THE TALL MAN sat at the wheel, the very tall man on the back seat with him, and the sunny winter day began to move towards afternoon twilight. The tall man sat upright saying nothing, the very tall man sat upright saying nothing. You would never have known that the very tall man had been playing hide and seek with the twins the evening before, like a child himself. A quick-change artist, thought Hämäläinen, and he thought of the evening ahead, and the Spanish girlfriend he’d once had in a life long ago.
To this day he found a certain consolation in assuming that she had left him because of the Finnish winter and not for other, more personal reasons. Once, when the Spanish girl came to see him, she had walked through Customs wearing a summer jacket, and when they were waiting for the bus in the cold and the dark she had asked whether the sun always set so early in Finland. Only in winter, Hämäläinen had told her, and a week later she had flown home, never to return.
‘Dark outside,’ said Hämäläinen, and the very tall man looked enquiringly at him.
‘When you think that the sun was still shining only fifteen minutes ago, I mean,’ said Hämäläinen.