TH03 - To Steal Her Love (5 page)

‘You had someone call me at home and ask me to come in right away, sir.’

‘That’s not true,’ he replied, almost startled. Perhaps he was worried that Harjunpää would ask to be paid the normal call-out rate. They looked at one another, as if each of them thought the other was insane, and Harjunpää had the surreal sensation that he was still lying beneath the sauna benches, still dreaming. He sat down without asking.

‘Well,
somebody
called us…’

‘Of course.’ Järvi cleared his throat and moved as though he had realised something but still wanted to conceal it. He was a pale man, almost retiral age, and if you’d thought of him as a lake, as his name suggested, you wouldn’t have thought of a serene open lake in Saimaa but one of the polluted ponds of southern Finland.

‘There’s clearly been a misunderstanding. I asked DS Lampinen to call you, but I asked him to tell you to come and see me first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘Yes,’ Harjunpää groaned, and as he sat there he realised this was precisely what had broken his soul. ‘Well, I’m here now.’

‘But let’s return to this matter in the morning.’

Harjunpää raised his hands and started rubbing his temples. Time passed, the room was stiflingly hot, and eventually he said very calmly and carefully: ‘I’ve been working all night. I’ve only slept about an hour, and now I’m here again. What’s this all about?’

Järvi glanced at the wall, which was covered with an array of medals and honorary diplomas. Eventually he snapped out of the state of mind
that Harjunpää’s arrival had disturbed, stood up, brusquely folded his arms and glowered at Harjunpää with his chin jutting forwards. Now he was a general on horseback in front of his troops, his sabre raised aloft.

‘Very well. To put it bluntly, you have acted in a manner most
unsuitable
for an officer of your ranking.’

‘I see,’ Harjunpää had to milk it out of him. Järvi made him remain silent.

‘You irresponsibly sent a young, inexperienced officer – by himself – to a location where a suspected rape had taken place.’

‘But two calls came in at once. What else could we have done? I’m not the one that’s been cutting back our resources… Besides, Suominen said he took care of the matter. It was only an attempted rape. It was somewhere in Töölö: some kid broke into a woman’s apartment and touched her up in her sleep. But then she woke up…’

‘Some kid,’ said Järvi imitating him; he could do it in the most
scornful
way.
Bastard
, thought Harjunpää. He had no respect for Järvi or for the majority of the High Command in the force. Järvi was an old-timer. He’d started out as a constable back when the selection process hadn’t been quite as rigorous, and had gradually climbed up the hierarchical ladder, not because of his ability, but by using his elbows and by his sheer
bloody-mindedness
. It was still written all over him; he had the mentality of a beat cop and that was why he’d never made it to the top. Working for the police force was like an exciting toy to him; it enabled him to go
knocking
on the doors of the big boys, while he could freely slap the wrists of those who weren’t in a position to do anything about him. And if decisions had to be made, he would always suggest creating a separate task force – then delegate the tasks to everybody else.

‘This wasn’t just some kid,’ Järvi boomed. ‘This man holds the values of our society in utter contempt, and if you’d been up to your job you would have known that.’

‘How on earth…?’

‘Like this,’ Järvi snapped, turned to his shelves, located the relevant folder, flicked through it and handed Harjunpää a dog-eared photocopy. It was an internal police bulletin; Harjunpää had seen thousands of them. He quickly glanced over it: the memo asked all officers at Violent Crimes to pay particular attention to cases where a man gained forced entry to a woman’s apartment. Harjunpää vaguely remembered people once talking about it in the coffee room. The bulletin was dated over a year ago.

‘I remember reading this.’

‘Then why didn’t you act accordingly?’

‘I’ve already said… Nobody can be expected to remember all these age-old memos,’ Harjunpää growled and, though he tried to control himself, his irritation came across loud and clear. He didn’t care about Järvi’s reprimand – he knew he’d done the best he could – but he was furious that a stupid misunderstanding had cost him an entire day. Something about the incident was out of proportion, and that generally meant it involved something that was very important to someone, and Harjunpää was filled with a desire to find out what that something was.

