Light in a Dark House (33 page)

LEEA HANKALA-LEMBERG
read Olli a bedtime story about a little boy fearlessly putting monsters to flight.

At the end Olli asked if Lauri would be coming back soon, and she said yes. A few minutes later Olli was asleep. She waited there for a while, looking at her sleeping son. Then she carefully rose to her feet, tiptoed to the door and then went straight to the kitchen, because that morning she had left something there, next to the fruit and vegetables, and now it was urgent for her to take a closer look at it.

There was only one word on the slim package –
Infopost
. She held it in her hands for a while, looking at the brown envelope, reading the single word again and again, and remembering the conversation she had had with Lauri some time ago. Lauri had been amused by her credulity, and suggested that junk mail should go straight into the recycling bin rather than being opened.

She opened the envelope, and then stared at its contents for several minutes before spreading them out on the kitchen table and reading the handwritten note.

Dear Leea,

We won’t be able to see each other for some time. I’ve left you the money I made on the Stock Exchange. Please use it mainly for what Olli will need in the next few years. I’ll visit you both as soon as the whole thing has stopped mattering, but that could take some time. I’m fine. I’ll call you and Olli, but I have yet to work out a clever way to do it. Oh, and another thing – if Koski phones or even turns up on your doorstep, he could be a little angry. The Securities and Exchange people will probably want to investigate me for helping a biotechnology company to show a sudden leap in profits, but in the circumstances that’s the least of my worries, and the money in this envelope was worth it to me.

See you some time, love to Olli and to you, from Lauri.

She read the letter twice, then put it down on the table and began counting the money. Mauve notes, yellow notes that looked like play money, and to Lauri that was all it would have been. She counted until at last a round sum began to emerge: 100,000 euros. For Olli. Whatever he wanted them for.

She thought of what the police officer had said and that had been going round in circles in her mind ever since, a few centimetres away from her ability to take in its meaning.
He’s suspected of killing a man today in Frankfurt.

She went on sitting at the table for some time, thinking of toy money and the game of Monopoly that she had won, thanks to Teuvo and to Lauri’s annoyance. In the end Lauri had swept the hotels off the board, torn a 10,000 note in half, and told Teuvo not to laugh in that silly way.

She tried to hold the picture in her mind: Lauri, Teuvo and herself, as children.

She closed her eyes.

For some seconds she thought that the voice speaking to her from a little way off was part of the memory.

‘Is that money real?’ asked Olli.

81

KIMMO JOENTAA DROVE
through the night over the water and over the apparently endless bridge, and then followed the blue-and-green signs purporting to direct him to Turku.

There was very little traffic on the roads. Now and then he met snowploughs clearing the carriageways of the large amounts of snow that were falling thickly, snow in large flakes.

He phoned Sundström in Turku and Westerberg and Seppo in Helsinki. In turn, they brought him up to date with the latest developments, and they had various questions to ask about Teuvo Manner, the diary and the summer of 1985.

The diary, the blue exercise book, lay on the passenger seat beside him, and as he drove and talked and most of all listened, a picture began to emerge.

Lauri Lemberg, thirty-seven, born 17 February 1973, resident in Naantali and recently in Helsinki with his sister Leea and her son Olli; graduated with distinction in biochemistry, Finnish literature, economics and jurisprudence, subsidiary subjects physics, mathematics, cultural history and psychology; several years as a lecturer at Turku university; broke off studying for a doctorate in biochemistry after a few weeks and went to north Finland to work as a waiter for a year; then occasional jobs, after that journalistic work for a cultural journal in Turku, then a post he held for rather longer as representative for the pharmaceutical products of the firm of Kloks OY. Fired from that post, according to the CEO, for telling the firm’s indignant customers that the medicinal drug it was offering was useless and not worth their money.

‘Oh,’ said Joentaa.

‘Yes,’ said Seppo. ‘But he was right. The drug in question was taken off the market a little later.’

Seppo said goodbye and promised to phone again, and Joentaa thought of Larissa riding a moped through a snowstorm, and then his mobile rang, and this time it was Westerberg, who immediately began talking about Lauri, going on from where Seppo had left off.

Lauri Lemberg, representative for pharmaceutical products; then economic journalist on the investors’ magazine succinctly entitled
Shareholders
.

‘And here comes the crunch,’ said Westerberg. ‘He made money out of insider knowledge. I don’t quite understand how, but he ended up giving false information and writing reports that were pure imagination.’

Must ask Lauri tomorrow, thought Joentaa.

‘Kimmo?’ asked Westerberg.

‘Yes?’

‘I can’t think of anything to say, can you?’

‘No,’ said Joentaa, and then he went on driving by himself, missing Westerberg’s voice. Then Sundström called to say that Saara Koivula had gone to see Risto Nygren a day before she was found unconscious and severely injured in the roadside ditch.

Joentaa did not reply, but tried to concentrate on the road ahead of him.

‘The surveillance cameras caught her. Nygren convicted himself, so to speak, because his house has a lot of expensive security fitted to deter burglars. The cameras show Nygren putting the unconscious Saara in the boot of his car that evening, a few hours after she arrived, and then driving away.’

Joentaa still said nothing, and concentrated on the road.

‘Next morning he flew from Helsinki to Frankfurt.’

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

Sundström ended the call, and Joentaa drove on by himself thinking of the dead man in the forest, Teuvo Manner, who had been a boy and perhaps had stayed a boy, always hearing the last chord that Saara Koivula had played.

After some more time had passed, it was Seppo who told him that a letter had been found in Lauri Lemberg’s office on the Stock Exchange in Helsinki.

‘The desk was empty, just this letter in it. For us,’ said Seppo. ‘A letter from Manner to Lemberg.’

