The Winter of the Lions (14 page)

‘I’ll be cabin boy,’ says Aapeli.

She stands down below, craning her neck to see the two of them.

‘Coming up?’ calls Rauna.

Above her the grey sky. It drops away from the loose threads holding it. Ice floes crunch and break up on the water.

‘Coming up with us?’ calls Rauna.

Rauna’s voice, and an image in her mind. Rauna’s eyes. They fill her field of vision entirely. Rauna’s eyes in the dark. ‘Has the sky fallen down?’ That’s Rauna’s voice, she feels her lips shaking and she would like to reach for her, touch her, but she can’t move.

She opens her eyes and feels Rauna’s cheek on her arm. ‘Coming up with us?’ she whispers.

‘This is a great ship,’ says Aapeli, her neighbour of many years whom she has really come to know only today.

‘Anywhere you want to go,’ she says.

‘To the bathing beach,’ says Rauna. ‘Do you think we’ll be able to walk on the water?’

WESTERBERG HAD ALREADY
gone to the TV station, but a friendly colleague saw to getting all the photos on the hard disk of Harri Mäkelä’s computer copied within minutes and placed at Joentaa’s disposal.

Joentaa sat alone in a large, overheated room in front of a screen in a long row of obviously new computers, looking at
a silently laughing Harri Mäkelä with an arm round a friend’s shoulder. One of many private photos. Mäkelä was laughing in almost all of them, showing a self-confident, attractive smile.

It took him some time to understand the principle on which Mäkelä had arranged his photo archives. But then a simple pattern emerged. One set of the pictures that he was looking for had been assembled by Mäkelä in a folder called ‘CorpsesForDummies’. Joentaa opened several of the files and brought up the pictures. His shivering fit came back.

As a rule the pictures had been taken at the scene of accidents. Accidents involving cycles, motorbikes, cars, helicopters, aircraft parts. Firefighting teams bending over the dead, paramedics spreading blankets over bodies.

Sometimes it took Joentaa several minutes to find the element in the picture that, as the puppet-maker saw it, qualified it for the ‘CorpsesForDummies’ folder. For instance, a severed human leg lying in undergrowth next to the wrecked fuselage of an aircraft. The photos seemed to have been taken by photographers from all over the world: some from Finland, but others from deserts and the tropics. Many appeared to have been taken in America, and there were hundreds of them.

The lords of death, thought Joentaa.

He let the pictures run, and wondered how they were going to help him understand the death of Mäkelä, the death of Patrik Laukkanen, and the attack on Hämäläinen.

A conversation about puppets was the peg that held all three together. And the pictures he was seeing had given Mäkelä ideas and an understanding of dead bodies, enabling him to make realistic models of the dead.

Realistic fiction. The longer he looked at the pictures, the more dubious the theories he was developing seemed. Of the hundreds of thousands of viewers who had watched the
programme, most had surely had to come to terms with the death of someone close to them. Why should one of them take it personally when all the others had simply been entertained? Mäkelä had shown three puppets, and he had explained what kind of cinematic deaths they had suffered, or were going to suffer – the victim of an air crash, the victim of a train disaster, the victim of a fire on a fairground ghost train. Joentaa wondered why he was the only one to find the whole idea tasteless. He and Larissa, or whatever her name was.

And he wondered whether, for that very reason, his judgement had gone astray and he was developing erroneous theories that led nowhere. Puppets, Kimmo, only puppets. Sundström was quite right.

He looked at the photos with a queasy sensation in his stomach, and couldn’t understand now what he had expected them to tell him. Photos clearly classified. A macabre slide show. That was all.

He himself had seen similar pictures in the course of his training. So that he would be prepared, and would acquire the necessary knowledge. Just like Mäkelä, who had put them on file and studied them in order to do his job to the best of his ability.

Photos clearly classified … every sub-folder of the main ‘CorpsesForDummies’ category was labelled with sequences of letters and numbers that Joentaa did not at first understand:
150402NL/AMS
, and
110300US/NY
. When he came upon
201199FIN/TAM
he got the idea. Dates, countries, cities. On 20 November 1999 there had obviously been a train accident in Tampere. Mäkelä had stored four pictures of it in his sub-folder. An unnaturally flat body lying on its back beside a wrecked dining car.

