The Mine E-Book

Antti Tuomainen

• Herausgeber: Orenda Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 371

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

An investigative reporter sets out to uncover the truth about a mining company in Northern Finland, whose activities have caused an environmental disaster. Timely, atmospheric and chilling Nordic Noir from one of Finland's finest writers… 'Tuomainen writes beautifully' Publishers Weekly 'Clever, atmospheric and wonderfully imaginative' Sunday Mirror 'A simple story told with passion and elegant sadness' The Times ––––––––––––––––––––––––––– A hitman. A journalist. A shattered family. A mine spewing toxic secrets that threaten to poison them all… In the dead of winter, investigative reporter Janne Vuori sets out to uncover the truth about a mining company, whose illegal activities have created an environmental disaster in a small town in Northern Finland. When the company's executives begin to die in a string of mysterious accidents, and Janne's personal life starts to unravel, past meets present in a catastrophic series of events that could cost him his life. A traumatic story of family, a study in corruption, and a shocking reminder that secrets from the past can return to haunt us, with deadly results, The Mine is a gripping, beautifully written, terrifying and explosive thriller by the King of Helsinki Noir. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 'Dark, captivating and troubling' Crime Fiction Lover 'Beautifully executed … mesmerising' Australian Crime 'Antti Tuomainen again creates a powerful book, set firmly within the boundaries of strong themes and unforgettable characters, with the huge dose of beautiful sensitive style, masterfully translated from Finnish by David Hackston' Crime Review 'You don't expect to laugh when you're reading about terrible crimes, but that's what you'll do when you pick up one of Tuomainen's decidedly quirky thrillers' New York Times 'Antti Tuomainen is a wonderful writer, whose characters, plots and atmosphere are masterfully drawn' Yrsa Sigurðardóttir 'One of the most compelling, emotionally satisfying and beautifully realised crime thrillers that I have encountered this year. The clarity and deceptively simple style of Tuomainen's prose is utterly compelling' Raven Crime Reads

Leseprobe

i

PRAISE FOR ANTTI TUOMAINEN

‘Tersely written, full of twists and sudden violence, this is nothing less than the birth of a new genre: dystopian detection’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Tuomainen’s spare style suits the depressing subject and raises a serious question: how do you find hope when law and order break down?’ Financial Times

‘This chilling novel compels … Clever, atmospheric and wonderfully imaginative’ Sunday Mirror

‘Antti Tuomainen is a wonderful writer, whose characters, plots and atmosphere are masterfully drawn’ Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

‘Tuomainen reaffirms your faith in the crime novel … In the genre of crime, Tuomainen has created his own style, both linguistically and story-wise. There is the social aspect, the protagonist … who acts according to his own high sense of morals, and the language: descriptive and evocative, it is at times a pure joy to read’ Etelä-Saimaa, Finland

‘Exquisite suspense without any unnecessary frills’ Helsingin Sanomat, Finland

‘You can practically taste the Nordic class – the intensity of Stieg Larsson and the deliberately faded tones of the TV series The Bridge … The style is close to perfect’ Kainuun Sanomat, Finland

‘The ability to use all the tricks of crime fiction and all the tools of poetry makes Tuomainen’s work unique, and that combination makes the reader fall in love with his style. You cannot but value things around you more after reading The Healer’ Sofi Oksanen

ii‘Dark As My Heart contains passages of lyrical intensity, along with bloody scenes that would not be out of place in a Jacobean revenge drama’ Sunday Times

‘Dark As My Heart, the most lauded Finnish crime novel of recent years, lives up to its acclaim’ The Times

‘Its sparse prose style suits the dark, treacherous, rain-soaked environment of this dystopian vision of Helsinki’ Glasgow Sunday Herald

‘In Tuomainen’s first appearance in English translation, a long-unpublished poet takes to the streets of a grimly dystopian Helsinki in search of his vanished wife … Tapani’s search, which will lead him through an appalling series of cityscapes to some shattering discoveries about the wife he though he knew so well, is the stuff of authentic nightmares’ Kirkus Reviews

‘Good news, fans of Nordic thrillers! Tuomainen has won the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel and has been translated into 23 languages, so he’s bound to be good’ Library Journal

‘Tuomanien’s third book evocatively explores a near-future Helsinki … Tuomainen writes beautifully … Tapani’s progression from a dreamy poet content with staying at home to a man of action elevates this bleak tale and brings a glimmer of hope to rain-soaked Helsinki’ Publishers Weekly

‘This dystopian tale snagged the Clue Award for best Finnish crime novel of 2011, and U.S. audiences should prepare to be every bit as enthralled as the Finns … Tapani’s amateur sleuthing is all the more fascinating in light of the unimaginable barriers posed by the changing city, with inhabitants focused on their own survival. Readers attracted either to dystopian fiction or to Scandinavian crime will find gold here: Tuomainen’s spare, nostalgic style emphasizes the definitive nature of climate catastrophe’ Booklist

The Mine

ANTTI TUOMAINEN

translated by David Hackston

vii

To my father

viii

‘We run carelessly over the precipice, after having put something before us to prevent us seeing it.’

