‘Positive. There’s… no way he… stumbled.’
The lift arrived, jarring to a halt as though it had struck something hard.
13. Funny Guy
Matti was ashamed. It felt as if he were covered from head to toe in mud, or some stinking sludge, as though his shoulders had been worn down by lead weights. Because of this he didn’t look up, but just watched the tips of his shoes as they flashed in front of him, one after the other. He was also a bit scared, though perhaps not as much as normal on his walk home. He still expected them to jump out and attack him, even though they hadn’t even shouted at him on the playground this time. Above all he was disheartened by everything, at the way his life had changed, so that everything good and safe had disappeared.
‘Are you listening?’
‘What?’
‘I asked how you’ve got enough money to live in a place like Kulosaari.’
‘We moved there when my dad was still writing. He had two jobs: delivering the post and writing books.’
‘So why did he stop then?’
‘Dunno. Something must have snapped. Out of the blue they told him they were moving him to the sorting office, and I guess that’s when it all started.’
‘What does your mum do?’
‘She’s at home mostly, but she’s got a job at the newsagents,’ replied Matti. Leena’s curiosity and the fact that she talked non-stop made him uneasy; he would much rather have been quiet and continued staring at his feet. He wanted to go home, to go out in the garden and down to the shore; perhaps the swans would have arrived by now.
Besides, Leena was a bit odd. Her nose pointed upwards and she had a big chin, almost like a boy’s, and there was something else boyish about her. Her hair had been cut so that she looked as though she was wearing a bowl on her head. Once, back in the days when people called her the Hammer Thrower to her face, she hit this boy Joonas over the head with a stone, and his scalp had opened up and there was blood everywhere. Another time she smacked a girl called Pirjo in the face and gave her a real shiner. But no one called her names after that. Everybody was a bit scared of her now.
‘Can I come over to your house for a while?’ asked Leena. ‘We could watch a video or something.’
‘No…’
‘Why not?’
‘Mum doesn’t let me bring anyone home. And now this guy Roo’s moved in. He’s works nights and he’d tell her.’
‘Why has he got such a funny name? Roo…’
‘My sister Sanna still lived with us when he first moved in. And one day he brought back a bottle opener with a handle made from a kangaroo’s paw. A real one, it was dried. Can you imagine? A kangaroo’s paw…’
‘Doesn’t sound like a very nice guy.’
‘He’s quiet, a bit of a sissy really. Imagine, he’s got his own dressing table. Me and Sanna decided to call him Roo and whenever we got really pissed off with him we’d start singing ‘Tie me kangaroo down, sport!’Then we’d fall about laughing because he didn’t get it.’
They had come far enough that Matti could see his house, white behind the trees. It was a two-storey terrace, though there were in fact three floors because the garden sloped so much. Matti no longer felt the same calm and relief upon seeing the house as he had in the past. Now he just felt lousy and stale, like washing-up water left in the sink. He hoped Leena would take the hint and go home, but of course she didn’t, and insisted on walking him to the door like a baby. He sneaked a look at her. From the side she didn’t look all that bad, and she had bigger tits than anyone in their year. They bobbed up and down in a way that meant she couldn’t have been wearing a bra.
‘Why don’t you come out with me later.’
‘No…’
‘Don’t want to be seen out with the girls?’
‘No, it’s not that. I haven’t got any money, Mum won’t give me any.’
‘Oh come on! We can take the underground, we don’t need a ticket. We can go one stop at a time, get off and wait for the next train. That way you get to feel the excitement over and over.’
‘Are you serious? That’s completely pointless.’
‘Oh really?’ Leena retorted, as if it hadn’t bothered her in the slightest that Matti thought her suggestion was stupid. Instead she started jumping up and down like a toddler, and at this Matti felt even more embarrassed, for Leena too.
‘Hang on!’ she said, as though she had just thought of something astonishing, and tried to grab Matti by the hand, but he quickly moved his arm to safety, behind his back.
‘Well?’
‘I’ll take you to meet this funny bloke I know. You remember how people used to tease me back in the autumn?’
‘Yes.’
‘This man sort of cured me. I don’t know how he did it, he just cured me somehow.’
‘Give me a break. What guy?’
‘Some preacher or priest. But he’s not from the church or anything, I think he’s with some cult.’
‘I’m not interested in any of that religious mumbo-jumbo.’
‘But this is completely different. He does these amazing magic tricks and he speaks some weirdo language all the time. Come on, let’s go!’
‘Where does he live?’
‘We’re not going to his house. He’s always hanging around the underground or down at the railway station in town. Take this,’ said Leena, and this time she managed to grab him by the wrist and push something into his hand. It was a piece of paper folded over many times, smudged from her sweaty hands.
‘That’s my mobile number. Call me anytime you want. Please?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Matti. He didn’t know why he was so reluctant. What he really wanted to do was fly, and even when his mum and Roo were at home it was still almost possible: he could always shut the door to his room and put headphones on, then he could conduct the orchestra again, though he couldn’t properly take flight – there wasn’t enough space in his room.
