“Or not,” Kulta reflected. “It could just all be in his head. Something no one else can understand.”
“But even that would have been evident in the pen.”
“What if he hasn’t changed? What if he’s been screwed up the whole time, but was able to hide it?” Joutsamo suggested.
“All of these lead back to the suicide theory one way or another,” Takamäki noted. “A desperate man commits a desperate act, and because we don’t know why, we assume the only answer can be suicide.”
“There’s not always an explanation in cases like these,” Kulta said. “Sometimes a human life hangs by an extremely slender thread.”
“But if we go back to the act itself,” Joutsamo began. “His wife’s murder.”
Takamäki waved a hand. “Not right now. Let’s go back to it tomorrow. Suhonen, you have anything going on tonight?”
Suhonen shook his head. He never had anything going on that would’ve taken precedence over work.
“Find Saarnikangas. That’s the only name on the outside that has come up. Being a junkie, he’s probably on the move at night, even if Repo stays holed up. That might lead us somewhere.”
“Maybe,” Kulta said.
“You got any better ideas?”
“No, I just don’t think it’s a very strong direction.”
“It’s not,” Takamäki admitted. “But it’s the only one we have.”
“We could go check the old man’s house again,” Joutsamo suggested. “Mikko and I could drop by.”
“Oh, we could, could we?”
“Yes,” Joutsamo smiled.
“Sounds good,” Takamäki said, standing and flipping over the sheet with the question mark.
* * *
Takamäki quietly opened the front door of his house. It was a little before nine o’clock. He figured Jonas might already be in bed. Kaarina wasn’t, though. She was sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop.
“Hey,” Takamäki said softly.
“Hey,” Kaarina answered. Takamäki detected a coolness in her voice.
“How’s it going?”
“Fine. Nice you could make it home so early.”
Takamäki took off his coat and hung it up in the entryway. The lower floor of their townhouse contained a kitchen and a living room. The three bedrooms and a sauna were upstairs. The house had been built around 1990, and had suffered serious water damage a few years back.
“There’s food in the fridge if you’re hungry.”
Takamäki sat down at the table. “Not really,” he replied, browsing through the day’s mail. Nothing important: the latest issue of Technical World, a bank statement, some bills, a couple of ads.
“How’s Jonas?”
“What about him?”
“How’s he doing?”
“Not great. I gave him some ibuprofen that ended in a huge string of zeroes.”
“The samples you got from work?”
Kaarina nodded. She was a head nurse at the municipal hospital.
“He’s sleeping now. He did ask for you a bunch of times earlier this evening.”
Takamäki felt bad. He should have been there to answer his son’s questions. “What did he want?”
“Mostly he was interested in whether the entire hockey season was gone thanks to his arm. I didn’t know the answer.”
Takamäki felt a pang of regret. “He should have called me.”
“You’ve told the boys time and again that they shouldn’t call you at work. I’m assuming that’s why he didn’t want to bother you.”
“Well, the season probably isn’t totally gone yet. It’ll be six to eight weeks, I’d say. Or guess.”
“Jonas probably would have liked to hear that. But there’s no point waking him now. His arm was really sore, and he had a hard time falling asleep.”
Takamäki went over to the fridge and took out a beer.
Kaarina couldn’t resist needling him: “There’s food in there, too.”
Takamäki didn’t bother answering; he popped off the cap with the opener on the fridge and drank straight from the bottle.
Kaarina turned back to her laptop for a moment, but then interrupted herself. “Who hit him?”
“Don’t know.”
“The Espoo Police must be looking into it.”
“Yeah.”
“No one from there has called me. Did anyone call you?”
“I called the investigator,” Takamäki said. “As a matter of fact, I dropped by Sello and picked up the surveillance camera images.”
“Why? Shouldn’t the Espoo Police take care of that?”
“They should, but I thought I’d make sure it happened.”
“Can you see the hit-and-run in the pictures?” Kaarina asked hesitantly.
Takamäki nodded.
“How bad did it…?”
“There were a few stills. You can see the collision and the car’s license plate number.”
“So he’ll get caught?”
“Possibly. You can’t make out the driver.”
“Whose car is it?” Kaarina asked.
Takamäki took a swig of his beer. “I don’t know. Let’s allow the Espoo Police to do their job.”
“Well, they don’t sound very efficient, since they haven’t even questioned Jonas about the incident yet, and you had to pick up the photos.”
“The investigator’s pretty busy. I promised I’d take him the photos tomorrow.”
* * *
The green Volkswagen Golf turned onto the Tuusula Expressway, as sleet slapped into the windshield.
“Have you ever played boardless chess?” Kulta asked Joutsamo. He was at the wheel.
“What?”
“Boardless chess. Chess without a board and pieces. Let’s give it a shot,” he suggested, turning off the highway. They still had a mile or so to go. “I’m white, so that means my pieces are in squares one and two. You have seven and eight.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll make the first move. Pawn from D2 to D4.”
Joutsamo smiled. “OK, knight…ummm, B8 to C6.”
“Good,” Kulta said, slowing down. He let an old woman cross the road. “Pawn from E2 to E3.”
Joutsamo tried to picture the chessboard. “Knight from E6 to B4. Have you played this before?”
Kulta kept his eyes on the road. “Once with Suhonen. We got to the third move before we started arguing about where the pieces were.”
“So let’s quit while we’re ahead,” Joutsamo said. “Turn right up there.”
Kulta spun the wheel, and the car curved onto the street where the deceased Erik Repo’s home stood.
“It’s that one,” Joutsamo said, and Kulta eased off the gas. The sides of the road were again lined with parked cars, but Kulta managed to crank the Golf into a space so tight Joutsamo wouldn’t have even bothered trying to squeeze into it.
The officers stepped out of the car, and Joutsamo tugged up the zipper of her black coat. She fumbled around in her pockets, but didn’t find her hat or gloves there.
“Queen from D1 to G4,” Kulta said.
“That’s a dumb move,” Joutsamo answered. “My knight is going to move to C8. Check. And then I’m going to take your rook.”
The streetlights bathed the yard in a yellow glow, but the wooden house itself was dark.
“Bet you a coffee that this trip is a complete waste,” Kulta said, not waiting for a response.
The detectives started walking toward the house. Joutsamo tried looking for signs of forced entry, but there was nothing visible. At the gate, she took a quick look inside the mailbox. It was empty. A black garbage can stood next to it in a small wooden shelter. She looked inside that, too: also empty.
“No sign of Repo in there?” Kulta joked, continuing on to the house. He peered in through the window first, but didn’t see any movement in the dark interior. He took the windows to the left; Joutsamo took those to the right. They met at the back of the house, both of them shaking their heads.