Where Have All the Young Girls Gone

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Why?” Heini asked again.

  “Forensics has to inspect your apartment. It will be sealed until tomorrow. We need to go to Jorvi now, and then I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Don’t worry, Heini. I’m here for you. The doctor and I will have to ask you some questions, but only so Samir will get the sentence he deserves.”

  When Heini didn’t answer, I grabbed a nightshirt from the closet, a purple-and-pink-striped affair from Marimekko, panties, and a pair of socks. I put them in one of the plastic bags from my kit. I also took along a toothbrush and container of moisturizer from the bathroom. Maybe the doctor would think it best for Heini to stay in the hospital overnight for observation—if there was space. We could end up having to wait hours for her to be seen.

  Heini walked behind me to my car. There were a couple of oldish men standing around next to the police vehicle. They looked disappointed when, instead of uniformed officers, two women came out of the building, one of whom was a stranger and the other of whom was concealed under her hood. There was nothing about my car that would indicate it was being used in an official capacity. Heini got in next to me and fastened her seat belt. The Friday evening traffic was flowing at its usual pace along the streets of Espoo, with people returning from their jobs, going to the store or the movies, or hurrying to meet their loved ones. None of them had a clue that the life of one person in this town would never go back to the way it had been, that time would be divided in two, before rape and after rape. Heini probably didn’t know it yet either. But I knew it all too well.

  17

  The wait at the emergency room was grueling. My worry that, by going to the bathroom at home, Heini would wash away the semen seemed ridiculous now. She had to go twice more before we got to see a doctor. I was sure she knew the drill and would be preparing herself.

  Heini told me that her brother lived nearby, so I called him from her phone. He was taken aback when, instead of his sister, a complete stranger started talking. I said that Heini had been assaulted and was at the Jorvi Hospital emergency room waiting to be seen by a doctor. The brother promised to come as soon as he could; currently he was stuck in a business meeting.

  “What happened to her? Is she going to have to stay in the hospital?”

  “She’ll have to tell you herself, and the doctor will decide whether to admit her. I can say this much: her life is not in danger and there was no serious bodily injury.”

  Heini sat in the waiting room, her eyes closed. When I asked if she wanted something to eat or drink, she just shook her head. I still got her some water and a chocolate bar from the vending machines.

  “Only two more before you,” I said when I returned. I had tried to get Heini past the line, but the response was curt: everyone had to wait their turn.

  “The doctor will probably give you sleeping medication. Just go ahead and take it, even though you might not normally. Any trouble sleeping will just make you more depressed. I know from experience.”

  My words made Heini sit up a bit.

  “What do you know? No one can know how I feel!” she yelled. She was moving from initial shock to the anger phase, and in that state, anyone would do as the target for her rage.

  “I might know.” I didn’t want to relate my own experience in a public place, where there could be inquisitive ears. Though most of the people here were too focused on their own misery to eavesdrop on us. The others waiting to be seen included an old woman coughing violently into a towel, a worn-out looking young Russian woman whose toddler was whimpering and clutching his ears in obvious pain, and a drowsy drunk with a head injury who was mumbling to himself. A guard came to check every now and then to make sure the man wasn’t making a scene. I hadn’t told the guard I was a police officer, though it would be my duty to intervene if the intoxicated man started bothering the others.

  “At the Girls Club, do you have the contact information for the rape crisis center and the Victim Support Society? Definitely get in touch with them, and you can always call me too,” I said when the patient in front of Heini, the little old lady with the cough, had been in with the doctor for fifteen minutes. Just like Heini, I’d been able to recite from memory what a sexual assault victim should do and where to get help. Even so, I still ended up carrying the pain and shame inside for a long time, although support from my peers did help to lighten the load.

  Heini’s brother arrived at the emergency room a couple of minutes before his sister was called in to see the doctor. He was a little under thirty, and despite its being Friday evening he was dressed in a dark suit, spotless black shoes, and a blue tie with a Finnish coat of arms tie tack. He looked like he belonged to a different world than Heini did. The siblings didn’t hug or touch each other, but the brother introduced himself as Kimmo and shook my hand.