‘These cases haven’t even been assigned to a specific officer,’ he exclaimed. ‘They’re just hanging around in everybody’s cold-case folder.’

‘That is… that is purely a tactical decision. You know very well the risk of information leaking outside this building. In addition to their own cases my boys have been keeping a number of suspects under surveillance, but this kind of sloppiness from your officers could ruin everything.’

Harjunpää stood up as impassively and exhaustedly as he could, and hid an exaggerated yawn behind his hands.

‘And where do you think you’re going?’

‘Home. I’m tired, and I have things to do there too.’

‘Just wait a minute. I want you to understand quite what a serious matter this is. I trust your ability to keep this to yourself.’

‘Yes.’

‘This case involves somebody very high up indeed.’

‘Well,’ Harjunpää remarked and moved closer to the door.

‘Oh, very well, I’ll tell you. But I hope you realise what a show of trust this is.’

‘I’m sure I do.’

‘I take it you are aware of the Right Honourable Mr Kuusimäki,’ Järvi began, and an expression came across his face that could only be described as patriotic.

‘Honourable indeed.’

‘That was inappropriate… But now you understand why this matter must be handled with the utmost discretion. He lives elsewhere and he’s married, but naturally he has a temporary apartment in the city. And it’s perfectly understandable that… well, loneliness often plagues young men. Well, about six months ago this same kid of yours gained entry to his
residence too. Mr Kuusimäki contacted me about it personally. He wants the perpetrator caught and says he can’t fathom how investigation standards have slipped since his days in the force.’

Harjunpää felt as though something inside him had smiled; he
remembered
Kuusimäki only too well. He and Harjunpää had been sergeants together for a while. The man had been full of restless, boundless energy that too often found an outlet in his baton and in talking back to the supers. If Harjunpää remembered correctly, it was to Järvi that Kuusimäki had once blurted out, ‘Listen, you’re an excellent chief, but you’re living in the wrong century,’ and that had been the end of Kuusimäki’s career in Criminal Investigations. But then he’d gone off and studied somewhere, graduated in record time, moved back to his home town to work as a lawyer and now he was in his second term in the parliament.

‘He’s done it out of spite,’ said Harjunpää.

Järvi didn’t seem to understand, but assured him, ‘No, this is more serious. How do we know the break-in wasn’t politically motivated?’

‘Quite,’ said Harjunpää. ‘Now, good night.’

He didn’t leave the building and go out to his car but went instead to the Violent Crimes department, walked listlessly up and down its
corridors
for a moment, then realised that he could take a short nap on the sofa in the computer room at the Arson Division.

A moment later, however, he found himself outside Onerva’s office. He stood in the doorway and smelled her scent in the air: the smell of perfume, of long hair, of things shared and years gone by. Onerva’s
cardigan
was hanging over the back of her chair; Harjunpää stood staring at it. She called it the Heart. It was obvious when you looked at it; its colours were just right, full of pulse, a wonderful flow and vitality. It had all sprung from deep inside Onerva’s mind, she had passed it through her hands and along the strands of wool, and there it was: a cardigan that was a heart.

This wasn’t the only thing she’d knitted; small boutiques fought amongst themselves to be able to sell her knitwear, and Onerva knew she could make just as good a living from them as she could as a police officer, and that she would be a lot happier too. Harjunpää knew it would only be a matter of days before she tendered her resignation. Onerva wasn’t a dreamer: she knew what she was doing.

Harjunpää sat down in Onerva’s chair, propped his elbows on the desk and his cheeks in his palms, and sat there thinking about his life. It felt as
though crying might have helped a little, but he couldn’t think of a reason to do so.

He couldn’t comprehend that Elisa wasn’t the only woman he loved.

