TH02 - The Priest of Evil (16 page)

‘
Bona spes cum flammen alere
,’ he whispered, as he checked that the screw he had mounted in the clock face, at twelve o’clock, was raised high enough for the minute hand to strike it firmly. Sure enough, it was in the right place. He turned the clock around to check that the cable attached to the screw was securely in place. He needed only one battery, the one that ran the clock; it would provide more than enough electricity to ignite the primer.

With the tip of his knife he carved a small hole in the edge of the clock’s back cover, so that it could be closed properly while still allowing the cable to snake its way out; then he replaced the cover and turned the minute hand to eleven o’clock – giving himself five minutes. He
double-checked
the wires attached to the head lamp, then simply allowed the clock to tick, though it did not really tick the way clocks did in the olden days. It was more of a quiet hiss, like a hedgehog sipping milk.

‘Piggy Back,’ he said, his voice full, tasting the words - it felt good. He was content now that he had reached final certainty about the boy; he was not a trap, he was a son sent by Maammo herself. And the sacrifice of his own son was an act that would please Maammo so vastly that it might even begin a chain of events culminating in the Coming of the Truth: the birth of the New Big Bang.

He ought to have understood this earlier: after all, it was he who had summoned the plump girl to his side and she had unwittingly brought him precisely what he needed. But final confirmation of this had come only once he had sacrificed the first of the pigeons required for the adoption: its blood had created a particularly beautiful pattern on the rock, almost like the swirl of the spirit as it leaves the body. Not only this, but it had also tasted exceptionally good, and was so thick that he had allowed himself to imbibe two whole spoonfuls of it.

The minute hand had only a few seconds to go. It did not jolt forward showing each minute separately, rather it flowed upwards. Is it possible to flow upwards? No matter, this minute-hand did so, and it only had to flow a drop or two more before it touched the screw. With his tongue he restlessly realigned his lower teeth, over and over again, all the while staring fixedly at both the clock and the head lamp. The moment was nigh.

At last! The lamp flickered and lit up, shining even more strongly than with its normal battery – it worked! Maammo’s grace was with him. By coincidence the beam of light from the lamp shone directly towards his bedside table, as if it had known that there, hidden away, lay his beloved sticks of dynamite. In a frenzy he raised his hands in thanks and prayed, almost shouting:
‘Ea lesum cum sabateum, torea borea in loco parentis! Ea, ea, ea!’

His voice rebounded off the walls in a hollow, stony echo.

Since finally moving out Mikko had only once visited his former home in Kulosaari Park, to help Sanna move her things to Kallio; and he had no reason to visit now either. He was filled with a strange anxiety, like something thick and viscid heaving within him, mercury, or maybe cement. He had been gripped by this same sensation all those months ago during the divorce proceedings.

But there he stood, staring at the light brick wall that once had brought him such a deep feeling of contentment. The house was one of eight in a terrace. He stared at his former front door, and the familiar bronze
lionhead
door knocker stared back at him. Its expression seemed dead now;
before the divorce it had followed him everywhere, and had been on the front door of every house he had lived in during his adult life, but now it belonged to a woman from whom he was entirely estranged, and who lived with a man he did not even know. Ironically, it was his writing that had bought them the house in the first place.

The bushes in the front garden had been pruned, castrated, leaving nothing but stubs, and on the side of the pine – the pine that had once been so dear to him, his power source; when embracing it he had always felt a mystical energy coursing through him – a dartboard had appeared; several darts hung dangling from the tree’s bark. Even his stone labyrinth had disappeared. He had taken the idea from the poet Pentti Saarikoski, although his labyrinth had been much smaller. Every one of its stones had been unique, they were individuals that he had collected over the years. Still, the space had not been left empty: in its place there now stood two pink plastic flamingos balancing on wire legs, swaying quietly in the wind.

And on top of everything came one last humiliation. His cheeks furrowed as though he were chewing something, and his breath came fast and shallow. Despite this he picked up his mobile for the third time, pressed number three on the speed dial, and a few seconds later the telephone began to ring on the other side of the door. It made a shrill metallic sound - it was an old, black telephone he had bought at a flea market and restored, and it had always sat on the table in the hallway. It rang a third time, spitting out its harsh cry, and when Cecilia couldn’t bear it any longer she picked up the receiver. This confirmed that she was merely playing with him - for if she had wanted to she could have unplugged it altogether.

‘What is it now?’

‘Cecilia, be reasonable, open the door. I’ve brought something for Matti.’

‘You’ve got no business coming here, trying to be all chummy with me.’

‘Come on, Cecilia, please…’

‘And I think I remember telling you he’s not here anyway,’ she said.

‘Yes you did, but I’ve already been round all the places he normally hangs out and he’s not there either.’

‘How am I supposed to know where he is every minute of the day? And even if I did it wouldn’t make any difference, because he’s changed,
he’s become violent. He attacked me, and Kari had to pull him off; then today I got a phone call from the headmaster saying he’s given some kid named Janne a black eye, and now I have to go in and talk to him.’

Mikko didn’t say a word. He couldn’t, he was entirely unable to speak, for he was so utterly astonished. Somewhere beneath his bewilderment he was certain that she was lying. None of this sounded even remotely like Matti.

‘That’s all the more reason for me to see him. And I could go to the school instead.’

‘If things carry on like this we’ll have to put him in a foster home.’

‘Now listen to me! You… First you smoked me out of the house, then Sanna, and now you’re trying to do the same to Matti. He’s your own son!’

‘Oh I did, did I? I can’t do anything about it if neither of them wants to live here any more. I can’t force them to stay.’

‘Listen. As part of the settlement we agreed that you could keep the house specifically so that the children could live there with you. Is that suddenly no longer the case?’