  “It was good that you were with Heini. The negotiation just went on and on, and I didn’t want to tell my business partners where I needed to hurry off to. Who hurt her?”

  “We’ll talk about that soon enough,” I said just as the doctor called number forty-seven to come in.

  “Should I go with her?”

  “It would probably be best for you to wait here. Heini, I’m going to go now. You know where to find me. Your brother will wait here.”

  I’d requested that the on-call psychiatric nurse attend Heini’s physical examination. I would have wanted to be there myself, but regulations prevented it. Heini drifted into the office like an empty shell, and through the doorway I saw that in addition to a young female doctor, there was also an older woman in a nurse’s uniform. Though the gender of a health care professional was no guarantee of empathy, it was better that neither of the people examining Heini was a man.

  I asked Kimmo to come out into the hall where we could talk in private. I told him that Heini had invited an acquaintance she’d run into on the bus to her home for coffee, and that he had raped her. The perpetrator was now in police custody.

  “Who is this guy? Will he go to jail? It’s one of those ragheads, right? The ones whose sisters Heini mollycoddles over at that club of hers.” Kimmo’s switch from polished to furious was so fast that it took me a second before I managed an answer.

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘raghead.’ The initial investigation is ongoing, but the suspect is Samir Amir, a Bosnian Muslim.”

  “How could Heini have been so stupid, inviting a guy like that into her place!”

  I counted to three, then ten. I felt like grabbing his Finnish-flag-blue silk tie, but instead I directed all of my anger into my voice.

  “The worst thing you can do to your sister right now is blame her. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  Kimmo Korhonen blushed. “No, of course not. You never know about these Muslims, though. It’s not smart having anything to do with them. Heini is too naïve. I guess this will teach her.”

  No sermon I could give was likely to have any effect on Kimmo’s opinion of immigrants, so I let it be. I made him swear not to blame Heini. A rape wasn’t the victim’s fault.

  Back in my car, my hands were shaking so much that I had a hard time getting the key into the ignition. I wanted to get home, safe behind locked doors. Even though I knew the man who had injured me was in prison, the feeling of fear still overcame me, and there was no way to rationalize it away. I finally got my breathing under control, using the alternate-nostril breathing technique I had learned, and drove home.

  Once I was safely inside my house, I discussed the case over the phone with Ruuskanen. He thought that interviewing Heini Korhonen again could wait until next week. He was happy to leave it for me to do, since I was a woman, after all. We both reckoned that Ursula Honkanen would probably be too overzealous for the job, and the trainee, Jenna Ström, was still too inexperienced. There wasn’t any talk of questioning Samir Amir, because he’d sunk into a reactive psychosis.

  “Maybe he’s just trying to avoid having to take responsibility for his actions,” Ruuskanen said dubiously over the phone.r />
  “I don’t really think you can fake psychosis like that. He has an extremely traumatic past; he spent his childhood in a refugee camp. You name it, it happened there.”

  Ruuskanen just snorted. “My own father probably would have been certifiable by these new soft standards. He went to the front when he was seventeen and left one of his legs with the Russians. But he wasn’t any more traumatized than anyone else who came back from the war. He went to school and graduated in mechanical engineering. He was still entertaining his grandchildren with his prosthetic leg when he died. Our Miro always begged Gramps to take his leg off so he could show it to all his friends. No one else had a one-legged grandpa.”

  My own kids’ grandpa still had both of his legs, but his back was so sore that we finally asked a doctor to make a house call. He prescribed more pain medication and some exercises.

  “We could get you home lying down in a taxi van, but let’s wait and see how it is next week.”

  On Saturday night Antti and I decided to go into the city. My dad would be able to watch the kids, even though he couldn’t move.