Blaise Pascal

Contents

Title PageDedicationEpigraphPart One:Nickel12345678910111213141516Part Two:Lead1234567891011121314151617181920212223242526Part Three:Gold123456789101112AcknowledgementsAbout the AuthorAbout the TranslatorCopyright

1

PART ONE

2

NICKEL

3

 

Finally the blood started flowing.

It rushed and flowed as the hot water caressed his body, as it pressed evenly against every inch of his skin. It was as though he’d found someone bigger than himself, someone who knew his body well, knew how to hold it, how to take it in its embrace and warm it. He stretched his short, stocky legs. The bathtub was the perfect length. He tensed his chubby thighs, his round calves, and relaxed them again. The water buoyed him up, slowed his movements. On an evening like this, after spending all day in the freezing cold, he had earned a soak in the steaming bath.

Outside the wind was whipping up a flurry of snow, the January cold and the darkness swallowing all living things. A moment earlier Pirjo had packed the boys and their ice-hockey equipment into the car and left. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, he had the house to himself.

He moved his right arm, scratched his chest.

He leaned the back of his head against the edge of the bathtub and closed his eyes.

It is an unfortunate truth that with your eyes closed you often see much more than usual. The day’s people and events all flickered behind his eyelids like a confused news bulletin. A clear indication of stress.

He opened his eyes. The pressure! All the decisions that had to be made quickly and implemented regardless of whether someone disapproved. Someone always disapproved.

He wiped the sweat from his brow. The bath water was almost scalding. He glanced at the windows. They were covered in a thin layer of steam. The lights on the veranda were switched on, and through the steam he watched the whirl of the snow. There was something hypnotic about it, something relaxing.

4Maybe one day some people would realise they didn’t have a monopoly on being in the right; weren’t the only ones possessed of ultimate truths. Maybe…

An exceptionally dense swirl of snowflakes flurried past the window and the thick ice on the window ledge crackled as though a packet of boiled sweets had been scattered on the floor.

That’s a lot of snow, he thought. He turned his head and gazed at something even more relaxing than the snow: the white tiling and dark-grey grout, the purity and cleanness of the pattern, its exactitude, its repeating logic. How beautiful, how practical. One of mankind’s greatest achievements.

What was it he’d been thinking about? Ah yes, decisions. Making tough decisions. People who didn’t like his decisions. That’s what it had come to. Whenever you wanted something and tried to get something done…

The bedroom.

As though someone had pushed a plug into a socket.

Was there someone in the house? Surely not.

Only the moan of the wind in the chimney flue and the waves of snow washing past the window.

He lay still, and a moment later the water followed suit. This was the best thing about taking a bath: stopping, as though you had succeeded in stepping outside time itself, into its centre, a place where everything condensed. Again he closed his eyes. His breath was light and shallow. Old air out, fresh air in.

Almost as though someone was approaching.

Not quite footsteps, but something, somewhere.

He saw the bathroom’s white tiled wall and through the door a strip of the bedroom. Again he heard the wind whistling through the flues. A sudden thought entered his head: something bursting into flames.

An ‘electric shock’ is a misleading term. The word ‘shock’ gives the impression that the electricity only hits you and leaves the body. That’s not what happens. Electricity flows, that’s what electricity 5does. As it courses through the body, electricity causes massive burns, interferes with the functioning of the heart, fills the lungs with water, suffocates you.

Electricity clotted his heart, burned his organs, snapped his arteries, pummelled his muscles.

He writhed and trembled. Water sputtered and splashed.

Then, a moment later, an immense calm. It was hard to establish where his body ended, where the water’s surface began. Both lay utterly still, as though fused together.

A column of snow blew past the window. Snowflakes whipped against the window frame. 6

To: Janne Vuori <<[email protected]>>

From: Pain Increases Knowledge <<[email protected]>> Subject: Suomalahti

Hello Janne,

We have been reading your articles on tax avoidance and the grey economy. You might just be the journalist we’ve been looking for. Perhaps you’re not. We’ll soon find out.

You will probably be familiar with the nickel mine at Suomalahti in northern Finland. We recommend you look more closely at both the mining complex itself and the company administering the site. According to information we have received, the mine is engaged in hazardous activities and, what’s more, the company is fully aware of the matter. We are convinced that we will soon be looking at a full-blown environmental catastrophe.

