We arranged to go on Wednesday. At home it smelled like lasagna. To my great relief, Antti wasn’t sulking, and Iida was proud of the table she’d set and the napkins she’d folded into bunny ears. The joy infected me too, and I put out of my mind the fact that interviewing Suuronen had been pointless.
On Monday morning there was a message waiting on my desk saying that the forensic team had found ten bullets in the lake. Some of them were obviously old, but all of them had been sent to the lab.
Puupponen and Ursula were giggling like two teenagers again in the morning meeting. Puustjärvi sat as far from them as possible, looking miserable. Koivu said he’d interviewed Sini Jääskeläinen.
“At first she claimed she called her father on their landline. When I told her there was no such call in the house phone records, she tried to claim she has a special cell number that doesn’t show up. That isn’t true either. I asked her to come in today at ten to give her a little time to think. She’s obviously lying. Either to protect her father or—”
“Herself,” Ursula said. “Don’t write her off just because she’s sixteen. Have you checked if she or one of her friends has a moped? A lot of girls do now, at least if their parents have money.”
“Good observation, Ursula,” I said. “So far we’ve only been focusing on cars. Will you check that and also what flight Jouko Suuronen arrived on the day of the murder? Puustjärvi, what’s new with the cars?”
“We’re cross-checking all the suspects’ vehicles. We haven’t had any hits, but we’re still working on it. There was one moped spotted near the lake, but it was just an old guy who fishes there,” Puustjärvi said. “I was thinking about interviewing a few more people this afternoon. Can you go with me, Ursula?”
“Ville and I are going to talk to Hackman’s old coworkers from when she was in TV,” Ursula replied and flashed Puustjärvi a smile that made him blush.
“The only connection between the moose hunters and Hackman is that one of them went to elementary school with Hackman’s first husband. And that first husband lives in Singapore. So that’s a dead end too,” Puustjärvi said bitterly. Even though we knew Hackman hadn’t been shot with a moose rifle, I had wanted Puustjärvi to look into any ties to make sure. I wasn’t surprised there was nothing.
Kervinen’s gunpowder test results hadn’t come back yet, and his phone records showed no calls on Tuesday night. But on Monday he had called Hackman’s cell phone. One of the last calls Hackman received on Tuesday had come from a pay phone at the Kirkkonummi train station. For all we knew, that had been Kervinen too.
After the meeting I went to Koivu’s office to review a pretrial report for another case that was headed to the prosecutor. Koivu had done good work. A little before ten, the duty officer downstairs called and asked Koivu to come escort Sini Jääskeläinen up.
“I’ll look through the rest of this quickly while you go get the girl,” I said to Koivu. The parties in the case were a mother and her fifteen-year-old daughter, whom she’d been beating for years. At the girl’s own request she’d finally been placed with a foster family, and now she wanted her mother charged with aggravated abuse. I stared at the report wondering at the mother’s ingenuity in always finding new ways to torture her child. The girl should have been taken away years earlier.
The sobbing was audible before the door even opened. Sini Jääskeläinen walked in to Koivu’s office and collapsed in his chair.
“Completely hysterical,” Koivu whispered to me. “Stay if you can. Apparently she was crying when she got here. Should we call her dad?”
“Sini,” I said cautiously and touched her arm. “Sini, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Sini lifted her face from her hands and looked at me, then broke into even louder wails. I could only barely make out the halting words among the tears.
“Will I go to jail? I’m already sixteen.”
“For what?” I asked, finding myself fearing the answer. A few seconds passed before Sini could talk again.
“For lying to the police. Is that, like, perjury? Madde’s dad is a judge and Madde said you can go to prison for perjury.”
Koivu gave me a feeble smile. I’m sure he was thankful that he didn’t have to try to comfort Sini alone. “So what did you lie about?” he asked with such exaggerated sweetness that it was my turn to grin.
“About talking with Dad . . . On the landline. I never call him on that phone. I tried to reach him on his cell to get him to pick me up from aerobics, but he didn’t answer and neither did Annukka. So I went with Laura to McDonald’s to hang out. I thought it was weird Dad didn’t answer. He always answers when I call, and his battery is never dead.”
