TH02 - The Priest of Evil (31 page)
And from within the cottage came the sounds of sleep; there rested the happy family he had lost years ago.
Name
Jaana could only register a few things at once. First it had been the wail of sirens, their cries screeching high and low, then different cries at a faster tempo, like a dog barking. But now that too had stopped, and more distinctly than before she could feel the movement around her: she was being wheeled on a stretcher along a hospital corridor; fluorescent lamps and their mesh covers dazzled her eyes. It seemed like of an illusion; it felt almost as though she were moving upwards, shooting far up into the sky.
The next thing was the pain. There it was again, gripping her from the neck downwards; this time so strongly that it felt like a new experience altogether, a state of being in which she was entirely removed from what was going on around her. She no longer understood that she was being rushed into a birthing room, and she no longer had the strength to be afraid, not even for the baby that was almost two months premature. Somehow instinctively she reached out for help, her fingers grabbing at the empty space next to the stretcher. She was searching for Tero’s hand, though she knew that she would never be able to hold it again.
‘… Completely green,’ someone said. In the distance she heard the words: ‘Tell them to get an incubator ready!’
‘It’s coming… It’s blue…’
‘… Umbilical cord round the neck… Oxygen!’
‘… No heartbeat…’
Then amidst the commotion came a faint cry, like a kitten when someone stands on its tail, and immediately someone wearing a paper mask over her mouth leant across Jaana and all but shouted: ‘Mrs Kokkonen! Jaana! You’ve just had a little girl. What shall we call her?’
‘Is it a…an emergency baptism? Is she going to die?’
‘Not at all. It’s a healthy baby girl. Any idea what you’re going to call her?’
And although before his death she and Tero had come up with a number of different options, for a girl or a boy, suddenly she couldn’t remember a single one of them. For some reason she simply said: ‘Sinikka.’
‘Sinikka?’
‘Yes. Sinikka.’
More weak cries could be heard. A new being had been born and was about to embark on the long journey called Life.
Who could know what it held in store for her.
Catching Up
Elisa was sitting cross-legged on a wooden kitchen chair, her upper body bare, her elbows leaning on the back of the chair. Harjunpää was standing behind her; he squeezed more of the pungent, herbal gel on to the palm of his hands, spread it across her back and continued massaging from the left shoulder blade where he had left off. The girls were all out somewhere.
‘Is it getting any better?’
‘Maybe a bit.’
‘No wonder you’ve got a headache all the time, you’ve got enormous knots in the muscles here. You really should see a physiotherapist.’
‘It’ll be so difficult once I go back to work,’ she said and quickly changed the subject. ‘What exactly caused that explosion in Pasila?’
‘We still don’t know, but around the Exhibition Centre and the Hartwall Arena there was a distinct smell of explosives.’
‘But they haven’t located the site of the explosion?’
‘No. We’ve been through the whole of central Pasila, we even brought in some helicopters. If a group of kids blew something up on a spot of bare land it wouldn’t necessarily leave any trace at all.’
Harjunpää continued the massage in silence; by now the gel had been absorbed, making it much easier. His hands moved almost by themselves, finding one awkward knot after another.
‘You’re worried about something,’ said Elisa, more a statement than a question. ‘This is not your normal kind of silence.’
‘Do I have a normal way of being silent?’
‘You know very well what I mean,’ she said softly.
Harjunpää muttered quietly in agreement, but the silence continued for a long while. In the living room the wall clock ticked, but Harjunpää was so lost in thought that he didn’t count quite how many times.
‘I don’t know… Is this some kind of envy or what?’ he said finally. ‘I’ve never before felt like I wished for something that belonged to someone else but…’
‘Maybe it’s a feeling of injustice?’
‘Maybe. I haven’t told you yet: Piipponen got promoted to the DI position left open by Old Lörtsy.’
‘Piipponen? How on earth did that happen?’
‘Especially since Central had already decided not to fill vacant positions due to cut-backs… Apparently he was the most hardworking of us all, does the most overtime. And he apparently displayed exceptional bravery and initiative fighting off that guy’s attack and organising the search for him.’
‘But there’s still no sign of him?’
‘No. The boys will spend the next few weeks looking for him on the underground but after that they’ll have to call it a day.’
Elisa didn’t reply but laid her fingers on her husband’s hand as it rested on her shoulder.
Harjunpää continued massaging. Beneath his hands Elisa felt warm and familiar. He felt a certain pleasure at being able to provide some form of help to someone else. But all of a sudden he felt something change. It was as though she had tensed herself suddenly or tried to stand up, and then her body went limp and she fell back sharply into his arms. He tottered several steps backwards and eased her on to the floor.
