20

OUTSIDE IT WAS GREY AGAIN. Where had the bright skies of the day before gone? Anna stared at the landscape flashing past, her forehead pressed against the passenger window as Esko drove them north. She noticed that the leaves had turned yellow. When had that happened? Why did time go so quickly?

Taking someone bad news yet again, like an officious vulture, she thought. And again I have to take care of things with that nasty man who isn’t going to speak to me throughout the entire journey. At least he deigned to take me in his car this time; I suppose this is progress. Maybe she should tell Virkkunen that things were going well, far better than expected – Esko even allowed her in his car.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Esko was looking at her.

She needed a cigarette.

The victim’s wife, Maria Jääskö-Pollari, had only been a wife for about a year. She had married a successful man – the man of her dreams, she said. And now she was expecting their first child. A dead man’s child, a child that would never know its father.

Anna looked at the woman’s face, swollen and expressionless with weeping, and the bulging stomach beneath her black tunic. The two things didn’t belong together; they shouldn’t be in the same body.

The child would never see its father, yet it would carry a gnawing sense of grief at the back of its mind for the rest of its life, every bit as much as the genes it inherited from its father. We inherit so much, Anna thought, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

A familiar sense of melancholy hung around her shoulders, whispering dark prose into her ears. The enthusiasm she’d felt that morning had been erased in a single swipe.

Maria was an economist and had worked as a local councillor in Simonkoski. She had become pregnant just as the transitional period before the merging of two local constituencies was coming to an end, after which Simonkoski would no longer exist as an entity in its own right. Now she was on sick leave with back pain caused by loose joints. She found it all but impossible to sit in the same position for extended periods. She could still walk short journeys as long as she was able to lie down afterwards. She was due to start maternity leave in a month’s time, and then she would probably be off work for a year. By the time the child turned three, she would no longer have a job to go back to. It seemed that the only people to survive the cull as the city swallowed up the neighbouring constituencies would be the council bosses.

‘But none of that matters any more,’ said Maria with a note of bitterness.

Ville Pollari had driven to work at seven in the morning, as he did every day. He was a software engineer at Nokia. Maria had been at home all day, except for a quick trip to the local shop at around ten o’clock. During the day she had done the laundry but hadn’t been able to hang it out to dry; bending down to lift the wet laundry from the machine hurt her back too much. She had planned to ask Ville to help her when he came home from work. He helped a lot around the house: emptied the dishwasher, wiped the cupboard doors – all without her having to ask.

That afternoon Maria had cooked some food. She always tried to do this, so that there was food ready when Ville got back from work, though standing in the kitchen was almost as painful as sitting down.

Ville had returned home after five o’clock. They had eaten, Ville had hung out the washing and promised to buy a tumble dryer after pay day. Then he had slumped on the sofa and slept for half an hour. From six till seven he had watched the sports channel and Maria had slouched on the sofa with him, while her husband had massaged the sore areas at the base of her spine. Just before seven o’clock, Ville’s training partner Jussi Järvinen had called him to say that their daughter had a fever and his wife was working that evening.

Ville went running alone.

‘Did he often go running with a friend?’ asked Anna.

‘Ville always did his orienteering training with a friend, usually Jussi, who was a member of the same club. Ville normally went jogging by himself, though Jussi sometimes joined him on his runs, too,’ Maria explained.

In her notebook Anna wrote: Jussi Järvinen, daughter with fever.

Ville had left the house at around 7.20 p.m. Maria had lain in bed, signed into her Facebook account with the laptop propped on her stomach. She had spent half an hour chatting with her sister, who lived in Paris. Then her mother had called and they had spoken about all manner of things, including where to find a good deal on a tumble dryer. At around 8.30 p.m. she had switched off the computer and got up to heat the sauna. By 9 p.m. she had already begun glancing at the clock with a note of irritation and called her husband’s mobile phone; she heard it ringing in the hallway. At 9.15 p.m. she had telephoned Jussi, who hadn’t answered the phone.

Maria had waited another quarter of an hour before calling the police. The duty office had suggested she calm down and wait until morning, saying that there was no point organising a search party at this stage, that things like this happened surprisingly often and that men came home sooner or later with their tail between their legs.

‘That officer laughed at me,’ she said, devastated. ‘Can you imagine? He laughed it off! I shouted at him that Ville wasn’t like that, he wasn’t that kind of man!’

Maria started to weep. She hid her face in her hands, the sound of stifled sobs emanating from between her fingers. After a moment, she boldly raised her head and glared at Anna and Esko, a look of accusation in her reddened eyes.

‘If the police had acted as soon as I called, you might have caught the person who did this. You let that madman get away.’

Anna and Esko held their tongues.

‘May I look at your Facebook account?’ Anna asked Maria.

‘Can I refuse?’

‘At this stage, yes, but as the investigation goes on, probably not.’

‘Be my guest, read whatever you please,’ she snapped and fetched her laptop, catching her breath.

Anna and Esko scrolled through Maria’s account. Her small number of friends didn’t include anyone from Saloinen. The conversation with her sister had been saved in her chat history at exactly the time she had said. Maria had complained about her back pains and talked of the pain of waiting for things: waiting for dinner to cook, waiting for her husband to come home from work or a run, waiting for there to be something good on TV. And on top of that, waiting to give birth. Her sister had complained about the continual protest marches blocking the streets of Paris.

Nothing suspicious, nothing even remotely violent.

