Silence (5 page)

‘Did anyone say how old she was?’ asked Korvensuo.

‘The girl back then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thirteen,’ said Pekka.

Korvensuo nodded. Nodded to himself.

‘There’s one good thing about it, maybe they’ll catch the man now. Maybe this time he slipped up, made a mistake,’ said Arvi.

‘But it can’t be the same man. Not after thirty-three years,’ said Pekka.

‘Who else would it be?’ asked Arvi.

Korvensuo reached for his cup. The flickering in front of his eyes was getting worse. He heard the children laughing. He felt curiously light. The game on TV seemed endless. Marjatta poured more coffee and handed round chocolate biscuits.

‘Do you think …’ Korvensuo began. He met Marjatta’s eyes.

‘Think what?’ asked Marjatta.

‘Oh, nothing.’ He couldn’t remember what he had been going to say. Presumably he’d intended to change the subject, start talking about Finnish football again, but he couldn’t get the words out. He seemed to weigh light, very light, and he had a queasy feeling in his stomach. Marjatta’s gaze was resting on him, and Arvi and Pekka were talking about the missing girl who hadn’t yet been found.

‘They’ll find her in the same lake as the other girl all that time ago,’ Arvi was just saying.

‘I expect so,’ said Pekka.

‘But it’s still odd. I’ve never heard of something like that happening all over again thirty years later, just like that,’ said Arvi.

Pekka murmured something that Korvensuo couldn’t make out. The footballers on the screen were crowding around the referee.

‘Did he blow for a penalty or what?’ asked Arvi.

‘Looks like it,’ said Pekka.

They both leaned forward to hear the commentator’s opinion. Korvensuo watched the screen, saw the penalty kick. The man taking it tricked the goalkeeper, the ball flew low into the left-hand corner of the net. The players celebrated and Arvi said, ‘That’s how these stupid games always go. Three minutes before the final whistle.’

‘What’s the score?’ That was his own voice. ‘What’s the score now?’

‘One-all. I can see you’ve been concentrating!’ said Arvi.

‘That’s okay, then,’ said Korvensuo.

‘How do you mean, that’s okay? It’s not good enough. When it comes to the crunch that’ll only get them third or fourth place in the group.’

The children were laughing down on the landing stage. To his right, Marjatta and Johanna now seemed to be talking about the murdered girl. Yes, they were saying how scared it made them feel. Korvensuo raised his cup to his mouth again and ate a chocolate biscuit. A player was being interviewed on the TV screen.

‘Do you know …’ Korvensuo began again.

‘What?’ asked Arvi.

‘How many matches are there still to go?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, how many games in the qualifying period? For the A team.’

‘No idea. Three, is it?’

‘Five,’ said Pekka.

‘But they still won’t make it,’ Arvi opined.

Korvensuo nodded to himself and concentrated on the children’s laughter as they played cards on the landing stage. The flickering in front of his eyes was wearing off now, but sand was trickling through his body again, a slight but steady sensation. Arvi switched off the TV Marjatta picked up the empty coffee jug.

‘Let me do that,’ said Korvensuo. He had risen quickly and was fighting off mild nausea as he went into the house. In the kitchen he switched on the coffee machine and watched coffee dripping into the jug. He’d have to sort out his mind later. When their guests had gone. When Marjatta and the children were asleep. He would think certain things over then, perfectly calmly.

Through the window he saw Arvi walking down the slope. He probably wanted to use the sauna again. Johanna and Marjatta were deep in lively but relaxed conversation, certainly no longer about what they’d seen on the news. Pekka was leaning back slightly with his face turned up to the sky. Korvensuo took the coffee jug and went outside.

‘Anything else? We have chilled drinks too. Lemonade, anyone?’ he asked when he had reached the table.

‘Sounds good,’ said Pekka.

He went back into the house, into the kitchen, and took a bottle of lemonade out of the fridge. It felt cold in his hand, and in his head a vein burst. Or that was what it felt like. A hot sensation spreading from his forehead over his cheeks and down into his body.

He went back out and handed Pekka the bottle. Pekka thanked him. Korvensuo nodded. He too felt thirsty. He went back into the house and helped himself to a lemonade from the fridge. He drank greedily, draining it in a single draught, then he felt himself swinging back his arm and bringing the bottle down on the sink with all his might. The bottle shattered in his hand. Through the window he saw them all jumping up outside.

