GRÖNHOLM WAS LOOKING down at the list when he left the room, and Heinonen was fanning himself with his copy and seemed relaxed. He’s won, thought Joentaa. Presumably at good odds. He must speak to Paulina.
He called Sundström in Helsinki. Sundström seemed to be in high spirits, told him to do as he liked, and laughed his good-old-Paavo-Sundström laugh, the one that sounded menacing and infectious at the same time.
At least Sundström’s on the way to improving, thought Joentaa as he rang off.
He spent the rest of the day working through the names he had given himself to investigate. Besides Raisa Lagerblom they included a married couple from Salo whose daughter had died in the fire on the ghost train. Erkki and Mathilda Koivikko. Looking at the date, he thought it was too long ago. 1993. Plenty of time to grasp the fact, come to terms with it, forget or suppress it. He had had an event closer to the present in mind when the idea first came to him.
All the same, he went to Salo, because a comment in Päivi’s research notes had seemed important to him.
In the big market square of Salo, where there had been a funfair with a ghost train in the autumn of 1993, people sat shivering on benches, watching the skaters on the river falling down and getting up again.
Erkki and Mathilda Koivikko lived in a red house no more than a hundred metres from the market place. Their name was on the letterbox: Koivikko. It was not clear from Päivi Holmquist’s notes whether they had already been living here in 1993. Probably. He stood indecisively outside the house for a little while, imagining Erkki and Mathilda Koivikko seeing the burning ghost train through their own windows.
He turned away, walked across the market place and over the bridge. The Somero bank was on the ground floor of a large, new-looking shopping centre. Coloured placards of happy people promised high rates of interest and a secure, sheltered life. A young woman behind a reception desk gave him an encouraging smile as he came in.
‘My name is Joentaa, I’m from the Turku police,’ he said. ‘I’d like to speak to Erkki Koivikko.’
He showed her his ID, and she studied it for a while. She seemed about to say something else, but then refrained.
‘Is he here?’ asked Joentaa.
‘Yes, of course. This way.’
She went ahead, through a door in the back part of the bank, past men and women on the phone or staring at screens. Erkki Koivikko, unlike most of the employees here, had an office of his own. The woman knocked and waited for a reply, which came a few seconds later, the speaker’s voice muted by the door. She opened it.
A man of powerful appearance sat behind a pale brown desk. He wore a dark suit and a strikingly colourful tie, and was deep in a phone conversation. He went on talking for a little while before turning to the woman, who was waiting in the doorway beside Joentaa. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘This gentleman is from the police,’ said the woman.
Koivikko sat there motionless.
‘I won’t take much of your time,’ said Kimmo.
‘Right,’ said Koivikko. ‘Yes, thank you, Sonja. We’ll do this on our own.’
The woman nodded and left. Joentaa went in and closed the door.
‘Nothing that need disturb you,’ said Joentaa. He went closer and handed his police ID to Koivikko. He had deliberately not called in advance to say he was coming. He was pestering a man who had presumably been given news of his daughter’s death fifteen years ago by a police officer. He felt a pang in his stomach and watched for Koivikko’s reaction, waiting to hear what he would say.
‘Forgive my … slight surprise. It’s not every day that a policeman turns up in my office.’
‘It’s about your daughter Maini,’ said Joentaa.
Koivikko did not reply. A powerful man, sitting there looking relaxed, surprised but otherwise in perfect control of himself.
‘I know that she died in an accident fifteen years ago,’ said Joentaa.
Koivikko nodded.
‘At the time you did something that occupied the minds of my colleagues here in Salo for a while.’
‘You’re talking in riddles, but I think I know what you mean,’ said Koivikko.
‘You threatened the man running the funfair that day. He was suspected of contributing to causing the fire through negligence.’
Koivikko nodded.
‘You offered him violence during a confrontation after the trial.’
Koivikko nodded.
‘The man was found not guilty.’
‘I still think he was guilty,’ said Koivikko. ‘It wasn’t done on purpose, of course. Negligence, as you put it. An idiot. One idiot too many. And I needed to blame someone anyway, so the court’s decision carried no weight with me. I knew he was guilty, I didn’t need any evidence.’
‘Not back then,’ said Koivikko. ‘It’s a long time ago.’
A long time ago, thought Joentaa.
‘I gave the man a black eye. It swelled up in seconds, it really did. He got off with a black eye. Unlike my daughter.’
A long time ago, thought Joentaa. Koivikko sat there unchanged, focused but calm.
‘I was questioned about the incident at the time. It didn’t come to charges or a court case. The man who had killed my daughter was kind enough not to take it to court.’
‘I know,’ said Joentaa.
‘However, here I am today, working at my profession. I expect my colleagues out there are already gossiping. Koivikko … wasn’t there something, back in the past? That terrible case. And now here’s a policeman in his office again. How did you know where to find me, by the way?’
‘It’s part of our job,’ said Joentaa, and thought of Patrik Laukkanen, who was dead and whose life was laid out in detail, in impersonally bureaucratic language, on his desk.
‘I’d be interested to know why you are here,’ said Koivikko.
Joentaa nodded. He forced himself to hold the man’s gaze and asked, ‘Do you know the Hämäläinen talk show?’
Koivikko still sat there looking just the same, with his eyes narrowed. ‘Who doesn’t?’ he asked.
‘Did you see the programme when the puppets were used as models for bodies?’
‘You surely don’t think …’
Joentaa waited.
‘You surely don’t think I … you don’t think Hämäläinen’s show of dead bodies interests me personally?’
‘Did you see that programme?’
Koivikko looked at Joentaa. He seemed to be concentrating, and almost imperceptibly shook his head. ‘Interesting,’ he murmured.
‘This’ll make you laugh; yes, I did. With my wife. We like that talk show. Well, we did like it.’
‘Not any more?’
‘We watch only occasionally,’ said Koivikko. ‘We didn’t like the way it put those puppets on display.’
‘Exactly what didn’t you like?’ asked Joentaa, and after a couple of seconds Koivikko began smiling to himself.
‘When the trailer said there would be bodies specially made for films in it, my wife said at once that she didn’t like the idea,’ he said. ‘But I thought it was an interesting topic. Then, when they talked about a fire on a ghost train and the camera moved to a puppet modelling a dead body, my wife began crying, and I went into the bathroom and threw up.’
He said no more for a while.
‘Then I went back and watched the rest of it. In principle, a fascinating subject. I soon got over my first reaction. My wife had already gone to bed, and next morning she said she thought it was tasteless and she wasn’t going to watch the Hämäläinen show any more.’
Joentaa nodded.
‘Although, incidentally, she does still watch it now and then. Has done for some time. Is that what you wanted to know?’ asked Koivikko.
‘Yes. Thank you.’
‘I don’t know exactly what you suspect, but I think there’s one thing you should know.’
‘Yes?’
‘Our daughter’s death is fifteen years in the past. And the charred plastic figure on the stretcher in that TV show was male.’
Joentaa nodded.
‘Do you understand me?’
‘Yes. Thank you very much.’ He got up, and offered Koivikko his hand. Koivikko shook it.
‘Good luck,’ said Joentaa, removing his hand from Koivikko’s.
Then he quickly walked down the corridor and out into the fresh air, feeling a little better when he was surrounded by the biting cold.