Light in a Dark House (4 page)

It’s a funny idea when you imagine it. Someone’s smooching turning out useless. We’ll see if I do want to remember it some time, but anyway I’ve written it down now. Dear diary. That’s the way you put it, right? Dear diary. Hi, dear diary. I’ll have to ask Lauri tomorrow if you really do put it that way.

9

TURKU HOSPITAL. A
large, white building with countless windows. Kimmo Joentaa had tried counting them once, on a sunny day before Sanna’s death.

He had really meant to go home to look through his post and sleep for a few hours. But then he sat in the car instead, staring at the big, solid building, trying to pinpoint the window behind which Sanna was lying. And sleeping. Or dying.

Then he had begun to count, gave up at 174, got out of the car and went back along all the corridors to Sanna’s room. That was quick, she had said, wearily and in a husky voice, and he had sat down beside her bed and tried to smile.

The car park still looked the same. Sun too warm for autumn, as it had been then. Grönholm, beside him, got out of the car. Joentaa followed and overtook him. He suddenly felt that he had to get all this over with quickly. He walked purposefully; he knew the way. Right-angled walls, arrows to wherever you were going. There was a uniformed woman officer outside the broad swing doors with the words
Intensive Care
above them. Joentaa took his ID out of his coat pocket and returned her nod before going on. Behind him he heard Petri Grönholm’s slower footsteps.

Inside, white-clad forensics officers and a curious silence. Nurses both male and female were leaning against the walls, behind a glazed partition. Sundström was standing at the end of the corridor, deep in conversation with a man whom Joentaa knew.

Rintanen. The medical director of the hospital, who had looked after Sanna during the last days of her life. The doctor who made it possible for him to be with her day and night, although the hospital regulations didn’t really allow for that. One of the nurses had told him at the time that it wasn’t usual, and he would only make himself ill if he didn’t sleep and eat. Joentaa had nodded, and said nothing, and wondered why someone who didn’t understand anything about death was working in a hospital.

He went over to Sundström and to Rintanen, who stood very upright but not tense, with his head slightly bent. He used to stand like that before. Joentaa passed the room where Sanna had been lying; he remembered the number, the snow-white paint. The door was closed. His legs began to tremble, and he had to go on a little further before uttering a greeting that came out of his mouth as a croak.

‘Kimmo, my old mate,’ said Sundström, imperturbably humorous. ‘And Mr Grönholm in person. Good work.’

Joentaa nodded to Sundström and offered Rintanen his hand. ‘Hello. We’ve . . . we’ve met before.’

Rintanen looked at him for a few seconds, and then memory kicked in. ‘Oh, yes . . . that’s to say . . . yes, your wife, a few years ago.’

‘I’m glad to see you,’ said Joentaa, on impulse.

‘How are you?’ asked Rintanen.

Joentaa gave him a nod. Sundström cleared his throat.

‘I’m all right,’ said Joentaa.

Kari Niemi, head of Forensics, passed them, his eyes fixed on something wrapped in transparent film. Niemi, who had given him a hug in the days after Sanna’s death. He wondered if he was just imagining it, whether it was a product of his imagination, inspired by these surroundings, or if he really did still feel Niemi’s hug.

Sundström, Rintanen and Grönholm were discussing the question of how to keep the normal business of the hospital going while a murder investigation was conducted at the same time.

Joentaa moved away from them and went over to the room where most of the scene-of-crime officers were working. One of them gave him gloves and an overall. A large room with only one bed in it. Because people on their way to meet death had the privilege of privacy.

He went into the room, trying to control the unsteadiness of his legs. The woman was lying on her back on the bed. Salomon Hietalahti, the forensic pathologist, was sitting at the window on a visitor’s chair, making notes.

‘Murdering a dead woman,’ said Sundström behind him.

Joentaa turned round.

‘She was in a coma, from time to time a waking coma. Persistent vegetative state, or apallic syndrome as our medical friend Rintanen out there calls it. In his opinion she had no prospect of recovery.’

Joentaa nodded.

No prospect of recovery, he thought.

