The Winter of the Lions (24 page)

‘The woman we’re looking for saw someone she was mourning lying on that stretcher. Not a puppet, she saw a man she knew. Mäkelä did justice to his own claim.’

‘Meaning?’ asked Westerberg.

‘He wanted to create a perfect imitation of reality. And he did. As the woman saw it, there was no difference. While the others were amused, she saw a real person lying on the stretcher, just as she’d seen him at the moment of his death, and … maybe she was in the skating rink herself, and survived the accident.’

Sundström nodded without taking his eyes off the screen.

‘I also think she didn’t see the show on TV, I think she saw it here. She was in the studio audience.’

‘What?’ said Sundström.

‘Can we run the other tape again?’ he asked.

Tuulikki nodded. She swapped the tapes, and wound the one now in the machine back to the place where eight people were laughing and one was not.

‘I think that’s the woman we want. The woman in the middle,’ said Joentaa.

Sundström did not reply. He focused on the picture, his eyes narrowed.

‘That’s terrible,’ said Westerberg in the background.

Sundström nodded. ‘I see what you mean. All the same, she could simply be a woman who found the whole thing rather less amusing than the rest of them.’

‘That may well be so,’ said Joentaa.

‘That woman looks … she looks dreadful,’ said Westerberg.

‘I’ve asked Petri to get together with Päivi Holmquist and dig up all the data about victims of the accident at the ice rink,’ said Kimmo Joentaa. ‘That ought to be the quickest way. There’s also a list of the people in the audience at the chat show, but it’s incomplete, and because there were no numbered tickets it will be difficult to identify the woman that way in a hurry. And as you rightly say, we can’t be sure about the woman in the audience.’

Sundström nodded.

‘Petri will ring back soon and then we’ll know more.’

‘Yes,’ said Sundström.

Tuulikki had risen to her feet and was leaning over the computer monitor. ‘Who takes photographs like that?’ she asked.

Joentaa, Sundström and Westerberg followed her gaze.

The child was lying turned away from the camera, as if to hug the man, and one of the man’s hands rested on the child’s unnaturally flat body. In the light the camera had cast on it the picture looked as if the photographer had been fascinated by the scene.

‘Who takes photographs like that?’ Tuulikki asked again.

ALL EYES WERE
on him. The cameras were turned on him. His legs were rather weak. He felt a smile on his face and sweat on his forehead. The button in his ear was working. The assistant stood a few metres away, both hands holding up the card showing his cues. The first presentation was waiting in the teleprompter. He had forgotten just what Tuula had written for him. He stood there at the centre of the world, searching for words.

‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘I’m very glad to be here this evening. And very glad that you … that you are here with me.’

He turned to the bright red group of seats including the sofa where he was to welcome the first guest. It looked comfortable.

Whatever Tuula had written for him had been different. Probably better.

He sensed the camera on his back. He sat down. The full text of the presentation came up on the teleprompter. The cues were on the large piece of cardboard that the assistant was holding up.

‘A year is ending, a new year is beginning. We are here together to look back. We will try to discover what was important in the year just gone. Good enough or sad enough to accompany us into the New Year. The things that stand out from everyday life, creating memories that will stay with us. Things that we cannot forget, or do not want to forget, or ought not to forget.’

He felt dizziness behind his forehead, and an impulse to wipe the sweat away from his hair.

‘I would like to say hello to my wife, who is usually in front of the television when I am on it. My most important and best critic. In fact, my only critic.’

The audience laughed, and he laughed with them. The sweat on his body felt good.

‘And I’d like to say hello to my daughters. Hi, you two. See you after the show. Too bad if you can’t stay awake until midnight, because I have any amount of fireworks waiting.’

More laughter from the audience. He felt their glances without being able to see the people. All he saw was the radiance of the spotlights.

He had a feeling that he weighed less and less all the time, and he looked at the text of the first presentation on the teleprompter for a little while before he began to speak again.

‘And not least, of course, I would like to welcome my first guest. A man who felt the full force of happy chance in the year just past. This lucky person can boast of achieving the age of seventy-four, and he won the biggest jackpot in the history of the Finnish lottery. Welcome, Elvi Laaksola!’

