TH03 - To Steal Her Love (4 page)

Tweety felt suddenly agitated, as though a wire taut inside him had snapped. He tried to make himself believe that it was because of last night and what Reino had said, but it wasn’t. It was something else. Then he twigged: he’d heard something, and he knew immediately what it was. He pulled the blankets from over him and crouched down by the window. Mother Gold had come outside; her door had given a creak. He couldn’t stand that sound, but he didn’t understand why. He didn’t understand the cottage either; it made him feel extremely tense, as though the whole dive might cave in on him or burst into flames. It must have been because someone had died in there once, and somehow he could sense it. Mother Gold was upset that he never popped in, but he couldn’t.

Toby darted back into his cage as though he was scared too, and Tweety went back to bed, closed his eyes and tried to find those paper baskets again, but it was no use. There he was, lying between sticky sheets that smelled of his body, and now there were even more wires inside him and he could feel them tearing at his bones, his flesh and guts, leaving blood and pus dripping and stinking all around.

He sighed, his skin was damp with sweat, and then he realised what it was: he had dropped his wallet in Silkybum’s hallway. That must have been the dark object on the floor, right next to Silkybum’s shoes; he’d even heard a clap as it hit the floor. But he didn’t have time to think of the
matter further: a car pulled into the yard. And he knew it was going to be a police car, a blue-and-white Saab, both its doors opening at once and two big men in uniform stepping out, handcuffs dangling from their belts.

Tweety darted back to the window and pressed his forehead against the window so hard that it gave a crack. There was no police car; there was nothing else either, he’d been mistaken. Perhaps someone had pulled up in next door’s yard. Mother Gold was hobbling along the path; she was coming to visit them just as she did every Sunday, but Tweety didn’t stay around watching her. He bounded over to the chair and started
rummaging
with trembling hands through the pile of clothes, looking for his trousers. He found them. The wallet was in his pocket. And in addition to being buttoned up, the pocket was securely fastened with a safety pin.

‘Jesus,’ he sighed and slumped into the chair. His heart was beating inside him and he couldn’t think. He made out the sound of a door being opened in the distance and Reino saying something equally far away; Mother Gold started on about how much she missed their father, the way she always did, then commented on how they hadn’t made the bed. The water pump outside gave a squeal. Bamse had started making the coffee.

Tweety collapsed on his bed, pulled up the covers and thought of the mat at Lasse’s door. It was a worn old jute doormat. He thought of it in the rain, when it was wet, waiting for everyone to wipe the mud from their feet on it, and he felt sorry for it. He felt just like that mat. He felt like Asko, and Asko’s world was like a pigeon drawn with a blunt pencil, a pigeon run over by a car, its feathers blown about by the laughing wind.

He pretended to be asleep; he knew that Bamse would come and wake him up. He often mixed her up with Wheatlocks. She was so much closer than Wheatlocks and far more real, and she’d just said that she viewed him in a different way. Maybe she’d take him if something ever happened to Reino; or maybe one morning she’d sit down on the edge of his bed, caress him and say that Reino was a good-for-nothing, that he’s all talk, that he’d be out in the evening and that she wanted Tweety for herself.

The lock creaked as Bamse pushed the door open.

‘Get up, Tweety!’ she shouted; her voice was shrill and white as a little pebble. ‘And clean out that rat, it stinks in here!’

