The Man Who Died

by Antti Tuomainen

  About halfway through the tub I manage to get my thoughts back on track.

  I go through my conversation with Tikkanen, his tone of voice, his cunning, leading questions and his fleeting moment of hesitation. I think of my meeting with Raimo, his sudden invitation for a sauna conference, the fact that Taina is preparing to host the Japanese and wants to send me out of town in the name of care and compassion. I think of Asko’s story, the possibility that he’s a coldblooded killer and experienced at extracting his revenge. Tikkanen appears to realise that I know more than I’m letting on about Tomi’s fate, but he seems to have decided to bide his time. For what, I don’t know. And I don’t even want to think about how Sami will react to the news that his best friend has been dredged up from the sea, impaled on his own Samurai sword.

  I’m well aware that whatever I plan, I’ll probably end up having to improvise; there are simply more variables in play here than anybody could hope to control. On the other hand, if we have the strength and desire to think about the situation from a wider perspective – like a blue, open sky and the sea stretching out before our eyes – life has never been more exciting and eventful. I’ve flicked through women’s magazines and watched Taina’s favourite chat shows long enough to know that people have an innate desire to feel things, to gain experiences.

  Am I out for revenge?

  The thought has crossed my mind. Sometimes it’s swirled through my mind like a blood-red flag in a brisk wind, at others it churns like a black bog hole sucking up everything in its path. Naturally I want some form of justice, I want to get even. But then again, what I want most of all, and what I hope I will have enough time to see through, is to rescue my business. I cannot let it fall into the wrong hands. I will not sit back and watch from the sidelines as it is destroyed – even after my death.

  Today Sanni has started working for our competitor. I try to call her, but she doesn’t answer. I take the booking confirmation slip from my shirt pocket and read once again through the names of the guests I’ve written out. I have an idea and note it down.

  The second ice-cream tub is empty. I place it on the ground next to the first one and adjust my position between the rocks. The terrain near the shore is a mixture of uneven grass and rough sand. It takes a while before I am lying comfortably. My aim is not to doze off but to think, but as so often in life, thinking proves too much and I find myself in a dream in which I’m fighting off a horde of faceless men with ice-cream tubs as weapons.

  The reason for the men’s lack of faces becomes clear: their heads are ice-cream tubs. I try to run away, but it’s futile. My stomach aches, my legs won’t carry me, my shoes sink into a mire of ice cream. All of a sudden I pick up a sword, long and gleaming. I slice, snap and lance the ice-cream men, and I’m no longer standing in ice cream but on a jetty, my very own jetty, and the ice-cream men are nowhere to be seen. It’s a beautiful, calm summer’s evening. The sword is still in my hand, but now it feels heavy. I lift the sword and see Taina’s head cleft in two.

  I bellow and fumble at the air as I snap wide awake.

  The shade of the sky has changed; it is now one degree, two degrees darker. The wind has gathered pace; I can feel it as soon as I raise my head from between the rocks. There’s a sickly taste in my mouth, a milky sock knitted to the top of my palate. I lean against the boulder for a moment and pull my phone out of my pocket. It seems I needed that rest: I’ve been out cold for several hours.

  Raimo Lavinto, our acquisitions officer, lives in the Pitäjänsaari neighbourhood. The district is located on an island on the other side of the Tervasalmi bridge. At its narrowest point the distance between the island and the mainland is only twenty or so metres, but nonetheless the atmosphere and surroundings change dramatically.

  I’ve heard people call Pitäjänsaari a fantasy island, and I can understand why. The houses are mostly old, some built over a hundred years ago, and some of the original wooden buildings are quaintly slanted with picturesque low ceilings – so low that anyone of average height has to stoop as they step inside. The houses with their red and yellow walls, gardens and jetties, renovated and completed over the years, are like something straight out of a history book.

