TH02 - The Priest of Evil (15 page)

‘Oh God,’ Sanna whispered, and fell silent. Mikko sensed a cloud appear over his mind and he suddenly felt the need to lighten the tone of the conversation.

‘Cynics say it’s just the lights in the operating theatre… Remember that television series
Iron Age?’

‘Not really, isn’t it really old?’

‘Oldish, you can borrow it from the library. Have a look at that, especially the scene where Väinö tries to solve all his problems. He goes and lies down under a boat…’

‘What, a rowing boat?’

‘Some kind of boat. Anyway, he sees the boat turn into a tunnel just like the one you described and the person he meets at the other end is himself – dead. It’s all very well put together. Then at the end he realises that he’s found what he was searching for upon the River of Death after all… Sanna? Hello?’

He glanced at the screen – they were still connected – and quickly moved the telephone to his other ear. ‘Sanna, are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘Have you spoken to Matti at all?’

‘I called him yesterday, I think it was. Your mother said he wasn’t home. I guess I should get the extra cash together to buy him a mobile of his own.’

‘She always does that – says he isn’t home. She used to do it to my friends too. Matti called me really late last night, he couldn’t get to sleep…’

‘And?’

‘He’s in danger,’ she said, and although Mikko couldn’t see her, he knew that her lips were quivering, the way they always did when she was about to cry.

‘Would you care to explain?’

‘Matti had the vision. He’s the one that asked me about it. Some priest or magician hypnotized him or something… He’s being dragged into some weirdo cult!’

‘Sanna, calm down. I’ll come home straight away and you can tell me exactly what he said, OK?’

‘I’m… at work.’

‘When do you finish?’

‘Four.’

‘Right, I’ll be home by then. Trust me, we’ll sort this out and I’ll take care of him. OK?’

‘Ye-yes.’

Mikko ended the call and his hand dropped.

‘God help me,’ he whispered. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep…’Then it was as if he woke up, and his thoughts began flying back and forth, yet always returning to the realisation that he had neglected his son. In his defence he told himself that he couldn’t have done any more, that his own struggle had been too overwhelming. Nonetheless, leaving the children with Cecilia had been the wrong decision, despite the fact that she had convinced them to stay by calling him a monster. And what a ridiculous settlement he had agreed to - simply because the children had stayed with their mother he had given up his share of the house! Where was Matti right now? What did he know about Jehovah’s Witnesses? The Pentecostalists? He knew nothing about them. What about Satan worshippers?

Everything came to an abrupt halt, as though he were somehow paralysed. A moment later he was filled with the urge to set off right away. His intuition was telling him something, he was sure of it. He felt a strange force within him. He had to find Matti, wherever he was; he’d even take him out of school if necessary. He slammed the door behind him.

He too had been down that tunnel once, back when everything had fallen apart – and he had held the barrel of a pistol in his mouth.

Harjunpää pressed a button by the door of the video room, switching off a row of monitors and dozens of different LED lights. He returned to the control desk and began gathering up cassettes, discs and reels of tape. The day’s achievements were as much of a mess as the pile of equipment in his hands, he thought to himself. There came a knock at the door; not even the normal security keys could open it. Harjunpää dropped the material back on to the table and cursed – something he rarely did – as he was sure it was Piipponen, who was supposed to have arrived several hours ago to look through the rest of the tapes. Typical that he should turn up just when the job was finished.

‘Hi,’ said Onerva quietly. She had probably knocked the same way as she had a thousand times before, but he had been too worked up to recognise the familiar rhythm. ‘What’s eating you?’ she asked.

‘Everything. There’s something seriously wrong here, and I mean our method of working too. We’re stuck here in the dark wading through thousands of video tapes and a whole load of old cases and complaints when we should be out there interviewing people in and around the underground stations - shopkeepers, security guards…’

‘Mäki’s arranged for some internal enquiries to be conducted amongst the staff at the security firm. I’m sure they’ll come up with something in the next few days. He also sent a more strongly worded notice to the press. You’ll just have to cool it, Timo.’

‘And where the hell is Piipponen? We agreed to split this job up and now I’m left with a pile of things I still haven’t done.’