‘Timo!’ shouted Elisa from the other end of the corridor. Harjunpää
couldn’t
work out quite what she was doing in the Violent Crimes department, and he couldn’t go and ask her because he was in a hurry. He had to inform the chief superintendent that there was nothing wrong with the motor in the police-station lift after all – it was the repair men that were to blame. They’d caused the system to short-circuit, either on purpose or out of sheer stupidity, but still demanded their wages and it was costing the department so much of the annual budget that case after case was being left
uninvestigated
. He walked in without knocking. Tanttu was standing in his greasy overalls with his back to the door. There were other men in the room too, everyone on the departmental board, and then Harjunpää noticed: a lift motor was lying on Tanttu’s desk, and Harjunpää couldn’t say what he’d come to say. Tanttu cast him a dissatisfied look, but he’d been wrong: the chief superintendent proceeded to open up a zinc coffin containing a man’s body. It had been roughly patched together after autopsy, the stitches like splinters in his skin. The man was already partially mummified or dried up with embalming fluid – then all of a sudden he started to blink, sat up and looked at himself in horror – what had been done to him and what he had become – and he started to cry, demanding to know who had pronounced him dead and on what grounds, and everyone stared at Harjunpää: he was the only officer from Violent Crimes working that shift and he’d been on the scene. A marching band struck up with the ‘Narva March’.

‘Timo,’ said Elisa and laid her hand on his ankle, and Harjunpää realised where he was: at home on his napping mattress beneath the
benches in the sauna – it always was the most peaceful spot in the house – but still something was bothering him. All he could hear was a rushing sound, as though he were tipsy and had sunk beneath the surface.

‘You’ve still got your earplugs in,’ said Elisa, at least her mouth moved as though that was what she was saying, and Harjunpää pulled the small foam cylinders from his ears and the world surrounded him once again: the radio played softly, someone was jumping with a skipping rope, and from outside came the hum of a lawnmower. People loved them. Or rather, people hated grass: it refused to stay in check.

‘Morning,’ Harjunpää mumbled and slowly began to realise that everything wasn’t as it should be. He couldn’t have slept for more than an hour, he could feel it, and aside from that Elisa would normally have lain down beside him, rested a while, and sometimes they would start
caressing
one another and let things progress from there… and it was the most beautiful thing there was: to give your love and yourself to someone else, and to receive it back in equal measure. At moments like that he
understood
more clearly than ever that the whole world could march over them, but there would still be someone he trusted, someone who trusted him in return and who would never abandon him in times of hardship.

‘Grandpa?’ Harjunpää asked, and the restlessness he had just slept off was suddenly once again in his mind. ‘What’s he…?’

‘It’s OK, Timo. He and Pipsa have gone strawberry-picking. But someone rang from work. Valpuri answered and she had her headphones on while she spoke to him… Anyway, you’ve got to go and report to a DCI Järvi.’

‘Now?’

‘Straight away, they said. The caller didn’t say who he was, that’s why Valpuri believed he really was a policeman.’

‘Oh dear…’

Harjunpää couldn’t even begin to understand. It was extremely rare for the unit to telephone anyone who’d just been on night shift, let alone call them back into work. It could only mean that something serious had happened, a plane crash or something else of that magnitude; either that or someone had made a monumental blunder.

He didn’t understand why he had to report to Järvi either. Järvi wasn’t in Violent Crimes; he was the head of Special Branch. Harjunpää’s mouth felt suddenly sticky. He slowly began to crawl out from beneath the sauna benches, and the events of the previous night all began careering through
his mind: the manslaughter, the bodies, the suicide victim under the train, then he remembered Luukkanen and his promise of repercussions – but that would have been utterly nonsensical, even though he had been asked to report to Järvi. In any case, Luukkanen had only mentioned Kontio.

‘We were supposed to go to the Söderholms,’ said Elisa, and Harjunpää thought he could detect a note of disapproval in her voice, though he knew it wasn’t aimed at him but at the weighty boot pressing against the neck of all small-time officers.

‘If you could call them… or take the little ones. Pauliina can look after Grandpa while you’re gone.’

‘I’ve already called them, and we’re going next week. Come down and eat, there’s scrambled eggs and coffee.’

Harjunpää leaned against the sauna door; he was restless, full of frantic orders, but he didn’t have a spark of energy. His face expressionless, he stared at the clothes hanging on the line and the three flannel shirts among them: one blue, one green and one red. The red one had faded in countless washes and now it was an indeterminate shade of brown. The shirts belonged to his father. The air carried the faint smell of his father’s pipe smoke. Harjunpää rubbed his forehead, as though he wanted to be rid of thoughts that weren’t true, then he turned on the shower and the water stung his shins, though he had dabbed the grazes with Betadine.

