Silence (15 page)

Elina Lehtinen had nodded and didn’t understand Ketola, but she had known at once that there was a point to it, and she had not for a moment hesitated when at midday, after thirty-three years, he had asked her straight out if they could do an interview on television together. Of course. Hämäläinen. The show that topped the ratings, the one she watched every Sunday. To talk about Pia and answer Hämäläinen’s questions.

The idea, Ketola had explained, was to get things moving, to entice the man out of hiding until he made a mistake and then, at that moment, Ketola had said in his calm, cheerful voice, he would get him. Of course, Elina Lehtinen had replied, and she saw her neighbour Turre passing outside. She had wondered how Maria was, his wife who had fallen out of bed in her care home.

During the interview she had felt the spotlights on her skin and Hämäläinen had asked questions, questions he had discussed with them at length before the programme. She must have spoken very slowly, because she had tried every word on her tongue until she knew that it was the absolute truth.

Putting Pia’s death into words. For the first time in her life. In conversation with a stranger.

There had been a professionally gentle tone to Hämäläinen’s words, a camera-friendly calm in his voice. She didn’t blame him for that. Hämäläinen’s eyes glided over his questions, Ketola beside her had bowed his head, the spotlights had spread artificial fight and she had spoken as if in a trance, feeling that she didn’t have the strength – and Hämäläinen didn’t have the time – to understand what they were really talking about.

At the close the audience had applauded for a long time, and Ketola, beside her, had been shaking. An actor she liked had come on the programme next, his smile had brushed past her, and once they were off the set Ketola had thanked her and said he wasn’t sure if he ought to have asked such a thing of her. He wasn’t sure, either, whether anything would come of it, he said, whether it would do any good; then he had invited her to go and have a drink with him.

Curiously, they had not talked much about Pia in the café, or about Sinikka Vehkasalo, nor did they talk about the murderer who had come back after thirty-three years.

Ketola had told her about his son. They had laughed a lot, because the stories about Ketola’s son were funny – it was desperate laughter, of course, sad laughter, and when the waiter brought the bill and Ketola was fumbling for money in his jacket pocket, she had noticed that for the first time in her life she was really drunk.

It had felt good, and even going into the bathroom now and throwing up into the the washbasin felt good too.

Oddly enough, as she looked at her vomit in the basin she thought of Hämäläinen, and how she certainly couldn’t have appeared on his show in this state, and how even the alcoholic actor had looked perfectly sober as he walked on to the set. Then she wondered whether her neighbour Turre had seen the programme, or Hannu, the ex-husband she wasn’t divorced from. And she also reflected that anyway, that had been her first and last such appearance.

2

A
t six o’clock in the morning Timo Korvensuo was sitting in the hotel lobby. A friendly young lady asked if he would like to read the newspaper. He waved the offer aside and watched the waiter setting out the breakfast buffet.

He was turning over in his mind the ideas that had filled it ever since the moment when he woke up.

Pärssinen. Kindly old caretaker. How many people might Pärssinen have raped and murdered?

In all these years.

So many years, he thought. Coming back to find everything the way it used to be. Pärssinen’s apartment. The old sofa. Dreams did not exist.

The same friendly lady asked if she could bring him some coffee.

He said no thanks. Good service. A good hotel.

He realized that he was walking over to the reception desk and speaking to the young man there. Yes, he would like to stay another night. A day and a night. The young man looked at a screen and tapped a keyboard.

‘No problem, Mr … Mr Korvensuo.’

‘Thank you.’

He took the top off an egg in the breakfast room. The yolk spread over a roll, and he drank some coffee after all. Ate a yoghurt, stirred a little jam into it.

After a while the staff cleared away the breakfast buffet and removed the tablecloths with a flourish. A little girl of two or three ran around the room and looked at him with wide, curious eyes. Her mother picked her up and apologized.

‘That’s all right,’ he said and made a face. The little girl smiled uncertainly.

He went back to his room. The bed had been made. Nearby a vacuum cleaner was droning in another room, and Pärssinen was crouching in his car removing stains that couldn’t be there.

