The Healer (6 page)

“Is this the local news?” I asked.

Nina shook her head.

“Our home country,” Hamid said.

I looked at the fire again. It looked like all the other fires in the world.

“I'm sorry,” I said to Hamid.

“Me, too,” he said.

Nina picked up the remote from the counter and changed the channel. The Helsinki area information station reported news of the capital continuously. I asked her to call up the latest news broadcast. She pressed the remote.

I took out my phone and asked for a charger. Hamid snapped up the phone and took it behind the counter.

I sat in one of the restaurant's chairs and looked at the clock on the wall: twelve past one. I felt weak and sick. Ideas came into my mind, but I didn't want to follow them to their conclusions. Most of the thoughts revolved around Johanna, and the mere idea that something might have happened to her like what had just happened to me hurt more than the beating I'd taken.

The local news didn't offer any more clues. Armed robberies had increased—they were being committed in the daytime now, and closer to the city center. A skyscraper in central Pasila had been set on fire earlier in the evening. Traffic from the Russian border to the capital was jammed again. There was also good news: The metro tunnels had been pumped out, and the metro was back up and running. They had also increased the number of armed guards there.

But none of that was any help to me.

Hamid sat on the other side of the table.

“I'm sure things will get better,” he said when I turned away from the television and looked at him.

*   *   *

I
STOOD FOR A
moment in front of the pizzeria, breathing in the night's thin air, feeling it in my throat, and keeping my eyes on the trees that stood stock-still behind the library, silently waiting for spring, for warmth and new life, in the middle of the winter, in the middle of the night, glistening with rain, their limbs dripping. The earth beneath them was numbingly cold and would be for months yet, but the trees didn't let their nerves get to them, they didn't tremble or blame anyone for the unpleasantness of their situation. I was awakened from this lesson when Hamid backed the taxi around the corner and stopped in front of me.

I turned my phone back on in the taxi. No sign of Johanna. I took out a tissue and wiped my earlobe. The wound had opened again when I washed my face. The tissue turned dark red in seconds. I took a new one out of my pocket and held it against my ear.

We drove north to avoid the roads closed due to the high-rise fire in Pasila and made it to the police station without any trouble. Hamid stopped the car a few hundred meters before he reached the gates, and I handed him who knows how many bills. I hadn't calculated how much the fare would be. He had saved my life, so I felt I ought to pay a little extra. I asked him to wait. If I didn't return in an hour, he could go look for another fare.

I walked as upright as the pain in my back would allow me, shoved the bloody tissue in my pocket, and adjusted my face into as friendly and neutral an expression as I could without a mirror. In spite of all that my way was blocked as soon as I got to the gate in the fence that surrounded the police station.

No, I don't have a pass.

No, no one is expecting me.

I explained that I'd come to see Harri Jaatinen, chief inspector of the violent crimes unit, and that I was there concerning the man known as the Healer. The young policeman, in a heavy armored vest and helmet, with an assault rifle in his hands and eyes that kept darting from side to side, listened to me for a moment, then walked to the guard's booth without saying a word, waited, and opened the gate.

I was directed to the security checkpoint, where they took my phone and gave me an ID badge to pin to my chest. After security I walked into a building with a large foyer full of people and only one empty seat.

Across from me sat a wealthy-looking, well-dressed couple roughly the age of Johanna and me. The woman was half in the man's lap, sniffling quietly. Her fist clasped a tissue, and her face was twisted and blotched with red. The man's pale face was pointed straight ahead, and the empty, frozen look in his eyes was unchanging as he mechanically moved his hand over her back.

I closed my eyes and waited.

 

8

“Tapani Lehtinen?”

I opened my eyes.

“If you're reporting a theft, robbery, or assault, take a number at the first window.”

Harri Jaatinen was amazingly similar in person to the way he seemed in the news clips—just as tall and chiseled as he was in those painful close-ups. I got up and shook his hand. He was quite a bit older than me—nearer to sixty than fifty, with dark gray at his temples, in his mustache, and in his eyes. He reminded me of Dr. Phil, the American psychologist on the old television show. But it took only a few words of conversation to easily distinguish where Dr. Phil ended and Inspector Jaatinen began. Where Dr. Phil would have coaxed and flattered with artificial empathy, Jaatinen's tone was dry, gruff, and unapologetic. It was impossible to imagine that voice dithering, sentimental, or fawning—it was a voice made for pronouncements, statements of fact. His handshake was the same: straightforward and professional.

I instinctively touched the bandage on my ear. It hadn't occurred to me that it might seem to be my reason for being here. I shook my head.

“I'm here about the Healer. I believe my wife, the journalist Johanna Lehtinen, has been in touch with you about the case.”

Jaatinen seemed to remember and understand immediately what I was talking about. He switched his weight from one leg to the other.

“That case and many others,” he said, and I couldn't quite tell from his expression whether he was pleased and faintly smiling, or vexed by the memory. Then he said, “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

The coffee was acrid, but warm. The stark room contained a desk, two chairs, and Jaatinen's computer.

I quickly told him everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours: Johanna's disappearance, how I had found out about her investigation, and, of course, my own investigations, which had resulted in the bandage on my ear, a back that was black and blue, and a crazy theory about waves on the seashore.

“Johanna's a good reporter,” Jaatinen said. “She's been a lot of help to us.” His voice didn't rise or fall and had no shades of color or tone. He didn't take sides or make commitments. But it was a surprisingly pleasant voice to listen to. “As you no doubt know, we're short of staff at the moment. I'm sure you understand that I can't spare any staff to search for your wife. Or for anyone else.”

“That's not what I'm looking for,” I said. “I want to know more about the Healer, because that's how I can find Johanna.”

Jaatinen shook his head sharply.

