He stubbed out the cigarette and flipped the butt over onto the Ketteräs’ side. “Right after that the sneaky little bastard started comin
g
over the fence to steal our apples.”
“Have you seen Hannu much lately?” Koskinen asked tensely.
“No. He moved out ages ago,” the neighbor said, looking at Koskinen in confusion. “You must not know that he’s a cripple.”
“I do know.”
“
S
trange how somethin
g
like that can happen to somebody,” he said and leaned on the fence with both arms, looking thoughtful.
“Something like what?” Koskinen asked, even though he knew.
“He was skiin
g
and was just comin
g
down this steep hill, and some maniac had stretched a rope across the track. Hannu landed on his neck and got paralyzed.”
Koskinen nodded, thinking exactly the same thing: something like that could happen to anyone, absolutely
anyone.
“Would
a been hard for anyone,” the neighbor said, continuing. “But especially for Hannu. He’d been into sports since he was little. He even bought a motorbike as soon as he turned eighteen. A beat-up Royal Enfield.”
The neighbor pointed over the fence into the Ketteräs’ yard with his nicotine-stained finger. “He was always right there workin
g
on that pile of junk. Up to his elbows in grease. He had this friend who he’d always…”
The man’s voice was drowned out by the thundering of an approaching train. The rail line ran right next to the houses. They
would
ha
ve
to wait until the train passed before continuing. Two engines joined together were pulling a long line of cars, and the slipstream was strong enough that Koskinen felt it on his face after the last car went by.
“That’s the Pori line,” the man said. “Takin
g
paper to Mäntyluoto Harbor.”
Koskinen considered how he could shift the conversation back to Hannu Ketterä, but it was already too late. His interlocutor turned without saying goodbye and then said over his shoulder, “Gotta go help
the
wife
with
the
cleanin
g
.
That’s
Saturdays
for ya.”
Koskinen started walking away, still thinking about what the man behind the fence h
ad said a few moments earlier: c
ould Hannu’s accident h
ave h
appened to just anyone? Fate could not have punished anyone more blindly.
That is if fate had anything to do with it—maybe the rope had been stretched across the track specifically with Hannu Ketterä in mind.
Could that be the solution to all of this?
But working that thought through was complicated. Koskinen already had dozens of questions running around in his head, and any one of them could just as easily have held the key to solving the case. Often all he needed to find that key was a little hint to lead him to a crucial insight. Sometimes he just had to wait such an excruciatingly long time for it to come.
Koskinen sat in the car and thought about how he would kill the hour before the Ketteräs returned. Returning to Tampere would be pointless. Just the drive would take twenty minutes each way. He decided to use the downtime to have lunch and find the nearest service station cafe. As he was starting the engine, he remembered Riitta Makkonen’s little diner in the Myllypuro industrial park. It wasn’t more than two miles from here.
He turned the Vectra left and did a dogleg up to Pori Highway and then over to the Myllypuro area. He found the diner easily. It was situated between a carpet cleaner and a home appliance repair shop in the middle of a long industrial building.
Three customers all wearing coveralls were inside. Two were shedding jelly donut crumbs all over their clothes and the third was at the next table over spooning soup into his mouth. Koskinen stood at the counter for a good minute before Riitta Makkonen appeared from the kitchen with a towel in her hand.
She recognized him immediately and didn’t even try to conceal her alarm.
“What now?”
“Nothing,” Koskinen said, smiling in an attempt to reassure her. “I just happened to have some business in the area and thought I’d drop in for a bite.”
Makkonen didn’t look entirely convinced. She looked at Koskinen suspiciously and then waved the rag toward the kitchen.
“Today is Saturday, so I don’t have anything but onion and spinach soup or meatballs with mashed potatoes. Milk and bread are included in the price.”
“Meatballs would hit the spot.” Koskinen smiled and pulled out his wallet.
Makkonen still wasn’t smiling. Obviously she couldn’t believe that a lieutenant from the Violent Crimes Unit had just happened to pop in. She gave Koskinen his change. “Get your bread and milk from there and choose a table. I’ll bring the meatballs,” she said curtly.
It took five minutes for the food to be ready, and by then the other customers had left. Koskinen munched on a piece of rye bread and looked around. The diner was clean and attractively decorated. There were blooming fuchsias in copper flower pots hanging over the tables, and the wooden bread boards attached to the walls sported food-related aphorisms.
Makkonen brought a plate from the kitchen and placed it on the table next to his glass of milk. She immediately turned to leave, but Koskinen managed to catch her by the arm.
“Do you have a moment?”
She glanced at the empty tables around them as if wondering whether Koskinen was joking. Then she sat down across from her only customer.
“What do you want to talk about?” she asked timidly.
Koskinen squirted ketchup onto his potatoes. It was a
heaping serving with a couple of dozen meatballs.
“I came to talk about your son.”
Makkonen lowered her head, crossed her arms on the table, and sighed. “I should’ve guessed. You’ve found out about more crimes, right?”
“Nothing like that,” Koskinen said.
He told her what he had heard from Ulla. Mika’s friends had been arrested at the Oulu train station and were returned to Tampere under police escort. Nina had immediately admitted everything, emphasizing Mika’s negative attitude
toward
their jobs. Had it been up to Mika, there wouldn’t have been any break-ins.
