Where Have All the Young Girls Gone

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I laughed. It appeared that everything Rahim Ezfahani had heard during his social integration course had gone in one ear and out the other, possibly because he didn’t want to learn what was being taught. It’s easier to hate when you don’t know much about what you’re hating.

  “His father, Farid, tried to calm him down when we were at the tax office. He said that the system was good, that it takes care of people, that Rahim should be thankful to the Finns, who had accepted the family. Rahim talks a lot about returning to Iran, but there aren’t any relatives there anymore. His mother didn’t make it through the refugee camp, his sister died in childbirth, and his brother-in-law was killed. The family experienced a lot of grief even before Noor’s death.”

  “Did you know Noor?”

  “I’d seen her a few times, but I’d never spoken with her. People said she was extremely smart, that she had a mind as sharp as a diamond.”

  Suddenly the door to the restroom swung open; my nose told me it was Ursula before I saw her.

  “Hey, Kallio! It looks like we might have our breakthrough!” Ursula looked triumphant, but then she noticed the interpreter and went quiet. She slipped into a stall, from which then came the sound of buttons and a belt hurriedly being undone.

  “I managed to miss your name during the introductions,” I said to the interpreter. “What is it?”

  “Gullala. It means ‘tulip.’ Did you still have something you wanted to talk about . . . Your name is Maria, right?”

  “Yes. Let’s talk later, when things settle down. I have to escort you to the lobby; you can’t get out otherwise.” It was a wonder she’d been allowed to stay in the building without anyone noticing her. Maybe the male police officers hadn’t presumed to follow her into the restroom.

  I walked Gullala down to the lobby. Business hours were over, so it was empty, and I had to let her out of the inner door. A patrolman named Akkila was drowsing at the crime reporting station between the doors. He’d been in the department since the new police station had been dedicated in 1996 and was known for his incredibly poor human relations skills. The police academy psychological tests had really failed with him, and I couldn’t understand why he of all people would be stuck out here to meet the frantic citizens who came to report break-ins and assaults.

  I went back upstairs, because I wanted to hear what Ursula had meant by a breakthrough. I finally caught up with her in the Violent Crime conference room, which was also functioning as the nexus for Noor’s murder investigation. Ruuskanen was there too; no one else was around.

  “I found two neighbors who confirmed that Rahim Ezfahani sometimes drives a gray Toyota Corolla; it’s a model from the midnineties,” Ursula was saying. “According to the database, he doesn’t have a Finnish driver’s license.”

  “Was anyone able to tell you the license plate number of this gray Corolla?”

  “Not exactly. One remembered that the first letter was a C, and the other recalled that the numbers at the end were 235, her daughter’s birthday. According to the two witnesses, the owner is ‘some Arab.’ Their words, not mine. One was a Finn and the other a Russian. I’m going to start looking for the car in the motor vehicle registry.”

  “So, you discovered that Noor’s older cousin might have a car at his disposal. Was that your breakthrough?” I asked Ursula.

  “Isn’t that enough? Was I supposed to find the murderer all by myself while the six of you sat here on your asses?”

  “I didn’t say anything about it being enough or not being enough. Of course this will affect things, especially since Rahim is one of the main suspects. It would be great if we could find that car and get Forensics working on it.”

  “If you didn’t stick your nose into things that aren’t any of your business, I’d already be looking for it,” Ursula hissed and then walked out.

  Ruuskanen stared at me with a self-satisfied look on his face.

  “You two really do love each other,” he said with a laugh.

  “Ursula is a good police officer.”

  “I still wouldn’t assign her to interview a Muslim man, or if I did, she’d have to dress down for it. I’ve felt like calling her out on her clothes more than once. She looks more like a client of the old Vice Squad than a police officer. But I’d probably get a fake nail in the eye if I tried.” Ruuskanen perched on the corner of the table. “Keep in touch with Koivu over the weekend. He’s going to find out when we can visit Mrs. Ezfahani at the hospital. Rasilainen found out some interesting things while she was walking around the Ezfahanis’ neighborhood too, and Puustjärvi is supposedly coming back from the autopsy any moment.”