A little background. The mine at Suomalahti was opened seven years ago. Its owner, a company called Finn Mining Ltd, owns three other mines. The Suomalahti complex differs significantly from the other three. This mine was opened with the blessing of government authorities and the business world. One of the mine’s primary goals is to promote an innovative new technology, using the precious metals that can be extracted from Finland’s ore-depleted ground in an efficient and environmentally friendly fashion. This method has been extolled as the future of the mining industry, and it is hoped that this will propel Finland towards a new economic boom, the like of which has not been seen since the advent of Nokia in the 1990s.

This is all a pack of lies. The truth is we’re digging our own grave.

If we see evidence that you are serious about our case, we will be in touch. We guarantee it will be worth your while.

7

1

The mining complex must have been several kilometres in diameter; we were at the western edge of the site. I steered the car to the right-hand side of the car park and switched off the engine. The wind beat snow against the windows. Snowflakes as wide as mittens flew horizontally and vertically, occasionally gathering into fans whirling on an invisible axis, until they spun off their orbit and attacked us like a swarm of mosquitoes.

‘What are we doing here?’

I took the keys from the ignition.

‘Looking for the truth,’ I said.

Rantanen folded his arms across his chest. ‘In this weather that’s probably easier than taking photos.’

I tightened my scarf, pulled on my woolly hat and checked my pockets: phone, notepad, pen, gloves. I opened the door. Snow slapped me in the face like an enormous, cold hand.

‘Keys,’ I heard Rantanen shouting.

‘Camera,’ I replied.

Jari Rantanen: fifty-four years old; just old enough to have become used to a nice, easy job in the media.

The command tower, complete with mirror-glass windows, looked like a checkpoint on the border of a closed-off country. The words PERMITS REQUIRED were displayed in large letters on the wall. Behind the building blew flags belonging to the mining company. I didn’t understand why there had to be three of them on three separate flagpoles.

Snowflakes caught on my face, melted. The wind tore through my jeans and long underwear. My thick down jacket offered marginally more protection; after only a few steps it felt as though I’d been 8walking through a snowfield in nothing but my coat. Behind the command tower rose the silhouettes of the mine’s factory buildings: the crushing plants, refineries and drainage silos. I walked up the steps to the closed door and pressed the buzzer.

The door opened, and warmth engulfed me in an instant. The man who’d opened the door was wearing a jacket bearing the company logo, and for some reason he had a hard hat on his head.

‘I’ve come to get a permit,’ I said.

The man was short and dark-haired, and the area around his mouth was, for want of a better word, untidy.

‘Permit?’

I nodded towards the sign, a metre and a half tall, hanging on the wall. ‘That says I can get an authorisation pass here.’

‘You can’t.’

‘How do I get into the complex, then?’

‘You don’t.’

‘I’m a reporter. I’m writing an article about the mine.’

‘You’ll have to contact head office in Helsinki. The PR people are all down south.’

‘What about the people who take care of the day-to-day mining operations? Surely they must be here?’

The man seemed to think about this.

‘Wait out in the car park,’ he said, and pulled the door shut.

I walked down the steps and stopped by a van, which offered a little shelter – brief respite from the flurrying snow and whirling wind.

Ten hours’ driving. A glacial car park.

I’d wanted this. Only a day had passed since I’d received the anonymous email.

‘Hello.’

I hadn’t noticed the man’s arrival. It was strange, especially when I considered what size of man we were talking about. Perhaps the snow had muffled his footsteps and the wind had swept their weight away.

9‘Janne Vuori, Helsinki Today.’

The man’s hand was like the fork of a truck.

‘Antero Kosola, head of security. So, you’re writing an article?’

The man’s voice was so calm and warm, it seemed to melt the snow around us. Kosola was over one hundred and ninety centimetres tall and must have weighed about one hundred kilogrammes. Everything about him was wide: his shoulders; his jaw, mouth and nose. Only his cheeks were slender. Brown eyes, soft voice. Despite his size there was something small about him, like a bull that knows how to behave in a china shop after all. His black woollen hat was pulled down firmly over his large, round head. He smiled.

‘Are we talking unofficially?’ I asked.

‘Off the record, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m old enough to know one thing about reporters: you’re never off the record.’

That was that. We looked at one another.

‘May I ask, who is your superior?’

A sunny smile. No answer.

‘How long have you been working with Finn Mining?’ I asked instead.

‘From the time the actual digging started. Two and a half years.’

‘And has everything been going smoothly? Does the snow and the cold complicate things? Can, say, prolonged heavy snowfall affect the mining?’

‘This stuff?’ asked Kosola, and looked to the sky as though he’d only just noticed it was snowing. ‘Down in Helsinki this kind of weather might make the headlines. No weather for brogues.’

Kosola looked at my feet. My leather ankle boots looked like ballet shoes.

‘You can get yourselves kitted out in the village,’ he said, like a tourist guide. ‘If you’re planning on staying around.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Well, are you?’ Kosola asked again.

