Eusden had forgotten to fasten his seat belt. It was far from a high-speed impact, but still he was thrown against the wheel, setting the horn blaring. He lay across it, watched with detached curiosity the steam rising from the crumpled radiator and the shower of snow and pine needles pattering down on to the bonnet.
Eventually, he pushed himself back into the seat. The horn fell silent. All the breath seemed to have been knocked out of him. He found it difficult to organize his thoughts into initiating any kind of action at all. He wondered how much blood he had lost. And how much more he could afford to lose. Then he stopped wondering. He would find out soon enough, after all. Until then . . .
He forced himself to focus. He engaged reverse and pressed down the accelerator. The tyres spun, but did not grip. The Bentley was going nowhere. And neither was Eusden. He turned off the engine.
Tranquillity descended. And a shaft of sunlight, the first he had seen in Finland, turned the surrounding curtain of snow from greyish white to granular pink. He sat back and savoured the beauty of it. The forest felt holy in that instant. And he would be warm inside the car for a while yet. He could always turn the engine back on.
‘I’m offering you the chance to change your life,’ Pernille had said to him on the ferry from Sweden. Eusden smiled gently at what struck him now less as a tragedy than an irony. If only they had known. In truth, neither of them had had any future to shape or alter. They had both been voyaging to their deaths.
‘
Pull yourself together, Coningsby. You should’ve let me drive. I was always better than you. Now, for God’s sake phone for help and get us out of the mess you’ve got us into
.’
Eusden did not bother to point out that the jammer had travelled with them. There would still be no signal. Even if it had been conveniently knocked off, the closely packed trees would probably do as good a job. He pulled Lund’s phone out of his pocket and pressed the green button. It was as he had expected. No signal. ‘Sorry, Marty,’ he murmured.
It was a relief in some ways. There was nothing more he could do now. He could stop struggling. He did not need to think, even five minutes ahead. He closed his eyes. And the darkness received him like a loyal friend.
JYVÄSKYLÄ
FIFTY-ONE
Forty-eight hours had vanished into a black hole. They existed as a memory, but one too dark and dense for Eusden to access: a singularity in more ways than one, since being alive confounded his last recollected expectation.
He had been lucky, according to the quietly spoken doctor who succeeded the nurses who were the first to greet him when he resumed meaningful engagement with the world. He had lost consciousness in the car and, thanks to the angle it was resting at, had slumped forward across the steering-wheel, setting off the horn again. The noise had failed to rouse him, but, in the absence of much other noise, had attracted the attention of an engineer repairing a power line half a kilometre away, who had recognized it for what it was. Eusden had been brought to the Central Hospital in Jyväskylä, the regional capital, where he now was, with smashed ankle reset and broken ribs realigned, wounds cleaned and stitched, lost blood replaced, vital organs checked. Neither of the bullets had lodged in his body or caused irreparable damage. And the tube in his chest denoted nothing more sinister than a minor pneumothorax in his right lung, caused by one of the fractured ribs. The doctor’s prognosis was that he should make a full recovery, though not necessarily a speedy one. ‘Your body has been through a lot, Mr Eusden. It will tell you how long it needs to get over it.’
The doctor’s tone altered when he went on to inform him of the police’s interest in his condition. There was an officer sitting outside the room whose superior was anxious to talk to Eusden at the earliest opportunity. ‘I will have to inform him that in my opinion you are now well enough to be questioned.’
That seemed undeniable, though Eusden soon had cause to doubt it. ‘We have the media in the car park,’ the doctor added. ‘The death of Tolmar Aksden . . .in these circumstances . . . is very big news.’ Then he said something which Eusden had to ask him to repeat and even then could not quite believe he had heard, something so joyously unexpected and wholly astounding that he thought it must be a delusion on his part, until the doctor assured him it was not. ‘It has been difficult for Ms Madsen to come to the hospital. The reporters and photographers will not leave her alone.’
Pernille was not dead. The doctor, of course, did not know why Eusden was so overwhelmed by his reference to her. Nor was he able to answer the seemingly obtuse question, ‘How can she be alive?’ The simple fact, self-evident to him, was that she was. And she was just as anxious to see Eusden as Inspector Ahlroos.
