Below the Surface

by Leena Lehtolainen

  Andreas’s rally career ended with his drunk-driving conviction just as he was on the verge of international success. Afterward the family focused on supporting Sasha’s career, and the results were not long in coming . . .

  My reading was interrupted by a toy car, which flew straight into my cheek so hard I felt my teeth rattle. The next car hit my forehead, and I immediately felt a headache coming on.

  “What the hell!” I charged to the door of the children’s room. Taneli grinned in satisfaction and aimed the next car at me. I raised my hand to stop him, and he flinched in fear. As I lowered my hand, I realized it was shaking.

  “Don’t throw things anymore. It hurts. Play instead.”

  Taneli glowered at me, then burst into tears. Gingerly touching my forehead, I felt the beginnings of a lump. I tried to ignore it and lure Taneli into my lap. He didn’t want to come.

  “Taneli wants Mommy to play, not read,” Iida announced.

  “Then let’s play. How about another car race? I’ll play too.”

  Gradually the game picked up momentum. One of Taneli’s cars was a Citroën, and I laughed and said the driver was the future world champion, Sasha Smeds. Iida asked if Sasha was a boy or a girl, then started asking why only men drive rally cars, even though Mom drove our car a lot more than Dad. I was happy Antti didn’t hear her.

  I didn’t get back to the Hackman papers until after the children had fallen asleep. When Antti came home, he didn’t bother complaining about me reading for work in bed—apparently walking in the sleet had calmed him down. But we still avoided touching each other.

  The title of the fifth chapter of Hackman’s book was “The Woman of His Life: Sasha and Heli.” Included with the text were several pictures, including a wedding portrait that had printed blurry. Sasha wore a tuxedo, Heli a simple long dress and no veil.

  Race-car drivers are swarmed by beautiful women, and Sasha is no exception. But his heart belongs to Heli Haapala, whom he married in 1997. The couple met when Heli, who hails from Kouvola, came to the Smeds farm as a temporary worker in 1996. Heli comes from a middle-class family that includes two younger brothers. Her father is an engineer and her mother works in a library.

  When she was young, Heli rode horses and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian, but gradually the environmental movement began to tug at her. Even though she was a city girl, she gained admittance to an agricultural program. Heli was particularly interested in organic farming. She wasn’t on the Smeds farm for more than a few months before it became apparent that she could become the lady of the house if she so desired.

  “Love at first sight? Well, almost,” Heli responds when I ask how their romance began. However, at first Heli didn’t like Sasha’s rally driving, claiming it was a waste of natural resources.

  “But when I saw how hard Sasha trained, my opinion started to change. I respect his perseverance and his will to win. A rally driver has to be in shape practically all the time, and wins are based on overall performance. It’s a very demanding sport psychologically and physically.”

  Unlike some drivers’ wives, Heli rarely watches Sasha’s races. Her responsibilities on the farm are time consuming. Heli admits that she worries about Sasha on the track, so much so that watching competitions in person is unbearable.

  “I think Sasha can concentrate on races better when he doesn’t have to worry about me. At home we aren’t a star race-car driver and his wife; we’re just two equal people.”

  Heli laughs when asked if she’s ever jealous of the women who mob her husband.

  “Posing with models and movie stars is part of Sasha’s job. I trust him.”

  Ursula was right—it was hard to find anything sensational in the manuscript. Setting the papers down next to the bed, I closed my eyes. Sleep—and dreams—came quickly. I was in a rally race, and my car was the ancient Fiat Uno Antti and I had sold when the department gave me a vehicle. I didn’t know the race course and just tried to avoid the other cars and the crowds along the sides of the road. The children were in the car too, bouncing around in the back without seat belts and screaming warnings. Suddenly the Fiat lost its brakes. I woke up just as we careened off the rocks along the shore of Lake Humaljärvi and plowed into the water.

  9

  We received the first tire tread analysis results on Wednesday. Because Puustjärvi was still on parental leave, Koivu had to review the report with the technician. Around noon he appeared in my office looking excited.

