The Winter of the Lions (13 page)

‘Yes …’

‘I have to ask you something, something that strikes me as important, that’s why I’m ringing so late at night.’

‘Yes …’

‘It’s about the puppets.’

‘Yes …’

‘About the process of making them. What does a puppet-maker use as a model?’

‘As a model?’

‘Yes.’

‘I … excuse me, but I …’

‘What serves you as the model? You make exact copies. So what are they modelled on?’

‘Well …’ said Vaasara.

‘Well?’

‘Various things. It also depends on the way you go about making a particular puppet.’

‘Meaning?’

‘A puppet-maker commissioned to provide copies of dead bodies is well trained in human anatomy, of course. He needs that training for making other … well, normal puppets. And for copying corpses we use various sources. For instance, we’ve often used police literature. There are textbooks for trainees at police colleges, showing different kinds of deaths in great detail …’

Joentaa nodded.

‘We work with the Forensic Institute in Helsinki, and the Faculty of Medicine at the university … we attend autopsies,
and besides his craft training Harri also had diplomas in chemistry and biology, he … he was brilliant.’

Joentaa nodded. ‘I meant something else,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Vaasara.

‘Is it possible that someone related to a dead person could recognise that person, the one he’s mourning for, in one of your puppets?’

Vaasara said nothing.

‘Do you understand?’ asked Joentaa.

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Well?’

‘That’s not possible,’ said Vaasara.

‘Why not?’

‘We don’t copy real dead people,’ said Vaasara.

‘But you use photos as models. Photos from police textbooks, for instance.’

‘Of course,’ said Vaasara.

‘Well then?’

‘We use photos, yes. Harri more than me. Harri had whole data banks of such photographs, the Internet is full of them. Drowned bodies. People killed in various different ways, shot, run over, mutilated. Corpses in progressive stages of decomposition.’

‘Then we agree,’ said Joentaa.

‘No,’ said Vaasara. ‘We use photos and copies just as we use our knowledge of chemical and biological processes and above all, of course, our craft skills to make puppets. Not real people.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that the real model, if there is one, doesn’t look like the puppet that is our end product.’

Joentaa closed his eyes and felt the vague, outlandish idea take ever more concrete shape the longer Vaasara tried to convince him of its impossibility. Vaasara did not sound upset
or offended, he was answering the questions calmly, in a drowsily abstracted way, and did not seem to understand what Joentaa was telling him.

‘The faces,’ said Joentaa.

‘Faces?’ asked Vaasara.

‘The puppets’ faces. Who is used as a model?’

‘Which faces did you say?’

‘The faces of the puppets,’ said Joentaa.

‘Oh, the puppets don’t have any faces. Usually they’re just blank surfaces, because when we make puppets for films, their heads aren’t shown.’

‘Sometimes you see the heads.’

‘Yes, true, you do. But as a rule then they’re unrecognisable … just raw flesh, or scraps of skin, or bloated …’

‘That’s not quite accurate,’ said Joentaa.

‘Hm … well, sometimes there
are
real faces, but they’re the faces of the actors. We even made one of a dead Hollywood star once. It was used as a running gag in some silly comedy.’

‘No, what I mean is the puppets in that talk show with Hämäläinen … they have faces.’

‘Hm … no, I don’t think so,’ said Vaasara.

‘Yes, for instance the victim of that air crash. The puppet’s face was even shown in close-up for a few seconds.’

‘Air crash?’

‘Didn’t you see the programme?’

‘No, I was in the States working on a project at the time.’

‘Well, you see the face …’

‘You say an air crash; I don’t think there’d be much of anyone’s face left after that.’

‘You see the face. Of course it’s … well, badly injured, and …’

‘Like I said, a mass of flesh with bloody streaks all over it, bloated … certainly unrecognisable. Maybe that one was modelled on Harri himself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sometimes Harri gave the puppets his own face when he was making them. For – well, for fun.’

Vaasara sounded sad as he said that, and Joentaa felt exhausted. ‘The face I’m talking about wasn’t Harri Mäkelä’s face,’ he said.

‘I’m only saying that sometimes Harri …’ Vaasara began.

‘No. I don’t think we’re getting anywhere,’ said Joentaa.

