KIMMO JOENTAA AND Paavo Sundström spent the night in Helsinki again. In the same hotel. It was after two in the morning when they checked in.
The interrogation of Salme Salonen had been resumed and interrupted again several times. She had answered most of the questions that Sundström and occasionally Westerberg asked her with a simple ‘Yes’.
Kimmo Joentaa had stood on the other side of the window looking at the woman, and the longer she agreed, the more often she nodded, the less he had understood.
Salme Salonen had talked about a picture she had seen, but when Sundström asked her she couldn’t describe it in any detail.
‘It doesn’t do any good,’ she had said.
‘Why don’t you leave me to be the judge of what will and will not be any good in this case?’
She had nodded, but said nothing.
She’s at peace, thought Joentaa. She has come to a standstill.
She said, several times, ‘It didn’t help.’
Sundström had asked no more questions, presumably because he didn’t think he would get any further explanation of that remark.
‘When the third man was lying on the floor I didn’t feel angry any more,’ she had said.
Sundström had nodded.
‘I don’t know what it is now. Anger, I mean.’
Sundström had nodded again.
Westerberg had gone home, and Sundström and Joentaa had taken a taxi to the hotel.
The woman who had opened the computer terminal for Joentaa a few days ago, when he wanted to watch the DVD of the chat show in the middle of the night, was at the reception desk. She gave them their keys and seemed about to say something. They had already turned away when the woman began to speak. ‘Sorry I wasn’t very friendly a few days ago.’
Joentaa turned round. ‘No problem,’ he said.
‘I saw you on TV,’ she said. ‘Both of you. I didn’t know …’
On TV, thought Joentaa.
‘Taking that woman away. Is she … is she guilty?’
Guilty, thought Joentaa.
They took the lift up to the fourth floor and went along a red and orange corridor.
Sundström was listening to his mobile. ‘Nurmela,’ he said. ‘Congratulating us.’ He switched off the mobile and said goodnight to Kimmo.
Joentaa went into his room. He spent a long time standing in the dark, thinking of the picture that Salme Salonen saw and couldn’t describe.
Beyond the glass of the window, late rockets shot skywards now and then. As they went off they glittered in all colours of the rainbow.