But who would write something like that on Facebook? Lives portrayed on people’s walls were more idyllic than those in women’s magazines.

What’s on your mind, Facebook relentlessly asks. I’m sick of my husband; I think I’ll shoot him.

It was clear that Maria didn’t know Riikka. She took a long look at Riikka’s graduation photograph and shook her head.

‘No, I’ve never seen this girl,’ she said, her voice steady and firm.

Neither did she think it was feasible that her husband was having an affair with her or anyone else. Ville wasn’t like that, she reiterated. Ville was a good man. He would never have done anything like that. They loved one another, enjoyed each other’s company. They were happy.

Maria stroked her stomach and looked through the kitchen window out into the garden where the lawn was still green and healthy, just as it had been all summer.

Anna wanted to believe her. She wanted to believe that there were no infections, no boils lurking in this household and that the child soon to be born would be able to live in an environment that strengthened the beloved memory of its father.

But from experience she knew that people’s histories often revealed enormous, all-encompassing lies, all kinds of skeletons. The sense of anxiety tightened its grip on her. It disturbed her concentration, ripped her thoughts from the present moment, from the case at hand, and pulled them towards the ghosts of her own past. Anna gave her head a shake. Focus on the here and now.

‘Where was Ville on the evening of 21 August? Do you remember?’ Anna asked.

‘What day of the week was that?’

‘Ville always goes for a run on Sunday evenings.’

‘Around Häyrysenniemi.’

‘What about Selkämaa?’

‘Where’s that?’

Anna explained that this was where they had found Riikka’s body. Maria shook her head. Why would Ville have travelled so far to go running when there was a track much closer? His work forced him to sit behind the wheel of his car quite enough as it was.

‘Where were you that evening?’ Esko eventually asked.

‘Here,’ she responded calmly. ‘Where else would I be?’ She glared at Anna with a look of near contempt in her eyes. It burned. Why is she staring at me? Anna wanted to turn away. She stood up and said she’d like to visit the bathroom. Maria said it was in the hallway. Anna locked the door and stood in front of the mirror. A strange, unfamiliar face stared back at her.

I’m not in control of this, said the mouth in the mirror.

I don’t belong here.

As they were driving back into town, Anna asked Esko for a cigarette, trying to test the ice. To her surprise, Esko pulled over at a bus stop and handed her a cigarette. They stepped out of the car and smoked in silence, watching the passing traffic. The tobacco tasted good.

That evening Virkkunen was on the news. He appeared on the television in a special bulletin at 7 p.m. He was on the ten o’clock news. He was on the radio. Tomorrow things would really take off when the latest developments hit the papers, headlines screaming from the windows of every shop and kiosk. Anna could almost hear the city and tranquil countryside around it simmering and drawing breath in a collective display of fear, as though a bomb had exploded.

She was listening to the radio in a patrol car parked outside Bihar’s house. Virkkunen’s matter-of-fact voice went through the main events relating to the jogging murders as reporters tried to dig for more details. ‘For technical reasons, I can’t answer that,’ she heard him reply on more than one occasion.

It was late. The lights were on in the Chelkins’ apartment. Every now and then a shadowy figure appeared at the window. Anna got the impression that she was being watched, too.

‘The police would like to ask members of the public for anything they might have seen or heard in the area around the Selkämaa running track on 21 August and the Häyrysenniemi track on 14 September. Any observations could be useful to our investigation,’ Virkkunen continued on the radio.

‘How does the killer move from place to place?’ a reporter asked.

‘That’s what we’re trying to establish.’

‘Should we expect more murders?’

‘A ruthless killer is on the loose,’ Virkkunen said plainly. ‘Until we establish how he selects his victims, we ask everyone to avoid these running tracks, especially in the evenings.’

‘Is it still safe to go for an afternoon walk?’

There came a rap at the window. Anna gave a start.

‘Let me repeat: moving around in the dark, especially near the shore and along these running tracks, is to be avoided,’ said the voice. Anna switched off the radio and rolled down the window. It was Payedar Chelkin. He glared at Anna with a menacing glint in his eyes.

‘Leave us alone!’ he threatened her.

‘Remember that you’re speaking to a police officer,’ she replied and gripped the steering wheel.

‘Don’t police have better to do?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Now you have better to do! You go investigate murders. Go away!’

‘The police will do exactly what is required of them.’

‘Leave my daughter!’

‘You leave her alone, then I can do the same.’

‘I not do anything wrong! You go find running killer. You have better to think about.’

‘You seem to know a lot about these murders.’

‘I see it on news. News full of it.’

‘How convenient.’

‘What you say?’

‘How convenient that we’re working on a big murder case; you think we won’t have time to investigate you.’

‘Police have more important things than my family.’

‘There is nothing more important to me than your family,’ said Anna; she started the engine and sped away. Bihar’s father remained standing on the pavement shaking his fists. In the rear-view mirror, Anna could see him shouting something at her. A chilling thought ran through her mind.

Could Payedar Chelkin be so crazed?

Just then she received another text message.

Anna slowed down and pulled in at a bus stop. The screen on her phone showed an icon the shape of an envelope. Without even looking, she knew where it had come from. Or rather, she didn’t know at all.

I wanna fuck u, bitch!

The number from which the message had been sent was different. Of course, this was standard fare for professional criminals: change your number and service provider regularly enough to make tracing the messages impossible. But this message I’m not deleting, Anna resolved.