Where Have All the Young Girls Gone

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Are you able to move at all?”

  “I can crawl to pi . . . to the bathroom. Walking hurts.”

  “You said you took some painkillers.”

  “A couple of two-hundred-milligram ibuprofens. They were in my coat pocket, which, luckily, was on the back of that chair. I got water from the cat’s bowl. I hope I don’t catch anything.”

  “Let’s put some pain gel on your back. What about going to see a doctor?”

  “Nothing is going to help but time. Of course, something like this just had to happen!”

  I massaged the medicated cream into my father’s back. He took it calmly, but he started to have trouble when Iida asked to serve him his soup. She didn’t understand how much pain her grandfather was in and that many motions were impossible for him. A shot of whiskey would have made it easier to bear, but booze and pain medication were a dangerous combination for an old man.

  I made chanterelle risotto for the family and also cooked some hot dogs for Taneli, who thought that a real meal had to include meat. While I was cooking, a text message came from Puupponen.

  I wasted three hours and then got to talk to Sara Amir’s dad. He finally admitted that she had been sent to Bosnia because she was safer there than here. When I asked safe from what, he said from men. He didn’t feel like her whereabouts were any business of the Finnish authorities, but I’m going to figure out when and how she left the country once I can get a Serbo-Croatian interpreter.

  At five to eight I was waiting for Vala at the police station, inside the outer doors. The parking lot was almost empty, so I recognized him in his car when he pulled into the lot, parking as close as possible to the door. It was raining gently, and I had on rubber boots and a hooded raincoat. I’d pulled my hair up in a bun, put on my ugliest and loosest wool sweater, and carefully washed off all my makeup.

  When Vala started walking from the car, I saw that he had a long, thin object in his hand. It was a rose wrapped in cellophane, and as he came closer, I saw that it was bloodred. I opened the door, and he extended the rose.

  “Happy Women’s Day, Detective Kallio. Are we finally going to start speaking the same language?”

  “That depends on what language that is.” I accepted the rose but didn’t open the packaging. I’d always hated International Women’s Day, which to me seemed like an import that epitomized Soviet-style subordination: on one day women get roses, but the next day they have a double workload waiting at home and the collective farm.

  I took Vala to our case room, leaving the rose next to the coffee machine and deciding to forget it. I looked at Aziza, staring at me from the wall. She’d been illiterate until she was fourteen. I pointed to her.

  “Do you recognize her?”

  Vala had sat down in a chair from which he could see the case wall. He glanced at the picture first quickly, but then perked up, inspecting it carefully before answering.

  “At first you think that everyone in a headscarf looks the same. They aren’t even women, just forbidden fruit. Then you start to notice the differences. I doubt I’ve ever seen her in the flesh, and why would I have? Why would Issa Omar’s fiancée be in my circle of acquaintances? Obviously, you’re only finding out her true identity now.”

  Other officers had interviewed Aziza’s family, so I’d never met them. The family claimed that Aziza had left with her young uncle over the Christmas holiday for Sweden, but she’d never arrived. Had Aziza’s “uncle” been Issa Omar?

  “Who knows that Omar Jussuf has connections to Finland?”

  “I don’t know that Jussuf does. Issa does, though. Strange that the Security Intelligence Service wouldn’t inform the local police. The spy boys probably had a good laugh when they read in the paper that the fate of the missing immigrant girls in Espoo wasn’t connected to Noor whatever-her-name-was’s murder. Aziza doesn’t have anything to do with those other girls. She’s a shield whose job is to make it easier for Issa Omar to move from one country to another.”

  I didn’t know if Vala was just talking out of his ass, but the e-mail I’d gotten from Uzuri seemed to support his claim. Vala sat in his chair, perfectly calm. Gone was the restless motion of our previous meeting. I looked him in the eyes; his pupils were normal. Maybe I should have checked with the Ministry of Defense about whether Vala really was on leave and not discharged for psychological reasons, though they probably wouldn’t have told me anyway unless I had an official reason for knowing. Some Swedish soldiers had died in Afghanistan when an attacker dressed in a police uniform opened fire on them. Maybe he’d been on Omar Jussuf’s payroll too.

