Jarkko Sipila - Darling

Lind thought the will was complete, but the lady wanted to think about it some more. Lind got her drift: Mrs. Harju just wanted someone to talk to. This time the conversation was about her grandson’s academic success and his university alternatives. Lind charged the woman two hundred euros for the hour, which the elderly lady gladly paid.

“Till next week, then,” the woman said from the door.

“Good-bye,” Lind replied, closing the door.

She had slept poorly, woken up early, and come to the office. Her apartment on Museo Street was only a few blocks away. She had picked up a pastry on the way and made some coffee in the office. The Helsingin Sanomat newspaper printed only a short piece about the homicide, and both afternoon papers gave the seemingly routine incident only two columns each.

The media saw nothing special about the case, since the perpetrator had been taken into custody. They hadn’t been told about the brutality of the killing. The police bulletin’s mention that the killer had confessed irritated Lind to no end. A direct statement of the man’s guilt or innocence wasn’t the police department’s job. They were merely to investigate; the prosecutor would prosecute, and the court would determine whether the suspect was guilty.

Lind kept thinking about the case. She couldn’t put her finger on what bothered her about it, but something was off. In the back of her mind she didn’t believe, or didn’t want to believe, that Korpivaara was a killer. But it had been twenty years since their last meeting, and people changed-especially those who got into drugs, and Korpivaara definitely had.

Before Mrs. Harju’s appointment, Lind had searched the web for information about Korpivaara and the victim. She found nothing on either one-no Facebook pages, blogs, or anything else. She was perplexed.

Late the night before, she had sat on her sofa making a list of questions she wanted answered. The first was, “Is it possible for the perpetrator of a crime to lose his or her memory?”

The police seemed to think that memory loss meant the suspect was either unwilling or too scared to confess. But Lind found an article in a medical journal about dissociation, which discussed how dissociation, psycho-dynamically, is an automatic adaptive reaction to trauma that threatens one’s psychic balance, such as feeling shame or being horrified. As a result of the reaction, memory loss, disorientation, and hallucinations tend to cause a feeling of insecurity. Even though the original source of pain is gone from the conscious mind, the realization of not remembering one’s identity or what has happened is confusing.

Lind read the article twice, but still didn’t totally understand it. She came to the conclusion that one might protect oneself from a traumatic experience by blocking it from memory.

So the scientific answer to her question was yes. Of course, in Korpivaara’s case, the memory loss supported his guilt rather than his innocence. Had Korpivaara not been in the victim’s apartment, he would have no reason to forget what happened.

Lind listed another half dozen questions, but in order to gain answers she needed to know more about Korpivaara and Vatanen and their relationship.

Lind glanced at her watch. She would stop by the Alamo Bar in the afternoon, but first she had to represent a client in a real estate dispute in small claims court. It would take a couple of hours for several witnesses to be called to the stand. Lind would rather take on criminal cases, but she was glad to have any work. This case had been referred by a friend.

* * *

Crime Reporter Sanna Römpötti sat on one of the chairs near the side wall, looking at the computer screen projected on the white wall at the end of the conference room. While reporters sat to the side, the management was seated at the conference table. About twenty people were in the room for the Channel 3 News morning meeting to review the day’s events, listed on the wall. Beyond corporate press conferences, not much was going on.

Römpötti yawned, not even bothering to conceal it.

“Is that your view of today’s news agenda?” News Chief Risto Lӓhdesranta asked. He was nearing fifty and always wore a striped tie, whether his shirt was plain or plaid. Römpötti suspected that he slept with his tie on, and she could’ve had a chance to find out when Lӓhdesranta, drunk as a skunk, hit on her at a company Christmas party. To no avail.

“What?” Römpötti asked. The meeting was mandatory, and she hadn’t paid attention while discussion centered on education statutes and the administration’s plans to focus on secondary education over the next few years.

“You’re not interested in education statutes?”

“Just as interested as our viewers,” Römpötti retorted, and the others, except Lӓhdesranta, laughed.

Römpötti wondered if she had made a mistake. Sometimes news chiefs, not to mention editors-in-chief, had their own ideas on what made interesting news. Some of the ideas were good, but some were impossible, or impossible to cover in the two minutes of airtime each story got on the nightly news. Those suggestions were simply ignored. But under no circumstance were they to be shot down in the morning meeting-certainly not with jokes.

“Education statutes concern a large segment of our viewers.”

“Sure, sure. Facebook will probably be buzzing with posts about the upcoming huge scoop we have on tonight’s news…about education statutes.”

Lӓhdesranta turned all attention to Römpötti. “What does our crime reporter have to offer for the day?”

“The report of sentences for sex crimes will be published next week, but we can deal with that then.”

Lӓhdesranta laughed. “Well, that’ll interest the rapists, at least.”

The others didn’t find his comment funny.

Römpötti had reported on sex crimes a few years back, and it had resulted in a tightening of the laws. She was anxious to see what the impact was on sentencing.

“Don’t you have anything for today?” Lӓhdesranta pressed.

“Not really. Sometimes I just don’t.”

“If you don’t think our viewers find education statutes interesting, we’ll need something else to waken passions and shake up the Facebook crowd-and people are intrigued by crime.”

Römpötti stared at her boss. She should’ve kept quiet, because he was now about to get back at her by suggesting some totally stupid story idea.

“Yeah,” Römpötti said. “Apparently you have an idea.”

“Actually I do.”

Römpötti feared the worst.

“The police reported last night about a homicide in Haaga,” Lӓhdesranta continued. “A young female was killed in her apartment.”

“That’s probably not…”

“Don’t knock it. I think it’s interesting. Take it and add some human element to it. They’ve had several homicides around Haaga and Kannelmӓki in the past few years.”

“Well, they’ve got lot of public housing.”

“That’s a great angle.”

“Nah,” Römpötti said.

The other reporters followed the conversation, heads turning from side to side as if watching a tennis match at Wimbledon.

“If this was England, you’d be reporting live from the front yard of the building. This would be breaking news.”

“Yeah, but this is Finland.”

Lӓhdesranta smiled.

“You’re always complaining that human life isn’t valued and homicide cases get shrugged aside. Here’s a chance to get air time for a homicide, but yet you don’t seem very excited.” Lӓhdesranta started singing, “It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears; it’s a world of hopes and a world of fears…”

To his chagrin, nobody laughed this time either.

“While we’re quoting children’s songs, I’ve got one,” Römpötti said, getting on her feet.