‘Do your papers say something like that? Mine certainly don’t.’

‘But for crying out loud… We had a verbal agreement!’

‘I don’t remember anything of the sort. Were witnesses present?’

‘God almighty,’ Mikko hissed almost silently. He ended the call, took one step, then another, each like a violent gust of wind, then grabbed the bronze knocker hanging from the lion’s mouth and began hammering on the door. He realised it was senseless, but perhaps his problem was that he had always been too sensible. More than that, he simply felt that the situation was unbearably malicious and unjust.

‘I’ll take out a restraining order on you!’ Cecilia hollered. She too had put the phone down and was now standing behind the door. ‘You mark my words - a restraining order!’

‘They’re for abusive spouses. And if anyone in this family has ever resorted to using their fists it certainly wasn’t me!’

‘If you don’t leave this minute I’ll call the police!’

‘Call them for all I care! Call them all you want!’ Mikko bellowed, but at that moment it was as if he began to wake up; suddenly he burst through
the surface of his momentary rage and felt ashamed of the whole episode, the depths to which he had demeaned himself; and he shuddered almost instinctively, shaking the remnants of the episode from his body.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’m going. But I’ve bought Matti his own mobile. I’ll leave it here on the step. It’s all paid for with a prepaid deal. Wait five minutes then pick it up so no one pinches it.’

‘Is it new?’

‘Second-hand.’

‘Of course, your son isn’t worth a new one, is he?’

Mikko didn’t reply. He took the telephone and its charger, the instruction manual and the SIM-card and placed them on the top step. Then he took a few panicked steps, like a little boy caught doing something naughty. A moment later, incredibly, he almost burst into tears, but managed to stifle them. It finally occurred to him to go to the shopping centre at Itäkeskus, just in case Matti had ended up there.

Leena sat at the edge of her desk, her head propped in her hands, reading through the first verse on a smudged and frayed piece of paper, though she knew it off by heart. It was her favourite poem. With the end of a compass she picked absent-mindedly at the corner of the desk, scraping away small white shards of laminate. Her stomach was swollen for the second day running, her abdomen ached every now and then and her breasts were sore – her period would start again any time now.

Everything seemed so strange. She had read about a boy who could see the beauty in everything, who could imagine fairies living by the edge of the lake, could speak to animals and understand the language of the birds. How she wanted to be like him. But the first time she had seen Matti in school she had finally understood: Matti was the boy, and she had fallen in love with him, making her head spin; she had never felt so intensely about anyone before. It was as if her dreams had finally become real.

But no matter how hard she tried Matti had barely noticed her. And why should he have noticed her, he probably hadn’t even wanted to know her: a fat girl, the Hammer Thrower, with a face as bloated as a baseball glove. And now that he
had
finally noticed her and had become something of a friend, he would have to move to another part of town and go to another school.

She blew her nose and wiped her eyes, and pieces of laminate began to fly again. And then there was the priest. She wasn’t sure whether it was jealousy or envy, but whichever it was she had a nasty feeling about it all – she had realised that, despite his odd behaviour, the priest had taken a shine to Matti. He had even made the holy sign three times for Matti, and only once for her. Matti was his favourite, and she would have to settle for second place. She sensed the sheer darkness of her thoughts, black as liquorice spit. Another tear dropped from the end of her nose.

Sobs passed her lips and she slumped her head on to the table, whimpering. After a while she sat up again, sucked her upper lip between
her teeth and thought to herself. It was quiet. Mum had gone to aerobics again, or yoga, or whatever it was she did, and Dad was away on one of his countless business trips. All she could hear was the distant hum of traffic from the Eastern Highway and the occasional sounding of a foghorn from the harbour in Sompasaari. But then something occurred to her. She went into the living room, found a row of novels by Matti’s father standing in the bookcase, removed one of them, placed it in her small pink bag and threw it over her shoulder. A moment later she was in the hallway; she pulled on her shoes and grabbed the keys from the shelf.

Harjunpää was crouched on the floor of his office, a newspaper spread out in front of him and a pair of disposable blue rubber gloves on his hands. Again he found himself holding that same waterlogged leather wallet between his fingers. By now it had dried out, shrivelled and gnarled, but the job was still as frustrating as ever: none of the wallet’s various compartments yielded a piece of paper or a card that might have borne a name.

The wallet had belonged to a male body fished out of Tokoinranta the previous week. The body had clearly been in the sea through the winter, drowned last autumn, and Harjunpää still hadn’t succeeded in making a positive identification of the victim. A notice in the newspaper hadn’t resulted in as much as a phone call and his features didn’t match those of any listed missing persons. Harjunpää hadn’t been able to do anything about the body for a few days and even now he prodded the wallet merely to soothe his conscience.

He could hear Onerva approaching – nobody else’s shoes clip-clopped in the same way, like soft jazz. He stood up, stretched his back and peeled the gloves from his hands.

‘Timo,’ she exclaimed. She had rushed along the corridor, there were red blotches on her cheeks and she was smiling in a way that immediately caught Harjunpää’s attention. She was holding both her hands in the air and from each of them dangled numerous sections of video tape. ‘I think we’ve hit something…’

‘Really?’

‘I think so. These are from the tapes taken after the incident. Look at that.’

Onerva lay the tapes out flat along the table and Harjunpää reached for his magnifying glass. It was the same one he had had throughout his career, its original leather case was worn and shone like metal. Painstakingly he began moving the magnifying glass along the tapes, and in each frame the same figure could be made out, sometimes immediately after a train had left, when no one else was standing on the platform.

‘She goes back there a total of seven times,’ said Onerva. ‘At precisely the spot where the incident took place. Look at this one - she peers over the edge of the platform and moves her head back as if she’s sniffing something.’