Light in a Dark House (10 page)

‘Remember who?’

‘Then you don’t?’

‘Sorry, remember who?’

‘Well, another question, do you happen to know where Risto is?’

Happonen did not reply.

‘Because I’m looking for him, haven’t been able to find him yet.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know anyone called Risto.’

‘You’re afraid, are you?’ said the journalist in a curiously offhand tone, and went on searching in his camera bag.

‘One for the road?’ he enquired, and suddenly held out a bottle of whisky.

‘What?’

‘You didn’t have one back then because you’d already left.’

‘Didn’t have one what?’

‘One for the road,’ said the journalist.

Happonen tried to dodge it, but the bottle broke on his left temple.

He was only vaguely aware of what happened next, or of the fact that his cries, which he hoped would reach the girls laughing in the background, were no louder than a whisper.

27

So, dear diary, I saw Saara lying on the bed, and Risto came out of the room, and her nose was bleeding. And she still had her dress on, but it was torn. She was lying on her back on the bed, looking up, and Risto said, ‘Your turn now,’ to one of the men standing in the corridor.

The man laughed in an odd kind of way, as if he felt embarrassed.

Then I saw that boy from the top form at school was standing in the bedroom with Saara. His name is Kalevi. Kalevi Forsman. I don’t know him, but he was standing there with a wry look on his face. A wry smile, I mean.

The man Risto had spoken to went in and threw himself on top of Saara. Fumbled with his trousers and gasped while he was lying on her, and the bed squealed.

Forsman and another boy I know by sight, a tall, fat boy who’s also in the top class and boasts a lot, I think his name is Happonen, were both standing beside the bed holding Saara’s arms down, although she wasn’t moving.

Then the man on top of her finished and Risto sent in the one standing beside me in the corridor. The man lay on top of Saara, and all the time Risto was chuckling to himself as if he wasn’t all there, as if he’d gone crazy.

Saara just lay on the bed and didn’t move at all.

I was standing in the corridor and I couldn’t move either.

Then it was Forsman’s turn, and then the other boy from the top class, Happonen, who talks so big, but he burst into tears and suddenly ran out of the room into the open air, with his trousers undone.

Risto called after him to stay, and he asked me if I wanted a go too. Well, little one, want a go too? That’s what he said, and I think I shook my head, but maybe I didn’t do anything because I couldn’t move.

Then Forsman lay on top of her again, and then they all went into the living room, and Risto dropped on the sofa like a sack of potatoes and told one of the men to go and get something to drink. He was still fiddling around with his trousers, and Risto shouted at him again to go and get something to drink and five glasses.

Then it was the turn of one of the men I didn’t know, at least not really; I know that one of them works at the supermarket, he goes all over the floors in the evening with a cleaning machine, and once he shouted at me for spitting out a piece of chewing gum.

But I don’t know the other one at all, the one who was to fetch something to drink. He brought the glasses, and Risto stood up and filled them, and tried to give me one.

I think I shook my head, and Risto said something or other, that I could raise a glass with them or something like that. The others did drink something, I think, and Forsman’s mouth was still wry in the middle of his face, and he kept pulling at his balls as if they hurt. Risto kept saying something to me, and suddenly he threw the spirits in his glass in my face and broke the glass on my head. Then he grabbed me by the throat and said that hadn’t gone so well, and it was not for public consumption.

That’s how he put it – not for public consumption.

Then he told the others to go away. They were holding their glasses and didn’t know what to do, and then they all did go away when Risto shouted at them again to get out. There’s nothing else to see here, he shouted. When the others had gone he fetched Saara, led her by the hand to the piano, and then he grabbed hold of me and told me to sit down beside her.

Then we were sitting side by side again, like before. Before all that happened. Saara in the blue-and-white summer dress. It was all untidy and rucked up. There was that humming in my head, like bees or flies. Risto said Saara was to play something, and Saara looked at the floor. Then she raised her head and stared at the piano keys, concentrating on them. And then she pressed one key and it made a high sound. Then another key. High and somehow soft, but louder than the humming in my head. Yes, I wrote that down already. Like a kind of whispered scream.

Then Risto came back. Hauled me up and shoved me across the room, I don’t know just how, but anyway his hand was on my throat all the time, and he kept on talking, and I felt kind of like I was going to die any moment.

He pushed me down on the lawn outside and said I was never to show my face here again. Never again. He kept saying that, never again, never again, never again.

He pushed me down until I was lying on the ground, and I saw the two wooden sticks we’d used last week to be the goalposts. I caught almost every ball that time, and in the end Risto was getting almost angry, but I think he didn’t want to show it. Then he suddenly had the bottle in his hand, and he tipped the schnapps out all over me. It stung, and he said he’d kill me if I ever turned up there again. Then he went indoors and closed the door.

I rode home on my bike. I kept thinking of Saara all the time.

When I got home my mother asked how the piano lesson had gone, and I said it was okay, and then I went straight up to my room, because I didn’t want her to smell the alcohol. I smelled of it, and it stung my eyes badly. I showered for a long time.

Today I saw Forsman at school. He was standing on the edge of a group, not saying much. Stood there looking quite normal, in a brightly coloured T-shirt, and he wasn’t scratching his balls the whole time any more.

Saara wasn’t at school again today.

Lauri kept on asking me if everything was all right, because I was acting in such a funny way. But I don’t feel funny at all.

I just have to concentrate, because everything feels all mixed up.

I dreamed of Saara in the night, but I don’t remember just what it was about, except that Risto was there too, like a huge shadow.

