TH02 - The Priest of Evil (25 page)

‘So the old mare gave you a piece of paper. Now what?’

‘There must be at least two sets of fingerprints on this. One will be mine and…’

‘The other the woman’s!’

‘Exactly.’

‘Christ, Timo!’

Harjunpää placed the paper on the desk, carefully trying not to make any new prints that might obscure the old ones, and prised it open using the tongs and the end of a pen.

‘The Truth is Nigh,’ the paper declared. ‘Prepare yourself: renounce greed and sin!
Ea lesum cum sabateum! Pica pica setilius omni vibera berus! Custorae carboratum idiopatis!
’

‘What kind of language is that?’

‘Is it Esperanto?’

‘Looks more like Latin to me.’

‘
Pica pica
,’ Harjunpää read aloud. ‘I was quite a bird-spotter as a lad. And if I’m not mistaken this
Pica pica
is the Latin name for magpie.’

‘What the bloody hell has a magpie got to do with this?’

‘This must have been written by quite a lunatic.’

‘I must have learnt something in biology classes,’ said Onerva. ‘
Vibera
berus
means adder.’

‘Adder?’

‘Yes. And that’s exactly what we’re up against.’

‘Vascea cantrum esfobi,’
he repeated, over and over, for he could not understand why the attempted sacrifice that morning had failed. As though his chest were being crushed between two enormous sheets of ice, he had a strong sense that Maammo was displeased with him, that she would rescind her love for him and cast her wrath upon his shoulders. And perish he who befell such a fate. He would be lucky to survive without killing himself, or without at least having to spend time in a mental institution – he of all people should know.

Deep underground he pulled the tarpaulin across the door of his little nook, popped his head outside into the pallid light seeping down from above, and listened. The silence was foreboding. Not a single one of the Orange Apostles had whistled him a sign, a message from Maammo. At the sacrificial moment he had not even heard the screech of the tracks, the sound he cherished so dearly.

He stepped out on to the grille and walked across the platform, stopping at the wide open door of the chamber opposite. From his pocket he removed a small lamp, offering only a speck of light, and stepped inside the room. Although the room appeared empty apart from a few pieces of piping and steel railings, this was not entirely true, for the floor and the corners of the room were filled with all sorts of clutter - rubbish, cardboard, pieces of wood - which the earth spirit had been collecting. He formed them into a small pile in the doorway, barely the size of two fists clenched together, for although he was almost certain there would be no one wandering on top of The Brocken, there was always the possibility that one of those graffiti boys might be loitering up there, and he did not want the smoke to attract their attention.

He crouched down in front of his miniature bonfire, dug a box of matches from his pocket and lit the fire. The flames were sparse and low,
barely five centimetres tall, but it was enough. From his jacket pocket he produced one of the pins that had been standing in a row at the edge of his bedside table, closed his eyes and prayed nine times: ‘
Ea lesum cum sabateum, Mamollae non vihcum!
’

After the ninth prayer he began pricking the knuckles and fingers of his left hand, not quickly, but infinitely slowly, causing himself the greatest possible pain. This time he did not take refuge in his special powers but allowed the pain to engulf him, and let the blood flow. He opened his eyes: how he bled! The back of his hand was like mincemeat, covered in small pinpricks, each of them starting to swell, and bleeding profusely. He curled his fingers loosely into a fist, leaving only his first finger drooping downwards, then he watched as the blood ran down it, trickling into the flames in a chain of droplets. The smell was familiar - he had been forced to make amends for his unworthiness before - and it was such a distinct smell that it could not be described, let alone compared to any other.

He crouched there for almost ten minutes, until not a single piece of cardboard remained glowing amongst the embers. Only then did he stand up. He kicked the pile of ashes three times with each foot and stepped out on to the grille where he carefully wiped the soles of his shoes. This done, he pulled the tarpaulin aside and stepped into his home and the reddish glow of the storm lantern. He strode up to the edge of his bed against the far wall, knelt down, raised his hands into a praying position and stared at the poster depicting a far away galaxy - perhaps a Big Bang billions of light-years away.