“Did your father’s voice mail pick up?”
“No. The phone just rang and rang and rang. And when I tried Annukka it just said ‘the number you dialed cannot be reached.’ Where will I go if it is Dad . . . ?”
Sini’s mother, Marjut Jääskeläinen, had died in a traffic accident when Sini was five years old. A drunk driver had driven through a yield sign right into the side of her car. Atro and Sini had lived alone for ten years. It would be no wonder if the arrival of a stepmother had triggered jealousy in Sini.
I found a little piece of grubby paper towel in my jacket pocket and handed it to the girl.
“Tell us the truth now and you won’t be charged with anything. Why do you want to protect your father?”
Sini blew her nose repeatedly, and finally I went to my office to grab a packet of tissues. I wondered if some salmiakki would calm Sini down. I always had a bag in my desk for various emergency situations. Usually I was the emergency situation, though. I grabbed the bag of licorice, but Sini didn’t want any candy. Koivu, on the contrary, grabbed three at once.
After stammering for a while, Sini finally managed to tell us what was bothering her.
“I heard Annukka talking with Hannu on Monday. They were arranging a date for Wednesday. If Dad heard about it . . .”
I asked Sini to start from the beginning. She’d come home earlier than usual on Monday and was sitting in the living room half in the dark when Annukka came in with her phone to her ear.
“She was obviously nervous, apologizing for not responding to some messages, and said they needed to meet one more time to talk through things. She suggested dinner on Wednesday at the Tapiontori Restaurant for old time’s sake. Once Hannu yelled at us from outside our living room window that he always had to pay for their meals at Tapiontori, and I remember Annukka shouting back that he should send her a bill. I don’t know what she was planning. Probably to cheat on Dad. Back in the beginning she was sleeping with both of them.”
“Did you tell your dad about the phone call?”
“No. I didn’t want him to be sad. But when Annukka hung up, I stood to show her I’d heard it all. At first she tried to downplay it, saying that she just didn’t want Hannu pining over her for the rest of his life and that he has to find someone else. That was what she was going to tell him. As if she hadn’t already said that a million times. Maybe Annukka told Dad herself, because she was afraid that I’d turn her in.”
Koivu and I exchanged glances over Sini’s head. The phone records matched her story.
“Do you happen to own a moped or a motorcycle?” Koivu asked. Sini stared at him as if he was an idiot.
“Dad has a scooter, and I drive it sometimes. Was it someone on a scooter?” Sini started crying again.
Koivu tried to change the subject, asking her about school and aerobics, and managed to slip in a few questions about Sini and Annukka’s relationship. Sini claimed that Annukka had been OK and that her father had been in a much better mood ever since he’d met her.
Outside the sun shone for the first time in weeks. The light made Sini’s face look even redder. Koivu promised to arrange for someone to take her home even though she probably should have been in school.
“So we need to come back to Jääskeläinen and Kervinen,” I said to Koivu when he retu
rned from escorting Sini downstairs. “Will you get Hannu in here by tomorrow and interrogate Jääskeläinen yourself? When did they say the gunpowder results would be ready?”
“At the end of the week. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Anu says hi. She wants to know how you convinced Antti to take paternity leave after Iida was born.”
I burst out laughing and said that it had been the contentious atmosphere in the university math department, not me, that did it. Apparently Anu wanted to get back to work. Koivu and I agreed that they’d come to our place for a visit as soon as our work calmed down a bit.
I tried to get Taskinen to join me for lunch, but it didn’t work for him so I headed downstairs to the cafeteria alone. There was space at Puustjärvi’s table, so I sat down there with my vegetable soup.
“Have you already been up to the lake?” I asked.
“I’m just leaving after lunch. I’ll go straight home from there. I have to take the rugs out to beat. Kirsi isn’t up to housework.”
“Let’s go in my car,” I suggested. Puustjärvi had started riding the train so his wife could have the car after she went on sick leave in the twenty-second week of her pregnancy.
“You’re coming too?”