10I was about to say something when Rantanen appeared beside me. I introduced the men to one another and asked if we could take a photograph of Kosola.

‘I’d rather not. I’m not at my best in photos.’

‘It’s to go alongside the article about the mine.’

‘Well, it would hardly go on the fashion pages. One question: why are you here? The main office is in Helsinki. Everyone that can answer your questions is down there.’

‘That’s precisely why we’re here,’ I said.

Kosola looked at me. ‘Thank you, gentlemen. I have to go.’

He turned and walked off towards the command tower.

‘One more question,’ I called after him.

Kosola stopped and turned.

‘Just in case we do stick around, is there a number where we can contact you?’

‘My mobile,’ he said and gave me the number, which I typed into my phone’s memory.

I slipped my phone into my pocket and stood looking in the direction Kosola had left. I couldn’t see him; couldn’t even see footprints in the snow. For some reason I thought of a phrase from the email I’d received: …we’re digging our own grave.

11

2

He was standing at the corner of Museokatu and Runeberginkatu. It was a cold, windy January day; a blizzard was blowing, and he drew the air into his lungs.

New York smelled of hot dogs and exhaust fumes, London smelled of the Underground, Paris of fresh bread, Berlin of heating oil.

As for Helsinki…

Its innocent smell was like an old cardigan left out in the freezing cold, spattered with salty seawater, fresh pine needles caught in its threads.

He realised he had missed his hometown more than he’d ever realised – or at least admitted to himself. He’d been away for thirty years.

When he had left, Helsinki had been a small city in the truest sense – grey both on the inside and the outside. What he saw now, however, was not the same city.

He walked along Runeberginkatu, leaving the city centre behind him. Here were unchanging streets, unchanging brick houses; so familiar. He arrived at Hesperia Park and spotted the restaurant where he was planning to enjoy a late lunch. The restaurant looked exactly the same as it did all those years ago: the large windows, above them the name of the restaurant in small neon letters, and in the windows the same name in almost a child’s handwriting – an E that looked like a set of buttocks and a tiny circle about the I.

The restaurant itself was half full, depending on how you looked at it. (How would he have answered the old water-in-the-glass test? He might have said that when he was younger the glass was always half empty, that he always thirsted for more. Today it was nice to think there was still something in that imaginary glass, and if it was half anything, it was undoubtedly half full. This was one of the good 12aspects of growing old: there was more than enough of everything. Everything, that is, except time.)

He left his coat in the cloakroom at the entrance. At this time of day there was nobody working the door. He didn’t imagine anyone would want to pinch his run-of-the-mill black, size forty-eight coat. He chose a table beneath the row of windows and knew instantly why he had come here: white tablecloths, artwork hanging on the walls, furniture with a certain gravitas, the small park on the other side of the windows. Now that everything was about to change again, it was important to find things that reminded him of how things used to be.

They had eaten dinner either at this table or at the next one along – nearer to the short bar by the other entrance. He remembered the roundness of Leena’s face, the fortified glow of red wine in her glass and on her cheeks, how unaccustomed they were to eating out. He remembered Leena’s dark, almost black hair, her beautiful, nervous hands, and how young they were.

He ordered a steak with onion gravy, a dish named after acting legend Tauno Palo, and a bottle of good old sparkling water.

A man and woman were eating at the northern end of the room. They clearly were not a couple, married or otherwise. Probably colleagues, office workers, low-level operatives in a large corporation, the foot soldiers of a sales and marketing department. Again he thought how differently life could have played out.

His dish arrived. He stuck his fork into the steak, piled onions and light-brown gravy on top of the meat and tasted it. Even better than he’d remembered.

Someone once said that our youth is a different country. For him, it was this country, this city. He had last seen Leena when they were both thirty years old.

After finishing his steak, he asked to see the dessert menu and made his decision in all of five seconds.

The waiter took away his plate and poured the remains of the sparkling water into his glass. Something about the last few drops 13trickling from the bottle reminded him of his last assignment. This happened more and more often: the most insignificant observation, the tiniest detail, and immediately his mind began to darken in a manner that he wasn’t used to.

The trickle of water, the portly man – burned white with electricity in his bathtub, crimson blood in his eyes.

Wherever he looked, his past came to life. He tried it again now as he waited for coffee and dessert. He raised his eyes, saw a bunch of white tulips displayed on the counter in an Alvar Aalto vase. He could sense their scent in his nostrils. The smell carried him back to Malaga.

