TH02 - The Priest of Evil (8 page)

Ding-dong, came the sound again, and at that Sinikka and the rest of the world began to bounce, much faster, and soon afterwards Sinikka could make out her own murmuring: ‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning. I’m DS Timo Harjunpää from Helsinki Police.’

‘Oh? Ah yes, you must be here about the break-in. I simply haven’t got round to making a list of everything that’s missing.’

‘No…’

‘Don’t worry, you can look at it. Quite a handsome bump, isn’t it? It’s our first baby.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… Do you know what it is yet?’

‘No, we didn’t want to. We’ll find out when the time comes. So what does bring you here then?’

‘May I come in for a moment?’

‘By all means.’

‘Perhaps we should sit down.’

‘I’d rather stand. It’s good for the back, you know.’

‘Do you have any friends or relatives who live nearby?’

‘No. Why do you ask? What’s this about?’

‘Your husband is Tero Yrjänä Kokkonen, is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m afraid I have some terrible news,’ Harjunpää finally stammered. ‘Your husband has been involved in an accident and I’m afraid to say…’

‘No! It isn’t him! Good God, what a fright you gave me… That motorbike is still registered in his name, but someone else was driving it. We only handed it over once the payment had been settled. He sold it two days ago.’

‘I’m terribly sorry. This wasn’t a motorbike accident, this happened in the underground.’

‘Good God! No, God, no… what happened? Which hospital is he in?’

‘I’m afraid he’s dead, madam.’

‘Oh Jesus, no! He can’t be! He took the underground because it was so much safer… Tell me it wasn’t Tero!’

‘There’s nothing we can do. There’s no doubt that it is your husband. Madam, please, come and sit down here.’

‘No! No!’

‘I’m so sorry; please, let’s sit over here. Please…’

These were strange murmurings, Sinikka had never heard anything like them before. They made her feel suddenly very bad indeed – her heart beat so frantically that it hurt, she became very restless and started kicking with her little fairy feet and waving her arms around. Then something even worse happened: something pressed against her, all around her, again and again – Sinikka felt like she was about to burst.

Her own discomfort meant that she no longer paid attention to the murmurings, but they continued, she could feel it, and she soon heard a very strange murmuring indeed: wee-wah-wee-wah! Soon afterwards Sinikka’s position changed again. In this position the world was still for a long time, and she couldn’t hear murmurings of any sort. Only now Sinikka no longer felt calm, as she always had done in that position. All she felt was that she was being pushed from every direction, that something wanted her out of there.

If you were to lift the stiff hatch in the corrugated-iron roof of The Brocken and edge your way through the gap, you might be in for a surprise. Right in the middle of the hut’s stone floor gaped the mouth of a shaft, about two metres in diameter, and a sheer drop leading down into
the darkness. At first glance it resembled the hungry jaws of an ancient monster. If you dared move closer, at the western side of the shaft you would notice the top of a pair of steel rails, and if you inched your way towards these rails you would see, in between the rails, steel rungs leading down into the earth’s invisible core.

And if you had the courage to grip the rails, place a foot on the first rung and lower yourself down, it would be another twenty-five rungs before your feet once again touched something firm. If, however, you were to shine a torch at your feet, you would notice that the firm ground was not so firm after all – it was a platform fashioned from an iron grille and covered only half of the shaft. It would turn your stomach to look down between your feet into who knows what; if you should drop something small through the grille, there would be no reassuring clatter or splash to indicate that the object had arrived somewhere.

Along the other side of the shaft the top of the next set of ladders could be dimly made out, leading down and down, and a faint upward draught would catch at your trouser legs, giving you goose bumps.

At this platform, along both the northern and southern sides of the shaft, were two doors – or rather, two openings. To the left gaped an empty room, a couple of metres wide and about five metres long, with concrete facing along the walls. However, the room was not entirely empty, for along the floor jutted a number of rusted mounting bolts, rather like those on the cemented floor outside but considerably sturdier and with two rails attached to the floor running between them. Along the ceiling ran a massive pipe, several metres long, which had once led somewhere and had perhaps served a very important function.

