The Winter of the Lions (8 page)

‘What was all that about?’ asked Sundström.

‘Hm?’

‘That was …’

‘What?’ asked Joentaa.

‘That sounded like a new woman in your life.’

KAI
-
PETTERI
HÄMÄLÄINEN WAS
looking at the previous evening’s ratings, handed to him by Tuula. His eyes rested on the figures, and he tried to remember the guests, to give faces to those numbers.

His head was empty. He had blacked out. Surely he could remember the people he had talked to yesterday evening? There was a knock at the door. It was Tuula, to say that the girl had arrived. He looked at her enquiringly.

‘The girl. The girlfriend of that gunman who ran amok.’

He nodded.

‘Do you want to speak to her. Or …?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

He stayed sitting there motionless, while Tuula lingered in the doorway.

‘In a moment. I’ll be with you in a moment,’ he said. He kept thinking of his guests. The day before yesterday’s guests. Of course. The Tango King. The Tango King had collided with an elk on a country road and died. He had talked to his widow the day before yesterday. Hence the figures. A great many viewers switching on. Even more than usual. The Tango King’s widow. And today he was going to talk to another widow, if that was the way to describe the girl. That was an
editorial mistake. He couldn’t be seen talking to widows two evenings running.

Tuula came back and said it was already on the news. He didn’t understand her.

‘Mäkelä. And the other man. The news desk wants to know if they can show a clip from your programme. Of course I said yes.’

Hämäläinen nodded.

‘Fantastic!’ said Tuula.

‘Yes,’ said Hämäläinen.

Tuula was turning to go, but he held her back.

‘Listen …’

She waited in the doorway.

‘What do you think happened … to Mäkelä and the forensic pathologist?’

Tuula seemed to be waiting for him to be more specific with his question.

‘Does it … does it have anything to do with us?’ he said.

‘Us? How do you mean?’

‘I don’t know … well, they were both on the programme with me. I talked to them, and now …’

‘Lords of life and death,’ said Tuula.

‘What?’

‘I remember the wording … that was the trailer we made for the programme they appeared on. Lords of life and death.’

Hämäläinen said nothing.

‘Are you going to come and talk to the girl? She needs a bit of soothing and encouragement,’ said Tuula.

‘In a minute,’ said Hämäläinen.

‘The recording starts in twenty minutes,’ said Tuula.

GLIDING OVER THE
snow.

Setting the world to rights.

Sleeping, dreaming. Waking.

In the evening she visits Rauna. The children are eating in the large, brightly lit dining room, and she sits to one side, watching them. Pellervo Halonen, head of the Home, sits down beside her smiling. He asks how she’s doing.

‘All right,’ she says. ‘I’m feeling better.’

Rauna is eating with a hearty appetite, and laughs at them, and Pellervo Halonen says, ‘Rauna always likes it when you come. It’s good to see that, every time.’

She nods.

‘I really hope you’ll be able to help Rauna some day when … when she fully realises what happened. When she has to confront … well, the whole of it.’

She thinks about what he has said for a little while.

‘I hope so too,’ she says at last.

Pellervo Halonen rises to his feet and walks away, and she watches him. He is unusually young, younger than most of his staff, and he always walks very upright, turning to meet life. She noticed that on her very first visit.

She had been afraid of seeing Rauna again that time. It was a mixture of fear and longing. She talked to the psychologist about it. He advised against it, and she went to see Rauna the very next day.

Pellervo Halonen’s upright carriage as he accompanied her to Rauna’s room. She remembers that. And Rauna’s distant
face at the moment when their eyes met. Rauna said nothing, and for a few moments she thought that Rauna didn’t remember her. Then the fear in Rauna’s eyes gave way to longing. Rauna ran to her and hugged her, and laughed. Pellervo Hallonen laughed. Even she herself laughed, for the first time in a very long while.

‘I’ve had enough to eat. Shall we do a jigsaw?’ asks Rauna.

She opens her eyes and sees Rauna smiling.

She nods. Rauna runs ahead with a hop, skip and a jump, and she follows her to the playroom. Rauna does the Noah’s Ark puzzle. Deep in thought, she fits all the pieces in place until the picture is complete.