“I want to see the crime scene again. Last time there was too much going on and too many people. Maybe the place will tell me something now.”
I’d always believed that murder scenes had messages for me. I tried to walk through them, placing myself in the role of the victim and the murderer. It was always fraught, but it usually helped. No one knew why Annukka Hackman had been swimming in Lake Humaljärvi on a November evening. The wet suit indicated that the swimming excursion wasn’t any sudden whimsy. For a moment I thought about borrowing one from the department’s equipment room, but I rejected the idea. Walking the shoreline would have to do.
In the car Puustjärvi said he’d talked to the residents of the nearby houses. One was absolutely sure that around four he’d seen an SUV parked on the edge of the forest. Puustjärvi had pictures with him of various SUVs, one of which matched the Smedses’ Land Rover. There were only a few dozen of that model registered in Finland. We arranged that Puustjärvi would call when he was done. I parked at the turnout where Annukka Hackman had left her car six days earlier. Despite the sunny skies, the wind was cold and whipped my hair in my face and made my eyes water. Branches swayed and grasses rustled in the wind. If the wind had been blowing this hard on Tuesday night, Annukka might not have heard someone following her. How familiar was she with these woods? A lot of city dwellers would be afraid in a dark forest, even though there were far fewer dangers here than in the middle of a brightly lit city.
There were waves on the lake, and it seemed crazy to even consider swimming in the frigid water in this lonely place. The nearest cabins, on the other side of the lake, were empty in November, and the farmhouses past the fields on the opposite side were too far away for anyone to possibly see a swimmer.
Because we didn’t know where on the lake Annukka had been swimming when she was hit, we couldn’t determine the shooter’s location. A hundred-yard range allowed too many possibilities. I started walking east from where Annukka’s clothing was found. Gradually the shore turned craggy and extremely difficult to traverse. I slipped on a moss-covered rock and fell on my back onto some lower rocks. For a moment it hurt so much I couldn’t move. Then my phone rang.
“It’s Petri. Where are you?”
“Here on these goddamn rocks!” I said and groaned. “I’ll start heading for the car. I’ll see you there.” I started back, occasionally having to clamber on all fours and feeling like a complete idiot.
Puustjärvi met me en route, and he looked chilled. “They thought the SUV they saw was a Toyota, but the witness, a sixty-year-old woman, wasn’t sure.”
“So it wasn’t a Land Rover?”
“No. Did you know the northern border of the Porkkala Naval Base went through this lake?” Puustjärvi asked.
“No. My father-in-law told me some of the local history, but it was more about down around Inkoo.”
“My mom is from Kirkkonummi, and her parents worked on the Pickala Estate and lived on the grounds. The order to leave back in ’44 was a huge blow, especially since, at first, the area was leased to the Soviets for fifty years. Mom’s parents were the same age then as I am now and thought they’d lost their house forever.”
The evacuation of the Porkkala Peninsula had also been mentioned in Annukka Hackman’s manuscript. Could her swimming the lake have something to do with that? I didn’t have time to contemplate the question further, though, as Puustjärvi’s phone rang. He glanced at the number with a strange expression on his face.
“Hi, Mirja. What? Oh no. When? To Jorvi? Are you OK with the kids?”
As he talked, Puustjärvi started striding toward the car, and all I could do was follow. My back still hurt. I heard Puustjärvi promise to make a call. Then he turned to me.
“Kirsi was taken in an ambulance to the hospital. She’s having some sort of hemorrhage. Our little Ninni almost fainted. The kids are at a neighbor’s house now.”
“I’ll take you to Jorvi.” I did a quick calculation and figured I could still make it to the day care before five. When we reached the car, Puustjärvi tried to get in on the driver’s side, even though his hands were shaking so hard he could barely open the door.
“I’m driving,” I said. “You call the hospital. We’ll put the light on top to get around the traffic. What week is Kirsi in?”
“Thirtieth.” Puustjärvi was almost crying. “I said having a bonus baby was a risk, but Kirsi still wanted one more. A woman over forty with twins. This has to be punishment . . .”
