Silence (7 page)

‘She’s always branching out into something new. After a while we lose sight of what she’s up to,’ said Vehkasalo, trying for a smile.

‘So she always cycled that way going to play volleyball?’ asked Joentaa.

‘I think so,’ said Ruth Vehkasalo. ‘I don’t know for certain because I was never with her when she went there. But I think so, yes.’

‘How often did she play volleyball?’

‘She went to training twice a week and there were usually games at the weekend.’

‘She’s very fond of sports,’ said Vehkasalo. ‘Unfortunately she has no staying power. She does this and that, she’s always starting something new and never sticks with it. But I suppose that may be perfectly normal these days, I … well, it doesn’t matter now.’ He fell silent.

‘Did she ever mention the cross?’ asked Joentaa.

Both parents looked enquiringly at him.

‘I mean, did she speak of passing the cross? Did she mention the inscription?’

‘No,’ said Vehkasalo, and his wife too shook her head. ‘No, never. Why would she? Why would Sinikka be interested in something that happened thirty years ago? She wasn’t even born then. Anyway, I’m wondering what all this stuff is in aid of. The same psychopath Coming back thirty years later to kill our daughter? Is that your theory, or what have you found out so far?’

‘Nothing,’ said Sundström. ‘Nothing yet. We’re only just beginning. Of course the place where the bicycle was found is significant and there are striking parallels to that case, which does indeed lie far back in the past. But to be perfectly honest, I have to tell you that I’ve never heard of anything similar. For now we know no more than you do.’

Vehkasalo nodded, obviously mollified by Sundström’s honesty, and his wife suddenly asked if she should make some coffee. She was already on her feet.

‘No, thanks very much, not for us,’ said Sundström. ‘When did your daughter set out for volleyball training? Did you say anything to her before she started?’

‘Yes, of course. Kalevi was at the office, but I was here, we had lunch together, then Sinikka went to her training session and I met my sister in town in the afternoon.’

‘What did you talk about during lunch?’ asked Kimmo Joentaa. ‘Is there anything that seems unusual to you now, in the light of Sinikka’s disappearance? Anything she said?’

Sinikka’s mother considered the question for a little while, then thoughtfully shook her head. ‘No, she really didn’t. We – today was the last day of school term, so that was why …’ Her voice broke and she began crying, but went on, ‘Of course we quarrelled over her report and I expect I raised my voice because – well, because we were really quarrelling all the time.’ She suddenly began screaming. Joentaa felt Sundström flinch beside him. ‘Because it was downright impossible not to quarrel with Sinikka!’ she screamed. ‘Because she always wants everything and never gives anything back! And now she’s gone! Now she’s gone away! Far, far away!’ She hit out at her husband, who was sitting there as stiff as a poker. Then she jumped up and ran out of the room. Soon afterwards a door slammed. Vehkasalo stared after his wife, his mouth half open. ‘I’m very sorry, that’s to say – I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘I’d better go and see how she is.’

‘Of course,’ Sundström agreed.

Vehkasalo went out of the room, as if in a trance.

‘Of course,’ Sundström repeated after a while, deep in thought, and he helped himself to a chocolate from a silver dish, ‘Want one?’ he asked.

Joentaa shook his head. He felt tired, and powerless to help the missing girl’s parents. He thought about Sundström and how to some extent he understood Sundström even less than his predecessor Ketola. He had often thought about Sundström and his curious way of making a joke of everything. At the same time he could be very efficient in concrete situations, however difficult, and not at all inclined to joke about them.

Kimmo’s reflections led him nowhere and after a while he found himself thinking of Sanna, who had always been amused by his constant wish to probe into anything and everything, to understand it down to the smallest detail.

He could faintly hear the voice of Kalevi Vehkasalo, obviously talking to his wife in a room at the other end of the house. Sundström, sitting next to him, was munching his chocolate, and Kimmo found his thoughts beginning to circle around Sanna.