‘Elisa!’ he shouted, tapping her on the cheeks. ‘Elisa, wake up!’
He felt her neck, remained there motionless for a split second, then leapt up and dashed towards the telephone in the living room. His imagination was running wild, and he could do nothing to stop it: he felt as if a curse had been hanging over him these past few weeks, a curse that had plagued him at work – and now that same curse was about to take Elisa from him! The journey seemed endless, he ran and ran, and everything around him started to spin, to warp, making it difficult for him to stay on his feet.
Elisa
Elisa was standing on the top of a white wall, her gaze fixed in front of her like a tightrope walker. But she was not afraid of falling; she felt warm and at peace.
When she looked to her right all she could see was a flood of light, opaque and soft as though it were shining through frosted glass, and at the centre of the light she could make out what seemed to be a number of different figures, but she was not sure whether they were people or trees. Nonetheless it was something immensely beautiful and good, powerfully drawing her closer.
And when she looked to her left – she saw what looked like the wall in their kitchen, though it was much higher, and she could see herself lying on the floor, and Timo running in from the living room, kneeling down beside her and fretting over something. She turned again to look towards the light. There was no one beckoning to her, no one to block her path, and at this she realised that the choice was entirely up to her: she could step to whichever side of the wall she chose.
She waited for a moment longer, but still no one appeared from the light to greet her. Meanwhile Timo kept repeating her name: ‘Elisa! Elisa!’ And at that she turned back towards the kitchen and prepared to take her first step.
Timo Juhani
‘Elisa!’ Harjunpää called out between gasps of breath, as he frantically patted his wife’s cheeks. Again he felt her throat. A pulse! Was he mistaken? He thought he could feel the artery faintly beating beneath his fingers. Again he thought he felt it, but then came a long pause, longer than time itself, and the wail of approaching sirens, the sound that he so longed to hear, just would not come.
‘Elisa!’ he called out again, and all of a sudden he could hear through the open door the sound of the girls returning home. He could hear giggling and it sounded like one of them was hopping on one leg; then he heard the echoing sound of a stone being kicked through the tiled hallway. He stood up; he knew that he must go to his daughters, prepare them for what they were about to witness. He took a step towards the hallway but was struck by a stinging fear - almost a certainty - that if he left Elisa now he would lose her for good, and at this he fell to his knees, laid his head beside his wife’s head and sobbed. And he felt so profoundly small, and so alone - never before had he felt so small, and so terribly alone.
Matti Joensuu
Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston
An exciting crime story that also gives a touching portrait of a young man thirsting for love, and the police officer pursuing him.
A strange nocturnal visitor tiptoes through apartments in Helsinki. Nothing is stolen, nothing is destroyed. Numerous women wake to an unknown presence in their bedroom, but in the light of morning, it all seems a dream. At first the police take little notice, and the women themselves begin to doubt their own sanity. But evidence accumulates, and the net closes – Tweety, a skilful picker of locks, falls in love with one of his
night-time
women. He shadows her, daring to approach her secretly only at night. But then Tweety’s lock-picking skills are needed for a break-in by some of his professional criminal brothers. The results of falling in love and a life of crime are tragic for Tweety. For Detective Sergeant Timo Harjunpää, times are also hard. He is forced in his private life to reassess his values, the significance of those dearest to him, and the nature of love and guilt.
Priest of Evil
:
‘Matti Joensuu – a scholarly cop who might get along better with Morse than Rebus – has emerged from a long silence with a ninth novel about Detective Harjunpää. He’s still an arson and explosives expert on the Helsinki force’ Boyd Tonkin,
Independent
on
Priest of Evil
EuroCrime
9781905147748
£
11.99
Eugenio Fuentes
Translated from the Spanish by Paul Antill
Winner of the Alba/Prensa Canaria Prize
Paternóster, a remote nature reserve in Spain: Gloria, a young and attractive painter, is found brutally murdered. A few days later, a female hiker dies in exactly the same way. Next on the list is one of the reserve wardens, shot dead at point-blank range while on patrol.
Depths of the Forest
is the story of a journey to the interior of an impenetrable and imposing landscape, but also into the secrets deep within each of the characters. What ties Marco, Gloria’s lawyer boyfriend in Madrid, to his university friend Octavio, who leads a strange and disturbing life with an elderly landowner who has taken him under her wing and treats him like an adoptive son? Gloria appears to have attracted love and admiration in equal measure – from men and women alike. The woman who was her co-director at the trendy urban art gallery they owned together, and the passionate sculptor dividing his time between Madrid and a converted studio near the reserve – what was the true extent of their smouldering jealousies? These secrets make each of them a potential perpetrator of the crime and, at the same time, a victim of their own destiny. Nature itself becomes an underlying protagonist to form the background to a novel exuding mystery and tension.