‘Well …’

‘Thank you very much.’

‘Well …’ said Vaasara.

Joentaa ended the call.

He put his mobile down on his bedside table and sat on the bed for some time.

He thought of the face he had seen.

The face of a dead man who had no face.

The face of a dead man who wasn’t dead.

He thought of the blonde woman, the stranger in his house, and didn’t understand why he missed her.

After a while he closed his eyes, and seconds later fell into a sleep as vague as the pain and dizziness in his head.

KIMMO
JOENTAA WOKE
up shivering and with a sense of knowing what he wanted to do next. He went down to the breakfast room. Sundström was sitting, lost in thought, in front of a cup of coffee and a bowl of cornflakes.

‘Good morning,’ said Joentaa, sitting down beside him.

‘Morning,’ said Sundström.

‘I’d like us to approach this investigation from a new angle,’ said Joentaa.

Sundström looked up.

‘I don’t think there’s any rational motive. I think it’s a motive by association,’ said Joentaa. ‘Something to do with that TV programme.’

‘Go on,’ said Sundström.

‘I think the murderer was … was traumatised by the programme, felt it was some kind of attack on his peace of mind. That would explain the fury that seems to be behind the whole thing.’

He looked for signs of mockery or scepticism in Sundström’s eyes, but found none.

‘I still don’t know how it all hangs together, but it must have something to do with those puppets and the way they were discussed on the show.’

‘Puppets, Kimmo, only puppets.’

‘Yes, but not for one viewer. Let’s suppose that one viewer saw something else. Perhaps someone close to him, and he had lost that person and was mourning.’

For a long time Sundström said nothing. After a while he
began to eat his cornflakes. Then he put his spoon down and said, ‘Funny idea.’

‘I know,’ said Joentaa. ‘But I think it’s right.’

‘You think.’

‘I watched the DVD again last night. And after that I phoned Vaasara. Mäkelä’s assistant.’

‘And?’

‘He thought it was an outlandish idea.’

‘Ah.’

‘All the same …’

‘Kimmo, I watched the programme myself, I know those puppets were only dummies. Corpses in a film. Props. Made of plastic.’

‘You don’t understand what I’m getting at.’

‘Not entirely.’

‘I’d like to look at the data banks of photos that Mäkelä built up,’ said Joentaa.

‘Why?’

‘Vaasara said he had collected a lot of photos for research.’

‘Yes, yes, but why do you want to look at them?’

‘I don’t know.’

Sundström looked down at his cornflakes again. ‘That’s a typical Kimmo Joentaa reason – “I don’t know”.’

‘You yourself say that the interview plays a key part. And the puppets are at the centre of the interview.’

‘Yes, I’m with you so far, but I don’t understand your theory.’

‘Do you have a better one?’

‘At the moment I don’t have any theory at all.’

‘Then in that case …’

‘Which of course will send me off to talk to the press in tearing good spirits. I’ll probably have to spend the whole morning preparing for that ridiculous conference.’

Kimmo got to his feet. ‘See you later. I’m off.’

‘Kimmo, wait a minute …’

Joentaa walked quickly through the breakfast room to the entrance hall. When he turned round once more, he saw Sundström shaking his head as he contemplated his cornflakes.

He walked on through the hall, thinking about Sundström, who had seemed curiously passive since the attack on Hämäläinen, and for the first time since Joentaa had been working with him appeared to find that a situation was getting him down. Presumably his unique brand of humour had gone AWOL, and he had to rediscover it before he could operate with his usual efficiency.

On reaching the way out of the hotel Joentaa stopped, and on impulse took his mobile out of his coat pocket. He called his own number, and after a few seconds heard a strange voice, but it didn’t sound like the standard announcement on the answering machine, and indeed it did not consist of the usual wording.

‘Er … hello?’

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Who … who’s that speaking?

‘I think I’m the one who should be asking you.’

‘Larissa?’

‘No.’

‘My name is Joentaa, and the telephone you’re holding at this minute belongs to me.’

‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘That’s right. And I’d like to speak to Larissa.’

‘She’s not here.’

‘Ah. And who are you?’

‘Jennifer. A colleague of hers.’

‘Is … is Larissa …’

‘She’s in the bathroom. I came to pick her up because she has such a long walk to the bus stop.’