It was impossible to say with any certainty what had been in the room many years ago – a winch of some sort, a crane, or perhaps some kind of ventilation pump that had later been replaced by something further down, newer and more efficient. The opening to the right was covered from the inside with a green tarpaulin – the kind that you often see gently rustling in the wind, covering boats tethered up for the winter.

Behind the tarpaulin was a room all but identical to the one opposite, but this room was far from empty: on the floor along its far wall lay a foam
mattress and upon that a sleeping bag left open to air. At the head of the mattress stood a wooden box, one that once had been used to transport apples. Upon the box there was a storm lantern and an alarm clock without its glass cover – even in the darkness you could feel the hands of the clock and see what time of night it was.

Near the door opening a nylon rope had been stretched from wall to wall across the room and this clearly served as a clothes-line. On clothes hangers to the right hung women’s clothes, for the most part loose skirts and caftans reaching almost to the ankles, a few blazers and a floral woollen cardigan. To the left hung men’s clothing: different coloured trousers, a pair of jeans, jackets and shirts and a hefty leather jacket from the 1950s. All this clearly served another purpose too: if you drew the clothes together they formed a handy inner door to cut out the draught.

Along the walls were a number of cardboard boxes, and in the two outermost boxes was presumably a selection of underwear: one box for women’s underwear, one for men’s. At least, on top of the left-hand box were various men’s hats and baseball caps, whilst upon the right-hand box sat two berets, one blue and one green, and with them a brimmed hat and a straw hat with a plastic flower stitched into the ribbon.

In addition to this there was a folding chair – like the ones often found on terraces during the summer, the kind that are particularly uncomfortable to sit in – and opposite the chair a Trangia stove and an old burnt pan. Beside them stood a neat row of full water bottles, and behind them a row of empty ones.

Books lay in piles on almost every free surface. If you were to take a closer look at these you would notice that the majority of them dealt with different religions and astronomy – and that every last one of them had been stolen from the city library.

The only item that might have been considered a luxury or a decoration was a poster hanging on the wall above the bed. The poster showed an image from the furthest reaches of space, nebulae joining together to create another Big Bang, a new universe, or perhaps it was simply a far off galaxy – it was impossible for any layman to know precisely what it displayed, but you might guess that the photograph had been taken by the Hubble Telescope.

All in all, looking around that southern room, it contained everything that an ascetic person needed to live their modest life. That person’s spirituality must surely have been far richer. For without a doubt this nook was someone’s home, a gnome’s perhaps or an earth sprite’s, a cosy little nest of their own.

‘Faustus dies
,’ he puffed each time he grabbed hold of another rung. He climbed upwards with the agility of an animal: hand, foot, other hand, other foot. This did not present him with the slightest difficulty as he was used to lots of walking. Besides, there was not a gram of excess fat on him; just bones, tough muscles and skin.

‘
Faustus dies
,’ he panted for the last time, as his head and shoulders finally appeared above the grille at the top of the shaft. He stopped there for a moment, listening. Or rather, he was taking the scent, as he put it. He could make out the rumble of traffic in the afternoon gloaming, the wail of the wheels of a freight train, and somewhere on the station yard an engine gave him a short signal:
hu-huu!

Nothing closer could be heard, which meant that there was no one on The Brocken or anywhere near it. He clambered up on to the grille and although a dim light still shone through from above, like the dusk of early evening, enough that you could just about see, he did not switch off his head-lamp yet. He stepped up to the right-hand opening, his very own front door, pulled the tarpaulin aside and moved his head slowly in both directions, the lamp’s yellowish light caressing the walls and boxes in the room. He had scented correctly: no one had been inside his home. It would have been a miracle indeed if someone had managed to find it: not only because of its location, but because he had protected it with holy triangles painted in pigeon’s blood.

He drew the tarpaulin shut behind him, lit the storm lantern and switched off his lamp. Though it had been a long day, the excitement within him had not yet abated. He could not sit still, nor could he lie down on the mattress; he could only pace the floor, back and forth, from the piles
of books to the tarpaulin, then back towards the sleeping bag, all the while the hem of his skirt trailing like a flag torn in harsh winds.

