The Healer by Antti Tuomainen Read Free Book Online Page B

behind the library, silently waiting for spring, for warmth and new life, in the middle of the winter, in the middle of the night, glistening with rain, their limbs dripping. The earth beneath them was numbingly cold and would be for months yet, but the trees didn’t let their nerves get to them, they didn’t tremble or blame anyone for the unpleasantness of their situation. I was awakened from this lesson when Hamid backed the taxi around the corner and stopped in front of me.
    I turned my phone back on in the taxi. No sign of Johanna. I took out a tissue and wiped my earlobe. The wound had opened again when I washed my face. The tissue turned dark red in seconds. I took a new one out of my pocket and held it against my ear.
    We drove north to avoid the roads closed due to the high-rise fire in Pasila and made it to the police station without any trouble. Hamid stopped the car a few hundred meters before he reached the gates, and I handed him who knows how many bills. I hadn’t calculated how much the fare would be. He had saved my life, so I felt I ought to pay a little extra. I asked him to wait. If I didn’t return in an hour, he could go look for another fare.
    I walked as upright as the pain in my back would allow me, shoved the bloody tissue in my pocket, and adjusted my face into as friendly and neutral an expression as I could without a mirror. In spite of all that my way was blocked as soon as I got to the gate in the fence that surrounded the police station.
    No, I don’t have a pass.
    No, no one is expecting me.
    I explained that I’d come to see Harri Jaatinen, chief inspector of the violent crimes unit, and that I was there concerning the man known as the Healer. The young policeman, in a heavy armored vest and helmet, with an assault rifle in his hands and eyes that kept darting from side to side, listened to me for a moment, then walked to the guard’s booth without saying a word, waited, and opened the gate.
    I was directed to the security checkpoint, where they took my phone and gave me an ID badge to pin to my chest. After security I walked into a building with a large foyer full of people and only one empty seat.
    Across from me sat a wealthy-looking, well-dressed couple roughly the age of Johanna and me. The woman was half in the man’s lap, sniffling quietly. Her fist clasped a tissue, and her face was twisted and blotched with red. The man’s pale face was pointed straight ahead, and the empty, frozen look in his eyes was unchanging as he mechanically moved his hand over her back.
    I closed my eyes and waited.

 
    8
    â€œTapani Lehtinen?”
    I opened my eyes.
    â€œIf you’re reporting a theft, robbery, or assault, take a number at the first window.”
    Harri Jaatinen was amazingly similar in person to the way he seemed in the news clips—just as tall and chiseled as he was in those painful close-ups. I got up and shook his hand. He was quite a bit older than me—nearer to sixty than fifty, with dark gray at his temples, in his mustache, and in his eyes. He reminded me of Dr. Phil, the American psychologist on the old television show. But it took only a few words of conversation to easily distinguish where Dr. Phil ended and Inspector Jaatinen began. Where Dr. Phil would have coaxed and flattered with artificial empathy, Jaatinen’s tone was dry, gruff, and unapologetic. It was impossible to imagine that voice dithering, sentimental, or fawning—it was a voice made for pronouncements, statements of fact. His handshake was the same: straightforward and professional.
    I instinctively touched the bandage on my ear. It hadn’t occurred to me that it might seem to be my reason for being here. I shook my head.
    â€œI’m here about the Healer. I believe my wife, the journalist Johanna Lehtinen, has been in touch with you about the case.”
    Jaatinen seemed to remember and understand immediately what I was talking about. He switched