  “I think we got a hit. The Smeds have a bunch of cars, and one of them is a Land Rover, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “About a kilometer from Hackman’s car, on Mäyrä Road, we found tracks from where a Land Rover had recently parked. We’ll need a warrant to make casts of the tires.”

  “Good. That lines up with the eyewitness accounts. You have my permission to take the casts, but let’s keep this as quiet as we can. The British rally starts tomorrow, and if the media catches wind of this, we’ll get slaughtered . . . Do what you can to make everyone think this is strictly routine.”

  I felt my cheeks burn as if I was doing something illegal. Cases that pointed to influential or famous suspects could be very unpleasant—I’d had ample experience with that. The conviction from the last murder I investigated went all the way to the Supreme Court on appeal, and the process was still underway. If we found a member of the Smeds family guilty of Hackman’s murder, someone was bound to point to my husband’s environmentalist leanings and accuse me of bias.

  Annukka Hackman’s death was still in the headlines, and the papers were conducting their own investigations. Although I knew all the big-name crime reporters at least superficially, I didn’t know any of them well enough to find out what they were uncovering. In the Hackman case, a source like that would have been helpful.

  “I’ll give Forensics their marching orders,” Koivu said. “Did all the Smedses have alibis?”

  “Theoretically, but only the parents’ alibi seems solid. Ursula verified that Viktor was having follow-up tests from his heart surgery, and Mrs. Smeds was his driver. Heli’s alibi hasn’t been confirmed yet, and the brothers are providing each other’s alibis. I wouldn’t put too much faith in that.”

  “And Andreas has those DUIs.”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t make him a killer,” I said.

  “I’m hungry. Keep me company at lunch?”

  Lunch with Koivu was always fun, and this time he kept me laughing with anecdotes about surviving alone with his baby, Juuso, while Anu was at the store or aerobics class. I was sure Koivu was exaggerating his ineptitude when it came to changing diapers and bedtime routines, but I let him talk. Little did he know that the infant stage was actually the easiest; parenthood would only become more complicated as the years went by. I didn’t say that to Koivu, though. He’d learn soon enough.

  After the meal I did some paperwork, although my mind kept wandering back to the Smedses’ farm in Degerö. Koivu had said he’d get Forensics out there today. I remembered the rolling fields and the dark pine forests; it was a completely different world than the Turku Highway buzzing outside my window.

  A knock came at the door. It was Jyrki.

  “Busy?”

  “I always have time for you,” I answered with a smile. “What’s up?” Jyrki sat down on the edge of the desk right next to me, his hands fiddling with a paper clip.

  “It’s Terttu. Yesterday we had a huge blowup. She’s sure she has cancer and that it’s because she hasn’t had her own life. Supposedly she’s always lived according to the dictates of Silja’s skating and my work. She believes she’s sick because she’s been unhappy. According to her, of course, I never even noticed she was miserable.”

  Jyrki and I had always avoided talking to each other about troubles at home. I guess we didn’t want to share the banal “my spouse doesn’t understand me” complaints that people who are attracted to each other so often do. Out of respect for Antti, I tried to save my grumbling for conversatio
ns with my female friends.

  “In a way, Terttu’s right. I thought everything was fine, although work does take up a lot of my time. But I like my work, especially now that I’m part of the Interior Ministry’s crime prevention task force. I feel like I can really make a difference.”

  “Yesterday Antti and I had a similar conversation about my work. He was angry that I went to interview Sasha Smeds’s manager on Sunday. Apparently earlier in the fall I promised I was going to keep normal working hours from now on.”

  “You can’t always do that, though. That’s just how this job is,” Jyrki said with a sigh. During my maternity leave his hair had taken on a hint of gray, and a few wrinkles had appeared on his forehead and around his eyes. They animated his otherwise smooth, symmetric features.

  “Waiting for the results is the worst thing. Terttu said she’s moving out if she survives the cancer.”

  I took Jyrki’s hand and squeezed it. “You’ve met people in shock before. Don’t take her threats too seriously.”

  Jyrki looked at me for a long time, then wrapped an arm around me. We sat in silence for a while. Another knock came at the door, and Ursula opened it quickly enough that she saw us touching. We both moved away instantly, but the damage had already been done.