It was Ahlroos, however, who arrived first. A slightly built, dark-haired man with a professionally guarded expression and the apparent ability never to blink, he was accompanied by a burly junior who prowled round the room and did a lot of gum-chewing and window-gazing while his boss asked the questions. And he had a lot of questions to ask.
The inspector might have anticipated caution or evasion from his interviewee. It was clear to Eusden that he must be an actual or potential murder suspect. He supposed the most prudent course of action would be to say nothing at all until he had taken legal advice. As it was, however, he was so euphoric at the news that Pernille was not dead that he told Ahlroos everything he wanted to know and probably more, which even so was less than the whole and multi-faceted truth. All he sought in return was an answer to the question he had put to the doctor in vain: ‘How can she be alive?’
His persistence eventually won him an explanation of sorts. ‘Ms Madsen was never at the house in Munkkiniemi, Mr Eusden. She told us she let Lars Aksden take her place. He was killed in the explosion. For why they swapped, you must ask her.’
Eusden’s chance to do that came a couple of hours later. When Pernille entered the room, she stopped in the doorway and they smiled disbelievingly at each other. Then she walked across and kissed him on the cheek and sat down on the chair beside the bed. She was dressed in the same black outfit she had worn when they first met in Stockholm. She looked tired and stressed – and wonderfully alive.
‘I thought you’d run away,’ she said, still smiling at him.
‘And I thought you were dead.’
‘I’m happy we were both wrong.’
‘The police said Lars took your place.’
‘Someone inside Mjollnir tipped him off about what was happening. He refused to tell me who it was and now I suppose we may never know. He saw his chance to find out what the family secret really was and I was so . . . disappointed . . .you’d quit on me I . . . didn’t try to talk him out of it. We met halfway to Koskinen’s house. I got out of the car and he got in. Matalainen had no choice about going along with it. There wasn’t time for him to argue. They drove away – to their deaths. When I heard about the explosion, I realized Tolmar had doublecrossed us – and killed his brother by mistake in the process. I moved to a different hotel so no one would know where I was and tried to decide what to do. In the end, I went to the police. They didn’t believe me, of course. Then the news came from here that Tolmar and Arto Falenius and another man had been found dead – and that you were in hospital. It was the last news I was expecting.’
‘The Opposition sent a hit man after Tolmar, who shot Falenius by mistake. Then Tolmar shot the hit man. And then . . .’ Eusden searched Pernille’s face for some clue to what she thought he had done. ‘It was him or me.’
‘I’m glad it wasn’t you.’
‘I don’t suppose Michael will be. How is he?’
‘Not good. He’s lost his uncle as well as his father. He’s . . .’ She shrugged. ‘You can imagine.’
‘I’m trying to.’
‘I left him in Helsinki with Elsa.’
‘Thanks for coming to see me. It . . . can’t have been easy to get away.’
‘I’ve been several times.’
‘So I gather. And you’ve had to fend off reporters to do it, apparently.’
‘I can handle them. I’m more worried about the police. What did they want to know?’
‘Everything. And that’s what I told them. Now I should tell you everything as well. About what happened by the lake.’
‘It can wait. The doctor says you need plenty of rest. You also need a lawyer. I can help with that.’
‘I’m just going to keep on telling the truth, Pernille. It’s about all I feel capable of doing.’
‘They’ve arrested Erik Lund.’
‘Good.’
‘And poor Osmo Koskinen. But I expect they’ll let him go soon. I think it’s going to be all right. But still you should have a lawyer.’
‘OK. If you say so.’
A silence fell briefly between them, strangely lacking in awkwardness. Then Pernille said, ‘I met your American friend, Regina Celeste, in Helsinki. She asked me to tell you that Werner Straub has turned up there.’
‘He’s wasting his time. Sooner or later, he’ll realize that and go home.’
‘She also asked me to tell you that you owe her an apology.’
‘I seem to owe quite a lot of people one of those.’
Another fleeting silence was broken this time by Eusden.
‘I’m sorry about Lars, Pernille. He seemed a decent man.’
‘He was. I never should have let him go . . . instead of me.’
‘I’m glad you did.’
She sighed. ‘It’s not going to be easy . . . to find a way through this. Michael is so angry. He doesn’t believe what I’ve told him about his father. He’ll have to in the end. But then . . .’
