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piano.’
    ‘And I saw Mutanen’s eldest son carrying the telly out of there.’
    ‘The video and the microwave ended up in the rubbish downstairs.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Harjunpää and raised his hand. ‘I’ll be contacting you and everyone else in this block either today or tomorrow. I’ll leave my card on the notice board downstairs in case anything important comes to mind. Once again, thank you.’
    He indicated for the doctor and the firemen to follow him inside, shut the door behind him and crouched down to listen. He could tell that the neighbours were finally going from the sound of their voices and footsteps becoming quieter and quieter. Then came the sound of a door closing. This was what he had wanted. It would be better as far as getting Jari out of the flat was concerned.
    ‘Living with a corpse isn’t enough to warrant sectioning him. It would be a bit extreme,’ said the doctor. He was a youngish man with a round face, but despite his age he gave off the natural authority of someone capable of rational thought and who had implicit trust in his own judgement. He walked up to the living room door, looked around for a moment, then came back.
    ‘Neither is being a transvestite.’
    ‘That has nothing to do with it,’ said Harjunpää, running his fingers through his hair – there too he found a dead fly. There was something about the doctor’s attitude that bothered him. ‘Ever since he was a little boy his mother has been telling him she had hoped for a girl and that life with a girl would have been much easier. When she died, if I’ve understood right, he thought he could bring her back to life by being a girl.’
    ‘Aha.’
    ‘He’s your typical mummy’s boy. When his mother died, everything fell apart.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘Yes, I know I’m only a policeman, but as far as I can see he’s completely incapable of looking after himself. You heard them say how he’s given away everything he owned. And just before you got here he tried to jump off the balcony. It was a close call – for me too.’
    ‘I’ll examine him,’ said the doctor. His voice was different now, there was something almost disparaging about it. He turned and marched into the living room with the firemen close behind him.
    ‘He’s been feeding the body all this time. With porridge,’ Harjunpää added, but immediately wished he hadn’t. Still, it was a fact nonetheless.
    Harjunpää decided not to follow the interview but instead crept into the corridor between the kitchen and the living room. At that moment he couldn’t hear any tapping, just heavy panting. Perhaps Daddy had sensed the new arrivals in the flat and was assessing the situation. At least Jari had been taking some care of the animal: on the floor there were a dozen or so empty tins of dog food. Harjunpää didn’t stay there for long, but quietly continued towards the bedroom door and pushed it open with the tips of his fingers.
    The body looked exactly the way he remembered it. The only thing he had forgotten was her mouth: her lips had dried away to reveal her teeth in their entirety, almost as if this grin were her final grotesque gesture to the world.
    As many times as Harjunpää had witnessed scenes like this before, this time, for some reason, he couldn’t help thinking that this used to be a living person, Hilja Maria. Once Hilja Maria had been a little baby, suckled in her mother’s arms, with everything to look forward to: life and all its beauty and horror. Maybe Hilja Maria had once been a little girl with pigtails, skipping with the other girls in the playground, the best of them all at hopscotch.
    Hilja Maria had probably been a very slim young lady who marvelled at herself, at the woman she had become, at the breathtaking power of creation that womanhood brought with it. At some point a man called Simo had appeared – the same man who had been dead for over thirty years – and they had told each other how much they loved one