Where Have All the Young Girls Gone

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “S . . . sorry . . . ,” Tuomas stuttered. “I didn’t realize how tired I was. I haven’t been able to sleep.”

  “Where did you spend last night?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was there.”

  “Do you mean where Noor’s body was found?” A patrol had been on duty in the area all night because the forensic investigation was ongoing. It would be strange if they hadn’t noticed a teenager sneaking around.

  “No, that was in Olari near the school! I was in Kuitinmäki, near all the ragheads’ . . . I mean immigrants’ apartments. I sat in a swing and waited for a light to turn on in Noor’s window. But the curtains were in the way and it was dark anyway.”

  “You talk about ragheads, but you were dating a Muslim girl. So are you anti-immigrant or not?” Puupponen had leaned closer to Tuomas, and the light shining on his hair painted it carrot-red.

  “That’s just talk, you know, ragheads, towel-heads, sand niggers and all that. They talk about us the same way. Rahim called me an infidel dog. I don’t have anything against dogs or immigrants. Let whoever wants to come to Finland in, so long as they support themselves and don’t try to make us believe like them. And not all the Ezfahanis are total bums—some of them work. Or so I thought before they killed Noor. Do you know which one of them did it?”

  “We haven’t caught Noor’s murderer yet. Did members of her family directly threaten her life?”

  Tuomas didn’t answer immediately, first drinking more soda and looking over Puupponen’s head at the wall, which was blank. Over the years I’d seen people I was questioning project all sorts of internal films on empty white walls. One of the interrogation rooms used to have calming seascape pictures, but in the confusion of some remodel they’d been discarded. The police station was a stark sort of place, not meant to be hospitable. Finally, Tuomas sighed, his eyes tearing up.

  “Noor knew she could tell the police about the threats. Her family didn’t like that she was with me. But she was a minor, and they tried to forbid her. Rahim and the grandfather were infuriated that Noor knew her rights. And she said she would rather die than let herself be ordered around when she wasn’t doing anything wrong. She . . .” Tuomas paused. He closed his eyes as if that would make the tears stop flowing.

  “Why haven’t you made them confess?” he muttered, trying to catch the tears with his tongue and then wiping them away with his sleeve, leaving a smear of mud on his face.

  “What do you mean by ‘them’?” Puupponen asked.

  “Come on! Noor’s family and her relatives, of course. Haven’t I been telling you the whole time that one of them did it!”

  My phone pinged with a text message alert, followed by another. I looked at the screen. It was Liisa Rasilainen, saying she had just been called by one of Noor’s neighbors, who hadn’t been home when Liisa canvassed the neighborhood but had heard from her husband that the police wanted information about the girl. The neighbor had come home on Tuesday evening at 6:15 and passed Noor in the stairwell. She’d been crying and was barely able to say hello.

  I went out into the hallway for a moment and called Liisa, even though she was only a few floors away. The neighbor, Irina Domnina, had called after getting home from Jorvi Hospital, where she worked as a physician’s assistant. She hadn’t seen her husband, who also worked a night shift, since Noor’s death. When Igor Domnin told her that the police were interviewing Noor’s neighbors, Irina Domnina called us immediately. According to her, Noor had always been friendly and usually stopped to chat when Domnina was out walking the family’s smooth-haired Dachshund, who Noor liked a lot. This time she not only had been in a rush but was also crying. Irina Domnina had been worried but ascribed it to teenage disappointment that would quickly pass.

  “Now Domnina is blaming herself. If only she’d taken the time to talk to Noor, things might have gone differently. Noor would have stopped to chat and maybe been prevented from meeting her murderer. I’m going to see Domnina tomorrow, because I’ll be better able to judge her reliability face-to-face. But she doesn’t seem like the kind of person to go looking for attention by claiming to have been the last one to see a victim before her death.”

  “At least that confirms what the Ezfahanis said about the time Noor left home.”

