Silence

by Jan Costin Wagner

  Ketola still sat motionless, but Kimmo could hear him breathing heavily now and then.

  ‘Can you give me the friend’s name and address?’ asked Joentaa.

  Kalevi Vehkasalo shook his head.

  ‘Magdalena Nieminen. She lives not far away, on Helmenkatu. I don’t know what number,’ said Ruth Vehkasalo.

  ‘Which school did your daughter attend?’ asked Joentaa.

  ‘The Hermanni Grammar School,’ said Kalevi Vehkasalo.

  Joentaa nodded. ‘So then she went to training. Did you say anything else to each other before she left?’

  ‘No.’ Ruth Vehkasalo looked at the chocolates in the dish. ‘No, Sinikka was playing music, she turned up the volume and shut her door. I knocked a couple of times, but she didn’t come out until she set off for the training session. We didn’t really say anything else, not exactly, she just said she’d be off now and looked at me in a way … I think she was testing me to see if I’d try forbidding her to go, and if I had she’d have gone all the same.’

  ‘Do you know exactly what the time was?’

  ‘About two thirty. The training session began at three thirty, she had a little way to go first and she had to change when she got there. She always set off an hour before it began.’

  ‘And that’s what she did yesterday?’

  Ruth Vehkasalo nodded.

  ‘What exactly was she wearing?’ asked Joentaa.

  Ruth Vehkasalo thought for a while. ‘Red shorts and a pale green T-shirt. And green shoes, trainers, or kind of halfway between trainers and street shoes. Yes, that’s what she was wearing, and she had her sports bag with her … but they’ve already found that.’

  ‘Did she say anything, either yesterday or in the last few weeks, maybe even the last few months, that seems to you significant in retrospect? Anything that surprised you, or simply something that stuck in your minds?’

  Both the Vehkasalos shook their heads.

  ‘I’d still like you to go on thinking about that. Something might occur to you. Does she have a boyfriend?’

  ‘A boyfriend?’ Kalevi Vehkasalo laughed and a moment later Joentaa saw in his face all the desperation he was trying to cover up. He cleared his throat. ‘She’s very … well, so far as that’s concerned I haven’t really understood her for quite some time,’ he added.

  ‘She’s only just fourteen,’ said Ruth Vehkasalo. ‘She’s often had, well, relationships, but she’s never introduced anyone to us and I think they were always brief episodes. I did try talking to her about … about that subject once, but she laughed and said she didn’t think there was much I could tell her.’

  Vehkasalo leaned forward. ‘Forgive me, but what are you implying? What does that have to do with this situation?’

  ‘Could we see her room?’ asked Joentaa.

  Vehkasalo seemed about to reply, but then just nodded. He led them downstairs to the lower ground floor, which turned out to have been extended into a separate flat.

  ‘Sinikka has this floor to herself. Except for the laundry room, of course,’ said Vehkasalo. ‘And this is her own room.’ He cautiously opened the door, as if Sinikka might be there and feel they were disturbing her.

  The room was empty and quiet. Vehkasalo made an awkwardly inviting gesture and took several steps back.

  Joentaa stopped in the doorway. A tidy room. Not meticulously neat, but the first thing Joentaa thought was that every object was exactly where Sinikka wanted it to be. At least, that was his impression. As if everything was arranged and organized in a certain way. His second thought was that there was not a single shelf; everything, with the exception of a computer on a wooden desk, stood on the pale blue carpet, which looked both faded and pleasantly clean and fresh in the sunlight.

  At the front of the room a glazed door led out to a terrace. On the left a small music system stood on the floor against a bare wall, with CDs stacked beside it pell-mell, but even this chaos looked tidy in a way that he couldn’t quite grasp. To the right only a mattress covered with pale blue bedlinen lay against the wall.

  ‘Yes, that mattress … Sinikka didn’t want a bed,’ said Vehkasalo, who had followed the direction of Joentaa’s glance. ‘She liked this better, just a mattress. Her bed is up in the loft. She preferred – prefers – she likes things to be simple. Recently she has, at least. Or clear, or whatever you like to call it. I have just this one daughter, so I don’t have much practice at dealing with puberty. I can’t remember my own … sorry, I’m probably talking nonsense.’

