Silence (21 page)

How stupid people were. Enjoying a picnic by the lake and spoiling it all by starting to quarrel. Probably for no good reason. He almost felt an impulse to swim over to them and explain that they were making a mistake. Someone would have to tell them that in good time.

Marjatta. Aku. Laura. Elina. He would introduce them all to each other. Of course. No reason not to. Aku and Laura would like Elina, and Elina would have a family after all. They really would move to somewhere near her.

That was why he had left his business card with her. To start the process. Only now did he become aware how simple it all was. That was why he felt so light, so liberated. Even this morning, directly after waking, he had felt that lightness.

He would reopen his firm in Turku and they would live very close to Elina Lehtinen, in a house that she had recommended to them. Elina would help them with the move, and they would sit on the packing cases and eat blueberry cake, and Elina would tell them about Pia.

He heard laughter, a cackle of silly laughter, then, after a while, another sound. A kind of sigh. Unnaturally loud, uttered in a high voice. Right beside him.

He turned, but there was no one there. A deserted lake, a real insiders’ tip known only to a few. Pärssinen and the couple on the far bank.

An unnaturally loud note, uttered in a high-pitched tone, right beside him, over him, in him, around him.

He felt his lips still quivering slightly. Then they came to rest and the note died away above the water.

8

E
lina Lehtinen looked different. Ketola couldn’t work out just what the change in her was, he simply noticed it through the blur of his own excitement.

They were sitting in the kitchen. The business card lay on the table and Elina Lehtinen was calmly looking deep into his eyes as he asked her whether she could be mistaken.

‘No,’ was all she said.

Ketola picked up the business card again, turned it this way and that. This way and that. Timo Korvensuo, Estate Agent, Helsinki.

‘It was what he wanted,’ said Elina Lehtinen.

Ketola looked up with a question in his eyes.

‘He wanted to reveal himself. He wanted me to know his name.’

‘He can’t know that you saw through him.’

‘Yes, he can.’

‘He just found a pretext for speaking to you. He didn’t admit it …’

‘Yes, he did. Not directly, but … in another way.’

Ketola nodded, although he didn’t understand. He understood nothing at all, but nor did that seem to him necessary. What was the use of all that understanding?

‘He wanted me to know everything. Or at least, a part of him wanted that,’ she said.

Ketola had an answer on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. He lowered his gaze to the card again, trying to concentrate on what to do now, but somehow he couldn’t manage it.

He was excited and at the same time very calm, and somewhere between those two sensations he must have lost the ability to think clearly. He felt the card in his hand. This was not how he had imagined it. Well, he had not imagined it at all.

He thought of a bicycle in a field on a TV screen and an unusually cool day in spring. A day a few months back. He thought of the rain pattering down on the awning over his terrace that day. It had been a strange day, and again something strange had happened. Something really remarkable.

A man looked in and gave Elina Lehtinen his business card. Address. Telephone numbers: landline, mobile. Email address. Korvensuo, Estate Agent.

He felt the card in his hand, and didn’t know what to do with it. All he had been able to think of since Elina’s phone call was that it had actually happened. And that it was impossible.

He heard rain pattering on the awning, saw the cloudless summer’s day through the window and abruptly straightened up.

‘Your telephone?’

‘Out in the hall,’ said Elina.

He nodded, went into the hall, picked up the phone and dialled. He didn’t know what he was going to say; he just knew that he mustn’t waste another second wondering about it. Now he must get it right and do it well. Better than anything he had ever done.

It was a recorded reply. The voice sounded pleasant, likeable. Reserved but self-confident. Modest but self-assured. Younger than the man described by Elina Lehtinen. Timo Korvensuo’s mailbox could not be reached at the moment, but he would call back.

Ketola dialled another number. No stopping to think, he told himself. Joentaa answered just before Ketola was about to give up.

‘Kimmo. Listen to this.’

‘Just a moment. We’re in a meeting right now. Can I call you back?’

‘No. It’s important. Go out of the room, we have to speak.’

Kimmo seemed to be hesitating briefly. Finally he repeated, ‘Just a moment,’ and Ketola heard his footsteps and Sundström’s voice in the background. A door closing.

‘Right, I’m out in the corridor. What is it?’ asked Kimmo.

‘He’s been here. At Elina Lehtinen’s.’

