Below the Surface

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Have you read the manuscript you took from my house?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you know what it says about Sasha’s wife?”

  “Yes.”

  Without warning, Suuronen pounded his fist so hard on the table that Puupponen and I both jumped, and the desk lamp fell over. “And of course you think I’m just a manager and Sasha Smeds is just a way to make money, right? But that isn’t how it is. Sasha’s a fucking good guy, and he’s my friend! Do you tell your friend that his old lady’s cheating on him just as he’s about to achieve the biggest dream of his life? Or after he’s nearly died? No, you don’t, no matter how much it pisses you off when his wife pretends to be sad about his accident. As if that bitch really cared about Sasha! Today, at the airport, I wanted to punch Andreas in the face. That bastard can thank his lucky stars there were so many cameras around. Otherwise, he would have gotten the beating of his life.”

  Suuronen wiped his brow with his sleeve. His face glowed red, and a vein bulged on his temple.

  “I’ll ask you one more time,” I said. “When and how did you get that manuscript?”

  Suuronen had regained his equilibrium. “Arrest me if you want, but I’m not talking until my lawyer is here. Maybe I didn’t get it at all. Maybe it was given to me. Maybe someone planted it in my house. Maybe I really did write part of it myself. Just take me to a cell. It won’t be the first time.”

  We left Suuronen with the guard and went to my office for a quick meeting. Puupponen promised to keep his phone on all night in case Suuronen got his lawyer and decided to start talking.

  “Um, Maria, what’s this whole thing with Koivu?” he asked as I was pulling on my overcoat.

  “You haven’t heard the rumors? Ursula is accusing him of harassing her.”

  Puupponen started laughing uncontrollably, and the laughter was so welcome that after a few seconds I joined in too. We giggled until my abs started cramping, and tears washed away my mascara.

  “It’s lucky for Ursula that Anu’s on maternity leave. I wouldn’t want to see that fight. Ursula’s been annoyed at Koivu since the very beginning. She thinks you show him too much favoritism, and if Koivu wouldn’t give in to her attempts at seduction, then of course she’d be pissed. She and I went on a couple of dates, but that’s it. There wasn’t any chemistry.”

  I started laughing again and found I was liking Puupponen more all the time. “We’re all going to be asked for statements about Koivu and Ursula, which is going to be awkward,” I said after I’d calmed down. “You get along with Ursula. Could you try to talk some sense into her?”

  Puupponen snorted. “I don’t even dare get in the same elevator with her. I don’t want the same thing happening to me that happened to Koivu. She’s a hot chick, but she’s got a screw loose.”

  “I hate that Ursula’s lies are going to harm the credibility of people who’ve really been harassed.”

  I remembered my early days on the Helsinki force when I’d had the pleasure of being called a lesbian or a whore when I didn’t accept my coworker’s date invitations. I felt no sense of triumph at seeing the tables turned on men. Koivu was the one here who was being sexually harassed, and although opposite scenarios were many times more common, that still didn’t make it right for anyone to keep quiet about it. Tomorrow I’d have to speak to Ursula directly, even if that meant breaking Puustjärvi’s trust.

  To my disappointment, Antti was already sleeping when I got home. He’d made me a bed on the couch, even remembering my nightgown and some warm socks. For a bedtime snack I drank a glass of red wine and watched the slowly frosting-over world outside. The moon had set beyond the horizon, and the stars were only a shadow of how they would look in the countryside, away from the light of the city. My abs hurt, and I knew the hysterical laughing fits I’d had that night were evidence of stress. Taneli whimpered in his sleep. I got up to see that his leg had fallen between the slats of his crib. For Christmas we needed to get him a new bed. We just had to find the time to go buy it.

  I watched a video until after midnight, then must have fallen asleep. Around four I woke up to a ringing—I’d forgotten to turn off my phone. The call was coming from an unknown number.

  “It’s Hannu Kervinen, and this is important, Maria. Now I finally know what . . .”

  The line went dead. Suddenly I was perfectly awake.

