Where Have All the Young Girls Gone

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Of course I would. No one can get by just knowing a little Swedish anymore.”

  “Koivu and I don’t even really know that,” Puupponen said with a groan, and at the same moment my work phone beeped with a pager code. Tuomas had arrived.

  I went downstairs. Tuomas was standing at the reception desk, clipping a visitor’s tag to his collar. He had on muddy black shoes and a black winter coat that went down to his knees. It looked too big on him. When he saw me, he flushed a deep red but still tried to meet my gaze. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and he didn’t even try to smile. He didn’t say anything beyond hello until we sat down in my office. Then he stared at his shoes for several minutes. He unbuttoned his coat but didn’t take it off.

  “What did you want to tell me?” I finally asked. “You claimed on the phone that Noor’s murder was somehow planned . . . Planned by whom?”

  “By . . . us. We don’t have a name. Or I guess Kimmo called it Operation Eye-Opener, but he was probably the only one.”

  “Kimmo? Kimmo who?”

  “Korhonen. Heini’s brother. Maybe it’s best if you just watch this video . . .” Tuomas took a thumb drive out of the breast pocket of his coat. “You should be able to open it on your computer.”

  I took the thumb drive from his hand, which was shaking like an old wino’s. I got the video to work after clicking around for a second. There weren’t any opening credits. The picture shook a little, and then it became apparent that we were in a normal Finnish living room, where a group of men in their twenties and thirties were gathered. A date from the end of the previous September showed on the screen.

  “Who are these guys?”

  “Mostly Kimmo Korhonen’s friends. A lot of them play paintball together. I’ve been with them a couple of times. I don’t know why I went to that meeting. I guess I didn’t have anything else to do that night. I had a video camera with me, because I was supposed to be doing a project for social studies class. They wouldn’t have let me tape, but I snuck it in and turned it on in the middle of things. Listen to what they’re saying.”

  “And the Somalis had another fight with some Finns in Kivenlahti,” one of the men said. “A gang of them jumped two teenagers for no reason. But the police won’t do anything, and society pays for the spear-chuckers’ defense lawyers, so they don’t get punished. I’ve had enough of this bullshit.”

  “My sister doesn’t dare go near the Espoo train station at night. If she gets off work at ten, she has to take three different buses to avoid having to be around those Muslim rapists,” a young man in a T-shirt with a Finnish lion on it added. “Do we have to take the reins because no one else will?”

  All of the men growled in agreement. The picture was still bobbing around, and the sound quality was poor, but the men’s rage was conveyed perfectly. They reminded me of the Taliban soldiers I’d met in Afghanistan—the anger that filled the room was just as explosive. Suddenly, a woman’s clear mezzo-soprano rang out over the men’s voices.

  “Hold on a second, guys! You’re saying that we need to get all these namby-pamby bleeding hearts to realize how immigrants are threatening our society. And that’s true—the only way we can we stop our nation from slipping toward Islam is to get people to see the truth. But you aren’t going to convince them by fighting with immigrants. You’ll just make the liberals see them as victims.”

  “Yeah, and then we have to give them handouts, since they can’t work because of their PTSD. Fuck me if anyone coddled my granddad after the war. He had to work construction even though he left a leg at the Svir River.” The young man in the Finnish coat of arms shirt was speaking again. He seemed familiar. I paused the video.

  “Who is that?”

  “Miro Ruuskanen. But he doesn’t play a lead role here.” Tuomas pressed play again.

  The woman, who the camera finally turned toward, didn’t let Miro Ruuskanen’s interruption bother her.

  “Exactly. But even the libtards don’t really want Sharia law here. A lot of them are Green Party feminists. They only protect the Muslims because they can use them to keep you Finnish men in your place. We have to show them what their little pets really are. They are men who don’t value women at all, who beat them and rape them when they try to integrate with Finnish society.” Heini Korhonen’s eyes shone with the passion of a true demagogue.

  “We know all that. They’re so blind.” This speaker had a refined, bookish tone and an Adam’s apple the size of an orange.

