Silence (24 page)

Sanna, wrapped in blankets. Sundström, who could always put everything in a nutshell. In clear, comprehensible terms. In the brightly lit conference room. In the room where Ketola, an eternity ago, had investigated the disappearance of Pia Lehtinen. Ketola sitting in the shadows, chin propped on his hands, in front of a computer screen. In a strange house, in a room full of perfect right angles. The members of the salvage team calmly going about their work. Pulling the car out metre by metre. Elina Lehtinen in the garden of her house. Blueberry cake and tea in white cups. Pia, laughing out loud in a photograph, and Sinikka looking gravely into the camera. Niemi had said Sinikka looked sad. Just sad. A boy calling to him, a red football. And a business card. Timo Korvensuo, Estate Agent. A number under Timo Korvensuo, Estate Agent, that could no longer be reached. But there was the woman who had opened the door to them, expecting to see her son. Aku. Goodbye, Mr Joentaa. A number that he would not be dialling. And the vague feeling of having seen something. At a time that he couldn’t specify any more closely. Without a doubt, something of minor significance.

They had sat in the conference room, and Sundström had been integrating the estate agent Timo Korvensuo into the general context of their enquiries, expressing it all in short, clear sentences, when the call from their Helsinki colleagues came through. The thought of the annoyance on Sundström’s face almost made Kimmo laugh. Sundström, who had been in full swing, was suddenly stopped short in his tracks.

The times didn’t match. It was as simple as that. Timo Korvensuo had driven to Turku on Sunday. On Friday, at the time of Sinikka Vehkasalo’s disappearance, he had still been in Helsinki. His colleagues at the estate agency confirmed that. His wife Marjatta also confirmed it. So did Heinonen’s enquiries at the Turku hotel.

‘Which doesn’t have to mean anything,’ Sundström had said, after thinking for a while. ‘Of course he could have been in Turku at midday on Friday and back in Helsinki in the evening. That’s no problem.’

‘But if I understood it correctly,’ Heinonen had objected, ‘Korvensuo’s colleagues said he spent all Friday at meetings in Helsinki.’

‘Hm, yes … we’ll have to check that,’ Sundström had said, adding that he would drive to Helsinki first thing tomorrow. And Kimmo was to go with him.

He thought of Marjatta Korvensuo. So he would be seeing her tomorrow. And the boy, Aku. And the daughter, Laura. He’d see how they were. Get an impression. He would sit opposite Marjatta Korvensuo. They’d be sitting opposite each other tomorrow, just as they had this afternoon. He would have an opportunity of beginning from the beginning again, talking to her once more. But what about?

He opened his eyes and saw the white, calm expanse of water. The pale midnight sun persisted in shining. Somewhere, tucked away in a blind spot, the idea of something he had seen but not taken in was waiting for him.

He tried to approach that idea and saw himself, Ketola and Antti from Archives running through heavy, driving snow.

Antti now had a permanent appointment and seemed very happy working in Archives with Päivi Holmquist. Kimmo was really pleased for him.

Päivi Holmquist’s lumber room.

Ketola’s old files.

Ketola’s handwriting. On the day when Pia Lehtinen’s body had been found. Ketola’s hand had been shaking as he wrote a note on a piece of paper. A note in the old files.

Kalevi Vehkasalo. Sinikka’s father. His hand had been shaking too as he sat beside his wife on the sofa, asking her to keep calm.

Tomorrow Heinonen and Grönholm would speak to Sinikka’s parents. They would try to establish some connection between a dead estate agent and their daughter. Although it couldn’t have been Korvensuo who crossed Sinikka’s path last Friday. Or presumably not.

He thought of Sinikka. Of her face in the photo. Of the message Ruth Vehkasalo had left in her mailbox. Always the same message. Would Sinikka call? Please. In the end Sinikka’s mother had been shouting, almost weeping, with a premonition of disaster, even though she hadn’t yet known that Sinikka’s bicycle had been found.

Ruth Vehkasalo’s message had not left the house, because Sinikka’s mobile was still in her room. So why … why hadn’t Sinikka taken her mobile when she went to training? He would have to ask the Vehkasalos whether their daughter was forgetful; then he began drifting into sleep … Sundström would be at his door in a few hours’ time.

