Antti Tuomainen: The Healer

The stuffy dampness, the raw, rotten smell spreading from Gromov’s dead body, and my own oppressive, chest-tightening thoughts couldn’t all fit in that small space. His last words echoed through the room clearer than they had come out of his mouth. Before I left the room I looked around, opening drawers and closets searching for the telephone, but didn’t find it. As I walked out the door, I turned around. Gromov lay motionless in a dark puddle, like a big, broken doll. I didn’t know what I should think. I turned out the light and went downstairs.

I walked once around the half-darkened, open-plan second floor before I remembered what Gromov had worn in the surveillance footage. There was a coat rack just inside the door, and Gromov’s thigh-length, dark overcoat hung neatly from a hanger there. The coat looked empty, spent, the shoulders slumped loose. It felt wrong to rummage through its pockets. The left pocket was empty, but I found what I was looking for in the right one—Johanna’s phone. I held it in my hand, waiting for it to tell me what had happened, what was true. I pressed the power button, but the phone was mute.

Then I heard the sound of a car on the street moving at high speed. It stopped suddenly. I just had time to look out the window before the motor was turned off. It was a black sports car, with no one in it but the driver. The driver’s-side door opened and Max Väntinen stood on the street. I backed away from the window and quickly scanned my surroundings.

Väntinen opened the door with a key as I pressed myself into the space between the drapes that covered the window and a projection of the wall. Väntinen walked inside with quick, heavy steps, then stopped. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him and feel his presence. He was a few meters away, and for a moment I was sure I could hear his breathing, his heartbeat, practically even the movement of the blood through his veins.

After an unbearably long time, he climbed the steps to the third floor. I hoped that I hadn’t left any drawers or closet doors open or left anything in the room that would tell him I was on the premises. But something happened, because Väntinen immediately came stomping down the stairs and out of the house. I heard the car speed away, and only some time later dared to move.

Adrenaline and fear made my hands tremble and my breath shake as I glanced toward the front door. Although I could see that Väntinen’s car had left, I nevertheless decided to leave by the back door and go back to the taxi the way I had come.

I opened the door and listened for a moment to the murmur of the rain and the many sounds it made as it fell on the stones of the patio, the rain gutter above, and the shrubs beside me. The trees in the woods stood a few meters away as if observing a moment of silence. Gromov was dead. I had just been hiding a few meters from the murderer. And I hadn’t even thought of the gun, still in my backpack in the taxi. But why would I have brought it with me? I just wanted to find Johanna. I heard the sound of Gromov’s words again: what he’d said was possible, but it didn’t ring true. Johanna’s phone felt hot in my pants pocket, even with the battery dead. It would have the answer to Gromov’s last words, at least—something in the call record, the messages, the memos, or the pictures would offer the key to Johanna’s disappearance a few hours before. It would make things clear.

The path wound through the rain among the slippery tree roots. I stepped in a puddle at one point; at another my foot sank into a soup of mud. I was making my way along the edge of the trail when I heard a voice behind me.

“How did I guess?”

I turned and saw Väntinen step from behind a large, gnarled oak tree onto the path. In his hand was a large-caliber pistol. Probably the same pistol that had torn Gromov in two. And one like it had, of course, killed whole families.

His face was cold and ugly in the scant light. The hood of his raincoat was pulled over his head, and the edge of it cast a shadow over the top of his face to the bridge of his nose and cheekbones. I couldn’t quite make out his eyes.

“How is it that a guy as curious as you is still alive?” he said.

“You really shouldn’t kill me,” I heard myself say. “It would be no use to either of you.”

“Either of who?” he asked.

The cold rain pasted my hair to my forehead and tickled my scalp. The lights of the next row house twinkled through the branches farther off to the left. I looked as hard as I could at Väntinen, but I still couldn’t see his eyes in the deep shadows. His question seemed sincere, though.

“The two of you,” I said. “You and Tarkiainen.”

He nodded quickly.

“Of course. He’s in this, too. A little difference of vision. Pasi is so idealistic. Always changing the world. I, on the other hand, just got sick of being so damn broke.”

Looking at the barrel of the gun, I couldn’t help but think of Gromov. I had to ask: “Is Tarkiainen still alive?”

Väntinen’s lips spread into a smile for a moment.

“You’re more interested in how your wife is doing, aren’t you?”

He was right.

“Where is Johanna?” I asked, and realized I was shivering. The rain, wind, and nearly freezing temperature had taken their toll.

“I don’t think I’m gonna tell you.”

The barrel of the gun rose a couple of centimeters.

“Let you die without knowing. Nosy creeps piss me off, as a general rule. You, for instance. Would you be in this situation if you hadn’t come into my bar whining about your old lady?”

I had to stall for time.

“Tarkiainen,” I said, grasping at something, anything. “Was he the one who started all this?”

Väntinen’s lips smiled wider.

“OK,” he said. His voice was casual, superior. “Let’s stand in the rain and talk. How did it all start? Pasi wanted to make the world a better place, as usual. This climate change thing. He said that certain people had to be held ultimately responsible for what they’d done. I said, ‘Why not?’”

His smile evaporated, and the barrel of the gun rose again.

“Pasi said he was ready to use serious methods. But that’s what everybody says until you actually use serious methods. Same thing with Pasi. First a hell of a lot of bluster, then whimpering when the shit hit the fan. I thought it was a simple matter. Kill a few assholes and collect some money. Nobody suffers. Pasi had a problem with it. He couldn’t be the Healer after all. I had to take care of that damned song and dance, on top of everything else I have to do.”

I tried to look around. Väntinen noticed.

“Do you want to hear this or do you want to try to escape? Makes no difference to me. I’m just standing here trying to decide whether to shoot you in the head, the neck, or the chest.”

I continued to shiver and kept my eyes on his shadowed face. He was standing about four meters away. I couldn’t hear anything but the rain. No cars, let alone people. Where were all those supposed dangerous inhabitants of the park when you needed them?

“I thought you’d be interested,” Väntinen continued. “I’m getting to your wife—a real pain in the ass, if you don’t mind my saying so. Do you want to hear it or don’t you?”

I nodded, shaking. The cold had sunk right to my core, into my bones.

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “It was the last straw, the last misunderstanding in this whole damn mess. It wasn’t all your wife’s fault, even if she is a fucking nosy bitch. As you know.”

He smiled and continued.

“Pasi had a dream. He wanted to get some journalist to understand what he was doing. To get favorable publicity, if you can believe that. He said that once people understood what we were doing and why, they would realize it was necessary.”