  “Opening their eyes will take effort from all of us. But it will be worth it. We’ll have to act exactly the way the bed-wetting liberals want. We’ll start befriending immigrants. We’ll get to know them. Every guy here will get an immigrant girlfriend. The more traditional the family, the better. I have a few good candidates at the Girls Club. I can help introduce you. And we women will have to make even bigger sacrifices. In a war you don’t ask what the price of victory will be.”

  Heini’s voice was impassioned, but there were skeptical murmurs among the men. The one with the educated accent raised his voice again and asked if Heini was really suggesting that they start making friends with ragheads.

  “We don’t have anything against their women, so why not? They’re kind of pretty under their veils,” a small, dimpled young man exclaimed, looking excited about the idea.

  “But they’re all circumcised. What’s the fun in that? Although, I don’t really need a girlfriend, since I already have a wife.” Kimmo Korhonen stood out from the group in his well-tailored suit. He didn’t really seem to like that his sister had suddenly taken charge of the meeting.

  “At least you know that you’ll be getting fresh, tight meat,” Miro Ruuskanen said with a laugh.

  “This plan will take time. We won’t see results immediately. And that’s exactly why it will work, if we can just keep it quiet. The operation has to be secret. Can all of you keep your mouths shut? God damn it, put that phone away!”

  Tuomas’s video ended there.

  “They didn’t realize that I was filming too, but I didn’t dare try again. That was where it started, Heini’s idea. I knew Noor from school—there was no way not to notice a girl that beautiful—and Heini said that she would be a good candidate because her family was so possessive. And the plan worked . . . perfectly . . .” Tuomas broke down in tears.

  I felt like shouting and breaking things, but my feelings didn’t have a place in this investigation. I let Tuomas sob in peace and watched the video again. “In a war you don’t ask what the price of victory will be.” Did Heini still think that? Had she only pretended to be broken?

  “So, your intent was to provoke hotheads like Rahim Ezfahani to violence and use that to turn public opinion in your favor?” I asked once Tuomas’s sobbing had stopped.

  “Yeah, we were supposed to write online and use that to influence people’s attitudes. At first Heini’s plan sounded reasonable. It just didn’t seem to work. I was really the only one who found a girlfriend, and the others started to fade away. Heini made a list of the ones we should try with. Noor was on it . . . and Ayan Ali Jussuf. And that Sara girl . . . Have they been killed too? Why hasn’t there been more talk about them? Heini was right about that, that the Espoo police only protect immigrants. Didn’t you learn anything when Ibrahim Shkupolli shot those people in the mall?”

  “So Aziza Abdi Hasan wasn’t on your list?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have the list?”

  “No. Only Heini and Kimmo have it. Kimmo has an MBA and he’s studied a little law too. He said he was going to make sure that none of us could be charged with anything. Guess how angry he was at me when I went to force Rahim to confess. But what else could I do? I couldn’t let him beat the rap for her murder. But now I’m the prisoner, probably for the rest of my life . . .”

  I sighed. This childish conspiracy was like something straight out of a video game, where everyone has six lives and you can always start over from the beginning. Tuomas was still
a kid, of course, but he should have had some sense of what he was doing.

  “Heini gave me instructions on how to approach Noor, but after the beginning I didn’t need much help. She was a cool chick, but her homelife was screwed up. She wanted to live like the other Finnish girls. And I didn’t realize how much I really loved her until it was too late. I didn’t believe they’d really do it, no matter how crazy they are. After a couple of months of dating, I didn’t remember anymore what the original purpose had been. I just wanted to be with her.” Tuomas wiped his nose on the sleeve of his coat. “Heini told Noor that the best way to get rid of Rahim and his plans to marry her was to tell him that she wasn’t a virgin anymore. And that made him kill her! Why am I such a fucking idiot!” Tuomas slammed his fists against his head.

  “You did succeed at getting people talking. The Internet is full of calls for a lynching, and Rahim’s time in prison is going to be hell on earth if I know that part of society as well as I think I do.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for him at all. He’s a total shithead. Maybe he would have killed Noor anyway, because she wasn’t willing to marry him. I should have just taken her away from him. Maybe I could have asked her to come live with us!”