Sundström wanted to make an early start and had suggested picking up Joentaa at home. He didn’t know how late it was now, but the early start could be only a few hours away. He had the impression that the midnight sun was merging already, almost imperceptibly, into the morning twilight. Yet he felt that he didn’t want to fall asleep …

He sat up very suddenly.

He thought of the model on wheels. In the driving snow. And months later in Ketola’s house. On the living-room table. Ketola had laughed … incredulously … had simply not been able to understand it. That was how he had felt himself, but all the same there was something he had seen, something of very minor significance. One of the investigators had conducted an interview, one of the less important interviews …

He got up and went back to the house. Something that had briefly met his eyes … a passage that he had merely skimmed, because it was not of great importance and he had been too tired to concentrate on it properly. A conversation, only recently … He opened the front door and went into the living room, where the files lay scattered untidily around. He was looking for a statement about Sinikka, something that had struck him because it was odd. Not important, but odd.

He leafed and leafed through the files, and couldn’t find the wretched page. He sat down and forced himself to look through folder after folder calmly. Very calmly.

Relax, Kimmo, Sanna had liked to say, although she herself had been capable of considerably more alarming outbursts of rage than he was.

Here was the text he had been looking for. Tuomas Heinonen had written it and it wasn’t a formal record, just a summary of several interviews conducted by Heinonen that had brought up more or less important questions, matters that might still be explained. A girlfriend talking about a birthday party … Joentaa read the statement, then read it again, and again, and the longer he read it the less he understood what could be so important about it. He had been wrong, it must be something else, it wasn’t about this text after all.

He turned it over and saw a note in Heinonen’s very clear writing, so different from Ketola’s scribble. Clear and distinct, a word and a number.

Joentaa tore out the page, read the word and the number, and had no idea what they meant.

He sat there without moving for several minutes.

Then he stood up and left the house.

He didn’t understand it, he didn’t understand anything any more, but he felt an unspecified fear.

And a very specific hope.

17

‘C
ome in, Kimmo,’ said Ketola.

He didn’t seem surprised to see Kimmo, although it was nearly three in the morning. The buildings on both sides of the street might have been dead when Kimmo was driving through the city.

He followed Ketola into his living room. The terrace door was open.

‘I’m sitting outside. It’s a warm evening,’ said Ketola, looking straight at him as if to make sure that Joentaa agreed.

Joentaa nodded.

They sat on garden chairs, there on the threshold between night and morning, and said nothing.

Ketola had one hand on the model, which was now back on its wheels again. The field, the road, the avenue of trees, the bicycle, the red car.

On the table stood a chocolate cake decorated with kiwi fruit and raspberries.

‘Would you like a piece?’ asked Ketola.

‘No, thanks,’ said Joentaa and after a moment’s hesitation he leaned over the table, because the way the raspberries were arranged had caught his eye.

‘A and K,’ said Ketola. ‘Antsi Ketola. The birthday boy’s name.’

‘I see.’

‘My son baked it,’ said Ketola.

Their conversation lapsed again and Joentaa waited to feel the impulse to express what he hadn’t yet thought out fully.

Ketola seemed happy with the silence.

‘Sinikka Vehkasalo,’ said Kimmo.

Ketola looked up. ‘Sinikka Vehkasalo,’ he repeated.

‘She went to a birthday party. A few months ago. A girlfriend said something about it and Heinonen – well, you know Heinonen – in his thorough way he noted down the place where that party was given. The address, although it didn’t seem to be of any importance.’

‘Ah, yes, Heinonen …’ said Ketola.

‘Number 20 Oravankatu. That’s the house right next door to here. Those are your neighbours.’

‘Hm, yes,’ said Ketola.

There was a long silence.

‘Sinikka suddenly left the party,’ Joentaa finally said. ‘After a while she came back and she seemed different. As if something significant had happened. But she didn’t tell even her girlfriends what it was. She kept it to herself, like an important secret.’

‘Well …’ said Ketola.

‘She was here. With you. Why? What happened that day?’ asked Joentaa.

‘Nothing,’ said Ketola.

‘Nothing?’

Ketola nodded.

‘Was she here?’ asked Joentaa.