‘A most welcome addition, not just to crime fiction, but to literature in general’
Independent
EuroCrime
9781905147489
£
7.99
Eugenio Fuentes
Translated from the Spanish by Martin Schifino and Selina Packard
Nominated for the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards in the Author of the Year and the Breakthrough Author Award categories
Julián has suffered three severe blows: His wife has walked out, his mother has died, and Alba, the six-year old daughter he adores, is displaying signs of emotional withdrawal and other problems.
While clearing out his mother’s apartment he finds an old pistol. It had belonged to his father, who had died years before. The gun intrigues him and fascinates him. Although he knows he should hand it to the police, he hesitates, and instead puts it in a safe-deposit box at his bank, together with various other items. The next morning, he receives an anxious phone call from an assistant manager who admits that he forgot to lock the deposit box after Julián left. Julián hurries to the bank to find that all the contents are there – except for the gun. Shortly afterwards, a teacher at his daughter’s school is shot dead. Could the bullet have been fired with the stolen gun? A new case for private investigator Cupido, one of Spain’s
best-loved
contemporary detectives, who once again displays the charming world-weariness that made him a hit in
Depths of the Forest.
‘The days when foreign crime in translation was something of a minority appeal subject seem very far away. Many publishers are now committed to issuing such fare with welcome regularity, and the EuroCrime imprint is doing excellent service. As
Blood of the Angels
proves – this is crime writing that grips’ Barry Forshaw
EuroCrime
9781905147878
£
7.99
Eugenio Fuentes
Translated from the Spanish by Martin Schifino
One of their own is wickedly murdered. Who could be behind it all?
As in so many cities in the heat of growth, Breda, Spain, is home to a modest construction company that wants to take advantage of the booming times to construct a luxury housing-complex in the suburbs. Although between the business partners there are differences of opinion and fears about such an ambitious project, the expectation of the sumptuous benefits pushes them to go through with the scheme. Then one day, the corpse of one of the partners appears inside one of the newly constructed buildings. Detective Ricardo Cupido delves into a passionate investigation where the alibis matter less than the dark and desolate description of the human condition.
‘His writing style is literary, elegant, almost formal. His crime books weave the investigations of his gentle private eye, Ricardo Cupido, with an analysis of the dark side of remote Spain’
Observer
EuroCrime
9781905147373
£
11.99
Barry Maitland
An-edge-of-your-seat Brock and Kolla mystery set within a radical artists’ community in London where three children have been abducted in a matter of weeks.
The most recent is six-year old Tracey Rudd, daughter of the infamous Turner Prize winner Gabriel Rudd. After his wife’s suicide five years ago, Tracey’s grandparents laid the blame with the self-absorbed Rudd, and now hint at his complicity in this newest tragedy. Unbelievably, he begins almost immediately to exploit Tracey’s abduction as inspiration for a major and controversial new artwork, in the full glare of media attention. The superb duo DCI David Brock and DS Kathy Kolla are embroiled in their most compelling case yet, conducting an intensive hunt for the missing children and their kidnappers, who appear to be connected to an eccentric and suspicious community of artists, dealers and collectors, all of whom are under suspicion.
‘No one who reads this haunting, unnerving work will ever again think about contemporary artists the same way’
Publishers Weekly
EuroCrime
9781905147717
£
11.99
Dominique Manotti
Translated from the French by Margaret Crosland and Elfreda Powell
Top Thriller of the Year French Crime Writers’ Association Award
This fast-moving story takes the reader rapidly, in a single hectic month, along dark paths of sinister events in Le Sentier, the heart of Paris’s rag trade. One spring morning a young Thai woman scarcely more than a girl is found dead in a fashion workshop. A case of another unlucky prostitute, or something more sinister? Then an erotic video club is exposed with a membership including some very distinguished men. The seedy underworld of Paris is revealed – the traffic in heroin, illegal immigrants without work permits, police officers’ secret lives. A young Turk is a police informer and leader of exploited immigrant rag-trade workers – as well as Police Inspector Danquin’s lover. This complex morality tale of late twentieth-century Paris will grip you from beginning to end.
‘Set in Le Sentier, the district of Paris where expensive clothes are made in sweatshops, it uses real events – the struggle by foreign workers to get legal status – as the setting for an extraordinarily vivid crime novel’ Joan Smith, Books of the Year,
Independent
EuroCrime
9781900850872
£
7.99
Dominique Manotti
Translated from the French by Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz
Shortlisted for Duncan Lawrie International Dagger Award
Dominique Manotti is one of the raciest and most incisive writers in
France today.