  ‘No,’ said Joentaa.

  ‘And she had her hair cut like that. Well, you have the photo. She used to have very thick hair, it looked prettier … but I think she was going through a phase.’

  Joentaa approached the mattress. Impressions left on the bedlinen showed that Sinikka had been lying on it. The day before, when she shut herself into her room so as not to have to talk to her mother.

  A strange-looking soft toy animal lay under the quilt. Joentaa bent over it, but with the best will in the world couldn’t say what kind of animal it was meant to be. A hybrid between a bear, a cat and a mouse, he thought. Anyway, Sinikka had carefully put the animal to bed before going out.

  ‘Hm,’ murmured Vehkasalo.

  Joentaa looked at the soft toy and remembered the photo that Vehkasalo had given them the previous evening. Sinikka had been looking gravely, almost angrily, into the camera, but Kimmo had imagined that somewhere in her features a very wide, attractive smile lurked. He must look more closely at the photo again later. Though what use that would be – maybe they were finding Sinikka’s body at this minute.

  ‘Have you seen all you want to?’ asked Vehkasalo.

  ‘Er … no. Sorry.’

  Beside the desk with the computer standing on it, Joentaa saw something else, something he couldn’t identify at first glance. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That? It’s a mini-trampoline,’ said Vehkasalo.

  ‘A …?’ asked Kimmo.

  ‘For jumping on,’ said Vehkasalo. ‘Upstairs we always hear a springy, creaking sound when Sinikka’s jumping up and down on it. We gave it to her for her birthday; it was the only thing she’d told us she wanted.’

  Joentaa looked at the little trampoline for a while, then turned away. His eyes met Ketola’s. Ketola was standing perfectly still in the doorway; apart from the few usual greetings, he hadn’t said a word the whole time since they arrived. Joentaa saw that Ketola was sweating, and had the impression that it was painful for him to be there. Maybe memories of the past were coming back, of his first interview with Pia Lehtinen’s parents. Or perhaps it was something completely different, nothing to do with their presence here. Kimmo avoided Ketola’s glance and turned back to Vehkasalo, who was now standing beside him and looking around the room as if he were seeing it all for the first time.

  ‘You know, the crazy thing is …’ he said. He seemed to have lost the thread of what he was saying, but then went on, ‘The crazy thing is, I have this incredible … well, longing for Sinikka. It would be so wonderful if she was just back here sitting on her mattress. Now of all times I want to see her, just when I can’t, whereas yesterday it meant nothing to me … do you understand what I mean?’

  Thank you,’ said Joentaa. ‘We’ll be in touch when we have any news.’

  Vehkasalo stared at him, and nodded. ‘Right,’ he murmured.

  They went back to the living room. Ruth Vehkasalo was sitting in front of the TV set reading the news on teletext. One new item was the missing girl’s name. Sinikka V The report had moved yet further up in the headlines since yesterday evening and was now among the main subjects of home news. Kimmo wasn’t surprised; a child’s disappearance always made the front pages of the popular press, at least, and the mysterious connection in this case with an unsolved crime in the distant past increased public interest.

  Ruth Vehkasalo took her eyes off the screen only briefly when he and Ketola said goodbye.

  ‘Come back whenever you like,’
said Vehkasalo, holding Joentaa’s hand firmly. Joentaa nodded and went out into the sunlight with the still silent Ketola.

  Ketola walked fast, keeping a step ahead of Joentaa, and said a brief goodbye to him.’’ A good thing I’m retired. This thing really got to me just now.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kimmo. He would have liked to pursue the subject, but he wasn’t sure how to begin, and Ketola was already on the way to his car, swaying slightly.

  ‘See you later,’ he called back before getting in.

  Kimmo Joentaa watched him drive off. He was still trying to make eye contact, but Ketola stared past him at the road.

  Sundström had left a message on his mobile. Kimmo felt an uncomfortable tingling sensation. Perhaps they’d found Sinikka Vehkasalo’s body. He closed his eyes and listened to Sundström’s voice, but it was only telling him about a team conference at two that afternoon.