‘How’s he been today?’ asked Harjunpää and spooned scrambled egg into his mouth, more to please Elisa than anything. His stomach was still asleep and his thoughts had carried him somewhere else entirely, driven by an almost imperceptible desire to escape something. Järvi’s telephone had been continually engaged, as had the phone in the coffee room – that could mean something, or it could just be pure coincidence – and the switchboard at the Public Order Division had only been able to say that a Combat unit had been called out, and that came under Järvi’s jurisdiction.

‘Well, he’s… He was rubbing his chest a bit this morning and took a couple of nitrate tablets. Maybe he’s just having a bit of a blurry day.’

‘Yes,’ Harjunpää muttered when he couldn’t think of anything else to say, and he hoped Elisa wouldn’t ask him about Social Services and the forms – he’d had such a busy week and on top of that he’d been at a loss with all the paperwork, as with the matter as a whole.

It had been almost a month. A police car from the Kirkkonummi precinct had pulled up outside their house, all the kids in the
neighbourhood 
running behind it. Arponen had got out of the car and come inside scratching his brow.

‘Evening all. There’s a man out there in the car – he’s a bit senile. You know, demented. The thing is, he claims to be your father.’

‘Get off… My parents live in Käpylä. I spoke to them a few hours ago on the phone.’

‘This is a Georg Johannes Harjunpää. And the Register of Births and Deaths seems to confirm his story. He says he was married again and that he and his wife had some sort of prenuptial agreement, and now that she’s passed away, her children have come and sent him packing. Seems he’s screwed everything else up too, no pension to speak of, you name it…’

‘Let’s take a look at him,’ Harjunpää had said finally; his tongue felt dry and a chill ran through him, and the calm he had tried to build up within him had been shaken. His parents had divorced when he was five years old and he had thought of his mother’s new husband as his father, an economist, distant and consumed by his own pressures. In his entire adult life Harjunpää hadn’t met his real father once.

In the back of the police car, on top of his suitcases, sat a slightly stooped, thin old man who at times was clearly in another world. Harjunpää had been overcome by an almost nauseous feeling; he’d wanted to slam the door shut and say to hell with him, but then he’d recognised his own forehead and jaw, and above all his thin fingers and hands striped with blue veins. And on top of everything else the man had looked at him, smiled hesitantly, imploringly almost, and said: ‘You must be Timo.’

They already had a Grandad and Papa, so for the girls’sake they’d decided to call this one Grandpa. And Grandpa was only supposed to stay the night, but no care home would take him in and they were faced with the
possibility
of waiting lists months, years long. A strange contradiction was gnawing away at Harjunpää. If he’d been honest with himself, he’d initially wanted to get rid of Grandpa as quickly as possible, to free himself in some way, to have everything back the way it was before. But on the other hand he was content when it seemed the situation would be prolonged: there was something he wanted to understand, or something he wanted from his father, though he couldn’t put his finger on precisely what it was.

‘Here come the berry-pickers…’

They could hear speech and footsteps coming from outside, and a strange series of thumps: Pipsa came in hopping on one leg. Her legs were
long and thin like a grasshopper’s. She was holding Grandpa by the hand and the old man was swaying so much that Harjunpää had to look away.

‘You’ll be all right with him, won’t you?’ he asked hastily. It had become a matter of great concern to him, as had the fact that their entire life seemed to have gone off kilter since Grandpa’s arrival; more and more often arguments had sprung out of things that would normally have been dealt with in a few words.

‘I suppose so… The only thing that worries me is that he puffs away on his pipe during the night, but he’ll never learn to go out to the steps. And Pauliina’s a bit put out at having to share with the little ones.’

‘I know. I’ll try again this week…’

The door opened and the house filled in an instant: shoes flew into the hallway cupboard with a clatter and warm air flooded inside – still, August air that foreboded a thunderstorm.