  14

  I tried to call Kervinen back on his cell phone, but he didn’t answer. I tried his landline, but the machine picked up. Antti had also woken up to the sound of the phone ringing and opened the bedroom door.

  “I’m sorry, I have to make a few calls. You can just go back to sleep. I might have to go to the police station again, though, so can you get the kids to day care?”

  “Has someone died again?” Antti asked with a yawn, then closed the door before I had time to answer that I hoped not. I called the duty officer at the station and asked them to send a patrol to Kervinen’s apartment in Tapiola. Then I put some coffee on since I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I knew Kervinen was all right. I set my phone to silent and tried Kervinen’s number again. He still didn’t pick up. I tried to convince myself I didn’t have any reason to go to Tapiola. Others would handle it.

  I was almost finished drinking my first cup of coffee when the phone started buzzing in the pocket of my robe. It was the duty officer.

  “Haikala and Saastamoinen went to the address. They found a man’s body lying in the yard, apparently either pushed or a jumper. They haven’t made it to Kervinen’s door yet, since they have to deal with that.”

  “The body—is it Kervinen?”

  “There’s no ID yet. Puupponen is on his way to the scene.”

  “Thanks. I’m heading that way too.”

  I didn’t want to bother Antti, so I dressed in the previous day’s clothes. Downing the rest of my coffee, I grabbed a banana, which I ate in the car on the way to Tapiola. The streets were empty, and all the traffic lights flashed yellow. When I turned in to the apartment complex, I saw Puupponen behind the wheel of a car coming from the other direction.

  The parking lot was not quiet, with three patrol cars and an ambulance already there. Senior Officer Mira Saastamoinen was just setting up blue-and-white police caution tape around a shape lying on the ground and covered with a blanket. People stood on balconies and peered out of windows.

  “Hi. Get those balconies cleared,” I told Haikala. “There may be evidence on one of them.” After donning shoe covers and gloves from the car, I ducked under the tape and approached the body. Through the blanket I could see it was contorted in a weird position, arms and legs splayed to either side. I didn’t want to lift that blanket, but I had to.

  Kervinen’s head lolled strangely, and there was surprisingly little blood. His eyes were open, and he had a day’s worth of stubble. Farther away on the asphalt I spotted the pieces of a cell phone. When I stood up, I felt like vomiting. I took a few deep breaths and stepped out of the restricted area.

  “And now this,” Puupponen said in greeting. “Kervinen?”

  “Kervinen. I’m going inside to his apartment. Maybe there’s an explanation there. With any luck maybe it’s the solution to Annukka Hackman’s murder. You start organizing interviews with the neighbors and any other potential witnesses. Wake up Lähde and Autio. We need to get to work fast. No one’s sleeping in this building anymore tonight anyway. Is the building super on his way?”

  “We made the call,” Saastamoinen said. “How did you know there’d be a body here?”

  Mira Saastamoinen belonged to the department’s female soccer team, and we knew each other well. I didn’t start explaining the chain of events, though, since too many civilians were within earshot. The wind made my eyes water and whipped my hair in my face. I wished I had a hat. The downstairs door of the building was open, and I went inside to wait for the super. At least there I’d be out of the wind. Someone would have to go tell Kervinen’s brother, but that could wait until
later in the morning.

  The building superintendent appeared after a few minutes. He was a young-looking guy, barely twenty. Along with Hakkarainen from Forensics, we crammed in the elevator.

  “Who do I bill for opening this door?” the superintendent asked.

  “I’d think that helping the police is everyone’s civic duty,” I snapped back more peevishly than I’d intended.

  “At least I need a signature,” the boy said and handed me a paper, which I scribbled on. The elevator stopped on the top floor. When we walked into Kervinen’s apartment, we could see the lights of Espoo twinkling through the window, along with a lone ship out on the water. The door to the balcony was open a crack. Patrol had emptied the lower balconies.

  The railing was high enough that pushing Kervinen over it would have required some strength even though he wasn’t a large man, maybe five foot eight and a hundred and fifty pounds. We’d have to talk to the next-door neighbors first. The balconies faced the forest, but the highest ones were visible from the other apartment buildings around. It wasn’t impossible that a neighbor living in one of those had seen Kervinen jump or someone push him off.

