JESSICA STOPS OUTSIDE the sleet-splattered glass doors and scans the yard opening up before her. In the darkness of night, a body was submerged down at the water, after which someone crossed the yard and entered the house. And then left through the front door. Eventually the yard was filled with bright lights, police investigators, and dogs. Jessica feels shivers run up her back.
“Tech’s here.” Yusuf steps in, followed by a whiff of freshly smoked cigarette. Everyone deals with stress in different ways. And right now stress is the one thing they all have in common.
Jessica stretches her neck. “Let them know what we just talked about.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Go down into the yard.”
JESSICA INHALES THE biting sea wind through her nostrils. She pulls the sliding-glass door shut behind her, glances at the handle and lock. There was no break-in. But the killer walked in through these doors. Maria Koponen presumably knew the perpetrator; maybe it was someone who had dined at the Koponens’ table, watched television on their couch, slept in their guest room. Maybe climbed the maintenance ladder to the roof at some point. Someone who had a reason to be on their deck on a winter’s night. Someone Maria was expecting.
In the light of day, the yard looks larger than it did last night. Jessica eyes the hedge bounding the yard, the stunted stumps, the two tall pines that were spared when the other trees were felled to offer an unhindered sea view. The path leading from the shore to the terrace has been cordoned off with blue-and-white tape.
Jessica takes hold of the black iron railing and cautiously descends the few stairs. Wet snow sloshes underfoot. Her tennis shoes were perfect in the previous night’s below-zero temperatures, but when the weather gets slushy, they absorb water, and her feet freeze.
Jessica glances back up at the house and sees Yusuf talking with the CSIs. The knowledge that Roger Koponen may be alive has rattled Jessica. Suddenly the man assumed to be one of the victims is one of the suspects. Could Koponen himself have cold-bloodedly uploaded the video of his dead wife to YouTube, then hopped on a metro? And now no one knows where he is. Maybe he’s on his way home.
The wind eases its hold on the pines’ boughs. Jessica’s cell phone bursts out ringing; she doesn’t recognize the number.
“Jessica Niemi.”
“Hi, this Pave Koskinen calling from Savonlinna. Or actually I’m already on my way back to Turku and—”
“What does this concern?” Jessica says coolly, and watches two crows dive from the crown of one pine to the other. She thinks she can make out the scratching sound as the birds’ claws seize the branches. Their furious breathing, the sequence of light slaps as they shake the waterdrops from their feathers. They look back at her.
“I got your number from the investigative chief. Mikkelsson—,” the voice says after a moment’s hesitation.
“Mikson.”
“Of course. Exactly. We’re in utter shock over this. Roger Koponen was a superb writer and . . . it feels insane that just last night he and I were sitting down to a nice meal at the end of a pleasant evening. After his engagement at Savonlinna Hall—”
“What can I do for you?” Jessica is trying not to sound rude, even though it’s the second time she’s interrupted the caller. She closes her eyes. She feels tightly wound; all her senses have sharpened. She looks up at the crows but isn’t able to make them out among the dense branches. Maybe she’s been hearing things the whole time.
“The thing is . . . something occurred to me that might be related to the murder of Roger Koponen and his wife, but I don’t know if it’s of any use—”
“Anything could be of use.”
“I probably wouldn’t have remembered otherwise, but now—”
“What?” Jessica can no longer conceal her impatience. Now she spies the crows. They have settled side by side on the pine’s lowest bough. Their heads bob back and forth nervously.
“At last night’s event, where Roger was speaking, a rather unusual question was asked by an audience member. The man who asked it was very self-assured, even a little aggressive. And in hindsight, also somehow threatening. He asked . . .”
The caller pauses to consider his words, and Jessica decides to give him time to collect his thoughts. In this instance, rushing him would just cause problems.
“Argh, I had it formulated a moment ago, but—”
“Take your time. It’s important that you try to remember everything as accurately as possible.”
“Well, in the first place, the person asking the question was a man. Middle-aged, bald, thin . . . a somehow antisocial- and scary-looking guy.” Koskinen prattles away as Jessica presses the phone to her ear with her shoulder and pulls her pen and notebook from her pocket. The caller has captured her undivided attention.
“What did he ask?” Jessica says, clicking out the tip of her ballpoint pen.
“He asked . . . if Roger is afraid of his own books.”
