“They were taking soundings in the lake for the M.H.I. – that’s what they told us when they called in for a chat and a coffee. First-class young people, they were. I didn’t know they’d gone missing – we were abroad when it happened. Our daughter and her partner have bought a hotel in Thailand, so we went out there for a three-week holiday. Obviously we had to muck in – you know how it is: when anything needs doing, Father’s the only one who knows how.”
“They called in for a chat and a coffee… What was it they said?”
“Not much.”
No, Mella thought. No doubt you did most of the talking.
Sillfors continued.
“They were taking some kind of measurements for the M.H.I. What did you say?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, not you, I was responding to my wife. She says they were taking depth soundings in the lake. I recognized them the moment I saw them on the telly. The girl looked a bit dangerous with those little daggers stuck through her eyebrows. Huh! I asked her if she was into that what-do-you-call-it – you know, when you hang yourself from a rope with hooks you stick into your skin. Christ Almighty, I saw a programme on the telly about these characters with piercings all over their bodies, hanging themselves up on a washing line. But no, she said she only had the things in her eyebrows and ears.”
“Can you remember what they said about the lake? Were they thinking of going diving there, for instance?”
“No. They asked if I fished there.”
“And you said?”
“That I did.”
“Anything else?”
“No, nothing else.”
“Think hard, now. If you were drinking coffee, you must have had time to chat about all kinds of things.”
“I suppose so. We spoke a bit about fishing. I said there was a particular place where the fish always seem to bite. I thought maybe they were interested in fishing themselves. We usually joke about that spot in the middle of the lake and reckon there must be a meteorite or an especially big rock there. Somewhere the fish can hide, because that’s always where they bite the most. But the kids weren’t going fishing. Hang on a minute, my wife is trying to say something.”
He doesn’t hear what I’m saying, Mella thought. That’s because I’m not saying anything. He’s doing all the talking.
“You what?” Sillfors shouted to his wife. “Why should she be interested in that? Talk to her yourself if you must.”
“What’s all that about?” Mella said.
“Huh, she’s going on about the door to our shed. How someone pinched it last winter.”
Mella’s heart skipped a beat. She recalled the flakes of green paint Pohjanen had found under Wilma Persson’s fingernails.
“What colour was the door?” she said.
“Black,” Goran Sillfors said.
Mella’s hopes collapsed. It had been too good to be true. She heard Sillfors’ wife saying something in the background.
“Ah yes. You’re right,” he said. “It was black on the outside – that was the side I painted a couple of years ago. You know how weather and especially wind ruins paintwork. I had a bit of black paint left over from when I helped our neighbour to paint our fences. There wasn’t much, but I thought I might as well give the outside a coat at least.”
“Go on,” Mella said, concealing her impatience with difficulty.
“The inside was green. Why do you want to know?”
Mella gasped. This was it. Bloody hell, this was it!
“Stay where you are,” she yelled into the telephone. “Where do you live? I’m on my way.”
Goran Sillfors and his wife Berit took Mella to their cottage at Vittangijarvi. It was a brown-painted timber house with white window frames. The porch was unusually wide with a little roof supported by carved wooden columns. Goran drove the snow scooter with Mella in the sledge.
“Shall we go in?” Berit said when they arrived.
Mella shook her head.
“Where’s the shed door?” she said.
“There isn’t a door,” Goran said. “That’s the problem.”
The snow on the shed roof had melted and then frozen again. An enormous cake of ice hung ominously from the edge.
Mella took off her woolly hat and unzipped her scooter overalls. She was much too hot.
“You know what I mean,” she said with a jolly smile. “Show me where the door was. At the back?”
The opening, at the gable end, had been boarded over.
“I’ll sort out a new door in time for the spring,” Goran said. “We’re not here in the winter, so this is a bit amateurish.”
Mella examined the door frame. No sign of green paint, or of black paint, come to that.
“Could you remove the boards, please?” she said. “Just so I can go inside and take a quick look round.”
“Might one ask what you’re looking for?”
“Obviously I’m hoping there’s a bit of green paint left on the inside of the door frame. So that we can take some samples.”
“No, there won’t be any. It must be, let’s see, fifteen years ago that I painted it green. I unscrewed the hinges and laid it down on trestles. So there won’t be any paint on the frame.”
Goran Sillfors’ expression changed from pride at having done the painting so carefully to worry when he saw how disappointed Mella was.
“But do you know what?” he said. “One of the doors inside the cottage was painted with the same stuff. From the same tin. I painted it the same day, if I remember rightly. Will that do?”
Mella’s face lit up, and she threw her arms round a somewhat surprised Goran Sillfors.
“Will it do?” she shouted in delight. “You bet your life it will!”
“Shall we go inside after all, then?” Berit Sillfors said. “It would be good if I could check the mousetraps while we’re here.”
Scraping a bit of paint from the green door between the cottage’s vestibule and large hall, Mella put the flakes carefully in an envelope.
“Scrape as much as you like,” Goran said generously. “It needs repainting anyway.”
Berit Sillfors emptied the mousetraps in the upstairs wardrobes and beneath the sink. When she had finished she showed the result to Mella and her husband: five frozen mice in a red plastic bucket.
“I’ll just go and dispose of them,” she said.
“I’m finished,” Mella said.
