6

The door closes behind me, I hear the soft click of the lock. Normally the sound is imperceptible, but now it seems to echo, to ripple like a wave from the gates of the church hall to the empty car park, and from there to the dark wall of spruce trees on the other side. I stand there and look around. Still nothing but –21°C and the intensifying darkness; no cars, nobody lurking in the shadow of the trees.

I walk down the steps and arrive at my car almost instantly. Perhaps I was a little paranoid, leaving my car ready for a quick get-away, but I understand the rationale. I know I couldn’t possibly have noticed everything; I know I’m not at my best. Fatigue and panic inevitably show; even I can see it. In addition to worry and panic, my thoughts of Krista have now assumed new dimensions, not all of which are particularly welcome. They are dark, labyrinthine thoughts, scenarios of what might happen if … I can barely even put it into words. What if she … doesn’t come home? And what does that mean? If a person is trapped beneath the ice in a frozen lake, or in a snowdrift with a bullet in their head, or tied up in a mineshaft, they quite understandably won’t be coming home. They won’t return, because they are dead. So the question is: what if Krista dies?

I start the engine, drive home.

Our neighbour is once again reading at her kitchen table. Framed in the window and beneath the lamp, she looks like a painting hung in a darkened landscape. I glance at the windows in our house. They are all dark.

I step into the porch, thinking in what order I should take care of the things I need to do before my night shift. I check my phone again only to note that I have received neither instructions nor renewed threats. It worries me. Alongside everything else.

I throw my outdoor coat from round my shoulders, open the door between the porch and the hallway, step inside and stop dead in my tracks. This cannot be happening. But it is, because there’s no mistaking it. I take a deep breath through my nose. I don’t need to hear the sounds, but I hear them all the same, whether I want to or not.

The sounds are coming from the unlit living room. They seamlessly combine with the scent; they are one. The greeting isn’t dramatic; everything else is, and that’s enough. I step into the living room.

Even in the darkness, I recognise Karoliina.

It seems as though she has had time to make more than a passing acquaintance with our house, because she flicks on the reading lamp above the bookshelf with apparent familiarity. She is sitting on the sofa, her right leg across her left. Her lipstick is like Christmas apples – red with a hint of black – and her hair is tied in a ponytail. The white of her hands seems accentuated by the black of her jumper.

‘You haven’t called me,’ she says.

‘It’s been a busy day. The evening especially.’

‘But you’ve been thinking about me.’

‘Yes,’ I admit.

‘I’ve been thinking about you too. I came here to see you. The door was open, so I thought I’d wait.’

I am convinced the door locked behind me when I left this morning. But perhaps that’s not the most pressing issue right now. I try to listen, to ascertain whether Karoliina is alone in the house. I try to keep my movements as relaxed as possible and position myself so that there’s a wall behind my back.

‘Where is she?’ I ask.

Karoliina looks at me. The reading lamp lights her from an angle, so one of her eyes gleams, while the other remains indecipherable. I listen to the silence. I know the sounds of our wooden house, I know how it breathes, how it reacts to human movements. We are here alone.

‘Who?’ she asks.

‘My wife.’

‘How should I know?’ she says. ‘I didn’t come here to see her; I came to see you. I didn’t even expect her to be here. I’ve got the impression things aren’t going so well for the two of you.’

Karoliina’s words strike me with full force once I realise I really did hear right.

‘The impression?’ I ask and take a step towards her. ‘And where have you got the impression that things … “aren’t going so well”?’

The coffee table is between us. On it sits a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy, exactly where I left it earlier.

‘You hang around in bars,’ she says. ‘First thing in the morning. Alone. You drink whisky. You want the meteorite. And your behaviour is … preposterous.’

‘Preposterous?’

Karoliina pauses for a moment.

‘Oh, don’t be such a priest. I’ve seen the same thing a million times. You’re trying to make an impression on me.’ Karoliina smiles. Maybe.

I say nothing.

‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ she continues. ‘And you have made an impression. You’re quite cool for a priest. But we haven’t got much time, so we have to agree on a few things.’

‘Not before I know Krista is okay.’

She sighs. ‘This is all very worrying,’ she says and glances at the bookshelf.

‘What is?’

‘First you’re like a cowboy, riding into town, appearing at the door of the saloon, trying to hit on the women and plan a robbery. Then, just when you need to put the plan into action, you start worrying about your wife.’

I have to admit there’s a lot of sense in Karoliina’s words – in one way. She doesn’t talk the way a kidnapper would talk. She sounds genuinely frustrated. And she doesn’t behave like someone with any real leverage. What’s more, if she is not the one holding Krista, under no circumstances can she be allowed to get her hands on the meteorite. In short, if Karoliina does have a plan of how to get hold of it, I need to be a part of that plan.

‘My wife has been a bit under the weather recently,’ I say. Of course, this is true, and I have no difficulty saying it out loud. The next sentence comes just as easily. ‘But she’s tough.’

Karoliina shakes her head. ‘When I leave,’ she says, ‘I’ll make sure I leave for real, for good.’

I allow a few seconds to pass.

‘So you have a plan?’ I ask.

