The Healer (8 page)

 

ONE DAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS

 

10

I rolled over in bed and reached for the phone on the night table. 6:05 a.m. Unknown number. I'd slept without dreaming for almost exactly three hours.

“Tapani Lehtinen,” I said, now fully awake as if I hadn't slept at all—or had slept a long time. I'm not sure which it was.

“Lassi Uutela. I assume I don't need to ask if I've called at a bad time.”

My heart skipped a beat. Johanna.

“Not at all,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. As if controlling my voice could keep everything else under control.

“I have somewhat bad news, which is connected to Johanna in a way. I thought you'd want to know.”

“Of course.”

“The photographer, Gromov—the one I tried to call last night?”

“Yes.”

“He's dead.”

I didn't know what to say. I could feel my pulse throbbing in my neck. Soon it had climbed to my temple.

“There's no information about Johanna,” Lassi said. “Gromov was found alone, so it may be that it has nothing to do with her.”

“Where was he found?” I asked with a gulp.

“He was thrown from a car up north, along Tuusulantie. Apparently he died somewhere else.”

“When?”

“I don't know. I was told we may never know because they might not get around to investigating it.”

“How did he die?”

“They didn't tell me.”

I rubbed my dry eyes, thought for a moment, then asked, “Was he wearing clothes? Was there anything in his pockets?”

Lassi didn't answer right away. I could hear his fingers quite clearly tapping on his keyboard.

“No information,” he said. “I do know that he didn't have his camera or telephone with him.”

“I was thinking more of memory cards. Photographers sometimes have them in their pockets, don't they?”

Lassi again didn't answer right away.

“Well,” he drawled, and I could hear the keyboard clicking again. “I think they would have mentioned that.”

“Who? The police?”

“I haven't heard from the police,” he said after a short, emphatic pause. “I'm talking about the men from the security company who found him.”

I stood up—it hurt so much to straighten my back that it knocked the wind out of me. I grabbed the head of the bed for support.

“The police didn't find him?”

“No,” Lassi said. “Some guys from a private security company called and said they were taking him to the morgue. As you know, they have permission to do that now.”

“I know, I know,” I said, sounding more impatient than I intended. “Sorry, I didn't mean that.”

I took a breath and straightened my back again. The pain didn't let up.

“OK,” Lassi said. “Am I supposed to understand what you did mean?”

I told him about Johanna's investigations and my own, with particular emphasis on the thrashing I'd been given. I walked into the kitchen as I spoke, got a glass of water, and sat down at the table. When I'd finished talking, Lassi was silent for a moment.

“Of course there's a remote possibility,” he began, speaking considerably more slowly, and without the accompanying pounding of a keyboard. He paused a moment as if looking around the room for answers. “It's possible that there's some connection between these events. But I don't yet see what it is.”

“Gromov is dead,” I said. “And he hardly would have been thrown into a ditch if he'd died in an accident. How do you even know he was found in a ditch? Maybe they killed him someplace, anyplace, and carted him straight off to the morgue.”

I noticed that I'd raised my voice. Lassi noticed, too. His tone turned sarcastic.

“Naturally. First they murder him, then they take him to the morgue, and finally they politely call me. Makes perfect sense.”

He paused for a moment; I kept silent and took a drink of water. When he spoke again the sarcasm drained word by word from his voice.

“I called because I thought you'd want to know that at least for now, and at least judging by what we know, Johanna's all right. I intend to find out what this is all about by the end of the day. This may come as a surprise to you, but we do still place some value on our reporters and photographers. We take care of our own. As well as we can in these times.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment. Maybe the moment of silence was in memory of Gromov.

“Is there anything you intend to do with regard to Johanna?” I asked.

A brief silence.

“What can I do, really?” Lassi said. “What the heck am I supposed to do? I'm losing my staff, losing the paper itself, at an accelerating pace. I don't have any room to move.”