He wondered how Mäkelä had been able to build up this extensive archive. The Internet is full of them, Vaasara had
said. Three puppets. Air crash, train crash, funfair accident. Spectacular events. Linked to days, years and locations.

‘Here, for you,’ said a voice behind him.

Joentaa jumped.

‘Sorry,’ said his police colleague, handing him a stack of CDs. ‘I’ve copied all those photos in case you need them in Turku.’

‘Thanks, that’s a great help,’ said Joentaa.

His colleague nodded. ‘The press conference is about to begin. I’m going down there myself.’

Joentaa switched off the computer, took the CDs and placed them on the table. He probably wouldn’t need to look at the photos again. He’d had another outlandish idea.

The puppets would have to help him.

The puppets and the deadly events to which they owed their existence.

I RENE. AND
the imps. And the young doctor whose name he now knew: Valtteri Muksanen.

Funny sort of name. Funny sort of day.

The imps stood there facing him, and didn’t seem to recognise him any more. They couldn’t utter a word, they were inspecting him as if he were an attraction for sightseers and giggling nervously.

A new room. Wintry light came through the windowpanes. From time to time a uniformed police officer put his head round the door, possibly suspecting that the two little girls had explosives hidden about their persons.

The doctor with the funny name, the one he’d been talking to when Irene and the children knocked at the door, withdrew, not without nodding encouragingly at Irene again and shaking hands with the girls.

Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen looked at Irene and his daughters, thinking of Niskanen. He couldn’t get the man out of his head. Irene watched the doctor as he closed the door behind him.

‘You wouldn’t think it to look at that young man, but he’s the medical director in charge of this outfit,’ said Hämäläinen, and Irene nodded.

‘Valtteri Muksanen. Funny sort of name.’

‘You think so?’ asked Irene.

‘Don’t you?’ he asked back.

She sat down beside him. The children, arms hanging by their sides, inched slightly closer to him.

‘He recommends me to stay here a little longer, but he says I’ve been extremely fortunate, and I may be able to leave hospital within the next few days.’

‘Yes,’ said Irene.

‘Good to see you here,’ he said.

Silence.

‘Come over here, imps. It’s only medicine in that tube.’

The girls went over to the bed and looked at Irene for help. Irene took his hand and stroked it. He made several faces, and the girls laughed and ventured closer still, finally sitting down cautiously on the bed.

‘Have you heard anything from the TV station? Has Tuula called? Or Mertaranta?’

‘I disconnected the phone, it was ringing the whole time.’

‘Ah.’ His mobile. He felt the impulse to reach for it, but he was still supposed to move extremely carefully, and anyway he didn’t know where it was. He’d have to ask the doctor about that.

‘It’s all over the news,’ said Irene.

He nodded. And felt a curious satisfaction. All over the news.

‘The headline announcement,’ said Irene quietly.

He made another face for the children.

‘How fragile everything is,’ said Irene.

KIMMO JOENTAA TOOK
the train back to Turku. He asked his friendly Helsinki colleague to tell Westerberg and Sundström that he had left.

Sundström would be annoyed, but he had no time to bother with matters of minor importance just now. White buildings, lakes and forests flew past outside the carriage windows. A boy sat beside him bent over a laptop, playing a computer game the point of which Joentaa could not work out. A man in a yellow bird mask reduced the cars he drove to scrap metal and flung himself off high-rise buildings. The man on the screen was smashed to pieces, and the boy looked as if he were about to fall asleep.

‘Thrilling stuff,’ murmured Joentaa.

The boy cast him a suspicious glance, then concentrated on killing off the yellow man yet again.

Joentaa walked from the station to the police building, thinking about the idea that had occurred to him while he was looking at Harri Mäkelä’s neatly stored photographs. An idea that would, presumably, be difficult to put into practice. Difficult or impossible.

Petri Grönholm was out when he arrived, and Tuomas Heinonen was sitting at his desk.

‘Kimmo,’ he said. ‘Back already?’

‘Only me. Paavo’s still in Helsinki.’

‘Ah.’

‘I have an idea I’d like to try out …’

‘What is it?’ asked Heinonen.

Joentaa looked at Tuomas Heinonen, and wondered why he shouldn’t put what he had been thinking into words, and while he was thinking of that he noticed the changed expression on Heinonen’s face. His eyes still looked veiled, he still looked hunted. But something had changed.