  “Will you tell me the names of everyone who participated in your meetings and this ‘operation’?” We might have been able to charge the group with incitement to racial hatred, but if the only evidence was a few minutes of poor-quality video and Tuomas’s story, there probably wouldn’t be any prosecutions. We would have to question Heini Korhonen regardless, and before we did that we needed as much information as we could collect.

  Tuomas listed about a dozen names. Besides Miro Ruuskanen, none of them were familiar from work or elsewhere. In addition to Heini Korhonen, there was another woman in the group, a girl named Pia who was the girlfriend of Jasu, the one with the fancy accent.

  “Does your attorney, Kristian Ljungberg, know about this?” I asked Tuomas.

  “No. Why would I have told him?”

  “In court Kristian should be able to shift the blame for Rahim’s kidnapping from you to Heini. He isn’t a bad lawyer, even though what he says about me is a load of bull.”

  “I want to die. I want to go where Noor is. I don’t deserve to live,” Tuomas said, heaving a sigh.

  “Don’t go ruining any more people’s lives now. You’re right, you’ve been an idiot. But it’s good you came to talk to me.”

  “Heini said that you understand the Girls Club and that you really care what happened to Ayan and Sara. That through you we could make our voice heard.”

  A hum began in my head. Heini Korhonen had wanted me to be a part of her twisted game too, because she knew that I viewed the rights of immigrant girls the same way she did. Maybe the fact that I’d danced along to her choreography and started the investigation into the missing girls had set off this chain of events. I stopped myself midthought. No, Heini had started refining her moves in the early fall, when I was still at the Police University College training Afghans. I’d just happened to cross paths with Heini through my work and Iida.

  “If I remember right, it was Jaro, the short one who laughed in the video, who tried to make friends with Ayan in the fall, but Ayan wasn’t interested, and then Jaro started badmouthing her. Heini was mad, because Jaro said that he’d only tried to hit on Ayan as a joke. Jaro told Ayan she was a fucking nigger lesbian, and Heini thought that it wasn’t a good idea to keep Jaro in the group because he was unreliable. And then the group sort of dissolved. I was the only one who continued, and I didn’t realize that I wasn’t pretending anymore, that I really was head-over-heels for Noor, and I finally got her in bed. She wanted that too.”

  Once Tuomas got going, he talked and talked about the things he and Noor had done together, about Noor’s dreams, about how Tuomas’s parents had been delighted about Noor appearing in his life, because she valued her education and encouraged Tuomas to improve his grades. I wrote down the details, becoming increasingly apprehensive. All that was missing from this mess was for Noor and Rahim’s male relatives to take revenge on Tuomas if knowledge of the provocation reached them. The cycle of hatred would only continue.

  A knock came at the door. I stood up and opened it. Koivu was waiting in the hallway. His expression turned curious when he saw Tuomas. He motioned for me to follow him. I closed the door behind me, and we went into the case room.

  “What is Tuomas Soivio doing here?” Koivu asked once the door clicked shut.

  “He came to confess.”

  “Confess what? Rahim Ezfahani murdered Noor, and the other men of the family helped hide the body. We confirmed all that again in yesterday’s interviews. Puupponen went home because he had a headache. No wonder, given the heavy stuff the Ezfahanis were telling us.”

  I repeated to Koivu what Tuomas had told me. When I got to the video about the meeting, Koivu suddenly sat down. After I was done, he sat silently for a long time before he spoke.

  “So, in a way the Ezfahanis were right. They thought Tuomas was a bully who was trying to lure Noor away from Islam. But because Noor had transgressed so seriously against all of them, they believe Rahim’s act was just, even though they understand that according to Finnish law he will have to go to prison.”

  “What were you coming to tell me?”

  “I just came to ask if you’ll have time for lunch in a couple of hours. They’re serving chicken pesto lasagna in the cafeteria, and it’s pretty damn good. Ville and me usually split an extra serving.”

