ERNE ENDS THE call and clicks open a text message that arrived just a moment earlier. It’s from Jessica.
Helminen has been feeding us lies. We’re going to check on something. I’ll call you after.
Rasmus is sitting in the conference room with his laptop open in front of him.
“Fuck me,” Erne says, plopping down next to Rasmus. “Does Micke know Nina is headed to Kaitalahti?”
“Not yet. He’s still taking turns interrogating those two assholes. Did something new come up?”
Erne shakes his head and digs his lozenges out of his pocket. He watches Rasmus tap in www.battre-morgondag.fi and bring up the medical clinic’s website.
“Something about this place is seriously wrong if outpatients can get their hands on deadly drugs.”
“That woman is going to be facing charges for pulling that stunt.” Erne shuts his eyes. He hopes from the bottom of his heart that Roger Koponen is at the cottage, and this hellish snarl will begin to unravel. He considers the scale of the case, how small they all are in this universe. How ultimately minor the earthly destruction those sick assholes have managed to cause. And how they will die in the end too, fade into oblivion. When this case is closed, Erne is going to throw in the towel and take sick leave from which he will never return.
Erne feels a jab in the ribs; Rasmus’ voice is little more than a whisper. “Erne . . . look.”
“What?” Erne opens his eyes. He can tell he was only seconds from falling asleep. The disease has sapped his strength, his capacity to tolerate exhaustion. “What is it now?” he repeats grumpily.
Rasmus has opened the website’s Staff page, which features photographs of the Bättre Morgondag staff. He’s holding his forefinger next to the face of a dark-haired woman with a warm smile.
“Doesn’t Emma Luoma look familiar . . . ?”
Erne focuses his eyes on the screen, which Rasmus turns toward him.
“Now that you mention it . . . maybe a little. We’ve seen quite a few women who look like that over the last twenty-four hours.” Erne falls silent and looks at Rasmus. “Wait. . . . What are you getting at?”
For a second, Rasmus stares at the photograph as if he is waiting for the Emma Luoma staring out of the screen to blink first. Then he jams his thumbnail between his teeth. “I’m pretty sure that . . . Wait,” he says, and stands. Rasmus walks over to the large board, where a mind map of photographs, call data, meetings, and contacts has been patched together.
“Who are you looking for?”
“Goddamn it, Erne. If I’m right . . . Goddamn it. . . .”
Erne watches alertly as Rasmus takes down a photograph from the board. Then he walks back to the table on unsteady feet and holds it against the screen, next to the photograph of Emma Luoma. Rasmus is comparing a close-up of the woman crushed to death with stones to the neutrally smiling face on the website.
Erne looks at the two images side by side. At first the idea seems too impossible to be true. It’s so pivotal that he has to start rebuilding the entire chain of events from the end.
“Emma Luoma is Mrs. X, the victim from Haltiala,” Rasmus says.
A pungent smell assaults Erne’s nostrils. Rasmus has started to sweat again.
“She was never reported missing,” Erne mutters. Silence. They both know what this means. Even so, seconds pass in utter paralysis.
Erne reaches for his phone with both hands. Nina has to be at the service station by now, where the SWAT team is waiting for her. She has to be safe.
“Because . . . her husband is dead too,” Rasmus says in shock, and looks at the take-out bag lying on the table. Mr. X’s teeth. Daniel Luoma’s teeth.
“The couple Nina met were not doctors.”
The seconds that pass in the silent room feel like an eternity. A pop-up window advertising Nicorette gum appears on the screen, and Erne has the sudden urge to smoke.
“Dear Christ Almighty,” he says, phone at his ear. He jumps up. “Nina’s not answering her phone.”