Light in a Dark House (19 page)

He dreamed of a large, picturesque golf course with no one playing on it, although the stands were full of spectators.

51

IN THE MORNING,
when Joentaa was sitting at breakfast watching Westerberg and Seppo shovelling multicoloured muesli flakes into their mouths, he had a curious phone call, from Holmgren. It took Joentaa a few seconds to work out who that was.

‘What did you do to our patient?’ asked the man who had introduced himself by that name.

‘I . . .’

‘She’s screaming. Screaming and laughing.’

Holmgren. The bearded head psychiatrist at the Ristiina hospital.

‘Anita-Liisa Koponen. You questioned her yesterday, and a little later she started screaming and laughing. And then she made pasta and tomato sauce for the patients and the staff.’

‘I . . . I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. This is a breakthrough. It gives us hope.’

‘Oh.’

‘But I have to know what she told you.’

‘Hmm. Yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘Yes?’

‘I . . . well, I don’t know whether I can tell you.’

Holmgren did not reply.

‘She said she’d never told anyone about it before. So I don’t think I can tell you behind her back.’

Holmgren still said nothing.

‘Do you understand?’ asked Joentaa.

‘Yes,’ said Holmgren. ‘Yes, I do understand.’

‘You could ask her about it, see if she’ll tell you too.’

‘Yes,’ said Holmgren. ‘Several times in my career I’ve had to refer to my medical duty of patient confidentiality, although the other way around . . . but yes, I do understand. You’re perfectly right.’

‘I may have to speak to Ms Koponen again,’ said Joentaa.

‘Please do. Any time you like,’ said Holmgren.

‘And very good luck to you and Ms Koponen for now,’ said Joentaa.

Holmgren laughed. ‘The same to you,’ he said and ended the conversation. Westerberg, coming up to the table with another bowl of muesli, asked, ‘Anything important?’

‘That was the doctor at the hospital in Ristiina,’ he said. ‘The psychiatrist treating my witness Anita-Liisa Koponen.’

‘The one who recognised the dead woman as her piano teacher?’

‘That’s the one. It seems she’s doing better. I don’t exactly know why, but she told me something yesterday. An incident in the past . . .’

‘Ah,’ said Westerberg.

Violence, thought Joentaa. Casual brutality. A natural enough catastrophe, but Anita-Liisa Koponen hadn’t seen it coming. It had been twenty-five years before she was able to talk about it for the first time. And then, at last, she had begun to scream.

He thought of what Westerberg had said. That the father of the dead politician refused to recognise his son in the photograph. And the same was true of the sister of the other dead man, Forsman.

‘Are we going to see the politician’s parents?’ he asked.

Westerberg nodded. ‘After breakfast. I said we’d be there at ten.’

‘Good,’ said Joentaa.

‘And Kimmo, I’ll need that photo back,’ said Seppo. ‘I want to show it around today.’

Joentaa nodded. ‘I’ll bring it right away,’ he said. He went to his room and called Sundström, to bring him up to date with developments.

‘Westerberg?’ asked Sundström. ‘You mean Marko Westerberg from Helsinki?’

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘There in that dump? Karjasaari.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because of a double murder.’

‘Presumably.’

‘That’s somehow connected to our dead woman.’

‘I think so, yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘Because a nutcase thinks she recognises the woman as her piano teacher.’

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘Whose name she doesn’t know, she only knows she was an angel.’

‘That’s right,’ said Joentaa.

He waited for Sundström to crack a joke and dismiss the subject of Karjasaari and all the rest of it, but as so often Sundström surprised him. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘If anything else comes of this it could get us further forward. Will you call again this evening and tell me what the prospects are?’

‘I’ll do that,’ said Joentaa.

‘And send me through the addresses of the nutcase’s relations. We’ll set about checking up with them. Maybe they’ll be able to remember the piano teacher’s name.’

The nutcase’s relations, thought Joentaa.

