TH03 - To Steal Her Love (21 page)

Tweety could barely contain his desire to visit Brownie’s apartment. It smouldered inside him, unabated, like a burning ember high in the decks of his mind, so sensitive that the flow of air as he walked made it glow, and that’s why he was sitting in the evening darkness, perfectly still, on a bench next to a fountain.

He felt that he simply had to find out whether the police had found Brownie and his moped, whether he had lost them too or whether they had saved him, for he had gone there deliberately in an attempt to lose the police. When he’d seen the police lights behind him he’d heard a sudden shout; it was Brownie’s voice and that’s what had given him the idea. Perhaps she had wanted to make amends.

Thinking about it afterwards, there was more to his act than that: he had given up a sacrifice. He had relinquished something important to him, something that comforted him. He’d sacrificed her to the police, and through the police to God, because they were all on the same side just like priests and teachers. And he’d done it because he wanted forgiveness, for a short while at least, for as many days as it took to take care of the Chancellor, because he’d suddenly realised that it was no coincidence that the police had started chasing him: they’d been out hunting for him.

It was a frightening thought, though not as frightening as it had been. He’d gradually become used to the idea, he realised that he’d lived his entire life in the same situation. In the past he hadn’t been sure of it, but now he was certain. It came almost as a relief: he knew there had to be a reason why he was so afraid. And because of this he knew he had to be
on his guard. He’d always been afraid of the police, though he’d never had anything to do with them. He remembered how, as a child, the mere sight of a police car was enough to make him wet his trousers, which always meant a lashing with the belt when he got home. Over time he learned to sit in the stairwell for hours until his clothes had dried.

Tweety placed his hand on the bench and tried to sense whether a woman had been sitting there, whether her buttocks had been pressed against the surface of the wood, but he couldn’t concentrate, and turned and glanced behind him. He could see nothing but trees and ragged darkness and streetlights further in the distance. Nobody was spying on him, because nobody would think to look for him here. He’d never started following anyone out of Kaisaniemi Park, though there was a restaurant there too, situated at the far end of the park. He thought of how he had lost the aquarium restaurant for good; he’d never be able to loiter outside it again – or Hotel Inter, for that matter.

He moved as though compelled by an inner force, picked up a stone and cast it into the fountain with a plop. He thought of his moped. It was strange; he’d always hated the thing, so much so that he hadn’t even given it a name, but now that he didn’t dare go and see whether it was still there he suddenly missed it. Reino had put it together from various parts salvaged from older mopeds and Lasse had sorted him out with a tax disc, and although he’d never told Tweety where he’d got his hands on it, he knew it was stolen. It had obviously been attached to something else before.

Tweety stood up but sat down again almost immediately, as though the force of the bench were greater than his own resolve. He guiltily rubbed his chin and cautiously began examining his thoughts and tried to open up the doors to the main deck – he wanted to see whether the glass chair and the velvet curtain were still there – but he couldn’t find the hatch, the floor was nothing but solid wood. This had happened to him before, many times, and he didn’t let it unduly worry him. He was worried for another reason: the woman that looked like Annie Lennox could have helped him, saved him because, as contradictory as it sounded given his current
situation
, although he yearned to be with Brownie, a desire to do something was gnawing away at him, a desire that he tried in vain to push beneath the surface but that kept bobbing up again like a polystyrene board.

He knew exactly what he wanted to do. He wanted to touch a woman, caress her bare skin or even just her hair, then inhale the sweet
smell on his fingers. He felt dizzy just thinking about it and started
breathing
more quickly like a chaffinch as it flies into a window, and all of a sudden he thought of how tidy Wheatlocks’ flat was, of how as a little boy he’d had a teddy bear called Oskar, and how he used to draw his finger through a candle flame, slower every time, and slow down even after his finger had squealed in pain.

But he didn’t want to ruin the Chancellor, and he’d been close to doing just that. Reino was right, of course: he didn’t want to lose his chance for change, to screw up perhaps the only chance he’d ever had, and though it took a considerable amount of willpower he pressed his slender fingers together and prayed:
Dear God in Heaven. See us through the Chancellor; please, let it be a success. Don’t let us screw it up. Amen
.

