E-Book, Englisch, 276 Seiten
Tuomainen The Winter Job
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-916788-83-1
Verlag: Orenda Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
The darkly funny, touching new thriller from the author of the Netflix hit LITTLE SIBERIA
E-Book, Englisch, 276 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-916788-83-1
Verlag: Orenda Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Finnish Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when we made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. In 2011, Tuomainen's third novel, The Healer, was awarded the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel and was shortlisted for the Glass Key Award. In 2013, the Finnish press crowned Tuomainen the 'King of Helsinki Noir' when Dark as My Heart was published. With a piercing and evocative style, Tuomainen was one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime-genre formula, and his poignant, dark and hilarious The Man Who Died became an international bestseller, shortlisting for the Petrona and Last Laugh Awards. Palm Beach, Finland (2018) was an immense success, with The Times calling Tuomainen 'the funniest writer in Europe', and Little Siberia (2019) was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Readers Awards, the Last Laugh Award and the CWA International Dagger, and won the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. The Rabbit Factor, the prequel to The Moose Paradox, will soon be a major motion picture starring Steve Carell for Amazon Studios.
Weitere Infos & Material
Ilmari walked through the blizzard to Kamppi, found the right bus stop, waited fifteen minutes in the freezing cold, then climbed on board the number thirty-nine bus, dipped his ten-ticket travel card – now a little softened from sitting in his pocket – into the machine and allowed it to punch the final hole in the corner. He took a seat by the window near the back of the bus and felt warm air from the heater blowing against his left shin. The bus filled up one stop at a time and started to smell of damp clothes, as the snow melted on people’s jackets, shoes and woolly hats. He got off the bus in Pitäjänmäki. The snow had gathered in trenches along the pavements of this industrial neighbourhood, so Ilmari had to fight his way through it. According to the map that he had torn out of the telephone directory, his destination was around one kilometre from the bus stop.
Ilmari trudged through the snow, thinking to himself.
When the offer had presented itself, he had leapt at it. Despite the fact that he didn’t even know the guy. He’d got the tip-off and the phone number from Riekkonen, one of his older colleagues at the sorting office. At the end of the day, he was very low on options. He couldn’t ask his parents for money for the simple reason that they never had any, except to spend on cigarettes and alcohol; they were barely able to look after themselves. And as for friends from his youth and early adulthood, they had all practically disappeared after starting families of their own. And in any case, it was unlikely they would have been able to lend an old school mate enough money to buy a piano. All in all, this job offer and the payment he would get would solve his problem. And this was why he had decided to take four days’ unpaid leave from his proper job at the post office, and why, as evening drew in, he now found himself walking towards an industrial area in northern Helsinki, only days before Christmas, his final destination: Kilpisjärvi – right at the other end of the country.
He passed various warehouses and factory buildings, most of which were unlit. It was as though the streetlamps were positioned further apart than they were downtown; the dark blind spots between the lights appeared to be getting longer. Ilmari tugged his mittens up his wrists, as the wind seemed to be targeting them with particular accuracy. Snowflakes tingled on his face, where they melted and dripped down inside his collar.
Finest Antiques & Furniture, read a faint blue-and-white neon sign, its lower edge slightly hanging off the wall. He had arrived. At first, Ilmari thought this was yet another unilluminated, two-storey, roughcast construction, until he noticed a light at the other end of the building. He walked to the window, and through the Venetian blinds he saw slices of a poster of Victoria Principal and a cluttered desk on which sat several calculators. He located the bell in the doorway, and before its sound had faded, the door opened, and the frozen air was mixed with a curious blend of aftershave and onion. Ilmari had barely introduced himself and explained why he was here when the man showed him inside.
‘Pentti Leinonen,’ said the man. ‘The finest antiques.’
Ilmari brushed the snow from his jacket and scarf, pulled the hat from his head and followed Leinonen further into the building. They went through another door into the furniture showroom. Leinonen switched on the lights, and Ilmari looked around. He saw an array of items, mostly furniture of various ages, though none of it was exactly antique, let alone of the finest quality. Some of the items were nothing more than junk: heaps of lamps, piles of rugs, stacks of paintings. He looked at the middle-aged man next to him, who smelt of Tabac and meat pasty, and only now did he notice that the man’s right eye was made of glass and stared in a slightly different direction to his left.
‘Need any furniture?’ Leinonen asked.