A dazzling white house with a swimming pool set into a steep hillside. He is waiting in the garden, hidden in the shade of the trees. The smells of a still night: roses, cypresses, rosemary, pine. A pump-action shotgun, a Remington Express, propped against a tree, a Smith & Wesson M500 in his belt. Gangster guns, both of them, and he doesn’t like them one bit; but the nature of his work defines the tools of his trade. He has decided to make this look like a drugs-related killing. He hears the BMW jeep approaching, the sound of the motor rising and falling. The driver accelerates up the winding village road; the sound of the vehicle breaks the pristine night. He picks up the shotgun, shrugs it into position, positions himself on the steps between the house and the garage and knows he’s in a spot where the car’s headlights won’t wash over him. The jeep turns into the yard. It slows and comes to a stop. The driver switches off the motor; the lights go out. In a single movement he steps towards the car, raises the shotgun and fires. The windscreen shatters and the driver’s upper body is blown apart. He fires a second time, a third, throws the weapon to the ground, walks once round the car, removes the workman’s boots, which are far too big for his feet, and changes them for the trainers dangling from his belt, then stamps them into the mud, walks round to the passenger seat, takes the revolver and shoots the driver another five times in what is left of his torso. Two shooters. He picks up the shotgun, walks into the woods and disappears. That night the thousands of flowers around him smell more pungent than ever.

The waiter brings his crème brûlée.

14

3

Our arrival in the village of Suomalahti was at once gradual and sudden. At first it was impossible to think of the houses at the edge of the road as being linked to one another, but when we finally reached the heart of the village we realised we’d arrived some time ago, that the houses slowly getting closer together formed a chain leading us directly to the centre of ‘The Hidden Gem of Northern Finland’. The dots were missing from the ‘i’s. Perhaps the wind had mistaken them for snowflakes and had whipped them away with the same force as it battered the landscape around us.

I told Rantanen we’d take a short tour of the village, conduct a few interviews and take some photographs to lend the article a bit of local colour. Rantanen replied with a sigh. I drove slowly. A branch of the Cooperative Bank, a supermarket, Kaisa’s Hair and Massage Parlour. Petrol station, church, Hyvönen’s Motors & Snowmobiles. Funeral services, the optician, a hotel, and Happy Pizza, where today’s special appeared to be a faded ham-and-pineapple. Sports Retail Ltd, the local high school, and Maija’s Munchies.

The village came to an end.

I glanced in the mirror. The road was empty in both directions. I spun the car with a handbrake turn and pulled up in front of the snowmobile rental firm.

The shop floor smelled of new motors. A moment later a folding door opened in the wall and a man of about my own age stepped towards us. Close-cropped hair, thick arms, and a stocky chest beneath his hoodie; the crest of the Finnish lion round his neck, a round face and blue eyes. He introduced himself as Hyvönen. I explained we were researching an article about the mine.

15‘It’s brought the village nothing but good,’ Hyvönen said without hesitation.

I continued with a few follow-up questions. Hyvönen agreed to be photographed, as long as his snowmobiles appeared in the background.

We heard a largely similar story at the salon. The mine was a good thing.

We returned to the car. Rantanen informed me that it was time for lunch. We drove a few hundred metres and I pulled up in front of a detached house. Maija’s Munchies on the ground floor, the family home upstairs.

The place was as deserted as the forty-minute drive from the mine into the village. We’d seen nothing but snow and forest, hills and straight roads. The wind had kept us company all the way. As we took the steps up to the door I looked behind: a metre of snow, and plenty more in the sky.

We stepped into the restaurant. A bell jingled above the door. All four tables were empty. We decided to sit by the window. Rantanen placed his camera on the table and pulled a collection of memory cards from his pocket. I could hear someone coming down the wooden staircase and into the kitchen. A moment later a woman walked into the restaurant; I guessed this must be Maija. We exchanged a few quick words about the wind, the snow and the game pie, and with that Maija retreated into the kitchen.

Rantanen was flicking through photographs on the camera’s small screen.

‘We’ve got a few decent ones,’ he said. ‘That should do.’

I tried to see whether he was telling the truth or whether he simply wanted to get back on the road. There were a few good shots. The article would probably feature a lot of graphics and only one photograph – maybe the one with the three company flags fluttering in the blizzard. Behind them the mining complex glowed like a sickly sun.

Maija – I still assumed this woman was Maija – brought us our game pies and mashed potatoes. The brown gravy was piping hot 16and there was plenty of it. Rantanen had unzipped his jacket. His old woollen jumper was already tight around the stomach, and flashes of his green vest showed between the loose stitches. We ate heartily and agreed that I’d give Rantanen a lift to the airport.

‘You’re really going to stay on?’ Rantanen asked, bemused, even though we’d already discussed the matter.

‘I want to look around.’

‘You won’t get into the mining complex.’

‘But the mine is here. Believe me, if there’s anything to see, it’s right here in front of us.’

‘What does it matter?’ Rantanen asked. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere.’

‘There’s always something to see, even in the middle of nowhere. And here in particular. This place has got something there’s a shortage of everywhere else: clean, untouched nature.’