He ran his hands through his hair in dismay. Just maybe his prayer had ended up on a great answering machine in the sky that God would listen to after his evening nap. He’d recognise Tweety’s voice, of course, and think, there’s no point in bothering, just wait for your day of judgement like everyone else. At least he’d tried. He’d tried in other ways too, prepared himself, and in that he trusted himself rather more than God. He had left the pouch at home. Without it he couldn’t go anywhere,
couldn’t
get himself into any sticky situations.

And it wasn’t only because of the Chancellor that his desires worried him, but because he’d had an exceptionally long run of bad luck. It was as though his luck were exhausted from working so hard and now it needed a rest and wanted to lie low for a while. But still his desires kept rearing their head, and he tried to hide from himself the fact that, despite
everything
, he was still planning on making an excursion somewhere that night. It was completely nonsensical, as though a part of him wanted to be caught, as crazy as it seemed. But when he stopped to think about it that’s not what it was about. He didn’t want to get caught, but in some way he wanted to experience the same as Kariluoto in
The Unknown Soldier
after being hit by a bullet:
It’s over now. Never again
. He’d read that same passage many times, and each time it moved him just the same; they were the most beautiful words ever written.
It’s over now. Never again
.

He stood up again, and this time he wasn’t held back by the force of the bench but set off with brisk steps along the edge of the fountain. He walked towards the theatre and continued along the alley at the side of the building. He was thinking of beer and Alice. Despite her name, Alice
wasn’t a woman. She might have been, but he’d never given the matter any thought. Once inside it was hard to tell which sex a building was. There might have been a drainage pipe running along the edge of the roof, and that made him suspect the bar was male, but it could just as easily have been a blood vessel, as buildings’ veins were often on the outside, on the surface, and only as he was leaving and touched the door handle did he realise that it was clearly the touch of a woman’s hand.

Tweety came out on to the Station Square and there were no police cars in sight. The fragmented jazz of the late-evening traffic rumbled past; a handful of people, runaway musical notes, were wandering around, and though he didn’t like large open spaces he began striding across the deserted square, and it occurred to him that although his whole life he’d considered himself something of a coward, he was actually far from it. He was often afraid, but he wasn’t a coward. It had something to do with the candle flame, and although he didn’t fully comprehend the line of thought, he felt that he was doing the same thing, every moment of every day, and that one day he’d realise that the flame doesn’t burn you after all. He felt that someone had been lying to him, lying to him, telling him that life is all about death.

He turned on to Keskuskatu, walked past the entrance to the
underground
, and the pillars stood right in front of him, holding up the entire building like a giant castle rising up into the sky. He was nervous, just enough, because he knew he was about to do something, though at the same time he wasn’t; this he repeated to himself with every step. He was only going to have one pint.

He opened Alice’s door and climbed the stairs up into the bar. The buzz of chatter hit him like a hail shower; cigarette smoke floated in the air and he could hear the babble of a television somewhere further off. Glasses clinked and somebody laughed. He approached the counter and tried to glance around casually: lots of women, all with soft thighs and round buttocks hidden beneath their clothes. One woman with pouting lips had hair that was stylishly ruffled. If only he could touch it, it would have been like eating candyfloss.

He waited for his turn. He didn’t visits pubs very often because he always felt that everyone was staring at him or that he didn’t know how to behave properly, that he’d knock his glass over. He managed to pick it up firmly and slunk further into the bar. He knew precisely where he
wanted to sit; the space was generally free, as it was on this occasion too. Other people must have thought it an unpleasant place to sit: the toilets were right behind the table and right in the line of sight. They were next to one another, the women’s toilet and the men’s toilet, and neither of them had a proper door, only a curtain of beads. There were doors in each of the cubicles, but that was different.

Tweety sat on a high bar stool, shifted to make himself more
comfortable
and took a sip of beer. It tasted good, cold, the milk of the hop fields. This was another reason he didn’t visit pubs very often: little amounts of alcohol made him drunk, sometimes all it took was one pint. And when he was drunk he felt that same falsified sense of safety, as though he wasn’t Asko Leinonen after all, as though the entire Leinonen family didn’t exist. At times like that he could have plucked up the courage to think and plan anything, and that was dangerous, because in that state of mind it was too easy to be careless.

A dark-haired woman in a red jumper walked into the toilets right in front of Tweety’s nose. Her body was brimming with all the elements of womanhood he so admired: a white neck, bouncy little tits and a soft, swinging behind. A tantalising trail of her scent hung in the air and her high heels clip-clopped provocatively against the tiled floor behind the bead curtain.

