Copper Heart (31 page)

Only the green light on the ceiling of the elevator illuminated the narrow, damp shaft. The ladder was cold and badly rusted, instantly tearing at my hands. I forced myself to climb deliberately, envisioning in my mind’s eye a fuse somewhere half a mile away growing shorter by the second. Johnny hung on to my back, a 180-pound sobbing heap. The tears on his cheek mingled with my own. I was beyond afraid. One false move and we would plunge into the depths. Trying to keep myself composed, I counted the rungs. There couldn’t be more than three hundred of them.

At rung 120 we encountered a narrow platform, presumably intended as a resting place. There I was able to get Johnny’s weight off my back momentarily. My panting reverberated off the walls of the six-foot-wide shaft, and Johnny’s voice came as a low rumble when he whispered, “I didn’t tell you I saw Meritta because I thought she jumped off the Tower…because of me. Our relationship was done, even though she didn’t want it to be. And then when they said it was murder—”

“Don’t waste your energy talking!”

“I ran into Kivinen last night. He said he knew they were looking for me and that he would help. He probably slipped something into my beer.”

I tried not to listen to Johnny as we continued our climb; the blood was pounding in my head and my legs felt heavy as copper.

“I want you to know before we die,” Johnny blubbered as he wrapped his arms around me again. “I was on the rebound with Meritta. I really would have wanted to try again…with
you. That was what I was going back to tell Meritta that night.”

For a moment I hated the man hanging on my back. Why was he making pathetic confessions instead of fighting for his life? Apparently he also thought I was there for the taking.

I forced myself to go on and breathe calmly through my mouth so I wouldn’t smell the revolting stench of blood from Johnny’s leg.

At around rung 200, I was sure we would never make it to the top. The rough steel had left my hands raw and bleeding, and my muscles were pumped full of lactic acid. Then Johnny perked up and started pushing on the rungs with his healthy leg, which helped a bit. In an excited burst of adrenaline, I started rushing, and one of my feet slipped. Fortunately, Johnny reacted faster than I did, gripping one rung firmly with one hand and me with the other while I regained my equilibrium. I felt as though my heart would explode with fear before the explosion came. Even though the light in the shaft was growing dimmer, I could see we had only thirty feet left to go.

The intervals between the rungs were long, clearly not intended for someone my size. My thighs burned and I could barely lift my legs as sweat and tears stung my eyes. Johnny tried to use his one good leg, but that almost made me lose my balance again. Our cries ricocheted off the black walls of the shaft, and then a booming sound began. Somewhere below, the earth started to shake.

Somehow we managed to haul ourselves up those final yards to the elevator platform, where we lay sobbing in darkness. The rock beneath us trembled, and hysterical screams came from the other side of the thick steel door. Taking Johnny by the hand, I
thought grimly that dying next to him wasn’t as romantic as I once imagined it to be.

There was a sudden final bang from the tunnels, powerful even at a distance, and the gleam of the elevator light far below disappeared. From somewhere deep in the darkness came the sound of an enormous collapse. Gravel coming loose from the ceiling rained down on us, making us one with the copper-scented stone.

16

Standing atop the Tower, I gazed down over the city. Birch trees veiled the buildings with their green leaves, and the main road wound through the city empty of cars or people. The church was just as ugly as ever, and to the west the burgundy water of the Sump pond still shimmered. The evening was already growing dark, and a round yellow late-summer moon was climbing in the sky behind the Tower. Behind the nearest trees was an opening in the ground where Kivinen’s explosives had ripped the previous sinkhole even wider and deeper.

One decaying house on the edge of the subsidence zone had collapsed, but no one had died or even been seriously injured. Kivinen assumed his explosives would be about three times more powerful than they were. He had said himself you never can tell about forty-year-old dynamite.

Even he had lived. Before the blast, he had regained his senses enough to flee nearly half a mile up the left-hand passageway. After the explosion, a rescue party had gone down the tunnel through the ore mill entrance and found him still breathing. His left hand was shattered and a shard of glass had left him blind in one eye. Now he was in the county jail awaiting trial.

The copper sand of the Sump glistened in the setting sun; behind it were endless forests, their gray ribbons of road winding out to the rest of the world. Great silver lakes gleamed to the northeast. Everything was the same as before—everything except the sinkhole, the middle of which was now a gray-brown festering wound after the explosion.

I had saved Johnny, but not the city. Some heroine. Old Mine Tourism Ltd had been ripe for bankruptcy since its inception. Kivinen had managed to hustle an enormous amount in business subsidies, successfully hiding most of it in Central European banks. Using front companies registered in his wife’s name as subcontractors, he had managed to sink four times more money into the project than was really spent. Lawyers for the city and the Ministry of Trade and Industry were currently in the process of determining how to recover what Kivinen had swindled and invested elsewhere, but things looked bad. The case would drag on for at least several years. In the meantime, the loans Kivinen had taken out would most likely fall to the city to repay. I had heard rumors that Barbro Kivinen would be willing to continue her husband’s business provided the city could ensure sufficient capital, but I was afraid that would be too much even for the most gullible wishful thinkers on the town council.

Below, on the flat top of the mine hill, a campfire flared to life. With summer over, the art camp was having its closing party. In the calm air, the smoke rose straight up, bringing the scent of burning pine to my nose. Bending down to see better, I noticed Koivu waving a wine bottle up at me.

“That’s enough brooding already!”

Koivu was standing almost in the same place where Meritta had fallen. For a second I saw her orange shadow at Koivu’s feet, but it disappeared quickly. I didn’t believe in ghosts after all.

Slowly descending the stairs, I occasionally caressed the weathered gray walls of the Tower. It hadn’t even shuddered in the explosion. The tower viewer at the top still stood solidly on its post, and even the cobwebs in the skylights remained intact. Someone sometime in the past had done good work.

