Read TH02 - The Priest of Evil for Free Online Page B

another. Because of their existence and their love a son appeared, Jari, whose hoarse crying could now be heard from behind the wall and for whom the doctor was currently writing out a referral to a mental hospital.
    Harjunpää couldn’t quite understand where it had all gone wrong. Perhaps after becoming a widow Hilja Maria couldn’t understand that Jari had not been born simply to be there for her, but also for himself - and even then only for a short time. Or perhaps she truly believed she owned something: a child, a son, and through that another person’s life andfreedom. Still, Harjunpää couldn’t bring himself to believe that Hilja Maria really wished she had had a girl. It was all just talk, a way of teasing Jari.
    ‘Timo.’
    ‘Yes?’ said Harjunpää turning around.
    Rummukainen had appeared behind him and was sizing up the body, though even now he refrained from commenting on the scene in front of him.
    ‘No use talking to him. He got an injection up the arse and now they’re taking him off. Eränen’s squad is waiting downstairs and they’ll take him. Listen…’
    Only then, from the echoes, did Harjunpää realise that the crying was coming from the stairwell, and perhaps it wasn’t crying after all but an agonised wailing: like frayed steel wire, lacerating everything in its path.
    ‘OK, let’s get that dog out of here,’ Harjunpää said finally. He remembered only too well how high and how heavily the dog’s paws had thumped behind the door when he had arrived, and he had not forgotten Jari’s blind fear and his claim that the dog would go straight for the throat.
    They stopped outside the cupboard door: the smell of urine and excrement hung in the air and the tapping behind the door resounded back and forth like a distant drumming. Daddy was probably more restless now than earlier, it must have smelt and heard all the strange people in the apartment. Harjunpää instinctively brought his hand up to his throat and looked at Rummukainen. His eyes seemed uncharacteristically fixed on the floor. Even his shoulders seemed to be drooping slightly.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Harjunpää hesitated. ‘Can something like this really make a dog go mad too?’
    ‘Well, if it’s enough to make a human go mad…’
    ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. I once had to deal with a boxer dog that had eaten its dead master’s backside, but that was only out of starvation.’
    ‘Timo.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘If I tell you something, can we keep it between ourselves?’
    ‘I don’t see why not.’
    ‘You see,’ he began and raised his eyes from the floor. His expression was no longer that of a policeman carefully registering the details of aroom; this was a side of Rummukainen he’d never met before. ‘We once went to my aunt’s place in Pälkäne – I must have been about six at the time. Their garden backed on to a graveyard, you could see all the crosses and gravestones over the wall. They had an outdoor toilet back then and I used to be terrified of going out there because of this graveyard…’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Well, they had this big dog, some sort of Alsatian. It used to be a stray. And well… Once it wouldn’t let me out of the toilet. It stood there growling and baring its teeth and had me cornered up against the stone wall. I must have been there for about an hour before any of the adults noticed. And believe me I was scared.’
    For a moment both men fell silent and tried to avoid looking each other in the eye. With the tip of his shoe Rummukainen scraped dead flies into a pile. The doors of at least three cars could be heard slamming shut outside.
    ‘I can take anything else in this job, but not dogs,’ Rummukainen finally broke the silence. ‘But nobody knows that.’
    ‘And they still don’t know. Where’s your squad partner?’
    ‘Out in the car. He’s still young, almost parted company with his breakfast when we got to the door.’
    Harjunpää was silent. Part of him was still