Tweety knew that there were three cubicles in the women’s toilet.

He took another sip from his pint. With his free hand he slowly caressed the smooth surface of the table.

Harjunpää’s clothes were heavy with the acrid smell of smoke. It wasn’t the smell of a campfire or the aroma of a lakeside sauna. There was nothing good about this smell and that’s why it troubled him; that and the fact that the same smell hung in the air in the coroner’s lab downstairs. What troubled him even more was the fact that the fire had had two separate points of origin.

The first and seemingly primary point of origin was between an armchair and a bookcase where the victim had apparently been dozing and smoking his last cigarette, but the other was against the opposite wall, on the floor at the foot of the bed. What could explain this? Harjunpää hadn’t noticed anything else that might indicate foul play and he’d been exceptionally thorough, firstly because his partner on this case was Virta, a young rookie at the first house-fire of his career, but also, entirely subconsciously, because of Luukkanen’s formal complaint against him. He still had to come up with some kind of response.

He sighed and placed his bag of equipment on the grey stone floor, turned up the volume on his police radio and lay that on the floor too. He was always half-listening to the radio, expecting another job to come in or something else to happen at any moment. The coroner’s men had done as they were told; they hadn’t wheeled the body into cold storage yet, but had left him on the slab waiting for their return. He was lying on a gleaming steel stretcher, wrapped inside a plastic body bag. That’s where the smell of the fire was coming from. Harjunpää pulled on a pair of disposable latex gloves and began to unzip the bag – and then he realised.

‘It was the bookcase,’ he said to Virta and almost gave a smile. ‘The firemen said it had been knocked over when they arrived. And think about the fire pattern on the wall…’

‘It went right up to the ceiling…’

‘Exactly. And the side of the bookcase was charred right the way along. And the taps were running in the bathroom. And the body was lying by the front door.’

‘He’d been trying to extinguish the fire and knocked over the bookcase in all the confusion.’

‘Right, and the papers on the top shelf created the second point of origin. The fire pattern at that end was smaller because the fire started later. And as he was trying to put out the fire he was rushing around breathing in carbon monoxide all the while, which is absorbed into the bloodstream hundreds of times faster than oxygen, and that’s why he couldn’t make it into the stairwell…’

He gripped the body bag and yanked, and the tapes holding it together crackled as they came apart. There lay the body. It felt strange to think that only a few hours ago he was just someone who’d been
pottering
around all day, blissfully unaware that the world would come to an end that same evening. He wasn’t in particularly bad shape – fire victims are often nothing but charred lumps set in a boxing position. He was red with some amount of blistering, and only on his legs, which had been facing the fire, were his muscles visible.

‘Why do we need to examine him if…?’

‘Let’s look for any other injuries,’ said Harjunpää, instinctively trying to hold his breath. ‘Anything not caused by the fire. And anything that might give us an ID: scars, jewellery, that sort of thing. I’ll turn him over. Take a look at his back.’

He took hold of the body by the arm and hip, and as he tilted it towards him something opened deep in its throat and gave out a long wheeze, almost a moan. Virta looked up at Harjunpää then leaned down to look at the victim’s back, examined it slowly and finally shook his head. Harjunpää released his grip, laid the body in its original position and suddenly turned towards the radio.

‘Did you hear what Control just said?’

‘No… I mean, it was nothing for Crime Squad.’

‘Wait a minute…’

Harjunpää peeled the gloves from his hands, bounded towards the radio and raised it to his mouth. He wasn’t at all sure whether he’d heard what he thought he’d heard, and he was even less sure of the thought that leapt into his mind. It wasn’t even really a thought, it was like an unripe apple, a hunch, but nonetheless he pressed down on the keyboard and called Control.

‘Crime Squad, go ahead.’

‘Just out of curiosity, what was the nature of the job 1-5-5 just took on Keskuskatu?’

‘Some Peeping Tom wandered into the women’s toilet and groped a customer.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He was behind a locked door in the middle cubicle. There’s a hole in the wall and he’d stuck his hand through and tried to touch up the woman in the next cubicle.’

‘Can you give me a description?’

