JESSICA PULLS THE door shut behind her and hears Yusuf’s car cough to life at the side of the road. Once again, the Koponens’ front yard looks like the set of a Hollywood movie; scads of people and equipment have been brought in with large vehicles. The circus came, packed up, and then returned to Kulosaari. Encore.
Jessica zips up the coat she’s wearing; it’s not hers. Her parka is racing to the hospital in the ambulance, wrapped around the woman who rose out of the water. That means Jessica’s wallet, phone, and the notebook where she wrote down the name of the man who called from Savonlinna are headed toward the hospital too.
Jessica’s fingers feel stiff, and her joints are prickling. Her hands were submerged only for a moment, but it feels like the blood still isn’t circulating properly through them.
Yusuf pulls up at the Koponens’ gate, and Jessica trudges over and opens the passenger door. She climbs in, casts one last glance over the house, and pulls the door shut.
“Töölö Hospital?”
“Yup,” Jessica says, letting her head fall back against the headrest. Despite the gauze of clouds veiling the sun, it’s brighter out than it was earlier.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Yusuf says, closing the center console. Jessica catches a glimpse of a red cigarette pack . “Those aren’t mine.”
“I’m not your big sister, you know.”
“That’s pretty obvious from the difference in our tans.”
Yusuf smiles and waves at the patrol officer who’s making sure outsiders don’t cross the perimeter.
“Smoke all you want. As long as you can still run from one end of the floorball court to the other,” Jessica says. She looks out the passenger window at the man with the thin face and the police-issue beanie pulled down over his bald head.
The car drifts down the route the murderer masked as a CSI fled on foot the night before. Jessica vividly remembers her furiously pounding pulse and the bite of frozen air in her lungs. The coveralls fluttering in the middle of the street. Her fear and disappointment. The anger that washed over her once the fear eased. The man was clearly playing some sort of game with her. She is certain it’s the same man. It’s no coincidence that Jessica was the one who encountered him inside the house last night and on the ice today. He wanted to be seen; good for him. Next time, she’s going to shoot him.
“Stop the car,” Jessica says as Yusuf turns at the intersection. She has thought back to the phone call she received right before her encounter with the horned figure on the ice. Middle-aged. Bald. Thin.
Jessica opens her door.
“What is it now?” Yusuf asks. But Jessica is already gone.
As she hustles back to the house, Jessica makes sure her pistol is at the ready. She hears a car door slam shut behind her, followed a second later by Yusuf’s footfalls running after her.
“Hey!” Jessica calls out, and whistles at the police officers controlling access in front of the house. There’s no sign of their skinny, bald colleague. Jessica feels her senses sharpen. Where did he go?
“Forget something?” one of the officers asks. There’s a hint of sarcastic insubordination in his voice.
Jessica looks him in the eye, then turns to his partner. Yusuf runs up, a little out of breath, and looks at her, perplexed.
“Where’s that other guy?” Jessica asks. Suspense is gnawing at her guts. “Where’s the tall, thin guy?”
“Huh?”
“The one who was standing next to the cordon a second ago!” Jessica snaps, prompting the patrol officers to exchange amused glances.
“Where is he?” Jessica insists. Yusuf takes a step closer and is opening his mouth to say something, but then quickly shuts it again. Jessica hears a cough behind her.
“Looking for me, Detective?”
Jessica whirls around. In the doorway to the Koponens’ house stands the police officer who a moment earlier allowed Yusuf’s car to exit the cordon.
“Sergeant, ma’am . . . ,” he says, raising his hands in a pacifying gesture, “am I in some sort of trouble?”
One of the patrol officers laughs. Jessica looks down and realizes she’s holding her pistol in her right hand. She shoves the gun into her holster. “Can I see your badge?”
“Sure,” he says, opening his breast pocket at a leisurely pace.
“What the fuck are you rolling your eyes at me for?”
“Sorry, but I don’t understand—”
Jessica takes the badge. Her eyes flit between the name, the photo, and the face in front of her.
“I just went for a piss and all of a sudden—”
Jessica hands the badge back. “Come on, Yusuf.”
Jessica starts walking back to the car. Behind her, she hears soft laughter leaping from man to man like wildfire. “Fucking schizo.”
“CARE TO TELL me what that was all about?” Yusuf says, shifting into higher gear, once again hopelessly late. The way he punishes his poor engine annoys Jessica to no end.
“I got a phone call when I was out in the backyard. Just before . . . what happened happened.”
“Who was it?”
“Some guy from Savonlinna. Interviewed Roger Koponen last night or something. He said someone in the audience asked Koponen if he was afraid of the things he wrote.”
“Pretty incriminating, when you consider everything that has happened.”
“Bald, thin, weird-looking . . . middle-aged,” Jessica says, shooting Yusuf a pregnant look.
He sighs. “I get that this is really hard on you. It’s hard on all of us, but—”
“But what? Are you doubting me too?”
“Too?”
“There was a guy with horns out there on the ice, and he was there because of me.”
“OK. But I didn’t see him.”
For a second, they sit in silence.
“No, you didn’t. And you don’t see the whole point either.”
“Which is?”
“If we hadn’t gone to the Koponens’ house, that woman wouldn’t have been in the sea to begin with.”