I drank the rest of the water, then got up and went to fill the glass again. When the water's running and you don't have to boil it, it feels like your whole life's a little easier. Or it would have felt that way in some other circumstances, at some other time. I put the glass of water down on the counter.

“Anyway,” I said. “Thanks for calling.”

Lassi's voice was quieter now, and, surprisingly enough, softer.

“I'm sorry, Tapani. I really wish I could help you—and a lot of other people.”

“I believe you,” I said, trying to sound as sincere as I could. I looked out at the dark morning.

“But these times…”

“I know.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You, too.”

I lowered the phone from my ear and wiped the sweat from both.

I warmed up some oatmeal in the microwave, mixed in a teaspoon of honey, and ate it. I felt a little better. I immediately made myself another helping and turned on Johanna's computer while I ate.

I read for a moment, finished my oatmeal, put some coffee on to brew, and walked into the living room. I could see a few fires far off on the other side of the bay. Otherwise the landscape was dark except for the electric glow of the city on the left edge of the starless sky. The black limbs of the leafless trees in front of the building stood out like they'd been burned.

I had to get started, so I went back to the computer, opened the browser, and typed in “Pasi Tarkiainen.” I didn't find anything new. I tried other searches: “Pasi Tarkiainen” and specific years. I still didn't find anything recent, only information I already knew from the past. Then I combined “Tarkiainen” with other search terms: first his home addresses, then his workplaces. Nothing. I tried combinations of names: “Pasi Tarkiainen Harri Jaatinen.” No results. “Pasi Tarkiainen Vasili Gromov.” No results. “Pasi Tarkiainen Johanna Lehtinen.” A brief news item caught my attention. Another search, this time with Johanna's maiden name: “Pasi Tarkiainen Johanna Merilä.”

A cold fist wriggled in my chest, my stomach dropped away to the point of pain, my fingers on the keys started to tremble, and my fingertips were suddenly numb.

It was an article from thirteen years ago.

Johanna was young in the picture, as was Pasi Tarkiainen, of course. He had his right arm around her, and you could see him pulling her closer to him. Johanna's expression was neutral, though there was perhaps a trace of discomfort either from the mere fact of being photographed or because of his overeager squeeze. Tarkiainen's smile was once again broad and radiant, but there wasn't yet that intensity in his eyes that I'd seen in the photo taken several years later.

There was a headline above the picture:
ENVIRONMENTALLY EFFICIENT LILLIPUT HOUSES GET THEIR FIRST TWO RESIDENTS
.

The article didn't really say anything about Johanna or Pasi Tarkiainen; it was mainly about a new residential development in Kivinokka. A former allotment garden had been converted to housing in the same miniature spirit as garden cottages, with the goal of demonstrating the housing construction of the future. Everything about the neighborhood was twenty years too late—although the houses produced their own energy and were entirely recyclable, sustainable, and nonpolluting, the environment was already so changed by then that the innovations were meaningless. On top of that, the houses were too expensive for an ordinary person to afford, and those who could afford them certainly didn't want to move to Kivinokka. Nowadays the houses were inhabited by anyone brave enough to live in them—the forgotten suburb of Kivinokka had a bad reputation, for a lot of reasons. The area near the bay at Vanhakaupunki was strewn with about a dozen skeletons of high-rises whose builders had run out of money and time before they were completed. But that didn't mean that no one lived there. The people living there didn't mind being off the beaten path.

The nearly decade-and-a-half-old article mentioned that the young couple were a medical student and a journalist, and that they were pleased with their new home. “This place has it all: sustainability, nature, the city, good transit connections.” The words were attributed to Pasi Tarkiainen.

I looked at the photo again.

What surprised me the most?

The fact that Johanna had once lived with Pasi Tarkiainen? That she had lived in Kivinokka, just a couple of kilometers from where we lived now? Or that I knew nothing about either of these facts?

I got up, walked to the living room, opened the balcony door, and went outside. I looked out toward Kivinokka. It was dark, of course, as it almost always was. Here and there fires shone, but otherwise the entire cape was blank darkness but for the angular outlines of the tall black buildings.

