ERNE IS STANDING next to the table in the conference room, arms folded across his chest. He’s watching the large television screen, on which Mikael has just started playing the CCTV footage. Nina is sitting at the table, swigging juice. She has taken off her hoodie, revealing the athletic arms under her T-shirt.
“Something here doesn’t add up,” Erne says, glancing at each of his subordinates in turn.
Mikael zooms in again on the man standing right at the edge of the metro platform, smartphone in his hand. The figure, who bears an astonishing resemblance to Roger Koponen, turns his head and looks more or less directly at the camera. The image is crisp and leaves no room for conjecture. The expression on his face is guarded but calm.
“Fucking fucking fuck,” Erne says, rubbing his forehead. A moment later he looks up, and his shoulders start to jiggle, at first almost imperceptibly, then harder. A burst of laughter erupts from his mouth.
Mikael and Nina exchange glances.
“Well, I’ll be,” Erne says, wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes. Then, in a surprisingly swift transformation, he’s serious. “I’ll be damned. This is something else.”
“Another passenger must have noticed Koponen in a fully packed metro,” Mikael says tentatively, casting a discreet glance at Erne. “After all, the guy is a celebrity. And even if the news of his death didn’t make it into the free rush hour papers, it was already online by then.”
“Picture yourself reading about some famous person’s death on your phone and you look up and there he is, sitting across from you in the subway, live and in the flesh,” Nina says, lowering her empty mug to the table. “I’d probably pull the emergency brake.”
“The first thing I’d think is, man, that looks a lot like him. And that’s what’s going on here too. It has to be,” Erne says.
“Because the DNA from the burned body was compared to DNA found on Roger Koponen’s belongings?” Mikael asks laconically.
“Yes.”
“Can we be sure the guy from Kulosaari didn’t seed the house with those things after he murdered Maria Koponen? Razor blade, toothbrush, deodorant . . .” Mikael strokes his knuckles. “For some reason he wanted us to believe one of the bodies from Juva was Roger Koponen’s. Maybe that’s exactly what the guy dressed as a CSI was doing upstairs.”
Erne’s eyes are nailed to the ghost on the screen. “Where does he get off the metro?”
“Rasse is looking into that right now.”
“Good,” Erne says, then leans over the table so his dirt brown tie slips out from under his blazer.
Nina sees Mikael stop his gum under his tongue. She hears Erne’s raspy breathing in the otherwise quiet room. He strokes his gray beard thoughtfully.
“What if Roger Koponen didn’t die last night, but arrived in Helsinki in perfect health, uploaded that sickening clip of his dead wife to YouTube while waiting for the metro . . . ? It would mean Koponen is the devil himself.”
“There’s one thing I don’t get.” Nina knots her hair up in a ponytail, only to let it fall free again. “Why would anyone go through so much trouble to stage Roger Koponen’s death if they knew he was going to show up, with his phone, at a metro station during rush hour, just a few hours later?”
“Koponen might be in on the plot—”
“The question still stands,” Nina says. Silence falls over the room.
“Does Jessica know about this?” Erne eventually asks.
“Yup. She went to Kulosaari with Yusuf. She called in techs to lift more DNA samples. Ones that really are Koponen’s.”