“If he’s afraid of them?”
“Yes. It was a very strange question, and I don’t think Roger completely understood it either. Maybe that’s why he didn’t quite know how to answer. At least at first.”
“What else did this man ask?”
“He asked the same question a few times. Repeated it in slightly different words.”
“In your view, did the man mean Koponen ought to be afraid of his fiction coming true?” Jessica immediately regrets asking the question. It was too leading. She turns to look at the house. From the yard it looks even bigger than it does from the street. That was hard to discern in the darkness last night.
“Well, that’s just it. . . . That’s exactly what it sounded like, even though it was only these ghastly events that made me think that . . . that, after the fact, the question sounded almost like a threat.” Pave Koskinen’s voice is trembling.
“Is there a video or audio recording of the event? Were there any journalists present?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know about journalists. Maybe one or two. I was just the moderator.”
“Great. What do you think . . . It’s Pave, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Pave Koskin—”
“Would you be able to identify the man from a photograph?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Yes, I believe so. He was sort of an unusual-looking fellow.”
“Good. Do me a favor, Pave. Keep your phone on all day. I’ll give you a ring back.”
Jessica ends the call and brings up the caller’s number. She jots it and Koskinen’s name down in her little notebook and then shoves her writing supplies in her coat pocket. If there are cameras at Savonlinna Hall or its immediate vicinity, they have a chance of finding the guy. In and of itself, the question doesn’t prove anyone’s guilt. Even so, the tip feels like it has potential.
Jessica pulls her beanie down over her ears. She can’t help but feel like a chump. Everything they know about the case has been offered to them on a silver platter. But experience has taught her that the crumbs suspects toss the police are usually inedible; there’s usually something poisonous about them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been offered to the police in the first place.
Unfortunately, they have few clues to go on otherwise: a skinny man in the audience and Yusuf’s gauzy theory that they might find the words “Malleus Maleficarum” somewhere else, perhaps written in the snow. She has the urge to phone Erne but decides to wait to talk to him until she gets to the station. Even though he’s the sweetest guy in the world, by some trick he inevitably manages to sound like an asshole on the phone. More than one conversation has gone off the rails simply because the warmth Erne exudes in person doesn’t come through on the phone. To like Erne, you have to meet him in person.
Jessica slogs the remaining few dozen meters of wet snow to the shore and pauses on the dock. The crows scream behind her. The two snow-frosted buoys jut up on either side of the dock, frozen in the ice. To the left of the dock, she can see the hole from which the Ice Princess was fished out last night. The hole is still unfrozen; its frigid heart is as black as oil.
Jessica looks at the long-distance skating track running down the middle of the straight. The tracks indicated that was where the suspect made his approach the night before. The unbuilt rocky cliffs of Kruunuvuori and Kaitalahti loom beyond it. Like other teenagers, Jessica spent drunken evenings there long ago.
Jessica turns her gaze to the right. A few hundred meters away, a figure is standing on the ice between the skating track and Laajasalo. There’s no sign of a dog or ice-fishing gear. Perhaps it’s an eager journalist with a camera and a 0.5-meter lens.
Jessica feels a curious shudder in her gut. Suddenly she regrets coming down to the shore alone.
Jessica squints. Something starts pushing up from the figure’s shoulders. For a moment, Jessica thinks he’s slowly raising his hands, but then she realizes it’s a pair of horns, and that they’ve been there this whole time. The figure has raised its head. Now it’s looking at the end of the dock, where Jessica is standing.
She smells the fetid stench of Venice’s canals, a mix of silt and salt.
Jessica’s fingers wrap around her pistol grip; she is otherwise paralyzed, staring at the strange creature. She feels like shouting, like ordering the creature not to move, then chasing it down. She is burning with a desire to call Yusuf, the uniformed officers out on the street, but her lips won’t part. The figure raises its right hand in the air, as if it is about to wave. But the hand doesn’t move. And just as Jessica releases the gun from its holster and starts off across the ice, she hears something.
The sound grows louder. Behind her. Air bubbles are burbling in the ice hole, as if the water has started to boil.
“What the hell—”
She freezes as the words escape her mouth. And then, as if she has been watching only the eerie preview of a nightmare, Jessica hears an animal scream, sees a head rising out of the hole in the ice, plastered with glossy hair, followed by bluish fingers, their nails scrabbling at the slushy snow.