  An emergency vehicle’s siren blared, and Vala flinched. He was about to stand up but quickly realized that the alarm didn’t have anything to do with him. Over the years I’d learned not to react to sirens, unless an alert had come to my cell phone or pager right before.

  “How well did you know Ulrike Müller?” Vala asked.

  “I guess she was sort of a . . . friend. I liked her.”

  “But you didn’t know the real reason she was participating in the Afghanistan police academy project?” Vala’s voice was amused. “Apparently, she trusted you much less than she did me. Or maybe she didn’t trust me. Maybe she was just spouting off in the heat of the moment.”

  “In the heat of what moment?”

  “What, am I making you jealous? I told you that danger turns people on. At least the last night of Ulrike’s life wasn’t boring. The threat of a terror attack at the police academy on its opening day was very real, which you were obviously too naïve to realize. Ulrike did, though.”

  I listened to Vala’s self-assured voice as he related that, after the opening ceremonies, he and Ulrike had ended up in the same bed, in her room. She had fallen asleep after they made love, and Vala had gone through her things.

  “Ulrike was a police officer and a German intelligence agent. Of course, our German friends wanted to monitor what kind of new police officers were being trained for Afghanistan. Less than half of the current police force there can be trusted. No one knew whether the new recruits were clean or whether the drug lords could buy them. Ulrike admitted all of this when I pressed her after she woke up. She was amazed that the Finns didn’t understand what a big risk we were taking by participating in setting up the police academy. Or did some of us realize after all? How do I know what the real reason is for your interest in Aziza Abdi Hasan? Maybe you want to find her so you can turn her over to Issa Omar. Ulrike said that the German police believed Omar’s tentacles extended into Finland. Considering what the police get paid here, it would be no wonder if someone had been bought. Are you the mole, Kallio?”

  16

  Vala’s question was so ridiculous that I couldn’t respond with anything but a laugh.

  “For Christ’s sake, Lauri, get a grip. I’m not a mole, and Ulrike’s necklace is just a piece of jewelry. Get that through your head already.”

  “What are you more offended by, that Ulrike wasn’t honest with you, or that I doubt you?”

  I answered that I wasn’t offended about anything. Ulrike was dead, so Vala could claim anything he wanted about her.

  “You’ve been there, in Afghanistan. You know what it’s like. Finland is at war, no matter what the government says. Each momentary success in negotiating with one faction is followed immediately by a strike from another. The Taliban are fluffy little lambs compared to the drug lords. Drug runners aren’t even bound by religious law. In Finland we imagine that if we play along nicely, we won’t be touched. That’s not how it works!”

  Vala leaned toward me and grabbed my wrist. I felt like breaking away, but that would have seemed weak. Still, I could feel my pulse rate rising. My brain sensed danger and was trying to warn my heart.

  “You must know what it’s like. I know you joined the police while you were still in diapers. I applied to be a peacekeeper the moment I was old enough too. It seemed so noble. Peacekeepers protect peace, they don’t fight wars. A little like freedom fig
hters taking up arms for some good cause. How naïve can a person be? But no one stays that way for long. When everyone around you is backsliding, you can’t always keep your hands clean. You look the other way when the men in the next unit use excessive force on teenage boys. Then you go whoring, even though you have no clue who the money ends up going to or whether the girls are even of age. You get so damn apathetic—and lonely.” Vala tightened his grip on my wrist. I grabbed his arm with my free hand and disengaged it.

  “I know exactly as much about Aziza as I’ve told you. I also believe she may be in danger. I still have a few shreds of idealism left, but I’m not naïve. I’m . . .”