  On the living room table was a laptop computer. It was turned on, but the screen was dark. With a gloved finger I carefully tapped the space bar, and words appeared on the screen.

  “Now I finally know what I have to do. The one who killed Annukka is going to kill me too. But it doesn’t matter, because now that Annukka is dead, nothing matters anymore.” There was no signature. Taking out my notepad, I wrote down the message word-for-word.

  We didn’t find any other suicide note in the apartment. The bed was unmade, and based on the smell, the sheets hadn’t been changed in ages. Yesterday Kervinen had seemed like his old self, but perhaps he didn’t ever clean much. The kitchen was full of empty beer bottles. In a familiar-looking saucepan I found dried porridge, now turning green and fuzzy. I shivered. After the rest of the forensic team rumbled in, my phone rang. Puupponen asked whether I intended to stay at the crime scene much longer.

  “There’s a really strange letter up here,” I told him. “I want your opinion about it. And interview the neighbors from the next balcony over right now. Has someone called crisis support?”

  I walked back into the living room. Next to the couch I found Kervinen’s Birkenstocks. He’d gone out on the slushy balcony in his socks. That could mean two things: either he’d really decided to jump or he’d gone out quickly because of someone else. But how could a murderer have lured Kervinen out onto the balcony? Kervinen didn’t smoke. Jouko Suuronen was the only one of my suspects who seemed to be a smoker.

  I glanced into the apartment’s spare bedroom. As Koivu had said, there were just a couple of empty cardboard boxes. A layer of dust covered the floor and windowsills. I didn’t bother to go in.

  I asked some of the forensic team to check out the balcony. “Especially look for signs of a struggle. We can’t rule out the possibility of homicide.”

  Then it occurred to me that I should ask Kervinen to take a close look under the victim’s fingernails—and a few seconds passed before I realized some other pathologist would have to inspect this body.

  There was a buzzer downstairs to let visitors inside the building. Telephone records would tell us if someone had called Kervinen. On my own phone I checked the time of his call to me, then remembered the pieces of the broken phone on the asphalt. Apparently he’d had his phone with him right until the end.

  Puupponen appeared in the entryway. “Things are under control. The boys are on their way over, and Saastamoinen’s patrol will start on the interviews with them. What did you want me to see?”

  I took him to the computer. The message had been saved at 3:38, four minutes after Kervinen’s call. Puupponen bent down to read it.

  “‘The one who killed Annukka . . .’ That’s the first ambiguous thing I’ve ever seen Carcass write. Sorry, his name was Hannu.”

  “Kervinen didn’t necessarily write it himself.”

  “No, but this doesn’t sound like something a murderer would have written to cover his tracks. ‘The one who killed Annukka is going to kill me too . . .’ Why not just write, ‘I can’t go on without Annukka’?”

  “You’re right. Or is he saying that he killed Annukka? First he killed her, then he killed himself. But why did he do it by jumping off the balcony, when he had access to drugs? That’s such an easier way to go.”

  I remembered Kervinen’s medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Twenty or so of the Dormicum were left, and a bottle of Cipramil, an antidepressant, had also appeared. That was almost full. Had Kervinen feared he’d be found before the medications could take effect? A blue nylon rope about two yards long lay on the bathroom floor.

  I wrote down what Kervinen had said on the phone while I could still remember it clearly. Why had he called me specifically? We’d never gotten along all that well, and I couldn’t imagine him choosing me as the last person to talk to in this life. That also pointed to homicide, and another crime I hadn’t been able to prevent.

  I heard a commotion coming from the hallway and what sounded like an elderly person yelling. A lot of retirees lived in Tapiola. They’d bought their apartments decades ago when the suburb was still spacious and new. When we moved two years ago, Antti had wanted to return to the landscape of his childhood, but it hadn’t been possible financially. As for our future prospects, I had a hard time believing a PhD mathematician wouldn’t be able to find work, but I’d always considered myself an optimist. At least when I was younger.

