“I realize it might be impossible,” Joona says.
“Seriously, it is,” Kaj replies.
Joona thanks him for his time and goes to Disa, who is sitting on the rim of a fountain waiting for him. She lays her cheek on his shoulder as he sits down beside her. Just as he’s putting an arm around her, he remembers Robert Riessen’s words about his brother: If not even Axel could figure it out, no one can.
72
While Joona is quickly walking up on the Bragevagen sidewalk, he hears children happily yelling on the grounds of the German School.
He rings Axel’s doorbell and hears the melodious chime inside, but no one answers, and after waiting for a while, he decides to walk around the house. Suddenly he hears a screeching noise. He can see people standing in the shadow of a tree, and he pauses at a distance. A girl holding a violin stands on the marble patio. She looks about fifteen years old. Her hair is extremely short, and he can see some drawings she’s inked on her arms. Axel Riessen is with her, nodding and listening carefully as she drags the bow across the strings. Her movements look awkward, as if she’s holding the instrument for the very first time. Perhaps this is Axel’s daughter, or even his grandchild, because he watches her with such a gentle, curious expression.
The bow crosses the strings at the wrong angle and elicits a hissing, whining sound.
“It’s not in tune,” the girl says as an excuse for the terrible noise.
She smiles and, with care, hands the instrument back to Axel.
“Playing the violin means listening,” Axel says in a calm, friendly fashion. “The music is already inside you. You just release it into the world.”
He sets the violin to his own shoulder and begins to play the introductory melody to “Seguedille” from Bizet’s Carmen, then stops and holds out the violin to demonstrate.
“Now I’m going to tune these strings a little strangely, here… and here,” he says, and he turns the pegs a few times in different directions.
“Why are-”
“Now the violin is completely out of tune,” he continues. “And if I’d only learned how to play mechanically with exact fingering, then I would sound like this.”
He plays “Seguedille” again, and it is so terrible it’s almost unrecognizable.
“How pretty!” she says, joking.
“However, if you listen to the strings…” he says as he taps the E string. “Hear that? It’s much too low, but that makes no difference at all. You compensate by moving your finger farther up the fingerboard.”
Joona watches Axel Riessen put the violin back on his shoulder and play the piece again on the falsely tuned violin. He seems to use gymnastic fingering, but the piece is perfectly in tune.
“You’re a magician!” The girl laughs and claps her hands.
“Hello,” Joona says. He walks up and holds out his hand. Axel gathers the violin and bow together in his left hand and then shakes Joona’s hand. The girl shyly does the same.
He looks at Axel with his mistuned violin.
“That’s impressive.”
Axel shakes his head.
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t played for thirty-four years.” His voice sounds stiff as he says this.
“Do you believe that?” Joona asks the girl.
She nods and then she says mysteriously, “Don’t you see the glow around him?”
“This is Beverly,” Axel says in a low voice. “Beverly Andersson.”
Beverly gives Axel a big smile, and then she simply walks away between the trees.
Joona nods at Axel. “I need to talk to you.”
“Sorry about earlier, when I took off like that,” Axel says. He begins to retune the violin. “But something came up.”
“Not to worry-I just came back.”
Joona watches Axel, who, in turn, watches the girl pick some flowering weeds from the shaded lawn.
“Do we have a vase inside?” she calls out.
“In the kitchen,” Axel replies.
She carries her tiny bouquet of dandelions-white balls of fluff-into the kitchen.
“That’s her favorite flower,” Axel says as he listens closely to the G string. He adjusts the peg slightly and then sets the violin on the mosaic table.
“I’d like you to take a look at this,” Joona says, and he takes out the photograph from the folder.
They sit down at the table. Axel takes a pair of glasses from his front pocket and studies the photograph thoroughly.
“When was this taken?” he asks quickly.
“We don’t know, but it was suggested this was in the spring of 2008,” Joona replies.
“All right.” Axel looks much more relaxed immediately.
“Do you recognize these people?” Joona asks calmly.
“Of course,” Axel says. “Palmcrona, Pontus Salman, Raphael Guidi, and… Agathe al-Haji.”
“I need your help in one specific area. Could you take a good look at the musicians in the background?”
Axel looks up at Joona speculatively and then down again at the photograph.
“The Tokyo String Quartet-they’re very good,” he says in a neutral voice.
“Well, the thing I’m wondering about is… I’ve been thinking about this picture and wondering if it is possible for a knowledgeable person to tell… just by looking at the picture… which piece they’re playing.”
“That’s an interesting question.”
“Would there be, even remotely, a possibility for an educated guess? Kaj Samuelsson didn’t think so, and when your brother took a look, he said it was completely impossible.”
Joona leans forward, his eyes smooth and warm in the shade.
“Your brother was adamant that if you couldn’t solve this riddle, no one could.”
A smile plays at the edges of Axel’s mouth.
“He said that, did he?”
“Yes,” Joona says. “Though I’m not sure what he meant by that.”
“Nor am I.”
“Still, take a close look at this picture. I have a magnifying glass-”
“You want to know when this meeting took place, don’t you,” Axel states in a suddenly grave tone.
Joona nods and takes a magnifying glass out of his briefcase.
“You should be able to see their fingers clearly,” Joona says.
Joona sits back quietly and watches Axel minutely examine the photograph. He thinks if this had been taken in 2008, as they’d been told, his intuition had been wrong. But if these people had met after the arrest order in March 2009, the photograph was proof of criminal activity.
“Yes, I see the positions of their fingers,” Axel says slowly.
“Could you guess which notes they’re playing?” Joona asks expectantly.
Axel sighs, hands the photograph and the magnifying glass back to Joona, and then sings four notes aloud in a soft but clear voice as if it emanated from inside himself. Then he takes up the violin and plays two high, trembling notes.
Joona Linna stands up.
“And this is no joke-”
Axel Riessen looks directly into Joona’s eyes and shakes his head. “No. Martin Beaver is playing a third C, Kikuei is playing a second C, Kazuhide Isomura has a rest, and Clive is playing a four-note pizzicato. That’s what I sang, E, A, A, and C.”
