Silence (13 page)

Korvensuo watched him. It relaxed him. Pärssinen rode regularly up and down the lawn. Carefully, meticulously, he also trimmed the edges of the grass. He was older now. An old man, but he hadn’t looked young even then.

Korvensuo wondered whether Pärssinen had chosen that colour. The red of the mower. Very likely these models were always red. He felt the sand trickling through him again. Slowly and steadily. Pärssinen raised his head and lowered it without showing any sign of recognition.

Korvensuo started walking. Metre by metre. He was freezing, and he felt the sand inside him.

‘Hello,’ he said, when he was close enough, and Pärssinen raised his eyes from the lawn, looking at him questioningly, merely shrugged his shoulders and pointed to his ears, to indicate that he couldn’t hear him. The engine was roaring.

‘Hello!’ Korvensuo called again.

Pärssinen turned off the engine and said, in the silence, ‘Yes, what is it?’

‘It’s me. We know each other,’ said Korvensuo.

‘We do?’ asked Pärssinen.

Korvensuo nodded.

Pärssinen stared at him. ‘Ah. Yes,’ he murmured.

Korvensuo was shaking. He had the shivers. And gooseflesh on his back. A hot day. Timo,’ said Pärssinen and Korvensuo felt himself nodding.

Pärssinen adjusted a few things on the mower and got off. ‘It’s been a long time,’ he said, taking Korvensuo’s hand. His own was sweaty and had blisters and weals on it. Korvensuo felt them on his skin.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Let’s have a drink.’ Pärssinen went ahead and Korvensuo followed, thinking he would drive home. At once. To the people who were his life.

‘Well, fancy seeing you,’ said Pärssinen. He looked almost happy as he opened the door of his apartment. Venetian blinds drawn down. Dappled sunlight on the floor.

‘A beer?’ Pärssinen asked.

Korvensuo nodded.

Drive away. Just get in the car and drive away, he thought.

‘Sit down, do,’ called Pärssinen from the kitchen.

Korvensuo sat down in one of the two soft, shabby armchairs where he used to sit all of thirty-three years before. The sofa was also the same, but where the screen used to be there was now a large TV set. A new, expensive model.

‘Not bad, eh?’ said Pärssinen, following his gaze. Korvensuo nodded.

‘Brand new.’ Pärssinen handed him one of the bottles. ‘Cheers!’

Korvensuo took a sip.

‘To our reunion,’ said Pärssinen.

Korvensuo looked at the floor. The sense of trickling sand was dying down, his headache had come back. Dappled sunlight. A DVD player and video recorder stood under the TV set; the cases for the discs and cassettes were neatly arranged on a shelf.

‘like to watch a film?’ asked Pärssinen.

Korvensuo looked at the bottle in his hand and was surprised, for a moment, to see that he had apparently half finished it already. Then he began to laugh. At least, it sounded like laughter. It broke out of him and lasted only a few seconds. The sand had stopped trickling. He felt nothing except for his headache. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

Pärssinen was sitting there as relaxed as ever. ‘Nothing to apologize for. ‘So you don’t want to see a film?’

‘No,’ said Korvensuo. ‘That’s right, I don’t. No, I wanted to ask you something. I’d like to know … why?’

Pärssinen put the bottle to his lips and seemed to be waiting for him to ask his question more precisely.

‘Why did you do it?’ asked Korvensuo.

‘Why did I do what?’ Pärssinen asked.

‘The girl who’s gone missing right where we … where back then we …’

‘Oh, you mean that,’ said Pärssinen. He seemed to be smiling.

Korvensuo stood up. The bottle felt cold in his hand. Chilled beer. I’ll go home now, he thought. ‘Why did you do it, you bastard?’ he screamed, throwing the bottle at the patch of sunlight in front of his feet. As hard as he could. Then there was silence. The shards of broken glass were lying all over the room. A trickle of beer was making its way towards Pärssinen’s shoes. Pärssinen still sat there looking relaxed.

‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said.

Korvensuo stared at him.

‘Do sit down again,’ said Pärssinen. ‘Please.’

Korvensuo sat on the arm of the chair.

‘I have nothing to do with it,’ Pärssinen continued. ‘I heard about it only yesterday evening. By chance. I don’t often watch the news … I’m not interested in all the crap that happens. It’s all just shit, that corrupt stuff.’

‘Ah,’ said Korvensuo.