Sari hadn’t been able to enjoy her new home for a while now, even though it was exactly what she had wanted: a light one-bedroom
apartment
, its surfaces coated in a fine off-white, and the furniture suited her tastes – simple, cheerful almost, and the fabric colours were coordinated and soothing. On top of that, the windows caught the afternoon sun and the rumble of the traffic on Runeberginkatu didn’t disturb her as the windows were triple-glazed and soundproofed.

Yet a strange Evil had managed to sneak inside.

It hadn’t been there a year ago, when she had first moved in, and back then the flat had signified the beginning of a new life. Her husband had died a few months earlier, inexplicably and, with hindsight, almost stupidly, as though life and death had been playing a trick on her. Simo had arrived slightly late for his meeting, had sat down in a hurry, clumsily missed his chair and landed awkwardly on his behind. Everybody had laughed, of course, even Simo, or so she had been told later on. The meeting got underway and an hour later Simo fainted. Two hours later he was dead.

Sari hadn’t asked to see the autopsy report, but had accepted things the way the police had explained them: the trauma to the spine had fractured something, the fracture had caused some kind of internal bleeding and the bleeding had shut down something else and that was that. Cause of death and the findings of the health-and-safety officers.

She still wasn’t quite over it all. She knew this, and that was something, at least. In addition she was constantly trying to get over it, and moving
into a new flat was part of the process; she could feel Simo’s presence all too strongly in their former home. But still it always felt as though
ridiculous
things could bring everything tumbling down, and one of them was the stupid envy of her stupid sister-in-law.

Sari had renovated and decorated the apartment with the money from Simo’s life insurance and made it into just the kind of home she had always dreamed about as a girl. But when her sister-in-law had seen the mirrors and tiles in the bathroom, she had commented simply: ‘That’s just great, cut up your dead husband and plaster him on the wall in a thousand pieces. You’ll be lucky if he doesn’t turn up one night and demand to know what you think you’re doing frittering away his hard-earned cash.’

The Evil presence manifested itself in that Sari was afraid to be alone in the flat in the evenings. Neither was her sense of dread alleviated by the fact that she knew exactly what she was afraid of: she thought she was losing her mind. That being said, she would have been even more paranoid and afraid had she known that her name was Wheatlocks, for she firmly believed her name to be Sari Anneli Luoto. This was her name too, after all, her driver’s licence said so, and the plaque on the front door read: L
UOTO
. And every time she looked in the mirror, Sari Anneli stared right back at her.

That Sunday evening Sari Anneli Wheatlocks was sitting curled up on the sofa with a book. She hadn’t read anything for the last quarter of an hour but had been glancing absent-mindedly around her home, at the tassels on the rugs and all the beautiful glassware, at how the darkness had consumed the world behind the windows one bit at a time, and it was the darkness that reminded her once again that perhaps, in some way, she was mentally ill: she was afraid of her dead husband. And because of that she was afraid of herself, and because of herself she was afraid of almost everything.

Rosalyn wasn’t going to give in just like that
, Sari began reading, almost mechanically.
Her bosom heaving, she sidled up to Carl and looked him defiantly in the eyes
… The book fell once again to her lap. She wasn’t prepared to give in either; she only had one life, but she needed help if she was ever going to beat this. There had been plenty of sympathy immediately after Simo’s death, but her problems had continued despite moving into the new flat, and once she had cautiously hinted that Simo still visited her at night, even her best friends had started rolling their eyes in exasperation. And now she was even more alone than before.

Her therapist hadn’t been much more sympathetic either. ‘What’s most important is that you try to calm down,’ the man had advised her. ‘You shouldn’t let these notions and dreams frighten you. The human mind is full of unpredictable things. This may mean that you’re still grieving. And if we take into consideration that you’ve been enjoying a regular sex life which has now come to an abrupt end… A friend of mine discovered that
becoming
widowed reawakened her erotic fantasies of puberty. But they soon settled down once she accepted that they were a natural part of her…’

The worst of it was that he appeared in some way to have decided precisely what was wrong with her, and although she had tried hard to accept this, she simply didn’t believe it was true. One benefit was that she had been prescribed a course of Diapam which she truly needed. She was pleased that she’d had the courage to seek professional help in the first place, though what courage did that really take? After all, she would have gone to the doctor’s if she’d hurt her hand, too.