‘Finished!’ says Rauna, and she claps her hands and says Rauna is the best at doing jigsaw puzzles for miles around, and Rauna asks where the third lion is. ‘The third lion. The third monkey. The third giraffe.’

She can’t think of an answer to that, and says it’s a good question.

‘The third lion is coming later. And so are the others,’ says Rauna.

She nods.

‘On another ship,’ says Rauna. ‘In the winter.’

A carer is standing in the doorway. Visiting time is over. She reads Rauna a bedtime story, and at the end of the story Rauna, in her pink pyjamas, is wide awake.

‘See you again soon!’ calls Rauna, and the carer, smiling, offers her hand as she says goodbye.

THE HOUSE, WHITE
in the darkness. The apple tree wrapped in snow. He parked his car and went the few steps to the front door. Opened it and stood there in the silence. The note was lying on the living-room table, with the pen beside it. He looked at the note, read what he had written that morning, and wondered whether Larissa had read it. Turning his gaze away, he looked at the closed bedroom door. He imagined Larissa lying on the bed on the other side of the door. She had fallen asleep and had not woken up. Couldn’t find her way back to the surface. The image spread, and he strode over to the door and opened it abruptly. The room was empty, the bed was made. The bedclothes and cushions were as tidily arranged as in a hotel bedroom when you first move in.

Joentaa closed the door and stood there for a while, indecisively. The little Christmas tree was an outline in the dark. He hurried out into the cold and fetched the DVD from the car. The snow crunched under his feet. Then he was sitting in front of the flickering screen. Patrik Laukkanen laughed, and an unseen audience joined in. Leena Jauhiainen lay awake. The baby was asleep. Hämäläinen lifted a blue cloth and revealed the view of an injured face.

‘A funeral the wrong way round.’

He turned.

‘That was what disturbed me. I remember it now,’ said Larissa. She let her snow-white jacket slip to the floor and came towards him.

‘I didn’t hear you coming,’ he said.

She sat down beside him and looked at him. He avoided meeting her eyes, looked at the pictures flickering on the screen, and sensed that her gaze was resting on him.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

She did not reply.

‘What did you mean about …’

‘A funeral the wrong way round. People were laughing, not mourning, the dead were on show and not buried,’ she said.

Joentaa looked at her grave, sad face.

Her gaze was resting on his eyes.

He nodded. Waited. Her hand shot out fast, he felt a sharp pain on his cheeks and felt himself falling. Then she was lying on top of him, with her lips to his throat. Her movements were calm and regular. He closed his eyes and let himself drift. She was saying something in a voice that didn’t belong to her. The TV audience was laughing in the background. Suppose it was always like this? Falling. Falling for ever and ever. In the distance, he heard her laugh. There was soft, cool fabric against his face.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said.

‘Hm?’

‘You’re bleeding. I scratched a little too hard.’

‘Mm.’

‘I’ll clean it up. Do you have any disinfectant?’

‘Hm …’

‘Never mind. I’ll go and shower. Take this.’

He took the towel she handed him.

‘You must hold it against the cut. It’s only a scratch, looks worse than it is.’

He nodded and watched her going to the bathroom. He lay on the floor beside the sofa. The rushing of the shower. Water. An unseen audience. He picked up the remote control and muted the sound. He could taste blood at the corners of his mouth.

‘I’d like to ask you something,’ he said when she came back.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Why?’

‘You’re lying on the floor and the towel you’re holding to your face is turning red.’

‘Oh, it’s not so bad,’ he said.

She sat down cross-legged beside him.

‘I’d like to ask you something,’ he said again.

‘Go ahead,’ she said.

‘What was the most wonderful experience you ever had?’

She did not reply.

‘Is that so hard to answer?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Well?’

‘I’d be telling you a lie.’

‘You would?’

‘Yes.’

He sat up and tried to meet her eyes.

‘Go ahead, then,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I’d like to hear your lies.’

She still said nothing.

‘How old are you? What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Twenty-two. Larissa.’

‘I’d like to …’

‘We always take a bit off our age, but never more than three years at the most.’

Then she got to her feet.

‘Don’t come in until the scratch has stopped bleeding, please, there are clean sheets on the bed,’ she said as she left the room. She opened the bedroom door and closed it almost without a sound.