‘
Sublimator surmontilos, picea exelsa cum narilarum
,’ he prayed in a whisper, repeating the words over and over as devoutly and with as much concentration as he could muster. But no, nothing happened. Still Maammo would not deign to grace him with her gaze, would not pardon him. Was this because, in addition to ruining the sacrifice, other people had now seen him and what had happened? Did Maammo think this even worse because now the infidels, the police, were on his tail? If he were caught it would jeopardise the task with which Maammo had entrusted him.

‘
Sublimator surmontile!
’ he cried out imploringly, but still his chest felt gripped between two great floes of ice. He humbly lowered his hands,
rested them against his knees and thought hard. He did not need to think for very long, for he knew precisely what lay ahead. He would have to face his fear of mortality – and defy death itself. Of all acts of devotion to Maammo this was the greatest, and now that he was no longer in her favour he had no chance of becoming a part of her, of spending eternity blessed by her love. Instead he would die like the infidels; he would rot away and worms would feast on his remains.

A sound almost like a whimper passed through his lips, or perhaps he just breathed too quickly. Only twice before had Maammo been so displeased with his incompetence that he had been forced to make amends by facing the possibility of death. Both times he had stood on the central train line’s tracks, at night, waiting for the intercity train to appear from the north, and had only jumped out of the way at the very last moment. These had been extraordinary experiences: the approaching train thundering closer and closer, the ear-splitting sound of the horn, the trembling of the ground, the engine and the headlamps growing larger at a phenomenal speed. The last time he had done this it had been so close that the train had torn off his jacket sleeve as it sped past. Nonetheless, after this act of contrition Maammo had been very merciful to him indeed.

‘Ea lesum cum sabateum,’
he finally intoned. The zeal and pleading had disappeared from his voice, and now he sounded like someone standing in front of a firing squad, ready to accept his fate. For he already knew what he would do to atone this time. He stood up and tied a rag around his hand, so that his clothes would not become soiled with blood. He then took from behind the piles of books a black rucksack, the kind that can be seen on the backs of dozens of people every day. It was clearly very heavy, and his arms trembled under the strain of lifting it. He undid the drawstring around the bag; inside there were nine small, closed cardboard boxes with a space in the middle for a tenth. He lifted the lid of one of the boxes and peered inside, though of course he knew all too well what lay inside: rusty screws, nails, bolts, all manner of sharp, lascerating objects he had found on his night-time excursions along the rail tracks.

He straightened his back, walked over to his bedside table and lifted its lid to one side. Inside was the alarm clock he had stolen, and next to it the tenth
box from the rucksack. The clock’s blue and yellow cables wound their way into their home, inside the box where the sticks of dynamite were. They were not like the ones seen in cartoons or films; they were more like sausages, their surfaces oily and sticky to the touch. When he had pressed the cables – which were tucked inside metal caps, no larger than his little finger - into the sticks of dynamite it felt as though he were pressing something into a block of marzipan: the substance was resistant at first, but eventually gave way.

With blood still seeping through the bandage on his left hand he picked up the box, took the clock in his right hand, and moved towards the rucksack. He slid the box into the space between the others, placing the clock on top; then he sat down in a lotus position and shuffled his buttocks against the floor. Finally he took the rucksack and placed it between his legs, like a mother protecting her child. Fine beads of sweat appeared in a row on his upper lip, and his mouth was extremely dry, as though he had not drunk anything for a week.

He picked up the clock and stared at its glassless face. The connecting wire was still rigged up to the minute hand, set five minutes away from the screw jutting through the clock face at number twelve. He turned the clock around; the battery door was open and the battery had been left only halfway in so that it did not provide a current. He hesitated for a brief moment, then wet his lips decisively; he had tried this with his headlamp many times before and it had never switched on when he had pushed the battery inside; it would only detonate once the wire came into contact with the screw.

What if this time he had made a mistake? Perhaps the rucksack would explode at once. Was this precisely the kind of fear Maammo wished him to face and overcome? Should he go one step further and attach the battery, and then wait until there was only a minute left before disarming it?