  For a moment I was going to tell Vala about my own experiences, about my own close calls, about Ström’s suicide, about why I’d left the Espoo police, but thankfully I had the sense to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t want to be Lauri Vala’s ally, and I wasn’t the woman who could offer him comfort.

  I was only able to get him to leave after promising to tell him what we found out after meeting with Aziza’s family. Of course, Vala knew I might promise anything to get rid of him. He didn’t have an official position in the police organization or any right to demand that I cooperate with him. However, he probably did think that our shared experience near Jalalabad bound us together and obligated me to keep my word somehow.

  “I would have brought you poppies, but there aren’t any around here this time of year. The first time I saw slopes covered with red I thought, My God, how beautiful. But it’s because of those flowers that so many people are killed with so little thought. Fuck, we’re risking our lives to guard the drug lords’ property. What sense is there in that?”

  When I had been in Afghanistan, in the fall, the poppies hadn’t been blooming anymore, but crocuses had been planted near the police academy. The international community was trying to convince opium producers to switch over to saffron. Ulrike had picked one and pressed it between the pages of her notebook, staining the pages with the yellow spice.

  I didn’t want Vala to infect me with his dark outlook, so I asked him again to leave. I left for home at the same time, and in the hallway, he suddenly reminded me that I had forgotten my rose.

  “Go get it. Forgetting a gift given in goodwill brings bad luck.”

  I didn’t know where Vala had gotten that from and even less whether he really had goodwill toward me, but I promised to go back to get the flower after I escorted him to the door. There he suddenly snatched me up in his arms. It lasted longer than a normal good-bye embrace, and I was starting to think about giving him a knee to the groin, but he finally let me go.

  “Every good-bye could be forever. Take care of yourself, Kallio.”

  I didn’t have any desire to ever see Lauri Vala again. I went back for the flower, though. It may have been a cut flower, but it was still a living thing, and I didn’t want to kill it. The flower hadn’t chosen who bought it or who received it, I reasoned as I trudged toward my house with the cellophane-wrapped bundle in my hand. At home I said that the department had passed them out to all the women for Women’s Day.

  The next day I went with Koivu to meet Aziza Abdi Hasan’s family. They lived on the same block as the Wang-Koivus, and they even had common acquaintances. No one in the family was answering phone calls or text messages, so we went to ring their doorbell. No one answered.

  Suspicion of terrorism would have been enough to get a search warrant, but I wanted to have more information before I set the big wheels turning. While we were waiting at the door, I found Corporal Jere Numminen’s contact information in my phone’s e-mail archive and sent him an otherwise vague message in which I first marveled about our good luck with the roadside bomb, then told of my receiving Ulrike’s necklace from her mother, and finally asked how Major Lauri Vala was doing. The message was a shot in the dark, of course. And even if he did know something, Numminen might decide that discretion was the better part of valor.

  After waiting for a bit, we decided that no one was home. I dropped a written contact request through the mail slot.

  We had cleared up Sara Amir’s fate the previous day without any serious drama. After seeing the picture the Bosnian police had sent, Sara’s mother had admitted that she had been sent to live with relatives in Bosnia.

  “It is better for her there,” she’d said but hadn’t been willing to say anything more. Koivu had gotten in touch with Child Protective Services, who would take over the case.

  We didn’t hear anything from Aziza’s family all week. Koivu rang their doorbell every night, and a uniformed patrol stopped by a few times each day. On Thursday we decided to start going through the Border Patrol exit records. Aziza would have been caught at passport control in the airport or at the ferry terminal, but no alert had been issued for the rest of the family. So, I wasn’t surprised when I finally found that Abdi Hasan Mohammed, his wife, Selene Salim, and their underage sons, Ali Abdi Hasan and Mohammed Abdi Hasan, had traveled by boat from Turku to Stockholm on the second of March. Both boys were still required to be in their classes—they were only halfway through elementary school.

  We called the school, and the receptionist told us that the family had let them know in February that the boys would be traveling the week before winter break. They’d received permission from the principal to be away for the week, but there hadn’t been any sign of the boys after the vacation, and their homeroom teachers hadn’t had any luck contacting the family.