‘I’ve got better things to do.’ Pärssinen waved the subject away and put the bottle to his mouth again.

Korvensuo thought of Marjatta and the children. Marjatta going for a walk, the children in the rowing boat. Laura rowing, Aku dipping his hand in the water.

‘Yes,’ he said and saw Pärssinen sitting there in an armchair, relaxed. It hadn’t been like that thirty-three years ago. On the day when … on that day Pärssinen had seemed distraught, panic-stricken, as he had never seen him before. ‘Yes,’ he repeated.

‘Understand? I have nothing to do with it. You don’t either. I’d never have thought of suspecting that you … it’s just coincidence, that’s all.’

‘Coincidence?’

‘Yes, coincidence. Something happened. We don’t know what. We have nothing to do with it. And it’s of no interest to us.’

Korvensuo nodded.

‘You have nothing to do with it. I have nothing to do with it. Understand? Timo, our … what we did once, it’s an eternity ago. Understand?’

Korvensuo nodded. What we did once, he thought.

‘After all, it’s in the past,’ said Pärssinen.

In the past, thought Korvensuo. Past and over. Nothing happened, he thought. Nothing, nothing. Pärssinen smiled and looked friendly. A kindly old caretaker.

Silence reigned for a while. Then Pärssinen said, ‘Well, Timo, good to see you again.’

‘Yes.’

‘I often thought of you … back then, the way you went off, that was odd, of course. For a few days I was worried, thought you might maybe go to the police … it was like the earth had swallowed you up.’

Korvensuo nodded.

‘You always were an oddball,’ said Pärssinen, laughing.

Korvensuo nodded to himself again.

‘So how are you doing these days? Got a family, that son of thing?’

Korvensuo tried to meet Pärssinen’s glance and saw only eyes looking past him, looking into nothing. Nothing, he thought. Nothing, nothing. Aku is dipping his hand in the water and asking Laura if he can have a go at rowing too.

‘I’m going now,’ said Korvensuo.

Pärssinen nodded. ‘Always on the move, eh?’

Korvensuo started walking.

‘Oh, one more thing.’ Pärssinen got to his feet and went over to the shelf with the discs and cassettes. Korvensuo stood still. Waited. Don’t move, he thought.

‘You liked one film specially, your favourite film,’ said Pärssinen. ‘With the girl you fancied so much. The slim girl with the dark hair, she’s doing it with two men in the film and she has kind of a birthmark on her shoulder. Remember?’

Pärssinen went on searching; he wasn’t expecting an answer. He found what he was looking for and came towards Korvensuo with a case.

‘I managed to transfer it to DVD, simply filmed it again with a new camera. The quality’s really good … particularly the girl. I’ll make you a present of it.’ Pärssinen smiled and held out the case to him. A neutral white case, with a few letters written on it, denoting some kind of classification known only to Pärssinen. And a date, the date of the year when the film had been made: 1973.

‘Here you are,’ said Pärssinen.

Korvensuo took the case.

‘Drop in any time you like,’ said Pärssinen.

Korvensuo walked over the carefully mown lawn to his car. He would call Marjatta, tell her he’d arrived safely. And had a good meeting. About terraced houses. His body was a heavy weight of emptiness, heavy as lead.

He put the DVD case on the passenger seat and started the car.

5

S
undström was looking confident. Inclined to make jokes that no one understood. Heinonen was sitting deep in thought, Grönholm was tapping out a monotonous rhythm on the tabletop, and Kari Niemi was telling the core group of the investigating team the results that forensics had come up with. They seemed to lead nowhere.

‘There’s very little,’ he concluded.

Various fingerprints had been found on the bicycle; only one could be identified. Ruth Vehkasalo had touched her daughter’s bike.

‘The husband was rather annoyed when we asked him and his wife to come in for fingerprinting,’ said Heinonen. ‘Although we said right away we always do that, it’s only so as to compare their prints with those we find. So that we can spare ourselves unnecessary work, but he didn’t entirely understand that.’

‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t either, in his position,’ said Grönholm.

‘I felt sorry for him,’ murmured Heinonen.

‘The man’s had all he can take,’ added Grönholm.