A faint smile crept onto Riitta Makkonen’s lips, making her face look even more fragile. Her mouth was small and her lipstick a fiery red, which enhanced the paleness of her face and her blond hair that was parted down the middle and then pinned back above her temples.
The relief disappeared from her face just as quickly as it had come, and another sigh revealed the depth of her longing. “Mika’s heart was pure gold.”
Koskinen forked mashed potatoes into his mouth while giving Makkonen time to unburden herself.
“Mika always helped when asked at home. Except lately when he wasn’t around as much anymore.” Makkonen paused for a moment. Then she said quietly, “But he still existed.”
These words touched Koskinen, and he remembered his call to
Tomi
earlier that morning. It had been eating at him all day—he had had no choice but to cancel their fishing trip that afternoon.
Tomi
had been bitterly
disappointed and hadn’t held back expressing his irritation. He had already bought a new spinnerbait with his meager funds. Their conversation had ended in a minor fight, as so many times before during
Tomi
’s childhood and teenage years.
Makkonen had already moved on to another topic. Koskinen felt that she wanted to drown her sorrow in words. She said how hard
o
f a time she was having with her diner—selling five-euro meals didn’t leave much of a profit. But she couldn’t raise her prices if she wanted to keep the few customers she had. Only occasionally was she able to hire outside help. The past week had made a serious dent in her budget, since she had spent three days in the ICU. She had allowed herself one day of rest after her son’s death and then returned to work this morning.
Koskinen mopped up the gravy from his plate with the last of the meatballs and then glanced at the burl
ed-
wood wall clock. His conscience was pulling him in two directions—he was just sitting here idly while the others were hunting for a killer who had taken the lives of two defenseless people. On the other hand, he felt bad leaving Riitta Makkonen alone with her sorrow.
“I hav
e to go,” he said. “I have lots of work
.”
“But today is Saturday.”
“For us, the day of the week doesn’t mean much of anything.”
“I understand,” Makkonen said and tried to smile bravely.
They both stood up, and Koskinen thanked her profusely for the excellent food. He was not exaggerating. It made her smile, and this time there was
something new in it, maybe even a hint of cheerfulness
“Don’t you have a wife to cook for you?”
“Not anymore. I divorced her a couple of years ago. Or, actually, she divorced me.”
“So you’re all alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Not even any kids?’
“A 20-year-old son,
Tomi
. But he’s already moved out and is living his own life.”
“A little older than my Mika,” she whispered, and once again they both returned to reality.
Makkonen suddenly took Koskinen’s hand in her own and squeezed it long and hard. With demanding, serious eyes, she said, “I’m not trying to recruit you as a customer, but it would be nice if you stopped in again sometime.”
“Yeah, I’ll be around. Maybe sooner than later,” Koskinen said and then walked out to his car.
He headed out to the deserted street that ran through the industrial park and then headed back
toward
the Ketteräs’ house. He drove without hurrying and thought about Riitta Makkonen. He found himself feeling strangely attracted to her—it wasn’t just sympathy for a woman mourning the loss of a loved one. There was something else to it. He just couldn’t figure out what.
The ringtone of his phone cut off his muddled thoughts. He pulled the phone out of his breast pocket and wondered for an agonizing second whether the body had been found. The display showed that the caller was Pekki, but that did not allay his fears in the slightest.
Pekki’s news was not quite that bad though. But it wasn’t much better either. “We found Ketterä’s wheelchair. Abandoned in the same thicket as the other one.”
Koskinen pulled over to the shoulder and got out of the car with the telephone stuck to his ear. “Are you absolutely sure it’s Ketterä’s chair?”
“Yes,” Pekki yelled into the phone with some rhythmic pounding sound coming from the background.
“How?”
“The
backrest
has
his name
and address
velcroed
to it.”
Koskinen blew all the air out of his lungs. There was no doubt—it looked like a repeat of the
Timonen
case. It was only a matter of time before they found Ketterä’s body somewhere around town.
“You said the wheelchair was found near the other one. Be more specific!”
“About thirty yards off, in the same brush. Ketterä’s wheelchair was on the side of the new road.”
“I know the spot,” Koskinen could see the place in his mind and even guessed the source of the pounding in the background. It was the sounds of a construction site. They were driving piles into the ground for the foundations of the new apartment buildings. He had jogged past there on his night runs many a time, wondering why hundreds of apartments had to be crammed into such a small space. There was plenty of space elsewhere.
“Cordon off the area immediately!” Koskinen started rattling off instructions. “And I want you down sniffing
around the roots of every single bush.”
Pekki’s voice went acidic. “Yeah, yeah. Now we’re doing canine work.”
“Ask the station for backup. Nothing gets overlooked.”
“Okay.” Pekki sighed and then shouted, “Hey, wait just a second!”
Koskinen waited and listened. He could hear a muffled conversation in the background, then a couple of disconnected exclamations from father off. Thirty seconds later, Pekki came back, out of breath. “Guess what we just found.”
Koskinen squeezed his eyes shut, trying to keep himself under control. “The body?”
“Is that your final answer?”
“Damn it, Pekki! This isn’t any time for your games.”
“A pillow,” Pekki said quickly. “It had been thrown farther back in the forest.”
“Send it to Forensics.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to take it home,” Pekki replied impertinently. “And now we know what we’re going to find in Ketterä’s windpipe.”
Koskinen had been pushing it out of his mind the whole morning, but finally he had to resign himself to it. “Where could the body be?”