Light in a Dark House (8 page)

‘Time to get some sleep, don’t you think?’ I say.

‘Another game!’ says Olli.

Leea scurries by like a shadow. Sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. She is talking on the phone. Her voice is always there, sometimes near, sometimes far. Although I can hear only her and not the person at the other end of the line, that tells me what they’re talking about.

Henna, Leea’s best friend, is having a baby. Her first. Now, at this very minute. She’s in the hospital – another hospital – and has been walking up and down for hours, waiting for her labour pains to get intense enough. When that moment comes the doctor is going to carry out a Caesarian at once.

Kalle, Henna’s husband, is standing in the corridor outside the operating theatre, waiting to be let in and phoning Leea to calm himself down.

But now they are both agitated and in no condition to keep each other calm.

Olli throws the dice and comments on his move in the game.

At forty-two, Henna is quite old for a first-time mother.

The baby will be called Valtteri, always assuming that, as the doctor has told them, it is a boy.

Leea is on the phone, Olli is throwing the dice, Henna is bringing a baby into the world. I find it difficult to keep those events related to each other.

It’s warm in this house.

‘You’re not paying attention,’ says Olli.

‘Sorry.’

‘You’re not playing properly,’ says Olli.

I stroke his head, my hand passing over his hair. I feel how soft it is. Leea says nothing. She puts the phone back on its charger and looks at me.

‘Your turn,’ says Olli.

‘Henna’s baby is coming,’ says Leea.

Kalevi Forsman. Adviser for software solutions.

‘It’s your turn,’ says Olli.

I throw the dice.

A man dies, a boy begins to live.

20

IN THE NIGHT,
Kimmo Joentaa called Police Chief Nurmela. On the TV screen, a scantily clad presenter was in search of animals with the initial A, and Nurmela’s voice seemed to surface from deep sleep.

‘Kimmo here,’ said Joentaa.

‘Yes . . . Kimmo . . . just a moment . . .’

‘Hello?’ said Joentaa.

‘Yes . . . is there . . . anything new?’ mumbled Nurmela.

‘I have to ask you something about Larissa,’ said Joentaa.

Nurmela did not reply.

‘Hello?’ asked Joentaa.

Nurmela still did not reply; there was a crackle on the line.

‘Alligator. Alligator. That’s not it, Ari-Pekka, that’s not it,’ said the TV presenter, gesticulating.

‘Are you crazy?’ said Nurmela.

‘Thanks for calling in, Ari-Pekka.’

‘What?’ said Joentaa.

‘Look, it’s three in the morning. I’m asleep. My wife is asleep.’

‘She’s gone,’ said Joentaa.

‘Who?’

‘Larissa.’

‘Kimmo, I’m going to—’

‘I have to find her,’ said Joentaa. ‘Do you know—’

‘Stop going on about that damn woman.’

‘I went to the house where she was working, but she isn’t there any more, and I thought you might have another number or address where she . . .’

‘No, darling, no, no, go back to sleep.’

‘. . . where she worked.’

‘Hamster, no, that’s not it. No, the first letter of the name is A. The initial is A.’

‘Yes . . . lie down, darling, I’ll be right back.’

‘Are you listening to me?’ asked Joentaa.

There was more crackling on the line, and then Nurmela’s whispering voice came through quite close. ‘Now then, listen to me, Kimmo, you arsehole. I want to get some sleep. I don’t know the woman, and she doesn’t interest me either.’

‘I have to find her as soon as possible,’ said Joentaa.

Nurmela said nothing.

‘Like now,’ said Joentaa.

‘Kimmo, I’m hanging up,’ said Nurmela evenly.

‘She left the key,’ said Joentaa.

‘Ape, no. Ape isn’t the answer,’ said the presenter, who had now lost her bra.

‘She never did that before.’

Nurmela had hung up, and for a while Joentaa watched the TV presenter.

Then he rang the number flickering on the screen. He waited for the now familiar message that he had been hearing for hours when he tried it, to the effect that all the lines were in use, and advising him to try again a little later.

Instead, another voice informed him that he was in luck and would be put straight through.

He waited.

The woman on the screen bobbed up and down on tiptoe and asked him his name.

‘Er, Kimmo,’ he said.

‘Kimmo, lovely to talk to you.’

‘Thanks. The same to you.’

The woman on the screen laughed, and Joentaa bent forward and narrowed his eyes to see her better.

‘Kimmo, dear, are you still on the line?’

‘Yes.’

‘You have a lovely voice.’

‘Do I? Thanks.’

‘What is the right answer?’

‘Giraffe.’

The woman laughed, a sudden, shrill laugh. ‘The initial is A, sweetie-pie. The name begins with A.’

‘I’m right, all the same.’

‘I’m inclined to think our friend Kimmo isn’t totally sober.’

‘Are you hanging up on me now?’

‘Thanks for calling in, Kimmo.’

The sports channel was showing a tennis match. He sat on the floor, leaning back against the sofa, and followed a few rallies before his head fell to one side.

One of the players served an ace. Applause.

Just before darkness came down on him, he asked himself, with remarkable clarity, whether he was falling asleep or falling unconscious, and what the difference really was.

21

11 August 1985

Dear diary,

Saara laughed because I played all the wrong notes. I hadn’t practised the piece, but I didn’t want to admit it. I think I sat there stiffly and tried to press the right keys, but it sounded terrible.

Saara laughed, and suddenly stroked my hair very lightly. It felt incredibly good. As if she was petting me. Then she said we’d better play something else, and I could choose the piece, and then Risto was standing in the doorway asking what there was to laugh about.