28

MARKO WESTERBERG MET
the dead man’s sister at Helsinki station. Kirsti Forsman had brought only a small case, and she was wheeling it along behind her as he led her through the concourse into the open air and over to the car. When he picked up the case to put it in the boot, he got the impression that there was either nothing in it or, at the most, a couple of bird’s feathers.

She looked out of the passenger-seat window and only nodded as he threaded his way into the evening rush-hour traffic and explained the course of events. She was to make a statement. Give information about her brother. Go to the forensics department. Yes, that was no problem. No, she hadn’t booked into a hotel, she was going to travel back that same evening.

Westerberg bit back his objection that it was already evening.

‘Your . . . case?’ he asked instead.

‘Sorry?’

‘I mean, you’ve brought a case with you.’

‘Oh, I bought that in a shop at Hämeenlinna station.’

So much for the bird’s feathers, thought Westerberg. And then he wondered why a woman would buy a case on the way to a city she intended to leave again at once.

In the mortuary she stood by the stretcher with her dead brother on it for a long time.

‘Thank you,’ she said at last.

Then she went along the corridor, walking with long, steady strides. Westerberg had difficulty keeping up with her. The evening sun was shining, both cool and warm. Kirsti Forsman lit a cigarette as they sat in the car, and Westerberg scraped the carriagework on another car’s bumper as he backed out of his parking place.

He got out of the car to inspect the damage, and wrote a note giving Seppo’s direct phone number and saying there was no need to report it to the police, they had already been there.

‘Okay?’ asked Kirsti Forsman as he restarted the car.

‘Not too bad,’ he said.

At police headquarters, Seppo was waiting with one of his catalogues of questions, which as a rule were logically constructed. Seppo’s warm voice and Kirsti Forsman’s clear, regular tones filled the room.

‘You work as a lawyer in Hämeenlinna.’

‘That’s right. Mainly for Arsa, a dairy company.’

‘Dairy.’

‘Yes, milk. Yoghurt. Chocolate too in the north of the country. I draw up contracts and advise the company management on legal questions.’

‘Yes,’ said Seppo. ‘Your brother. We need your help because he . . .’

‘I don’t know that I can help you there.’

‘. . . seems to have been in touch with very few people.’

‘I’m afraid we were hardly in touch at all ourselves.’

‘Oh,’ said Seppo, and Westerberg thought: so much for the catalogue of questions.

‘We last saw each other at Christmas three years ago. I was thinking about that on the train,’ said Kirsti Forsman.

‘Where was that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Where exactly did you see each other then?’

‘Oh, I see. At our house. We’d invited him. My husband and I. Well . . . my then husband. Kalevi came and spent the night. It was . . . really nice.’

‘So the three of you celebrated Christmas together,’ said Seppo.

She nodded.

‘Three years ago?’

‘Christmas three years ago.’

‘Right, then . . .’

‘That is, two years and nine months ago. Roughly.’

‘Right. And since then . . .’

‘We spoke on the phone now and then. I tried to reach him on his birthday last year, but I only got his answering machine.’

‘Do you know anything about his lifestyle? I mean, we know he was in close contact with his business partner, but outside that did he have friends or . . . or a woman in his life?’

‘A woman in his life . . . not as far as I know, no,’ she said. ‘The last was a few years ago, she was an employee of his company, but it didn’t work out because he felt the two things couldn’t be combined.’

‘Couldn’t be combined?’

‘The private and professional spheres of life.’

‘I see.’

‘In fact we did talk about it this way and that at the time, and he called me more often for a while after he’d ended the relationship.’

‘The relationship with this employee of the company?’

She nodded. ‘And there were some legal aspects involved, because the woman wanted to hand in her notice.’

‘I see,’ said Seppo.

‘But then she left of her own accord anyway.’

‘I see. And there’s been no woman in his life since then, so far as you know?’

‘Not so far as I know. But as I said, we’ve not been in touch. We simply never had much in common. I’m a few years younger, I had a different circle of friends, different interests. A different life.’

‘His firm was under pressure. Do you, by any chance, know of conflicts on a professional level that could give us somewhere to start investigating?’

She seemed to be thinking it over without coming to any conclusion. ‘I don’t think his firm was under more or less pressure than many others,’ she said. ‘He had to struggle, like everyone who sets up a company of his own. But I really do think his programs were good. When we last saw each other he’d just got a major new customer.’

‘So that would have been about three years ago?’

‘Yes, exactly . . . he talked about it that evening.’

‘But it’s quite a while ago.’

‘Of course, but as I said, I can’t confirm that his company was in difficulties. I just don’t know what went on in his life.’

A different life, thought Westerberg, and said, ‘We’re asking only because he fell from the fourteenth floor of a hotel.’

The woman looked away from Seppo and turned her eyes on him.

‘I understand that you didn’t have much to do with your brother. It’s certainly nothing unusual for brothers and sisters to lose sight of each other, but now he’s dead, you know.’

She nodded, and he wondered whether she really did know. Whether it had sunk in.

‘Do you know the people in this photograph?’ asked Seppo. He showed her the picture he had found under the mattress in Forsman’s bleak apartment.

She looked at the photo for a long time. Turned it over and examined the back of it as well.

‘No,’ she said at last.

‘But your brother . . . you recognise him?’

‘Yes, of course, this is Kalevi. But the others mean nothing to me. We had very different . . . relationships.’

Seppo nodded, and Westerberg thought about the word. Relationships.

‘It’s quite an old picture anyway,’ she said.

Westerberg drove her to the station. Her case was still light, her handshake firm.