‘But here’s the best of it – we don’t know who she is. We don’t even know her name.’

‘How on earth . . . ?’ said Grönholm.

Don’t even know her name, thought Joentaa.

‘Because the poor soul was found lying at the side of the road with traumatic brain injury. And without any personal details on her.’

Call Larissa.

‘I think I remember that case. It was in the papers for quite a while, wasn’t it?’

On the occasional table next to the telephone. Was he imagining it? He must go home, he must check.

‘No idea,’ said Sundström.

‘Yes, it was. The unknown woman, unconscious and without any memory. Didn’t you read about her?’

He must check up on it. He must go home. Grönholm and Sundström were talking about the woman lying a few feet away on a bed like the one where Sanna had lain. In a room that looked like the room where she had died.

‘Though if she was unconscious, how would she have any memory anyway?’ said Grönholm, and Joentaa wondered whether it was the residual alcohol still in his bloodstream that made him sound so stupid. He thought of Sanna. And of what was on the occasional table next to the telephone. His glance had fallen on it . . . but he wasn’t sure. He must leave, he must go home.

‘Kimmo?’

‘The giraffe,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Sundström.

‘I must leave,’ said Joentaa.

‘What?’

‘Back very soon. I forgot something.’

‘Kimmo? Hey, hang on a minute!’

Sundström’s voice in the distance. He walked along the corridors fast, the way he had walked along them on the night when Sanna’s pulse stopped beating.

‘Kimmo, for God’s sake!’ cried Sundström, and he was out in the open air, running to the car, driving away.

He thought that he didn’t even know her name.

And that he mustn’t lose her.

10

THE LIGHT WAS
on. It was difficult to spot that, because the sun was shining almost as brightly as the electric lights inside the house, but Joentaa saw that it was on.

The light was still on. Larissa wasn’t there.

Of course not. For a moment he wondered if she ever had been.

As he opened the door and went into the hall, he thought of the occasional table with the telephone on it. Then he was standing in front of it, looking at the key.

The second key to the house. Larissa had left it behind. For the first time. Whenever she went away for an unspecified time, she’d always taken her key with her, so that when she did come back days or weeks later, she could unlock the door, put the light out, and sit in the living room in the dark.

The key hung from an ungainly wooden giraffe that had amused her enormously when they came upon it recently, as they strolled around a flea market down by Naantali harbour. She had gone back there that same day. To buy the giraffe pendant. And now she’d left the same ungainly giraffe behind for him, along with the key and her false name.

His mobile hummed its usual tune. He didn’t reply. The landline telephone rang. Sundström, speaking in urgent tones, was leaving a message. Joentaa heard the voice but didn’t take in what it was saying. He must find Larissa. Not just look for her, find her. Now, at once. He must be with her now, put his arms round her, hold her close and ask the questions that he’d forgotten to ask. And the other questions that she had left hanging in the air as she smiled, or said nothing, or vaguely shook her head.

He must ask questions, get answers.

Now, immediately.

He took his mobile out of his jacket pocket and called her number. The number where he could never reach her. The familiar anonymous voice spoke. The person he had called was not available. A new text. Nothing in his mailbox. His hands were beginning to shake. He went into the kitchen, poured a glass of water and sipped it.

Then he hurried downstairs to the room that had been Sanna’s studio in another life. Before she fell ill, and stopped working for the firm of architects that had sent one of the most expensive wreaths on the day of her funeral. With a card signed by all the staff members.

He sat down at the desk and started up his laptop. Went into his email and opened it. Two new messages. He had won a lottery that he’d never played. The second message was from his colleague Tuomas Heinonen. He felt a pang. He must visit Tuomas in the hospital where he had checked himself in a few weeks ago, when his gambling addiction came back. Heinonen had been off work for months. He hadn’t gone for treatment until he had gambled away the proceeds from the three-room apartment that he had inherited and sold, without telling his wife Paulina anything about it. Joentaa decided that he would call Paulina, and then he would go to the hospital with her and her little twin daughters and visit Tuomas, and then everything would be cleared up and all right again. He’d do that soon.

