Before I Go

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “I heard about a two-bedroom apartment in Leppävaara, right next to the park. Eija Hirvonen’s brother’s family is upgrading, and the landlord would love to rent to another police family. Since we’re so reliable.”

  Now Koivu cracked a grin.

  “Tell Anu how you feel. Being honest with each other is key if you’re starting a life together. There will be plenty of things you’ll have to keep your mouth shut about, but this isn’t one of them,” I said, remembering my own pain one and a half years earlier, when I’d send Mikke Sjöberg to prison. Crying over another man on your husband’s shoulder wasn’t a nice thing to do.

  I didn’t feel like another beer, so I moved on to water. An empty house and intoxication were a bad combination. And besides, I was on my bike. I helped Koivu through the worst of his anxiety, and we hugged for a long time before parting. I pedaled home as fast as my thighs could stand, took a cold shower, and then ate three sandwiches. Sleep came surprisingly easily.

  Saturday morning I was peeved. I could have gone to Inkoo with my family, since the investigation was treading water. If Marko Seppälä appeared, I would be able to get back from Inkoo in plenty of time. So I dressed for riding and biked to the police station to make sure nothing new had come up. The trip to the cabin in Inkoo was only twenty-five miles, which I could ride in a couple of hours without hurrying, especially since the wind was in my favor. But instead I left the station and headed for the Ilveskivi crime scene.

  The fields were still brown, but the newly turned earth smelled of spring. I rode slowly on the rutted dirt road, which had blades of grass poking out of it here and there. The sun had lured children outside to try out their new bikes, and a hardy runner passed, his upper body bare and pink. The elderberry bushes were awash in a violet plumage of buds, and a few wood anemones had already appeared on a sunny slope. Spring was here again, but just as we noticed Mother Earth putting on her delicate dappled coat of spring, it would all be gone. Soon the exuberant spinach green of early summer would overwhelm any nuance.

  Deeper in the forest was still brown, and the most-shaded depressions still held snow. A pheasant crowed in the middle of the path before lazily flapping out of the way of my bike.

  I recognized the place from the pictures. The hill was short but steep, and I was forced to slow to a pace that would have made me easy to attack. Still, the attacker had taken a huge risk.

  Had Petri Ilveskivi been on his guard or had the attack come as a surprise? And had the attacker meant to kill? What if Petri had something with him other than the briefcase, something that Marko Seppälä had considered worth stealing? Maybe he had just been acting on a whim. Seppälä had stopped in the forest to smoke a cigarette and saw Petri Ilveskivi carrying something on his bicycle. A laptop?

  Tommi Laitinen hadn’t mentioned anything like that being missing. I left my bike on the side of the path and walked into the forest. The ants in their hill still slept, but the skylarks were already constructing their nests, their cries audible from the edge of the fields. Otherwise it was quiet. Then a sudden rustling came from behind and startled me. Instantly Salo’s gang came to mind: following me into the deserted forest would have been so easy.

  But it was just an off-leash Irish terrier coming to make friends. Relieved, I petted it and didn’t bother to remind the apologetic owner that dogs were supposed to be on leash inside city limits.

  I biked back home through Central Park. As I got out of the shower, I stepped on one of Iida’s glittery play earrings. She had received a princess jewelry set with a tiara from my sister Helena and loved prancing around in her baubles, even though the clip-on earrings pinched. I had barely managed to restrain myself when Iida claimed that it wasn’t a problem because the earrings looked so nice. It was frightening that already a two-and-a-half-year-old girl thought she had to suffer for beauty.

  Of course, I reminded myself, I had dressed up in lace petticoats and my friend’s mother’s wedding dress when I was a girl too, and what was wrong with that? Would I be so worried if I had a son who worshipped Formula 1 drivers? What kind of female role model did I hope to be for Iida?

  Recently I had found myself staring at that picture of my grandmother, the thirty-five-year-old with the face of an old woman and eyes just like my own. Why did I keep remembering her? Why did I fight memories of my mother, who was alive but seemed distant even when she was present? Sometimes when my mother talked and cooed to Iida, I could make out the same tone I had heard when I was that age. As a child, I had admired my mother’s old, carefully preserved schoolbooks, which had dozens of detailed drawings of princesses on their pages. I had never seen my mother draw, but after seeing those books I’d started begging her to draw paper-doll princesses. I tried to draw ones just as nice, but the curls always got tangled and the complicated beadwork of the dresses turned into a mess. But Mother didn’t have time to draw, since she was busy with my little sisters. Then I realized that a knight in armor was much easier to draw, so I changed to playing with male paper dolls.

