It was often like this: at first everything was like a vague, opaque mush that nobody wanted to touch, and when they did every thread seemed to lead to a dead end, then amidst it all the telephone would ring or someone would walk in and from that moment on the case seemed electric, so many sensible tasks to take care of that you didn’t know where to start, and each check, in one way or another, led you another step forwards, and more importantly the mood changed, the spirit, and it was suddenly clear that the case was about to wind itself up, that the perpetrator would be caught in a matter of days if not hours.
Harjunpää felt just like this; he sat in his chair impatiently, doodling small birds on the cover of the telephone directory – they oddly
resembled
chaffinches – but officially he was waiting for the man sitting opposite him to read through his interview statement. The man was being agonisingly thorough, occasionally flicking back to the previous page and thinking about something, his head tilted to one side, then he would scroll down the page with his finger until he found the relevant place and continue reading. He might have been feeling unwell and his bandage may have hampered his reading: one side of his face was swollen and partially covered in plasters, and around his forehead was a bandage that covered one of his eyes almost entirely.
The man was one Juha Backman. In her own office, Onerva was
interviewing
a Raija Somebody-or-Other; Harjunpää couldn’t remember her surname. Backman had dashed into the stairwell after an intruder, switched on the lights and was close enough to get a relatively good look
at the man for about ten seconds. The description was included in his statement, and Harjunpää had realised while he was writing it down that it wouldn’t be too difficult to find potential suspects that fitted the description from their online photofit database.
‘That sounds fine. Of course, the height’s only approximate – I was looking at him from above and he was all hunched up.’
‘It’s close enough for me. These descriptions are always approximate. I’d just like to double-check what you said about his feet…’
‘He was barefoot, I’m absolutely certain. He was carrying all his clothes crumpled up in a ball with his shoes dangling at the front, a pair of light brown trainers.’
‘And he wasn’t wearing any socks?’
‘I think I would have noticed, especially as he was completely naked. What does it matter? I’m sure he’s wearing some now.’
‘The soles of your feet have the same kind of friction ridges as your fingers… If you’d like to wait outside for a moment, I’ll fetch a witness, we can sign your statement and go to the flat together.’
Harjunpää glanced into the corridor but Onerva’s door was still shut. There wasn’t the faintest sign of Lampinen or Juslin, and with a sense of relief he returned to his desk and dialled the Forensics office.
‘Thurman.’
‘Harjunpää here. I need someone to come with me to a scene in about twenty minutes. Dagmarinkatu 10.’
‘A body?’
‘No. An apartment fresh from our mystery intruder.’
‘And?’
‘We’ll bring the lock back here, take it apart and photograph it, so bring a spare latch with you. Most importantly we’re looking for prints. Fingerprints. Primarily from the door but also from all around the flat below waist level: he moves around on his haunches and might have
steadied
himself against something. And the bed apparently has wide, painted boarding around the edges, so they might give us something.’
‘OK. But you know it’ll take longer than a quarter of an hour.’
‘I know. And we have to start off by looking for footprints. Our man was barefoot and the place is covered in smooth vinyl flooring. Then we’ll look for any fibres, at least in the hallway – it would be logical for him to leave his gear there.’
‘Not a problem. We’ll take care of it.’
‘Thanks. I’ll ring when we’re ready to go.’
From the corridor came the joyful clip-clop of high heels, and without even looking up Harjunpää could see how Onerva’s skirt fluttered around her legs and clung to her thighs… A moment later she was at his door. She was smiling about something. They had conducted the initial interviews together and both knew the particulars of the case, and now there was a glimmer of happiness in her eyes once again, the same happiness that shone out of her knitting, and even now her hands moved nimbly as though she were holding her knitting needles, tying the whole case together just as she did everything else. And again Harjunpää wanted to touch her.
‘Timo, I think only one of us should go to the Dagmarinkatu flat. The other should stay here and call through the list of other plaintiffs.’
‘Maybe it would be best just to have a quick look around then leave Thurman to get on with it. I’m itching to see what the photofit database will come up with.’
‘Excuse me…’
Kauranen had appeared at the door. He’d been on night shift and you could tell. His face was a pallid grey and his eyes seemed distracted, as though they were caught up in the past, and everybody knew with what: blood and guts, tears and sorrow. In his hand he had a printout and a plastic bag containing a number of bottles of pills.