  “Maria, I’ve got the fiber results from Annukka Hackman’s clothes. Do you want to look?”

  “Yeah, hand them to me. And you did talk with the hospital about Viktor Smeds’s follow-up tests, right?”

  “Yes,” Ursula said, clearly irritated by my double checking. “It checks out.”

  Taskinen stood up from the edge of the desk to see the report too. He had to walk so close to Ursula that their shoulders touched. The fiber analysis report didn’t reveal anything momentous, but it provided a good foundation for further work. Ursula also provided a summary of the interviews with Annukka Hackman’s relatives. Most of them had known that Kervinen had threatened her, so they blamed him.

  I drove home in the sleet that was still tormenting southern Finland. After the record hot summer, fall had only lasted a few weeks, providing just a handful of clear days before this early winter. Even though I’d tried to spend as much time in the summer sun as possible to store it up for the winter, I already felt like my reserves were depleted.

  At home I managed to forget about work for once. I was reading Taneli a picture book on the couch as his bedtime story when my cell phone rang. Antti got to it before I could reach it.

  “It’s about work. Someone named Andreas Smeds,” he said and handed me the phone. “Should I finish the story?”

  I stood up and went in the kitchen to talk.

  “Kallio.”

  “What do you think you’re doing investigating our car? It was sitting in the garage the whole day when Hackman was killed. What newspaper are you in bed with? There just happened to be a whole pack of photographers lurking in the bushes here when your forensic team showed up. And apparently they didn’t have the authority to drive the hyenas away.”

  It was possible that someone in the building had leaked to the press. I asked Andreas what paper the photographers were from.

  “It’s all the same pile of shit. I don’t try to keep them straight. I called Jouko too. Hopefully Sasha doesn’t hear about this before Sunday. Although I guess that’s pointless since the British rally is going to be crawling with Finnish media. I hope you feel good about yourself, now that you’ve ruined my brother’s concentration.”

  Andreas’s voice trembled slightly. Maybe he was drunk. Since there was nothing I could do, I cut the call short and went to help Taneli brush his teeth.

  The next morning the papers were full of the Rally of Great Britain. “Sasha Smeds Confident Heading into Championship,” they proclaimed. I looked at Smeds’s boyish smile for a long time. To my relief, Jouko Suuronen hadn’t left any messages.

  As I drove to work, the sleet was thick, piling up on my windshield wipers. Each winter, the dark days seemed more unbearable than the previous year. The brightly lit advertisements along the roads only made the situation worse. Perhaps simple darkness would have been preferable to the contrast created by the city’s lights.

  As usual, the conditions for the Rally of Great Britain were expected to be muddy. I felt like I was on my own rally track as I braked to avoid a car that had abruptly cut in front of me.

  The rally was also the hot topic at work. The tire tread analysis results were supposed to be ready by the next morning, and the whole unit seemed to be on the edge of their seats about everything having to do with Sasha Smeds. Puupponen was tracking the special stage results on the Internet, and when I returned from a painfully long organizational meeting in the afternoon I saw Koivu and Ursula in the break room watching a news report about the latest rally results.

  “What’s the score?” I asked as I poured myself a coffee.

  “Sasha has fifteen seconds on Sainz. It seems close. Hopefully the Citroën runs well. Earlier this year there was some nonsense with the gearbox,” Koivu said.

  “Hopefully Sasha can keep his head together,” Ursula added. “This is a blood sport, and I worry he might be too soft. He has to risk everything now and push it.”

  In the evening the difference was only five seconds. The images of cars wallowing and growling in the mud were repeated at the end of every news report. One enthusiastic reporter commentated with his face all aglow:

  “The Rally of Great Britain has turned into a true clash of the titans. Facing off we have two Citroën men, veteran driver Carlos Sainz and Finland’s latest rally sensation, Sasha Smeds. This is a war with no prisoners.”

  “Death before dishonor, right?” Antti said, laughing and sitting down next to me. “Even in boxing you aren’t allowed to beat each other to death anymore, but in car racing you can go right ahead and kill anyone, even bystanders.”

