TH02 - The Priest of Evil (21 page)

According to stories in the Bible, God sacrificed his only son Jesus, and this was seen as a sign of his great love towards mankind. But he would go one better, for nowhere in Maammo’s laws did it state that the adopted sacrificial victim had to be a child, it could just as easily be an adult.

‘
Cum sabateum
!’

Everything was perfectly clear. All he had to do was hurry back to the top of The Brocken, set his pigeon trap and sacrifice another three pigeons. In this way he could adopt Mikko Matias and claim him as his son too – and then he would show their God. He would sacrifice
two
of his sons, whereas God had sacrificed only one.

‘
Res in cardine est
,’ he whooped, for he had had yet another revelation. For final confirmation he would ask the Five Wise Ones for advice. They were there for all to see, but only earth spirits were blessed with the knowledge that they were in fact the FiveWise Ones and that they could answer any question, as long as you could understand their language. He could do this well, as could all earth spirits. The trick was that the speech of the FiveWise Ones could not be heard, it had to be seen.

He no longer cared for Mikko Matias and let him disappear into the crowds of people. Mikko Matias was heading towards Hakaniemi, but here their paths would separate, for now he turned and began walking towards the Central Railway Station. A moment later he noticed that he was
hurrying - running as fast as he could, shoving people out of his way and scoffing at them as he passed: ‘
Merde essum
!’ he cursed, though they knew not what he was saying.

Harjunpää felt clammy and uncomfortable, so much so that it could easily have been a slushy, foggy morning in November and not spring at all. From Onerva’s silence he guessed that her state of mind wasn’t any chirpier than his own. It was all because the case had reached a dead-end: they had two deaths, neither of which they could categorically say was a homicide, no clear suspect, barely a shred of evidence, not even a clear line of investigation. It was almost as if they had been suddenly crippled, stripped of their professional skills.

They sat together in a car parked by the side of the Central Railway Station and wondered where to go next. They had already been to Kaisaniemi underground station, as Harjunpää had felt the need to see the scene of the first death, from Lörtsy’s old case. Ultimately this had been of very little use; it hadn’t given him any clearer a picture of what had taken place, and now he felt somehow drawn to the Railway Station. He had the uneasy feeling that something would soon happen there too.

‘I just can’t think of a possible motive,’ Onerva sighed, finally bringing the long, grey silence to an end. ‘Especially since there seems to be no connection between the two victims, nothing linking them to one another.’

‘I know. If it is the old biddy I saw, I’d have to put it down to insanity or some sort of paranoia.’

‘Another possibility I thought of…’ she began, but left the sentence unfinished and pointed instead at the radio. ‘Hang on. What was that?’

‘I wasn’t listening…’

‘It was about someone preaching,’ she said and a sparkle appeared in her eyes. She snatched the radio from the dashboard and brought it swiftly towards her mouth.

‘Switchboard. This is unit 189. Can you repeat that, please?’

‘Sure. There’s a three-three wandering around on the ground floor of the Sanomatalo building; preaching to people, kneeling in front of the lifts praying and trying to force people to do the same.’

‘Male or female?’ asked Onerva, as she bit her lower lip and held her breath. The silence seemed to last unbearably long, spanning out across metres of time.

‘An elderly man,’ the duty officer finally replied. Harjunpää and Onerva looked at one another in disappointment.

‘Unit 189 will take it. We’ve got a visual on the building. It may be linked to our case too.’

‘You’re not on the system… Okay. Crime Squad Unit 189 is on its way.’

‘Roger.’

Harjunpää had already turned the ignition key and the car roared into life. A moment later he slipped into first gear, gently eased the accelerator and steered the car on to the road. He could already see their destination, the transparent glass walls of the Sanomatalo building rising up on the corner, bearing neon advertisements one above the other. He was forced to drive the last stretch of the journey against the flow of the traffic, but he and Onerva had worked together long enough that she could almost read his mind: she grabbed the emergency light from beside her feet, all but threw it on top of the dashboard and flicked the switch, sending its blue light flashing in all directions.

‘Why did we take this job?’ asked Harjunpää, who was still unsure of the situation.

