The Winter of the Lions (23 page)

‘What?’ replied Tuulikki.

‘Never mind. CorpsesForDummies, please.’

‘What?’

‘That’s the name of the folder I want to look at.’

‘Ah, got it.’

The name of the file ran:
170208/FIN/TUR
.

17 February 2008. Skating rink, Finland. Turku.

Tuulikki pressed a key, and thumbnail views of all the photographs came up on the screen.

‘Do you want to look at them all?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Joentaa, and Tuulikki pressed another button.

Flickering pictures.

A macabre slide show, thought Joentaa, nothing more.

‘Edifying stuff,’ said Tuulikki.

A winter evening lit up in bright colours. Black and yellow. Firefighters in red. Paramedics in white. A mixture of colours in the dark, blurring before his eyes.

‘Oh,’ said Tuulikki.

Falling to your death, having your death fall on you. Used to tragedy. Would you like to stay with her? the doctor had asked. At the hospital, in the minutes after Sanna’s death.

‘Did you see that?’ asked Tuulikki.

‘What?’ he said.

‘I’d like another look at that photo. Just a moment.’ Tuulikki pressed buttons, and then they were sitting side by side in silence again in front of a frozen picture.

‘Look at that, the dead man in the middle next to the firefighter, under the rubble.’

She pointed to the screen, gently touching the picture of the dead man with her forefinger.

‘It reminds me of one of the puppets in the programme. He’s lying in just the same way. They look identical. And he has only one leg. As if he’d been the model for the puppet.’

How cute, thought Joentaa.

‘If it weren’t for the closed eyes and injuries everywhere, I’d say they were the very image of each other,’ said Tuulikki.

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘It’s eerie,’ said Tuulikki.

‘I have to find out who he is,’ said Joentaa.

Tuulikki leaned forward and touched the screen again. Very lightly and carefully. She showed him what he had just seen. ‘I think that … that bundle lying in front of the larger body is … it looks almost like a …’

‘A child,’ said Joentaa.

WHEN
OLLI
LATVALA
entered the hotel lobby the woman was already sitting on one of the sofas. She did not seem to notice all the comings and goings around her. She was looking straight ahead into nothing.

Olli Latvala slowed down. He was a little anxious. He wondered if she would be up to appearing on the show, and thought of what had happened to her. It was unimaginable. He had no idea what this woman must be feeling, and he asked himself whether Kai-Petteri would succeed in getting through to her.

The questions that he and Tuula had put together were good questions. They built up from each other, and there was plenty of scope for dealing with anything unforeseen. What was important today was the fact that the show was going out live. No one was better than Kai-Petteri at dealing with the unforeseen, no one could break the ice better.

Break the ice, he thought. To lose her husband and her son, to see it happen. Severely injured herself. And to this day no one knew exactly why the roof of that skating rink had fallen in.

He thought it had been the right decision to fetch her from the hotel himself and not leave it to one of the drivers. He had a feeling that she needed special attention, and had … well, deserved it.

He quickened his pace again and injected a certain amount of volume and confidence into his voice as he said, still some distance away, ‘Hello, here I am. It’s nearly time now.’

The woman took her eyes off the driving snow outside the panes and looked at him.

‘Shall we go?’ asked Olli Latvala.

The woman stood up.

‘There’s a good deal of traffic, and it’s snowing. But I know a way of my own to the TV station,’ said Olli Latvala. He smiled at her.

The woman nodded and followed him into the open air. His car was parked directly opposite the gilded main entrance to the hotel, in a No Parking zone. The hotel doormen flanking the entrance nodded at them, and Latvala said, ‘Good, no parking ticket, I’m in luck. Sometimes it takes our helpful friends only a minute to write one of those out for you.’

He let the woman into the passenger’s side, got in himself, and moved the car out into the evening traffic. Fireworks were going off sporadically in the sky; they drove past a rear-end collision. One of the cars had slipped into the roadside gutter, the other had a slightly dented bonnet.

‘I don’t think it’s anything serious,’ said Olli Latvala, and the woman nodded.

‘How are you doing?’ asked Olli Latvala. ‘Do you like the hotel?’

‘Yes,’ said the woman.