‘Yes. Of course.’

Of course, thought Joentaa. Of course. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Ask me another,’ said Ketola. ‘Something easier.’

‘Why?’ Joentaa repeated.

‘I don’t really know why.’

Joentaa waited.

‘I was sitting on the terrace. Same as now. The girls were running about in the garden, even jumping into the swimming pool, though it was very cold. And then it started raining. They all went indoors except for Sinikka. Sinikka climbed the fence and joined me here on the terrace.’

‘Why?’ asked Joentaa.

‘I don’t really know why. She knew that I’d been in the police. I expect her friend, my neighbours’ daughter, had told her. She was probably a bit curious. And she asked why I was sad.’

‘What?’

‘Funny, isn’t it? I thought so myself. A girl of Pia Lehtinen’s age climbs the fence and asks me pointless questions …’

‘And then?’

‘Then what?’

‘What happened after that?’

‘I sat here in my chair, much as I’m sitting here now, and I probably stared at her as if she were a ghost. And she began to laugh.’

Joentaa thought of the photograph. The girl’s serious features and how he had thought he could detect loud, hearty laughter lurking beneath them.

‘Yes,’ said Ketola. ‘She … she said she’d been watching me and wondering all the time what was the matter with me, and then I began telling her all about it.’

‘All about it?’ asked Joentaa.

‘Everything, from the moment when I thought of Pia Lehtinen. On my last day at work, you remember. Everything that had been going through my head since then. All about Pia. Everything I could remember. Everything I’d thought about during the months after … after my retirement. I had plenty of time to rack my brains over it. I guess that was about the longest monologue I ever delivered in my life.’

Ketola stopped.

‘And?’ Joentaa asked.

‘She sat there listening. She was surprisingly calm. I talked and talked, and after a while I had the feeling that nothing I had ever said before was sinking in so … so directly. It’s hard to describe. I had this sense that she was actually absorbing it all, understanding the whole thing, without once interrupting me or asking a question. And then, at the end …’

Joentaa waited.

‘At the end she pointed to the model and said, as if it was quite natural, that she knew the place. The place where the cross stands, she always passed it on her way to volleyball training. And then … we neither of us said anything for a long time. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then she suddenly said I had to find the man who killed Pia Lehtinen …’

Ketola fell silent again.

‘And after that?’ asked Joentaa.

‘After that I thought: either this is just childish and I’m sitting opposite a precocious girl talking nonsense at random, or I’m dreaming, or I’ve gone crazy, or all at once … good heavens, how would I know?’

Ketola got up, stood there for a minute, and cut himself a piece of cake as if he had just been waiting for the moment when he could do that. ‘Want some too?’ he asked.

Joentaa did not react, and Ketola was not to be deterred. ‘It’s really good, come on,’ he said, cutting another piece.

Joentaa took the plate that Ketola handed him, bit into the soft chocolate icing and thought he felt just as Ketola had on the occasion he described. Soon Sundström would be standing at his door, waking him up.

‘It had been raining hard,’ said Ketola, wiping his mouth. He seemed relaxed now, as if he were over the worst of it. ‘I keep hearing the rain pattering down on the awning when I think back to that day. I said it was too late, it was many years in the past, something like that, and she … Sinikka … she said well then, it just had to happen again.’

‘Had to happen again?’

‘Yes. It had to happen again, at the same place and in exactly the same way. Then the murderer of thirty-three years ago would come back, because it would never leave him in peace.’

‘And you went along with this?’

‘Of course not. I thought it was the silliest idea I’d heard in a long time.’

‘But …’

‘She said she was going to do it. She said she had so often got off her bike when she came to that cross, wondering who Pia was, and now she knew and she was going to do something about it. She would be the girl who disappeared. Her parents were sodding well getting on her wick anyway, excuse the expression but that’s how she put it, and she didn’t really get on with the people at school either, so anyway she felt like disappearing for a while, as long as necessary. Good, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘The cake,’ said Ketola.

‘Ah.’

‘Yes, well, of course I thought: she’s just showing off. Well, I probably didn’t think anything. The girl left. She did say I’d have to wait a little while, because she wanted to go up into the next year at school, so the whole thing would have to wait until the holidays. Then she left.’