From Teuvo to Lauri, thought Joentaa.

‘Dated 27 June. It must have been with the diary. Manner writes that he saw the photograph of Saara Koivula in the paper, and indicates that he meant to take his own life.’

Like a whispered scream, thought Joentaa.

‘He got off his ship, came to Karjasaari, went into the forest and killed himself,’ said Seppo.

Joentaa was silent.

‘And Lemberg read the diary and . . . cracked up.’

Lauri. Must ask Lauri tomorrow.

‘He must have been there,’ said Joentaa.

‘What?’

‘Lauri Lemberg. He must have been there, with Teuvo,’ said Joentaa. ‘The receipt for the pages copied was made out on 29 June. Judging by the letter, Lauri must have had the diary before that.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Lauri copied the diary, so Teuvo had sent him the original. Lauri looked for Teuvo, found him dead and gave him the diary back. Getting a copy made for himself.’

‘Gave it back . . . to the dead man?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then he just left him . . . the dead body . . . there in the forest?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’

Joentaa reached Turku just as night was giving way to morning. He did not drive straight home, but went to the city centre and withdrew money from a cash machine. Then he drove on, going a way that he had not taken for some time.

The last phone call that night came from Sundström, telling him that Saara Koivula had made a will a few weeks before her death.

‘A will,’ said Joentaa.

‘Yes. Handwritten, but properly witnessed by a notary. I think she knew or guessed that she would be in danger if she sought out Risto Nygren.’

Joentaa said nothing, but parked the car by the side of the road and wondered what he could put the money in. There was a CD sleeve in the glove compartment. The CD was in the player, a compilation that Larissa had made that summer when she was still around. Melancholy disco music, strong basses, atmospheric sound.

‘It’s about a small plot of ground, a kind of . . . meadow,’ said Sundström. ‘She left it to that woman . . . Anita-Liisa Koponen. The nutcase.’

Joentaa said goodbye to Sundström and wished him a good night. He felt the soft, fluffy snow underfoot as he went up to the house. He put the CD sleeve with 500 euros inside it into Tuomas Heinonen’s letterbox:
Dear Tuomas, here’s the money you asked for. Let’s have a drink and talk in peace some time soon. I hope you and Paulina and the twins are well, and having a good holiday.

He drove home along increasingly narrow roads and thought of what he could ask Lauri tomorrow.

Maybe whether it was right or wrong to give Tuomas the money.

Or why Larissa always switched off the light when she came home.

82

6 December 1985

Lauri and I went to the Christmas fair. Lauri was talking all the time, and was kind of excited, and says I’m sad but I can’t show it.

Then something funny happened, and that’s why I’m writing now, although I wasn’t really going to write any more.

There she suddenly was. Saara. In a thick coat and a big cap, and she’d been drinking mulled wine and looking at the guys riding motorbikes on the ice rink.

She saw us and smiled for a second, and then she took several steps back as if she was afraid of something. Then I went up to her, because I couldn’t help going towards her, and she said I should run away. At once. Now. She screamed it.

Then she was gone, and I went after her. I couldn’t help it. She turned and shouted to me to stop following her.

Then Risto was there. He was pushing a motorbike and had probably been one of the bikers on the ice. He smiled, turned off the engine of the bike, came towards me quickly and bored into my ear with his finger until it hurt, and I thought I might pass out.

And then the funny thing happened. Lauri grabbed Risto’s hand and pushed it away from my head. It all seemed so easy. Risto stood there staring. Little Lauri, big Risto. Saara was standing beside Risto, and her eyes were gleaming so sadly, as if she was going to cry but she couldn’t.

Lauri let go of Risto’s hand and they stood facing each other. Lauri was trembling, I could see that, but he stayed put.

‘And who are you?’ asked Risto, and it sounded quite friendly. Lauri didn’t answer. Then Risto swung his arm back and punched Lauri in the face with his fist, with all his weight behind it, really hard, making Lauri’s head wobble, and flinging him backwards. But he still stayed put.

Risto asked Lauri if he wanted to die, and Lauri turned round and told me we’d be going now. He said it perfectly calmly, but then he began running and I ran too.

When we cycled home I suddenly had to cry because of everything, and because Saara had looked so sad, and Lauri’s face was red as a tomato, and his nose was bleeding because of the punch in the face.

Lauri asked why I was crying, and I couldn’t explain. Why was I sad, he asked, and I said I wasn’t sad. Then if I wasn’t sad there was nothing for me to cry about, he said.

Logical, Lauri, only logical.

Tomorrow I’ll tell him that he’s my best friend, but I’m sure he knows that anyway.

83

WHEN KIMMO GOT
home, the giraffe had woken up and got to its feet and gone away. He looked for it in the snow under the apple tree for several minutes, but he didn’t find it.

He went back to the car, sat in it looking through the windscreen for some time, wondering how long electric light bulbs last. Wondering how long they would burn before giving up the ghost.

How many days and weeks?

How many days and weeks was it since he had switched on the light and locked the door and driven to Karjasaari? He didn’t know. He tried to think about it, but it was no good.

He thought of the Christmas tree, the fir tree a metre high that Larissa had carried out of the forest into his living room exactly a year ago. They had stood side by side looking at the tree, and he had felt a certain kind of smile come into his face.

A smile that now, at last, came back.

He got out and went up to the house that lay there in the dark.

THANKS

My thanks to Niina and Venla, Georg and Wolfgang, Christian and Klaus, Esther and my parents.

A special thank-you to Stefan Scheid, who had the idea of taking up music together. Dear Stefan, it was fun and gave me new strength for writing – and now at last I know what songs Kimmo listens to in the evening in his house by the lake. When he thinks of the people he misses.

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