‘He went to the post.’

‘What, to send a letter?’

‘Ha ha,’ she smirked. ‘Our D. O. A. Kokkonen, but you never know with him…’

‘Listen,’ Harjunpää sighed heavily and sunk back into his chair. ‘The fact is I haven’t got anything off these tapes.’

‘Kirsti and I have had slightly better luck,’ Onerva tried to buoy him up, laid her pile of papers on the table and sat down next to him.

‘First of all there’s Lörtsy’s old case. In the report the driver of the train and one of the passengers both mentioned seeing an elderly woman rushing along the platform and accidentally knocking the victim in front of the train. Either that or the victim bumped into the old woman.’

‘Is any of this on the video?’

‘Sadly not, the camera facing that end of the platform was out of order that day.’

‘Of course.’

‘However, we did get a fairly good description of the woman; but the photo-fit was in the papers so many times they eventually stopped printing it altogether and instead started making snide remarks about how the police weren’t able to get hold of one old woman.’

‘That’s right, I remember now.’

‘Lörtsy and his partner spent a good two weeks hanging around the underground during rush hour, just riding back and forth, keeping an eye on Kaisaniemi in particular.’

‘And came up with nothing.’

‘Right, but I still think they did everything they could. The lack of results certainly wasn’t from lack of trying. Still, Piipponen doesn’t appear to have taken the matter any further, though there were a number of questions left unchecked.’

There was another knock at the door. This time it sounded as if someone had kicked it, someone in a hurry. Piipponen appeared in the doorway, quick and nimble as the finest acrobat. In one hand he was carrying a bulging paper bag, while in the other he had managed to pick up three paper cups of coffee without spilling a drop.

‘Give us a hand, Harjunpää. These cups are hot as hell. I reckon we’ve more than earned our coffee break today. These doughnuts are from the bakery across the road,’ he explained as he sat down and began ripping open the paper bag. His annoyance aside, Harjunpää felt a faint glimmer of a smile creep through his mind. If for no other reason, this day would be remembered for the fact that Piipponen had treated everyone to coffee and doughnuts.

‘That was quite an autopsy, or should I say patching together. Severe crushing and mutilation is the official cause of death, but they’ll be able to tell us more once they get the results back. No other obvious problems with his internal organs; blood alcohol level zero.’

‘That was quite a long post mortem…’

‘Tell me about it. On the way back I stopped and had a chat with a few snouts I know, they said they’d keep their eyes peeled.’

‘Perhaps it’s not such a good idea to get the underworld involved in this,’ said Onerva. ‘If these are premeditated crimes we have to assume we’re not looking for anyone sane.’

‘Oh I agree, just thought I’d be on the safe side.’

Onerva picked a few sheets of paper from the top of the pile and tapped them with her fingernail.

‘This might seem a bit far-fetched,’ she said. ‘But we’re going to check them out. Kirsti dug them up on a cross-reference search. In the first case the plaintiff felt a slight pain, but then assumed they’d been struck by a young boy’s skateboard. In the other one the woman in question was already on her way up the escalator at the Central Railway Station when the person behind her noticed that blood was dripping from her hand.’

‘Shit,’ Piipponen snapped. ‘I had a feeling during that post-mortem that we were going to end up going through every assault on the underground.’

‘In both cases the victim had a slit in their clothes about a centimetre long and beneath that a superficial skin wound.’

‘You think they were cut with the tip of a knife?’

‘Maybe. Maybe even a surgical knife. Then there’s a whole wad of damage claims where people’s bags – and in particular leather jackets - have been slashed without their noticing.’

Harjunpää picked up a complaint from the top of the pile, Piipponen grabbed the one underneath. They weren’t very long, and understandably they had been filed as miscellaneous complaints or alleged assaults, because there could be no certainty as to what had happened. In another file the plaintiff himself had suggested that the wiring of another passenger’s bag might have been responsible for the cut. Onerva closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with her fingertips.

‘You’re right,’ said Harjunpää after reading through both files. ‘We need to talk to these people again. Both damage claims date from between the two fatalities. Both took place during the afternoon rush hour, while the fatalities occurred during the morning rush hour.’