  “Yeah. I would think there would have been more eyewitnesses at that time of day, though. Given how many people live in and travel through that area, we haven’t had very many sightings. We could always issue a request for assistance through the media.”

  “That’s Ruuskanen’s wheelhouse,” I responded. I didn’t bother to ask if she’d told the lead investigator what she’d just told me. I wasn’t Rasilainen’s boss.

  When I’d started working for the police, we hadn’t needed to consider the possibility that a witness might come forward out of greed or because they were seeking publicity. Career criminals built their reputations behind bars by recounting their deeds on the pages of Alibi magazine and other venerable publications, but a homicide had to be really extraordinary for the general media to interview witnesses and their mother’s brother’s dog’s former owners. Miles of column space hadn’t solved Kyllikki Saari’s murder, the Tulilahti double slaying, or the Lake Bodom tragedy, and maybe that had put a damper on crime reporting. There’d been some cases of spotlight seeking in the eighties, but they were few and far between. Back then some witnesses were downright afraid of having their names mentioned in the media. Now we constantly had to be on the lookout for the attention starved. The worst part was that some of them didn’t even care about living the rest of their lives with reputations as liars and frauds, and they had no compassion for the lives touched by a homicide. Once I’d tried to count how many people one death could touch, but I gave up in horror once I reached triple digits. In a way it was comforting, though: everyone left a mark on the world. Maybe the kids I’d seen lighting candles for Noor in the forest and singing together at the Girls Club would channel their sorrow into something that could help them heal their wounds.

  Tuomas had calmed down while I’d been away. Puupponen had turned the conversation to the hockey game between the Espoo Blues and the Oulu Ermines, which the boy planned to attend the next day. Puupponen’s team was actually KalPa from Kuopio, but apparently he also knew the Blues lineup better than the average fan. Soivio seemed to be responding mostly out of politeness—the game wasn’t the most important thing on his mind at the moment.

  “Let’s go back to Tuesday night,” I said, interrupting Puupponen as he speculated about whether the Blues would win their home match by a one- or two-goal margin. “Noor was coming to meet you in Tapiola. What mode of transportation would she have been most likely to use?”

  “Airplane. Give me a break. The only way out of there is the bus. Nineteen, thirteen, or one ninety-five. Whichever one happens to come by the stop first.”

  “Did she always use the stop closest to her apartment?”

  “How am I supposed to know? Probably.”

  Central Park wasn’t even close to the route between her home and the Girls Club. Because there was so little information about her movements after leaving home, it seemed likely that she’d caught a bus soon after leaving her family’s apartment. None of the Ezfahanis had their own car, but Noor’s father and uncle did have access to trucks. We would have to verify with the trucking company about the garage where the vehicles were stored when they weren’t being driven . . . I stopped that line of thinking; I wasn’t going to start doing Ruuskanen’s job. Of course, I would mention it to him when we met the next morning.

  I opened my briefcase and took out three pictures. First, I showed Tuomas the pictures of Ayan Ali Jussuf.

  “Do you know her?”

  “Why should I?” Tuomas had barely glanced at the picture.

  “Do you know her?”

  “No. Who is she?”

  “Ayan Ali Jussuf. She went to the Girls Club too.” Then it was Sara Amir’s tu
rn. “What about her?” Tuomas looked at this one more carefully but denied ever having seen her.

  When I took out Aziza Abdi Hasan’s picture, Tuomas reacted in a completely different way than when I’d showed him the other photographs. His expression looked confused, but then he said that he had never seen Aziza. He demanded to know why he was being shown the girls’ pictures, but I didn’t tell him. I thought it was strange that Tuomas hadn’t known Ayan. According to Heini, Noor had been aware of Ayan’s disappearance, though the girls hadn’t been connected by anything beyond religion and the Girls Club.

  We didn’t have any reason to keep Tuomas at the station, so we allowed him to call his father to come pick him up. Puupponen promised to wait for Tuomas’s father so he could verify the boy’s movements on Tuesday evening.

