TH03 - To Steal Her Love (12 page)

The pile of post came halfway up his shin, tightly packed around the door, and Tweety kicked it frantically to one side. He was still full of the night’s events. It had been so close – and something had got into him. He’d stopped on the second-floor landing, turned and held the Flame ready in his hand, and if the man had gone for him he would have got the blade in his stomach right up to the hilt. But judging by the crash he’d stumbled on the floor above, and that misfortune had saved them both.

He managed to move the papers out of the way and close the door. The darkness was stifling; a strange, pungent smell hung in the air, at once acrid and sweet like that given off by gases or cheeses, the kind riddled with mould and swarming with mites that English lords might pick from their silver platters and discuss whether its taste was angularly backward or subtly foreboding.

But Tweety drew his hand up to cover his mouth and nostrils; the smell made him feel ill straight away, it was all around him, thick like the darkness, so thick that he could almost lean into it. All he had to do was overcome his nausea and stay firmly put. After a moment or so he opened his fingers slightly and took a deep breath, for there was something about the smell that fascinated him.

Perhaps it was because it affected him with such force, set his
imagination
loose, rattled its hatches, driving his ghosts into their corners, and when he allowed this to happen he was filled with an almost
unfathomable
, dreamlike calm and he felt as though he had conquered something. He wasn’t afraid anymore. Nothing frightened him, not even
thinking about the Power, and a desire to paint surged within him, his mind filled with visions and images and colours, and even now he was thinking how he might paint his inner calm and the smell of the air. How can you paint a smell?

Excitedly, he pulled out Sparkle Eye, switched it on and walked further inside. Brownie’s flat was the only one in which he kept his clothes on and walked upright. He paraded around like a king, his back straight and with firm steps, and the thin strip of light wiped across the floor in front of him; it was an old, dark-oak parquet, hardwood, not just an imitation covered with veneer, and although the rugs were slightly worn they were obviously genuine, the kind that must have cost an arm and a leg. And as he slowly tilted the lamp upwards he could see the countless paintings that covered the walls, and upon looking at them even a layman would feel a quiet sense of amazement and melancholy, a yearning for beauty, and at once he would know that these were the works of true masters.

Tweety walked onwards. Heavy picture frames glinted on the walls and silver on the tables; the layers of darkness were deep and it felt almost as though he weren’t in a real flat at all but in Sleeping Beauty’s castle while everyone was asleep for a hundred years. He stopped where the parquet creaked and raised the lamp: a great crystal chandelier glittered with blazing sparks, and as he moved Sparkle Eye the sparks shifted and changed colour and glowed like the stones in Reino’s treasure chests. Immediately he began to wonder whether he could paint it, and the more he thought about it, the more he knew the answer was yes.

It was a large flat. There were five rooms in all – the floor space must have been almost two hundred square metres – and it was clearly the home of someone old and very wealthy. Tweety had first visited this flat by accident: he’d gone to the wrong floor. One floor below lived a chubby redhead he had meant to visit, but little by little this place had taken on a special significance for him. There was something solemn about it, like being in church, and he came here whenever he needed to calm down, particularly when something had gone wrong.

He paced further into the flat and the smell became stronger, as though there were a hole in the floor and in that hole a spring sending fumes into the air. At last he came to what must have been a great hall, its walls covered with bookcases reaching up to the ceiling, and in amongst the thick leather-bound volumes on the shelves Sparkle Eye’s wedge of
light fell on sculptures of bronze and marble and crystal vases like huge chunks of ice. In the middle of the room was a long mahogany table, draped with a lace tablecloth, and six high-backed chairs around it. The flowers in the vase had surely once been fresh, but now they were brown, nothing but kindling that rustled and disintegrated when you touched it.

Tweety’s calm was mixed with a strange excitement. He walked up to the record player, switched on the bluish current and started playing the record:
Carmina Burana
began quietly, then fully – this was where he’d first heard it – and he walked towards the bay window and the two large, leather-covered chaises longues that stood there. He approached them, turned Sparkle Eye off and made sure not to look at the floor – he didn’t want to look down there just yet, he wasn’t ready – and sat down in the right-hand chair. It surrounded him like a miniature fortress and he felt safe.

He felt all the more that the curse which had plagued him was finally gone. It always disappeared when he was in Brownie’s flat and returned when he left, and he felt a profound sadness that one day he would inevitably lose everything, that someone would eventually notice what had been going on. But now was not that moment. Now was the moment when he sat on his throne, and he was filled with colours and shapes and thoughts of Wheatlocks, and he knew he could paint her just the way she was in the cherry-blossom world, and he thought of her and loved her – he felt he could almost paint love itself.