‘I think you can wind up one of your cases,’ he yawned. Harjunpää and Onerva were silent. ‘I’ve just got back from the scene. At first I thought it was suicide, pills and alcohol, but there was nothing to back it up, no note, nothing organised. These don’t look out of the ordinary and there were even some pills left. Judging by the number of bottles, I’d say the victim was only a moderate drinker. But both of them together… Vomited in her sleep then choked to death. It’ll probably be recorded as accidental death. It’s just that I found your card at the scene and there was a note in the case folder.’
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s… hang on a minute.’ Kauranen fumbled around. There were so many things running through his head after his shift that he had to consult his papers. ‘Pirjo. Pirjo Marjaana Lehmusto. Worked in telesales.’
Onerva turned her back to the others; it looked as though she brought her hands up to her face.
Harjunpää made to stand up and groped at the air for a moment, as though reaching for a handbrake that didn’t exist. Was it only yesterday morning she’d been here?
Pirjo had been sitting in the foyer like a startled butterfly; her hair was very short, the shape of her head was beautiful, her neck slender with an endearing furrow running down the middle. He’d wanted to protect her, help her – she was so frightened – and her whole body had seemed to ask forgiveness simply for existing.
Tweety needed surprisingly little sleep. It puzzled him; it must have been because he could escape every now and then, doze off for thirty seconds at a time throughout the day, though nobody ever noticed.
Just as he did now: he was sitting on his stool behind the counter waiting for customers, looking at the people moving in a mass of clothed flesh on the other side of the window, listening to the wail of the vacuum as Weckman got rid of the dust beneath his goggles. And all the while… In front of him was a chair made of glass, every bit of it, right down to the seat and the delicate ribs of its back, and if there were any screws, they too were made of glass – that’s why he couldn’t see them – and behind the chair was a dark-red velvet curtain, and from the folds of the curtain there suddenly appeared a naked woman, the spitting image of Annie Lennox. She sat down on the chair, winked at him and smiled seductively, urging him to get down on all fours and crawl under the chair to marvel at the splendour of her pussy. He dearly wanted to comply, but he was terrified – what if it was a trap? What if the chair suddenly shattered and the shards rained down on him tearing open his veins?
‘Have you finished those Eccos yet?’
‘Yes… But you need to tell her not to leave them to dry in warm places. She’s got them wet somewhere.’
‘They’ll never learn,’ Weckman muttered. The vacuum wailed again and Tweety jumped: stepping out of the curtain was Reino. He was fully clothed, at least, and had Lasse with him. Tweety rubbed his eyes and brow. Reino and Lasse were standing outside the shop window. They were
trying to look in without Weckman noticing and Reino was gesticulating as if to say he was coming into the shop and that he had something important to say. Tweety sat there motionless. They’d never come to his workplace before and they were both clearly worked up. Reino was moving his hands anxiously and Lasse kept looking behind them. Lasse’s jumper bulged beneath the left arm: he was carrying his Smith & Wesson.
‘Hey, Weckman,’ said Tweety, his mouth dry, and didn’t quite know how to continue. But Reino had more power over him than Weckman. Their father had been able to get him to do anything just by looking at him. ‘Is it all right if I take last week’s overtime now?’
‘What, all of it? Don’t be daft.’
‘Well, an hour then… It’s a bit of an emergency. My mum is… I mean, I’ve got to run a few errands for her.’
‘Running errands for your mum,’ said Weckman and stared at him weighing up the situation and prolonging the silence. Tweety tried to think why Reino and Lasse had suddenly turned up at the shop and he had a nagging suspicion that they’d come to warn him of something. Maybe the police were on to him after what had happened that night and come round the house asking for him, causing Mother Gold to have a heart attack – she’d said that something terrible was about to happen. Maybe Reino wanted to hide him – or kill him; he’d said as much. Tweety could feel the edge of his mouth twitching. Lasse had even brought his gun.
‘On you go.’
‘Thanks…’
Tweety walked around the counter; Reino and Lasse noticed and started sauntering towards the post office. Common sense told Tweety they hadn’t come to bump him off – without him they wouldn’t be able to see the Chancellor through. He snuck out into the street but didn’t feel any sense of relief. The air was tinged with blue, foreboding and
poisonous
; even the sound of the traffic seemed abnormally piercing, as though that very afternoon a horrific accident might occur.
They were waiting for him at the corner. He hadn’t been mistaken, Lasse was more agitated than usual, constantly peering around and
checking
beneath his arm, and there was something twitching at the edge of his eye, like a little mouse wagging its tail.
‘Let’s walk that way like we’re minding our own business,’ said Reino and nodded somewhere in front of them, then whispered to Tweety so
that Lasse couldn’t hear. ‘He thought he saw Lampinen again this morning, at the shopping centre in Malmi. I didn’t notice anything. I think he’s losing it.’