  He put the mobile in his pocket and spent a little while looking at the pale green house in the sunlight.

  He saw Ruth Vehkasalo inside the window. She was just pulling the Venetian blinds down.

  3

  What monstrous energy, thought Timo Korvensuo. He couldn’t get the word out of his head.

  Energy. Everything consisted of energy.

  He was sitting in the shadow of the house, watching his children running around. They seemed indestructible, they ran and jumped and swam and laughed and called and shouted, and Timo Korvensuo had been watching them with a pleasantly hazy feeling, until at some point the word ‘energy’ entered his mind and wouldn’t go away, and his headache had come back.

  Energy, energy. Power, monstrous power, it had been stronger than he was. He had watched himself. A spectator of his own destruction. It was inevitable. Quietly, very lightly, struck down with indescribable featherweight force … and then he had gone to Naantali beach with a towel and his textbooks. Children’s mouths, children’s bodies, naked children’s bodies, limbs stretched out … boats in the warm breeze, laughter around him, women eating ices and asking him now and then, in friendly tones, what time it was, and his books, probability calculus or algebra, on a towel, a little sand on the paper, numbers and letters half hidden, his eyes veiled … young bodies brown from the sun, leaping about, jumping head first into clear, cold water from a wet wooden landing stage, not far away, a cool breeze on his skin. And the feeling of being drawn gently, carefully, deeper and deeper into a beautiful nightmare.

  Marjatta came out of the sauna, put down her towel and jumped into the water.

  He had been thrown on his own resources, alone – worse than alone.

  Until Pärssinen came along and asked him into his flat. Everything was energy, nothing was chance. Nothing simply happened. He had sensed that when he first crossed the threshold of Pärssinen’s flat.

  Venetian blinds drawn down. Dappled sunlight on the floor. Pärssinen had poured plum schnapps into shot glasses, put a film into the projector and unrolled the screen. While the film was running Pärssinen kept quiet, he always did then.

  Aku came towards him. He ran, stumbled, slipped and ran on. Armed with a pistol. He laughed, sprayed water in Korvensuo’s face, asked if he’d like to play with their ball with them.

  ‘Let your old man get a bit of rest,’ said Timo Korvensuo.

  Aku ran back to the landing stage, where Laura and Marjatta were kicking a brightly coloured ball about. Aku shouted that he was goalie now.

  Korvensuo felt the water on his skin. Pleasantly cool. Marjatta didn’t seem to notice anything, thought he just had a hangover. He did, too. It happened rarely enough.

  Aku saved a shot and clutched the ball like a trophy. Laura snatched it from his hands and kicked it back to Marjatta. Laura was a pretty girl. He loved her.

  Pia Lehtinen. So that had been her name. It made no difference. He had never known her name, and he had seen her face for the first time the previous evening, in a photo on the news. An old photo.

  Pärssinen had been lying on top of her, had covered her face, and it had also been Pärssinen who dragged her to the boot of the car. He had stood to one side, looking at the bicycle the whole time. He had straightened the handlebars.

  He would call Pekka and tell Marjatta his plans. It would be a little difficult, he’d have to make a great effort to lie to her, but there was no help for it. He had to do something, he didn’t know what, but something … it would be best to stay on this chair, not moving … but he had to call Pekka, go into the house and call Pekka while the three of them were playing down there. Pekka might be annoyed. Maybe he’d wonder what was up, or maybe not.

  He stood up. Turned round, then round the other way, and went indoors. He stood at the window, practising in the silence the words he was going to say.

  Then he dialled the number. Pekka answered. His voice sounded young and relaxed.

  ‘Hello, Timo here,’ said Korvensuo.

  ‘Hi, how are you doing? Still out there by the lake?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, we are.’

  ‘I was going to call you anyway and say thanks for yesterday. It was a great evening.’

  ‘Thank you, I’ll pass that on to Marjatta. I … listen, I thought of something I’d totally forgotten. I have to be in Turku at the beginning of the week. There’s a major project in the offing, some properties in Helsinki, but the potential buyer lives in Turku and I’d fixed to meet him.’

