The Winter of the Lions (21 page)

‘Fine,’ said Joentaa.

‘You’re welcome. I’ll be back in quarter of an hour,’ said Olli Latvala, walking purposefully past the yellow tape towards the lifts, and Joentaa sank back into his chair.

The waitress came and wiped his table with a cloth. ‘Can I get you something?’ she asked.

‘Er … tea,’ said Joentaa. ‘Peppermint tea. No … camomile tea, please.’

A SUNNY WINTER’S
day. Like the days back then.

It’s a long time ago. An age has passed, and the next age is beginning, and like the one just past it will last only a moment.

‘Everything’s all right,’ says the voice.

‘Has the sky fallen down?’

‘It will be all right,’ says the voice.

‘Yes,’ she says.

Through the window she can see the sea, and a café where she sat with Ilmari and Veikko. Whenever they were in Helsinki they went to this café. Veikko wants ice cream even though it is winter; Ilmari eats cheesecake. Veikko wants ice cream and cries when he gets hot chocolate instead. She glances at the counter and the ice-cream cornets, and Ilmari looks at her sternly. Veikko has hot chocolate, Ilmari has cheesecake. She drinks tea, and gives Veikko the little round biscuit beside her cup.

The sea is frozen over.

The sky is so blue that it hurts your eyes.

Rauna dances and twirls, and Veikko laughs, and Rauna twirls faster and faster, and Veikko laughs louder and louder.

Ilmari skids.

‘Have you hurt yourself?’ she cries.

Ilmari waves the idea away, and acts as if nothing at all has happened. Something like that always embarrasses him. He gets up. Veikko laughs, Rauna laughs, the sky falls down.

Ilmari ducks, and she tries to meet his eyes, but she can’t find him any more, and Olli Latvala will be fetching her. Soon. After an eternity. At 17.00 hours.

A QUARTER OF
an hour later Olli Latvala came back, and after another ten minutes Kimmo Joentaa was sitting up in a glass room close to the sky.

‘Not bad, eh? Only the boss, Raafael Mertaranta, is a floor higher than this,’ said Olli Latvala.

Joentaa nodded.

‘I’m afraid I can’t stay, but Tuulikki will show you everything. She knows this technical stuff much better than I do anyway.’

The handshake of the slender young woman standing beside Latvala was perfunctory, and there was no reading the expression on her face. ‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hello,’ said Joentaa.

‘You’re lucky, we’ve found it for you. We even managed to rustle up the full version of the show, I mean before cutting, and some of the tapes of material cut later,’ said Latvala.

‘Aha …’ said Joentaa.

‘I still have to look for the lists of names and addresses. But it will be best if you look at all this first with Tuulikki. Good luck.’

‘Thanks,’ said Joentaa, but Olli Latvala was already in the corridor and out of earshot.

‘Uncut version?’ asked Tuulikki.

‘Hm? Er … is there a tape showing only the audience?’

She looked at him as if he were an extraterrestrial. ‘Only the audience?’ She sounded put out.

‘Yes, that would be just what I’m looking for.’

‘You’d better look at the uncut version first while I find the stuff from the hand-held camera.’

‘Er … fine.’

‘The hand-held camera is used to film the audience,’ she explained.

Joentaa nodded. She pressed several buttons, then there was music, and on the screen against the glass wall high up here in the sky, with a few winter clouds, Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen greeted his guests.

THE LOW-BUILT
blue house looked deserted, thick snow lay in the drive leading up to it, the letterbox was crammed. An ambulance stood by the roadside, and a young woman doctor opened the front door to let Sundström in.

Nuutti Vaasara was sitting on the living-room sofa with his forearms bandaged, and greeted him in an exhausted voice. Sundström thought of Hämäläinen and wondered instinctively why, these days, he was always having to grapple with people who survived instead of being dead.

‘How are you, Mr Vaasara?’ he asked.

‘All right, I think. In the circumstances.’ He glanced at the doctor; she smiled and nodded agreement. A paramedic busy packing a bag was kneeling on the floor beside Vaasara.

‘Yes, he is,’ said the doctor. ‘Doing fine. Just at the right moment …’ She turned to Vaasara. ‘Just at the right moment you made the sensible decision to call us.’

Vaasara nodded.

‘Would it be all right for me to ask you a few questions here and now?’ asked Sundström.

‘Of course,’ said Vaasara.