‘Bye then! Give me a ring and we’ll go out!’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, again and again, and it was the truth: he really didn’t know. He turned and began plodding towards the front door, and no matter how hard he stared at his shoes they remained just a pair of beaten-up trainers, and he couldn’t make them chat to one another.
14. Something to tell you
‘Hi. How come you’re back so early?’
‘To be perfectly honest I’ve had a really shit day. First off this morning someone ended up under a train and all the lines were down. I didn’t get to Kontula until well after ten.’
‘Another suicide?’
‘How should I know? But it made me feel pretty bad. Even though I’m well aware that my fear of death is in fact a fear of rejection, it still doesn’t help.’
‘Cup of tea?’
‘Yes please,’ said Mikko, placing his briefcase on the floor. All of a sudden he could no longer understand why he had bothered carrying those few sheets of paper with him all day. He could just as well have left them at the office or at home that morning; he knew it all off by heart, like a poem: “Someone called out his name…” Maybe it was just a habit that had stuck from the days when he was able to write properly. He had had an almost irrational fear of losing his papers or that they would be destroyed in a fire or in some other terrible way, so he had always made numerous copies of everything and kept them in different places.
‘We’re going to take the flat, Dad. There’s just enough room for two and since we’ll be sharing the rent it’ll be fine.’
‘That’s great news,’ he sighed. He walked up to his daughter and put his arms around her, but a moment later that same uncertain guilt reawoke within him, and he began to explain, or rather, to defend himself. ‘You know it’s not that I’m kicking you out…’
‘I know, I know. Let’s not start that again.’
‘But I need you to understand. It’s just I can’t think or write with someone else under the same roof. It makes me nervous, like I’m
always worried something’s going to happen and I’ll have to go and help. And I need to be able to walk around at night without worrying that I’m going to wake you up. And I talk to myself a lot… the characters’ lines.’
‘You think I haven’t noticed?’
‘Well, no and… To be honest, financially this is a bit overwhelming. I can only barely afford to pay rent on two flats, and then there’s the travelling. It doesn’t come cheap, you know.’
‘Dad, I know.’
‘I’m being silly; of course you know. But soon they’ll be out of the way, and then I can turn this place into a proper home – with a workroom – and when I jump out of bed I can be right in front of the computer, just like back in Kulosaari.’
Sanna turned and picked up the chopping board. Her movements had suddenly become stiff and angular, her neck tensed, and Mikko had the distinct impression that everything was not quite right. Perhaps he had been too excited about Sanna’s move and had offended her.
‘Listen,’ she began. He had been right: her voice was completely different from before; it was lower, almost as if she were holding back tears.
‘Yes?’
‘There’s something I need to tell you…’
‘Then you need to get it off your chest.’
‘I can’t…’
‘And why not?’ he asked, only to realise immediately how clumsy it sounded. He gently stepped behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. At this Sanna spun round and hugged him tightly around the neck, the way she had done as a little girl. But something was terribly wrong. Tears flowed down her cheeks, her whole body heaving as she sobbed, as painfully as if she had just heard about the death of a loved one.
‘What on earth’s the matter? Are you…?’
‘N-no… it’s not me…’
‘Well what is it?’
‘It’s Matti. And you…’
‘You shouldn’t worry yourself about our problems. He’s going through a phase; it’ll soon pass. I’m sure he doesn’t really hate me.’
‘He doesn’t… But you weren’t supposed to know. Matti told me that for as long as he could remember Mum’s been telling him that you don’t really love him, that you’re just pretending, and that she’s the only one that really loves him.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. He misses you so much that all he ever does is listen to your writing music. Always something classical, never anything that other kids his age listen to.’
‘Well now I understand a thing or two…’
Sanna lowered her arms limply, walked over to the sink and wiped her face with a towel before bursting into tears again.
‘Sanna, listen.’
‘You don’t know! He didn’t want to… he didn’t dare tell you. He told me and… and…’
‘And?’
‘And now Mum’s trying to do the same to him!’
‘What’s she doing?’
‘You know the way she tried to smoke me out of the house because I couldn’t stand Roo. Imagine: there’s a strange man in the house eyeing me up and I’m supposed to act as if there’s nothing wrong! And she expected me to send that oaf a Fathers’ Day card!’
‘Sanna. What’s she doing to Matti?’
‘Exactly the same. She doesn’t speak to him for days, doesn’t wake him up in the morning, so that he oversleeps. She takes the rubbish into his room if he’s forgotten to take it out and goes off with Roo for days at a time without telling him anything, so he suddenly finds himself home alone for the weekend. Last autumn they went to Crete and left him at home for a week!’
‘What in the world can we do to help him?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘No…’
‘You need to save him like you saved me!’ she shouted, her voice strange and almost angry, but in a way that the anger wasn’t directed at him. ‘He’s got to come and live here with you, but then you won’t be able to write again and…’
‘Good God,’ Mikko whispered almost silently. He could sense the swamp, frighteningly close, dragging him into its murky, brown waters. He saw eyeless, white fish swimming deep beneath him. He barely had enough time to bring his hands up to his face before bursting into tears; the heavy, pounding sobs of a grown man. And he cried not only because of what he had just heard, but for the sake of so many other things that had passed without tears.