‘Not really, but he’s in custody. The woman was sober and apparently she does karate. If she decides to press charges it’ll be passed on to the bureau of investigations. Do you want his ID?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Harjunpää and hesitated for a moment. He wanted the suspect taken to a holding cell in Pasila; he wanted to see him for himself. But it all seemed too far-fetched, hope against hope, and he decided to let it pass and ended the call.

He gave Virta a brief explanation of what was going on, pulled on a fresh pair of gloves and began feeling the head beneath clumps of singed hair, but he couldn’t find any obvious traumas or bumps, and when he brought his hand away there was no blood on his fingers. He then examined the victim’s neck and chest, then continued downwards, but apart from burn injuries all he found were four bruises which, judging by their colour, had been there for some time. In addition to the legs, there were severe burns on his arms, another indication that the man had tried to put out the fire by himself.

‘Just photograph him, then we’re done,’ said Harjunpää. ‘General photos, arms and legs in particular. And the face, though nobody will be able to identify him. The Burns unit can come down tomorrow and try to get some fingerprints or a dental profile off him. They’ll help make a positive ID.’

Virta took the camera out of his bag. Harjunpää went to the sink and washed his hands. He did this thoroughly, almost too thoroughly, as though there was something other than just talcum powder that needed to be removed from his hands, from himself, his life. He began towelling his hands and heard someone call for him on the radio.

‘Crime Squad, this is 1-5-5 at the Alice bar on Keskuskatu. Do you copy?’

‘This is Harjunpää. Copy.’

‘You wanted a description of the suspect?’

‘That’s right.’

‘About 165 centimetres tall, skinny with sharp facial features. Grey waist-length jacket and dark-grey trousers with a pair of scruffy trainers.’

Harjunpää didn’t say anything for a moment. He couldn’t say anything. He thought of the man he’d seen in the park and that had been described to him countless times, and he shuddered. Perhaps this was what it felt like when you got seven correct numbers on your lottery coupon and couldn’t quite believe it was true.

‘Is she going to press charges?’ he asked, and his sense of disbelief deepened. It all seemed far too simple.

‘Not by the sounds of it. She’s a bit shaken up, that’s all. There aren’t really any grounds to bring a case against him. The cubicles are open at the top and apparently he just tried to stroke her hair.’

‘OK. Take him to a holding cell in Pasila, just to verify his ID and as a suspect in one of our cases.’

‘Copy that.’

‘And just so you know, if it’s the guy I’m looking for, he can run pretty fast.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind. Over and out.’

Hacjacket sleeves, and though he knew that there was still a possibility he was wrong, he no longer felt that nagging sense of hesitation. He was almost convinced that he would know the moment he saw the suspect himself; illuminated by flashes of lightning, he’d been able to make out the man’s features quite well. He gripped the stretcher’s cold handles and pushed the body towards the storage area, opened the door and pushed the trolley into the refrigerated area of the lab, frosty steam billowing from behind the door.

Another call came over the radio. This time it was Virta who answered: ‘Crime Squad. Copy.’

‘Get going as soon as you can,’ came the voice from the clerk at the switchboard. ‘There’s been a stabbing at a flat at Eerikinkatu 29. Emergency services are on their way. We’ve already sent units 1-5-7 and 1-5-9.’

‘Copy. We’re leaving the coroner’s lab now.’

‘Suppose we’d better get going,’ Harjunpää sighed and picked his bag up from the floor. He didn’t need another call-out right now; he wanted to go straight back to the station, but it was always like this on shifts. As soon as something started to happen, everything happened at once. The beginning of the evening had been relatively quiet. The fire on Kankaretie had been the first job of the shift.

They stepped outside and the night-time air felt unbelievably good, so pure that you wanted to stand there sniffing it. They strode towards the Lada, Harjunpää threw his bag on the back seat and sat down behind the wheel. A moment later the engine roared into life and the car was on the move and swung down a steep ramp, the glare of its headlights sweeping across the darkness like two enormous, white fists.

‘Put on the flashlight,’ said Harjunpää. ‘And ask Control for some specifics: the condition of the victim, the suspect.’

Virta opened the window and held out the flashlight bulb; Harjunpää flicked the switch and blue light began frantically licking the world around them.

‘Control, this is Crime Squad. Have you got any more information on the victim and any possible suspect?’