  “That took long enough.”

  “Apparently the bone saw broke. Murphy’s Law. I’m going to send another statement to the media as soon as I’ve talked with Puustjärvi. If your cell doesn’t have something else going on, as far as I’m concerned you can go enjoy your weekend.”

  In a way it was a relief not to have to direct this murder investigation. At most I might need to hold the rudder sometimes and watch to make sure others kept the sails trimmed. I promised Ruuskanen that I’d be available by phone the whole weekend, and then I went back to our case room, where Puupponen and Koivu were sitting at their computers.

  “I got an e-mail from the Bosnian police,” Koivu announced.

  “About Sara Amir?”

  “Yeah. A girl named Sara Amir, born 1995, was registered for school last week in the city of Bihać. She doesn’t have a passport or any other identification papers with her. The woman who registered her for school claims to be her aunt. According to her, the girl is from the countryside, and her identification papers were lost in the same fire in which the girl’s family died. There isn’t any record of a fire fitting that description, though. The police are going tomorrow to determine if this Sara Amir is the same girl who disappeared from Espoo.”

  “Tomorrow? Why not immediately? If she’s our Sara, she might just disappear again. Have you notified her parents?”

  “It probably isn’t a good idea to raise false hopes. I’m going to wait to see what our colleagues in Bosnia find out. I’m leaving now, but I’ll check my e-mail once I get home and let you know immediately if anything comes up. We should go to the hospital the moment Mrs. Ezfahani is ready to talk.” Koivu sighed deeply, logged out of the e-mail system, and turned off his computer. He removed his glasses and rubbed his face. When had such a deep furrow appeared on his forehead?

  “Say hi to Anu and the kids. I’ll be off to see my own soon too. Let’s be in touch.”

  Puupponen’s fingers were flying on the keyboard, his left hand quickly moving the mouse back and forth. “I’m looking for comments about Rahim’s gang’s throwdown with those Finns last fall. I mostly want to see if any of the commenters on the fight have usernames that match those of the people who’ve commented on Noor’s murder. That will help me judge the reliability of the rumors I’m seeing.”

  “Is there anything new or interesting?”

  “Nothing earth shattering. The online rumor mill thinks the family is guilty. I’d be willing to bet that the username ‘In Memory of Noor’ is either Tuomas Soivio or one of his good friends, since he knows so many details about how he ended up at the police station. At least he has the sense not to post the names of the officers who questioned him. I’m going to go through these one more time. What do you think? Would it be a good idea to throw some bait into the net, add a little bad information?”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, say for example that Noor was seen getting into a gray Corolla—I heard about Ursula’s find. Maybe that would spawn something.”

  “Don’t say anything about the Corolla if you want us to find it. Ursula is looking for it right now. And besides, you’d need the lead investigator’s permission to plant any false rumors, like you would for an undercover drug buy. Are you going to be hanging around here long?”

  “As long as I need to. I’m not in a hurry to get home.”
/>   “OK. Well, have a good weekend.”

  I stopped by my office, put my family pictures back on the desk, and then left. A familiar figure stood at the bus stop closest to my house: my father. Ever frugal, he had wanted to ride the bus to Helsinki instead of taking a cab. He was staring fixedly in the direction the bus would arrive from, which was opposite the direction I was coming from, so he didn’t notice me. He looked strangely frail in his knee-length, dark-gray winter coat and blue brimmed hat.

  My dad had always been a very strong man. He wasn’t especially tall, but he was well muscled and, at my uncle Pena’s farm, had been able to lift shockingly heavy sacks and logs like they were nothing. My mother, on the other hand, had barely been able to carry two full water pails from the summer kitchen to the barn.

