Free Silence by Jan Costin Wagner

joke, or whatever you liked to call it, seemed absurd, but in another it was even more absurd to think of a murderer returning to the scene of his crime thirty years later, to commit the same crime again.
    Now that Sinikka Vehkasalo’s disappearance had been confirmed, the joke idea didn’t work. The most likely thing seemed to Joentaa a copycat murderer, whatever the motives of this new murderer thirty-three years on might have been. Maybe he had come upon the idea of the cross, the way it persistently called Pia Lehtinen to mind, and that cross had set something off in him …
    If the murderer really did intend the incidents of the past to run their course again, it would be months before they found the body of Sinikka Vehkasalo, because the search for Pia Lehtinen had also gone on for months. But there the parallel ended, simply on pragmatic grounds: today’s murderer would know that sooner or later they would search the lake that had featured in the old crime, so he had hidden the body somewhere else, in a place that the investigating team wouldn’t find until considerably later.
    On the other hand, if for whatever reason the murderer wanted to repeat the course of events, reproducing exactly what had happened then, that meant there was a noticeable divergence in one crucial point – always assuming that they didn’t find the corpse in the lake next morning after all.
    Joentaa rose abruptly. His own speculations, leading nowhere, were getting on his nerves, while Ruth and Kalevi Vehkasalo, in their pale green house in Halinen, couldn’t sleep for anxiety about their daughter.
    He turned away from the lake beyond the window, and his eye fell on the two photographs on the bookshelves. They had always stood there, ever since he and Sanna moved in. In the weeks after Sanna’s death Joentaa had removed them, then put them back in their old place a little later.
    Standing in front of them, he looked closely at the photos. One was of Sanna as a small child; the date on the back showed that she had been two years old at the time. Sanna had just knocked a biscuit out of her mother Merja’s hand and the biscuit was flying through the air towards the camera. Merja’s mouth was wide open and Sanna was looking really furious, probably because her mother had told her she couldn’t eat the biscuit without giving her, Merja, a bite. Jussi, Sanna’s father, must have jumped just as he was taking the photo, because the picture was slightly blurred. A wonderful picture. Kimmo felt a smile spreading over his face.
    The other picture had been taken a few months, perhaps only a few weeks, before she was diagnosed with cancer. When everything was still fine. Sanna had just begun working as an architect. The photo showed her standing in front of her desk. Kimmo remembered that she had particularly wanted to have that picture taken and they had sent a print to her parents. Her face showed pride and satisfaction. And the certainty that everything would go on just as well in the future. Kimmo’s glance wandered from one picture to the other, then settled on the little girl knocking a biscuit out of her mother’s hand.
    Sanna.
    Sanna just a metre tall, running, red-cheeked.
    He went into the bathroom, washed, then lay awake on his back for a long time, his eyes open.
    7
    T imo Korvensuo heard Marjatta’s slow, regular breathing as she lay beside him. She had clutched the quilt firmly round her. What a nice evening that had been, she’d said just before dropping off to sleep.
    For a while, Timo Korvensuo had listened to the soft giggling of his children through the open window. Aku and Laura were sleeping in their tent down by the lake. Now their voices, too, had died away and all he could hear was the whining of the gnats.
    He still felt curiously light. Weightless. The guests had stayed a long time. They had enjoyed the evening: the warmth, the clear night, the children had played games. Arvi had told stories, Marjatta, Johanna and