He moved suddenly, as though he were trying to keep out a
sorrowful
chord barging its way into his head, but it was no use. He knew that he
couldn’t
paint and that he
would
have been able to paint if only his life had been different, if he hadn’t been born into the Leinonen family, if he’d got a place at art school, and if… he didn’t know what, but that’s how he felt. And it was painful because he faintly understood something but didn’t quite understand
what
he understood. It was as though he were trying to squeeze through a small hole but didn’t quite fit, or as though his soul were covered with an eyelid made of layer after layer of elephant hide, so thick that every time he tried to wrench it open it slammed shut again.

It must have had something to do with the fact that there were two of him: Asko and Tweety. Together they could have been… something greater. And now when he thought of it, he brought his hands up to his eyes and wept, rough and tearless, grieving for something so much while
all the time hoping. He hoped with all his heart that the Chancellor would be a success and that he’d finally have some kind of chance, and he knew that if he were given that chance he would change and finish with everything, even the night-time visits.

Some ten minutes later Tweety came to. He felt as though he were filled with heavy metal plates frozen into the earth, and with this came the knowledge that he hadn’t been born like this. Something had made him like this, and it was a crime for which he had the right to seek revenge. He just didn’t know whom to punish. He would have dearly loved to know. He thought and sighed, then quickly flicked Sparkle Eye’s switch and without a moment’s hesitation aimed its beam of light at the floor in front of him.

The source of the smell lay there. Suddenly it looked like nothing but a dark heap on the floor, a rolled-up bearskin.

But it was a human body nonetheless.

She was lying on her front. Her legs were straight and pointed towards the other chair as though she had just stood up when death finally arrived. Her left hand was twisted in front of her face as though her last act on earth was to blow her nose.

She had grey, permed hair. And her face was completely black. A black skull-face: the flesh had slid away and the skin had dried to the bone, though you could still make out the wrinkles on her brow, the contours of the cheeks and even the sparse silvery hairs on her upper lip. Her teeth showed, her lips tight as though she were grimacing with horror at what she had become, and where her eyes had once been there were only two holes lined with mould and filled with darkness.

It was the body of an old woman – a granny, a crone, a biddy, a hag.

The strip of light began moving shakily across the body’s face and Tweety held his breath. His terror was about to awaken; it was like an avalanche deciding whether or not to unleash its powers. He gripped the arm of the chair more tightly and hesitantly wet his lips, and his fear retreated and froze into a lifeless mass.

He moved the light. The body’s skin was a brown-black colour, like cardboard and just as hard – he’d tried tapping it with a spoon – and its fingers and toes had shrivelled oddly; they were like brown bottle-glass, and through the glass something lighter could just be made out,
presumably
joints and bones.

Beneath the body a puddle had formed on the floor, though that too had dried a long time ago. Still, it was best to avoid stepping in it as his shoes would stick to everything and crackle wickedly with every step.

Tweety looked at Brownie with his head tilted to one side – he had christened her Brownie – and he could still bear the sight of her fairly well. The first time he’d seen her he’d run headlong out of the flat and vomited on the street, but a few days later he’d felt compelled to go back. After that he’d returned again and again, each time daring to come closer to her, gradually overcoming his initial horror. It was as though he was compelled by a profound need deep inside him, one far more powerful than his own will. And when he looked at her now a strange sense of
satisfaction
glowed within him, a mysterious feeling of fulfilment and victory. Never before had he experienced anything like it.

He moved Sparkle Eye back to Brownie’s face. It looked just as horrific every time. When he moved his hand the lights and shadows moved too, as if her expression were constantly changing, and all of a sudden Tweety knelt down closer: was her grimace somehow different? Was there mockery in it? Something knowing?

Tweety’s mind seemed to shimmer. He suddenly found himself
thinking
of precisely what under normal circumstances he consciously tried to avoid ever thinking of: he had never slept with a woman, properly, had actual intercourse. He hadn’t even done it with Soot Rose. He’d tried it with her many times, but every time the same thing happened: at the critical moment he was always flaccid, and Brownie grinned there on the floor as though she knew. Tweety jumped edgily to his feet, panting, his hands clenched into jagged fists.

Finally he spat on Brownie’s back. The spittle shone like a white blotch and she couldn’t do anything about it; she just lay there with no eyes, her guts and heart rotting away, dried to a crisp, and she would never get up from there again and would never tell anyone what she knew or what he had done to her.

Tweety turned around, switched off the record player and left the room and its stench; the narrow strip of light flashed in front of him, the
silverware
glinted, the floorboards creaked. In the living room he stopped still and raised the lamp. He aimed the light at the gable wall, and lit from such a distance they stood out well: dozens of different weapons. The wall was covered with them. Most of them were old revolvers but among them there
were a few pistols, an old Mauser M1916 and about ten bayonets and three swords. He knew that there were cartridges for two of the pistols; he’d found them in the lower drawer of the glass cabinet. He’d loaded the guns once, but now he let them be. Somehow he was too agitated.