Karoliina stands up from the sofa. She walks round the coffee table, appears in front of me. Her proximity always has a physical impact on me: my heart beats quicker, my chest and stomach start to tingle. And it’s happening again now. I simultaneously want to back away and move forwards. Desire has nothing to do with what is sensible or, for want of a better word, right. It’s simply … desire.

‘Yes, I have a plan, of course I do,’ she says, and now I can smell the full force of her perfume. ‘But … can I trust you?’

‘I need that meteorite,’ I say. It’s the God’s honest truth.

Karoliina appears to be thinking about something. Then she moves her right hand, and I feel her touch. And not just at the spot on my shoulder where her hand comes to rest, but through my whole body.

‘If I’m honest, I’m a bit frightened,’ she says.

‘Frightened of what?’

‘I can tell you this sort of thing, right? I mean, you’re a priest, right?’

The light is shining from behind her. Her lips are dark, slightly apart. I can see their shape, their moisture.

‘I have a duty of confidentiality, yes.’

Karoliina moves her hand along my shoulder. ‘I’m afraid of him.’

‘Of who?’

She opens her mouth, then pauses.

‘Leonid,’ she answers eventually.

‘Right. Leonid.’

‘Right. He forces me to … He’s a dangerous man.’

‘In what way?’ I ask.

‘He is…’ Karoliina begins and again looks me in the eyes. ‘He’s a criminal.’

‘He wants the meteorite, is that right?’

I can hear her breathing. She moves closer all the while.

‘Yes.’

‘Is he working alone?’

‘He is now that Grigori’s dead. Someone shot him.’

I won’t correct Karoliina by telling her that technically speaking Grigori shot himself, that he pulled the gun from inside his coat, pointed it at an unarmed civilian and pulled the trigger.

‘Does Leonid know who shot him?’ I ask.

‘He says he does, at least. He’s been talking about it nonstop, about how he’s going to take revenge on the guy who did it, skin him alive, crucify him.’

A cold fist grips my insides. I try not to let it show.

‘When you said Leonid was working alone…’

‘Not quite alone. He’s working with me.’

‘You’re afraid of him and you’re going to steal the meteorite with him?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘What does that mean?’

Karoliina is right against me.

‘It means I first want to be sure I can tell you my plan,’ she says.

She presses herself against my body. She has closed her eyes. Her lips are so near my own that I’m certain I can already feel them touching. Our lips do not meet, but there’s an electricity between them, and I can feel her breath against my face. She moves one of her hands, it comes to rest on my hip and it awakens something I haven’t thought of for several days now. I close my eyes, lean back my head.

‘Shouldn’t it be the other way round?’ I ask and open my eyes. ‘Shouldn’t I ask whether or not I can trust you? Shouldn’t I hear about your plan first and then decide what to do?’

Karoliina looks up; our eyes meet. She moves her hand from my hip, crosses to my abdomen, then moves further down until she is gently touching the front of my trousers. Her bare arm turns slightly. Along the side of her forearm runs a long, freshly healed scratch.

‘We will both have to work, but with regards to the future, it’s for the best: we’ll both be equally guilty.’

She speaks of guilt as though it were something to seek out and share with others. I can’t possibly agree to this, but I keep my thoughts to myself.

‘You are on guard at the museum,’ she says, her voice now barely louder than a whisper. We are so close to each other that her voice sounds like waves on a beach. ‘All of a sudden two people break in. One of them threatens you with a gun. You fight back, you manage to grab the gun and you shoot one of the intruders…’

‘No…’

‘The intruder dies,’ she continues as though she hadn’t heard me. I can feel her hand against my crotch. ‘Despite your exemplary bravery, you still can’t prevent the theft of the meteorite. One of the intruders escapes with it. It later transpires that the dead intruder is a Russian professional criminal. He has been seen around the village with a friend on several occasions. It is quickly established that he and his friend were working together. And now the accomplice is every bit as missing as the meteorite. One plus one. Two Russian crooks, one missing meteorite. Nobody will come looking for me – and they certainly won’t suspect the brave guard on night shift who tried to protect the meteorite in the first place.’

‘Who will shoot the intruder?’ I ask.

‘Leonid is a nasty piece of work. He’d do the same to us. If you won’t do it, then…’

I have no intention of getting into an ethical discussion; there isn’t time. And I haven’t upheld the highest ethical standards myself in recent times. I still feel the same inexplicable, aching desire for this woman.

‘Why wouldn’t the surviving intruder kill the security guard too?’ I ask.

‘Because she needs the guard.’

‘For what? She already has the meteorite, and blame has been deflected to the Russian crooks. Why does she need a pastor?’

‘She needs him because he’s a pastor,’ says Karoliina. ‘She needs an alibi, of course. Nobody will believe you could be lying. Everyone will believe you. And you’ll give the police such a detailed description of the intruder that they’ll be looking for the right man from the very next second.’

‘The right man?’

‘Grigori. Leonid told me Grigori’s in storage, somewhere nobody would ever think to look for him. From our perspective – what could be better?’

I feel Karoliina’s hand against my trousers as though it were against my skin, as though there was nothing separating us. I look her in the eyes.

Indeed, I think, what really could be better?

What could be better right now?