He went down in the lift to the underground garage and got into his car. The road was flooded with sunlight. What a wonderful summer. If it went on like this. Which you could never know. Not with the best will in the world.

He parked on a rise within sight of the grey concrete block. Pärssinen’s flat among the trees. The window. The Venetian blinds drawn down. The playground. Children. A boy and two girls. The girls were on the slide, the boy on a swing.

Pärssinen was nowhere to be seen.

Get out of the car, walk over at his leisure, say hello to the children, tap on the window, and a stranger would open it and say: Pärssinen? Who’s he? Never heard of him.

Aku. Laura.

The girls were sliding, the boy was swinging. Wildly, going higher and higher, until Korvensuo felt sure he would go right over the top of the frame at any moment.

But that was impossible. He’d discovered it himself as a child. However hard you tried, you could never go over the top of a swing frame.

You might fall off, of course, and hurt yourself badly. That had happened to him. His knee had bled, and only years later had a doctor said his trouble in the joint there might well be as a result of the fall.

The boy slowed down, jumped off the swing, uninjured, and pushed one of the girls off the slide. The boy went on the slide, the girls ran to the swings.

Pärssinen came out of doors, stretching. He called out something unintelligible to the children. Korvensuo just heard his voice faintly. Pärssinen jogged along the path and disappeared in the direction of the supermarket.

Wait, he thought. Wait for Pärssinen to come back. Ask a question. Get an answer. We won’t be meeting again, he would say as they parted.

He called Marjatta. She was in town with Aku. Aku snatched the mobile and asked if he was on his way home yet.

Aku’s voice.

Yes, he thought, and said nothing.

Then he told Marjatta that his business was going to drag on for a while. A day, perhaps two days. He didn’t know.

Marjatta asked if he had seen the Hämäläinen show, that woman, the mother of the girl who was killed so long ago and the police officer who had been investigating the case.

No, he said.

Pärssinen came back. He was holding a white plastic bag in each hand. Milk, sugar, eggs. Plum spirit.

Sit with Pärssinen for a while. In the shade. Watch old films.

No, he said, I missed it. What did they say?

She had felt sorry for the woman, Marjatta said.

Aku wanted to go to the cinema. Korvensuo said he hoped they’d have a good time and switched off his mobile. He had the shivers.

Pärssinen had gone indoors and didn’t come back. The boy went into the building after a while, no doubt for lunch. The girls rode away on bicycles. Pushing hard on the pedals. Like Pia Lehtinen.

‘Ready?’ Pärssinen had asked and he had replied, ‘What do you mean?’

Timo Korvensuo sat in the car, his hand on the door, ready to get out. Get out and ask Pärssinen one last question. Say goodbye. He opened the door and closed it again. Opened it and closed it once more. Several times he got out and walked a little way. Then he went back to the car, dropped into his seat and looked at the empty scene.

Pia Lehtinen pushing the pedals down vigorously, cycling towards him.

The boy came back and started swinging very high. Braked his impetus, then took off again. Braked and took off again.

Timo Korvensuo got out. He took one step after another. The boy ignored him until he put down his jacket on the grass and sat on the second swing, beside the boy.

‘Let’s see who can go highest,’ said Korvensuo and the boy stared at him.

Korvensuo catapulted himself into the air. A tugging sensation in his stomach. He heard the boy laugh.

Pärssinen’s window flew past.

‘Come on, push me!’ he called.

The boy hesitated for a moment, then started throwing himself against the swing. Korvensuo felt a tingling and a tearing and the possibility of tipping over.

Pia Lehtinen cycled on. He got out of the small red car, watched her go and felt the sun on his forehead.

When the moment came he let go.

The impact felt soft.

‘Oh, wow!’ said the boy.

Korvensuo took his jacket and crossed the freshly mown lawn towards the trees.

Step by step.

He got into his car and drove away. The pain lingered in his right ankle and his right shoulder. Venetian blinds were down in Pärssinen’s window, and the boy was still holding the swing.

3

K
immo had never seen either Sundström or Ketola like this before. Sundström was shouting. After every sentence, something hit the table or the floor. Presumably a file folder or something of that kind, thought Joentaa. Ketola said nothing. Not a word out of him.