‘According to the emergency services the victim called for help by himself. Male, one stab wound to the side. Suspect unknown and still at large. No description yet. There was a woman in the flat too; she’s a friend of the victim.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Apparently they were asleep, then they woke up as someone else tried to get into the bed. The victim ran after him and got himself stabbed in the stairwell.’

‘Copy.’

Harjunpää steered the Lada abruptly on to Mannerheimintie; his stiff fingers gripped the steering wheel and his breath came in short bursts of disbelief. A swarm of curses flooded his mind, and after struggling with them for a moment he forced himself to believe it: their intruder had been
at that flat and the man arrested at the Alice bar could have been anyone. It was just their luck that he matched the description of their suspect. The location fitted their man’s territory too; so far the most southerly incident reported had been on Lönnrotinkatu.

He reached out his hand and Virta gave him the car radio.

‘Control, this is Harjunpää. This incident may be linked to a series of cases we’re working on. Give the officers on the scene the following
description
: male, twenty-five to thirty. Height no more than 170 centimetres; thin, slender build. Angular facial features. Probably wearing grey, colourless clothes. He’s very fast on his feet and may be travelling by moped.’

‘Got that. All units…’

‘Damn it,’ said Harjunpää. He switched on the siren and pressed his foot down on the accelerator. The street was almost deserted so he didn’t need to drive along the tramlines, but sped along the right-hand lane. The road opened up ahead and the Lada hungrily devoured the tarmac beneath them.

As they were passing the parliament building, Control put out another call for them.

‘Crime Squad, go ahead,’ Virta yelled above the noise of the sirens.

‘An ambulance is taking the victim to the hospital; his condition is stable. Unit 1-5-9 is at the scene and 1-5-7 is searching the surrounding area. And the woman that was there has taken off. Apparently she was a… you know. Maybe you’d be best off going straight to the hospital so you can question the victim before he goes into surgery. His name’s Kai Orvo Johannes Retula.’

Virta looked enquiringly at Harjunpää, who nodded and said: ‘Tell them to send Forensics down there too. Thurman’s on duty, he knows what to do.’

Harjunpää turned off the siren but left the blue lights flashing. They had already reached Erottaja. He steered the car on to the Esplanade and the shop windows lit up with the emergency lights flashing like the beat of a fearful heart. They were almost at the hospital. Harjunpää took a right on to Kasarminkatu and the Lada began the slight incline towards the hospital. An ambulance pulled out of the forecourt; Harjunpää steered the Lada up on to the pavement and parked by the right-hand wall.

‘Crime Squad,’ Harjunpää said quietly to the medical officer and showed him his badge. There were a couple of people waiting in the
lobby: a drunken man holding his bloody face and an old lady sobbing to herself.

‘If it’s possible, we’d like to talk to the stabbing victim who just arrived from Eerikinkatu… Mr Retula.’

‘Oh him,’ the man replied, and for a moment his expression was somehow strange, hesitant, as though he wanted to say something but realised that he wasn’t supposed to.

Harjunpää had to ask: ‘He is still alive?’

‘Oh yes. Very much so. Our doctor is over there.’ The man clomped down the corridor in his wooden shoes and stopped beside a
dark-bearded
doctor who was standing reading some papers, muttered a few hushed words, and the doctor looked up at Harjunpää and Virta.

‘It’s fine to go in there,’ he said. ‘His little run-in hasn’t left him with any life-threatening wounds. There’s one stab wound to the lower right costal arch that just managed to puncture the stomach wall. We’ll operate to be on the safe side and make sure he hasn’t sustained any bleeding or internal injuries. We’re prepping him for theatre, so if you could keep it brief.’

‘Is there anything else?’ Harjunpää asked without really knowing why. Was there something unusual about the doctor’s expression, something he was hiding?

‘No, nothing out of the ordinary. Have you apprehended the stabber?’

‘I’m afraid not. We do have a nameless suspect.’

‘I see,’ the doctor chuckled dryly and began walking away. Harjunpää didn’t understand what was so funny, unless the man was simply mocking their inefficiency.

He didn’t stand around thinking about this for long. He proceeded down the corridor; he knew his way around from years of experience. The hospital smell in the air seemed stronger than before, and somewhere nearby he could hear the hum of a machine and a faint beeping. Retula was lying on a bed curtained off from the rest of the ward. The blonde nurse recognised Harjunpää, nodded and moved away from the bed. Harjunpää approached the patient.