  Raimo lives in a house just like this, right at the end of a peninsula on the northern side of Pitäjänsaari. Though the houses on the island are relatively close together, Raimo’s property has plenty of privacy: the attractive red-painted log house with its gleaming-white window frames cuts off the view from the road, while an oblong sauna-cumbarn, erected long before the advent of modern building regulations, means nobody can see in from the bay either.

  I drive round to the yard behind the house, turn the car on the gravel and reverse it in front of the garage. The garage door is locked; Raimo’s car is doubtless inside. I step out of the car and wait for Raimo to appear from somewhere or to hear his deep, resonant voice coming closer. All I hear is the sound of a motorboat passing.

  Smoke putters from the sauna chimney. Perhaps it’s not smoke, just a wave of warmth that refracts the air and softens it, doing to the blue sky what crazy mirrors at the fairground do to people’s faces. Raimo is warming the sauna; after all, he’s invited me for a sauna conference, and the stove needs wood. The luscious, tended garden rolls down towards the shore, and to the left of the sauna a jetty strides a long way into the blue waters. Halfway down the garden an unimpeded view of the bay opens up before me.

  A wooden boat is heading out towards the open waters. It is about ten metres long and looks like it might have once been a fishing boat, before being adapted for recreational purposes with an extended cabin up top. I wonder what it would feel like to ride in one of those, on my way to beautiful, rugged islands, free of my present concerns, many of which are of a distinctly and painfully permanent nature. The thought is so attractive – the low rumble of the diesel motor and the rush of water against the prow so enticing – that I very nearly set off swimming after the boat. Instead I walk across to the sauna and am about to call out Raimo’s name when I hear a text message beep in my pocket:

  ‘Jaakko, had to fetch the wife. She’s ill, can’t get the bus. The sauna is heated. Use it. Key is under the porch rug. Let’s talk tomorrow. Raimo.’

  The garden is empty and silent. The trees and buildings protect me not only from prying eyes but from the wind too. The evening sunlight takes me in its arms. The flowers are fragrant, the sea too. Now I can only hear the sound of the boat if I concentrate hard or imagine even harder. I won’t use the sauna, heated or not.

  All the same, I stoop to lift the key from beneath the porch rug, unlock the sauna door and step inside. The dressing room is immediately in front of me, the door into the sauna to the right. I peer inside.

  It’s an old-school sauna: no shower, no separate washing facilities. Fresh water is brought directly to the building via a hose, and the barrels of water look to be filled and ready. The stove is in the middle of the far wall. It is large, and so is the hatch in the front of the stove. I guess the temperature is just about right to bathe, and the thermometer on the wall confirms my estimate, showing around 84°C. Raimo can’t have left long ago. I step towards the stove, crouch down and use a ladle to prise open the hatch; I don’t dare touch the metallic handle with my bare hands.

  The heat that surges out of the stove almost knocks me on my back. The live coals glow bright red. Raimo clearly takes the task of heating the sauna very seriously indeed. I adjust the position of my legs, transfer most of my weight to the balls of my feet and begin to stand up. At the same time I turn and feel a wave of dizziness. The combination of the heat and the exertion is too much after all. I stumble and stagger to the left, towards the window. The water ladle is still in my hand, and as I lurch forwards it pulls the stove’s hatch wide open.

  What occurs next happens with such extraordinary speed and such inexplicable force that it’s almost as if every movement, from the start of the sequence of events to the very end, was optimised and attuned to per
fection.

  The axe is perhaps the heaviest and most expensive wood-chopping implement in mass production. It weighs four and a half kilos, and in addition to the razor-sharp blade, the pole widens at the ends. This is the king of all axes, the Bentley of the wood-chopping world. I know this because I’ve considered buying one for myself. I’ve held one in my hands at the hardware store and swung it a few times to find out what it feels like. The difference between this and a standard axe from the supermarket is about the same as the difference between an aircraft carrier and a rowing boat, and moving the thing is similarly deadly: once the speed and direction of the swing has reached a certain point, stopping or turning it is out of the question. The axe will stop only once it comes into contact with its target, and when that target is reached, it will be annihilated.