Applause burst out, and a white-haired man came towards him, looking unsure of himself rather than lucky.

A DEAD MAN
in the snow, a puppet on a stretcher, a woman in the audience, and on the fourth screen Hämäläinen was talking to a winner who said he had been a loser all his life.

‘And now it’s too late,’ he said. ‘What am I supposed to do with all that money now? I don’t feel like travelling, and I can’t drive a car because of my eyes.’

Hämäläinen smoothed over the situation with a joke.

The audience laughed.

The white-haired man remained waspish, and seemed unwilling to be disabused of the idea that winning the jackpot was an unreasonable imposition, the last thing he needed in his old age.

‘Very funny,’ said Sundström. ‘That’s how I’d like to be when I get old.’

‘Seriously?’ asked Tuulikki.

‘It was a joke,’ said Sundström.

The monotonous ring tone of Joentaa’s mobile sounded. He took it out of his trouser pocket. ‘Petri?’ he said.

‘Hi, Kimmo. Well, we already have something,’ said Grönholm.

‘Yes?’

‘When the roof of the skating rink collapsed, twenty-four people lost their lives. We have their names.’

‘Good.’

‘Can I fax them to you? Or if you can lay hands on a computer I’ll send you the list in an email.’

‘Do that. As soon as you can, please.’

‘Right,’ said Grönholm. ‘You’ll see that several of the victims had the same surnames. We haven’t gone through them yet to find two who might be father and son. We’re going to do that now.’

‘Fine,’ said Joentaa.

‘I’ll ring back as soon as I have news.’

‘One more thing: does the list include the names of injured victims who survived?’

‘Er, no.’

‘We need to know about them too.’

‘That could take more time. As far as I remember, there were quite a lot of them, and it’ll be a good deal more difficult to get a full list of those names.’

‘Try, please. And as soon as you find the name of a survivor that matches any of the victims let us know. We may be looking for a man and boy who died, and a woman who was among the survivors.’

‘Okay, we’ll get to work on it. More later,’ said Grönholm, breaking the connection.

Joentaa turned to Tuulikki. ‘Can you reach Olli Latvala?’

‘I can try, but I’m afraid it’s not likely. He’s looking after the guests, and we have an enormous programme today.’

Joentaa nodded. ‘He said there were names of at least some of the audience, and if they wrote ordering tickets those were sent by post. I’d like a list of any names.’

Tuulikki nodded. She tried ringing Olli Latvala, but after a while she shook her head. ‘No good. He has ears for nothing but his headset right now, and the people taking part in this evening’s show.’

Joentaa nodded. ‘Never mind. I have to call up an email. Is that computer connected to the Internet?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Tuulikki.

Joentaa sat down in front of the monitor and minimised the photograph from Mäkelä’s CorpsesForDummies archive folder.

‘What was Petri able to tell us?’ asked Sundström.

‘They have the names of the dead. He’s sending a list.’

‘Maybe I’m rather slow on the uptake,’ said Westerberg, who had also come over to the computer, ‘but I don’t quite see the connection.’

Joentaa opened the email that Grönholm had sent him; it contained no text, only an attached Word document.

‘The list must contain the names of the man and the boy you can see on that photograph.’

‘Ah,’ said Westerberg.

Joentaa opened the attachment. Another list, he thought. First name, surname. No dates of birth yet. Mertaranta and Päivi Holmquist were working on that, because the age of the victims was important. They all leaned towards the screen and read:

Leo Aalto

Seppo Aalto

Markku Aalto

Petra Bäckström

Sulevi Jääskeläinen

Eva Johansson

Ronja Koivistio

Ella Kuusisto

Lara Kuusisto

Pentti Laakso

Kielo Laakso

Viola Lagerbäck

Sipi Lindström

Raija Lindström

Ilmari Mattila

Veikko Mattila

Kaino Nieminen

Tuomas Nieminen

Arsi Peltola

Urho Peltola

Tuomas Peltonen

Akseli Pesonen

Tapio Pesonen

Laura Virtanen

Joentaa felt that at any moment he might come upon a name he knew. Someone he had met at some point and lost sight
of, only to find him again on this list years later. But the names remained strange. Strange black characters on virtual white paper, on a monitor in a strange room. In alphabetical order.