‘Did you come across Bon Jovi?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

He turned his eyes away from the road. ‘You did?’

‘Yes, in the swimming pool.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Latvala.

‘At least, that’s who he looked like. And he was speaking English,’ she said.

‘Must have been him,’ said Latvala.

‘Maybe he was surprised because I was swimming naked. I hadn’t brought a swimsuit with me.’

Olli Latvala laughed and turned his eyes back to the road ahead. He felt relieved, without being able to say why.

Maybe because now he was sure that this woman was still taking part in real life, even if only by meeting a rock star in the swimming pool.

HE SAT BESIDE
Tuulikki looking at the picture of two bodies under rubble.

Tuulikki phoned a colleague and asked him to stand in for her at the meeting with the cameramen, and Joentaa called Grönholm’s mobile.

‘The collapse of the ice rink in Turku, early this year,’ he said.

‘Yes, what about it?’ asked Grönholm.

‘I’m sure you remember it.’

‘Of course.’

‘We need the names of the dead. A complete list. We could be looking for a father and son.’

‘Father and son?’

‘We have a photo here. The body of a man, a child with him. They could be father and son. At the moment it’s only a theory, but they’re lying … well, as if closely entwined. Anyway, we need those names. Ask Päivi Holmquist to help you with the research.’

‘Sure. Then is it … why is the ice rink suddenly part of the case?’

‘I’ll explain it all later. We need to move fast now, we’re near the solution.’

‘Right, I’ll get to work.’

‘Thanks. Call me as soon as you have something.’

‘I’ll get in touch,’ said Grönholm.

‘Do that,’ said Joentaa, and ended the call. Tuulikki got up and went to the screen with the still of the laughing people still flickering on it. And the picture of the woman in the middle who wasn’t laughing with the rest of them. Tuulikki began pressing keys and adjusting controls, and Joentaa called Sundström’s number.

‘Hello? Kimmo?’

‘Where are you at the moment?’ asked Joentaa.

‘In the TV station. Entrance hall, at the security check. I’ve just arrived.’

‘Then please come straight up to floor thirty-six.’

Sundström said nothing for a few seconds. Then he asked, ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m here in the TV building too, on the thirty-sixth floor, in the office of one of the cutters, her name’s Tuulikki.’

‘Tuulikki?’

‘And tell Westerberg.’

‘He’s right here with me.’

‘Then both of you come up. We have something here that you ought to see.’

‘Yes … right. We’ll be with you,’ said Sundström.

‘See you,’ said Joentaa, breaking the connection again.

He looked at the two dead bodies lying in a sea of rubble and snow, against the background of a dark, starlit winter night.

Behind his back, Mäkelä said, ‘How cute.’

Tuulikki had changed the tape. ‘Identical,’ she said in a toneless voice.

Hämäläinen laughed. Laughed at Mäkelä’s comment. The audience joined in.

Joentaa turned to Tuulikki, and on the screen saw the puppet lying on a stretcher in the warm illumination of the spotlight.

The dead don’t have faces, Vaasara had said.

He thought of the moment that never ended, and the winter behind the panes of the glass tower was indistinguishable from last winter, when the roof of a skating rink in Turku had collapsed.

KAI
-
PETTERI
HÄMÄLÄINEN
was looking at Tuula as she carefully arranged the yellow Post-It notes in order, side by side or above each other. From time to time she rearranged them, or removed a note because the point mentioned on it wasn’t needed now. Kapanen, who had inflicted a gunshot wound on James Bond, had agreed to come only on condition that he wasn’t asked any questions about the soap opera in which he had begun his career.

The politician who had dominated the headlines for several weeks on end, after snorting cocaine during a grand reception in Sweden, asked them not to touch on that subject, although it was the only reason why he had been invited to appear on the show in the first place.

Several other Post-It notes found their way into the waste-paper basket, and Tuula said, ‘Makes no difference. Of course we’ll have to ask him about it, but you’ll make it arise naturally from the situation.’

Arise naturally from the situation, thought Hämäläinen. ‘Of course,’ he said.

‘He’ll know it’s coming, he can’t be that stupid. He probably only wants to make sure you won’t be too hard on him.’

