32

JESSICA ENDS THE call and presses her phone to her chest. The NBI agents who went to Neurofarm talked to Maria Koponen’s boss and a few colleagues but didn’t come up with anything out of the ordinary.

Jessica sits back down at her computer and looks at the dark screen. She is on the verge of rattling her mouse to rouse it, but her arm stops midmovement. She stares at her blurry reflection. It reproduces the contours of her head, but leaves the features in the center indistinct. The experience is like a repeat of the night before, when Jessica gazed at her reflection in the window. It’s as if someone is looking back at her from the other side of the glass. Some stranger from a cold, dark universe reminding her she has yet to find her place in the world. She will never be normal, even if she has a government job and pretends to live on the salary the police department deposits in her bank account every month. Fake. Liar. Hypocrite. Fraud von Hellens.

“Jessica!” Yusuf barks as if he is calling a dog. But the face that appears over the room divider is sympathetic. He continues more softly but still clearly pumped up: “Call data.”

Jessica taps her computer screen to life, then walks around to Yusuf’s workstation. It’s as messy as ever. At least six mugs, rims ringed with coffee stains. No wonder she can never find clean dishes in the kitchen. Behind stacks of papers stand two trophies: Yusuf took them home for winning the department’s go-kart championship and is more than happy to show them to anyone and everyone who wanders past his desk.

“Roger Koponen’s phone was on between eight oh two and eight oh nine this morning,” Yusuf says, arms folded across his chest.

“Where?”

“Helsinki Central Railway Station. Maybe underground, at the metro station.”

Jessica’s fingernails sink into the upholstery of Yusuf’s chair. “Great. There are tons of people there—”

“We’ll go through the tapes,” Yusuf says, tapping a number into his phone. Jessica stands up straight and fills her lungs with the stale air the station’s tirelessly exhaling HVAC system has perfumed with its signature scent: a blend of vacuum cleaner bag and metal. Jessica rubs her wrists and finds her pulse, which seems to have remained elevated since the events of the previous evening. She hasn’t been able to get her encounter with the murderer out of her mind. The coverall-hooded face, the eyes whose color she can’t remember. The words she still doesn’t understand. That’s it for the first one. She can’t help but think “the first one” refers to something they haven’t even thought of yet, something the perpetrator wants them to know. Or, to be more accurate, guess.

“Jessie?” A remote connection to the CCTV cameras at the railway station has appeared on the computer screen. “It might take a minute,” Yusuf says. “Going through the tapes, I mean.”

“Leave it to—”

“The lovebirds?” When he sees the surprise on Jessica’s face, Yusuf smiles. Then he shakes his head. “What? You think I didn’t know Nina and Micke are screwing? You think Erne doesn’t know?”

“I couldn’t care less. Go tell them.” Jessica grabs the parka lying on Yusuf’s desk and tosses it in his lap. “Then you and I are heading out.”

“Where?”

“Kulosaari. I want to see that place in daylight.”