‘Because preachers like that more than likely know one another. Let’s just calm him down first.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Harjunpää said firmly, bringing the car to a halt. Despite the rush he still remembered to lock the doors – a microphone had been stolen from an unlocked patrol car only a few weeks previously.

They slipped through the revolving doors and came out into a corridor full of shops, at the end of which was the ground floor hall. There were no great crowds of people to be seen, just the odd passer-by hurrying
along. In the open acoustic they could hear the shouting clearly: ‘
Ea lesum
! Cum sabateum!
’

‘Over there,’ said Onerva curtly. Directly in front of them stood a row of decorative bushes the size of trees, and from the right of the bushes came the shouting. The man had sunk to his knees and was facing the lifts, his upper body swaying. The lifts had been designed so that all their mechanisms and weights could be seen behind a glass wall. The machinery was dotted here and there with bright yellow pulleys. It was a beautiful, ingenious construction. Everyday machines suddenly formed a mobile of sorts: one lift went up, another soon followed it, while a third was on its way back down. At a glance he counted a total of five lifts standing side by side.

It seemed as though the man on his knees had sensed their arrival; he spun round to face them and caught Harjunpää’s gaze. He turned immediately, as if in an attempt to stand up or run away, but before he could straighten his body fully his hands flew up to his chest, he collapsed to his knees once again and finally landed on his forehead, a dull thud resounding as his skull struck the stone floor.

‘Epilepsy,’ Onerva gasped, and they broke into a run. They didn’t have far to go, twenty metres at most. No one else seemed to pay the man the slightest attention. Though some glanced over their shoulders before continuing on their way.

‘Let’s get him into the recovery position,’ said Onerva sharply as they bent over the man, grabbing hold of him. At a glance the man looked slightly the worse for wear, but by no means had he reached the downand- out stage yet. His thick-rimmed glasses had fallen off and slid across the floor; his cap had also slipped off, revealing a silvery grey ponytail tied up on the crown of his head. The man was neither whimpering nor shaking. Harjunpää placed his fingers on the man’s neck, then frantically tried the other side.

‘No pulse,’ he whispered, then tried his wrist, remembering to put his fingers in the correct place. ‘Nothing. He’s stopped breathing! Let’s get him on to his back!’

They each grabbed hold of the man and began rolling him over. Despite their haste Harjunpää noted that the man smelled rather stale, yet
somehow strangely familiar. The man’s hand fell lifelessly to the ground, like that of a body before the onset of rigor mortis.

‘Still nothing. Come on old boy, wakey wakey!’ Harjunpää panted and slapped the man’s face, but he didn’t react in the slightest. Onerva had already pulled his jacket open; she then tore at his shirt, sending the buttons flying - revealing a bony, hairless, grey chest. It wasn’t moving.

‘Hey!’ Harjunpää shouted at a woman who had stopped further back. ‘Call an ambulance! Tell them the patient is male, in his fifties. He’s stopped breathing.’

‘How does it go again?’ whispered Onerva, her voice clearly trembling. ‘I’m not sure I… wait a minute. First two breaths, then fifteen rapid compressions – quite fast, about a hundred per minute. Put your hands here. Right, just below the rib cage. A few finger-widths upwards; fingers pointing towards the throat and the other palm on top. I’ll breathe first…’

Harjunpää hesitated for a moment. The man looked dirty and unkempt, and his lips were cracked. But they had no other option: the man’s life was literally in their hands. He stuck his fingers into the man’s mouth – he had been right: he fished out first the upper then the lower set of false teeth. They were slippery and a glistening thread of spittle dangled suspended from the man’s mouth. Harjunpää quickly wiped it away, held the man’s nose firmly with one hand, lifted his chin with the other and angled his head backwards, keeping the windpipe open all the time. He took a deep breath and bent over the man’s gaping, toothless mouth. It resembled an axe wound in a corpse. At the last moment he closed his eyes, felt the man’s lifeless lips against his own and blew as hard as he could. As if from the distance he could hear Onerva shouting: ‘It’s working, his chest is rising!’

He breathed into him again, it was no easier than the first time. Then he sat up dizzily, shaking as Onerva began the compressions.

