The Winter of the Lions (7 page)

‘Fine,’ said Sundström.

‘And we have to think about Hämäläinen.’

‘Hämäläinen?’

‘Three people took part in that conversation on the chat show. Two of them are dead, and Hämäläinen is the third.’

Sundström said nothing for a while. ‘I see what you’re getting at. The problem is, I just can’t think how to construct a motive for murder out of that conversation on the chat show. It simply won’t wash. Unless we assume we have here a murderer who kills people because they appear on TV.’

‘We’d have to protect a hell of a lot of people,’ said Grönholm.

‘It was a joke, Petri,’ said Sundström. ‘Irony.’

Irony, thought Joentaa.

‘Of course we’ll talk to Hämäläinen,’ said Sundström. ‘I’ve already fixed it with our colleagues in Helsinki for us to be present when they interview him. But personal protection … at the moment that strikes me as a rather far-fetched notion.’

Joentaa nodded.

‘What matters is to get an idea of what this is really all about,’ said Sundström.

On the screen, the comic was telling sad stories from his life.

The dead bodies lying on stretchers under blue cloths had never been alive.

And Patrik Laukkanen, who wasn’t alive any more, raised a glass of water to his mouth.

JOENTAA DROVE TO
Helsinki with Sundström. The roads were wide and empty, the winter sunlight gave way to grey clouds, and it began to snow.

They sat in Westerberg’s office and compared notes on
what they knew. Kimmo Joentaa couldn’t get that picture out of his head, the image of a laughing Laukkanen raising the glass of water to his mouth.

Sundström had not been exaggerating. Marko Westerberg did indeed seem to be very tired as he described the state of their investigation in Helsinki so far.

They went to the house where Harri Mäkelä had lived, and where he had died outside the front entrance. A sky-blue, unusually extensive clinker-built wooden house. Police officers in white overalls were securing any clues. Neighbours and curious onlookers stood on the other side of yellow police tape. A thin young man was sitting on a sofa in the living room. His head was bowed and his eyes closed.

‘Mr Vaasara?’ said Westerberg in his melancholy voice, dragging the words out slowly.

The man looked up.

‘These are colleagues of ours from Turku. Paavo Sundström and Kimmo Joentaa.’

The man nodded.

‘Nuutti Vaasara,’ said Westerberg. ‘He’s … he lived here with Harri Mäkelä. And they … they worked together too.’ Westerberg sounded particularly weary as he gave this information.

The young man nodded, Sundström and Joentaa nodded.

‘I’d like to know more about the work,’ said Joentaa.

The young man stared at him for a while, and Joentaa wasn’t sure if he had understood. He was about to ask again when Vaasara said, ‘The studio’s at the back of the house.’

‘May I take a look at it?’ asked Joentaa.

‘Of course,’ said Vaasara, and got to his feet. He was tall, and his movements were fluid and well coordinated. Joentaa, Sundström and Westerberg followed Vaasara down a long corridor and entered a world that had nothing to do with the
warm, elegantly furnished living area of the house. Vaasara had opened the door and let Joentaa into the large white room first. On a long, massive wooden table in the middle of the room stood containers, spray cans and buckets of paint. Joentaa went over to the table and out of the corner of his eye saw human figures leaning against the wall. With their heads drooping. A red and yellow clown stood out sharply against the white that dominated the room. A dead body lay in the clown’s lap.

A stand-up comic telling sad stories from his life, he thought.

Joentaa stood motionless, and Vaasara said, ‘This is our studio.’

Joentaa nodded, shook off his rigidity and went over to the table. He looked inside the containers.

‘Silicon, latex,’ said Vaasara. ‘Silicon, latex, plastics, they’re the basic materials for making the puppets.’

Joentaa nodded. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the puppets up against the wall and felt a pang in his chest. In his chest and behind his forehead. He sensed an idea making space for itself.

‘I’m the assistant. Harri is the artist,’ said Vaasara.

Joentaa nodded. Not with the best will in the world, Sundström had said. By now Sundström had gone over to the table himself and was asking Vaasara a question that Joentaa did not hear, because the idea was taking over more space. An idea that he couldn’t quite grasp yet. Westerberg was standing gloomily in the doorway.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Sundström. The words reached him in waves.

‘Sure,’ said Joentaa.

