4

Between Heaven and Earth a slender strip of blue thread lingers, the last vestiges of the day. I drive back to the village, take out my phone and check I haven’t received any text messages or calls without my noticing. I haven’t. I slip the phone back into my pocket.

The trembling in my hands continues. It’s faint – other people probably wouldn’t notice it at all – but I sense it all the same. It’s a mixture of exhaustion and agitation, low self-esteem, guilt and panic. I talk to Krista out loud, tell her I’m on my way, wherever she is. I tell her she can trust me. I mean what I say, I just don’t know how I’m going to make it happen.

There is nobody driving in the opposite direction, the empty road seems to hum, the soft snow puffing up behind the car. Again I think of all the people who might have taken Krista hostage. At the same time I warn myself not to leap to hasty conclusions. Jokinen might have a secret, yes, but it isn’t one I need to investigate or even one I need to know about. I have to be more careful, more precise. The meteorite will be heading to Helsinki in less than twenty-four hours. The van that will carry it will pull up outside the museum at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Before that happens, I have to get Krista back. There are simply no other options.

I recall the evening we managed to lose each other in Jerusalem. We had spent all day wandering the city in the parched July heat. Evening fell just as we were resting our legs, filling our stomachs at a restaurant and talking about everything we’d seen. Or maybe I did most of the talking that evening. I wanted to see the Dead Sea Scrolls; I’d written my thesis about them. Perhaps the fact that I’d chosen an archaeological as opposed to a purely theological topic was a sign of what was to come.

We had spent the morning in museums, wandering around the old city. Eventually we headed towards the city’s new downtown area and ended up walking far beyond that too.

We stepped out of the restaurant. The darkness was striking – there was something almost physical about it, enveloping you completely, wholly. Krista said she fancied a Coca-Cola. She went back inside the restaurant. I waited in the street but she didn’t come back out again. I imagined we’d take a taxi back to the hotel, because we were both tired, worn out by the walking, the heat. And so I thought that, while waiting for her, I might still use the bathroom at the restaurant. I quickly took care of my business, went back out to the street and waited. But she didn’t appear.

I went back inside, but she wasn’t in the small dining room. I asked the waiter if he’d seen my wife, the woman with whom I’d been enjoying dinner only a moment ago. Your wife just came in to buy some pop, the waiter replied, then rushed outside again. I returned to the street but couldn’t see Krista anywhere. I pulled my phone from my backpack, only to remember that Krista’s phone and wallet were inside my bag. While out walking we’d decided it was most sensible for me to carry everything in my bag. It didn’t seem so sensible now.

The long street was dark, deserted in both directions. Suddenly I wasn’t sure which direction we’d arrived from. I tried to think what Krista had done, which direction she might have chosen. I made a decision and set off. I picked up my pace and arrived at a crossroads. I called out her name. I could hear laughter from the darkness beneath the trees across the street. The walls of the buildings were covered in slogans and graffiti. I continued on my way.

The streets became narrower. Just one more corner, I thought many times, before ultimately returning the way I had come. I quickly noticed this wasn’t what I had done at all. I lost my way along the narrow pathways. Again I took out my phone, this time only to notice that the battery was dead. The map application, which I’d been using all day, had sucked the battery dry.

I did everything I could to find my way back to the restaurant, but it was futile. We’d been warned about this part of the city, told that after dark it was best to keep away from here. I tried to convince myself that Krista was probably on her way to the hotel – if she wasn’t lost too. And I was walking along a dark, narrow residential street when I saw it.

Golgotha.

A small, run-down hotel with an ancient neon sign outside.

I walked up to the hotel, stepped inside. Krista was sitting on the only chair in the lobby.

Later, once I’d managed to suppress the sense of stress and growing panic somewhere deep inside, we took to saying it was at Golgotha that we found each other again. Though I doubt either of us found the anecdote especially amusing, the memory remotely pleasant. I believe we both experienced an immediate, genuine panic about each other’s wellbeing, and the specific place where we were reunited was more than just a trifling detail.

The centre of Hurmevaara looks different. But it hasn’t changed; I just look at it from a somewhat different perspective from a few days ago. Everywhere I go I look for signs of Krista and try to see dangers before they can pose me a threat. I arrive at the church hall.

I turn the car round before switching off the motor so the bonnet is facing towards the village. I’ve parked in the space nearest the door. Although how can you define a parking space in winter? Who’s going to sweep the snow away, reveal the painted lines on the asphalt and check whether the car is properly parked? I give a sigh. It seems I’ll latch on to any passing thoughts to avoid thinking about my wife and the fact that I’m the one who put her in this predicament in the first place.

I get out of the car, walk up the steps and open the door. Many things remind me of everything I have forgotten since I became so paranoid: the familiar environment, the silent building, my own echoing footsteps, the plaster sculpture of Christ in the lobby, and beside it the former rally driver, his face almost as white as the Lord’s. I remember what Pirkko said just before I left.

Tarvainen.

The three-thirty appointment.

The situation is surprising, unexpected, though I’ve always known there was a possibility it could happen. I say a stiff hello and he responds. Dark floodwaters surge and a storm rages between my ears. The lobby is perfectly silent.

‘Pirkko said you had a slot at three-thirty,’ says Tarvainen. He sounds different from when we met at the kiosk; now he doesn’t sound remotely like the drunken idiot in whose car I flew through the air and raced along the snow-covered streets of Hurmevaara. His voice is neither harsh nor rough; he sounds like a man who has come to meet his shepherd.

Which, to put it mildly, feels ever so slightly conflicting.