‘Grandpa lost his pipe,’ Pipsa explained. ‘But we found it again.’

‘I thought we agreed not to say anything about that.’

‘You’ll never guess where we found it!’

‘Well?’

‘You know how it is,’ Grandpa interjected. ‘These things happen.’

‘We went back along the track looking. Then down by that giant spruce tree we saw smoke. The moss was burning.’

‘But we stamped the fire out.’

‘Good. You’ve got to be very careful with fire, and you must never smoke in bed.’

Grandpa brushed off the incident with a smile, pulled out a chair and sat down. Elisa started pouring him some coffee, and before long they were chatting away – it came so easily to Elisa, words just bubbled from her mouth – and again Harjunpää felt left out. This was always the way. Grandpa had befriended everybody else; he and Pipsa got on especially well, but whenever he saw Harjunpää he soon slid off somewhere and started forgetting things. As strange as it sounded, there were times when Harjunpää felt that he did this accidentally on purpose: upon seeing him, Grandpa’s mind was filled with things he couldn’t properly process. Perhaps this was part of the irony: the last time Harjunpää had had a father, he’d been helpless and couldn’t quite understand things, but now that he was an adult and wanted to talk things through, it was his father who was helpless and couldn’t quite understand things.

‘Yes, you’re Timo, aren’t you?’ Grandpa asked suddenly and looked at Harjunpää. His eyes were unsure; it was impossible to play-act such uncertainty.

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re an economist, yes?’

‘No. I’m a policeman. We’ve talked about this before, remember?’

‘That’s right… But you’re not wearing a uniform.’

‘I don’t have a uniform. I’m at the Criminal Investigations Division. We wear civilian clothes.’

‘And did you know that your grandmother’s father was a constable in Tampere?’

‘Yes, Grandfather Bergman. We’ve talked about this too.’

‘He had a bicycle, you know. Aren’t you a constable?’

‘I’m a detective sergeant. And I’ve been at work all night, but now I have to go back again,’ he said and began to get up. In a peculiar way he felt almost nostalgic. Through his wistfulness he realised that perhaps Grandpa really did want to get to know him but that, without knowing it, he himself was being standoffish, and he knew that Grandpa could sense this. Perhaps what they really needed was to spend some time together, just the two of them, but there never seemed to be a suitable opportunity.

‘Dad,’ Valpuri hissed. She’d been standing in the hallway all this time, and as Harjunpää made to leave she darted past him on the stairs and stood there with the rabbit in her arms, her cheeks red with excitement.

‘We’ll go and get the mesh tomorrow, as soon as I get back from work. Remind me if I go off for a nap or something.’

‘No, listen…’

‘Yes?’

Valpuri started sniggering the way adults sometimes do, laughter bubbling up inside no matter how much you know you shouldn’t laugh, no matter how serious it is.

‘Well, when we were in the woods, Grandpa told Pipsa that…’

‘Hey, cut it out!’

‘I mean, a man his age… He said he thinks the rabbit got in his room during the night and… wet his bed…’

‘He says a lot of things…’

‘I just went and looked, and his bed’s wet, but it’s not the rabbit’s fault!’

Valpuri started howling, almost paralysed with laughter, and the rabbit panicked and shifted position in her arms.

‘Listen, calm down. The thing is, when you get to that age everything seems a bit… Why don’t you tell Mum, but make sure Grandpa doesn’t overhear you.’

‘I know. When will you be back?’

‘I’ll be back soon. You can be sure of that.’

‘Afternoon,’ said Harjunpää and stepped into Järvi’s office. He leaned over the papers on his desk, as though he didn’t want Harjunpää to see them. Harjunpää didn’t like the way Järvi was looking at him: slightly perplexed and questioning, almost a continuation of the silence through the
corridors
of the Violent Crimes department.

‘Good afternoon…’

‘Well, here I am.’

‘Yes… and may I ask why?’