The idea was Sanna. The moment when the nurse on night duty had put out the light. Bright yellow light, like the light in this room. The same white walls. He had seen
Sanna’s face and couldn’t take in what he was seeing. Couldn’t take it in. Hadn’t taken it in to this day. He went out of the room.

‘Kimmo?’ he heard Sundström saying.

The name came to him in waves, Kimmo, Kimmo, Kimmo.

Kimmo, he had replied, when Sanna had asked who he was, what his name was. When she didn’t recognise him any more, when the world in which they had lived together was slipping away from her, to be replaced by a new world that he didn’t understand. Could he see her riding a horse, Sanna had asked, and he had nodded, and Sanna had smiled for the last time.

He went down the corridor back to the living room, where it was warm. He sat down on the sofa where Vaasara had been sitting. His head was bowed, like Vaasara’s when they had arrived.

‘Are you really all right, Kimmo?’ asked Sundström behind his back.

‘In a minute,’ said Joentaa. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing regularly.

‘It – they’re only models,’ said Vaasara. ‘Puppets.’

Sundström laughed briefly.

‘Thanks. We’d never have thought of that for ourselves,’ said Westerberg wearily, standing in the doorway.

THE CONFERENCE ROOM
was dark, and smaller than their own in Turku. Jobs to be done were shared out, areas of responsibility named. Officers assigned to keep the flow of
information going between Turku and Helsinki. Two cities, one murder case. Sundström and Westerberg agreed to call each other twice a day, at fixed times, to exchange the most important results of their investigations.

A forensics expert told them that an initial analysis showed the probable nature of the murder weapon in both cases.

Probable nature, thought Joentaa.

‘As you know, features around the edges of wounds and the direction of the thrust allow conclusions to be drawn about the nature of the instrument used, but it’s not an exact science,’ said the forensics expert.

‘Probability will do us for now,’ said Sundström.

‘A small but sharp blade,’ said the forensics man. ‘Presumably an ordinary household knife, meaning it’ll be one widely sold in large quantities.’

Sundström and Westerberg nodded.

Joentaa heard little of what was being said. He was thinking of Sanna, Sanna’s face when life had come to a stop behind it. The routine sympathy of the nurse on night duty. The drive home. The landing stage and the lake in the darkness. The cold of the water against his legs as the pain finally made its way into him and spread.

One of the Helsinki investigators talked about Harri Mäkelä. His voice sounded hunted, and rose and fell at unnaturally regular intervals. Mäkelä had been the best, he said. He’d made life-sized dummies not only for Finnish productions but also for the American movie industry. He’d even made the model of an Oscar prizewinner who had to fight a robot that looked just like him in a film. Joentaa wondered what the basic idea of that film could have been. The officer said, ‘He was much in the media. Recently wrote a book. Kind of a semi-celebrity, here in Helsinki anyway.’

Silence filled the room.

‘Hm,’ said Sundström.

‘We don’t know much more about him yet,’ said the officer apologetically.

Then they went along the corridor and stepped out into the driving snow. They drove to the TV station from which Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen’s chat show went out with such success. A large, tall building, surrounded by its own extensive park, dominated by glass. While they made for the building Joentaa looked at the little people visible through the glass, and wondered whether the executives who ran the station deliberately put their employees on show as if they were on a huge screen.

The doorman stood to attention when Westerberg showed his ID, the woman editor of the
Hämäläinen
chat show welcomed them on the twelfth floor. She was in a cheerful mood. Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen entered the room a little later. He wore a black jacket and blue jeans, clothes expressing the mixture of gravity and the popular approach that presumably accounted for some of his success. Joentaa examined the best-known TV face in Finland and wondered what it was about it that he found so irritating.

‘Hello,’ said Hämäläinen, and shook hands one by one with Sundström, Westerberg and Joentaa. He sat down, crossed his legs, and looked at them with a friendly, enquiring expression.

Hämäläinen is playing the part of Hämäläinen, thought Joentaa, and Hämäläinen’s expression darkened as Westerberg explained the reason for their visit: Harri Mäkelä, found dead outside his house.

‘That … that’s terrible,’ said Hämäläinen.

‘There’s worse to come,’ said Sundström.

Hämäläinen looked at him and waited.

‘Patrik Laukkanen.’

