Wolves and Angels (49 page)

Koskinen stayed behind to look at the lake for a few minutes. The man and boy were paddling up the river. The canoe made a quiet lapping sound and then suddenly a splash from the reeds—the boy had hooked a fish. He enthusiastically reeled in the line, and the man slipped a net under their catch. The canoe rocked dangerously, not straightening until the man jerked the net up out of the water with a good two
-
pound
northern
pike trashing around in it.

Koskinen turned away wistfully and started walking. The wind ha
d
started to blow
,
i
t whipped leaves around in the yard as if in farewell to one more summer. Two magpies were fighting around the outdoor grill over a burned sausage casing.
An a
ngry dog bark
ed
on
the other side of the lake. Somewhere even farther away a chainsaw growled into life.

The women had already made it to the back seat of the Corolla. Pekki waved to Koskinen and drove off. Ketterä was sitting in his wheelchair, transfixed
at the rear of the car until it disappeared from sight.
Then he swung his chair around
toward
Koskinen and Kaatio.

“Off to jail then,” he said, his voice shaking. “It’s all the same to me. Life can’t get any worse than it already is.”

He banged the right wheel with his fist. It had to hurt. “I was already put away for life five years ago.”

Ketterä closed his eyes and squeezed both wheels so hard the whole chair trembled. Koskinen gave him time to calm down and only then helped him into the rear seat of the car. Kaatio folded the chair up and lifted it into the trunk. In passing he whispered to Koskinen, “At least this time we don’t have to worry about him doing a runner.”

“No, thankfully not,” Koskinen said with a snort. “I’m not exactly in any shape to be chasing anyone down.” He walked around the car and climbed into the back seat next to Ketterä.

Koskinen watched the landscape, lost in thought, and didn’t start talking until Kaatio turned onto the highway back to Tampere. “We’ll start the official interviews tomorrow, but there’s one more thing I wanted to ask now.”

“Go right ahead,”
Ketterä
grumbled.
“Lay
it
on me!”

“I can’t understand why you left your wife and children. Wouldn’t they have been an important source of support after your accident?”

“No one can understand it. At least not someone who hasn’t been condemned to living on other people’s pity for the rest of his life. Yeah, Sanni tried—I can’t deny that—but I still saw how hard living with an invalid was for her. I knew I’d lose her eventually anyway, and the more dependent I became on her, the worse losing her would hurt.”

“And the children?” Kaatio asked from the front seat. “Didn’t you think of them at all?”

Ketterä sighed. “It was exactly them I was thinking of. The girl was three then, and the boy was just a year. I knew that at that point they wouldn’t have any real memories of their father, so they wouldn’t really miss me. I went through all the scenarios—how one day they’d be ashamed of their crippled father with their friends. And I wouldn’t have been able to bear that.”

They had already made it halfway back to Tampere. Ketterä looked to the right at an old stone bridge as they passed, and the brokenness of his voice told how difficult it was for him to speak. “The solution I came to hurt like hell, but I still decided to never see them aga
in. I was just thinking of what’
d be best for Sanni and the kids. And it didn’t take long before I heard that some guy had taken them under his wing…”

Ketterä swallowed the rest of his words and then fell completely silent. Koskinen was realizing what an avalanche of feelings Ketterä had been through. His last five years had been a constant battle between love, hate, and jealousy.

They were downtown by the Orthodox church, when Ketterä started talking again. “I’ll say right here and now that I don’t need a lawyer. I don’t regret killing Raymond. Not one little bit! I would’ve done it eventually anyway. Even if hadn’t figured out
that he
was to blame for my
injury
.”

Koskinen thought back to what Matias Honkanen, the ex-officer, had said about the bitterness that followed being paralyzed. It was like a buildup of toxins in the body after an illness. But still it was hard for him to understand it.

“But why Raymond in particular?”

Ketterä looked at Koskinen in surprise. “Isn’t it obvious? We were chained to each other. We had the same memories and the same fate. We were like Siamese twins. Together we couldn’t breathe anymore; one of us had to be torn off.”

Kaatio parked in front of the main entrance. He got out of the driver’s seat and went to get the wheelchair out of the trunk. Koskinen went around behind the car as well, his legs still clumsy. “You take him from here.”

“Where?”

“Down to the holding cells for now.
T
he
y
can
figure out what to do with him. Maybe they can call in a medical assistant from somewhere. After questioning he’ll be headed for the Hämeenlinna Prison Hospital Unit in any case.”

Kaatio muttered something insubordinate, but then started putting the wheelchair together. Koskinen didn’t bother looking back. As he entered the lobby of the station, he hadn’t even managed to close the door behind him before a gruff shout came from behind the duty desk. “Koskinen rules!”

Officer Tiikko was behind the duty desk with a young bristly-haired officer. They both stretched their arms
toward
the ceiling and did a two-man wave. Koskinen shook his head and stepped into the elevator.

Climbing the stairs wasn’t an attractive prospect at the moment, and even in the elevator he had to lean against the wall. The face in the mirror was wilted. The gray stubble made his cheeks look more sunken than they actually were. His blue eyes stood tiredly in his face and his ski jump of a nose was red from all the exertion. His thin hair was also in desperate need of combing.

He tottered out of the elevator into the third floor lobby and at first didn’t immediately recognize the diminutive woman standing in the hallway. Her wheat blond hair was cut short and her head looked like a round cabbage. It was Milla without her habitual antenna cap.