The swirl was incredible! He had never seen anything like it before. That man’s spirit had contained a phenomenal amount of particles, perhaps even one and a half times as many as other human spirits, and on top of that they had been large, almost the size of sugar crystals. And they had come together to form a swirl that was an unfathomably deep shade of red. In his mind’s eye he could still see it. He could even hear it – it had given off a faint hum before disappearing completely. It had been sucked into the wall of the underground tunnel with such rage and power that rubble had almost flown out from the rock face.

‘
Carboratum nexi datum
,’ he sighed and removed the beret pulled down almost to his eyes. He then strode up to his bedside table, reached behind the storm lantern and picked up an aluminium mug containing his teeth, both the upper and the lower dentures. He popped them into his mouth and moved them into place with his tongue. His face changed dramatically. It was no longer the face of a sharp-chinned old biddy, but of someone considerably younger – and of a man. With both hands he flattened his hair back across his head towards his neck and dexterously tied it into a ponytail with a rubber band, making him look even less like the old woman who had just clambered up the rungs of the shaft.

He stood still and rested his hands thoughtfully on his hips. He had hesitated for a split second, and it had almost proved fateful: the whole sacrifice had very nearly failed. The mouth of the Orange Apostle – indeed, this time it had been Advocatus Mamillus himself – had already sped past them, but he had decided to try nonetheless. And how he had succeeded! Advocatus Mamillus had snatched the victim into his arms; barely had he managed to cry out before he was gone. He had clearly sensed Maammo’s grateful smile, for she sent him a bunch of blessed beams, and this time they had been the colour of copper.

He removed his dress, placed it carefully on the clothes hanger and hung it on the line by the doorway. Then he raised his hands between his shoulder blades, undid his bra and took it off along with his breasts. Once he had put on his hooded top he looked even more like a man.

He put his hands to his groin and groped around. For a brief moment his face was empty, as though a spark had disappeared from within him. He then quickly took off his underpants – they were red and made of a shiny material with a broad strip of lace down the front – grabbed a thin leather belt, blackened with sweat, from on top of the sleeping bag, hooked it around his hips and fastened the buckle. He shifted the belt round so that the buckle was at his back and a leather sheath tightly crammed with sand lay against his stomach. It dangled between his legs and reached almost half way down his thighs.

Finally he slipped on his underwear, a pair of boxer shorts covered in pictures of Hagar the Horrible, pulled on his trousers and took a pair of thick spectacles out of his pocket – the kind that President Kekkonen used to wear. Once he had placed them on his nose there was no longer the slightest hint of the woman Maammo had commanded him to become the previous night.

He dimmed the light from the storm lantern. Of all others he had chosen that particular man because he had revealed his sinful ways. There had been a quiet smile on the man’s face, the kind of smile that meant he was clearly content with his life, happy even – but immediately he had understood why. That wretched man had been wallowing in sin and lechery, trampling the will of Maammo into dirt. Perhaps that very morning the miserable creature had held his hand between a woman’s legs, fondling it until it became moist with evil juices, shoved his member inside, and screwed her, teased her nipples and writhed until everything went black. Perhaps he had even thrust into her anus, or her mouth.

‘
Diablo desum!
’ he muttered hoarsely and a wave of disgust trembled through his hands. He flinched and his head moved like a dog shaking itself dry, but soon afterwards his eyes squinted slightly, almost as if he were smiling. And indeed he was smiling, for he knew: that man would never do any of this again. His fornication would no longer hold up the coming of the Truth, nor would he ever covet money and possessions again.

‘
Ea lesum
,’ he whispered, as if to bring an end to the matter. He had been so excited by the sacrifice that he had felt compelled to visit the underground platform a number of times that morning, and at several points he had been able to make out the thrilling stench of raw human
flesh, like walking past the meat counter at the market. Yet not even this could satisfy him. He had felt the urge to mark out others for himself, even though he knew it was dangerous during the daylight hours. Rush hour was by far the best time for this, as people were crammed into the carriages, pushing and shoving each other, and did not notice as he secretly marked them as his own.