‘Nothing,’ said Saara, quick as a shot.

‘Oh, nothing?’

Saara shook her head, and Risto asked what the idea of the boy was supposed to be. I think he meant me, and Saara didn’t get round to answering because Risto took a couple of quick steps our way and hit her.

Just like that.

She sat there, and I think she started trembling.

Risto went away and came back after a while, and he said we could play football.

Saara looked at the floor and didn’t move at all. She was breathing very fast.

Then we played football. I chased every ball as if I was running for my life. In the end Risto praised me and clapped me on the shoulder, and then he put his hand on the back of my neck. Exerting pressure. It almost hurt. I can still feel it now, although it was quite a while ago, and then I got on my bike and went home.

Lauri rang, but I don’t want to see him at the moment.

I’m going to have to cry now, I don’t know exactly why.

22

KIMMO JOENTAA WOKE
early in the morning with a headache and thinking of Sanna, who used to make the pain better. She would massage his head for hours when he woke up at night and woke her too, because the tablets hadn’t worked and the pain was unbearable.

That had been when he first joined the Turku police force and wasn’t getting on with the police chief of the time, Ketola. With Ketola’s aggressive and remote stance.

It was a long time since he’d had one of those severe headaches, and he wondered for a while why. Maybe it was because he now thought of Ketola as a friend whom he hadn’t seen for a long time. Or maybe it was because Sanna was no longer alive, so his head had burst apart long ago. As a matter of course and without his noticing it.

So the headaches had come back – look at it that way, and everything was all right. His tongue felt coated and dry, there was football on the TV screen, a series of goals being scored. The morning sun stood bright and clear over the lake outside.

He took last night’s leftovers into the kitchen, put everything on the counter top next to the sink, went back into the living room, turned off the TV and got out his laptop. Sitting on the sofa, he logged in and wrote a message to
[email protected]
. He decided not to spend long thinking about the right words, because he had a feeling that no words would be right anyway. He quickly typed:

Dear Larissa,

I hope you’re well. Please get in touch. I miss you, and I’m worried because you left the giraffe here. It’s lying in the grass under the apple tree, and it will stay there until you come back.

Love from

Kimmo

He sent the message, took two painkillers, showered and thought of Sanna as he rubbed his scalp dry.

He switched the light on before he went out.

23

ONCE AGAIN MARKO
Westerberg was standing far above the ground of Helsinki, in a penthouse with a roof terrace, thinking that in all probability Kalevi Forsman the software adviser had been a lonely man.

The apartment lay bright and empty in the sunlight. Empty except for a narrow bed, a silver TV set, a scarlet sofa and an elaborately equipped computer terminal, as well as a designer kitchen, and a broad, varnished wooden table in the middle of the living room.

‘No chairs,’ Seppo had remarked perceptively.

He was right, there was a distinct shortage of chairs. And of everything else that could have made the apartment look inviting. A broad, long table just right for a pleasant evening with friends, but no chairs. Cream for coffee and several boxes of chocolates in the fridge, along with a few slices of ham past their use-by date.

In daylight the whole place looked even more peculiar than the evening before, but Seppo, not to be deterred, kept informing him, unasked, that this was the way such people lived nowadays.

‘Such people?’ asked Westerberg.

‘Software advisers. IT nerds. Too busy earning money to do any living.’

‘Forsman had debts,’ said Westerberg.

‘That doesn’t make it any different,’ said Seppo.

Westerberg sat down on the only chair, the one at the computer terminal, and picked up the photograph of Kalevi Forsman again. The photo on his company’s home page. Well-pressed suit, neatly arranged tie, and a smile that Westerberg thought would last only fractions of a second after the camera flash went off.

‘Politician,’ said Seppo.

‘Hmm?’

‘Should have been a politician,’ said Seppo, nodding in the direction of the photograph.

Westerberg looked at Kalevi Forsman’s face and thought the really odd thing about it was that Kalevi Forsman
had
no face. He was forty-three years old, had studied at university and got a good degree, built up a firm, employed twelve people, made a lot of money and finally, after years of presumably meteoric progress, lost a lot of money when several of his most important customers went elsewhere. He had spent the last few months writing a new program or improving the old one. Westerberg didn’t understand that in detail, but Samuli Jussilainen, Forsman’s partner, kept on mentioning that angle when the question of what Forsman had made of his life arose.

He had written a program, he had acquired customers, he had travelled to various countries to sit in various banks negotiating with various other people. He had spent the working hours of the day saving his company, and before he did that he had spent the working hours of the day building it up.

When Westerberg had asked Forsman’s partner whether he had any friends the answer had been: yes, me. His parents were long dead, he had a sister who lived in Hämeenlinna, and all that Forsman’s partner could tell them about her was that he didn’t know her and Forsman had lost touch with her.

Westerberg looked at the photograph, at the smile on Forsman’s face, so obviously artificial as to be almost comic.

‘It would have been his birthday in a week’s time,’ he said, looking up to meet Seppo’s eyes, but Seppo wasn’t there.

‘Seppo?’ he called. No answer.

He stood up, and found Seppo in the bedroom. He too was examining a photograph.

‘Look at this,’ he said.

‘Hmm?’

Seppo handed him the picture. An old one, yellowed. It had been crumpled up, and then at some later date smoothed out again. A stain near the top right-hand corner, perhaps coffee. Westerberg wondered whether it was Kalevi Forsman who had crumpled up the picture and then smoothed it out. And why.