She walked up to Koskinen and waved a stack of bills in the air.

“Guess what!”

“What?”

“I made a hundred euros! Isn’t that awesome?”

Koskinen laughed. “Congratulations!” He calculated the odds—ten to one against. Not very flattering.

“And all because of you!” Milla exclaimed, her round face beaming like the moon in a children’s storybook. But almost as quickly she turned serious and conspiratorial. “Can I suggest a scenario?”

“A scenario?” Koskinen was suddenly on his guard. “What might that be?”

“I’m going out to dinner with my boyfriend. You could come along.”

“Oh, is
that it
?” Koskinen laughed, relieved. “There’s no way I can make it. Maybe some other time.”

“I’m buying.”

“Even so.”

Milla looked disappointed. “All right then. Me and Samuli will go
,
just the two of us.”

Koskinen walked straight into Pekki’s office. Ulla was sitting in there as well. She had already had time to conjure up a cup of coffee and a few oatmeal cookies from somewhere.

“So that’s that,” she said, smiling at Koskinen and biting off half of a cookie.

Koskinen nodded. “Yes indeed. But there’s still plenty of work to do. We need to reopen the investigation into Ketterä’s ski accident. Now we have a completely new perspective.”

Pekki looked at Koskinen appraisingly. “Are you sure Ketterä wasn’t just imagining it all?”

“That very well may be, but we still have to find out. We have to dig up all of
Timonen
’s acquaintances and drinking buddies from the fall of ’95.”

“That’s gravedigger’s work,” Pekki whispered and tried to grab a cookie from the desk.

Ulla slapped his hand. “That’s going to be quite a row to hoe. Should we get started right now?”

“It can wait until tomorrow morning,” Koskinen said and then turned to Pekki. “You write up a preliminary report about today’s events. Also throw together some sort of press release for the media. Tanse is going to swoop in here as soon as he hears about the arrest. I want to disappear before that happens. This
tracksuit
is
like
a
red cape to
a bull
for him.”

“I’ll do it,” Pekki promised. “But where did you lose the prisoner?”

“Kaatio went to take Ketterä straight down to the holding cells.”

Pekki stood up from his desk looking concerned. “I’ll go make sure they don’t let him near the stairs alone.”

Koskinen knew what Pekki meant.

Pekki disappeared from the room, and Ulla offered Koskinen a cookie. “Have you had time to eat anything all day?”

“I was just thinking about leaving.” Koskinen wolfed the cookie down in one mouthful. “First I’m going downstairs for a shower though.”

He turned around to go, but stopped at the door and thought for a moment about how to phrase the question he wanted to ask. Shouldn’t she think a little more about the move to Hämeenlinna? Let Kristian move there alone if he really wanted to go. But he couldn’t find the appropriate words; instead he dug his race medal out of his pocket and offered it to her. “Take this to your kids. I’m not going to do anything with it.”

Ulla licked a cookie crumb from the corner of her mouth and turned the medal over in her hand looking confused. She didn’t even notice that Koskinen had already slipped into the hallway.

Koskinen was surprised that the gym downstairs was completely empty. Usually someone was always there on the weekends pumping iron. Apparently the beautiful fall day had lured all the off-duty cops to other forms of recreation.

Koskinen had just climbed out of his clothes when his phone rang on the bench in the shower room.

“Hey, it’s Kangas. Where the hell are you? Me and Aatos have already had three rounds.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Hurry up! We decided to take turns drinking you under the table.”

Koskinen promised to hurry. He put the phone back on the bench and turned on the shower. The hot water quickly loosened up his tight muscles, and it felt like his mental faculties were recovering at the same pace. His thoughts started to race as he thought about what he would do. Given the sense of relief he felt, he didn’t want to be alone.

Suddenly he was taken with a blind, raging hunger. The thought of sinfully greasy bratwurst, garlic potatoes, and a few cold beers made saliva run down his freshly washed jaw. He decided to take a taxi the barely half-mile trip from Sorin
Street
to the arched brick gateway of the old Finlayson factory complex.

But he doubted whether hanging around other cops would keep his interest all night and found himself longing for female company. He turned the shower water colder and kept standing under it for a while. He thought about whom he should call. Riitta Makkonen or Ursula Katajisto? On the other hand, he was interested to find out whether Lea Kalenius’ invitation to come up for tea still stood. Or should he try the blind date Tiikko had been trying to finagle or check out
this
Laila
Pekki had mentioned
?

S
o many
women
to
choose
from, but
he
was
still alone.

He shut off the shower, sat down on the bench with a towel around his waist, and made his choice. This lifted his mood, and, satisfied, he straightened out his legs. He had driven them hard today. His long, hairy shins were covered with wet droplets, and suddenly he found himself staring at them. He found himself wondering whether they were really his legs. There were some things that he just took for granted. He wiggled his toes and found himself surprised again—his brain sent a signal, and his toes obeyed.

He rarely thought about that.

Also by Seppo Jokinen

In Finnish:

Koskinen ja siimamies

Koskinen ja raadonsyöjä

Koskinen ja pudotuspeli

Koskinen ja taikashow

Koskinen ja kreikkalainen kolmio

Hukan enkelit

Piripolkka

Vilpittömässä mielessä

Suurta pahaa

Sana sanaa vastaan

Hiirileikki

Viha on paha vieras

Kuka sellaista tekisi

Lyöty mies

Räätälöity ratkaisu
Ajomies