“That's not at all certain.”

“It's all I've got. And the police have nothing to lose, whether I find her or not. In any case, you'll have one more man investigating the murders. Everybody wins.”

Jaatinen measured me with a glance and didn't answer right away. Maybe he was calculating my trustworthiness, or comparing me in his mind to the thousand other people offering or asking for help that he must run across in his profession. I sat in my chair and tried to look as forthright as possible, tried to look like I'd be a lot of help to him. The bandage on my ear probably didn't reinforce that impression.

“We have DNA tests from only some of the cases because the lab is overbooked and understaffed, and the equipment is starting to wear out. Anyway, there are DNA tests from the most recent case, the murder in Eira. What I'm about to tell you is absolutely confidential until you hear otherwise. I shouldn't be telling you this, but Johanna was a great help to us, and to me particularly, in solving those kidnappings three years ago.”

He took a sip of coffee and glanced at his cup with a satisfied look. I was perplexed, and tasted mine again. It was almost undrinkable.

“We have one suspect, the same person who's suspected in the first murder, the one in Tapiola. We got a DNA sample in that case, too, and we even got it to the lab for testing, which happens less and less nowadays.”

He took another mouthful of coffee. He was enjoying his so much that he was willingly lingering over it before swallowing.

“So. We compared the samples to the national DNA bank and got a name. There was only one problem.”

His gray-blue eyes shone in the poorly lit room. He looked all of a sudden like he was sitting much closer to me than I'd realized. Either that or the room around us had shrunk and the walls were pushing us closer together.

“The man in question died in the flu epidemic five years ago.”

“OK,” I said after a little pause, trying my best to make myself comfortable in the suddenly confined space.

He put his coffee down and pushed it away from him, dropped his gaze to his elbows leaning on the desk, and scooted them forward, too. If the desk had been a living thing it would have been crying in pain.

“The suspect was about to graduate from medical school. Pasi Tarkiainen. Died at home.”

“So?”

Jaatinen's expression was unchanged, and the pitch of his voice remained the same. Apparently he was used to explaining things to people slower than himself.

“So we have a dead medical student who left traces of himself that were found on the victims,” he said. “And he may be using the name ‘the Healer.'”

“There must be some explanation.”

He seemed to be of the same opinion; an indentation appeared between his lower lip and the tip of his outstretched chin that seemed to say: Exactly. Quite. That is the point.

“Of course there is. But we don't have enough investigators to find out what it is. We had three detectives officially resign yesterday, and one of them was assigned to this case. Last week two of my employees didn't come to work, and it looks like they're gone for good, since they took their weapons with them but left their security passes. And this bunch has a calling for the job—I can only imagine what the situation's like in other departments.”

He drummed his fingers on the desk a few times and sharpened his gaze.

“All our time goes to recording new cases. There's no time for investigation because new, and worse, cases are constantly arriving. We go as fast as we can and we're still at square one. It's no wonder people give up. Maybe I should leave, too, while I still can. But where would I go? That's what I can't figure out.”

“Did Johanna know about this?” I asked. “About Pasi Tarkiainen?”

Jaatinen leaned back and sized me up again, me and the whole situation.

“Probably not. Unless she found out through her own research. Our department's not as airtight as it used to be. After all, here I am talking to you. But did she know? I don't think she knew.”

I shifted my position in the chair, trying to throw my left leg over my right, but the pain in my lower back stopped me like a wall. It was as if someone had taken a screwdriver directly to the nerve. I let out a squeak and put the leg back where it was before.

“Do you know who they were?” Jaatinen asked.

“The ones who clobbered me?”

He nodded. In a friendly way this time, I thought. I shrugged. It was of absolutely no importance, I thought. “If I had to guess, I'd say they were from some private security company, paid professional sadists. There are still people living in those houses, and they can afford to pay someone to keep the place clean.”

“The only sector that's growing,” Jaatinen said. “We've had a lot of people defect. They want to try to earn enough to go north. But the space up there isn't unlimited. And life up north can't be much easier or more delightful than it is here.”

I had to get the discussion back on track. I was looking for Johanna, not pondering convulsions in the labor market.

“Let's assume that you could investigate the Healer and Tarkiainen,” I said. “Where would you begin?”

Jaatinen seemed to have expected this question. He didn't think for even a second before saying, “I'd look for Tarkiainen. Dead or not.”

“How?” I asked.

“With the information you have, some instinct, and a bit of luck. You'll need all of it. The evidence indicates that Tarkiainen is alive. Somewhere there are people who know him. I'd be surprised if they weren't right around the corner. I have a feeling the killer knows the areas he's active in very well. The same would apply to the people around him. I would look for old friends of his—workmates, neighbors, golf buddies, kindred spirits. One of them might still be in contact with him. He might even go to the same pub he used to.”

Jaatinen was quiet for a moment and seemed to purposely leave the obvious question hanging in the air.

“You don't believe that Tarkiainen's dead?”

He didn't need to wrestle with his answer.

“No,” he said in a dry and implacable voice.

We talked for a few more minutes, and I had the feeling he was still keeping me at a distance. He had told me a lot, but not everything.

*   *   *

I
DIDN
'
T PRESS HIM
. Nor could I bring myself to ask him directly what he thought Johanna's chances were, but we did talk about the kidnapping case three years earlier that she had helped to solve, thanks to which two girls, aged six and eight, though permanently traumatized, had been returned alive. I could tell that Jaatinen hoped this chat would encourage me. I did my best to accept whatever crumbs I could get from it.

After a moment of silence, he got up and pulled up his dark suit pants. I did the same with my jeans. There was another sharp pain in my back. We shook hands and I thanked him for his time. He said, “We'll keep trying,” and I said, “Yes we will.” We were at the door before his choice of words registered.