‘Was Petri able to give us anything else?’

‘They’re still working on it, trying to make out which are the relevant names. I told him to look for a man and a boy, possibly father and son. He’ll be in touch as soon as they have anything new,’ said Joentaa.

Sundström nodded.

On one of the big screens on the glass wall, Hämäläinen was saying goodbye to the gloomy jackpot winner, and the white-haired man left the stage leaning on a stick.

THE WHITE-HAIRED
man disappeared in the beam of the spotlights as if dissolving into mist, and the ski-jumpers who had just come on stage to resounding applause waved to the audience without changing expression. They looked rather comical in blue jeans and brightly coloured shirts, with their gold medals round their necks and their skis over their shoulders. Like children.

Although one of them was in fact only sixteen, and sportsmen never had to grow up anyway, because they were not forbidden to play games or weaned off them; on the contrary, playing games was how they earned their money.

He thought of Niskanen. Waiting for the result of the B test. Hoping against hope, flying in the face of logic, obsessed by an urge to tell lies upon lies, one after another, until he believed them himself. And when at last that urge had worn
itself out you could always go to Ireland to breed sheep, cutting off the connection when your past was on the line.

The ski-jumpers sat down on the comfortable sofas, and Hämäläinen lost his train of thought. The show was going well. The best thing about it was that he hardly had to pay attention. It just flowed on. He thought of the gunman’s girlfriend, and felt a slight pang, he couldn’t say just where. The pain wandered through his body, and he asked a question about the composition of skis for ski-jumping. Read it out from one of the yellow notes.

One of the ski-jumpers answered, and he thought how clean everything was. So red and gold and dark blue and orange. So precisely adjusted, not a speck of dust in sight. The smooth parquet floor, the handsome desk at which he would sit later. Leaning a little way forward, not too far. Summoning up a smile, then wrinkling his brow. Then the smile again.

The next question was about the fall in the penultimate round. When everything had suddenly been balanced on a knife-edge, and they no longer had a clear lead but were trailing slightly. The ski-jumpers laughed. They had come to terms with that past episode. The star among the victors explained how he had engineered the team’s triumph. A record jump in the last round, holding his attitude elegantly in the air over a distance that appeared physically impossible.

Hämäläinen remembered. The microphone he had used for questioning the expert at the time, early in the year, during the live showing of the Finnish victory had been yellow, just like the notes in front of him now. Driving snow. The ski jump a monster, spewing out skiers like vermin. A flight of two hundred and forty metres through the air. Not bad for a human being.

Hämäläinen had asked an expert how far this could go, would they be able to travel a kilometre or more through the air on skis some day, might that become a new and
inexpensive mode of travel, and the expert had laughed, and the last man in the opposing team, previously in the lead, paid the price of nervous stress, failing in his flight like a bird whose wings had dropped off.

He thought of Niskanen, leaned forward and smiled. The questions left his lips, and he heard his own voice sounding like a stranger’s.

One of the ski-jumpers held up his medal to the camera, another made a joke in doubtful taste, then the four athletes went towards the mist, which swallowed them up, and Hämäläinen announced the summer hit by the rock band that the imps had liked.

They’d probably be singing along at home, and Irene would join in, but only humming the tune, because she didn’t know the words.

SHE KNOWS THE
song coming over the loudspeaker. It went gliding past her in a summer that she had seen disappear through a pane of glass.

‘WE HAVE SOMETHING
,’ said Grönholm.

‘Yes?’ asked Joentaa.

‘Got that list there?’

‘Yes, it’s here.’

‘Right, looks as if there was only one little boy among the dead. The names you probably want are Ilmari and Veikko Mattila.’

Kimmo read the two names.

‘Father and son,’ said Grönholm. ‘The father was thirty-five, the son five, registered address in Turku, Asematie 19.’

Name, address, date of birth.