‘Maybe I can help.’ Eusden reached out towards her and she took his hand.
‘Maybe we can help each other,’ she said softly.
Lying in bed that night, gazing up at the shadows on the ceiling and listening to the sounds of the hospital around him, Eusden wondered if he and Pernille really were alive, or if this frailly hopeful future that seemed now to be possible was merely a consoling fantasy devised by his brain to render the process of freezing to death in a Finnish forest more tolerable. Maybe it was, he decided. But as consolations went, it was mightily effective. There was nothing to be gained by fighting against it. Time would tell whether it was real or not. He closed his eyes. And the darkness received him like a loyal friend.
COWES
FIFTY-TWO
The sky over Cowes is cloudless azure, the still air cool, the noon sun warm. It is a Wednesday in mid-September, yet there is no tinge of autumn in the late summer light. The warmth and stillness have certainly been a blessing for the occupants of the motorboat now approaching one of the jetties along the Parade. Richard Eusden and Gemma Conway are returning from a shared last act of mourning for their friend and in Gemma’s case ex-husband, Marty Hewitson: the scattering of his ashes in the indulgently calm, gently lapping waters of the Solent.
The owner of the motorboat puts them ashore, acknowledges their thanks and heads out again. The two people who knew Marty best in the world watch the departing vessel for a while, then walk slowly away, their savouring breaths of the ozoned air blended with full-hearted sighs. The sunlight sparkles on the wake of a Red Jet ferry as it accelerates out of the harbour, bound for Southampton. Eusden tracks its progress from the corner of his eye, knowing he will soon be leaving the Isle of Wight himself, crossing the water where he has just bidden a final farewell to his friend of nearly forty years.
As they turn away from the sea into Watchhouse Lane, Gemma breaks the silence that has hung between them since leaving the boat. ‘I’m glad we were able to do this at last, Richard. Just you and me. And Marty.’
‘Same here. I hated missing his funeral. This has . . . made up for it in a way, I guess. Even though . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I should have been there. To say a few words. To tell everyone . . .I loved him.’
‘I told them for you. They all understood you couldn’t make the journey. Even Bernie Shadbolt.’
‘And Vicky?’
‘Her too, I think. They had lots of questions, of course. Questions I couldn’t answer.’
‘I’m not sure I’d have been able to either.’
‘Able? Or willing?’
Eusden smiles ruefully. ‘A bit of both.’ They reach the High Street end of the lane and stop by the entrance to the Union Inn. It is a pub he and Marty frequented in their time, as did Marty’s grandfather, Clem Hewitson, though never at the same time. ‘Can I buy you a drink, Gem?’ His use of the diminutive form of her name appears to surprise her almost as much as it does him. He wonders if this is the first occasion he has used it since their divorce. And he wonders if she wonders also. ‘Unless . . .’ He is aware she is not an entirely free agent. Their long postponed joint adieu to Marty has been arranged as part of a pre-term holiday Gemma is spending on the Island with Monica, who has diplomatically absented herself, though not, Eusden suspects, for long.
‘All right.’ Gemma smiles awkwardly. ‘Just a quick one.’
They enter the pub, stepping down into the cosy old bar that has changed little over the years. Eusden orders a pint of bitter for himself and a spritzer for Gemma. They sit by the window and toast Marty’s memory, the urn that held his ashes sitting in a bag at their feet.
‘I should’ve known Marty would die young,’ says Gemma. ‘He never stuck at anything.’ At that they manage a laugh. ‘You know, Richard, I’ve missed him more these past six months than I ever did in all the years we were apart.’
‘That’s because you could’ve talked to him if you’d really wanted to. But now . . .’
‘I can’t. Ever again.’ She draws a deep breath. ‘It feels like the three of us have been heading downriver in a boat and Marty’s got out and stood on the bank, while we sail on, looking back at him as he slowly fades from view.’
Eusden pats her hand. ‘I’ll miss him too.’
‘He so wanted his life to . . . add up to more than it did. I suppose that’s why he wouldn’t leave the mystery Clem bequeathed to him in that attaché case alone. It gave him . . .a high to go out on.’ She half-turns in her seat to look at Eusden. ‘All those things you told me when I visited you in Finland . . .’