Tomi Lauri

Antero Rousku is a storeman in a paint store. His job requires raw muscle power, mixing paints and carrying house repair materials around to earn his daily bread. But the basic salary is not enough for Rousku. He also sells a lot of stuff on the side from the storeroom directly to Jylhäkorpi, a frequent visitor, bypassing company bookkeeping. Rousku's colleague in the cellar storeroom is Raninen whose life consists of work, quarreling with his wife, and lottery. Raninen wants to win the main prize but he wants to have the right numbers in exactly the order in which they appear from the lottery machine. Raninen is not the sharpest pencil in the pencil box. Rousku's freedom is threatened by his relationship to the saleswoman Karita. Rousku wants to keep a distance to the woman except in bed. Karita has decided otherwise.

In the middle of the summer holidays, the body of a drowned man with ligature marks on his wrists is recovered from Tammerkoski river. The investigation by Koskinen's team is further strained by the hit-and-run case of a dubious music manager and the mysterious Carl Friedrich. When a new body is found in Lake Näsijärvi, the connection between the victims is made clear.

Markus Viitanen, a sculptor living in Suomenlinna, has not seen his son Eero for fifteen years. When he learns of Eero's death, he sets out to find out what kind of person Eero grew up to be during his nineteen years of life, and how the nanny Katri relates to the rest of Eero's life.