Silence (12 page)

Now he was sitting at a table for two in a service station, watching the cars racing by. His thoughts were circling around the fact that he still had a choice: go on to Turku; turn back home.

Or simply stay sitting on this chair, not moving. For an indefinite time. He would carry the cardboard beaker to his mouth at regular intervals, and watch the cars driving back and forth.

Korvensuo smiled a little at his own idea, and a young woman who met his glance at that moment narrowed her eyes, shook her head and turned her back to him.

A little later Korvensuo continued his drive. The sun was dazzling; a hot day lay ahead.

He imagined Laura and Aku diving head first into the clear water, and drove on to Turku at a moderate, regular speed.

3

T
he girl in the photograph was laughing. A peal of laughter, thought Joentaa, those were the words that had occurred to him when he saw the picture of the girl. Pia Lehtinen.

Joentaa stood in front of the photograph and felt a tingling sensation at the idea that it had been hanging here for decades. Just as Sanna’s photos would still be in the same place, decades from now.

‘That’s Pia,’ said Elina Lehtinen, who had come to his side. She was carrying a tray with cups, plates and a blueberry cake still steaming from the oven.

‘I know,’ said Joentaa.

‘Of course. You have a photograph in your files,’ said Elina Lehtinen.

Joentaa nodded.

‘It’s incredibly long ago,’ she went on, without taking her eyes off the photograph. ‘I was thinking about that yesterday, and I was surprised to realize that today Pia would be a woman of forty-six. Hard to imagine.’ She looked at him and smiled.

Joentaa nodded again. ‘I …’ he began.

‘Yes?’

‘Excuse me, I’m sure this is a strange question, but … but do you know what Pia was laughing at so much?’

Elina Lehtinen looked at the picture again and thought for a moment. The photo had been taken in winter; there was snow in the background, but otherwise it showed only Pia’s face in close-up.

‘No,’ said Elina Lehtinen at last. ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. I think my husband took it – my former husband – on a skiing holiday. Maybe he wanted to take her by surprise, and she laughed when she saw that, and then he took the photo.’

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘No one else has ever asked that in all these years,’ she said.

‘Hm.’ Joentaa had another question on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t know how to put it.

‘Most people just pass her photo as if they didn’t know it was there,’ she said. ‘Even today. Of course some people don’t know who Pia is, but not many. Those are the ones I haven’t known long. I don’t tell everyone about it straight away, but somehow the conversation always gets around to her.’

Joentaa nodded, and once again felt the impulse to ask his question, but he refrained. He turned away and followed Elina Lehtinen out on to the terrace.

‘Home-baked.’ She put a slice of cake on his plate.

‘Thank you,’ said Joentaa.

She sat down and looked at Joentaa enquiringly.

‘Well …’ said Joentaa.

He was silent for a while and Elina Lehtinen said, ‘You’re an odd sort of policeman.’ For a moment she looked very like her daughter.

‘Am I?’ Joentaa asked.

‘Yes, definitely,’ said Elina Lehtinen.

‘I … I’d like to ask you something, something not at all important. My wife … she died two years ago, of cancer, and I’m still living in the house we shared. And her photos, well, there are photographs of her there, and what I want to ask is this … not that I know how … I have no idea what I really wanted to ask …’

He felt the sweat standing out on his forehead and saw Elina Lehtinen calmly returning his gaze. A slender woman with a strikingly round face and laughter lines in the places where her daughter too would have had them.

‘Sorry … I really don’t know what I … probably just living up to my reputation.’

‘Reputation?’

‘For being an odd sort of policeman,’ said Kimmo Joentaa.

Elina Lehtinen gave a little laugh. A laugh that Joentaa couldn’t interpret.

‘I …’

‘How are the parents managing?’ asked Elina Lehtinen.

‘The parents?’

‘The parents of the missing girl. On TV they just call her Sinikka. It was the same back then, they just called her Pia. But there was much less news about it then. Or else I simply wasn’t following it, I don’t remember any more. I do recall a colleague of yours very well, another young police officer, very – very committed. He was an odd sort of policeman too.’

‘I know the man you mean. We worked together for several years,’ said Joentaa.

‘Not any more?’

‘No, he’s retired, since early this year.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s only in my mind that he’s still a young man. Do try the cake.’