  “I don’t think they hurt anyone on purpose. Don’t they take the biggest risks themselves? It might be interesting to try sometime.”

  “What, taking risks? Don’t you have enough experience already with that?”

  “If I die because of my work, it’ll be from boredom in the endless meetings,” I replied glumly. “We’ve got our Friday leadership meeting tomorrow morning.”

  The weather had changed again when I woke up the next morning. The snow had melted and something vaguely resembling the sun peeked shyly through breaks in the clouds. It felt strangely bright, and I had to rummage for my sunglasses in the glove compartment before I drove to work.

  Uncharacteristically Taskinen arrived at the meeting a little late, just as I was turning off my phone. I kept it off through the entire hour, so I didn’t hear the news until afterward. The tire tracks from the car parked on Mäyrä Road near Lake Humaljärvi and the Smedses’ Land Rover had significant similarities.

  “The cast is of the back left tire, since the right rear tire print was so unclear it was impossible to draw any conclusions from it,” said Hakulinen from Forensics. “The tire is almost brand new, bought and mounted in late October, so it hasn’t had time to develop much wear. The tire model isn’t very common, but the same tire could be on other cars.”

  “Would this evidence hold up in court?”

  “Only if the defense attorney is a real loser. No one’s getting locked up based on this print alone.”

  That was what I’d been afraid of, but at least the Smeds family would have some explaining to do. I might have made a pretty big mistake letting Sasha leave the country. I called the unit together and arranged to go with Koivu, Ursula, and Puupponen to the Smedses’ farm.

  “Right now?” Koivu asked. “The rally is on live. They’re sure to be watching it.”

  “Then they’ll be home.”

  “And we’ll get in the papers: ‘Police Raid World Champion’s Family Party,’” Puupponen said.

  We went in two cars, my work vehicle and another unmarked car, so it wouldn’t be obvious we were police. I remembered how doggedly the paparazzi had lurked aro
und the houses of skiers caught doping. Maybe there would be photographers staking out the Smedses’ house too. Puupponen drove my car while I planned our approach. I didn’t bother to verify that the family was at home. A surprise would be better.

  I figured that it would take less than half an hour to drive from Degerö to the lake where Hackman was killed, and barely ten minutes to walk from the road to the water. The round trip would take about an hour, and maybe either of the brothers, Sasha or Andreas, wouldn’t have noticed the other’s absence. But how had the killer known about Hackman’s swimming outing?

  As we drove we met an army of semis coming from the other direction, Russian rigs transporting German luxury cars from the Hanko harbor to the border. They were followed by a long line of passenger vehicles, which made passing difficult.

  “Oh, to be a Russian,” Puupponen said with a sigh. “On a cop’s salary I’ll never have enough for an Audi or a Mercedes, but if I were militia in St. Petersburg . . . At Russian prices, I could afford one of those in a couple of months.”

  “I have a hard time imagining you shaking down tourists,” I said.

  “Is that a compliment or an insult? Jeez, you women think every guy has to be like Sasha Smeds, rich and daring but still a good family man. You want someone you can look up to and idolize. I’d even be willing to bet you don’t really want to earn as much as men.” Puupponen brushed a strand of his red hair off his forehead and kept his eyes fixed on the road.

  I didn’t feel like continuing the conversation. It came too close to what Antti had said recently. When we passed Kirkkonummi, I thought of Puustjärvi. Maybe Puupponen’s irritation flowed from the same source as Puustjärvi’s guilty conscience: Ursula. Had she turned Puupponen down? At least Koivu and Lehtovuori got along with Ursula. As a young cop my only option had been to be one of the guys, but as a boss I seemed to have taken on a maternal role.

  The sun shone on the deep-brown fields, bringing back the ruddiness of the pine bark. Puupponen parked the car next to the much-talked-about Land Rover, and the Smedses’ dog rushed to meet us. Its paws left muddy prints on Puupponen’s light-colored jeans. We waited for Ursula and Koivu to arrive before going inside.