THE CONFERENCE ROOM was dark, and smaller than their own in Turku. Jobs to be done were shared out, areas of responsibility named. Officers assigned to keep the flow of information going between Turku and Helsinki. Two cities, one murder case. Sundström and Westerberg agreed to call each other twice a day, at fixed times, to exchange the most important results of their investigations.
A forensics expert told them that an initial analysis showed the probable nature of the murder weapon in both cases.
Probable nature, thought Joentaa.
‘As you know, features around the edges of wounds and the direction of the thrust allow conclusions to be drawn about the nature of the instrument used, but it’s not an exact science,’ said the forensics expert.
‘Probability will do us for now,’ said Sundström.
‘A small but sharp blade,’ said the forensics man. ‘Presumably an ordinary household knife, meaning it’ll be one widely sold in large quantities.’
Sundström and Westerberg nodded.
Joentaa heard little of what was being said. He was thinking of Sanna, Sanna’s face when life had come to a stop behind it. The routine sympathy of the nurse on night duty. The drive home. The landing stage and the lake in the darkness. The cold of the water against his legs as the pain finally made its way into him and spread.
One of the Helsinki investigators talked about Harri Mäkelä. His voice sounded hunted, and rose and fell at unnaturally regular intervals. Mäkelä had been the best, he said. He’d made life-sized dummies not only for Finnish productions but also for the American movie industry. He’d even made the model of an Oscar prizewinner who had to fight a robot that looked just like him in a film. Joentaa wondered what the basic idea of that film could have been. The officer said, ‘He was much in the media. Recently wrote a book. Kind of a semi-celebrity, here in Helsinki anyway.’
Silence filled the room.
‘Hm,’ said Sundström.
‘We don’t know much more about him yet,’ said the officer apologetically.
Then they went along the corridor and stepped out into the driving snow. They drove to the TV station from which Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen’s chat show went out with such success. A large, tall building, surrounded by its own extensive park, dominated by glass. While they made for the building Joentaa looked at the little people visible through the glass, and wondered whether the executives who ran the station deliberately put their employees on show as if they were on a huge screen.
The doorman stood to attention when Westerberg showed his ID, the woman editor of the Hämäläinen chat show welcomed them on the twelfth floor. She was in a cheerful mood. Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen entered the room a little later. He wore a black jacket and blue jeans, clothes expressing the mixture of gravity and the popular approach that presumably accounted for some of his success. Joentaa examined the best-known TV face in Finland and wondered what it was about it that he found so irritating.
‘Hello,’ said Hämäläinen, and shook hands one by one with Sundström, Westerberg and Joentaa. He sat down, crossed his legs, and looked at them with a friendly, enquiring expression.
Hämäläinen is playing the part of Hämäläinen, thought Joentaa, and Hämäläinen’s expression darkened as Westerberg explained the reason for their visit: Harri Mäkelä, found dead outside his house.
‘That … that’s terrible,’ said Hämäläinen.
‘There’s worse to come,’ said Sundström.
Hämäläinen looked at him and waited.
‘Patrik Laukkanen.’
Hämäläinen frowned and seemed to be thinking. ‘Isn’t that the forensic pathologist who was on our show with Mäkelä?’
‘That’s right,’ said Sundström.
‘Laukkanen was also found dead,’ said Sundström.
‘Oh, good heavens,’ said the editor.
‘That … that’s terrible,’ said Hämäläinen, and for the first time he really did seem to be shaken.
‘The only link between the two that we’ve been able to establish so far is your show. The appearance of both of them on the programme,’ said Sundström.
Hämäläinen was silent for a while. ‘I see,’ he said at last.
‘So far as we know, Mäkelä and Laukkanen met for the first time on your show. Can you think of any other connection between them?’
Hämäläinen shook his head, and seemed to be lost in thought.
‘Nothing at all that stuck in your memory?’
‘It was a good show that day, a good conversation, we had good …’ He stopped.
We had good ratings, Joentaa suspected.
‘We had a good conversation, they were nice guys and they came over that way. Good guests,’ said Hämäläinen.
Sundström nodded.
‘There’s one idea we’ve discussed within our team, an idea we would like to put to you,’ said Westerberg with ceremony and very, very wearily.
‘What is it?’ asked Hämäläinen’s editor when the silence began to seem endless. Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen was staring at the glass walls around them.
‘Do you … will you have anyone around for protection?’ asked Westerberg.
Hämäläinen didn’t seem to understand what he meant.
‘Do you have personal protection? Bodyguards?’ Westerberg specified.
‘No,’ said Hämäläinen. ‘No, I’m not a … I lead a perfectly normal life.’
Westerberg nodded, and Joentaa thought of an interview with Hämäläinen he had read a few weeks ago. It had focused again and again on that statement. A perfectly normal life, a star within the reach of ordinary people. As far as he remembered, Hämäläinen was the father of two daughters. Twins. Like Tuomas Heinonen.
‘Why do you ask that?’ said Hämäläinen’s editor. ‘Do you really think that Kai-Petteri …?’
‘To be honest,’ said Sundström, ‘at the moment we’re overwhelmed by what’s happened. We get that sometimes. We don’t know anything, and we don’t understand it. We’re only registering events.’
They all fell silent, until Hämäläinen suddenly stood up and said, in an unnaturally loud voice, ‘Absolutely out of the question.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Sundström.
‘Out of the question. I’m very sorry about these deaths, but I didn’t know either your forensic pathologist or Harri Mäkelä personally. I met them just once, at the time of that interview. I can’t contribute anything, and of course I don’t need personal protection or anything like that. Excuse me, please.’ He shook hands with Sundström, Westerberg and Joentaa, and walked out of the room.
‘That was quick,’ said Westerberg slowly.
The editor took them down the now brightly lit corridors of the big glass case that was the TV station to the lift and said again, before the automatic doors closed, how terrible it was. The doorman stood to attention, the large car park was a picturesque scene in the dark of an early evening swirling with snowflakes.
They drove in silence, and Kimmo Joentaa thought of Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen acting the part of himself. A part that he had to play all day long. A man who was real on screen and only a copy in real life.
The sad comic imitates voices, the presenter imitates himself.
Joentaa closed his eyes, tried to concentrate on some distant but central nugget of information, and suddenly had to laugh at his own crazy idea. He laughed and chuckled, and thought, vaguely, that he must call Larissa.
‘Kimmo’s laughing,’ said Sundström, and Westerberg only nodded, presumably because he didn’t understand the joke and was not at all interested in understanding it.