  When someone from Espoo went “into the city,” it meant going to downtown Helsinki. We made a compromise: first we went to a Scarlatti piano recital, which Antti enjoyed, but to be completely honest it put me to sleep, then we ate in an Italian restaurant, and finally we rushed over to Semifinal to see to a couple of my favorite bands. Antti got caught up bouncing with me to the music, and in the taxi we made out like teenagers. It was hilarious trying to sneak into the house without waking up my dad. We managed to do it, but Iida was still awake and followed us into our bedroom, looking serious.

  “Mom, how can you go out partying when Heini was just raped!”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Everyone knows. We have an e-mail list at the Girls Club.”

  “Did Heini announce the news there?”

  “No, but someone did . . . I don’t know who. So, it’s true!”

  “Yes. We already have the perpetrator in custody, and I took Heini to the doctor.”

  “So, you knew yesterday?”

  “I have to keep my work confidential; we’ve gone over this before.”

  “What difference does that make when everyone can read about it online?”

  I was too tired to check up on that on the computer, and it took a good amount of time to calm Iida down. I sat next to her bed until 3:30 a.m., and by that time, the last of the alcohol I had drunk had disappeared from my bloodstream.

  On Sunday I didn’t get out of bed until noon, and still I felt like I hadn’t had enough sleep. Iida was still dozing as I finished my morning coffee. I went into her room and gently stroked her teased-out hair.

  “Time to get up, dear, so your sleep rhythms don’t get all out of whack.”

  She looked like a little troll, and her expression was surprisingly similar to a three-year-old woken up from a deep sleep.

  “After breakfast, I want you to show me that e-mail list. I don’t normally track your conversations online, but in this case, someone has to step in.”

  “I’ll start the computer right now if you bring me a cup of cocoa,” Iida said as she got up and stretched. The skin on her back and arms was still smooth and free of pimples, but her breasts were already womanly under her thin nightshirt. I went to make some dark hot chocolate, with very little sugar. That was how Iida liked it. My dad had succeeded in turning onto his side on the mattress on the floor and was reading the morning paper, groaning occasionally. Antti had brought him bread, coffee, and fresh juice. Taneli had gone to the morning session at the rink with a friend, whose mother had picked him up. Antti had apparently been up since the boys left. I tried not to feel guilty—one parent was enough for sending a child out for the day.

  “Heini posted it herself. Just look, Mom. Her username is HeiniK.”

  I bent over to look.

  Warning to all girls: Never let anyone even the slightest bit unfamiliar into your home. Anyone can be a rapist. Anyone can take you by surprise. Anyone can hurt you.

  And so on. Heini must have really gone haywire.

  Instead of calling her, I called Nelli Vesterinen, who was the other moderator of the e-mail list. She hadn’t checked the list since late the previous evening and was appalled to hear what had been posted there.

  “Is it true?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. You haven’t talked to Heini?”

  “No! She had Friday night off, since it was theater improv night, and we don’t really do anything together outside of work. This is terrible! Who did it?”

  I related the facts briefly, and I used the term “suspect” in reference to Samir Amir. I asked Nelli to take down the message and to delete all of the replies that had come in.

  “Should I say that someone hacked the site using Heini’s username? Heini never would have done this, upsetting the girls on purpose.”

  “Maybe not. I’ll be in touch later.”

  Iida had gone downstairs, so I stayed at the computer. I did a search of the discussion boards using Heini’s name. News of the rape was already on quite a few forums, including Suomi24, where the thread had already been cut off once, and also on the Homma anti-immigration forum. The opening post was the same on all of them:

  My name is Heini K. and I’m 29 years old. I was raped in my own home on Friday by 22-year-old Samir A., a Muslim refugee from Bosnia. I was crazy to let him into my home. I took pity on him because he needed someone who knew Serbo-Croatian. I do. It’s almost the same language as Bosnian.

  The message continued with a description of what the rapist had done to her. The username was different on every discussion thread, and none of them was HeiniK.

  I tried to get in touch with Heini, but all I got was her voice mail. I left a message asking her to call me, and I also got in touch with the cybercrime officer on duty, who would have to deal with the legality of the messages with the discussion board moderators. There wasn’t much more I could do.