He continued towards the bedroom and thought of Brownie’s real name: Helga Anna-Liisa Kivimäki. She’d died in March; the oldest newspaper in the pile of post was dated 2 March, and nobody had missed her. Nobody had loved her enough to actually miss her, and perhaps now Brownie wished that her heirs might love her money enough that they’d finally come and lay her to rest. She’d spent long stretches of time abroad – he’d examined the entire flat and knew almost everything about her life – and perhaps people who knew her thought she was just sunning herself somewhere. But they were wrong. Though she was certainly brown enough.

Tweety paused by the dressing table, let the light slide across the
porcelain
pots and the comb with the silver handle, and stopped when he reached a small photograph. In the picture was a woman of about thirty; Tweety guessed it was Helga Anna-Liisa, her clothes and the style of the photograph were so dated, like something hundreds of years old. The woman was beautiful. Her neck was long and magnificent, her cheeks full and rosy; she had a pretty, pursed mouth and, judging by the picture, large and very dark eyes. Their expression was gentle, accepting. It made you want to answer her – and Tweety was suddenly struck by how much he missed Toby and wished he could have held him and stroked him.

He held the photograph closer to his face. Helga Anna-Liisa had little dimples, too, and wild curls of hair behind her ears. He began to sense that she was a good person after all, or that she once had been, and if she had been there in the room, either how she was in the picture or how she had been just before her death, she would surely have clasped him in her arms and stroked his neck and his hair, caressed his ears and his mouth. She would have lulled him like a child without demanding anything from him. She would have loved him.

Harjunpää sat on the steps at the back of the house with the night around him and the rabbit in his arms. He gently scratched Viljami’s neck. The rabbit’s jaws munched, stopped every now and then, then started munching again, and each time the rabbit finished eating its dandelion leaf Harjunpää quietly apologised and fetched him a fresh one growing by the wall.

On the horizon he could see that morning was almost upon them; the darkness was fractionally bluer. It was almost four o’clock. He’d woken up around three and hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. Instead he sat there breathing in the fragrant night; he would have liked to think about the pet shop, but this time he found he couldn’t.

It was just a thought he’d had, a daydream that would have involved buying a slightly older house somewhere further away. There was a suitable house for sale in Veklahti and it even had a garage big enough; he’d already been to look at it. Then the whole family could start raising rabbits and guinea pigs and mice and everything in between, they could grow their own hay too, then they’d rent a little place in the centre of Kirkkonummi and open a shop that Elisa could run. There wasn’t a single pet shop in Kirkkonummi, but there were plenty of children and teenagers.

And somewhere deeper down another thought began to crystallise: if the business were successful he could do the same as Onerva. But he couldn’t mention it out loud; he knew all about unemployment, bankruptcy and the recession, and those who didn’t understand that all this was just a game knew to their cost far more than he did. It was as though the recession had claimed people’s very idea of happiness, too.

He was so overwhelmingly tired of death. He was overwhelmingly tired of bodies, but new ones were always waiting for him somewhere, still warm, almost human, or changed somehow, black monsters, rotten and stuck on the floor. He was tired of murderers and arsonists and rapists, tired of the fact that behind even the most horrific acts there was always someone crippled, someone crushed by human stupidity or the sheer lack of love. Therapy was of no use to these battered souls, far less being crushed with the full force of the law.

He was tired of serving as a sticking plaster; he was tired of trying to solve a problem to which there was no solution.

And he was tired of the police force and its personnel policy, which wasn’t a policy at all but a means of demeaning and breaking people. The latest officer to be broken for good was Osmo Salonen.

Osmo’s name had appeared on an advance list of those to be transferred to the Public Order Police. The list consisted primarily of officers who’d had problems in the past or who didn’t know how to keep their mouths shut or bow down low enough to the powers that be. The Public Order Division then quickly produced another list of officers they weren’t prepared to take under any circumstances, and Osmo’s name had been first on the list. Two weeks later he was pulled over for drink-driving and booted out of the force, but his gun was finally taken away one bullet too late.

Harjunpää started wondering when his own name would appear on a list – nowadays it was on everyone’s mind – though, on the other hand, wouldn’t it ultimately be something of a relief?

Grandpa had been sitting in the woods at the foot of a great spruce tree and there had been nothing wrong with him. In fact, he’d been exceptionally lucid. He’d looked Harjunpää in the eyes and said, almost apologetically: ‘I just had such a strong feeling that… it was time. And I figured, better out here than in front of the children… I’ve always loved the woods. And when I was younger and pressed my hand into the side of a tree, I could feel it breathing, it was alive…’

Harjunpää propped his elbow on his knee and pinched his fingers tightly along the side of his nose.

Out in the woods a strange bird chirped.

Viljami started whimpering as he finished his dandelion leaf.