‘Kalevi Vehkasalo,’ said Sundström. ‘Say the father’s been abusing his daughter for years, the daughter grows up to be a big girl, then a bigger girl, and a time comes when she threatens to tell Mama some funny things when she gets a chance. Her father comes home from the office early on the afternoon in question, because his daughter calls him, says she’s just quarrelled with Mama again and now she’s going to tell her all. Her father’s panic-stricken, he sees his daughter on the cycle path, gets out of his car, stops her, they argue for a while, she hits out at him, calls him names, threatens him again with telling her story. The father goes off his head, throt-tles his daughter …’

‘That trace of blood,’ said Heinonen.

‘… okay, stabs her with some unknown weapon, probably a mortal injury, puts her in the car, sinks her in water or buries her somewhere.’

‘No traces of anything of that kind in Vehkasalo’s car,’ said Heinonen. ‘He was angry with us for checking that too, which I can understand better.’

Sundström nodded.

‘There’s nothing and no one so far to suggest that Vehkasalo and his daughter … had a secret,’ said Heinonen carefully.

‘And several employees in Vehkasalo’s company confirm that he was there all day,’ Grönholm added.

‘Which is why that scenario is nonsense,’ agreed Sundström. ‘Just wanted to run it past myself.’

Joentaa looked at the photograph he was holding. Sinikka Vehkasalo. A serious-looking girl, with hair cut short and tinted black. She was pressing her lips firmly together, but Joentaa thought he could trace a smile. The lurking possibility of a wide, happy smile. In her eyes … yes, a hunger for experience. For beautiful things, important things, serious things …

Very likely he was making all that up. What does a photograph tell you? And what use would it be even if his impressions were correct?

Joentaa lowered the picture and tried to concentrate on Sundström’s curiously ironic remarks. Presumably he was trying to keep them awake. Or keep himself awake. They had finished discussing everything long ago. No suspicious factors in her immediate environment. At least, nothing really tangible.

Outsiders had considered the Vehkasalos the perfect family; the Vehkasalos themselves had made it clear, unasked, that they were having problems with their daughter. That they never met her friends and had no basis in common for conversation these days, that Sinikka had been out all night several times staying with girlfriends, or maybe even boyfriends, but the Vehkasalos knew nothing in more detail, because Sinikka refused to talk about it. It was much like that with many parents and many children.

In an interview with Heinonen and Grönholm, however, Vehkasalo had admitted, or rather had said of his own accord, that he had struck Sinikka twice in the weeks just before her disappearance; then he had begun shedding tears and saying, on record, that he wished he could undo that now, he’d give anything in the world if only he could undo that. Joentaa thought about this statement as he looked at the photograph again. All children wanted to be left alone. At some point, anyway Wanted to break free of their parents and make their own way. Or so he supposed, although of course he had no idea what it meant to have children, or how to deal with them. Sanna had wanted children, he himself hadn’t thought much about it. Later, he had thought, and sometimes said so when they discussed the subject.

Joentaa remembered his own childhood. Soon after finishing at school he had moved away from Kitee, leaving his mother but at the same time always feeling how much the link with her mattered to him. Knowing that she was there. It seemed to be different in Sinikka’s case, at least at the first superficial glance. Why had Sinikka wanted so persistently to get away from her parents? Joentaa stared at the photo as if the girl in it could answer and tell him.

‘Everything clear, Kimmo?’ asked Sundström.

‘Yes, sure,’ said Joentaa.

‘What does that photo tell you?’ Sundström asked.

‘Hm … what’s your impression, everyone?’ Joentaa held up the photograph so that they could all see it. None of them said anything for a while.

‘In a word,’ said Joentaa.

Still silence.

‘Likeable … I mean, she looks nice,’ said Heinonen at last.

Grönholm nodded. ‘Mysterious? Kind of as if she’d like to look mysterious.’

‘I don’t see that at all,’ said Sundström. ‘No, reserved, sort of shy, but then again no …’ He suddenly darted forward, reached for the picture and held it close to his face. ‘I think she makes it look as if she’d … oh, I don’t know.’

‘Sad,’ Niemi observed.

They all turned to look at him.

‘That girl is sad,’ said Niemi, with his eternal smile.

6

T
imo Korvensuo was sitting on a chair in a hotel bedroom, looking out of the window at the city where it lay in the evening sunlight. The window was tilted open and a breeze blew in over his shoulders.

He heard the muted siren of a police car. A little later its blue light flashed near the marketplace. He couldn’t see what was going on, but it was almost soundless, just impacts now and then like someone kicking dustbins. Presumably drunks, waking from last night’s stupor and rampaging around a little more before going home. Nothing too terrible.