  “Let’s shoot for that. I’ll come over to your office, but right now I need to keep going with this.”

  I didn’t feel like leaving Tuomas sitting alone in my office for any longer than I had to. I hadn’t shut down my computer completely, but I had left it in a state that would require a password to access anything. Although I hadn’t had time to collect much in the way of files, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him flipping through the folder that had Noor Ezfahani written on the cover. But when I returned to the room, Tuomas was sitting with his hands covering his face, crying.

  “Do you know if Noor has already been buried?” he asked when he finally regained control of his voice.

  “Last Thursday. She was buried immediately after the body was released.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a small Islamic section at the Kirkkonummi cemetery.”

  “Is there already a headstone at the grave? I have to go there; I have to get close to Noor.”

  “I don’t know. You said your mother is in Stockholm. On a business trip? And your father?”

  “He’s probably at work. He has some sort of account-balancing thing going on. Mom was a little unsure about whether she could leave now with me just lying around the house, but then she said that I’m a grown man who has to grieve in his own way. And they can’t help me. No one can.”

  The idea of putting Tuomas behind the wheel of a car was terrifying, especially if he decided to drive out to Kirkkonummi. After the intersection with the Ring III Beltway, he might meet a truck coming in the opposite direction that looked just a little too appealing.

  “I’m going to say this one more time: you have acted like an irresponsible idiot. But Rahim killed Noor, not you. And maybe with the information you’ve given me we can still find Ayan Ali Jussuf. Heini lied to her mother—I’m sure of it now. Why do you think she’s so afraid of immigrants?”

  “She isn’t afraid of immigrant women at all. She wants them to come here and be freed from the chains men and Islam put them in. That’s how I’ve understood it anyway.” Tuomas dried his eyes. “What will happen to me now?”

  “Maybe it would be a good idea for you to tell your parents and your lawyer the truth about why you started dating Noor. Leave that memory stick with me. I’ll write you a receipt for it. I’m going to have to talk with the officer in charge of the investigation. You’ll have to repeat your story for the official record. And one more thing: Was Miro Ruuskanen actively inv
olved in carrying out the plan, or did he just go to meetings?”

  “Well, he didn’t hit on any chicks, as far as I know. He mostly just hung around, listening, but he didn’t say much. I haven’t seen him around in the past few months. He’s probably trying to stay on the straight and narrow since his dad’s a cop.”

  If Miro had directly played a part in Noor’s murder and Sara’s and Ayan’s disappearances, then their investigation would have to be moved away from Ruuskanen’s unit—or at least from Ruuskanen. I had no desire to make an enemy of Markku Ruuskanen, though. The smartest thing would be to talk to him and Taskinen at the same time. Even though Taskinen might be annoyed by it, I wouldn’t warn him ahead of time and would instead just invite them both to a meeting tomorrow morning. Our cell could always act independently, of course—we weren’t under Ruuskanen’s command. I reported directly to Taskinen.

  “Sylvia’s going to kill me and Heini when she hears about this,” Tuomas said. “She probably won’t ever speak to me again, and my grandma’s going to be scolding me for the rest of her life. I guess I deserve it. Can I go look for Noor’s grave now?”

  I didn’t have a way to prevent Tuomas from leaving. I told him that he could call if the guilt became too difficult to bear and he didn’t have anyone else to talk to. He was an adult, so in theory I didn’t need to notify his parents. I would be violating Tuomas’s privacy if I did tell them, but that wasn’t relevant at the moment. He needed support. I looked up his mother’s telephone number, and when she didn’t answer I left a message asking her to call me back. As the investigation proceeded, we would need to interview Tuomas’s parents, because Noor had visited their home frequently, and Noor’s relationship with Tuomas had been the main motivation for Rahim’s attack.

  Tuomas collected himself, becoming once again the polite boy his parents had tried to raise, and he shook my hand before he left. After I’d escorted him to the lobby, I returned to the case room where Koivu was engaged in his favorite activity, drinking coffee and eating the last piece of a pastry, which, based on the smell, had been a cream cheese Danish.