Hämäläinen frowned and seemed to be thinking. ‘Isn’t that the forensic pathologist who was on our show with Mäkelä?’

‘That’s right,’ said Sundström.

Hämäläinen waited.

‘Laukkanen was also found dead,’ said Sundström.

‘Oh, good heavens,’ said the editor.

‘That … that’s terrible,’ said Hämäläinen, and for the first time he really did seem to be shaken.

‘The only link between the two that we’ve been able to establish so far is your show. The appearance of both of them on the programme,’ said Sundström.

Hämäläinen was silent for a while. ‘I see,’ he said at last.

‘So far as we know, Mäkelä and Laukkanen met for the first time on your show. Can you think of any other connection between them?’

Hämäläinen shook his head, and seemed to be lost in thought.

‘Nothing at all that stuck in your memory?’

‘It was a good show that day, a good conversation, we had good …’ He stopped.

We had good ratings, Joentaa suspected.

‘We had a good conversation, they were nice guys and they came over that way. Good guests,’ said Hämäläinen.

Sundström nodded.

‘There’s one idea we’ve discussed within our team, an idea we would like to put to you,’ said Westerberg with ceremony and very, very wearily.

‘What is it?’ asked Hämäläinen’s editor when the silence began to seem endless. Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen was staring at the glass walls around them.

‘Do you … will you have anyone around for protection?’ asked Westerberg.

Hämäläinen didn’t seem to understand what he meant.

‘Do you have personal protection? Bodyguards?’ Westerberg specified.

‘No,’ said Hämäläinen. ‘No, I’m not a … I lead a perfectly normal life.’

Westerberg nodded, and Joentaa thought of an interview with Hämäläinen he had read a few weeks ago. It had focused again and again on that statement. A perfectly normal life, a star within the reach of ordinary people. As far as he remembered, Hämäläinen was the father of two daughters. Twins. Like Tuomas Heinonen.

‘Why do you ask that?’ said Hämäläinen’s editor. ‘Do you really think that Kai-Petteri …?’

‘To be honest,’ said Sundström, ‘at the moment we’re overwhelmed by what’s happened. We get that sometimes. We don’t know anything, and we don’t understand it. We’re only registering events.’

They all fell silent, until Hämäläinen suddenly stood up and said, in an unnaturally loud voice, ‘Absolutely out of the question.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sundström.

‘Out of the question. I’m very sorry about these deaths, but I didn’t know either your forensic pathologist or Harri Mäkelä personally. I met them just once, at the time of that interview. I can’t contribute anything, and of course I don’t need personal protection or anything like that. Excuse me, please.’ He shook hands with Sundström, Westerberg and Joentaa, and walked out of the room.

‘That was quick,’ said Westerberg slowly.

The editor took them down the now brightly lit corridors of the big glass case that was the TV station to the lift and said again, before the automatic doors closed, how terrible it was. The doorman stood to attention, the large car park was a picturesque scene in the dark of an early evening swirling with snowflakes.

They drove in silence, and Kimmo Joentaa thought of Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen acting the part of himself. A part that he had to play all day long. A man who was real on screen and only a copy in real life.

The sad comic imitates voices, the presenter imitates himself.

Joentaa closed his eyes, tried to concentrate on some distant but central nugget of information, and suddenly had to laugh at his own crazy idea. He laughed and chuckled, and thought, vaguely, that he must call Larissa.

‘Kimmo’s laughing,’ said Sundström, and Westerberg only nodded, presumably because he didn’t understand the joke and was not at all interested in understanding it.

ON THE DRIVE
back to Turku he tried to reach Larissa, but she wasn’t there.

Of course not. He wondered why he felt such a great need to talk to her.

He repeatedly got through to his own mailbox, with the manufacturer’s standard pre-recorded announcement, a metallic female voice that brusquely asked callers to leave a message. He had deleted the real announcement, Sanna’s announcement in Sanna’s voice, three years ago on the night of her death. It had been an almost unconscious act, one that he could hardly remember.

At the fourth attempt he closed his eyes and began speaking. ‘This is Kimmo, Hello. I … I’ll be a little later home than expected because … because of Helsinki, I’ve been in Helsinki, on a case, and I’m on my way back but the road … it’s snowing heavily, so it could take some time … See you soon.’ He was going to add something more, but sensed Sundström’s eyes resting on him and broke the connection.