‘It’s all right! I’ll clear it up. I just dropped a bottle,’ he called.

Marjatta was running to the house.

‘It’s all right,’ he repeated when she reached the doorway. He turned his back to her and felt about in the cupboard for a dustpan and brush. ‘It won’t take me a moment to sweep it up. It’s all right.’

‘Do be careful with the broken glass,’ warned Marjatta.

Korvensuo nodded. ‘No problem,’ he said.

Most of the shards were in the sink. A few were clinging to his T-shirt and his arms. A little blood was flowing from one finger, but it was only a scratch. He stopped the blood with a handkerchief and tipped the broken glass into a bin bag.

He looked through the window. Outside, Arvi was running out of the sauna and down to the lake where, to the children’s great amusement, he jumped into the water stark naked.

3

T
he lake lay calm and still in bright daylight, although it was nearly eleven p.m.

Nights of no night, Sanna always used to call them, adding that these long nights were more beautiful in Finland than anywhere else. Once, when they were staggering back through Turku after a midsummer party, she had fallen into the river, hopelessly tipsy. Kimmo, panic-stricken, had jumped in after her and Sanna had laughed at his clumsy attempts to pull her out.

‘Nothing!’ called one of the divers. ‘We’re not finding anything.’

‘Carry on!’ called Sundström, who was standing on the bank beside the motionless Petri Grönholm, rocking vigorously back and forth on the ball of his feet. He turned and came over to Kimmo. ‘No sign of her,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’re going to find the poor soul in this lake.’

Kimmo nodded. If so, the curious parallels would probably end here. When the discovery of the bicycle was reported at midday, no one had made the connection at first. A couple of officers on patrol had gone to take a closer look, and reported back that the bicycle was lying near a cross erected in memory of a girl murdered in 1974. They said they had also found traces of blood and a sports bag containing gear that presumably belonged to a teenage girl.

While Niemi and his team were driving out to the scene, Kimmo had gone in search of the files. He had immediately remembered the day of Ketola’s retirement, the case that Ketola had described, the model they had carried out to Ketola’s car in the sleet and snow.

With Päivi Holmquist, the head archivist, he had gone back down to the big basement room where long-forgotten items were stored. Päivi had gone straight to the right folder, taken it out and, presumably noticing his amazement, pointed out, with emphasis, that she did know what files were to be found in this room.

There were dozens of file folders, faded yellow folders containing a wealth of carefully compiled material. Joentaa had thought of Ketola putting that particular folder down there so long ago.

He had thanked Päivi, taken the folder up to the third floor in an old cardboard box and had a first quick look at it before driving out with Sundström to the place where the bicycle had been found.

The site as reported was the same as the crime scene of the old case, and the name on the cross was indeed the name of the girl in the files dating back to that time. Niemi and his colleagues had been hard at work. Joentaa, feeling the sun on the back of his neck, had read the inscription on the cross. Pia Lehtinen. Murdered 1974.

‘Take a look at this, will you?’ Sundström had said, indicating the place where Niemi was standing a few metres away. They had approached cautiously, and Niemi had pointed to the spot where the soil joined the asphalt bicycle path and the thin trail of blood there.

‘It’s as if someone had been dragged along the ground to the bicycle path. That’s where the trail ends,’ Niemi had said.

Kimmo had nodded, remembering the reconstruction of the old crime in the files. There had been a trickle of blood then too and the reconstruction suggested that the murderer had put Pia Lehtinen in his car before sinking her body in the lake, where she was found months later. Sundström, Grönholm and he were now standing on its bank, while divers searched the bottom for the corpse of a still anonymous girl.

‘Could be the girl doesn’t exist,’ Grönholm was just saying. ‘Could be the whole thing will turn out to be just a joke.’

Kimmo nodded.

‘Funny sort of joke, of course,’ Grönholm added. ‘But to date all we have is a bike found by chance beside this cross and the sports bag.’

‘And traces of a struggle. And a trail of blood, my young friend,’ said Sundström.

‘Yes, well,’ said Grönholm.