  I felt like leaving the car at the station and walking home, but I didn’t know if Antti would need it the next day. The evening had turned cold, and some puddles had already formed a thin layer of ice. After parking the car, I stood for a moment in our front yard and listened to the hum of the city. A few pale stars shone in the sky, but they couldn’t compete with the lights of the city. Their brightness was just a question of where you viewed them from. I hoped I’d be able to find a new perspective on Noor Ezfahani’s killing, an angle from which I could see the truth.

  9

  “Do you think I’m stupid, Kallio?” Markku Ruuskanen, in his nasal voice, practically shouted. “Of course I’ve checked whether Farid and Reza Ezfahani could have used a truck outside of business hours. The answer is no. They’re big semitrucks, which don’t fit in normal apartment building parking lots. The trucks are stored at transport centers. They’re used to haul food, so they have strict hygiene regulations. So, you can drop the truck theory. We’ve checked with the taxi services to see if any of their drivers saw the girl on Tuesday. Zero results there too.”

  “There have been cases where the taxi driver himself was the killer,” Ursula Honkanen reminded us.

  “So far nothing points in that direction. Today we’ll continue questioning the Ezfahani family, but we must consider the possibility that Ms. Ezfahani was the victim of a random attack by a stranger. Puupponen, how did Tuomas Soivio’s alibi hold up?”

  “The parents and uncle confirmed it, but you know relatives. Soivio was chatting online all night, but he could have done that from anywhere. We can’t put a whole lot of weight on that. No one saw Soivio in Noor’s neighborhood Tuesday night, but people did on Wednesday, so at least that part of his story checks out.”

  I was still inclined to believe Tuomas hadn’t killed his girlfriend, but I also suspected that he knew more than he’d told us. Other than Tuomas and Noor’s cousin, had there been other would-be suitors? It would have been in Tuomas’s best interest to tell us about someone like that.

  In addition to his own unit, Ruuskanen had called in our cell and representatives from Forensics for the morning meeting. Only Puustjärvi was missing: Ruuskanen had ordered him to observe the autopsy and report back if anything earth shattering turned up in the results. The pathologists knew how to do their jobs without us hovering over their shoulders, but it was up to the lead investigator to decide whether he wanted a member of his team present. I wasn’t at all surprised that Ruuskanen was trying to make his mark on department procedures. Anni Kuusimäki wasn’t likely to return to the role of head of the Violent Crime Unit, and Ruuskanen was already positioning himself to apply for the job.

  “What has your team found out so far, Hakkarainen?” Ruuskanen asked the representative from Forensics, who cleared his throat and clicked open a file on his laptop.

  “We’ve examined the site where the body was found, clearing the layers of snow and doing various cross-checks. Just based on that, it looks like the girl was not killed where her body was found, because there weren’t any signs of a struggle. There was evidence that someone had driven a car on the walking path after the second-to-last snowfall, so before the body was found, and according to the revised snow radar report, the last flurry was in the morning at about five thirty, and the previous one was at three. So, we can assume the body was moved to the scene at some point between those times.”

  “Have you identified the tire tracks?”

  “The tires were a basic Gislaved model that Biltema sold thousands of during a sale not too long ago. We’re not going to collar anyone based on that alone. We’re trying to analyze the wear pattern, but it’s clear the tires were more or less new. I doubt we’re going to get any solid lead from that direction.”

  “I have those same Biltema Gislaveds,” Puupponen saw fit to announce. He received an irritated glare from Ruuskanen. Then Ruuskanen’s phone rang. He answered and set the phone on the table with the speaker on. It was the most expensive smartphone on the market; there was no way the department budget could have covered it. The speaker distorted Puustjärvi’s calm voice, but it was still recognizable.

  “They’ve completed the external investigation here. They just started removing and weighing the internal organs. I came out into the hall to talk so I wouldn’t bother them,” Puustjärvi reported. Ursula winked at Puupponen, and Koivu smiled too. The autopsy had to be done, but watching it wasn’t something that even an experienced officer would enjoy.

