‘But now we need extra resources more than ever,’ Harjunpää exclaimed in bewilderment. At first he wondered whether he had misheard Järvi or misunderstood him. He looked at the others. Everyone had gathered in the Crime Squad staffroom: Järvi and Valkama, Onerva, Lampinen and Juslin and one of the night-shift boys who’d been with them at the flat, but they all remained silent and looked as though nothing in particular had happened. Only Onerva stared up at the ceiling, exasperated.
‘That moped is still out in the street and it needs to be put under surveillance,’ Harjunpää tried to reason with them. ‘Rummukainen’s there now, but he can only do mornings. And the same applies to the flat. Our man could easily go back there; he might not even know we’ve located it.’
‘I imagine he was clever enough to hide somewhere and watch what was going on,’ said Järvi dryly without looking at Harjunpää. ‘He had enough sense to escape via the back door, didn’t he? And it shouldn’t have taken much brains to work out that that’s what he’d do either. Anyway, what’s done is done. My men are off this case with immediate effect.’
Harjunpää ran his fingers through his hair. It seemed that he had no other option but to prolong the situation. Ahomäki had promised to join them but he’d been called away and Harjunpää dearly hoped he’d get back in time. The super would have stuck up for them – Valkama didn’t have it in him – either that or he would have edged Järvi into a corner so that he would have had no option but to tell them the reasons for his sudden U-turn.
‘And what if this is now a murder investigation?’ Harjunpää remarked, but Järvi didn’t react in the slightest. In his shiny suit he was like a great
aristocratic leader that morning. Though everyone else was sitting he strutted about the office with his hands on his hips, and there was something about his expression that said he bore the great responsibility of always knowing best. He stopped in front of Pesonen, the night-shift officer, and asked: ‘What do you make of it?’
‘Impossible to say at the moment,’ he began and moved awkwardly in his chair. ‘I mean, it’s impossible to speculate on the cause of death. The coroner didn’t have much of an idea either because the body was in such bad shape. But on first inspection there were no signs of external violence… And the location and position of the body are consistent with a fit of some sort. It was as though she stood up from her chair and had a heart attack.’
‘And what about the flat?’
‘Forensics are still down there. But on the face of it there was nothing out of the ordinary. No signs of a struggle. The surfaces hadn’t been wiped down – at least not that anyone noticed. Nothing appears to be missing…’
‘And you’re still desperate to make this a homicide,’ Järvi snapped at Harjunpää. ‘Well, whatever it is, it’s now the sole responsibility of your office.’
Harjunpää stared down at the tabletop and rubbed his temples. It was half past eight and he hadn’t slept a wink. The night had been a long series of failures and disappointments, dotted with recurring glimpses of hope over possible breakthroughs that eventually came to nothing. But for the first time the case had taken a significant step forwards: they had the moped and finding out who owned it might lead them right to the intruder; they had the Kivimäki woman’s flat which, according to initial reports, was full of fingerprints and footprints. But perhaps more importantly, after the events of the night before, Lampinen and Juslin had been forced to admit that they were more than likely wrong about Nikander. Harjunpää had been banking on this; he’d hoped that once the sense of competition had died down they would all start trying to locate this chaffinch man.
‘Let’s wait for the results of the autopsy first,’ he said, again trying to stave them off. ‘And I think it would be a good idea to hear what Ahomäki has to say too.’
‘We’re not conducting an opinion poll here,’ Järvi scoffed. ‘There’s no use moaning about it any further. I’ve been assigned a case of national importance, which will obviously take priority over your bird-man. Gentlemen, I think we’re done here.’
He clicked his heels sharply and bowed, then marched out of the room with his head held high. It was a stylish exit that many an actor would have been proud of.
Harjunpää couldn’t help himself.
‘I wonder what the right honourable Kuusimäki will have to say about that,’ he said a fraction too loudly. Järvi stopped in the doorway, turned and glared at him, opened his mouth as if to quip something in response, then pressed his lips into a tight, almost frightening scowl and marched along the corridor, his heels clacking as he went.
For a moment the staffroom was silent save for the hum of an
industrial
vacuum cleaner.
‘Well…’ said Valkama, breaking the silence. ‘It won’t be the first time we’ve had to handle complicated cases by ourselves.’
‘Lampinen,’ said Harjunpää. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘Apparently it’s none of your business.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Harjunpää and stood up. His cheeks were tight; the events of the last few days were whirling inside him and he could feel a sense of stifling disappointment and anger beginning to raise its head. He would have liked to scream and shout, to break something.