No message from Larissa.

He typed in her address:
[email protected]
.

He wrote:

Dear Larissa,

I hope you’re well. I’m rather worried. The key is still here. Did you forget it? I’ll leave it in the grass under the apple tree, and then you can get in any time, even if I’m out.

Love from

Kimmo

He looked at the message, and wondered why he hadn’t asked those important questions. Why he hadn’t insisted on the answers?

He sent the message, and waited a few minutes for any feeling that someone was beginning to read it at the other end.

Then he went upstairs, found a piece of paper and a pen, and wondered what he was going to write. His eyes lingered on the photograph of Sanna standing on the shelf beside Larissa’s stack of books. He had once talked to Larissa about Sanna. And about that photo. They had been lying on the sofa, and as a city exploded on the TV screen Larissa had got up to go over to the photograph.

A photo of Sanna on cross-country skis, leaning back and laughing her clear laugh, taken when she was still healthy, in the winter before her death.

Larissa had looked intently at the photograph, as if she were seeing it for the first time, and then she had said, ‘Sanna was really wonderful.’

On the screen, the hero of the film had fallen into the sea from a great height without dying, and Joentaa had talked about Sanna. Probably for quite a long time, because when his voice died away the film was over, and Larissa had been sitting there very upright, clumsily stroking his leg, and their eyes met.

‘I didn’t want to make you . . .’ he had begun to say, and she had laughed, but she was still crying, and she had said, ‘Oh, Kimmo, I cry every day.’

11

HE DROVE BACK
to the hospital. As the car went down the street he tried to count the years, months and days that had passed since Sanna’s death.

He got muddled up, and thought that it would be better to count the hours, or the minutes. The seconds. The moments that had passed by since that one moment that wouldn’t ever pass by.

He had left the giraffe under the apple tree.

He sat in the car when he reached the car park, stopped counting minutes and began counting the windows again. That was certainly simpler. The police car had been left in a No Parking area. The forensic team’s minibus was parked in the sun.

He got out of his car and retraced his earlier footsteps. Faded arrows in assorted colours pointed different ways. Blue arrows for Intensive Care, green for the nearby Surgical Ward. Yellow for Maternity. White for the cafeteria.

He followed the right angles and the blue arrows.

The room where Sanna had lain.

Kari Niemi, smiling as if everything were all right, showed him an item wrapped in transparent film and said something that Joentaa couldn’t make out, because waves swallowed up the words before they reached him.

Sundström, red in the face, came towards him, and Joentaa thought of the giraffe under the tree.

‘For God’s sake, Kimmo!’

‘I’m back,’ said Joentaa.

‘What got into you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Kimmo!’

Joentaa passed him and stopped in the doorway. The woman was still lying on the bed at one side of the room, like an empty shell, surrounded by apparatus that now looked unimportant.

‘The great unknown,’ murmured Sundström beside him.

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘We’re using the cafeteria for interrogations,’ said Sundström, turning away.

Joentaa nodded.

‘Come on, damn it!’ cried Sundström.

They followed the white arrows. The cafeteria too looked the same as ever. Large, bright pictures on the walls. Joentaa remembered them only when he saw them again. A view through the big window of the garden, the fountain, the benches grouped around it. Rice pies with egg butter under transparent plastic on the counter. He thought of Sanna carefully spreading egg butter on a roll a few days before her death, and saying that she felt better.

Members of the hospital staff were sitting at the tables in their medical coats, waiting to make statements. The discreet background noise of whispering.

Petri Grönholm was sitting at one of the tables bent over a laptop, and nodding to a young man who kept shaking his head apologetically.

‘It looks as if no one noticed anything,’ said Sundström, and Joentaa listened in vain for the familiar sarcasm in his voice. ‘We have a dead woman no one knows, and a murderer no one saw.’

Joentaa nodded, and Sundström made his way to an empty table at the side of the big room. They sat down, and Sundström took some notes out of his shabby briefcase and put them down on the table like a newsreader about to begin his bulletin.