‘I won,’ said Heinonen.

‘What?’

‘Won it all back. Almost all. There’s an international ice hockey tournament on in Germany. The Slovakia versus Canada game.’

‘Yes …’

‘Slovakia won. The idiots who run the betting system didn’t realise that Canada was bringing a B team. Funny mistake, not like them to make it.’

Joentaa nodded.

‘A three-way combination, two favourites, and Slovakia as an outsider at high odds.’

Joentaa nodded again. He did not understand the way it worked.

‘I could tell Paulina everything and put all the money on the table in front of her.’

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

‘I have plenty of cash with me … look.’ Heinonen reached for his coat, which was hanging over his chair, and took out some 500-euro notes. ‘As much as you could wish for, I’m the king,’ he said. ‘Sorry I’ve been such a pain the last few days, and thank you for …’

‘You must stop,’ said Joentaa.

Heinonen stared at him.

‘You must stop now, at once.’

‘I expect you’re right,’ said Heinonen.

‘If you love Paulina and your children you will stop now,’ said Joentaa, hearing the emotion in his voice.

‘You’re right,’ said Heinonen. His own voice sounded toneless and studied.

They faced each other in silence.

‘What about this idea you have?’ asked Heinonen at last. Joentaa looked at Heinonen, saw his heated face and the disaster heading his way. He’d have to talk to Paulina.

‘Kimmo?’

‘Yes?’

‘You have an idea.’

‘Yes … I’m not sure yet. If possible I’d like to check the families of all the people who’ve died in air crashes or train accidents in the last few years, or of anyone who died in a fire on a fairground ghost train.’

Heinonen nodded, and seemed to be trying to visualise what he had said. ‘Ah … fire on a ghost train. You mean those puppets in the talk show?’

‘Exactly. It would indicate very explicitly what kind of death the puppets were supposed to have died in a film. I think that programme struck a note in a relative mourning a victim who died like that, and then …’

‘That sounds rather way-out … rather specific,’ said Heinonen.

‘I know, but what’s going on at this moment is also rather specific, isn’t it?’

Heinonen nodded, but he did not look convinced.

‘Anyway, that’s what I’m going to do. Never mind what the rest of you say.’

He sat down at his desk, still thinking of Paulina as the computer came on. He would have to talk to her. He just didn’t know how. Paulina knew what had been going on, so she must be in a position to stop Tuomas. Who could do it if she couldn’t?

He thought of the banknotes in Heinonen’s coat pocket. A fortune behind a zip fastener, and presumably Tuomas had brought it with him so that after office hours, or even before then, he could take it to the nearest betting shop.

He shook that thought off and called Päivi Holmquist down in Archives. Her voice sounded pleasantly bright and carefree. ‘Of course I can help you,’ she said, when he had explained his idea.

‘Wonderful. Er … how?’

‘These days we have very easy and comprehensive access to the newspaper archives,’ she said.

‘Using the right Search commands, I’m sure I could start by drawing you up a list of the kind of accidents you’re after.’

‘That’s great,’ said Joentaa.

‘Then we’d have to dig a little deeper to find out the names of the people who died in such accidents. And then, if I understand you correctly, it’s a matter of finding the names of their relatives.’

‘Yes … that’s exactly it,’ said Joentaa.

‘Then I’ll start right away,’ said Päivi.

‘Thank you,’ said Joentaa.

He sat there with the phone in his hand, and suddenly felt great reluctance to find the relatives of the dead. To rekindle their grief on the basis of what was probably a wild, hare-brained idea.

‘Do you really expect something to come of that?’ asked Heinonen, sitting opposite him.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Patrik Laukkanen had debts,’ said Heinonen.

Joentaa raised his head and looked enquiringly at him.

‘He’d lost money speculating on the stock exchange,’ said Heinonen.

‘And what does that have to do with the murder of Mäkelä and the attempted murder of Hämäläinen?’

‘We haven’t got that far yet,’ said Heinonen.

Joentaa nodded.

‘It was simply an observation,’ said Heinonen.

Joentaa stood up abruptly. He wanted to go home. At once. Stand in front of the little tree with Larissa. What business of his were Patrik Laukkanen’s debts? He had no right to know about them.