Antti Tuomainen - The Healer

“Thank you.”

“I don’t know if that helps.”

“It helps a lot,” I said, as warmly and friendly as I knew how to be, which was easy, because I had a sincere desire to thank her. “It helps in a lot of ways. I’m glad I came to see you.”

I got up from my chair, as did she. I felt a fleeting confusion—like I was living in two different times, twenty years ago and today. Luckily the feeling quickly passed. I stepped toward her, took her hand, which felt surprisingly familiar in mine, and held it a moment. When I let go, I wrapped my arms around her.

Twenty years, and my arms didn’t reach any farther than they ever had.

Hamid’s taxi was around the corner with the motor running, just a hundred meters away. I sped up my steps so that I wouldn’t get wet, but I got wet anyway. The rain was falling in sheets that the wind tossed where it would. A gust of rain hit me in the face with easily enough water to wash my hair. I got to the taxi, opened the door, and climbed in. Hamid turned nearly 180 degrees in the driver’s seat and laughed out loud when he saw how wet I was.

“It’s raining pretty hard,” he said cheerfully.

“It’s raining pretty hard,” I agreed. I asked him to drive me home. On the way I explained that I would need his services for some time and that I would, of course, pay for them. This suited Hamid, and after a little dickering we agreed on a price. I leaned back in my seat, gave my wet hair a finger fluff, and, after some hesitation, tried Johanna’s number. Not available.

Next I called Jaatinen. He didn’t answer so I left a message asking him to get in touch with me as soon as possible. I reached Elina and asked her to have Ahti call me as soon as he was up and about.

Hamid wove his way down the Sörnäinen shore road looking for a faster lane, but not finding one. Every time he sped up to move into a promising-looking opening the traffic slowed to a nearly pedestrian pace again. Hamid was a young man and drove like young men always have, with no concern for saving gas or saving lives. Both were getting cheaper by the day.

The oil hadn’t run out yet, although they’d been predicting it would for decades. The problem was, in fact, the opposite. There was enough oil to do everything that had accelerated the rise of the sea levels; enough to destroy the air, land, and water for good; enough to pollute all the lakes, rivers, and seas; enough to continue to manufacture all the same useless junk. Those who had been afraid we would run out of oil had the satisfaction of knowing that the supply just kept on coming. It wouldn’t die. When the world ended one day we would still have tankers full of oil, ports full of it, billions of barrels of black gold, ample fuel for a trip to eternity.

Hamid found a lane that was moving. We drove onto Kulosaari bridge, and the traffic was nearly stopped again at the other end. The right lane, on the sea side, was closed, and we inched forward at a snail’s pace. The flashing light of a fire truck dyed the rain blue like a scene from a horror story, and far up ahead we could see a truck with its cab still on the bridge and its trailer crashed through the side of an office building. From a distance it looked at first like nothing remarkable, as if the truck were somehow simply driving out of the building and onto the bridge.

From up close, the situation was different, of course. The ambulances that had been hidden a moment earlier by the fire trucks were waiting with their doors open so that at least some of the pedestrians and office workers hit by the truck could be placed onto stretchers and receive some kind of treatment. We passed the scene of the accident in silence, neither of us speaking. Soon we had sped up again and passed through Kulosaari and into Herttoniemi.

When we got to my building I dug the payment we’d agreed on out of my pocket, and Hamid backed out of the driveway and pulled away. He had promised to be there within fifteen minutes if and when I called.

The quiet, empty apartment seemed even sadder now, as if it, too, were tense and worried, and no longer knew how to be cozy, warm, and safe. I took off my shoes and put my wet coat on a hook before I had to sit down on the swivel stool next to the door. I just barely managed to grab hold of the seat of the stool before the tears came. Tears, the first I’d shed in years, flooding from my eyes, hot and heavy on my cheeks.

I was worn out. It felt like everything was pointless, like every effort to take hold of something was just futile groping. I had disappointed myself and betrayed Johanna’s trust. I replayed all the promises I’d made to her—I’ll always help you, I’ll always love you, I’ll do anything to make things easier for you.

Calm down, Tapani, I told myself. You can keep your promises, even if you can’t deliver right now.

I let the tears come—let the worry and grief swell and then subside again. I don’t really know how long I sat there. It seemed like a long time.

When I could finally move again, I tried not to look around me. Everything in the apartment reminded me of Johanna and made me wonder why I couldn’t figure out where she could be.

I took off my clothes and got in the shower. I noticed that I was doing everything hurriedly, in swift swipes—shampoo, shower gel, shaving. I tried to count to ten as I shaved. I got to three.

I wasn’t all that ready for what I might find in the clothes closet. As I was taking a clean pair of socks out of the wardrobe, my eye fell on a bit of red and gold wrapping paper. My Christmas gift for Johanna. I took the package out of the closet, laid it on the bed, and looked at it. I stood there with a sock on one foot, unable to decide what to do next. It’s strange how the meanings of things can change. It wasn’t a handwritten, hand-bound book of poems and a modest amount of mad money lying there on the bed, it was our whole life. Everything that makes a life out of each day. I felt the tears rising to my eyes again, then hot, large tears rolling down my face to my lips and chin.

I turned, put a sock on my other foot, and walked out of the bedroom, leaving the gift where it lay.

I made some coffee, took Johanna’s cup from the counter and put it in the cupboard, got out my own, and sat down with it at the computer. I went through everything again but didn’t find anything new or useful. I looked at the surveillance footage from the corner of Fredrikinkatu and Urho Kekkosen katu and still didn’t see anything that caught my attention.

I poured myself some more coffee, had an idea, and used Johanna’s password to search through archives for articles she’d written for various papers and magazines. I looked through them all as thoroughly as I had the Healer memos until I was out of coffee and had to get up and walk around. My ribs didn’t ache constantly anymore. The clubbing I’d got made itself known only when I sat in certain positions.

I tried to call Chief Inspector Jaatinen again, but he still wasn’t answering. I went back to the computer to read some more of Johanna’s articles.

Johanna wrote for many different publications and had always been a diligent writer, particularly when she was a young freelancer. She wrote quickly and clearly and built up people’s trust, including the people she interviewed—all the characteristics of a good journalist. But her real talent lay in finding little connections, or big ones, amid all the details, and summing them up. I wished I had that quality.

Amid all the uncertainty and searching, I had progressed in my investigation, such as it was. What Laura had told me, for instance, had confirmed my idea of Johanna and Pasi Tarkiainen’s youthful relationship. And what I’d learned from Elina about Johanna’s complete silence on the subject told me that she had been afraid, and she’d had good reason to be afraid, from what I could tell.