He put his mobile on the bed, picked up his laptop and switched it on. No new messages had come in.

No news of a big win on the lottery.

No telephone bill.

Not even a ‘Yes’.

52

25 November 1985

Dear diary,

Saara isn’t there any more. The house is empty. No one lives there now.

Anita-Liisa Koponen told me that today. She told me although I didn’t ask her, and I never talk to her, but she came up to me at break and told me.

At midday I went there with Lauri, and the house really is empty. Risto’s big car has gone, and so has Saara’s little one. The curtains have gone. I didn’t want to, but Lauri kept saying we ought to go into the garden and see what it looks like inside, and then I went with him, and when we were in the garden I suddenly thought that Risto might be there after all, and I began trembling. Trembling like mad. Lauri asked if everything was all right, and I said yes, yes, everything was fine.

This morning Lauri helped me a lot with the dictation, because I was sweating so much I almost burst into tears, because I couldn’t concentrate and I couldn’t keep up. It was all much too fast, and then Lauri took my exercise book and wrote the dictation out for me, and old Itkonen didn’t notice because he never sees anything. Later Lauri even apologised to me because he made a couple of mistakes on account of doing it in such a hurry, my goodness. I didn’t say so, but I couldn’t care less whether I make ten mistakes or a hundred or a thousand. Nothing matters now, but no one would understand that.

So then we were in the garden and we looked through the window. It was all empty inside. The sofa had gone. The big bed in the bedroom had gone. The piano had gone. I was trembling, and I thought I was going mad with fear or sadness or goodness knows what.

Lauri asked me what was so bad now.

Nothing, I said, but we’re here.

Why are we here? Lauri asked, and he said none of this is logical, and he wants to understand it. And I ought to tell him what’s going on.

Forget it, I said.

And that’s just it. That’s what I’d like to do.

At last. At last. At last.

Forget it.

53

‘
SO HERE YOU
are again,’ said Joosef Happonen.

They were sitting opposite each other on the low red sofas that Westerberg had already described during the drive there. Joentaa understood what Westerberg had meant when he said he had felt both at ease and uneasy in the house. Suoma Happonen brought coffee, and Joosef Happonen repeated:

‘Here you are again.’

‘Yes,’ said Westerberg.

‘And of course we wonder . . . why. Forgive me, but what do you want from us?’

‘Mr Happonen . . .’ Westerberg began.

‘We would like to have some peace at last.’

‘We understand that.’

‘Then . . . what is it?’

Everyone is the same as usual, thought Joentaa.

‘Sugar?’ asked Suoma Happonen. ‘Milk?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Westerberg. ‘Well . . .’

‘For you?’

It took Joentaa a moment to realise that she meant him. ‘No, no, thank you. Nothing for me,’ he said.

Suoma Happonen poured coffee for Westerberg and sat down beside her husband. ‘For you?’ she asked him.

‘What?’ asked Happonen.

‘Coffee?’

He waved it away.

‘The piano teacher,’ said Joentaa, following an impulse.

He saw the woman’s enquiring glance. And the look in the man’s eyes, which was extinguished when Joosef Happonen simply closed his eyes. As if he had been forcing himself to keep them open too long, just waiting until he could finally close them.

‘The piano teacher?’ asked Suoma Happonen.

Her husband took his arm from around her shoulders and let himself lean back. His eyes were still closed.

‘What piano teacher?’ asked Suoma Happonen.

‘A woman who worked at the school that your son attended,’ said Joentaa.

‘That means nothing to me,’ she said. ‘Markus never had piano lessons. He did once play the violin, but only when he was small, after that he didn’t want to. And of course we didn’t make him go on. Although it would have been nice. But . . .’

‘Perhaps she taught your son at school in the regular lessons on the timetable,’ said Westerberg.

‘Yes . . . of course that’s possible. But why is that important?’

‘Mr Happonen?’ said Westerberg.

Happonen opened his eyes.