  “The girl was five foot four and weighed 120 pounds. She had good muscle definition and clearly exercised. There were some old scars on the body, the longest of which was on the left rear thigh. It looked like a knife wound. Hard to say what caused the others. In addition, there were postmortem abrasions.”

  “So, she was moved after she died?” Ruuskanen shouted. After nearly falling off my chair in surprise, I realized that Ruuskanen must know that the speaker on his expensive gadget was junk.

  “Yeah, it looks that way. We’ll get the stomach-content analysis later, but given the degree of rigor mortis, the body was in the cold for three to six hours. That was as exact as they could get.” Puustjärvi made a dramatic pause and then continued. “She wasn’t a virgin, if that means anything.”

  “Was she circumcised?” Ursula’s voice was cool, but I could see from her eyes that this information was important to her.

  “No. There were no signs of sexual violence or semen found on her either. An obvious case of strangulation, the murder weapon being her own scarf.”

  Why had the strangler left the headscarf around her neck? Hadn’t he realized we might be able to find his DNA on it? Of course, her clothes had been checked for fibers, particles, and cells, but they wouldn’t be of any use until we found corresponding samples.

  “Was her hair dyed? Did she shave her legs or armpits, or her genital area?” Ursula asked. Ruuskanen looked appalled, though Ursula’s questions were completely relevant.

  “I didn’t notice. Should I go ask?”

  “I think details like that can wait for the final autopsy report, but make sure it gets included. So, no breakthrough so far?” Ruuskanen sounded disappointed.

  “No. Should I stay here?”

  “Finish the job.” Ruuskanen pressed the off button. He hadn’t divvied up the day’s assignments yet. It was a relief to not be responsible for organizing the entire investigation. If it were up to me, since Noor’s home had already been searched for signs of a fight, next I would have moved on to the building nearby where Noor’s grandfather Reza, her uncle, and her cousins lived. I was just opening my mouth when Koivu asked if we intended to question the entire Ezfahani clan together at the same time.

  “Puupponen said that Tuomas Soivio’s alibi can’t be considered airtight because it was confirmed only by family members. It’s the same with the Ezfahanis. Let’s put them in a room together and see if they get their wires crossed.”

  “If they do,” Ruuskanen said with a snort. “All we need now is an honor killing. What were you getting at with your questions about her hair, Honkanen?”

  “It tells us how westernized Noor was. Puupponen, Kallio, did you even ask the boyfriend if they were sl
eeping together? You better believe that matters for the investigation! If Soivio went to bed with the girl, he made her unmarriageable in these Muslims’ view. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  I studied Ursula thoughtfully. Bright red glinted on her lips, and her skin was completely free of blemishes. Her tight black sweater was conservative compared to her usual wardrobe, because it was both a turtleneck and long sleeved. Her violet suede trousers clung to her body, which was a shape most of us could only dream of. Ursula’s colleagues had grown numb to her beauty and heavy makeup, but sometimes it made people underestimate her, believing she was some bimbo who was too stupid to catch them in their lies. Had Ursula tried to hit on Ruuskanen? Had he been warned about the department vamp? I knew Taskinen had warned Ursula about sexual advances in the workplace. I’d never heard about her trying to hit on a member of the public while on duty. She knew that would get her benched.

  “The imam from the Ezfahanis’ mosque has gotten himself mixed up in the case too,” Ruuskanen said. “He called me last night demanding the body be turned over immediately. There was a dispute about the autopsy as well, but I told him that religion doesn’t trump the law in this country. The girl will be buried as soon as we’re done with the body.”

  My cell phone, which was on silent, started to blink and vibrate. I didn’t recognize the number. I thumbed in a message right away, replying that I couldn’t answer right now but asking the caller to leave me his or her name. Rasilainen was reporting on the neighbors’ stories, and the information about Noor crying as she left home probably prompted Ruuskanen to follow Koivu’s suggestion about questioning the Ezfahanis together.