‘I see.’

‘She was late yesterday. That’s rather frowned upon.’

‘Ah … well, it’s good that you’re picking her up.’

‘Would you like her to call you back?’

‘That would be nice.’

‘Goodbye, then.’

‘Er … just a moment …’

But Jennifer or whoever it was had cut the connection, and Kimmo Joentaa stood there for a while with his mobile in his hand. Then he put it away in his coat pocket and went out into the winter sunlight.

PELLERVO
HALONEN, THE
head of the Home, waves, and Rauna turns in the child seat and waves back. ‘Byeeee!’ she calls, although Pellervo Halonen can’t hear her.

On the way her neighbour Aapeli sits in the back of the car and tells Rauna stories. Rauna laughs almost the whole time. She is glad that Aapeli is with them. He was coming towards her this morning just as she was about to drive away. Aapeli said good morning and smiled, and she saw the sadness in his eyes and asked if he’d like to come too.

‘Where to?’

‘Moomin World. In Naantali.’

‘The children’s theme park?’

She nodded.

‘Just the two of us?’ Aapeli asked.

‘And Rauna,’ she replied. ‘A friend, a little girl, we’ll be fetching her.’

Aapeli stood there for a while in the swirling snowflakes thinking about it, then he nodded and went straight to the car with her instead of back indoors.

Now Aapeli is telling stories, and Rauna is laughing, and she glides over the snow as if on rails, and the world is set to rights.

Rauna asks how he knows all these stories, and Aapeli tells her they are the stories he can’t tell his grandchildren because his children never come to visit.

‘Why not?’ asks Rauna.

‘I think they don’t have time,’ says Aapeli.

‘Why don’t they have time?’ asks Rauna.

‘Because they have to work a lot, and they don’t live near here.’

‘Why don’t they live near here?’ asks Rauna

When they reach Naantali, the wooden houses are swathed in white, the restaurants are closed, and the sea is frozen. They go along the broad landing stage, and Aapeli says, ‘Is Moomin World open in winter?’

She stops and looks at him.

‘I was only thinking it’s really much too cold for it now.’

They walk on to the end of the landing stage, and along the woodland path on the island until the large, fenced terrain of the park begins. The little ticket booths are unoccupied, the windows have blinds down over them.

‘You’re right, Aapeli,’ she says.

‘What a pity,’ says Rauna.

‘I ought to have remembered that it was always closed in winter,’ she says.

Aapeli has gone a few steps ahead. ‘Funnily enough the gates are wide open,’ he calls back.

‘So they are,’ she says.

The ticket booths are closed, but the broad gates through which you enter the world of the Moomins are open.

‘Let’s just go on, then,’ says Aapeli.

Rauna runs off, and she hesitates. She has always been afraid of doing something that’s not allowed. Even if unintentionally.

‘Come on,’ calls Aapeli, and she thinks she has never seen him happier. Rauna takes Aapeli’s hand, and she gives herself a little shake and follows the two of them.

They run around on a deserted island, and hear a recurrent knocking sound. At regular intervals. Men are calling to each other, saying something that she can’t make out.

‘They’re doing renovation work here, that’s why the entrance was open,’ says Aapeli. They stop on the hill and see the blue wooden tower where the Moomins live. A man is standing on a ladder, banging at the red roof with a hammer. Another man is standing down below, giving instructions. The two men don’t notice them at all as they pass.

‘The bathing beach is further on,’ she says. ‘And if we keep left we’ll come to Moominpappa’s ship.’

‘Super, I want to go there,’ says Rauna.

‘So do I,’ says Aapeli.

The two of them go ahead, although they don’t know the way, and she follows them, thinking of the summer when she worked here. It is not a memory but a sequence of elusive images.

She is Little My.

Ilmari is a stranger.

And Veikko isn’t born yet.

The sensation of cold water on her skin in the sunny evenings.

‘Left and up the steps,’ she calls to Rauna and Aapeli.

She would have liked to bring Veikko here. Next summer. When Moomin World is open again.

‘The lions go away on the ship,’ calls Rauna. She is standing up on deck, turning the ship’s wheel wildly in all directions.

‘And that man with the beard isn’t the captain, I’m the captain.’