  Once I’d made lunch for Taneli after he’d returned from practice, I asked Iida to go for a walk with me. It was a sunny day, which, despite how much snow there was, still exuded a feeling of spring. Chickadees sang in the trees in the yard. Jahnukainen was sleeping on the porch and lazily opened his eyes when a bird came too close. Venjamin was entertaining Norppa, the little girl next door, by running after a branch she was dragging around. He was still such a kitten, and he must have been able to feel spring in the air too. Iida and I set off in the direction opposite of the police station.

  “Thank you for telling me about what was happening online, Iida. Without you, those rumors would have been left to spread. Heini probably wasn’t herself when she shared that with everyone.”

  “I hear it was posted other places too. Someone said so on Messenger. They’re threatening to beat the person who did it if he gets free. How is that supposed to do Heini any good? Everyone just wants revenge and revenge and revenge, and it just goes on and on. Someone wrote online that we should borrow the Muslims’ tradition of blood vengeance.”

  The sun shone straight into my eyes and made them water. I recognized the anxiety and anger of puberty in Iida. The black-and-white world of childhood was forever gone for her, even though plenty of adults seemed to return to that often enough nowadays. It was easy to label and pigeonhole, to cling proudly to prejudice, no matter what reality showed you. But I guess each of us has our own mental funhouse, though looking at our delusions in the mirror is more likely to make you want to cry than to laugh.

  “Nowhere near all Muslims believe in blood vengeance. And even if some do, we shouldn’t adopt something so absurd.”

  “Maybe Dad is right: all religions are evil,” Iida said with a dramatic sigh. We arrived in the center of Kauniainen, a small town surrounded by the city of Espoo, and stopped at a kiosk to buy some salmiakki licorice. Iida especially liked the strong Turkish Pepper brand. I knew I couldn’t make my daughter forget what had happened, not Noor’s mu
rder and not Heini being raped. All I could do was be there with her and listen, and answer her questions, however imperfectly.

  On Monday morning, when I switched my work phone’s ringer on, I found that Ruuskanen had called three times and Koivu once. The latter had also sent a text message: Ruuskanen in headlines, both tabloids. Explaining why he hadn’t announced Friday rape. Papers in the case room. Come read before morning meeting.

  I’d slept in for as long as possible, so now I’d be cutting it close. Ruuskanen must have tried to call to talk about my participation in the morning meeting, but then why hadn’t he left a message? I was just glad that someone else was dealing with being the boss and under the reporters’ microscope. I managed to get dressed, drink my coffee, eat a roll, and glance at the morning headlines in fifteen minutes. It only took five minutes to get to work by bicycle, though I almost had a wreck on a puddle that had frozen overnight. The surface was so slick that even my winter tires couldn’t get any purchase.

  Akkila was just taking down a crime report when I stepped into the vestibule at the station. The complainant had had a rock thrown through a window during the night—that was as much as I managed to hear as I walked by. The case room smelled like coffee, and Puupponen was unwrapping a cheese-filled baguette.

  “I decided to have health food for breakfast today! Have you seen the papers?”

  “Give them here.”

  Ruuskanen’s mustache looked bushy; the picture was obviously a few years old and had been taken from a police yearbook. In both tabloids, the article itself was brief. Ruuskanen had been pressed on why the media hadn’t been informed about the rape on Friday in Tapiola, and Ruuskanen had replied that it hadn’t been necessary since the police already had the suspect in custody and didn’t need the public’s help in solving the crime. Another reporter had stated that the person in question was presumably a man, which Ruuskanen confirmed. Ruuskanen also said that the rape case hadn’t been made public out of a desire to protect the privacy of the victim. After this Ruuskanen was asked whether it was true that the suspect had received a permanent residency permit in Finland and had a Muslim background. Ruuskanen had answered in the affirmative but declined to comment further. The headline of one tabloid asked the question “Police Covering Up Immigrant and Refugee Crimes?” and the other proclaimed, “Woman Raped in Tapiola—Second Act of Violence by an Immigrant in Espoo This Month.”