‘
Ea lesum cum sabateum
,’ he said, his voice quivering, for Maammo had answered him immediately, and only the latter method would warrant forgiveness. And with that he took a deep breath, held it in, clamped his eyes shut and slipped the battery into place with a ‘click’. Straight away he could hear the clock’s soft ticking, but nothing more.

Once again he turned the clock so he could see its face. Just as he had thought: the second hand was ticking away, as was the minute hand,
though its movement was steadier and almost imperceptible. Four minutes. It suddenly seemed like an eternity.

All he could think was: what if? What if the boxes of nails ripped him to pieces, what if the little nook he called home collapsed upon him and his body were never discovered? In all the seven years he had lived there not a single caretaker had been down there, not a soul. But would it matter? Perhaps this – the ultimate sacrifice – was what was required to set in motion a series of events leading to the New Big Bang.

‘
Ea lesum cum sabateum
,’ he repeated once again, but now his voice was hoarse. His shirt was so damp that it stuck to his skin, and he would have given almost anything for a gulp of water. But he did not dare reach his hand towards the bottle of water, for he had to be vigilant, ready to grab hold of the minute hand.

At that moment Maammo gave another command: he must let the clock tick until there were only thirty seconds left before the explosion! His cheeks began to tremble and he almost dropped the clock. Now each second felt as long as the four minutes that had just passed, and he began to count: ‘Six. Five. Four. Three. Two…’

Harjunpää turned the steering wheel sharply to the left and revved the transporter into Leanportti. Once he had passed the row of hedges he took another left, then swung round to the right, and pulled the car up on the pavement a few metres from the imposing gates leading into the central police station. Hidden from view, a radar device or an electric eye of some sort examined the transporter, received a confirmation signal in reply and accepted that this was indeed a police vehicle. The gates gave a shudder and slid slowly open.

He drove inside and reversed the car into one of the parking spaces allocated to Violent Crimes. He was in a strange mood, like a partially clouded sky. On the one hand he was content and even slightly excited that the Criminal Police had agreed to treat the issue of the fingerprints as a matter of great importance, and to prioritise it over
other tasks in the queue. After all, there was a very good reason for this: as impossible as it seemed in a country like Finland, they were on the tail of some kind of serial killer, and it was only a matter of time before the next unsuspecting victim would be pushed in front of an underground train.

But what excited him even more was that he had been able to watch the leaflet being treated with ninhydrin; and more to the point, to see the wonderful clear prints it had yielded. They appeared on so many different parts of the paper that they couldn’t possibly all belong to him.

Still, he couldn’t quite figure out what was bothering him. He didn’t consider himself old – nor was he – but somewhere in the back of his mind he sensed that a train bound for an unknown destination had already departed, and that he had been left standing on the platform. He had felt this most strongly while his fingerprints were being taken for comparison with the leaflet. For years now the staff in Pasila had done all of the lab-work, and this meant that those investigating a case had only to send the appropriate requisition form to the right people. Even now, no one had asked him to dirty his own fingers with ink; all he had done was place his fingers and hand on a glass plate resembling a small photocopier. Then a computer linked to the device had photographed it, and almost immediately afterwards the printer had spat out a sheet of paper displaying his fingerprints.

The wonders hadn’t stopped there either. His prints were then fed into a computer programme called AFIS which then compared them to every set of prints on the national register, as well as to any unidentified prints found at crime scenes. The same was then to be done to the other set of prints found on the leaflet: they would be photographed, scanned, and if the old woman had had any previous trouble with the police the machine would match the prints and provide them with a name in an instant.

Harjunpää was overwhelmed by even the most basic technological advances. His computer, for example – as soon as he’d acquainted himself with the hidden wonders of its programmes they were replaced by new and ostensibly better ones, and so the cycle of clumsily teaching himself to use the new software could start again. No IT training was ever organised; in fact they were lucky if someone took the time to introduce the new system at all.