I backed the car into the road and took off much faster than was safe. Puustjärvi called Jorvi Hospital, where they said that, based on the information from the paramedics, they were preparing for an emergency C-section. They were worried about a placental abruption.
I turned onto Gesterby Road, which was paved but narrow and winding, and I had to dodge a van coming at us in the middle of the road by going a little off the pavement toward a ditch. Puustjärvi tried to call Kirsi’s cell, but all he got was voice mail.
“Dear, it’s Petri. I’m coming to the hospital. Everything will be fine,” he said into the phone, practically whimpering. When I finally reached the highway, I could see that he was now crying. Then I had to concentrate on driving. A steady line of cars flowed toward us, and a truck veered onto the wide shoulder to get past me.
“If Kirsi dies, it’s my fault . . .”
“Hardly anyone dies in childbirth in Finland, and even preemies under one kilo can be saved. And how would it be your fault when you just said it was Kirsi who wanted another child?”
“On Friday . . . Me and Ursula . . . Kirsi hasn’t wanted to in months. She says it hurts too much and she’s big and clumsy. But I still shouldn’t have. I’ve never cheated on Kirsi before. But Ursula is just so nice.”
I braked at some traffic lights, then floored it after they changed, trying to think what I could say to Puustjärvi.
“After work I went for a beer with Ursula in Tapiola. Then she said she was hungry and had some paella at home that just needed to be warmed up and asked if I wanted to join her. Stupid me, I went with her. We never even got to the paella. Oh God. I’ve been out of my mind all weekend.”
“Think about that later. Kirsi needs you now, and your children need you. All of them.” I turned onto Ring III and got stuck behind a Russian semitruck. I remembered Puustjärvi’s bleak expression during the morning meeting and Ursula giggling with Puupponen. Of course my subordinates’ private lives were none of my business—unless their misadventures threatened to ruin the working culture of the unit.
I slipped through a small opening past the Russian truck, and an oncoming car had to brake to miss us. Puustjärvi dried his eyes. I probably knew him the least of any of my subordinates. He barely ever talked about his private life or feelings. I knew he p
layed Go in a club, and that had to be a small community. Did he have trusted friends he could confide in there?
When the road turned to four lanes, I sped up to seventy-five miles an hour. We were at Jorvi less than thirty minutes after Puustjärvi had received his call. I left him at the maternity ward door, then headed for the day care, this time without the police light and carefully following the speed limit.
8
“Kervinen’s on sick leave and isn’t answering his phones,” Koivu reported in the Tuesday morning meeting. “Should I send a patrol out to get him?”
“Let’s wait until the afternoon. Maybe he’s still sleeping. How long is his sick leave?”
“Just this week.”
“Got it. Petri will be out on parental leave for a few days. His wife and twin boys are doing well given the circumstances. The babies are in the NICU. Get flower money to me today, five euros per person.”
A wave of relief seemed to wash over the room. Puustjärvi had called me the previous evening to say that the emergency C-section had gone well. Even though the babies only weighed three and a half pounds each, they had a good shot at pulling through.
Puustjärvi had asked whether he should tell his wife about Ursula. I’d advised him not to say anything for now. His wife had enough to worry about with the babies. Frankly, I wished I didn’t know about the whole mess either. Ursula seemed to be focusing her wiles on Koivu now. Before he met Anu, Koivu had been an easy mark for any woman who took a fancy to him, but I wasn’t one to judge him for it. I enjoyed a little flirting myself every now and then.
At the back of my mind there was a flash from the past that I didn’t want to think about. Instead I turned to Sasha Smeds’s biography. Ursula had read through it and seemed disappointed that it didn’t contain anything particularly sensational.
“According to Hackman, Andreas is a terrible drunk and Heli was hopeless as a socialite type of wife, but anyone could see that. Hackman only wrote good things about Sasha, to the point that it seemed like she was probably in love with him. She was a good-looking woman. Maybe she slept with Sasha. Maybe she meant to write about that, and that’s why Sasha refused to cooperate with the book anymore.”
Below the Surface Page 9