Harjunpää sat on the steps at the back of the house with the night around him and the rabbit in his arms. He gently scratched Viljami’s neck. The rabbit’s jaws munched, stopped every now and then, then started munching again, and each time the rabbit finished eating its dandelion leaf Harjunpää quietly apologised and fetched him a fresh one growing by the wall.
On the horizon he could see that morning was almost upon them; the darkness was fractionally bluer. It was almost four o’clock. He’d woken up around three and hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. Instead he sat there breathing in the fragrant night; he would have liked to think about the pet shop, but this time he found he couldn’t.
It was just a thought he’d had, a daydream that would have involved buying a slightly older house somewhere further away. There was a suitable house for sale in Veklahti and it even had a garage big enough; he’d already been to look at it. Then the whole family could start raising rabbits and guinea pigs and mice and everything in between, they could grow their own hay too, then they’d rent a little place in the centre of Kirkkonummi and open a shop that Elisa could run. There wasn’t a single pet shop in Kirkkonummi, but there were plenty of children and teenagers.
And somewhere deeper down another thought began to crystallise: if the business were successful he could do the same as Onerva. But he couldn’t mention it out loud; he knew all about unemployment, bankruptcy and the recession, and those who didn’t understand that all this was just a game knew to their cost far more than he did. It was as though the recession had claimed people’s very idea of happiness, too.
He was so overwhelmingly tired of death. He was overwhelmingly tired of bodies, but new ones were always waiting for him somewhere, still warm, almost human, or changed somehow, black monsters, rotten and stuck on the floor. He was tired of murderers and arsonists and rapists, tired of the fact that behind even the most horrific acts there was always someone crippled, someone crushed by human stupidity or the sheer lack of love. Therapy was of no use to these battered souls, far less being crushed with the full force of the law.
He was tired of serving as a sticking plaster; he was tired of trying to solve a problem to which there was no solution.
And he was tired of the police force and its personnel policy, which wasn’t a policy at all but a means of demeaning and breaking people. The latest officer to be broken for good was Osmo Salonen.
Osmo’s name had appeared on an advance list of those to be transferred to the Public Order Police. The list consisted primarily of officers who’d had problems in the past or who didn’t know how to keep their mouths shut or bow down low enough to the powers that be. The Public Order Division then quickly produced another list of officers they weren’t prepared to take under any circumstances, and Osmo’s name had been first on the list. Two weeks later he was pulled over for drink-driving and booted out of the force, but his gun was finally taken away one bullet too late.
Harjunpää started wondering when his own name would appear on a list – nowadays it was on everyone’s mind – though, on the other hand, wouldn’t it ultimately be something of a relief?
Grandpa had been sitting in the woods at the foot of a great spruce tree and there had been nothing wrong with him. In fact, he’d been exceptionally lucid. He’d looked Harjunpää in the eyes and said, almost apologetically: ‘I just had such a strong feeling that… it was time. And I figured, better out here than in front of the children… I’ve always loved the woods. And when I was younger and pressed my hand into the side of a tree, I could feel it breathing, it was alive…’
Harjunpää propped his elbow on his knee and pinched his fingers tightly along the side of his nose.
Out in the woods a strange bird chirped.
Viljami started whimpering as he finished his dandelion leaf.