Kimmo said nothing.

‘Did you get that? He actually came here. He left his business card with her. Address, phone numbers, the lot.’

Kimmo remained silent and Ketola thought, once again, that this man could sometimes drive him mad. With all the urgency of which he was capable he said, ‘Elina is sure of what she says. He told her some kind of story, about wanting to live in that area, and maybe she could help him and so forth, but Elina is sure, do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘I’m sure too. His name is Timo Korvensuo.’

‘Timo Korvensuo,’ Joentaa repeated.

‘That’s right. We’ve got him. Now we just have to find him.’

‘I see,’ said Kimmo with infuriating slowness, and Ketola was about to make a remark about Kimmo Joentaa’s phlegmatic nature, but he thought it inappropriate just now.

‘You see. That’s great. We must get going.’

‘Where to?’

‘Well, his place. To Timo Korvensuo, resident in Helsinki. He has a wife and two children. I must take a look at this. At first I thought of calling his home, but that’s no use, his wife won’t understand what it’s about.’

‘She won’t understand if you ring her doorbell either.’

‘Never mind, that’s what I have to do now. I have to follow my instinct at this point. That’s a good idea, right? You’ve always been keen on following your instincts. And you must come along. I need you because you’re a member of the investigating team. I’m sure you can see that.’

Once again Joentaa said nothing for a while. Ketola forced himself to wait.

‘I’ll have a word with Sundström,’ said Joentaa at last.

‘Do that. Tell him Ketola has one of his crazy ideas and you want to watch him to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m planning on doing,’ said Joentaa.

‘Ah.’

‘I’ll be at Elina Lehtinen’s in half an hour,’ and Joentaa broke the connection.

Ketola took a deep breath and heard Elina’s voice behind him.

‘Do you know what I think?’ she asked.

He shook his head.

‘I think that man … Korvensuo … I think I know why he came,’ said Elina.

‘Yes?’ asked Ketola.

Elina looked out of the window and did not seem to be speaking to anyone in particular when she quietly went on in a soft voice, ‘He wanted to tell me he was sorry.’

9

K
etola rushed out of the house, even before Kimmo Joentaa had a chance to press the bell, and insisted on taking the wheel. ‘I know how you feel, Kimmo, but we have to move fast now.’

Joentaa sat in the passenger seat and took the business card Ketola handed him before noisily starting the car. As Ketola drove off, Joentaa saw Elina Lehtinen through her kitchen window and waved to her, but she probably didn’t see him. Ketola drove at excessive speed the whole way, and Joentaa looked out of the window, thought of the name on the business card and wondered what to make of it.

During the discussion following Ketola’s call Sundström, as was only to be expected, had been sceptical, and Joentaa himself was not sure what to think of all this. He had originally meant to talk to Elina Lehtinen about the man who had visited her, but it was too late for that.

‘You can set your mind at rest, it’s him,’ said Ketola. ‘The name on the card is the name we want, and the man we’re after goes with the name.’

‘Maybe,’ said Kimmo.

‘Elina isn’t mistaken,’ Ketola insisted.

‘Did she say anything else? How exactly did their conversation go?’

‘His pretext was that he was looking for a house in that neighbourhood. He was thinking of moving there with his family. After a while he suddenly began asking questions about Pia. Then he told her about his own children. Aku and Laura.’

Kimmo nodded.

‘But it’s like this: Elina noticed at once … even before he’d said a single word, she knew who she had before her.’ Ketola was careering along the road at a crazy speed and turned to look at him. ‘She sensed it, do you understand? She saw the man standing at her garden gate and she knew who it was.’

Kimmo nodded and for the time being took over Ketola’s job of watching the traffic.

‘Because she was expecting him,’ said Ketola. ‘Because she’s been waiting for this for years and now it’s happened.’ Ketola turned back to look at the road and added, ‘A seventh sense. You’re keen on that sort of thing, you ought to like the idea.’

‘Sixth,’ said Joentaa.

‘What?’

‘I believe it’s called a sixth sense.’

‘Ah.’

‘At least, I think so.’

‘Could be.’

Ketola joined the motorway, which lay wide and empty ahead of them.

Joentaa felt a vague weariness. The names Aku and Laura passed through his thoughts, and at the moment when his eyes were almost closing he wondered what cloud Sanna would be sitting on when the day was as cloudless as this.