Why hadn't Johanna told me about Tarkiainen and the place in Kivinokka? On the other hand, why would she? When we'd met ten years ago and married six months later, it was the beginning of a new life for both of us. So why would we have ever had anything to say about Pasi Tarkiainen or a miniature house they'd lived in thirteen years ago?

It had been a long time since she lived in Kivinokka. When we met she was living in Hakaniemi in a one-bedroom with a kitchen that she'd been in for at least a year and a half. That left another year and a half between the time of the article and her move to Hakaniemi.

Something had happened, and it had happened in a very short time. It may have been nothing more remarkable than the end of young love, though, of course, the discovery of Tarkiainen's DNA at the scenes of the Healer killings and Johanna's disappearance brought to mind other possibilities.

I went back into the kitchen and looked at the picture again, rubbing the cold out of my toes. The photo was cropped so that Johanna Merilä and Pasi Tarkiainen were cut off at the waist and filled the left side of the frame. On the right was a little yellow house with solar panels on the roof, either their house or one of the first to be completed. The caption read: “Johanna Merilä and Pasi Tarkiainen moved to Kivinokka from Kallio.”

I looked through Tarkiainen's list of previous addresses. One of them was Pengerkatu 7, in Kallio. I tried an address search under Johanna's name, but all I got was her address on Hämeentie, which I already knew.

I thought for a moment, then picked up my phone.

It was almost seven.

In spite of the time, Elina answered quickly, in a voice that sounded more like someone who'd been awake all night than someone who'd just been awakened.

“Has Johanna been found?” she asked, before I'd finished saying hello.

“No,” I said. “Are you still in Helsinki?”

Elina didn't say anything for a moment. Maybe she was checking to see where she was.

“We're still here,” she said quietly.

I waited a moment for her to say something more, but she didn't. The silence almost described the way she closed her eyes and hung her head.

“Elina, is everything all right?” I asked.

“No,” she said quickly, sharply, then paused a moment and said more cautiously, more softly, “We're not leaving. At least not yet.”

“What happened?”

Another silence. I could almost hear her gathering her thoughts and putting them in order. Then she spoke, in a quiet, even tone:

“Ahti was in the basement yesterday getting our things together, and he was bitten by a rat. At first we thought it was nothing, but he woke up last night with a fever, looking yellow, throwing up, and having cramps, and we had to call a doctor. He might have died otherwise. You know there's no point in going to the hospital.”

“I know,” I said, guessing the end of the story.

“The doctor wouldn't have agreed to come if it weren't for the fact that we could pay in cash. We had the money you gave us, but it wasn't enough. I had to sell our train tickets.”

“Did you have enough money then?”

“Enough for the doctor's visit and the antibiotics. And he gave Ahti an injection of something.”

“Is Ahti all right?”

“He's sleeping,” Elina said, again so quietly that I was almost leaning into the telephone to hear her better. “Or under some kind of sedation. His breathing is rough. Labored, like he can't get enough oxygen.”

“Does he have a fever?”

“Not anymore.”

“I'm sorry, Elina,” I said, trying to make my voice a touch lighter, to pick up the pace. “I'm sure Ahti will recover from this and you'll be able to take your trip. But there's something else I wanted to talk to you about. It has to do with Johanna. And Pasi Tarkiainen.”

The phone was completely quiet, with not even the normal background buzz. Elina didn't say anything. I took the phone away from my ear and looked to see if we'd been disconnected. The display said she was still on the line.

“Are you there, Elina?” I asked to make sure.

“Pasi Tarkiainen?” she asked, startled somehow, sounding like she just realized she was still on the telephone.

“Johanna's old boyfriend.”

“Yeahhh.”

Tense, waiting. That's how she sounded. I asked her in the most patient voice possible: “‘Yeahhh,' meaning that you know him, or ‘yeahhh,' meaning that you're waiting for me to ask something else?”