Rantanen took a mouthful of mineral water, puffed out his cheeks as though to burp.

‘You’ve got an agenda.’

‘No, I haven’t. I want to write an article.’

‘You’re an eco-warrior.’

‘I am not.’

‘So what’s going on?’

I explained what I’d found out with just a few quick phone calls and a little reading. The mine at Suomalahti was a nickel mine. One of the main uses of nickel is in the production of steel, which is then made into supporting girders for bridges and other, smaller components. The mine was owned by a company called Finn Mining Ltd, which also owned another three mines. Finn Mining Ltd had bought the rights to the Suomalahti site for only two euros. The public explanation for this low sale price was that, at the time of the purchase, undertaking mining operations here was only a theoretical possibility. Getting started depended on a variety of factors: the quantities of ore in the ground, the results of exploratory digging, the projected environmental effects, securing sufficient funding, among dozens of 17others. Still … two euros. The project quickly garnered cross-party political support: on the one hand from those who on a national level backed policies based on flagrant vested interests, policies that were incredibly detrimental to the national economy; and on the other from those for whom any project that might employ a handful of people in a remote community – no matter how many millions of euros that project would swallow up, or how great an impact it would have on the environment or the health of local residents – was a fantastic, unrivalled investment oozing innovation. Of the two hundred MPs in the Finnish Parliament, roughly one hundred and ninety-eight fitted into these two categories. The remaining two would doubtless have supported it too, had they bothered to read the final report on the project, which was brimming with misleading superlatives cooked up by a bunch of bribed lobbyists.

But that was getting off topic, I told Rantanen, and returned to the subject of Suomalahti.

Only seven or eight years ago it seemed that the only projects left in the world were building projects. The nickel mine should have been a goldmine.

Rantanen didn’t laugh at my lame pun. He dipped a piece of bread in his gravy and munched on the soggy mess.

Critical voices, of which there were very few, claimed that the ore body near Suomalahti was highly depleted, with a low nickel concentration. Those in favour of the project said this didn’t matter because the mine would be using a process known as bioleaching, whereby oxidising bacteria are injected into the ore body in a jet of water, where they break down the rock and enable the extraction of the metal. While this method was profitable, it was also deemed highly environmentally friendly. And that wasn’t all that was going on at Suomalahti, I told Rantanen.

‘I’m sure it’s not,’ he said, a glob of brown sauce in the corner of his mouth.

Finn Mining Ltd, which now owned the complex at Suomalahti, used to be called the Finnish Mining Corporation, a company 18founded in 1922. It had been run by the Mali family for generations. In the interviews I’d read, Matti Mali, the current CEO, had talked about how much the company meant to him; how important it was that the family business and the mines they owned were governed responsibly; that their vision extended into the long term; and how he wanted to take all the important decisions personally. These interviews gave the impression of the septuagenarian Mali as an old-school industrial leader, a man of principle and honour, a man for whom the continuation of his ancestors’ traditions meant everything.

‘Well?’ was all Rantanen said after I’d finished my commentary.

‘I don’t know yet. That was just the background. It’s our job to call a spade a spade, to tell people what’s really going on. If there’s anything going on at all, that is.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Tell people the truth.’

Rantanen wiped his mouth. ‘You’re after a scoop – another feather in your cap.’

I glanced outside. Snow. I decided not to tell Rantanen that he sounded like my wife.

‘Just drop me off at the airport,’ he said.

We drove for half an hour through the dark, lunar landscape and arrived at the airport – a well-lit building the size of a local corner shop. It had been built to serve the needs of the ski resort forty kilometres away. And it was now packed: people, ski bags, the thirst for beer in the air. The bar was overflowing with customers. Rantanen headed straight for the counter.

Driving by myself, the steering wheel felt colder in my hands and the road back to the village seemed all the longer. Darkness wrapped its fist round the car and I found myself involuntarily thinking of my last argument with Pauliina. The car lurched to one side as I reached under the seatbelt and rummaged in my jacket and trouser pockets for my phone. I scrolled down the log of calls to find Pauliina’s 19number. She answered almost instantly. After the standard greetings, the line fell silent. Both of us were waiting for the other to take the initiative, to cross the icy chasm between us. I was already surrounded by frozen weather and decided I might as well take the leap into the unknown place our relationship had become during the last twelve months.

‘How are you doing?’ I asked and realised that my tone of voice sounded as though I was talking to a distant acquaintance.

‘I’m at work,’ said Pauliina. ‘It’ll soon be time to pick up Ella.’

The silences between us felt unavoidable. The beams of my headlights ate up the snow-covered road.

‘I’m in Suomalahti,’ I said. ‘We paid a visit to the mine.’

‘Have you paid Ella’s nursery fees?’

I stared at the landscape ahead. ‘I’ll do it when I get to the hotel.’