  “I spoke with the principal. Our son, Juuso, is in the same school, and Sennu will be going next year. The Hasan brothers are already teenagers, but they’re still attending grade school in the immigrant class. Each has different developmental problems that slow down their learning. They haven’t even learned to read properly. Apparently, the father and Aziza are the only ones in the family who know how to read and write Dari, and only Aziza understands Finnish well. According to the principal, Child Protective Services was intending to contact the family next week. But the rest of the family seems to have vanished into thin air along with Aziza. However, their residency permit is valid until the end of this year.”

  “Maybe we should take a look at their apartment. I take it there aren’t any suspicious smells coming from inside?”

  “No smell of bodies,” Koivu confirmed.

  “When you first made the connection between the missing girls, did you do thorough background checks? Did Aziza’s family members all come into the country at the same time, and were their papers in order?”

  Koivu promised to check. I filed the request for the search warrant and sent another e-mail to Uzuri. I contacted the Security Intelligence Service, but I received a curt reply that no minor by the name of Aziza Abdi Hasan was on their watchlist. The officer who answered the call refused to even discuss Issa Omar. Regardless, I was sure my call would stir things up. That was fine with me. I wasn’t looking for kudos for finding Aziza. Lately Security Intelligence had expanded its jurisdiction to include outright spying and had established units all around the world. If Omar Jussuf’s empire were to expand too close to Finland, they would be sure to know, but of course they wouldn’t be sharing information with us regular police officers.

  On Thursday there was a logjam of stabbings and domestic violence incidents in Espoo, and Ruuskanen pressured Puupponen and Koivu into helping his unit with the investigations. I kept in touch with Child Protective Services and met briefly with Sara Amir’s parents. They didn’t understand why they weren’t allowed to decide where their daughter would live. According to the Bosnian police, Sara wanted to stay in her former homeland. So what was the problem?

  On Thursday morning I also received the search warrant for Aziza’s home. Because the other members of the cell were busy with their investigations, I went over with Assi Haatainen from Forensics. In the hallway, we put on paper coveralls, shoe guards, shower-cap-like hair protectors, and disposable gloves. Haatainen had joined the department during my most recent absence. She was about thirty years old,
very energetic and decisive seeming, and spoke so much on the drive over that it actually made me dizzy.

  The building superintendent from the housing cooperative showed up just as we’d finished donning our gear. I’d heard from the co-op that Aziza’s family’s March rent had been paid, but that the family had been behind on their rent before. They hadn’t given notice. The maintenance man watched us curiously.

  “Do you have to put on those getups because you think you’re going to find bodies?”

  “Please exit the area. The possibility of contaminating the scene applies to you too,” Haatainen said firmly. She let me through the door first and then closed it in the building superintendent’s face.

  It was a two-bedroom apartment, decorated much the same as many private spaces I’d seen in Afghanistan: lots of rugs, wall hangings, and low couches and tables. There were no cloths on the tables and no beds, but there was a pile of carefully rolled sleeping rugs. There were dishes in the kitchen, but there were no hygiene products of any kind in the bathroom. The hall closet gaped open, empty. Assi began to vacuum the rugs to find hairs and fibers. I peeked into the cleaning closet, which held only a lonely looking rug beater and an almost empty package of laundry detergent. The refrigerator had been turned off. The door was open, and from inside wafted a sour, astringent lemon scent. In the cupboards, there were a few bags of black tea, an unopened package of rice, and a can of crushed tomatoes, plus a few dishes, a battered pot, a dull-looking serrated bread knife, and a few colorful plastic mugs that looked like they’d been bought at IKEA.

  In the closet in the bedroom, there were two pairs of tattered men’s-size athletic shoes and a lone black sock. In the other closet was a soccer ball. Nothing else. Either Aziza’s family lived a very austere life, or they weren’t intending to return to Finland.