An idea came into his mind, one that had often occurred to him since Sanna’s death, one that frequently obsessed him and then, suddenly, seemed wrong and entirely meaningless. It was the idea that he was free of everything that tormented other people. In similar situations he had often felt the same as he did now. He sensed the fear and desperate anxiety of the parents, who didn’t know what had become of their daughter, and at the same time felt sure that he himself would never have to fear anything at all, would have no more anxieties of any kind. Because unlike the missing girl’s parents, he had that phase behind him; because he had long ago lost Sanna, the most important pan of his life.

The idea began to feel vague and uncomfortable, and he obviously made some physical move in the effort to shake it off, because Sundström asked, ‘Everything okay?’

‘Hm?’

Are you okay? You sort of suddenly twitched,’ explained Sundström.

‘No, I’m okay. It was nothing.’

Sundström nodded and surreptitiously, as if doing something wrong, took another chocolate from the dish. He choked on it when the door opened behind their backs.

‘Forgive me,’ said Vehkasalo. ‘I’m very sorry; my wife, well, of course she’s very worried. I think … if possible could you speak to her tomorrow? I’m entirely at your disposal myself.’

‘Of course. I understand perfectly. I hope your wife will feel a little calmer in the morning. I’d like to clear up just a couple more points and then we’ll be on our way.’

Vehkasalo nodded and sat down opposite them again.

‘What we urgently need is a photograph of your daughter. A recent one if possible. We’ll probably be distributing it to the media as well. A photo that’s … well, as good a likeness as possible, I mean showing her as she looks today. An up-to-date passport photograph would be ideal.’

Vehkasalo nodded and thought for a moment. He stood up, left the room and soon came back with several photograph albums.

‘My wife always puts them straight into albums,’ he murmured, leafing through one of them. ‘They sometimes have group photographs at her school, they take portrait photos as well … yes, here, for instance.’ He handed them a picture showing a girl looking gravely at the camera lens.

Sundström turned it over. ‘Taken only recently, good,’ he said. ‘Many thanks. We’ll take this away with us, if we may.’

‘Of course,’ said Vehkasalo.

‘We can talk about everything eke tomorrow,’ said Sundström, rising from the sofa.

They stood there in silence for a few seconds, then Vehkasalo went ahead of them to the door. ‘I hope you’ll – you’ll find her,’ he said, when they were in the doorway.

‘We’ll do our best,’ said Sundström.

They drove along the urban motorway towards the city centre. Sundström nodded off to sleep several times, waking with a jolt after a few seconds. ‘Terrible,’ he muttered. Joentaa didn’t know whether he meant their conversation with the missing girl’s parents, or his exhaustion, or something else entirely, and he was too tired himself to ask. They parted at the car park outside the police building.

‘See you tomorrow,’ said Sundström, clapping him on the shoulder.

‘See you tomorrow,’ Kimmo agreed, and got into his car and drove home.

6

I
t was just after one when he parked his car beside the apple tree outside the little house. Sanna’s house. It was and always would be Sanna’s house, and that thought was there every time, waiting for him, evening after evening when he came home. Sometimes it was strongly present, sometimes less so, sometimes it was a good thought, sometimes a painful one, sometimes just a thought, coming and going.

His house was Sanna’s house. He had lost Sanna for ever. Sanna would be here for ever. It was as simple as that and he couldn’t understand why some people didn’t understand it. What was so odd about the idea?

He didn’t talk to many people about Sanna and he had never really opened up to anyone, because it was no use. Because he felt he was unable to open up, and didn’t want to either, and it would do him no good. How could he talk to other people about feelings that at heart, and to this day, he himself couldn’t really understand?

As for the few who were close enough to him to try probing now and then, after a while he left them feeling they were talking to a brick wall. Because he had to indicate that such a conversation would soon come up against barriers that, with the best will in the world, he couldn’t cross. He would suffer a near-allergic reaction when they said things like: you have to look to the future, life must go on some time, it’s all in the past now, that’s what Sanna would have wanted.

He was indeed looking to the future and life
was
going on, and he knew what Sanna would have wanted much better than any clever counsellor. It wasn’t his problem if other people wouldn’t believe that, and if they thought looking to the future meant removing everything to do with Sanna from his life they were very much mistaken. He had removed nothing. That had been his first reaction; he had thought he couldn’t live in this house any longer, he had thought he must clear away everything that reminded him of Sanna from cupboards and drawers, but a moment came when he realized that no such plan would ever work.