  As a little girl I’d admired my father’s strength and wanted to be just like him. I’d worked hard to follow in his footsteps. Now I looked back on my bravado with amusement. I’d spent so much time trying to prove that I was just as good as the boys. But my desperate desire to keep up had been a sign of how little I valued my own gender. Had my father demanded that of me? There probably wasn’t an easy answer to that question.

  “Hi.” Dad jumped at my voice. He obviously hadn’t heard me approach. “When is the bus supposed to come?”

  “Antti said it should be here in a few minutes. I like to be early, since you never know about these things.”

  “So, Antti is at home?”

  “He came home early, at three thirty. He’s cooking some sort of bread. Starts with an f.”

  “Focaccia. Yum.”

  “How was your day at work? Any progress?”

  “A little.”

  “The news at noon said there had been an attack on that police academy of yours in Afghanistan. At least three students were killed. Hopefully no one you knew. Here comes the bus!”

  I watched as Dad climbed aboard and then let the weight of that news wash over me. I felt like running to the nearest computer to look it up. If the first report said three people died, it was likely the actual total was much larger. The strike wasn’t a surprise—there had been danger in the air since the school opened. Of course the drug lords didn’t like that we were trying to create a force in the country that would threaten their operations. Some of them funded the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and when you captured one bad guy, two always popped up in his place.

  At home it smelled like rosemary and garlic. Taneli was helping his father make a salad, and I couldn’t see Iida. I went into the bedroom to turn on my computer, and while I was waiting for it to come to life, I took out my jewelry box, which still had Ulrike’s necklace in it. I got it out and carefully inspected every detail, searching for seams or cracks that would reveal something hidden inside. I didn’t find anything. After thinking for a moment, I took out my smallest jewelry box, which had once had a pair of earrings in it. The necklace just barely fit. I fetched some cotton balls from the bathroom and lined the box with them. Then I wrapped it in newspaper and a plastic bag and put the whole assemblage in an empty ice cream container. I stuck a label on the top and wrote Mushrooms and a date in September on it. I showed the container to Antti in the kitchen.

  “I’m putting this in the freezer. Don’t ask why.”

  “Why?” Antti said anyway, but I had already gone back into the bedroom, where the computer had finally booted. I clicked my way to the Finnish Broadcasting news site: “Bomb Attack at Finland-Supported Police Academy in Afghanistan. At Least Three Students Killed.” The picture that showed the familiar building looked, based on the season, like it had been taken just after the school opened. The article was brief, and I didn’t find anything more on the NBC, BBC, or New York Times sites.

  I dashed off a quick e-mail to Muna, Uzuri, and Sayeda, though the attack could have destroyed the school’s Internet connection. I wanted to do more, but I was thousands of miles away and utterly powerless. I dug out the ten-afghani bill I’d been carrying around as a memento. The banknote was decorated with a greenish-brown picture of a palace and an edifice that looked for all the world like a European triumphal arch. I looked at the money for a moment and then put it in my drawer. I’d been saving it in case I went back to Afghanistan someday. I didn’t know if I would ever be up to that again.

  Then it was time for dinner. Antti had made Italian fish stew, pistou, and the focaccia my dad had mentioned. On a normal Friday night, I would have joined him for a glass of white wine, but because of the news about the explosion I felt like I was on standby. Iida asked about the investigation into Noor’s killing, but I couldn’t tell her anything more than that the work was coming along.

  When my phone rang at seven thirty, I knew immediately that it couldn’t mean anything good. I couldn’t put my phone on silent, because someone from work might call. Lauri Vala’s name flashed on the display. Shit.

  “Why aren’t you answering?” Taneli asked, and Jahnukainen stared disapprovingly at the device, which was playing a riff from Juice Leskinen’s “Police Academy” as its ringtone. Puupponen had put it on my phone during a boozy night the previous summer, when he and I and the Koivus had been on a pub crawl around Helsinki.

  “Not interested.” Finally, the noise stopped, but then the voice mail notification chime sounded. Jahnukainen started rubbing against my legs. I looked under the sofa to find one of his toy mice on a string and started playing with him. Venjamin got up from his lounging spot by the fireplace, which for once was spick-and-span because my father had not only vacuumed but scrubbed it. The cats soon lost interest in the mouse and instead started fighting with each other. Whenever they noticed a person was watching, they would stop, looking sheepish, but after a moment go right back to their play.