KAI
-
PETTERI
HÄMÄLÄINEN WAS
watching Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen, and already he felt a little better.

‘It’s only just begun,’ said Irene. She gave him a kiss on the cheek, sat down again on the sofa and watched her husband on television.

‘Today that girl was on the show, wasn’t she?’ she asked.

‘Yes, the girlfriend of the gunman who ran amok,’ said Hämäläinen.

He went into the bathroom, washed his hands and splashed a little water on his face. Then he went back to the living room, sat down beside Irene and put an arm round her.

‘How did it go?’ asked Irene.

‘Fine,’ said Hämäläinen.

On the screen, the girl kept her head lowered as she concentrated on finding words to describe something beyond description.

Yes, it had really gone very well.

He had steadied himself again. He had sat on his chair, seen his face in the mirror, thinking about ideas that were difficult to grasp, and Tuula had come along and said, yet again, that there wasn’t much time, the recording was beginning and the girl seemed silent and unsure of herself. He had nodded, stood up, and went to interview the girl. He had talked, the girl had listened. His voice had filled the studio, and the girl had nodded gravely, and then his powers had returned to him. When the recording began he was still feeling a little dizzy, but he couldn’t quite remember what had really disturbed him.

Lords of life and death, he had thought, and the girl had talked about her boyfriend, a gentle, affectionate young man, a model student, who had killed three people and then turned the gun on himself. He had nodded, and at every answer the girl gave, he knew what to ask next. Together with the girl he had swum in a river of words. His words, her words. A steadily flowing current.

The girl had concentrated on what she was saying, had not felt unsure of herself. Tuula had been wrong there, and anyway Hämäläinen was inclined to doubt Tuula’s judgement. How the hell could she have come up with the idea of getting him to interview, on two successive evenings, women who had lost their men? The Tango King’s widow, the girlfriend of the gunman who had run amok.

He looked at the TV screen and felt Irene’s hand tickling the nape of his neck. It gave him a tingling sensation. He closed his eyes and listened to the girl’s voice coming from the TV set.

‘I won’t forget him,’ she was saying. ‘He’s always with me.’

His own voice putting a question. Calm, controlled, warm and understanding, yet also sceptical and with a touch of admonition. Lords of life and death, Tuula had said. There was something about that remark that he couldn’t get out of his head.

‘The one thing I can’t forgive him is that he never really talked to me,’ said the girl. Then another voice, croaking slightly. The psychologist sitting in the audience whose job it had been to contribute a scientific comment from time to time. Then he heard his own voice asking a question. A question that now hovered in the air.

‘If I’d known, I’d have kept him from doing it. I could have done that,’ said the girl.

A moment of silence.

‘I could have kept him from doing it,’ said the girl again.

Irene’s hand at the nape of his neck. Hämäläinen opened his eyes. He saw himself on the screen, nodding thoughtfully. Then there was long applause.

‘Good,’ said Irene. It sounded curiously toneless.

‘What did you say?’ he asked.

‘Good. I mean you were good today,’ said Irene. She caressed the back of his neck, and he felt tired.

‘How are those two little imps of ours?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ said Irene.

‘When did they get to sleep?’

‘Late. Just before you came in.’

He nodded.

‘Lotta has her first race with the school cross-country skiing team at the weekend. She was all excited, so then of course Minna didn’t want to go to sleep either.’

He nodded.

‘Terrible,’ she said, and he said, ‘Goodnight, stay with us,’ but that was on the screen. The credits came up, and Irene said, yet again, ‘Terrible.’

‘What …’

‘That girl. She seemed to be … concentrating so hard. You too, both of you.’

He nodded.

‘I never felt you were concentrating so hard as in this particular show,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘It’s hardly two weeks ago, and people have already stopped talking about it. They hardly even remember how many people that boy shot.’

‘Three,’ said Hämäläinen. ‘And five wounded. You’re right, we weren’t …’ But he didn’t finish his sentence. That interview wasn’t so topical any longer, he had been going to say. It hadn’t been easy; first they had tried inviting the gunman’s parents or relations of his victims on to the show, and after
fruitless efforts in those quarters they had finally got hold of the boy’s girlfriend. Not so topical, but relevant to the subject all the same. The girl had made a good guest.