‘You know something, Lempi? If you’d bothered to back us up in that park we could have had him in custody by now. And besides… this whole investigation has been going nowhere because of your personal grudge.’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘You’d better make sure nobody else ever sticks your head down the toilet. Klaus Nikander is going to gnaw away at you for ever and a day.’
‘Just like your bird-man,’ said Lampinen, stubbed his cigar in the ashtray and stood up. He left the room, his movements full of twitching anger. Visibly calmer, Juslin swaggered off behind him.
‘Damn it!’ Harjunpää snapped and took a few heavy steps.
He felt strangely stuffy, dirty and embarrassed, and it didn’t make him feel any better when Valkama remarked coolly: ‘We have to remember that we all fail sometimes. And our failures don’t become any smaller if we start blaming other people for them.’
‘No, of course not,’ Harjunpää sighed and stepped into the corridor. He wanted to be by himself, at least for a while, anywhere. He headed down the corridor towards his office and hoped that not even Onerva would follow him.
He stood in the middle of the office and looked out at the horizon. Very slowly his mind settled and the feeling of embarrassment began to pass. But there was still something, something about the situation as a whole, a sense that somebody had to
do
something. But who? He thought for a moment and realised that the onus was on him. He didn’t quite understand where his next thought came from but it was clear to him that he would have to speak to the chief of police. Maybe he had recalled something Tanttu had said in an interview about being a father to whom his subordinates could come like children to discuss family problems. Thinking realistically he knew that, despite his tiredness, he would be able to handle the situation properly. More than that, he knew that Tanttu was in a position to set up a task force that could take care of the case, and with any luck it wouldn’t take them too long.
He strode off down the corridor, but the closer he came to Tanttu’s office the more uncertain he became. He wondered whether it might be wise to leave it until the following day and to start with Ahomäki, but that would have been giving in and he was tired of giving in to everyone else. He resolutely pressed the buzzer on Tanttu’s door and the green light came on immediately.
‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning,’ Tanttu replied, a little coldly, perhaps. ‘Word travels fast, I see.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Please, sit down.’
Harjunpää sat down in a chair near Tanttu’s desk and the strange
stiffness
Tanttu exuded put him on his guard. At that same moment he realised that Tanttu had in fact been expecting him.
‘You have almost twenty years of unblemished service in the police force,’ he began and glanced at the papers on his desk. There were two documents: a witness statement and a copy.
‘That’s right,’ Harjunpää mumbled and a chill suddenly washed through him, that same feeling of guilt he’d once had as a child when he’d broken the window in the laundry room and had to go and talk to the caretaker.
‘Have you been under any particular stress lately?’ asked Tanttu, his voice betraying that this was a phrase he’d learned on some leadership course, but that the matter didn’t interest him in the slightest. ‘Burn-out?’
‘Well, yes I mean… this case we’re working on…’
‘A police officer must be able to cope with the stress associated with a normal job. Otherwise you ask yourself whether that man is suitable for police work in the first place. And the rules stipulate that any man found to be unsuitable for the job can be relieved of his duties…’
Harjunpää couldn’t say anything. The chill inside him deepened and perhaps the strangest thing was that he began to wonder whether he really had done something reprehensible. Was it because of his argument with Järvi or Lampinen? He suspected that he was being made a scapegoat for someone else, but there was still enough of the humble officer in him that he waited patiently for Tanttu to continue. On top of this he realised that he was the only member of his family in full-time employment.
‘I’m not sure I understand…’
‘I have here a complaint about you and your behaviour.’
‘Yes?’
‘The statement claims that last Sunday you behaved in an
unprofessional
and, shall we say, disrespectful manner to a woman who had reported finding a body. Then, in a most demeaning fashion, you proceeded to expose to the woman and her husband… your backside.’
‘It wasn’t like that…’ Harjunpää gasped, his mouth dry. He didn’t know quite how to continue and waved his hands in a vague expression of bewilderment. ‘How on earth…?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know. Not least because this statement has been written by a person of considerable public standing.’
‘We were out in Mustikkamaa. I almost drowned… But as for exposing my backside… I had to put my clothes on, I was freezing, and my boxer shorts were wet. I did ask them to leave several times.’
‘I don’t want to hear your explanations right now. I won’t pass this on to the supers and the assessment board just yet. Write your own account of events and have it on my desk by Monday.’
‘Sir, I really didn’t…’
‘Here’s a copy of the statement.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Dismissed.’