‘We’re on our way,’ said the doctor. ‘Don’t forget about that appointment tomorrow, Mr Vaasara.’

Vaasara nodded. ‘Thank you.’

‘Goodbye and good luck,’ said the doctor,

‘Yes, good luck,’ murmured the paramedic.

Vaasara nodded.

Then they were alone, and Sundström sat down and looked
at Nuutti Vaasara, slumped on the sofa, and felt a vague queasiness at the thought of all he knew about him. Nuutti Vaasara, born 25 June 1971, grew up in Hanko with a mother who was none too bright and a father inclined, in certain situations, to outbreaks of violent rage. Left school after year eleven, moved out of the parental home, then disappeared for two years claiming he wanted to see the world, which had his few remaining friends and relatives still wondering, twenty years later, how he could have done this without any money. In March 1990 Vaasara had met Harri Mäkelä at a university that he had no right to be attending at all. Since then the two of them had lived and worked together. As a couple. Hard as Sundström tried to be liberal and open-minded, every time he thought of men doing it with men it still turned his stomach. Naked and up to … well, whatever they did get up to. His own Lutheran Christian inclinations, dammit.

Did Vaasara guess that his homosexuality was worth a passing note in the files? Even the rainbow media had allowed a bold surmise or so relating to this aspect of the case, but presumably Nuutti Vaasara didn’t read the papers, and he certainly had no idea that in the broad, wide-ranging probing that called itself an investigation he was high up on the list of suspects.

He just sat there looking at the wall, and somewhere beyond it into a strange world, his bandaged arms in his lap.

Sundström cleared his throat, looked at the tall, thin man, and Vaasara raised his eyes.

‘Do you take shoe size 38, Mr Vaasara?’ asked Sundström.

Vaasara did not reply for a long time.

‘No,’ he said at last, without a sign of annoyance, mockery, or even amusement in his voice.

RAAFAEL MERTARANTA BLEW
her a kiss before he got into the lift and went up to the next floor.

Tuula Palonen turned away and went into the cafeteria. She felt a brief pang as she passed the area marked off by tape, the rectangle of smooth floor on which Kai-Petteri had lain fighting for his life. The thought was unreal.

She chose avocado soup, risotto, and a pink dessert garnished with raspberries, which looked suspiciously creamy but delicious. With her meal she drank a glass of water and black coffee.

She sat at a table over to one side, ate fast, and was so deep in thought about the course of the next few hours that she hardly noticed the taste of the food.

Finally she drew the raspberry cream and her coffee towards her, and took the schedule and a red pen out of her briefcase. She began reading, taking a spoonful of raspberry cream and a sip of coffee now and then, and ticked items that had already been dealt with.

At one point she stopped for a moment and thought about that police officer, Joentaa. She’d call him and tell him there had been no unusual reactions to the interview with Mäkelä and the forensic pathologist. No threatening letters or anything of that kind. Of course not. There’d been many appreciative letters and emails about the information given in the programme, and the writers had expressed thanks, but that probably wasn’t what Joentaa was looking for. In fact, she wondered exactly what he
was
looking for, and thought of
the mysterious questions he had asked about the puppets and imaginary causes of death.

She looked at the schedule, the warm-up sequence and the presentations, and her glance fell again on the fifth main subject of tonight’s programme.

She thought of Harri Mäkelä. Of the cheerful and well-irrigated evening after the recording. Mäkelä had downed beer after beer and talked his head off. About a plane crash that wasn’t a plane crash. She remembered that she hadn’t really understood what he had been trying to say. But maybe that taciturn policeman could make something of it.

She made a mental note to call him as soon as she had a free moment, and took a last spoonful from her dish of raspberry cream. She drained her coffee, went through the hall, past the rectangle marked off by police tape and over to the lifts, then up to the twelfth floor.

Margot Lind was sitting in the open-plan office of the
Hämäläinen
talk show, telephoning. ‘Olli’s looking for you,’ she said as she put the receiver down. ‘And one of those policemen called. Or rather it was someone from reception, to say he hadn’t been able to connect the policeman with us, and the policeman would like someone to call back.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Tuula Palonen.

‘Just a moment. I wrote the name down. Yes, Joentaa, from Turku.’

Joentaa, thought Tuula Palonen, that pain in the neck. At that moment Olli Latvala came into the office, cheerful and confident as ever and said, ‘There was a policeman looking for you. Man called Joentaa.’

Margot Lind giggled. ‘Persistent, isn’t he?’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Latvala.