  It’s a good thing I stumbled and staggered to my left for support.

  The axe comes to a halt against the footstool right next to me. The wooden slats explode in splinters, the axe goes straight through them and smashes against the concrete floor, which cracks too under the force of the blow. The axe grinds against the ground as I fall on my side, the sauna ladle still in my hand.

  Next the blade of the axe approaches me from the side.

  I’ve underestimated Sami.

  His scrawny frame and his music-student’s pallor notwithstanding, he packs a lot of force behind the axe. Only then do I understand the reason why: the former baseball player is using the axe like a bat. He understands the laws of physics, probably without being able to name a single theory. The blow from the side whooshes towards me as I try to regain my balance. Stumbling randomly is in fact the best way of avoiding the blade: from the hitter’s perspective my movements are unpredictable and don’t follow a predetermined trajectory, such as that of a ball thrown by a pitcher or a log placed firmly on the spot.

  The axe slices the hairs from the top of my head, I feel the brush of the blade at the point where my hair is thinnest. On its way it leaves a painful graze on my scalp. Which, of course, is preferable to life without my forehead.

  The axe comes crashing into the wall of the sauna.

  The wooden panelling – the beautiful, darkly varnished boards – smashes apart like a jam jar. Again I manage to clamber to my feet. I’m still stooping, and there are two reasons for this: I feel very faint indeed and guess this is a more advantageous position for me at the moment than standing up with my back straight.

  Sami’s movements are erratic. In addition to his limp and his lazy eye, he appears to be suffering from a profound, immutable rage. But he certainly knows how to hit. He handles the axe as though he is getting ready for a force play and spins the weapon so deftly into position, ready for another blow, that the mere sight of this would have most people fleeing for their lives. Except I can’t go anywhere. Sami has positioned himself right in front of the door.

  Again the axe slices through air. This one is clearly a switch hit.

  Sami tries to plunge the axe through my head: the blade comes down from above and will rebound upwards again, and the contact with the ball – in this case, my skull – will be as low to the ground as possible. The aim is to strike the ball very powerfully so that it bounces up as high as possible and travels a long way, so that the player waiting on third base has enough time to run home before the ball can be returned.

  I doubt, however, that my head will bounce anywhere at all if the axe makes contact, at least not in one piece. I grip the sauna ladle in my hand as I lunge forwards and upwards at an angle. I only have enough energy for one leap; my vision is blurred, the electric shocks have returned, and I’m short of breath.

  Sami’s movement is so loaded that it carries him with it in the same way it carries the axe. The blade cuts through the air; his hands move in an arc, and Sami moves with them. The axe misses me. I stand up, see Sami in front of me, and charge towards him. I raise the ladle in an attempt to hit the axe from his hands. I hit hard and miss both the axe and his hands. I strike Sami somewhere around the head. He dives forwards. The doorway stands like a dusky gate ahead of me.

  Head for the door.

  I concentrate on making my legs follow my instructions. My body moves.

  Sami passes me as he falls forwards. The ladle must have given his motion plenty of added momentum. I hear crashing, clattering, a bang, and knock into something I assume must be the wall. I collapse and hope I am already in the garden.

  The shorn grass scratches my cheeks. Ants tickle my neck. The evening sun is filtered through the thick birch trees, casting long, languorous fingers of light into the garden and along the walls of the house. The air is heavy with the smell of barbecued sausages. My mouth is so dry that it feels like it belongs to someone else. My senses awaken one by one, my limbs too. I move my arms and legs. They’re all intact.

  My first attempt to stand up is too quick, too abrupt. The second is more cautious. It is successful, though I have to prop myself against my knees. Eventually I straighten my back. It seems I am halfway there; the house and the sauna are equidistant, and I am probably in the very centre of the property. I listen for a moment, try to look for movement in the garden or the sauna building. I cannot see or hear anything. Not a breeze in the trees, not a boat in the bay or cars on the street. Nothing.