  A few years later, when I had moved from paper dolls to soccer and saved up to buy my first electric guitar, my mother suddenly had time to draw princesses for my sisters. I despised those paper dolls, but I only tore into them with my words. Later, when my sisters fell in love with Charlie’s Angels, they asked my father to make wooden guns for them to play with. I was the only one who detested their American trading cards, and I proclaimed that the Angles didn’t have any real power—they just did what some faceless man told them to do. When I made it into the police academy, my sisters played me the opening monologue “Once upon a time, there were three little girls who went to the police academy . . .” and claimed that they weren’t jealous, even though I was the only one of us who got a real gun.

  Why had I always tried to differentiate myself from my mother and sisters? We were similar in many ways: my mother had her own career, and both of my grandmothers had worked just as hard as any man their entire lives. My sister Eeva was the first woman in the family to achieve a financial position that allowed her to stay home until her children were all in school. So who was the woman I didn’t want to be? How would I feel if Iida wanted to be as different from me as she possibly could?

  The buzzing of my cell phone saved me from these uncomfortable thoughts, and I ran to answer it. Usually a call on that phone meant work. Maybe Marko Seppälä had turned up.

  “Hello, my name is Kim Kajanus. I apologize for calling outside of business hours, but I wanted to talk about the Petri Ilveskivi murder. I understand that you’re in charge of the investigation. Would it be possible to meet?”

  The man’s voice was young and clear, and there was a refined Espoo Swedish lilt to his Finnish.

  “Do you have information about Ilveskivi’s death?”

  “No, not really . . . but I have a lot of information about Petri.”

  “Were you his friend?”

  I heard an embarrassed swallow before Kajanus continued.

  “I got your number from Eva Jensen. She’s my therapist. She suggested that I talk to you. Petri and I . . .”

  The pause lasted ten seconds.

  “We were in a relationship, and now I’m afraid that Tommi . . .” Kajanus must have heard my surprised intake of breath, because he continued quickly.

  “No one knew about it, or at least I didn’t think they did. Now I’m not so sure.”

  My thoughts took off like an Olympic sprinter running the two-hundred-meter. Petri Ilveskivi was supposed to be the model of marital fidelity. But then I remembered Eva Jensen’s reserve on the night after Ilveskivi’s death. She had known about Kajanus, but of course she couldn’t reveal confidential information, even to help a homicide investigation.

  “Would you be willing to meet at the Espoo police station in one hour?”

  Another sandwich replaced the bean-and-nut salad I had been planning, and I had to slow my pace as I biked back to the station so I wouldn’t end up drenched in sweat. I ran a backgr
ound check on Kim Kajanus. Age twenty-eight, resident of Espoo, professional photographer, unmarried, no criminal record. I felt like calling Eva Jensen, but I could only interview her if Kajanus turned out to be Ilveskivi’s killer and we needed a statement from his therapist.

  I would talk to Kajanus alone first—I should be able to find someone in the building to act as a witness for a formal interrogation if that became necessary. The duty officer downstairs called me five minutes before the arranged time. I ran down the stairs.

  In the lobby I found an attractive man of about five foot nine inches with a graceful build and long limbs. Wavy auburn hair fell to his neck. His gray-brown eyes were large with long lashes, his mouth expressive. His nose was narrow and aquiline like my husband’s, but where Antti’s face had a vaguely eastern look, Kajanus was more reminiscent of a Polish count. He would have looked very attractive in a lace collar. His handshake was firm, but his polite smile did not extend to his eyes.

  I took Kajanus to my office, and instead of the couch he chose an armchair, crossing his legs in their brown jeans and trying to look relaxed but failing to conceal his agitation.

  “Is there any news?”

  “We have a couple of promising leads. But any help is welcome.”

  “Yes, of course. At first I just didn’t know what to do. It was such a shock to read in the paper Wednesday morning that Petri was dead. Eriikka was sitting on the other side of the table, so I just had to keep it in. This is still . . . hard to believe.”

  “My condolences. And it’s good that you decided to come to the police. You said on the phone that you and Petri Ilveskivi were in a relationship. How long had it been going on?”

  “Eva said that I would regret it for the rest of my life if Petri’s killer got away. I know you’re Eva’s friend, so you must understand . . .”

  My job wasn’t to understand—my job was to solve the crime. Still it felt wise to let Kajanus take this at his own pace.

  “It’s hard to start, since I’ve never talked to anyone but Eva about Petri. I started therapy because of him. I never imagined anything like this could happen to me. Or . . . I don’t know.”

  Kajanus sighed heavily and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry that I’m being so confusing. I should probably start from the beginning. My whole life I’ve thought I was only interested in women. I’ve had a few serious relationships, and I’ve been with my girlfriend, Eriikka, for a couple of years now. We don’t live together, although there’s been talk of that. Guys have hit on me every now and then, and that didn’t bother me, but I wasn’t interested in any of them. I’m a magazine photographer, and in this line of work you run into all kinds of people. Like Petri.”