Heinonen was staring hard at his computer monitor; Grönholm, unmoved, was eating a breakfast roll. Joentaa tried to hear what Ketola was saying through the closed door of Sundström’s office, but there was nothing to hear. The louder Sundström shouted, the more doggedly Ketola preserved his silence.

After a while Ketola came out of the room. He looked almost relaxed. He was smiling. Sundström stood in the background in front of his desk, his face distorted.

‘Coming with me, Kimmo?’ said Ketola, already out in the corridor. Grönholm raised one eyebrow. Heinonen never took his eyes off his monitor, and Joentaa followed Ketola into the corridor.

They walked along in silence, went down to the ground floor and found a table in the cafeteria. Ketola got himself some coffee. He wasn’t smiling any more, and Kimmo had the impression that he was far from relaxed. Rather he seemed tense, edgy, tired.

Ketola stirred his coffee for a while, and Joentaa saw that his hand was shaking. Then he looked up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I ought to have discussed it with you.’

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘But I’m a private citizen. I can do what I like, or not, as the case may be.’

‘Of course.’

‘Hämäläinen’s editorial team approached me and I said yes.’

Joentaa nodded.

‘Because I knew at once it was the right thing. I just knew that,’ said Ketola.

‘What
is
the right thing?’ asked Joentaa.

‘I’d like to ask you something. Something important,’ said Ketola. ‘Don’t you think it’s possible, just for once, that I’m on the right track here?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Joentaa, although he guessed at Ketola’s line of thought.

‘That the man has come back … that it means something, understand?’

‘What exactly
do
you mean?’

‘I mean that now we have the chance of … I mean that he … now that he sees what happens … well, perhaps he saw the interview’

Joentaa nodded.

‘And maybe he’s started things moving again,’ said Ketola. ‘As simple as that. They’re moving again. After thirty-three years.’

‘You’re forgetting that we haven’t found Sinikka Vehkasalo yet,’ said Joentaa.

Ketola stirred his coffee.

‘She could be still alive.’

Ketola shook his head.

‘Maybe your TV appearance will make him decide to kill Sinikka. Because he’s frightened, because he feels threatened.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Ketola quietly.

‘Why is it nonsense?’ asked Joentaa.

Ketola looked at him for a long time. ‘Because the girl is dead already,’ he said at last. ‘Easy. We’re looking for a murderer, not a kidnapper’

‘But …’

‘That’s it! That’s all.’ The penetrating, aggressive voice that Joentaa had heard so often. ‘I saw what was left of Pia Lehtinen. We don’t have to be cautious because of Sinikka Vehkasalo any more.’ Ketola had straightened up and was looking Joentaa in the eye. ‘Understand?’

Joentaa did not reply.

‘What else?’ said Ketola, suddenly calm again. ‘Have you all been looking for possible parallel cases? Children missing or murdered over the last thirty-three years?’

‘Of course. Grönholm and Heinonen are busy on that right now,’ said Joentaa.

‘Still nothing more positive?’

‘They’ll be reporting on their findings this afternoon.’

Ketola nodded. ‘I know that nothing similar has happened in all these years. At least, not in Turku. I was busy working on that for the first few years; I followed it up. We all followed it up. But after a while of course the case was forgotten. And networking then wasn’t what it is today. There weren’t computers and all that stuff, and those boxes we did have later on would make you die laughing today. Myself, I was only ever once confronted with anything like it. The girl was even younger and it was cleared up quickly. A family member did it, her stepbrother, to be precise. But there could have been cases in other cities. Cases I never heard of And above all cases of missing persons, maybe in Turku as well, cases I never set eyes on. After a bit I’d forgotten that one myself.’

Ketola drank some coffee and looked at two uniformed policewomen at the next table. A moment came when the policewomen looked enquiringly at the two of them, and Ketola turned away. He cleared his throat and asked, ‘Would you … keep me up to date now and then?’

Joentaa said nothing.

‘I’ll call you. Maybe this evening,’ said Ketola.

Joentaa nodded.

‘My son, by the way,’ said Ketola.

‘Your son?’

‘His name is Tapani. He’s totally crazy. A complete nutcase.’