Joentaa raised his fork to his mouth.

‘Once I really did have a great fit of laughter,’ continued Elina Lehtinen and she was laughing again now as she saw Joentaa’s face. ‘An extraordinary fit of laughter, it’s my most vivid memory. On the day my husband left me. He said he was going now, and I started laughing and couldn’t stop until that evening, and next day I rang my neighbours’ doorbell and they took me to a hospital, and I spent a long time having treatment there. Is the cake all right?’

‘It’s very good,’ said Joentaa.

‘My most vivid memory,’ she repeated. ‘Everything else is almost just a … well, a feeling of everything being over. It’s sometimes close, sometimes further away. You talk to people, that sometimes helped me. And now it’s ages ago, but it’s beginning all over again.’

‘You mean the missing girl, Sinikka?’

‘Yes. It’s repeating itself. When I saw the police officers I wasn’t surprised. Because I’d always expected it to happen again, somehow. Do you understand?’

Joentaa didn’t answer. He didn’t know whether he understood or not.

‘I always knew that couldn’t have been all, because some time everything comes to an end, but this never really did. I’m afraid I can’t explain it any better.’

Joentaa nodded. ‘Can you think of any possible connection? The missing girl is called Sinikka Vehkasalo. Does the name mean anything to you?’

She shook her head.

‘Of course we’re looking for some such connection, with luck someone who lived near you at the time and now lives near the Vehkasalo family.’

‘No, the name means nothing to me.’

‘We can’t assume that there is such a person. There’s much to suggest that whoever we’re after is not someone from the … the victim’s immediate environment. But all the same …’

‘That was just the problem at the time,’ she said. ‘Your colleague spoke to me about it, I remember that now. I had a feeling he wanted to apologize for not making any progress, he said exactly what you did just now: it was difficult to find out about the murderer because he very likely wasn’t someone from our immediate environment.’

‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.

‘And of course there were no clues that were any use, because Pia had been in the water for so long.’

Joentaa nodded.

‘What I always kept wondering later, when I was a little further from it, was what goes on inside a person … I wanted to know what he looked like, who he was, but most of all I wanted to understand what went on inside him, how it was possible for such a thing to happen at all. Do you understand?’

Joentaa nodded.

‘Have you found out anything yet? Back then your colleague was always talking about hoping to bring the enquiries to a successful conclusion. That’s the way the police put it, I think.’

‘Yes, I mean no, I’m afraid we’re only just at the start. It was hardly two days ago. But I’d like to ask you something, I’d like to ask whether, even going against all probability, you would try to think of any possible connections. Any contacts you have, maybe from back then until the present day. Places, localities you visit, then we can compare them with a list made by the Vehkasalos. I know it’s a long shot. Oh, and do you have the present address and telephone number of your divorced husband?’

She nodded, stood up and Joentaa saw her searching a drawer in the living room. She came back with a business card.

‘It’s his private address as well. He was already working from home when it happened. But I’m not sure that the facts are still up to date; he sent me that card by post years ago. We exchange birthday cards now and then. And by the way, we’re not divorced, just separated. That mattered to him at the time, and I had no objection.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

She laughed. ‘Nothing to apologize for.’

Joentaa read the information on the card, which identified Hannu Lehtinen as representing a well-known insurance company.

‘Thank you.’ He put the card in his pocket.

His glance fell on a football lying in the middle of the garden. He had been vaguely aware of it all this time, but now he wondered what the ball was doing there.

‘My neighbours’ grandsons kick a ball around here now and then,’ said Elina Lehtinen, who had followed his gaze. ‘Because my garden’s bigger and I don’t mind if my flower beds get knocked about a bit. And because I like to see children playing in the garden.’

She smiled.

Joentaa nodded. ‘Thank you. The cake was excellent.’ He was going to get to his feet, but sat there for a few more seconds looking at the ball on the lawn.

Then he let Elina Lehtinen lead him through the shade of the living room and the hall to the front door. As he stepped outside, he collided with Ketola.

‘Oops!’ said Ketola.

‘Ouch!’ protested Kimmo.

‘Watch where you’re going!’ Ketola’s eyes were reddened, and seemed to Joentaa to be unnaturally wide and restless.

