Light in a Dark House Read Online Free

sat on the sofa, never taking his eyes off the lake, and thought that Sanna was dead and Larissa had disappeared. And that there was nothing else to think about.
    She’d come back. In the evening. Or tomorrow. In a few days’ or weeks’ time.
    He’d go and water Sanna’s grave.
    He went into the kitchen, poured water into a glass, and raised it to his mouth. Pasi Laaksonen from the house next door came past. With his fishing rod. He waved, and Joentaa raised an arm to return the wave. As usual. As he had on the day when Sanna died, and so many other days afterwards.
    When Pasi Laaksonen went fishing late in the morning at weekends, Joentaa was usually standing at the kitchen window. He watched Pasi disappear down in the hollow leading to the lake, and wondered whether it was really just chance, a recurrent coincidence, or something entirely different.
    Pasi with his fishing rod, walking by, waving. A few hours after Sanna’s death. Perhaps he stood at the kitchen window so that he could experience the scene again and again. Because watching Pasi walk down to the water always brought back the moment when Sanna had died – and the moment when she had still been alive.
    The longer he thought about it, the more conclusive that idea appeared to him, and he wondered why it occurred to him only now, years later.
    He was still thinking about it when the phone rang again. He moved away from the window and went to answer it, walking with swift, springy steps, although he knew it wouldn’t be Larissa.
    It was Petri Grönholm. He spoke clearly, if a little slowly. Joentaa thought of the moment, not so long ago, when Petri Grönholm had thrown up on Nurmela’s carpet, and the moment long before that when Sanna had stopped breathing, and then he thought of the fact that Larissa had gone without saying goodbye. Larissa or whatever her name was, and he had difficulty concentrating on what Grönholm was saying at the other end of the line.
    ‘Kimmo?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Did you get all that?’
    ‘Not entirely. At the hospital, you said . . .’
    ‘Yes, Paavo Sundström is on his way, and Kari Niemi is already there with the forensics team. The woman was very sick anyway.’
    Anyway, thought Joentaa.
    ‘So it’s kind of odd . . . when she’d probably have died of her own accord.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Joentaa.
    ‘Never mind that. Anyway, Paavo said we were to park in the car park outside the main building, and then there’s signposting to Intensive Care.’
    Joentaa nodded. He knew the Intensive Care ward at Turku hospital.
    ‘So . . . can you pick me up? In case of any residual alcohol in my bloodstream. I was pretty well pickled last night, so I don’t want to . . .’ said Grönholm.
    ‘Yes . . . of course I can.’
    ‘See you soon, then,’ said Grönholm, ringing off.
    Joentaa stood there for a while with the phone in his hand.
    As he was putting on his coat, he finally remembered Nurmela’s first name. Petri, just like Grönholm. He wasn’t entirely sure, but yes, he did think he saw the name in his mind’s eye. Petri Nurmela, chief of police.
    Cover name August.
    Wasting electricity, he thought, and he switched on all the lights in the house before leaving.

8
29 June 1985
Lauri says I ought to write it all down. He says I’ll want to remember it some time. Because another thing you have to think about is that everything happens so quickly, and after a while it’s all past and forgotten, and then you’d like to remember it. Lauri says. I think Lauri is a bit of a nutcase, with his books and his clever sayings and the way he acts in general, but he’s smart as well, you have to give him that, and besides, he’s a real friend, I know he is, so I’m going to write it all down.
Starting today.
I want to, as well. Which is funny, because there’s nothing I hate more than writing essays and dictations and all that stupid stuff. But I think Lauri’s idea is a good one, even if just now I was nearly killing