  When my cell phone rang again, my first thought was that Vala was a persistent bastard, but the call wasn’t coming from his number. The number looked familiar, though it wasn’t a police number, so I answered.

  “Hi, it’s Tuomas Soivio. I have Rahim Ezfahani here, and he just admitted that he strangled Noor. Come pick him up before I kill him.”

  12

  “Tuomas, where are you calling from?”

  “From the forest near Noor’s building.”

  “And Rahim is there too, right?”

  “He’s right over there, handcuffed to a tree and whining. He’s probably afraid of this knife. I could cut off his balls.”

  “Tell me the address.”

  “I don’t know! The patch of forest behind the bus stop west of Noor’s building. He admitted that he killed Noor. Take him to jail.”

  “OK, I’ll be right there. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  I called for backup and got moving. I found Noor’s building on the GPS. I remembered more or less what woods Tuomas meant. The patrol car got there before I did; Himanen and Sutinen happened to be on duty again, and they told me where to find them. When I arrived on scene, I found Rahim shackled to a pine tree with his limbs around the trunk. Tuomas was holding a knife to his neck, and Himanen and Sutinen were trying to convince him to back away from Rahim. To top it off, inquisitive bystanders had started to gather—the tree was next to a popular walking path. We weren’t very far from the place where a murderer had once threatened to kill me if I wouldn’t agree to cooperate with him. I tried to push those memories to the back of my mind. Now the most important thing was to get Rahim and Tuomas out of this situation. Both seemed like they were out of their minds. Rahim was muttering something in Persian—I couldn’t tell if it was a prayer or a curse. Tuomas was crying and ranting and raving.

  “I’m going to say this one more time, Tuomas: give me the knife. There’s already plenty for us to charge you with: assault with a deadly weapon, unlawful detention, and brandishing an edged weapon in a public place. Don’t add resisting arrest and assaulting an officer to that list,” Himanen said. Sutinen and Himanen had weapons, but using them in this situation would have been too risky.

  “I want him to repeat what he just admit
ted to me. That he killed Noor because his future wife was dating an infidel. But you wouldn’t have gotten to have Noor first anyway, you fucking pig! She lost her virginity to me in December. Suck on that!”

  Rahim’s next words sounded like a curse. I looked at these two young men who were doing their best to ruin their lives, all for the sake of anger and revenge. The world was full of armies of frustrated teenagers, blinded by hate, who were easy to goad into fighting senseless wars. All you had to do was promise them honor, eternal life, or endless sex.

  “Sutinen, call for backup to help get the bystanders under control. Tuomas, I’m going to come closer now. I want you to throw the knife at my feet. You aren’t stupid. I’m sure you understand that any confession you get out of him using violence won’t carry any weight in court. It’s the police’s job to get guilty people to confess, not amateurs like you.”

  I tried to keep my voice calm, even though I was on edge too. Vigilante justice was the last thing our investigation needed. The media had stayed more or less objective up to this point, but we wouldn’t be able to count on that going forward. This little duel was guaranteed to lead to more gang fights, and each act of vengeance would be more brutal than the last.

  I started to inch closer to Tuomas. I didn’t think he had it in him to stab a police officer. And, in any case, it was unlikely a young man like Tuomas would consider a middle-aged woman like me to be a physical threat. I was nearly a foot shorter than he was. Sutinen and Himanen, both in their thirties, were the ones who represented a danger to him. I hoped my colleagues would pick up on what I was doing and move around to either side of the tree.

  More civilians had joined the crowd on the forest path, having heard the racket from the bus stop and wanting to see what real-life drama was playing out on their doorsteps this evening.

  “Don’t you flatfoots have your peashooters with you?” an old man yelled, making some of the other onlookers burst into laughter.