‘Wait,’ said Onerva and raised her hand as if she were in primary school. ‘I’ve just had a thought.’

‘You’re kidding,’ Piipponen smirked. Harjunpää remained silent. He knew from years of experience that Onerva’s flashes of inspiration often reaped great rewards.

‘We need to get hold of all the video tapes from Hakaniemi taken yesterday too.’

‘Because?’

‘If this is some kind of a psychopath – which it clearly is – then they’d have gone back to the station some time yesterday and had a look around, at blood stains, you name it.’

For a moment no one said anything. None of them really quite believed that perpetrators always return to the scene of the crime, but gradually their expressions began to soften, and finally something approaching a smile spread across their faces, as though they had just invented a car that ran on water.

‘Well done, Onerva. Most pyromaniacs do that too.’

‘I’ll get the tapes sent over today,’ Piipponen enthused.

Some people joked that Piipponen was only ever keen to do the cushy jobs, like setting up camera surveillance, or when he had the opportunity to take some kind of glory. What did glory mean in a profession like this? Simply doing one’s job?

Once they were in the corridor Onerva strode along briskly, leaving the others slightly behind. Piipponen sidled up to Harjunpää with an air of confidentiality.

‘Timo,’ he whispered. ‘Been thinking of getting a new set of wheels?’

‘No. Doubt I will for years.’

‘There’s this top-notch Merc going. 1999, only one previous owner, barely 50K on the meter; MOT done and all the paperwork in order; doesn’t rattle, doesn’t choke. Tell them I sent you and the price will drop five percent.’

‘You’ve been for a test drive.’

‘Too right I have!’

They continued along the corridor towards the lift, and only then did Piipponen realise what he had said. ‘Yesterday, I mean…’ he spluttered.

‘
Vasces et libera bombardus
,’ he muttered under his voice, and though he was accustomed to the dusk, to the dark even, for once he wished there was a little more light. He was at home, kneeling on the floor beside his only chair. The storm lantern dangled from the back of it, its flame so tall that the lantern gave off a thin tail of black smoke, and the smell of burning petrol filled the air. In addition he had pulled the tarpaulin which served as a door halfway across the opening, allowing a pallid grey light to filter in through the hatch above.

‘
Carboratum vitilea bodulis
,’ moved his lips. His fingers moved too; they were surprisingly nimble and flexible, as though some of his joints were made of rubber, and this dexterity meant that he had almost finished. In front of him on the chair was a pair of small-handled tongs, a pocket knife, a needle and a tiny screwdriver – and, of course, the alarm clock itself. However, this was not his own, but one he had stolen from a shop, one with a proper nine volt battery. The clock had partly been taken to pieces, and beside it lay his head lamp, though this time he could not rely on its light, for it too was part of the experiment, which was why he had removed its battery.

He had visited the library in Pasila and in less than half an hour on the internet he’d found what he needed. The majority of the instructions were nonsense, little boys’ silly fantasies that could not possibly have worked. This one, for instance, he remembered word for word: “Drill a small hole in the base of a light bulb. Pour petrol or gunpowder in through the hole and cover it with tape. Go into your enemy’s room and exchange your light bulb for his. When he switches on the light –
KABOOM
! Your enemy’s head will be gone!” How can one drill a hole through the thin glass of a light bulb? It is as fragile as an eggshell; and how can one pour petrol
through a hole the size of a pinprick when the air inside will not be able to escape?

Of course, he had found plenty of information about different chemicals, instructions on how to handle them and in what quantities to mix them, but he did not care for this. He already had his bomb, the sticks of dynamite lying there beneath his bedside table, and now all he needed was a reliable detonator. And for this he had also found the necessary instructions: the classic alarm clock trick.

At once he had understood how it worked, but only a moment ago had he realised that if he attached the fuse to the minute hand the bomb could be detonated at any time. However, if he attached it to the hour hand it could tick away in peace for up to twelve hours. Still, he – or rather his Piggy Back, as he had begun to call the boy – would need only half an hour at most, and thus the minute hand was the obvious choice.