‘I … excuse me, you probably won’t remember me,’ Ketola said, addressing Elina Lehtinen, as if Joentaa’s presence were to be regarded as a matter of no importance.

‘I remember you very well,’ she answered slowly. ‘You’re a bit older now. And we were talking about you only a moment ago.’

‘Ah. Do you have a little time? This won’t take long, just a few minutes.’

‘Of course.’ With a gesture she invited him in.

‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Ketola to Kimmo Joentaa. He seemed to be in a hurry to get inside the house before Joentaa started asking any questions, but he did turn back for a moment. ‘And do you have any news? Can I call you, this evening or tomorrow morning? Is that okay?’

‘Of course,’ said Joentaa. ‘And you should call Sundström as well, he wants to speak to you and rope you in on this case. I told him you’d suggested it yourself.’

‘Yes, good, I’m glad. See you, then. I’ll call.’

‘
Two
odd police officers,’ said Elina Lehtinen, almost imperceptibly wrinkling her brow.

‘Hm, well,’ Joentaa muttered.

As he got into his car he was thinking that Elina Lehtinen was a nice woman, and Ketola would always be a riddle to him.

4

T
imo Korvensuo reached Turku about midday, but he went on driving. He drove around the city in circles. Again and again. He felt it was important to keep moving. He saw the cathedral towering to the sky from various different angles. When he used to live here it was quite close to the Faculty of Mathematics, and now and then he had gone to sit in the cool of the cathedral for a while, between lectures or in the evening, without thinking of anything much.

He drove around in circles again and again, until in the early afternoon the petrol gauge started blinking red. He made for a petrol station, and then drove straight to his destination.

He knew the way. Along the urban motorway towards Tampere, into the small suburb surrounded by tall trees.

The grass by the roadside was yellow and dry. The supermarket stood where it always had, but the sign over it was a different colour and bore the logo of a well-known chain. There was a kiosk in the adjacent building, which had once been the only bar in the area. He drove slowly past, his eyes passing over strangers’ faces.

The sports field was still there too. The running track looked new; the red of it caught his eye. On the grass, three boys were kicking at a goal. The indoor swimming pool beyond was gone. It didn’t exist any more, nothing existed there. All gone, with nothing to replace it. The swimming pool was now an asphalt surface where cars could park.

Korvensuo felt his stomach lurch, and for seconds had a vague sense of relief. He had often been there on winter evenings because Susanna, the girl from the next-door building, used to train in the pool. She always wore a green swimsuit and sometimes smiled at him because they lived in the same housing complex, and he used to lean back at the edge of the pool, feeling the water getting colder round his legs, and staring for all he was worth, as inconspicuously as possible.

He remembered that perfectly. It had been the time when everything began, whatever ‘everything’ was, although he couldn’t pinpoint the real beginning, the exact moment in time. There probably wasn’t one. No beginning and no end. And no reason. None that anyone could have understood, none that he understood himself. There was nothing of that kind, and the pool where Susanna from the next-door building used to swim was gone as well.

The boys on the football pitch were arguing about the score. Korvensuo got into his car again and let it coast down the slope.

He passed the bus stop.

Then he turned left into the narrow drive and up to the building where he had lived.

Everything he had thought of as he drove from Helsinki was cancelled out. He’d planned to leave the car sooner than this, at a safe distance. Not to arrive until evening, under cover of dark, which anyway would be only a slight twilight. An absence of sunlight, achieved with difficulty and never complete, lasting for several hours.

It was cancelled out; he didn’t think of these things any more. He was shaking, but at the same time felt perfectly calm. He didn’t see any small red car. Of course not. He got out. The sun warmed him and brought out gooseflesh on his back. The garbage container stood where it had always been, although now there were several of them. For recycling. A middle-aged man in tracksuit bottoms was just putting bottles into the bottle bank. They smashed to pieces: a hollow shattering sound. The man folded up the bag that had held the bottles and passed him without looking up. Korvensuo didn’t know him. Of course not. The man would have been a small child when Korvensuo lived here. And had studied mathematics, for reasons he couldn’t put a name to now. Everything was different. An eternity had passed. He turned away his eyes and looked at the playground. Different rides, brightly coloured and new. An engine was humming. Pärssinen was sitting on a bright red mower, cutting the grass.