‘Okay, I’ll call him,’ said Tuula Palonen. ‘Give me the number, Margot.’

‘There’s no need, he’s here. Sitting up there with one of the cutters watching some archival material.’

‘Oh,’ said Tuula Palonen. ‘What kind of archival material?’

‘The uncut version of the show with Mäkelä and that forensic pathologist. And anything else we could find from that edition. Footage from the hand-held camera, for instance.’

‘Oh,’ said Tuula Palonen.

‘Mainly he wanted to see pictures of the audience,’ said Latvala.

‘Right,’ said Tuula Palonen. ‘I’ll go and see him right away.’

‘No need for that either. If I understood him correctly I’ve already been able to find him everything he wanted,’ said Latvala.

‘Oh, good. All the better,’ said Tuula Palonen.

‘If you have time I’d like to discuss a couple of ideas about the set for today’s show,’ said Olli Latvala.

‘Go ahead,’ she said, and Latvala sat down beside her. She thought again of Harri Mäkelä, who had sent them that impossible puppet. It was no good, they’d had to reject it on the very day of the show, but Mäkelä had provided a substitute all the same. And in the evening, after his tenth beer and fourth chaser of schnapps, he had said there’d been a little misunderstanding. Maybe she ought to go up one floor and see what Joentaa was doing. Archival material. Pictures of the audience.

‘Er … Tuula, are you with me?’ asked Olli Latvala.

‘What? Yes, of course.’

‘Well … did you hear what I said?’

‘Begin again at the beginning,’ she said.

‘Right, the idea is for Kai-Petteri to move from the sofa to the other group of seats depending on the subject,’ said Latvala. ‘And I’d definitely have the ski-jumpers sitting on the sofa, particularly as they’re bringing their skis …’

‘What?’ asked Tuula Palonen distractedly.

‘Their skis.’

‘They’re bringing their skis into the studio?’

‘Yes, it’s something to do with their sponsor’s contract. Kai-Petteri is supposed to be asking several questions about the composition of the skis, and skis for ski-jumping are very long, so the group of seats with the desk wouldn’t be so suitable, if you see what I mean.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Tuula Palonen.

‘The problem is that we’ve also planned to use the sofa for the next item in the show, so the effect would be static, and the directing team doesn’t like my suggestion of deliberately bringing the ski-jumpers into the picture with the hand-held camera.’

‘I see,’ said Tuula Palonen.

‘So have a word with them, will you?’

‘I will,’ said Tuula Palonen.

THE TALL MAN
sat at the wheel, the very tall man on the back seat with him, and the sunny winter day began to move towards afternoon twilight. The tall man sat upright saying nothing, the very tall man sat upright saying nothing. You would never have known that the very tall man had been playing hide and seek with the twins the evening before, like a child himself. A quick-change artist, thought Hämäläinen, and he thought of the evening ahead, and the Spanish girlfriend he’d once had in a life long ago.

To this day he found a certain consolation in assuming
that she had left him because of the Finnish winter and not for other, more personal reasons. Once, when the Spanish girl came to see him, she had walked through Customs wearing a summer jacket, and when they were waiting for the bus in the cold and the dark she had asked whether the sun always set so early in Finland. Only in winter, Hämäläinen had told her, and a week later she had flown home, never to return.

‘Dark outside,’ said Hämäläinen, and the very tall man looked enquiringly at him.

‘When you think that the sun was still shining only fifteen minutes ago, I mean,’ said Hämäläinen.

SHE GOES SWIMMING
. The words over the entrance say ‘Wellness Oasis’, and in front of it stands a man in the hotel uniform who asks for her room number. She takes the key out of her bathrobe pocket and gives him the number.

‘Welcome,’ says the man, and he begins to tell her about the various saunas, steam baths and massages from which she can choose.

‘I just want to swim,’ she says.

‘You’re welcome,’ says the man, showing her to the pool. The water splashes softly and lies calm in the dim light.

‘Thank you,’ she says, and the man withdraws.

She takes off her bathrobe and carefully puts it down on one of the loungers. Then she stands under the shower for a few minutes. She hears a loud splash; someone has jumped into the water. She comes out of the shower, goes towards
the pool over the cool, smooth tiles. A man is just getting out of the water, and stops when he sees her. He seems to be intrigued, maybe because she is naked. She hasn’t brought a bathing suit with her, she hadn’t thought that she might be able to swim at the hotel.