‘They were due last week.’

As if I didn’t know.

‘I’ll take care of it.’

‘Like you took care of the shopping before you left town?’

I could visualise the almost empty fridge, the forgotten shopping list on the kitchen table. There were eight hundred kilometres between me and them, yet they stood before me now, as tall as mountains. I pressed the phone to my ear and listened to the buzz of the PR office in the background.

‘It’s nice to know we’re important to you,’ said Pauliina.

‘Come on.’

‘It’s not me. You bring this on yourself.’

‘This trip came up suddenly.’

‘They always do.’

‘I’m working.’

‘Emphasis on the word I.’

‘At least I haven’t sold out to corporate giants.’

Pauliina sighed. Then silence again. Or not quite. I could hear the disappointment humming across the universe.

20‘Well, I think I’ll get back to selling myself then,’ she said. ‘So we can afford to pay the nursery fees and put food in the fridge. Your idealism doesn’t seem to make that happen.’

I couldn’t remember when things had become this bad. We’d met three years ago, and Ella was born a year later. Now we’d reached the point where we could barely agree on anything. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d laughed together or shared a joke. Pauliina accused me of concentrating solely on my work and said I neglected everything else, particularly my family. I accused her of abandoning journalism and moving to the dark side, which was what we at the newspaper’s editorial office called consultants, and communications and PR officers. We had good reason. Most of Pauliina’s work involved making black look white. It wasn’t out-and-out lying, but it meant using your journalistic skills to manipulate the facts and distract your audience. When we argued, I asked her when she was going to tell our daughter that her mother was up for sale. Pauliina replied by saying she’d tell her as soon as her father managed to pull his head out of his sanctimonious arse and realise that seeking out the truth didn’t mean masturbating at the thought of my imagined superiority, and that everything I’d ever done I’d done for myself and not for a single noble cause. Our arguments, which at first had always ended with torrid make-up sex, were now like black mud into which we sank a little further each time.

I arrived back in the village of Suomalahti. I drove past the supermarket, the hairdresser-cum-massage-parlour and a pub called The Pit. From the windows on the upper floor of the two-storey prefabricated hotel building you could see over the stone wall running round the church and into the old cemetery. Perhaps this was to comfort the guests: if you stayed here long enough, there was always a final resting place.

I hadn’t booked a room in advance. It turned out I should have done so; all eight rooms were taken.

I returned to the car and sat with the engine running. The heater beneath the seat was pretty ineffective. While my toes were tingling 21from the cold, my backside was burning. The dial showed I was almost out of petrol and snow spinning from the sky built up on the bonnet.

It was a quarter to five in the evening. Judging by the dark forecourt, the illuminated red-wooden church and the emptiness around me, you might have thought it was later. Hutrila, our editor-in-chief, would call me within the hour. I knew this, though we hadn’t agreed anything beforehand. Hutrila had recently remarried and had become a father again, and he liked to clear his desk early in the evening. This habit annoyed people. Members of our team said he was always in a rush and called him Hurrila, which certainly didn’t do anything to lighten the general mood in the editorial department of a paper that was already beset with financial woes.

Snow crunched beneath the tyres as I slowly pulled out of the hotel drive. The red light of the petrol dial was staring at me furiously. I didn’t know why I bothered flashing the indicator as I accelerated and turned into the main street. Illuminated windows here and there; signs of life.

The lights of the petrol station flickered in the distance. Two pumps, a roof above them and a mechanic’s workshop. Only as I pulled up to the pump did I notice what looked like a small bar or café to the right of the forecourt – two large windows from which a gentle light spilled on to the even, unploughed snow outside. I filled the tank. The pump’s handle was so cold, it ate into my hand, gnawed my fingers to shreds and then spat them out, numb. I closed the fuel cap and walked up to the door.

There was a thin line between the café and the drivers’ break room. Where did one end and the other begin? The distinguishing features of the break room were its general shabbiness and the belongings left lying around: a manly power drill with a set of bits on a table; two people’s plates, cutlery, napkins and glasses of dried milk on another. A third table was empty, but it was wobbly. At the café end of the space was a tall counter complete with pots of coffee and a vitrine displaying pastries, and behind that you could see a section of the kitchen, flooded with fluorescent light. Directly in front of me, 22opposite the front door, was the door into the toilets. The blackness of the area around the handle revealed this was in heavy use.

The man sitting at the wobbly table looked up.

‘You paying for petrol?’ he asked, and scratched his chin.

‘I could try.’

‘Over there,’ the man nodded.

I looked at the unmanned counter. ‘Okay.’

Once I had reached the cash register the man stood up, the legs of his chair screeching across the floor, walked behind me and round to the other side of the counter.

‘Pump number one. A hundred and eight euros and thirty cents. Anything else?’