  ‘I see … did you mention this before?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Well, that’s a relief, because I don’t remember anything about it. A major project, you said?’

  ‘That’s right, but we’re only in the early stages. That’s why I didn’t want to make a big thing of it.’

  ‘What properties are they?’

  ‘Well … an estate of terraced houses. We’d be handling all the sales for the housing estate, but it’s still at the construction stage. I’ll know more when I’ve talked to the potential client.’

  ‘Right, that’s no problem. I’ll hold the fort at the office. I’ll call Kati, maybe she can help out a bit. How long are you going to be away?’

  ’I’ll … oh, not long. I don’t know exactly. I’ll call on Monday.’

  ‘Fine. Enjoy your trip. And my regards and thanks to Marjatta.’

  ‘I’ll tell her. See you soon.’

  Korvensuo broke the connection. He was sweating all over. Marjatta was there in the doorway.

  ‘Anything in particular?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no – or, well, yes, I entirely forgot an appointment. Almost entirely, anyway. I have to go to Turku, today would be best because I have a date to meet the man sponsoring the construction tomorrow. It’s about several terraced houses.’

  ‘In Turku?’

  ‘No, no, the houses are here in Helsinki, but the man happens to live in Turku and he can’t get away just now.’

  ‘And the two of you agreed to meet on a Sunday?’

  ‘That’s right … yes, he could only make Sunday. Pressure of work, apparently.’ He took a step towards her and caressed her face. He felt her wet hair in his hand. ‘I think I ought really to leave this evening.’

  ‘But you can’t, we’re all spending tonight here!’ said Aku, who was suddenly standing beside Marjatta. Korvensuo saw the disappointment in his face.

  ‘Some other time we can …’

  ‘You said you’d be here this weekend! You said so! You said so!’

  ‘Yes, I … I won’t leave till first thing tomorrow, okay?’

  Aku hugged him. Marjatta smiled and, soundlessly, formed the word ‘Thanks!’ with her lips. Korvensuo held Aku tight, as tight as he could, until after a while, half laughing, half scared, Aku cried out, ‘Ow, that hurts, Papa!’

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered Korvensuo, as his son ran down to the lake again.

  4

  That evening, looking through his kitchen window, Kimmo Joentaa saw Pasi and Liisa Laaksonen, the elderly couple who lived next door to him. Pasi was carrying his fishing rod over
his shoulder, the basket for fish dangled from Liisa’s hand.

  It had been like that the morning after Sanna’s death. Kimmo often saw the two of them, and every time he did he thought of Sanna, because the picture of Pasi and Liisa with the fishing rod and the basket was engraved on his mind.

  Paso and Liisa had seen him through the windowpane that day and waved to him, and they did the same now. This time Kimmo waved back; then, he had stood there motionless. This time they were coming away from the lake; then they were going down to it. And they had come by in the evening to give him and Sanna some of the fish they had caught. Kimmo had felt the fish, wrapped in foil, lying cold in his hands, had seen Pasi and Liisa smiling expectantly, and told the couple that Sanna had died in the night. He hadn’t forgotten that moment either, the moment when what he said had sunk in to the husband and wife.

  A few months ago Pasi Laaksonen had suffered a slight heart attack, Liisa had come in to see Joentaa that evening and they had talked for a while. Liisa had been in tears, and Kimmo hadn’t known what to do, how to comfort her, but when she left Liisa had thanked him for their conversation. A few days later Pasi was going fishing again.

  Kimmo stared out of the window. Very likely Pasi would soon be ringing the doorbell to bring him some fish.

  For a little while he looked at the rather battered cardboard carton standing in the front hall. The files on the old case. He had taken the carton home because he felt he wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Sundström had frowned, but said nothing.

  They hadn’t found the body of Sinikka Vehkasalo either that day. They had had two team conferences, they had decided on areas of operation, allotted various tasks to various officers and had already carried out some of them.

  By now about thirty investigators were working on the case. Most of them were officers on patrol or temporarily conscripted from other departments. Sundström had coordinated this comparatively large group well, and had said a few clear, self-confident words, creating an effective working atmosphere.