‘Right, this girl’s off for a shower, then straight to bed,’ Wheatlocks said out loud; she found this often helped, though this time the words echoed through the silent, cavernous apartment, and she understood more clearly than ever before quite how helpless and alone she was. She decided to flick the radio on. She enjoyed listening to Baroque music, it calmed her thoughts, and, as if to order, the strains of Vivaldi came flowing across the Classic FM radio waves.

She took a few steps towards the bedroom but stopped suddenly and turned back; the bloke downstairs couldn’t stand the radio blaring late at night – once he’d even started hammering on the radiators – but if the music were too loud it would drown out any other sounds too, and if the door suddenly opened she wanted to hear it.

She closed the bedroom door and began to undress, and only then did she realise what she’d done: she had closed the door. In her own home, by herself! She scoffed at herself, but didn’t open the door and all of a sudden her hands felt as if they belonged to someone else, making
unnecessary
, jerking movements, and her stomach felt so sore that she might soon need a course of Alsucral. She slipped on her dressing gown – it too felt strange; in the past she had enjoyed walking around the flat naked, nothing but air against her skin – then she made a beeline for the kitchen, took a bottle of Riesling from the fridge, poured herself a glass and downed it in a few gulps.

Wheatlocks closed her eyes. She could already feel the wine warming her stomach, the pain wasn’t quite as sharp any more, then the effects of the wine reached her head, softening it, making it feel more woolly; she felt safer and it occurred to her for the umpteenth time that she ought to look for a lodger. At first she thought of Inkeri, but then realised that she’d have to put up with her constant flow of boyfriends. Besides, sometimes not even the best of friendships could survive such intense proximity and she didn’t want to lose anybody else.

Thunder rumbled outside; Wheatlocks gave a start. It hadn’t started raining yet. The wind rattled the roof slates and whistled through the TV antenna; it all felt somehow stifling. Sweat ran down the length of her back. She poured herself another glass of wine.

A man would have been one option, and there was no doubt that she missed having a man around. But that solution came with the greatest risk of all. She didn’t want to discover suddenly that somebody owned her or that being with someone came with certain strings attached; she didn’t want to end up in a ridiculous power struggle that would end with her having to compromise herself to make someone else feel good about themselves. She took pity on other people all too easily.

The whole boyfriend question was a problematic one because, without knowing it, the therapist had been right. She couldn’t simply go to a nightclub and come home with a man. Of course, she
could
, she had done so in the past, but it never gave her the satisfaction she imagined. She was always revolted afterwards; revolted that snoring beside her lay someone for whom she felt nothing at all, and who in the morning avoided eye contact, who glanced at his watch and who said ‘see you around’, then left, and who beneath his utter meaninglessness was happy at having simply added another notch to his bedpost.

Besides, she didn’t want to repeatedly endanger her health, not to mention her life. This had made her realise something almost amusing: men were afraid of condoms, and she had worked out why. Condoms and AIDS appeared side by side in posters and in virtually every well-meaning public health campaign. They were inextricably linked to one another, to the extent that producing a condom had become a hint: I don’t trust you, you might be infected. Or the other way round: beware of me, my love might be deadly. There couldn’t be many men who would still want her after that.

The lift jolted into motion, its sound clearly audible inside the flat, and Wheatlocks gave a start. She put down her glass and listened, following the hum and the clunking of the cogs, but it went past and came to a stop on the sixth floor. She found herself thinking that anyone could walk one floor down, and suddenly she didn’t want to take a shower after all. She stood there thinking, her head slightly to one side. Maybe it was because you had to walk through the hallway to get there. She hadn’t switched the hall lights on, and in the darkness the clothes hanging on the coat rack were like men waiting with their shoulders hunched.

