Free Light in a Dark House by Jan Costin Wagner Page A

the boy from the upper school who was there with us was absent too. In break I smoked behind the bicycle racks, and Lauri kept me company although he doesn’t smoke. He kept looking round in case a teacher came along and caught me with the cigarette, and he told me something, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept thinking of Saara and the boy from the upper school, his name is Kalevi Forsman, and then I thought they aren’t there, and perhaps they don’t exist. If they don’t exist then yesterday didn’t happen. Specially because of Risto.
It would be a good thing if Risto didn’t exist.
I keep thinking of his face, and the sweat. Risto came in just as we finished the piano lesson. She said I’d played well, and held my hand very lightly. Risto coughed, and Saara jumped.
And then something happened. It’s difficult to explain. It happened fast, and I didn’t know at first just what was happening. I was sitting on the stool at the piano. Risto took hold of Saara’s head, he pulled her hair and went out of the room with her.
Then I sat on the stool for a little while longer, because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t hear anything else either.
Then I thought I’d better go, and I stood up. There were two men in the corridor, and they gave me a funny kind of look. Sort of pale, as if they were afraid of something, but one of them laughed when he saw me and said, sounding nervous, that he supposed I must be the model student. And he looked at the other man as if that was funny, but the other man didn’t laugh.
Then suddenly the door to the next room opened, and Risto came in, and I saw Saara lying on the bed, and the garden was all in flower outside, and I think her nose was bleeding. Yes. And she, she was looking up at the ceiling in a way that . . .
Okay, I’ll tell the rest of it later.

25
    THE CONFERENCE ROOM was bathed in sunlight. Kimmo Joentaa thought vaguely of the lights switched on in his house, and Sundström’s voice was lost in a sea of facts.
    ‘Forty-five to fifty-five years old, one metre sixty-five tall, slender, weight in life about fifty-five kilograms, dark brown hair, blue eyes. Right earlobe pierced, older scars of unknown origin on her upper arms and forearms as well as her back, operation scar on her knee. Very good teeth, obviously prophylactic treatment against caries from childhood. Appendix presumably present. No pregnancy stretch marks, no Caesarian scar. Traces suggesting burn marks of older origin in the region of her torso and her wrists.’
    He looked up from the text that he was reading aloud.
    ‘Burn marks,’ said Grönholm.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘That’s new.’
    ‘Yes. The photo is attached, and then it all goes out to a wide range of disseminators referring to our website,’ said Sundström.
    ‘Scars,’ said Grönholm.
    Sundström nodded. ‘Hietalahti says there’s some indication of physical abuse, although long in the past. Probably years ago, can’t be precisely dated. He found most such signs only on closer examination of the body.’
    Scars of older origin, thought Joentaa.
    ‘Her fingerprint scans have given us no results so far,’ said Grönholm. ‘No hits in the criminal records. And of course no luck with the Missing Persons files.’
    Sundström nodded and lowered the sheet of paper.
    ‘That’s all,’ he said, and it sounded final.
    Kimmo Joentaa stood up and walked out.
    ‘Kimmo?’ Sundström’s voice, some distance away.
    He went through the entrance hall, past the cafeteria and through the early signs of autumn to the long, low building in which Forensics was accommodated. The silent green halls where Salomon Hietalahti went about his work.
    He waited at reception. Hietalahti came along a few minutes later and led him through the cool passages to the unknown corpse; her refrigerated drawer bore the number 17. The woman herself was known by a reference number: 1108–11. Hietalahti carefully lifted the cloth from her face.
    ‘I haven’t done the