Locking the door to the Tower behind me, I returned the key to Ella, who was organizing the sausage roast. The mine area had closed a couple of hours earlier, and even the restaurant was empty now. The only people who remained were a group of some thirty people from the art camp and we interlopers who had wanted to come up the hill to bid good-bye to summer.

One of the art students sat by the fire playing a bongo drum, and another pulled a harmonica out of his pocket. Johnny sat a little farther off, tuning his guitar. His left ankle was still bandaged, but he could walk with crutches. Kaisa brought him a glass of wine.

I was surprised she had made it to the party at all. The European Championships women’s javelin final was only yesterday. Maybe she had wanted to get away from all the publicity after taking the gold. Sitting with my father and Koivu, watching her compete in the final, I had shouted like a lunatic after Kaisa sent her second throw flying more than seventy-three meters. I hadn’t even tried to hide the tears in my eyes when the national anthem played. Koivu had confined himself to clearing his throat repeatedly.

“Aniliina says hi,” Kaisa said after I congratulated her with a hug. “I stopped and saw her yesterday. She’s already doing a little better.”

Mårten Flöjt, Kaisa, and I had arranged for Aniliina to go to Helsinki for treatment in an eating disorders specialty clinic. She would be in the hospital until her vitals were normal again
and her weight was above ninety pounds. After that, she would continue outpatient care and live with her father.

“You don’t necessarily ever recover from anorexia completely,” Mårten had told me over the phone. Predicting what would happen with Aniliina was difficult. At her mother’s and uncle’s funerals she had barely been able to stand. She had stopped putting up such a fight, letting her weak condition show. The therapist thought that was a good sign.

I brought Kaisa greetings from another hospital. Uncle Pena had told me to congratulate her on her winning throw. He could still speak only a few words at a time, but he could write quite well with his healthy hand.

The day after the explosion, I had gone with my father to tell Pena all that had happened. The familiar young doctor stood by while I attempted to formulate my sentences as gently as possible, to tell him that at least the worst hadn’t come to pass, that Kivinen wasn’t going to get away with fraud. The news had caused him mild arrhythmia, but afterward Pena slowly began to recover from both his heart trouble and his stroke. That he would ever be able to live at the farm alone again was doubtful, and the city council would have to look for a new chairman too. But at least Kivinen hadn’t managed to kill him. I had even brought Mikko along for the hospital visit. He had meowed pitifully the whole way in the car, but was overjoyed when he saw my uncle and curled up on the hospital bed purring. We were planning a repeat visit in the next few weeks.

Koivu shoved a stick with a piece of sausage on the end into my hands. Holding the stick carefully—I’d had the bandages removed from my hands only two days earlier—I began roasting the enormous hunk of processed pork. My skin was still tender, and I was going to have a permanent scar on my palm below
my left middle finger. My legs had been sore for a week after the explosion too, so I had to shelve my marathon dreams for the time being. Despite my sore hands, I had started practicing shooting again, because using a gun without being in complete control of it felt irresponsible. Even though I had hit Kivinen almost right where I intended, that was mostly a matter of luck.

Everyone at the station had spent time talking about the mine murders with a therapist, and our group sessions had brought us close enough to make me feel almost wistful at the thought of my post ending in a couple of months. Hopponen and Järvi had even invited me to join the department’s baseball team.

Handing my stick to Koivu for a second, I went to get myself a bottle of wine. As I walked past Matti, he stuck out his empty glass hopefully, so I filled it up.

After the murders were solved, Matti had been singularly embarrassed. He and Ella had each suspected the other of Meritta’s murder. I had done a quick but earnest investigation of Matti’s grant fraud and, of course, decided not to prosecute. When I described the situation to Detective Sergeant Järvisalo, he agreed. Matti had gotten off easy, and, of course, Ella had been the one to arrange the promissory note with the bank to pay back Matti’s “loan.” Compared to Kivinen, Matti’s scam was so pathetic that not even the city council would have bothered to do anything but laugh.

Once my sausage was nicely blackened around the ragged edges where it had burst, I squeezed half a tube of mustard on it.

“Are you sure white wine goes with that?” Koivu asked, looking in horror at my delicacy. The white stripe around his left ring finger was almost tanned now, but the wound in his heart had only begun to scab over. He was considering moving away from Joensuu, even farther north. Apparently the city reminded
him too much of Anita. I secretly hoped he would decide to move back to Helsinki.

A few days earlier, I had received a strange phone call.

“Hello, this is Detective Lieutenant Jyrki Taskinen of the Espoo Police Department. As you may have heard, we have major organizational restructuring going on. As part of that, we’re establishing a new unit specializing in violent crime and habitual criminality, which we’re mostly staffing from inside the department. We have one problem though. We need a woman with a law degree and police training, preferably one with at least the qualifications for detective grade two. Sergeant Pertti Ström from our department and Lieutenant Kalevi Kinnunen from Helsinki recommended you. Are you interested?”

For a moment I just listened dumbfounded until I thought to ask whether I would end up being the subordinate of my old enemy Pertti Ström.

“Ström will be working in the same unit, but you would answer directly to me.”

I promised to go to Espoo for a job interview the following week. The position would start in late November, so I would have time after my summer job ended to take a month off. Koivu was urging me to take the job, as were my parents. I hadn’t had time to talk with Antti yet, because he hadn’t been answering his phone for a few days.

The melancholy tune of the harmonica floated from the other side of the campfire, and Johnny’s guitar joined in. Someone started singing the Beatles’ “All My Loving.” Quickly I poured more wine down my throat, thinking of Jaska, who had always said the Beatles were touchy-feely tripe. I hoped he was playing backup for John Lennon now.