TH02 - The Priest of Evil (31 page)

And from within the cottage came the sounds of sleep; there rested the happy family he had lost years ago.

Jaana could only register a few things at once. First it had been the wail of sirens, their cries screeching high and low, then different cries at a faster tempo, like a dog barking. But now that too had stopped, and more distinctly than before she could feel the movement around her: she was being wheeled on a stretcher along a hospital corridor; fluorescent lamps and their mesh covers dazzled her eyes. It seemed like of an illusion; it felt almost as though she were moving upwards, shooting far up into the sky.

The next thing was the pain. There it was again, gripping her from the neck downwards; this time so strongly that it felt like a new experience altogether, a state of being in which she was entirely removed from what was going on around her. She no longer understood that she was being rushed into a birthing room, and she no longer had the strength to be afraid, not even for the baby that was almost two months premature. Somehow instinctively she reached out for help, her fingers grabbing at the empty space next to the stretcher. She was searching for Tero’s hand, though she knew that she would never be able to hold it again.

‘… Completely green,’ someone said. In the distance she heard the words: ‘Tell them to get an incubator ready!’

‘It’s coming… It’s blue…’

‘… Umbilical cord round the neck… Oxygen!’

‘… No heartbeat…’

Then amidst the commotion came a faint cry, like a kitten when someone stands on its tail, and immediately someone wearing a paper mask over her mouth leant across Jaana and all but shouted: ‘Mrs Kokkonen! Jaana! You’ve just had a little girl. What shall we call her?’

‘Is it a…an emergency baptism? Is she going to die?’

‘Not at all. It’s a healthy baby girl. Any idea what you’re going to call her?’

And although before his death she and Tero had come up with a number of different options, for a girl or a boy, suddenly she couldn’t remember a single one of them. For some reason she simply said: ‘Sinikka.’

‘Sinikka?’

‘Yes. Sinikka.’

More weak cries could be heard. A new being had been born and was about to embark on the long journey called Life.

Who could know what it held in store for her.

Elisa was sitting cross-legged on a wooden kitchen chair, her upper body bare, her elbows leaning on the back of the chair. Harjunpää was standing behind her; he squeezed more of the pungent, herbal gel on to the palm of his hands, spread it across her back and continued massaging from the left shoulder blade where he had left off. The girls were all out somewhere.

‘Is it getting any better?’

‘Maybe a bit.’

‘No wonder you’ve got a headache all the time, you’ve got enormous knots in the muscles here. You really should see a physiotherapist.’

‘It’ll be so difficult once I go back to work,’ she said and quickly changed the subject. ‘What exactly caused that explosion in Pasila?’

‘We still don’t know, but around the Exhibition Centre and the Hartwall Arena there was a distinct smell of explosives.’

‘But they haven’t located the site of the explosion?’

‘No. We’ve been through the whole of central Pasila, we even brought in some helicopters. If a group of kids blew something up on a spot of bare land it wouldn’t necessarily leave any trace at all.’

Harjunpää continued the massage in silence; by now the gel had been absorbed, making it much easier. His hands moved almost by themselves, finding one awkward knot after another.

‘You’re worried about something,’ said Elisa, more a statement than a question. ‘This is not your normal kind of silence.’

‘Do I have a normal way of being silent?’

‘You know very well what I mean,’ she said softly.

Harjunpää muttered quietly in agreement, but the silence continued for a long while. In the living room the wall clock ticked, but Harjunpää was so lost in thought that he didn’t count quite how many times.

‘I don’t know… Is this some kind of envy or what?’ he said finally. ‘I’ve never before felt like I wished for something that belonged to someone else but…’

‘Maybe it’s a feeling of injustice?’

‘Maybe. I haven’t told you yet: Piipponen got promoted to the DI position left open by Old Lörtsy.’

‘Piipponen? How on earth did that happen?’

‘Especially since Central had already decided not to fill vacant positions due to cut-backs… Apparently he was the most hardworking of us all, does the most overtime. And he apparently displayed exceptional bravery and initiative fighting off that guy’s attack and organising the search for him.’

‘But there’s still no sign of him?’

‘No. The boys will spend the next few weeks looking for him on the underground but after that they’ll have to call it a day.’

Elisa didn’t reply but laid her fingers on her husband’s hand as it rested on her shoulder.

Harjunpää continued massaging. Beneath his hands Elisa felt warm and familiar. He felt a certain pleasure at being able to provide some form of help to someone else. But all of a sudden he felt something change. It was as though she had tensed herself suddenly or tried to stand up, and then her body went limp and she fell back sharply into his arms. He tottered several steps backwards and eased her on to the floor.

‘Elisa!’ he shouted, tapping her on the cheeks. ‘Elisa, wake up!’

He felt her neck, remained there motionless for a split second, then leapt up and dashed towards the telephone in the living room. His imagination was running wild, and he could do nothing to stop it: he felt as if a curse had been hanging over him these past few weeks, a curse that had plagued him at work – and now that same curse was about to take Elisa from him! The journey seemed endless, he ran and ran, and everything around him started to spin, to warp, making it difficult for him to stay on his feet.

Elisa was standing on the top of a white wall, her gaze fixed in front of her like a tightrope walker. But she was not afraid of falling; she felt warm and at peace.

When she looked to her right all she could see was a flood of light, opaque and soft as though it were shining through frosted glass, and at the centre of the light she could make out what seemed to be a number of different figures, but she was not sure whether they were people or trees. Nonetheless it was something immensely beautiful and good, powerfully drawing her closer.

And when she looked to her left – she saw what looked like the wall in their kitchen, though it was much higher, and she could see herself lying on the floor, and Timo running in from the living room, kneeling down beside her and fretting over something. She turned again to look towards the light. There was no one beckoning to her, no one to block her path, and at this she realised that the choice was entirely up to her: she could step to whichever side of the wall she chose.

She waited for a moment longer, but still no one appeared from the light to greet her. Meanwhile Timo kept repeating her name: ‘Elisa! Elisa!’ And at that she turned back towards the kitchen and prepared to take her first step.

‘Elisa!’ Harjunpää called out between gasps of breath, as he frantically patted his wife’s cheeks. Again he felt her throat. A pulse! Was he mistaken? He thought he could feel the artery faintly beating beneath his fingers. Again he thought he felt it, but then came a long pause, longer than time itself, and the wail of approaching sirens, the sound that he so longed to hear, just would not come.

‘Elisa!’ he called out again, and all of a sudden he could hear through the open door the sound of the girls returning home. He could hear giggling and it sounded like one of them was hopping on one leg; then he heard the echoing sound of a stone being kicked through the tiled hallway. He stood up; he knew that he must go to his daughters, prepare them for what they were about to witness. He took a step towards the hallway but was struck by a stinging fear - almost a certainty - that if he left Elisa now he would lose her for good, and at this he fell to his knees, laid his head beside his wife’s head and sobbed. And he felt so profoundly small, and so alone - never before had he felt so small, and so terribly alone.