Olli notices Greta growing more tense.
“Then the Facebook craze started spreading everywhere, starting in 2008, a little while after Cinematic Life came out,” she says quietly. “I was among the first to join, out of curiosity. And besides, now that I was a writer, there were people I needed to keep in touch with. One evening I noticed that the Blomrooses had found me.”
Greta grimaces, covers her face with her hands, and shouts, “Tabarnak! Merde! By that time I had to all intents and purposes forgotten about them. I fell apart for a little while, couldn’t sleep… Oh God… can you imagine? First they tear me to pieces as if I wasn’t even a person, and then the next time our paths cross they want to be friends on Facebook…”
Olli takes Greta in his arms and strokes her golden hair until she stops trembling.
“That must have been awful,” he whispers.
Greta nods. “I started to have nightmares about them. That horrible morning in Tourula felt so near that I couldn’t see anything else. I thought I was going crazy. I read what I wrote in my book about cinematic revenge over and over, and I decided to kill the Blomrooses.”
In March of 2008 she decided to dedicate herself to revenge, and she accepted the Blomroos siblings as Facebook friends so that she could kill them.
“I thought it was meant to be. Why else would fate have thrown them in my path like that?”
She started gathering information. She found it on the Blomrooses’ profiles, and from the Blomrooses themselves, of course. Although Anne had sought Greta out as a Facebook friend, she had apparently been too busy to answer Greta’s brief greeting or the posts on her brothers’ or Greta’s walls. Riku and Leo were more eager to exchange thoughts with her. They didn’t really discuss the Tourula days. Both men concentrated on talking nonsense and—once they had seen her photo—flirting with her.
Wow, I would totally do you, was Riku Blomroos’s comment on her photo.
Leo, on the other hand, wrote:
I recall there was something weird about you in the Tourula days, and if I remember correctly, I think I even hated you for some reason, but hey, you certainly look OK now!
Greta was pleased. She could kill them now without any qualms.
She didn’t need any added confirmation to kill Anne Blomroos. She saw Anne’s leering face and bloody drill bit every night in her dreams.
Greta continued to keep in touch, and at some point Riku mentioned in a chat that the siblings were planning to get together at Anne’s summer house. Anne, it seemed, didn’t really stay in touch with her brothers, but now she had invited them to her place, which made Riku excited and slightly nervous.
This visit intrigued her. She found out as much as she could from Richard Blomroos and, in addition to the date, found out that the summer house in question—Anne had several—was in the south of France, in Trans-en-Provence, to be precise.
But the visit was just a week away. Greta began feverish preparations.
First she needed a gun. An old acquaintance of hers who was now a Facebook friend collected guns and had in fact tried to give her a pink designer pistol that he’d got at an auction. Greta had turned it down, because she didn’t like guns. Now she called him and said that she would accept the gift after all. He was pleased, invited her over, served her dinner, and showed her how to carry and shoot the gun.
Then she rented a car to drive from slushy Paris to the other side of France.
Greta stops talking.
Olli is thoughtful for a moment and then works up the courage to ask, “Well, did you shoot them?”
Greta gives him a blank look.
“I guess you could say I did. I drove to Trans-en-Provence, found Anne’s house, and walked in with the gun in my handbag. It was a cool, cloudy afternoon. I hoped there wouldn’t be any security guards or dogs. Executives of large companies rarely go anywhere without bodyguards, but on this occasion Anne apparently wanted to meet her brothers without any outsiders present. She had no way of knowing that an extra guest was coming, and that it was someone she herself had summoned through Facebook.”
Greta continues.
I found them in the dining room. They were sitting at the table, just the three of them, drinking red wine.
I had expected to find them having a rollicking time. But Anne was pale, thin and weak. Leo and Riku were red-faced and overweight, but they were as silent as their sister. It felt like I was walking in on a family drama, and the pistol in my bag seemed stupid. Riku and Leo looked as if Anne had just given them some bad news that they were trying to absorb. They didn’t notice me even though I stood there for several minutes.
I felt a tinge of curiosity, but then I reminded myself that I was there to get revenge.
I released the safety on the pistol and walked closer to the table. They finally noticed I was there. I took aim at each of them in turn. I was trying to decide who to shoot first.
The brothers looked at me and didn’t know who I was.
Anne recognized me immediately. She said my name. “Greta,” she said softly.
She seemed to be expecting me. I aimed the gun at her forehead. She laughed drily, poured herself more wine, and took a drink. Unlike her brothers, she wasn’t afraid.
Riku and Leo were terrified, like two Oliver Hardys, and if I hadn’t hated them so much I’m sure I would have thought them endearingly silly and forgiven everything.
They asked pathetically what harm they had ever done to me, assured me that if they had somehow offended me in the past they were terribly sorry about it. They kept saying that they were sure they could make it up to me, couldn’t they? Weren’t we all old friends?…
Then Anne told them to shut up and they went quiet.
Anne said something like, “If you two idiots could so easily forget a thing like that then you deserve to die. I deserve to die, too, but at least I’ll die knowing why.”
Then she stood up, smiled with a peculiar sort of innocence and gave a little speech.
I remember it word for word.
It went like this:
“Greta, before you do what you came here to do, I just want to say that you look fantastic! I can see now that you were strong enough to survive what we did to you, and believe me when I tell you that I’m glad. Don’t get the wrong idea; I don’t want to offend you, but ever since I read your book, I’ve thought of you as a friend. I want you to know that I accept what you came here to do to us, even if these two idiots are trying to weasel out of it from sheer heartlessness and attachment to the slow continuum. We deserve to be shot. I would do it the same way myself. Cinematically. I read A Guide to the Cinematic Life and I liked it immensely; it’s very inspiring. I started planning all sorts of cinematicness for the rest of my life, but now look at me, me and my blockheaded brothers, the scoundrels in your cinematic revenge… How funny! But this is exactly how it should be. I don’t imagine that asking forgiveness will make up for anything, so I won’t ask forgiveness. But I will ask one thing.”
I nodded.
“Before you shoot me, I want to talk to Karri for a moment,” she said.
“Talk to Karri?”
Olli sits up in bed. Greta’s story started to worry him the moment the Blomrooses appeared in it, and now the story has turned considerably more worrying.