Free The Winter of the Lions by Jan Costin Wagner Page B

again, ‘Terrible.’
    ‘What …’
    ‘That girl. She seemed to be … concentrating so hard. You too, both of you.’
    He nodded.
    ‘I never felt you were concentrating so hard as in this particular show,’ she said.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said.
    ‘It’s hardly two weeks ago, and people have already stopped talking about it. They hardly even remember how many people that boy shot.’
    ‘Three,’ said Hämäläinen. ‘And five wounded. You’re right, we weren’t …’ But he didn’t finish his sentence. That interview wasn’t so topical any longer, he had been going to say. It hadn’t been easy; first they had tried inviting the gunman’s parents or relations of his victims on to the show, and afterfruitless efforts in those quarters they had finally got hold of the boy’s girlfriend. Not so topical, but relevant to the subject all the same. The girl had made a good guest.
    Irene massaged the nape of his neck and his back. The children were asleep.
    ‘Let’s hope the girl can leave it all behind her one day and carry on with her life,’ said Irene.

28 D ECEMBER

27
    SUNDSTRÖM HELD A well-attended press conference in the morning. Tuomas Heinonen looked pale as he stared at his computer.
    Petri Grönholm asked Joentaa a question that irritated him. ‘Who’s this Ari Pekka Sorajärvi, then?’
    Joentaa looked at him blankly. Ari Pekka … names don’t matter, he thought vaguely. Grönholm held up a card and said, ‘Ari Pekka Sorajärvi. His driving licence was lying on the floor under your desk.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Joentaa.
    ‘Is it important in some way?’
    ‘No, but thanks,’ said Joentaa, taking the card. A round face, a self-confident expression. Joentaa imagined what the man would look like with a plaster on his nose.
    ‘No, nothing important,’ he said again.
    They went downstairs to the large hall where the press conference was being held. Heinonen did not react when Grönholm asked whether he was coming too. He never took his eyes off his computer screen. Grönholm raised an eyebrow, and Kimmo Joentaa wondered what sporting events took place first thing in the morning.
    Nurmela the police chief was in charge of the press conference. The hall was packed. The death of Laukkanen had been something of a sensation in Turku, the death of Mäkelä was sensational all over Finland, for it was he who, as his colleague in Helsinki aptly put it, had always been a semi-celebrity.
    And the connection with the appearance of both men onHämäläinen’s chat show had already been established. A reporter from
Illansanomat
, a tabloid with a wide circulation, asked what that connection meant, and Sundström said, with his own brand of disarming honesty, that he had no idea. The journalist, taken aback, said no more, and Sundström added, ‘We’re only at the start of this investigation. We suspect that the two victims stayed in touch after their appearance on the TV programme, and that the motive for the murders derives from this contact between them, but we don’t yet know what that motive was.’
    Sundström answered the questions that followed calmly and factually. Joentaa thought of Heinonen. No one, he noticed in passing, asked the question that was beginning to take shape in his mind, although he hadn’t been able to express it earlier. A funeral the wrong way round, Larissa had said. Something about it had disturbed her. Petri Grönholm and Tuomas Heinonen, on the other hand, had thought the TV interview informative and entertaining. It had left Sundström cold and entirely indifferent. Patrik Laukkanen had been happy, and Kai-Petteri Hämäläinen had called them good guests.
    Sundström closed the press conference and left the platform. The journalists got to their feet and pushed past Joentaa on their way to the door. Some of them looked serious and already seemed to be concentrating on the columns they were going to write. Others were laughing quietly. The reporter from
Illansanomat
wondered