He felt himself slump and didn’t know where he was when Ketola shook him.

‘Wake up, friend, we’re nearly there.’

After a few moments memory and consciousness returned. ‘Fine,’ he murmured.

‘Nearly there,’ Ketola repeated.

‘Good, good,’ muttered Kimmo.

Ketola drew up outside a house that Joentaa liked at first sight.

‘Number 24. This is it,’ said Ketola.

A pale green clapboard house. Like the Vehkasalos’ home. A pale green clapboard house surrounded by a dark green garden that appeared both wild and well tended. The house stood on a rise, with a view of the city baking in the sun some distance away. A little boy was kicking a red ball against the garage wall.

‘Nice place,’ said Ketola, about to get out.

‘Wait a minute.’ Joentaa still felt slightly dazed. ‘How long was I asleep?’

‘Almost the whole way,’ said Ketola.

‘Give me a moment to wake up properly.’ He tried to tense his muscles and massaged his scalp.

‘Okay?’ asked Ketola.

The boy was practising headers now, and Joentaa said, ‘I’d like to conduct the interview, if you don’t mind. And if we realize that we’re on the wrong track, we’ll call it off quickly and leave.’

Ketola looked at him for a while, then said, ‘Of course. That’s how we’ll do it.’

Joentaa nodded. They got out. Ketola strode ahead as fast as if he planned to shake Kimmo off over the last few metres. Tense, edgy, and at the same time calm and controlled. Ketola had often been like that in the deciding phases of a case.

The boy was immersed so deeply in his game that he didn’t even notice their arrival.

The woman who opened the door was smiling, and obviously expected to see someone else. ‘Oh,’ she said.

‘Good day, Mrs … Korvensuo?’ said Joentaa.

‘Yes, do excuse me, I thought my son … what can I … what did you want?’

‘Mrs Korvensuo, my name is Kimmo Joentaa, I am an officer in the Turku police, and this is Antsi Ketola, a … a colleague.’ He showed Marjatta Korvensuo his ID and saw the inevitable shadow pass over her face.

‘It’s nothing to do with … with Timo, is it? My husband is in Turku at the moment.’

‘No, no,’ said Joentaa. ‘Please, there’s nothing for you to worry about, we’re here because we’re making enquiries into the … the case of a missing person and we’d just like a little information. As I said, it’s nothing that need trouble you …’Joentaa fell silent and thought he ought to have prepared himself better for this interview.

‘Yes. Well, you’d better come in,’ said Marjatta Korvensuo.

‘Thank you.’

They sat in the living room. He noticed the uncertainty and sudden tension in Marjatta Korvensuo’s eyes, and sensed Ketola’s uneasiness as he sat beside him, jiggling his foot up and down. At regular intervals the ball crashed against the garage door.

‘Mrs Korvensuo, this is in fact about your husband Timo Korvensuo … but not in any way that need trouble you. We would simply like to ask a few questions that may clear things up quickly.’

‘Yes, well, go on,’ said Marjatta Korvensuo.

‘You said that your husband is in Turku at the moment?’

‘Yes, he’s meeting a business partner. My husband is an estate agent.’

‘Right. This business partner … do you have an address or a phone number for him? Or for the hotel where your husband is staying?’

‘No,’ said Marjatta Korvensuo. ‘I’m sorry, he didn’t tell me the man’s name.’

Ketola had abruptly risen to his feet. ‘Excuse me, may I use your loo?’ he asked.

‘Of course. Just to the left of the front door,’ said Marjatta Korvensuo. Joentaa saw Ketola striding out into the hall and turned back to Marjatta Korvensuo, who went on, ‘Timo called from the hotel. I must have stored the number.’ She picked up the telephone lying on the low glass-topped table in front of her. ‘Yes, here we are. This is it.’

Joentaa took the telephone. ‘Do you have a pen?’

‘Of course.’ She stood up, left the room and came back in a moment with a ballpoint. Upstairs, Joentaa could hear music and girls laughing. The ball thumped against the garage wall.

‘Thank you.’ Joentaa noted down the phone number of the hotel on the business card.

‘That … that’s Timo’s business card,’ said Marjatta Korvensuo.

‘Er, yes,’ said Joentaa.