Dead Horsemeat
is an inside account of horse-racing and
drug-trafficking, political intrigue and criminal intent, public corruption
and human decency. As the May ’68 generation comes of age, ideals turn
into business deals, deals which network their way across the new network
of a Europe without frontiers.
From high aspirations to low morals: a cast of flamboyant characters are
championed by gay police chief Danquin and ruthless PR manager Agathe
Renouard and involve the low-lifes inhabiting the Elysée Palace and the
high life of a transvestite brothel in Munich. You wouldn’t want to know
them, but following them through the vibrant and violent plot of
Dead
Horsemeat
easily matches the thrill of the chase to the finishing line in the
last race of the season.
‘Fits together the shady past and present of stop-at-nothing yuppies in a
socially acute crime yarn with punch and pace’ Boyd Tonkin,
Independent
EuroCrime
9781905147359
£
7.99
Dominique Manotti
Translated from the French by Amanda Hopkinson and Ros Schwartz
Winner of the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger Award 2008
Nominated for the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards in the Author of the Year and the Breakthrough Author Award categories
The players in this deadly-serious game of Monopoly will stop at nothing.
In Pondange, Lorraine, the Korean Daewoo group manufactures cathode ray tubes. Working conditions are abysmal, but as it’s the only source of employment in this bleak former iron and steel manufacturing region, the workers daren’t protest. Until a strike breaks out, and there’s a fire at the factory. But is it an accident? The Pondange factory is at the centre of a strategic battle being played out in Paris, Brussels and Asia for the takeover of the ailing state-owned electronics giant, Thomson. Unexpectedly, the Matra-Daewoo alliance wins the bid. Rival contender Alcatel believes there’s foul play involved and brings in the big guns led by its head of security, former deputy head of the national security service. Intrepid private cop Charles Montoya is called to Lorraine to investigate, and explosive revelations follow – murder, dirty tricks, blackmail, wheeling and dealing.
‘Another excellent French crime writer to set alongside Fred Vargas’ Sue’s Pick,
Publishing News
EuroCrime
9781905147618
£
7.99
Martin Suter
Translated from the German by Peter Millar
Winner of the Friedrich Glauser Prize
Shortlisted for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger Award 2008
Sonia Frey fears for her sanity. Her marriage ended in divorce after her husband tried to kill her. Added to this, an acid trip has disordered her senses – she can now ‘feel’ smells, ‘see’ sounds.
To escape these worries, she takes a job as a physiotherapist at a newly
reopened
hotel in a remote Alpine village in the Swiss Engadine. However, a series of unusual events throws her into disarray once more. The mystery deepens as she discovers a parallel to these occurrences in local folkloric tales of the supernatural. Can the legend of the Devil of Milan really be true? Or is the truth more sinister? Sonia’s mind, already under pressure from her strange sensory awareness, is stretched to breaking point by the climate of paranoia developing around her. This tightly plotted, intelligently written novel is an acute study of the shifting nature of identity and reality, as well as an engrossing mystery story with a thrilling denouement.
EuroCrime
9781905147526
£
11.99
Domingo Villar
Translated from the Spanish by Martin Schifino
Winner of the Brigada 21 Prize for best first crime novel
Winner of the Sintagma Prize
A rich literary mystery peppered with humour, Domingo Villar’s new suspense-filled novel combines a certain melancholy with the joys of music and white wine.
Amid the aroma of the sea and the Galician pines, a young saxophonist is found dead in his swanky flat overlooking the beach. The murder seems to have taken place after a sexual encounter with a lover: there are two glasses filled with gin in the living room, and the dead man, Luis Reigosa, is tied by the wrists to the headboard of the bed. But the way he was killed makes it impossible to obtain any more clues about his activities that night: his stomach, groin and thighs are horribly burned, and his genitals look hideously like a toasted cashew. The unusually cold-blooded and cruel murder is assigned to Leo Caldas, a disheartened police inspector still searching for his place in the world. The case unfolds between inviting nights at the jazz clubs and the tense, affected atmosphere of upper-class Vigo.
‘Villar never loses the attention of the reader’
El Cultural
‘A piece of hard-boiled crime fiction. In luminous prose Villar lets the Mediterranean space speak, setting his story in Galicia among the “
fjord-like
inlets known as
rias
… swaths of green land here and there … shielded from the pounding of the Atlantic by streamlined, white-sand islands”’
TLS
EuroCrime
9781905147762
£
11.99