‘Thank you…’
Harjunpää staggered towards the door, his legs numb, and instinctively tried to read the statement straight away. He couldn’t make out the text;
it seemed to jump frantically up and down in front of his eyes. He could just about make out one section: “…
in an obscene and indecent manner, with scant regard for even the most basic norms of polite behaviour
…”
He opened the door, stepped out into the corridor and almost walked into Kontio. The Bogey Man appeared to be heading for Tanttu’s office, or maybe he had just been standing there by coincidence. In any case, he flicked his hand as if to let the matter pass, then muttered: ‘And how is DS Harjunpää?’
‘Well… can’t complain.’
‘Chin up, then.’
Harjunpää sat barechested in the hazy afternoon heat and tried to
concentrate
on the only thing he could feel: the touch of Elisa’s gentle hands, how they massaged his shoulders and neck, how the painful knots stopped aching and disappeared for a moment. His soul was in his shoulders. He breathed in the smell of grass, of the forest and late-summer flowers, and listened as a bumblebee buzzed somewhere nearby. Every now and then he managed to shut everything else out and concentrate on simply being. But then a chasm opened up inside him, a mixture of depression, failure and shame. He gave a deep sigh and his shoulder tensed again.
The worst of it was that it all felt so unfair, a lie masquerading as the truth, twisted so much with sly, carefully chosen words that at times he began to doubt himself. And yet, when he really thought about it, he had done the best he could. He always did. Still, doesn’t everybody always think they did their best? He took another deep breath and moved as though he were trying to shake something from his skin.
‘Timo,’ said Elisa softly, without meaning anything in particular but simply to let him know that there was someone who loved him and cared about him, come what may, for better and for worse. Elisa didn’t mean herself; she thought of herself as an intermediary. She meant God. It no longer puzzled Harjunpää. A year ago, when Elisa had found her faith, he had considered it almost an illness and feared that at any moment she might cover her head with a shawl and start preaching door to door.
It was a silly thought. Elisa had simply found an inner happiness, a peace of mind. She hadn’t started foisting it on to other people, she simply
felt that God was
love
, and that that same love existed in all people, even evil people, that evil itself is merely a mental torment that prevents people from connecting with the immense powers within them.
And now, a year later, Harjunpää noticed that there were times he wished he could do the same as Elisa. He wanted to believe that someone was looking after them at every turn and that everything that happened had its own greater purpose that only revealed itself much later. But he couldn’t. A doubt lived within him. Every day he witnessed things that made him doubt even more, and made him feel that everything was fundamentally meaningless and futile, a whimsical joke. But no matter what happened, Elisa’s presence calmed him, as it did this time too. For all he knew she might be an instrument of the Lord after all.
‘Are you sure you’re OK to do this night shift?’ she asked, a small nugget of care in her voice. ‘Why don’t you call Tupala and get someone to cover for you.’
‘He went through the rota this morning. I should have realised this yesterday. There’s been so much going on, I’d completely forgotten about it. How’s Grandpa?’
‘He’s been fairly with it, actually. It’s as though he’s telling me things that he wants me to tell you.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, what he was telling me yesterday about their separation. This morning was the first time he really talked about you and how difficult your mother made his arranged visits, how she kept to a strict timetable and if something came up and Grandpa couldn’t make it then he’d miss the entire visit. She wouldn’t let him reschedule for another time and he wasn’t allowed to visit you at home.’
‘I remember that all too well. Mother made me promise not to let him in the front door. In the winter I stood out in the street freezing waiting for him to turn up.’
‘It’s understandable that your contact eventually dried up altogether… He told me that at one point he just had to get on with rebuilding his life and he simply couldn’t spend all his time at loggerheads with things that reminded him of everything he’d lost.’
‘I was still his son…’
‘But he said that when you stopped contacting him – you never called or sent a card – he started to believe that you hated him the same way your mother did.’
‘Yes… that’s probably partly true.’
‘And on top of that, some doctor told him that he shouldn’t make a spectacle of himself, that at some point children realise what’s been going on and make contact of their own accord… Why don’t you lie down and have forty winks?’
‘I can’t. Once I nod off, that’s it. I might take that basket and have a walk in the woods, see if any trumpet chanterelles have come up yet.’
Harjunpää wasn’t thinking so much of mushrooms as of Pilvikallio. Near the peak of the hillside was a small, mossy hollow where he liked to sit and think about things, and why not to have forty winks too. It was at the foot of Pilvikallio that Elisa had seen the light that she believed to be from Jesus.