  The day is reaching an end, and the sea looks darker now. The door to the sauna is open. At first I think I should dash back to the car and escape, but then it dawns on me that if Sami were still hunting me down, small pieces of me would already be smeared across the lawn. I walk gingerly, my sense of balance has still not entirely returned. On the veranda outside the sauna I look over my shoulder; nothing about the view has changed.

  In the sauna the temperature has dropped. The door has been left wide open – for how long, I can’t say. The axe appears to have flown high into the upper boards. Sami is resting on the floor, his body stretched out. All except for his head. His head and shoulders are lodged inside the sauna stove.

  Back in the garden again, at first I think of calling for an ambulance, but I don’t make the call. Sami’s head is nothing but a charred lump: a gnarled, rounded ember which only seems to be attached to the rest of his pallid, glowing body by a trick of Frankensteinian ingenuity. A defibrillator will not revive Sami now, and I’m not convinced the kiss of life would do much good either. I think of calling Raimo, but that’s an even worse idea: either Raimo is somehow involved in planning all this or he knows nothing about it whatsoever. In either case, I have nothing to say to him. At least not right now. I even consider calling Tikkanen, but getting the police messed up in this would mean getting the police messed up in everything else too, and I have no more desire for that than I have time on my hands.

  And now for Sami.

  15

  I bury Sami behind the sauna.

  He lies beside me as I sink the spade I found in the garage into the soft earth in the strip of land between the sauna and the sea. I am hidden from the bay by a thick tangle of bushes, and by the tall reeds and birches standing along the shore. From the garden I am completely hidden behind the sauna building. The strip of land is about five metres wide, and Sami’s final resting place will be much nearer the sea than the sauna. This is simply to maximise my cover from prying eyes. I cannot afford another unfortunate slip like there was with Tomi. I work fuelled by a bottle of orange Jaffa I found in the sauna.

  Digging a grave is slow, hard work. Every spadeful of earth – first a skimming of black topsoil, then a denser, moister layer of darkbrown sand and gravel – must be individually removed from the ground and lifted to the side. I’ve kept the turf in a separate pile; I’ll try and landscape the grave as best I can once I’m finished. I don’t believe Sami will remain in his grave forever, but I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he stays there for as long as possible.

  I’m sweating, the palms of my hands are chafed, my arm muscles ache and my back is stiff. At times I have to lean against the wall of the sauna and hope I
remain conscious. At first I consider trying to conserve energy and burying Sami bent over double like an Olympic diver, but the idea soon feels inappropriate. And so I dig a traditional-shaped plot, though it takes much longer.

  Eventually the hole in the ground is a metre deep and about Sami’s length. I’m standing up to my waist in another man’s grave when a text message beeps on my phone. I wipe my hands on my shirttails and pull the phone out of my pocket:

  ‘Best sauna in the world, don’t you think? Bet you’ve never felt steam like it. Swing the ladle for me too! Raimo.’

  I clamber out of the pit. I had to pull Sami here by the ankles. He’s left a trail of soot across the sauna floor, the patio and over parts of the lawn, as though someone has drawn across the landscape with a thick black crayon. There’s plenty for me to clear up once I’m done with the burial. I take hold of his ankles again and pull him a little further, stopping at the edge of the pit to gather my strength. I count to three, then haul the body up and drop it into the grave. Sami falls a metre and thumps down on his back. In both length and width, the measurement is perfect.

  Filling the grave is a much quicker affair than digging it. I don’t glance downwards until Sami is covered in at least half a metre of mud. When I finally look down, all I can see is a dip in the ground that could have been caused by all kinds of gardening work. I fill the rest of the hole, stopping several times to stamp the earth more firmly into the ground.

  I seem to have forgotten that, like all of us, there’s a certain volume to Sami’s body – whether we’re above ground or below it – and that volume is considerable. There’s so much excess soil that I have press it down many times. Finally I arrange the clods of grass on top.