Kimmo Joentaa wasn’t really listening. He was thinking what it would mean if the parallels between then and now ended here. Beside this lake. There were dozens of other lakes around here. Lakes they’d have to search. Ultimately, Grönholm had a point, but at the same time Joentaa thought the idea of a joke was ridiculous. What kind of joke would that be? What was all this about, anyway? Had the same murderer come back after thirty-three years to commit the same crime at the same place? If so, what on earth had got into the man?

‘I …’ he began.

‘Yes?’ asked Sundström.

‘I don’t understand any of this,’ said Kimmo.

‘Well, congratulations!’ said Sundström.

Joentaa wasn’t sure what Sundström meant by that, and Sundström went on, ‘What we need now, my friends, is that damn body.’

Grönholm and Joentaa exchanged a brief glance.

‘Or alternatively, how about the girl herself, uninjured and in perfect health?’ asked Grönholm, but Sundström didn’t even seem to notice that Grönholm was alluding to his remarks.

The divers went down and came up again. Unsuccessfully. By agreement with Nurmela, Sundström had already informed the media that afternoon. Joentaa thought this was the right thing to do. And the decision to carry out a thorough and immediate search of the lake where Pia Lehtinen had been found so long ago was the obvious course to take, even though Kimmo was beginning to wonder if there was any point in searching this lake for a body, when there was a chance that the missing girl was still alive somewhere else. If, indeed, there was a missing girl.

The ringtone of his mobile brought him out of his thoughts. ‘Tuomas here,’ said Heinonen. ‘I’ve located the girl.’

Kimmo’s stomach lurched. ‘Oh no, that’s …’

‘No, sorry. I mean I probably know who she is,’ said Heinonen.

‘Ah. I see,’ said Kimmo.

‘Guy called Kalevi Vehkasalo rang to say the bike on the news belongs to his daughter and his daughter hasn’t come home today.’

‘Was he absolutely sure about the bike?’

‘Yes, that’s why I think it’s important. I mean, it was shown in close-up on the news and he’s perfectly certain it’s his daughter’s bicycle; he recognized the green sticker on the bell and he says his daughter’s bike had one just like it, a sticker with strong language on it – well, it said Fucking Bitch – and he’d always wanted to take that sticker off, he said, but she wouldn’t let him. And the sticker really does say Fucking Bitch.’

‘How did you leave things?’ asked Joentaa.

’I said we’d come right over to see him. And his wife, they’re both at home. I thought maybe Sundström would do that.’

‘I’ll have a word with him. Give me the address.’

‘Sodankylänkatu 12. That’s in Halinen, quite a way from where the bicycle was found.’

‘Right, thanks. See you later,’ said Joentaa.

He spoke to Sundström, who narrowed his eyes, began rocking back and forth again and said, ‘Ah, so now we’re seeing some action.’

4

K
etola saw the bicycle beside the cross in the field on the late news.

His son Tapani had dropped in early that evening. Unannounced and out of the blue as usual. Ketola didn’t hear from him for weeks, sometimes months, then there would be Tapani standing in the doorway, smiling and looking at him with that expression of his, which might conceal some unfathomable world, or an empty world, or a world full of something or other, but anyway a world that Ketola didn’t understand.

Tapani sat on the sofa, facing him, and talked about things he had done, or rather said he had done. Meetings with people who didn’t exist. Couldn’t exist. Although it was sometimes difficult to keep reality and fantasy apart with him.

About a year ago Tapani had been arrested in northern Finland for simply walking out of a shop with a DVD player, obviously hoping the theft would be so conspicuous that no one would notice. Legal proceedings against him had been dropped, partly through Ketola’s influence, and yet again Tapani had spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. Ketola had visited him every week and they sat in his room. Tapani had talked, Ketola had kept quiet.

It was the same now. Tapani talked about men who went into the woods and never came out again, dwelling on the fact that he, Tapani, had warned them but no one listened to him, no one took him seriously.

‘I take you very seriously’ said Ketola.

‘Yes, but the others -I mean, the others don’t understand anything. I’d like some water,’ said Tapani.

Ketola nodded and fetched a bottle of water and two glasses. Tapani drank greedily and said he’d been thinking of learning to do flip-flops in the next few days.

‘What?’ asked Ketola.

‘Flip-flops. Lots of backward somersaults like the gymnasts do. Then I could get about very fast. It would be much quicker than walking. I just have to find someone who can teach me how to do them.’