I
will
go to the shower, she told herself and started moving, and as she walked she stared fixedly down at her toes and her red lacquered toenails flashed against the white birch parquet like berries escaped from a basket. But at the edge of the hallway she stopped; she had to. She continued to stare at her toes, but now she was thinking of the chain on the front door and whether she had remembered to secure it. She raised her eyes; the clothes men were still there, but now they seemed almost tame, and the door chain gleamed in the darkness – and of course it was locked.

She slipped into the bathroom, flicked on the lights, took off her
dressing
gown and began busily washing her face. She didn’t enjoy it the way she used to; she couldn’t concentrate on the sensation of the water gently brushing against her skin or the soft fragrance of the lather. Instead she scrubbed her cheeks with hard, abrupt fingers and thought about what her sister-in-law had said and whether Simo really did see her somehow. Then the other possibility rose up in her mind.

What if someone really did visit her at night? As horrific as it would be, it would almost be something of a relief. She’d thought about this many times and she knew it was impossible; she’d changed the locks straight after moving in, not even the caretaker had her key, and many mornings she’d checked the chain and it was always locked. And when she’d asked her brother Marko whether she ought to go to the police, he’d remarked: ‘They get all kinds of lunatics visiting them. You want them to start looking for an invisible man? Get a security lock, then you can forget about it.’ And she’d thought about it, but buying a security lock would have been an admission that she wasn’t all there. And what if the visits still continued?

She tried not to think of locks and chains and listened instead to the rush of the water, then all of a sudden her mind was filled with images from
Psycho
, the scene where the woman is standing in the shower; the
hand carrying a knife rises up and the water turns red. She could see herself from the outside, bent over the bathtub, her back to the door, naked, her back white and her bottom bare, and all she wanted to do was spin around and shout, shout, shout!

But she told herself that she mustn’t do that, that it was very
important
that she didn’t do that; she mustered all the willpower she had and turned the water off, then she slowly stood up and stared ahead, as though there had never been anyone standing behind her. The mirror was there in front of her and she could see her hair. It was like corn. She could see her forehead and her eyes – they were beautiful eyes but she couldn’t see that; all she saw was that they were terribly frightened.

She let her gaze wander, glide slowly along the tiles covered in images of seagulls flying with their wings spread open; she saw the clothes horse, all manner of little items hanging from it. Her tights had gone all funny and now they drooped like trolls’ ears – then there was the door. It was nothing but a dark, ominous rectangle, like a beast’s jaws or an open coffin, empty. Nobody was standing there watching her.

Wheatlocks leaned with both hands on the edge of the sink and took deep, heavy breaths. Her shoulders suddenly began to tremble and she started to cry. She stood there blubbering, inconsolable as a little girl, and that little girl felt so wretched that she was about to collapse. She left everything as it was, didn’t brush her teeth, comb her hair or moisturise her face, but huddled her dressing gown in her arms as if to protect herself and ran into the kitchen, her bare feet slapping against the floor.

The dressing gown fell to the floor as she opened the fridge and drank wine straight from the bottle. It dribbled down her chin, and though she knew that alcohol and pills don’t mix well she wrenched open the cupboard door, grabbed the box of pills, pressed a Diapam out into her hand and swallowed it. All she wanted was for her torment to end, to be able to put her mind to rest, and she turned the lights out and curled up in a tiny ball on the bed.

She lay there listening to the rain and hoped that she’d soon become drowsy and fall asleep – she couldn’t do this sober any longer. She’d become afraid of sleep too, as she didn’t know what happened to her while she was asleep, and she couldn’t choose her dreams in advance.

She often dreamed of being with Simo again, of making love in a yellowing hayfield full of butterflies. Once she’d woken in the night but
her dream had continued nonetheless: Simo had been kneeling beside the bed caressing her thighs, she’d called his name and he had replied: ‘Sleep, my love. Everything will be fine.’ And it had made her feel so happy that she’d dreamed she could fly and they’d kissed each other high up in the air. But the following morning she’d begun to question it all; parts of the dream had seemed too real and she’d checked through the flat, but
everything
was just as it had been and the chain on the door was locked.