He had put everything back in its old place, had spent a weekend restoring everything to the way it used to be when Sanna was alive, and when he sat there in the evening and looked around, he had known that was the right thing to do, and he would come to terms with her death, if he ever did, only in Sanna’s presence.

His best conversations had been with Kari Niemi, head of forensics. Niemi was in his mid thirties, only a little older than Kimmo himself. They’d never really had much to do with each other in the past, but Kimmo had appreciated Niemi’s very precise and careful work, and liked his unshakeable good humour, even if he also found it irritating.

Sundström told jokes without ever really laughing, and Kari Niemi was laughing all the time without, so far as Kimmo could remember, ever telling a joke. Behind Niemi’s eternal smile, in Joentaa’s opinion, there was a thoughtful, warm-hearted human being, and Kimmo could talk to him more easily than to anyone else about Sanna. Perhaps because apart from Sanna herself he had never met anyone with whom silence came so easily and who was so good at remaining silent himself. Conversations about Sanna, about her death, about his own life afterwards frequently consisted of silences.

Joentaa looked at the house. A sunny morning seemed about to dawn behind it, although it was only one thirty and still night. He pulled himself together, got out of the car and walked the short way to the house. He had had to fight off his drowsiness during the drive home, but now he felt wide awake again, and had a sense that he needed to think about several things at the same time. As if he still had something very important to clear up before morning came.

He went into the kitchen, poured cold milk into a glass, sat down in the living room and stared through the wide window at the lake.

They hadn’t found anything in that other lake, about an hour’s drive from here at the far end of Turku. Not yet; the divers would go on looking in the morning. Only recently Kimmo had been standing there on the bank of the other lake with Sundström and Grönholm, waiting for the divers to find the body of someone whose name they now knew. Presumably.

Kimmo put down his glass and realized what was keeping him awake. For the first time that day he found the time to think hard about what had happened. He’d have to talk to Ketola about it in the morning. Ketola might be able to help them. As usual.

A little while ago, when Grönholm mentioned the possibility of a joke, he had silently agreed. In one way a joke, or whatever you liked to call it, seemed absurd, but in another it was even more absurd to think of a murderer returning to the scene of his crime thirty years later, to commit the same crime again.

Now that Sinikka Vehkasalo’s disappearance had been confirmed, the joke idea didn’t work. The most likely thing seemed to Joentaa a copycat murderer, whatever the motives of this new murderer thirty-three years on might have been. Maybe he had come upon the idea of the cross, the way it persistently called Pia Lehtinen to mind, and that cross had set something off in him …

If the murderer really did intend the incidents of the past to run their course again, it would be months before they found the body of Sinikka Vehkasalo, because the search for Pia Lehtinen had also gone on for months. But there the parallel ended, simply on pragmatic grounds: today’s murderer would know that sooner or later they would search the lake that had featured in the old crime, so he had hidden the body somewhere else, in a place that the investigating team wouldn’t find until considerably later.

On the other hand, if for whatever reason the murderer wanted to repeat the course of events, reproducing exactly what had happened then, that meant there was a noticeable divergence in one crucial point – always assuming that they didn’t find the corpse in the lake next morning after all.

Joentaa rose abruptly. His own speculations, leading nowhere, were getting on his nerves, while Ruth and Kalevi Vehkasalo, in their pale green house in Halinen, couldn’t sleep for anxiety about their daughter.

He turned away from the lake beyond the window, and his eye fell on the two photographs on the bookshelves. They had always stood there, ever since he and Sanna moved in. In the weeks after Sanna’s death Joentaa had removed them, then put them back in their old place a little later.

Standing in front of them, he looked closely at the photos. One was of Sanna as a small child; the date on the back showed that she had been two years old at the time. Sanna had just knocked a biscuit out of her mother Merja’s hand and the biscuit was flying through the air towards the camera. Merja’s mouth was wide open and Sanna was looking really furious, probably because her mother had told her she couldn’t eat the biscuit without giving her, Merja, a bite. Jussi, Sanna’s father, must have jumped just as he was taking the photo, because the picture was slightly blurred. A wonderful picture. Kimmo felt a smile spreading over his face.