  I decided to head to the police station to prepare a press release, on the off chance someone who didn’t live in these buildings saw something that could help us explain Kervinen’s death. There would also be more coffee there, which my body was screaming for. I ordered Puupponen to notify me if anything decisive turned up. Then I remembered Esa Kervinen. Did a teacher’s work day start at eight or nine these days? Seven o’clock would probably be a good time to deliver the bad news. I delegated that to Puupponen as well, and told him that Puustjärvi could go along. Maybe it would be good to call on the police chaplain as well.

  Kervinen’s final diary was still in my office. I flipped through it for answers but with no luck. The last entry was made on the day Hackman called to ask about DNA analysis, the day before her death.

  I’m seeing Annukka in two days, then everything will be good again. At Tapiontori, like before. I expect an important surprise. I can finally have her here writing in that empty room, then maybe I’ll learn to like this apartment and this life. It’s like I’m walking half a meter above the ground, and nothing matters but Annukka.

  I remembered what Kervinen had asked Koivu and me in his initial interview: Had we ever been so in love that we thought we’d die if we didn’t get the one we wanted? In the same interrogation, Kervinen had seemed to hate Hackman, even though according to the diary just days before he’d thought she was coming back to him and was happy about it. It didn’t make sense.

  Puupponen called with an update. Kervinen’s next-door neighbor had heard voices and steps from his apartment at around two thirty when she got up to go to the bathroom. So far no one had seen anyone going into Kervinen’s apartment, and no one had witnessed the fall.

  Kervinen and Atro Jääskeläinen had accused each other of killing Hackman. It was definitely time to speak to Jääskeläinen again. I issued the order to have him brought in right away; if no one else had time, I’d question him myself. And Suuronen was still in Holding . . . My head was buzzing, and my thoughts wouldn’t seem to come together. At six thirty, my eyes started drooping. I decided to rest for a minute on the couch, but just for a minute. Finding a comfortable position wasn’t easy, and I wished I had a blanket. I curled up as tight as I could.

  When I woke up, it was to the sound of Antti’s ringtone. From the display I discovered that it was seven forty-five. Oh hell.

  “Maria. Are you at work or what?”

  “Yeah .
. .” My mouth was unbearably dry, and my neck was cramped.

  “Taneli seems like he has a fever; I don’t dare take him to day care. But Iida’s demanding to go since apparently they’re making Christmas decorations today. Any chance you could take her?”

  “My morning meeting is about to start. Take a taxi, and ask it to wait with Taneli while you take Iida in. I’ll try to pick her up, and I’ll call if I can’t.”

  “So you’re assuming that I’m staying home with Taneli without us even discussing it?”

  “Yes, I am! We’ve got another body here, I’ve been up half the night, and I know I’m about to catch hell from the press, so please stay home. You weren’t supposed to have anything special at work today, were you?” I asked, trying to calm down. Antti didn’t like being yelled at.

  “No, and even if I did, you still probably wouldn’t come home,” Antti hissed, then hung up the phone without even saying good-bye.

  “Shit,” I said to myself. We had to get out of the White Cube if all we could do there was fight. Or did it have nothing to do with the place? Was that just an excuse? December would be our seventh anniversary, so maybe this was just a normal marital crisis.

  My phone kept ringing, and this time it was Koivu.

  “I was just wondering if I can come to the unit meeting while I’m in exile if I promise to sit on the other side of the room from Ursula.”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “What? Did Ursula retract her accusation?”

  “No, unfortunately. It’s about Kervinen. He’s dead.” My voice suddenly faltered, and I started to cry.

  “Maria, are you OK?” Koivu asked.

  “No, not really,” I sobbed. “I’ll see you at the meeting. I have to calm down now.”

  Outside it was still dark. The wind had increased to the point that the pine trees outside my window bent like willows. I wiped my face and put on mascara. That, powder, and lipstick salvaged the situation a little but couldn’t hide my swollen eyes. But what did it matter how I looked?