Medusa by Markus Ahonen

Author:Markus Ahonen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, memories, police, growing up, serial killer, detective, social commentary, suburbs, murders, finland, helsinki, finnish, bestseller book, awarded author, vantaa, espoo, murder game, heinola, awarded novel, best of 2012, nordic noir
Publisher: Markus Ahonen

28.

A former athlete, Artturi Litovaara was stretching, feeling the frost and cold in his muscles. He stood in Pohjois-Haaga along Näyttelijäntie and looked at the green plastered apartment building. The hallway smelled of the ’50s, the era when hallways were not tagged or sprayed and the elevators were clean. Now there was an odd tag somewhere, but the elevator was in immaculate condition.

Litovaara looked through the elevator window and saw floors passing by. The elevator stopped on the fourth floor and he stepped out. One mail slot had the name Gugelgen. He rang the bell. No one came to the door and you couldn't hear any voices coming from the apartment. Litovaara rang the bell again.

Nothing.

“There's no one living in there,” a woman's voice said. Litovaara hadn't realized the opposite door opening. A youngish dark-haired woman with a pale face, suitable for wintertime, came out of the door with a child bundled up in a coat, hat and gloves. They were on their way outdoors.

“He moved away months ago. No one's moved in.”

Litovaara cursed the outdated information in the police report and in the State Registry. Some people forgot to do changes out of pure negligence or laziness. In this case, Gugelgen had given an old address. Maybe there wasn't a new one, or maybe he was using a post office box or some shelter for the homeless.

Now they'd need more to find him. Maybe the parents' address. It would take a little while to find it.

Going back to the police building in Pasila didn't sound tempting. Litovaara would've wanted to continue the day with field work.

“Would you know where they moved?” Litovaara had time to ask just as the woman and the child were about to close the elevator gate. The child was looking at him curiously under the edge of his hat.

“Nope. The landlord ordered him to get out fast. There wasn't much to carry,” the woman said and shivered her shoulders.

“Dam—,” Litovaara started to say, but then he remembered the child.

Figuring out from the woman’s angry glance that she had noticed it, Litovaara felt ashamed. For a moment he thanked himself for not remembering to introduce himself as a cop. Now she could assume Litovaara belonged to Gugelgen's possibly suspicious gang of friends.

Litovaara looked at the building, thought about the map of Helsinki. Even after a few years, he was still trying to learn certain suburb names and how to get there.

He was doing a mind lottery with those suburbs. Where to start. How to continue his line of investigation in the field. The investigation group meeting would start later on. He remembered Isaksson's method: It's useful to walk thoughts through. Or stay up all night with all of the investigation material in front of you.

Maybe it wasn't the school-book solution. But in a short time Litovaara had learned to understand Isaksson's quietly clever personality and his enormous sense of absorbtion.

Overnight Isaksson would go through the piles of paper, which in the early hours of the next day crystallized into just right conclusions.

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