15. Aftertaste
‘He’ll be over there. Take it back a couple of frames.’
‘OK.’
‘And make sure to print it off, in case the image is clearer on paper,’ he continued, though he wasn’t sure whether this would be of any use.
He and Rastas from the forensics lab had been sitting in the video room for well over four hours and it had clearly been too long. Harjunpää’s eyes could barely focus, they felt as though they were covered in powder; his neck was stiff and his temples were pounding with the beginnings of a headache. From Rastas’ laboured sighing Harjunpää could tell that he wasn’t feeling much better.
‘However you look at it, it’s impossible to say what actually took place.’
‘I know, it’s the same on the camera by the door. There’s some sort of movement, but it could just as easily be the guy himself.’
‘At least now we know the exact time of the accident, down to the second.’
Rastas rolled his finger over the viewfinder. The screen clearly showed how, like a vortex, some of the people on the platform surged backwards, while others found themselves pressed dangerously close to the side of the train, which was still moving at considerable speed. Then a man in a light-coloured jumper threw up his hands and began waving them frantically: this must have been the man the driver had mentioned.
But no one ran off, nor did anyone attempt to hide. The tape revealed absolutely nothing about what had taken place: had the victim fallen by himself, or had someone shoved him?
‘Huh,’ Harjunpää muttered as he stretched, rolled his neck back and closed his eyes, but it didn’t help: beneath his eyelids flashed dozens upon dozens of television screens, hundreds of men and women, young and old, all in a single, unified grey mass. In total there were five video recorders and eight screens in the room, though on that particular day each of them was in some way broken. The one and only video recorder that did work was inadequate because it played everything in black and white. This could prove crucially important, especially if they had to provide an official notice of the incident, let alone begin searching for someone on the basis of distinguishing features. The situation was made all the more miserable by the fact that throughout the city there were enough security cameras to provide CCTV footage of almost every crime – and yet the police’s own technology let them down.
‘What say we call it a day?’ Rastas finally suggested. His voice was cautiously enquiring, but he didn’t quite manage to hide his yawn.
‘Maybe, but there’s no point going over this same section again and again. We need to widen our search. Let’s start from well before the incident, in case there’s anyone wandering about the platform, or if anyone followed the victim when he first walked into the station.’
‘We ought to check the people coming back up the escalators too.’
‘Yes, but we still don’t know who or what we’re looking for.’
‘We might see a familiar face…’
‘Perhaps,’ Harjunpää muttered flatly. He knew from experience that this would take hours if not days of work, while the rest of the investigation ground to a complete halt.
With a scowl on his face he reached for his work phone and pressed number one on the speed dial. The phone rang five times before someone eventually answered.
‘Mäki.’
‘Hi, it’s Harjunpää again.’
‘Just as we agreed. And what a fine day it’s been. That aquarobics does a world of good, you know.’
‘Good for you. Listen, Rastas and I have gone through all the tapes from the platform. We can place the time of the inciden
t fairly precisely judging by people’s reactions, but that’s about it. There’s nothing here to indicate what actually happened.’
‘So all we’ve got is that nutter’s statement.’
‘There was nothing wrong with his head. My gut reaction says he was telling the truth.’
For a moment Mäki fell silent, perhaps he was rubbing his earlobe, something he was in the habit of doing whenever he was at a loss. He was doing a temporary stint as senior officer at the Pasila division, and over the past four months he and Harjunpää had got on well enough.
‘Has the official notice been typed up yet?’
‘Yes, Leppis just sent it off and it went straight on to the online news. Should be in all the papers by tomorrow. We didn’t mention the possibility of a criminal investigation, but just asked that any potential eye-witnesses come forward.’
‘That’s fine. We’ll have a meeting in the morning and decide whether to go all out on this one.’
‘I’ve got a feeling that’s what we should have done today.’
‘Well, that wasn’t really possible. You shouldn’t worry that the crime scene investigators didn’t do a more thorough job – at least a thousand people must have trampled over the place before you got there.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘Who else is coming tomorrow?’
‘Onerva, and that’s about it.’
‘We’ll draft in a few more if necessary. See you tomorrow.’
‘See you.’
Rastas had switched off the equipment and placed the cassettes in a neat, labelled pile. He now stood by the door, which was already ajar, with one hand on the handle and the other on the light switch. Harjunpää understood perfectly well and stood up.
‘Thanks for hanging in there.’
‘It’s all money in the bank. Good night.’
‘Night.’
Harjunpää turned left into the corridor and traipsed towards the lift. He still had to go up to his office on the fourth floor to check whether anyone had tried to contact him. He also had to switch off his computer and remember to charge his phone. As he approached the lift he took his personal mobile out of his jacket pocket: it was an old Nokia, the kind that nowadays people considered heavy and cumbersome. He felt a quiet, sullen satisfaction that it had lasted so long – only once had he had to change the battery. He was particularly happy that he hadn’t got caught up in the ridiculous habit of changing telephones once a year, or even once every other. All of a sudden everyone had to get a new mobile, learn all its new tricks and buy new calling plans with the internet, email and wap – all things he didn’t need.
TH02 - The Priest of Evil Page 8