I glanced at the pastries on display, then at the coffee pot. Five minutes. It might perk me up. I could phone around for a hotel room. I added a coffee and bun to my bill, carried them over to the table with the power drill and sat down to sort myself out.

My phone wouldn’t work; there was no signal. The coffee stung my gums; the bun felt scratchy and dry. The drill was pointing towards my stomach and it was snowing again.

I turned to the man. ‘Sorry, can I bother you for a minute?’

The man looked up as though he’d been reading a paper. Except the table was empty.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘My phone won’t work. I’m looking for a hotel…’

‘Opposite the church.’

‘It’s fully booked. Is there another…?’

‘No. But if you drive a bit further, you’ll find something.’

‘Which direction?’

‘You go that way, turn right and drive about seven kilometres until you reach the sign for Koitaniemi; take the turning and drive a few kilometres and you’ll find the Casino in Varpainen.’

‘Casino?’

‘It’s a summer place. They call it the Casino. These days it’s open in the winter too. Because of this mining business.’

23‘Talking of the mine … I’m a reporter. Janne Vuori, HelsinkiToday.’

A new expression spread across the man’s pocked face. Perhaps it was curiosity. ‘Something to do with those activists, is it?’

My face must have been just inquisitive enough. The angular, fifty-year-old man leaned back in his chair.

‘I mean, they were from Helsinki too. Pulled up here, filled their tank, ordered a cup of tea and sat here eating their own packed lunch even though we had hot pot out the back. I listened to them while they were talking; made me think it won’t be long before things start happening round here.’

‘Before what starts happening?’

‘Something they were cooking up together. You know, the way they were talking about the mine.’

‘What way were they talking?’

The man glanced outside and I instinctively did the same. The lights in the forecourt turned the snow yellow.

‘The way these people usually talk. They say a lot but they don’t know what they’re talking about. And I recognised one of them – from his picture in the paper. Blue hair. What kind of man has blue hair, eh? Environmental activist or not.’

‘When was this?’ I asked.

‘A week ago, week and a half, maybe.’

‘How many of them were there?’

‘One woman, three men. I’d better not tell you what I thought of them.’

‘How old were they?’

‘In their thirties. Seems that’s why you’re here, after all.’

The man might have been right. I’d be sent a tip-off and I was following it.

‘I’m writing an article about the mine,’ I said, trying to change the subject.

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

24The man tilted his head. ‘Is that what you lot live off down south? Traipse round the country, talking a lot of waffle? It doesn’t seem right in the head to me. You got family?’

‘A wife and daughter.’

‘Proud of you, are they?’

The garage owner’s estimate of seven kilometres was about right. The signpost appeared just as the man had said, and I turned off towards Koitaniemi. The road narrowed, the verges of snow piled either side growing taller. Fortunately, there were no cars coming from the other direction. My phone still couldn’t find a signal. I switched the thing off and booted it up again.

I thought of the words that the garage owner had used.

The blue-haired environmental activist was someone I’d seen in the media.

Like thousands of others, I’d watched a YouTube video showing the activist’s now infamous stunt: Santtu Leikola, a thirty-year-old man with hair dyed a bright, electric blue, who had become disillusioned and rescinded his membership of Greenpeace, stared at the camera and told the world what he was about to do and why. The image was effective in its simplicity: Leikola’s pale, pocked, badly lit face; his blue, scruffy hair jutting out here and there against the black wall.

Through a series of crude, amateurish cuts, the camera followed him as he packed his equipment: a long steel pole, which could be extended and retracted like a telescope and fitted into his rucksack; a flag four metres by eight in size; a length of rope; a number of distress flares; and other associated paraphernalia. Leikola’s voice was that of a fanatic: clearly agitated and utterly humourless. I couldn’t remember his exact words but the frankness with which he made his threats and the names of those he mentioned had stayed with me. Once Leikola had shrugged the bag on to his back, the picture jumped again.

Next the viewer was in the Töölö neighbourhood, behind the Parliament House.

25The camera moved jerkily as the activists (for there must have been at least two of them) climbed on to the roof of the Parliament. Once they were there, the image stabilised. In the background, the winter sun hung in the cloudless sky above the city. Leikola took a power drill from his rucksack and attached the telescopic flagpole to the ventilation shaft with a set of long steel screws. The pole was attached firmly, and, from watching his movements thus far, you could tell Leikola was quick and strong, and good with his hands. The flag was hoisted up the pole, fluttering in the brisk south-eastern wind, and then Leikola began to prepare the flares.

Again the picture jumped suddenly, and the next time we saw Leikola and the flag, the angle was completely different.

Now we were standing in the sloping garden outside the Music Centre across the street from the Parliament. The bright-yellow flag billowed and the distress flares glowed blood-red in the skies above Helsinki. nuclear waste – shut away for 1,000,000 years