‘But what if they’re on to something?’
‘They’re not… don’t you start,’ Reino snapped, and the fact that he snapped meant that he could have been thinking anything. ‘The point is we’ve got to switch the alarms tonight.’
‘We’ve just been there,’ Lasse butted in, the way people do when all they have is bad news. ‘Pretended we were customers. There was a van from a security firm parked outside and one of their guys in the building, walking around talking to some manager bloke. They were talking about updating the security system…’
‘They were probably talking about the cameras,’ said Reino trying to sound certain. ‘But it made me think they might decide to change the alarms too, they’re that old. But we’re not waiting for that to happen. We’re going to get the Chancellor on the road and we can start by switching the alarms tonight. So don’t go sneaking off anywhere this evening.’
Tweety didn’t dare look at Reino. His voice was so firm and every bit as domineering as their father’s. He didn’t want them to go that evening; the air was such a strange colour and he’d been plagued with bad luck many times in a row.
‘I won’t… though we agreed we’d do it at the weekend.’
‘And now we’re agreeing to do it tonight. A week night might be better, there won’t be as many police cars on patrol.’
They crossed the street and passed Poste Restante. Reino’s car was parked behind the railway station and they walked towards it, each of them lost in thought. Switching the alarms was probably the most
uncertain
and most dangerous phase of the whole operation because they had to deliberately set off the alarm and they would have no way of knowing how close a police car might be at the moment the alarm was registered. It was annoying not being able to listen in to the police radio any longer; you needed a computer nowadays and Lasse’s attempts at building one had been hopeless.
‘We could try and put them off the scent,’ Lasse suggested, his voice dry as sandpaper; he too was scared to death.
‘How?’
‘By making a few phone calls… We could say there’s a man running about with a rifle shooting people, or a bomb’s going to go off somewhere. Then they’ll send all their cars elsewhere.’
‘Like hell they will. They’ll soon see there’s no man with a rifle, then they’ll be even more on the lookout. There’s nothing else for it, at the end of the day it’s all down to luck. With bad luck there’ll be a squad car just round the corner taking a couple of drunks down to the nick, and you can be sure the drunks will have to wait nicely in the car if the bank’s security alarm goes off.’
‘What if we put someone on watch outside?’ Lasse persisted – perhaps Ritu had put the wind up him. ‘We could borrow those mobiles from Nordberg.’
‘Look, for fuck’s sake… It’s no use putting anyone on watch or working out intricate warning systems. It all comes down to speed.’
Reino stopped and looked around to make sure nobody was listening, and struggled to sound cheerful and convincing.
‘Think about it. The police get a call about an alarm going off. A light flashes and a buzzer starts beeping somewhere, but they haven’t got a location on it yet. The bloke sitting at the call desk pulls out his reference book and starts looking for the address. You can bet that’ll take at least thirty seconds, and if he’s in the middle of something else it could be two minutes. Then he feeds the information into his computer or wherever it is he has to log it in and starts asking around for a free squad car. That’s four minutes already. How long did it take when we practised?’
‘Two minutes to do the switch, then another minute when we imagined getting out of the building.’
‘There, you see? And remember, when the police car accepts the job, one of them might be queuing for a hotdog. He’s been standing there for a while and he’s just about to be served. They won’t get going right away, and when they do they’ll go to the street address first. And what’ll they do when they get there? They’ll look through the window into an empty bank and wait for a member of staff to come and unlock the door. And all that time we’ve been one floor further down and we leave through the back. We’ll be home before they even get inside. They won’t find anything and they’ll think it was just a false alarm…’
Reino managed a laugh – maybe it was a genuine laugh, maybe he was so relieved at finally starting to believe in the whole thing – and it had the desired effect: Lasse’s face relaxed and he gave a small chuckle.
They stood there looking at one another. The matter was settled and there was no need for them to get into Reino’s car. Even in the car Lasse was afraid to talk as he thought Lampinen might have planted a
microphone
somewhere; maybe he’d been reading up on his electronics a bit too much.
‘And remember, Asko,’ said Reino abruptly and poked him in the chest. ‘Tonight’s the night.’
‘I won’t forget,’ said Tweety – there was nothing else he could say. He could never say no to Reino, just like he’d never been able to say no to his father, and yet now he felt all the more strongly that this was the wrong day. He could have explained why, too, but Reino wouldn’t have believed him. In fact, he would have believed him even less; he was born that way, he just didn’t understand. He couldn’t possibly understand what it meant when, his knuckles white with exertion, the watchman elf on the upper deck of Tweety’s mind started banging his warning drum.