‘Can you remember a woman – she’d have been young at the time – who taught your son? In the summer of 1985?’

Happonen looked at Westerberg, and did not reply.

‘Mr Happonen?’

‘Joosef? What’s the matter?’

Kimmo Joentaa saw Joosef Happonen slowly slide off the sofa. He stood up and took a step towards him. Westerberg had also risen to his feet, but he stopped in mid-step, and Suoma Happonen too sat as if frozen as her husband collapsed on the floor, and after some vain attempts to catch himself up lay there on his back.

‘I’ll be all right in a moment,’ he whispered.

‘Joosef,’ said Suoma Happonen tonelessly.

‘I’ll be all right in a moment. Don’t worry.’

‘What is it, Joosef?’ asked his wife. ‘Joosef?’

‘Mr Happonen?’ asked Westerberg, and Joentaa went to get a glass of water. He had no idea whether it would help, but he had drunk water in small sips the day after Sanna’s death. When he came back Happonen was just sitting up. He handed him the glass. Happonen nodded and drank a little.

‘Yes. Thanks,’ he said.

‘All right?’ asked Westerberg.

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ said Happonen, hauling himself back up on the sofa. ‘Fine. I don’t know what . . . I kind of . . . collapsed.’

‘Joosef,’ said Suoma Happonen.

‘Not like me at all,’ murmured Happonen. ‘Hasn’t ever . . . happened to me before.’ He laughed. ‘I’m all right. Where were we?’

‘The . . . the piano teacher,’ said Westerberg.

‘Yes. Right. I’m sorry, I can only confirm what my wife said. Our son Markus never learned the piano, and I really don’t remember his teachers at school now.’ He cleared his throat and sat upright.

No one talked about what happened
, thought Joentaa.
Everyone is the same as usual
.

‘Well . . . anything else?’ asked Happonen, and his briskly casual tone was in almost comic contrast to his collapse of only a few seconds earlier.

‘Mr Happonen . . .’ said Westerberg.

‘No,’ said Happonen.

‘The fact is that—’

‘No,’ said Happonen. He got to his feet and walked across the room, taking long strides. ‘I’d like you to go now. I must . . . we must have a little peace.’

‘Of course,’ said Westerberg.

They sat there for a little longer. Suoma Happonen was wringing her hands and shaking her head, presumably to show that she didn’t know what was going on either.

Happonen was waiting for them by his front door.

‘I’m sure you’ll understand,’ he said when Westerberg and Joentaa had joined him.

R. says I’m not to worry about it
.

‘Do you know a man known as R.?’ asked Joentaa.

Happonen said nothing and stared at him.

‘What?’ he asked at last.

‘R. A name. So far we know only the initial.’

‘No. I’m sorry. Goodbye,’ said Happonen.

R. says I’m not to worry about it.

She smiled at me.

‘Good heavens,’ said Westerberg wearily as they reached the car.

L. as in Larissa, thought Joentaa.

A. as in August.

54

Dear diary. 15 December. The hotel room is beige. The wall, the chairs, the bedspread, the cushion, all of them beige.

Lassi Anttila, fifty-seven, is a store detective and in the evening a cleaner at a shopping centre in Raisio, near Naantali.

I went there today.

A pleasing sensation.

Following a detective.

I assume it’s something to do with control. Presumably everything I’ve done recently is to do with control. Losing control and getting it back.

The rituals, the diary, the business cards. At the end I even held a card under Miettinen’s nose, although I knew he wouldn’t be able to make anything of it.

Sitting at the computer, carefully adjusting the template to size, switching on the printer, printing out the card. A name that doesn’t mean anything to anyone but me. Profession: adviser; journalist; pastor; security scout – no, none of that is normal.

I don’t think there’s any such thing as a security scout, but it will do for Lassi Anttila.

Keeping a diary at my age – that’s not normal.

I called Leea.

Talking to Leea, about her friend Henna and the baby.