‘Fifteen, count them! Then I’ll give him two more breaths.’

Once again his lips were against the man’s mouth and he blew hard, took a deep breath and blew for a second time, then Onerva’s hands began bobbing up and down again. Harjunpää felt for the man’s pulse, and he
thought he could sense something, but maybe it was only the result of Onerva’s compressions. He recalled that you were only supposed to check for a pulse after the compressions. He breathed into him again and again, but still there was nothing, not the slightest pulse.

He remembered reading that resuscitation by amateurs very rarely succeeded in starting the heart again, that this required injections and all sorts of things, but that its purpose was to maintain a constant flow of oxygen until professional help arrived. They had no option but to carry on until the paramedics arrived, and they certainly couldn’t leave him be or pronounce him dead, as there were no other obvious signs of death. In circumstances like this only a doctor can pronounce a person dead. Again he blew hard, he had to catch his breath, Onerva counted her compressions, and he could feel the stone floor pressing hard against his knees. It seemed to go on and on, minute after minute, everything lasting an eternity. Again he breathed in, again. Only then could he make out the faint sound of the siren switching off and soon afterwards the patter of soft shoes fast approaching.

The men were wearing white jackets, the same jackets that Harjunpää had seen at hundreds of different crime scenes; he even recognised one of the men - Ruija. He threw his bag to the floor and wrenched it open; his partner knelt over the man and felt around his neck.

‘We’ve got a pulse!’ he exclaimed almost in disbelief. ‘You got it started again. It’s an even, steady rhythm.’

‘His eyes are moving too. They’re opening.’

Harjunpää slowly withdrew from the group and wiped his mouth and tongue on the sleeve of his jumper, but it wasn’t enough: he needed a toothbrush.

‘What if we were mistaken?’ Onerva panted, droplets of sweat sparkling on her forehead.

‘We weren’t… you felt it yourself.’

‘Then he owes his life to us.’

The man was trying to sit up and the paramedics almost had to push him back down by force. He was frantically trying to say something, and only after a moment could they properly make it out: ‘Whea ma teef?’

Harjunpää picked the false teeth from the ground and pressed them into the man’s hand. He clenched them carefully and appeared to calm down considerably. Harjunpää instinctively wiped the palm of his hand on his trouser leg. From his inside pocket he produced his card and slipped it into the man’s jacket. He swallowed. He felt as if he had tasted Death itself. He swiftly brought his hand up to his mouth and ran off towards the nearest of the decorative trees.

‘What SIM card?’ his mum yawned. She was annoyed that he had come to the newsagent’s. For some reason she didn’t like him coming to her workplace at all. From the way she refused to look at him when she was speaking, Matti knew she was lying. ‘If your father was stupid enough to leave it lying on the step, then you can be sure it’s long gone.’

‘It wasn’t just lying there - it was in one of those packets.’

His mum didn’t say anything and pretended to look for something on the shelf beneath the counter – but not for him. He didn’t enjoy visiting her workplace either. The boys at school had described her as being the easiest of all the staff to pull one over on. One of them would ask her to look for a magazine they probably didn’t even stock, while the others would fill their pockets with whatever they wanted, out of sight of the security camera. Thankfully they didn’t know that she was his mother.

‘Oh, the packet!’ she said, trying to look surprised, as though she had just remembered something. That was how she had managed to trick and mislead the entire family, and now she was pulling the wool over Roo’s eyes too; he did whatever she wanted. ‘Yes, there was a packet in there… I thought it must have been a CD your father was returning.

‘You didn’t throw it out, did you?’

‘Of course not. It’s on the shelf next to the video tapes. But don’t touch them, they belong to Kari.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Matti, and now it was he who couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He couldn’t understand what she had meant by all
this, she probably thought of it as simply another way to annoy him. He turned around and walked out.

‘
A CD!’
he scoffed. ‘
She sells exactly the same packets in the newsagent’s!
’

‘
Mortui non silent
,’ he muttered to himself, fingering the card carefully, suspiciously, as if it were contaminated in some way. Once again he was twenty-five rungs underground, in his home at the heart of the rock. ‘
Eccu larum rosaece
…’