‘Yes, probably,’ said Hämäläinen.

‘I’ll let him know just before the show begins, say we came to the editorial conclusion that the subject had to be mentioned, but at the same time I’ll indicate that there’s nothing for him to worry about.’

‘Right,’ said Hämäläinen.

Tuula laughed. ‘As if there was still anything to be hushed up. The man doesn’t seem to realise that it was the only reason for his popularity.’

‘Sometimes people don’t understand things,’ said Hämäläinen. He stared at the yellow notes, and after a while sensed Tuula’s eyes resting on him.

‘Good to have you back,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

He thought of the imps looking at him as if he were a stranger.

He thought of Irene’s hesitant touch, and the trembling in her voice that only he could hear.

He thought of the girlfriend of the gunman who ran amok, the girl who had said she could have helped him, she was sure she could.

He thought of a night under neon lighting in hospital.

‘Good luck,’ said Tuula.

He nodded.

‘After the show we’ll slip off and celebrate your return.’

‘Let’s do that.’

‘Sound check in five minutes?’ asked Tuula.

He nodded.

He could feel the make-up on his face.

He sat there for a few more minutes, then he got to his feet, and as he went along the corridor towards the babble of voices growing steadily louder, he thought of the very tall man who
had hidden in the shower and made the children laugh until, for a while, they had forgotten everything that frightened them.

THE WOMAN PASSES
a soft brush over her face and says she really ought to do something about that, and she doesn’t understand what the woman means.

‘Your lips. They’re so rough, you ought to do something about it.’

‘Yes?’ she says.

‘I can’t deal with that here and now. It’s more of a long-term project.’

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘I can only cover it up a bit,’ says the woman, going over her lips with the brush. ‘That’s better. I can’t do any more. More colour, Ukko.’

Ukko, a small, youthful-looking man, brings up a tray presumably holding the colours.

She closes her eyes and feels the fibres of the brush on her cheeks again. Stroking, tickling.

‘We can make a reasonable job of this,’ says the woman. ‘You’re the very fair-skinned type. I can’t get rid of that, I can only mitigate the effect a bit.’

She nods.

Get rid of it, she thinks, mitigate the effect. She thinks about words, and behind her back Olli Latvala asks, ‘Everything okay here?’

‘Nearly through now,’ says the woman. ‘I can’t do much about the lips, but I’ve covered up the sore places.’

‘Good,’ says Olli Latvala.

Then she walks down a corridor beside Olli Latvala to a large room. There are trays of open sandwiches and fruit on tables along the wall.

‘Help yourself,’ says Olli Latvala. ‘Would you like something to drink?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘I’m not thirsty.’

‘By the way, you mustn’t take my colleague in make-up too seriously. Your lips are perfectly all right.’

Music comes through loudspeakers.

‘Here we go,’ says Olli Latvala. ‘But we have a little time yet. You’d better make yourself comfortable, and I’ll come and fetch you at the right moment. Then, like I said, I’ll go just up to the stage with you, not beyond that. Okay?’

She nods.

‘I’ll be back. By the way, the white baguettes with eel and chopped egg are particularly delicious. I can recommend them highly,’ says Olli Latvala. ‘And if Bon Jovi happens to burst in here, mind you don’t confuse him any more! He has to sing today.’

He smiles.

She likes his smile.

Then he goes away, leaving her alone in the big room.

PAAVO
SUNDSTRÖM AND
Marko Westerberg were out of breath when they entered the room.

Outside, the snow had turned to driving sleet, and frozen pictures were flickering on the screens.

A puppet on a stretcher in a TV studio.

And two bodies, a man and a child, under rubble in the snow. The man had only one leg. His eyes were closed.

Sundström and Westerberg looked at the pictures for a long time, went back and forth between the flat screen and the computer monitor, and finally Sundström asked, ‘What is it?’

‘The photo is from the collapse of the skating rink in Turku. You remember, early this year, in February.’

‘Of course.’

‘The dead man in the photograph looks very like that puppet. They’re practically identical,’ said Joentaa.

‘Yes,’ said Sundström, looking at the puppet on the flat screen on the wall. ‘I see what you mean.’