‘No, thank you,’ Ilmari replied.
For a moment, they stood in silence. Leinonen wasn’t the person Ilmari had spoken with on the phone, and he felt a level of relief at the thought.
‘The prices are all tax-free,’ said Leinonen.
‘I came to pick up the car,’ said Ilmari.
They stood on the spot a moment longer, then Leinonen walked off, and Ilmari followed him once again, which was obligatory as corridors the width of woodland pathways were the only routes through the clusters of junk. But what set this place apart from the woods was its smell: the odour of mould was thick and sour. Leinonen stopped, and Ilmari saw that they had reached the gable facing the road, where there was a roll-up door. And in front of the roll-up door was a van. If you could call it that.
‘I understood from our phone call,’ Ilmari began, ‘that you’d been asked to find a second-hand Fiat Ducato, or something similar.’
‘After expenses and deductions,’ said Leinonen, ‘and given the timeframe, completely out of the question. This one would have been out of the question too, if I hadn’t chipped in a bit of my own.’
Now Ilmari realised what it was about Leinonen that disturbed him. It wasn’t the combined aroma of meat and rice and perfume committing a full-frontal assault on Ilmari’s senses, or Leinonen’s eyes, with which it was impossible to make any kind of contact. It was the way he seemed to approach everything: he might not have been entirely dishonest, but this was the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to buy a second-hand car from. During their short acquaintance, Leinonen had told him he offered the finest antiques while surrounded by piles of junk, suggested a spot of tax avoidance, and now it seemed he was hiding some of the money used to acquire the van. In one instance, however, Leinonen had told the truth, and in that he was perhaps more correct than he knew.
There was no time for anything else.
The light-blue van was a Thames, a British vehicle. Ilmari wasn’t an expert, but he was relatively certain this particular model had been discontinued some time ago.
‘I put on some winter tyres for you,’ said Leinonen.
Ilmari walked around the van, checked the undercarriage and the tyres, and saw that the latter were newish, but that there was one type on one side of the van and a different type on the other, which meant they were more than likely stolen and, what’s more, from two different vehicles. Ilmari arrived at the back door, opened it and concluded that, in this respect, everything was as it should be.
That said, seeing the sofa in the back of the van was like stumbling upon the Koh-I-Noor diamond in a sweaty changing room.
Unlike everything else Ilmari had seen in this cluttered warehouse, the generous sofa squished into the back of the van really was the finest of antiques. The dark-red upholstery was opulent, the dark-brown wooden fixtures gleamed. Ilmari could easily understand how this skilfully restored sofa might be important to someone, and not only in terms of its monetary value, though naturally that must play a part. He looked at the sofa a moment longer, checked the fastenings and tightened the straps on both sides, and closed the door. Then he walked round to the driver’s side and opened the door. The keys were in the lock, the tape player looked new and everything else looked old. The driver’s seat looked as though a very heavy driver had been sitting in it for several decades. Which, of course, was entirely possible.
‘As you can see, this vehicle is specifically for long-haul journeys,’ said Leinonen. ‘I took that into account – when I heard you weren’t taking the most direct route.’
‘I’m going to stop in Ilomantsi on the way,’ said Ilmari, more to himself than to Leinonen. ‘Then Vaasa.’
‘I know a lot of people in both towns,’ said Leinonen. ‘Smashing places.’
Ilmari thought it all but certain that Leinonen had never visited either town. Without continuing the conversation, he walked around the vehicle one more time, opened the passenger door and checked the dashboard on that side. He inspected the old van’s interior for a while then took a deep breath. Very well, he thought. He would drive the van and the sofa all the way north to Kilpisjärvi, so he could buy his daughter a piano for Christmas. Everything else was of secondary importance. What did it matter if he froze, how uncomfortable the seat was or how difficult it was to drive an old English van in the harsh Finnish winter?
‘Did you bring the money?’ asked Leinonen once Ilmari had closed the door.
Ilmari walked up to him. ‘What money?’
‘Seeing as you’re renting the car,’ Leinonen added, both his eyes now avoiding direct contact.
Ilmari had only known Leinonen a matter of minutes, but he could already say that he was a man who would never stop trying his luck. The mere whiff of cash would make him try and pull a fast one.
‘That isn’t the arrangement, and you know it,’ said Ilmari. ‘You’re supposed to give...