  Kajanus shifted in his chair and brushed a stray lock of hair off his cheek. After a moment he continued his story.

  In early January, Kim Kajanus had started shooting the spring edition of Gloria Home, and three of Petri’s sofa designs had been subjects. Petri had participated in the shoots, and he and Kajanus hit it off. At one point he asked Kajanus for a ride home.

  “I agreed, even though it was out of my way. When Petri was getting out of the car, I felt like saying, ‘hey, don’t go yet’ or ‘let’s get coffee sometime.’ I didn’t understand why I felt like saying that. Then the idiot I had given the negatives to managed to spill acid on one of the rolls, which turned out to be the one with all the pictures of one of the couches. So we had to set up a new session in a huge rush, and I didn’t know whether I really wanted to see him again or not. I was afraid of what I felt. Petri had told me he lived with Tommi, and he had a ring and everything. And then I was in the heat of the shoot and found myself flirting . . . with a man.”

  Kajanus shook his head and gave a sad, crooked smile.

  “It didn’t make any sense, and I had no idea what I was doing. I finished taking the pictures and then suggested that we go out for tea at a nearby café on the waterfront.

  “We did, and we talked and talked, and finally Tommi called Petri and asked what on earth was taking him so long. When Petri walked away from the café, I realized that I didn’t want to lose touch with him. I ran after him and said that I wanted to meet again. ‘Why?’ Petri asked, since I had mentioned Eriikka so many times. I didn’t know the answer, and we agreed to just e-mail. But in e-mails it’s easier to say things that you would never be able to say in person. Finally I invited him over. I’ve never been so nervous about a date before. And Petri was too. He said he hadn’t been with anyone else since he and Tommi got engaged. But we couldn’t keep away from each other.”

  Kim Kajanus spoke to me as if I were a therapist rather than a cop, but I didn’t interrupt. I had thought I had a clear picture of Petri Ilveskivi, but Kajanus was shaking the kaleidoscope so thoroughly that some time would need to pass before the new shape came into focus.

  “So we ended up in bed. I tried to explain it away as simple curiosity, that I just wanted to see what it would be like to be with a man before I finally committed to Eriikka. But it wasn’t that. I didn’t know who I was anymore. Petri and I decided not to tell anyone. He made it clear at the beginning that he had no intention of endangering his relationship with Tommi. And I had enough to deal with, now that I had fallen for a man. I decided I needed a therapist, and I found Eva on the LGBTI Rights website. I guess I was afraid that a regular psychiatrist would think I was sick,” Kajanus said, laughing nervously.

  A simple story began to take shape in my mind: Kim Kajanus had never admitted to himself that he felt attracted to men, and so his relationship with Petri Ilveskivi forced him to face the part of himself he’d rather leave buried. The only way to destroy it was to kill his lover. I had heard of things like that happening before.

  “It was completely insane. But I didn’t love Eriikka any less, and Petri was in the same situation. I guess things were pretty hard for him and Tommi sometimes, since they wanted to have a kid so bad. Maybe for Petri I was some sort of escape from that. I don’t know. I’ve been going over and over this all spring. I don’t know, and now I never will.”

  “So you didn’t tell your girlfriend about Petri?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Are you sure she doesn’t know?”

  “Eva asked that too. I don’t think Eriikka would have ignored it if she had found out. Everything is so clear-cut and straightforward for her, and she probably would have torn me limb from limb and then left me. And how could she know? Petri always met me at my place when Eriikka was at work—she’s a flight attendant—plus a couple of times at a hotel in Turku over a weekend. Petri had clients in Turku, so Tommi didn’t suspect anything. And I deleted all of his e-mails, even though I didn’t want to.”

  “What is Eriikka’s last name? Does she have a key to your apartment?”

  “Rahnasto. She does, but she doesn’t come and go as she pleases. She always lets me know ahead of time.”

  I nodded, even though I knew that affairs weren’t as easy to conceal as Kajanus seemed to believe. Eriikka Rahnasto might have observant friends in Turku, or a sloppy hotel clerk might have given Tommi Laitinen the phone number to Petri’s room and he may have discovered that his husband wasn’t alone.

  “Where were you last Tuesday between five and six o’clock?” This question seemed to surprise Kajanus. I saw anger flash in his eyes, but he controlled himself.

  “I imagine you have to ask that. I was in Helsinki doing PR portraits for a new author whose book is coming out this fall. That went from five to about seven. The lady was so shy that it took a while to get her to relax enough to smile. You can check.”

  After pulling out his calendar, Kajanus took a sticky note from my desk and wrote a woman’s name and phone number on it.

  “After the shoot, I met Eriikka at a restaurant in downtown Helsinki. We’re regulars there, so they’ll remember us.” Kajanus returned his large black leather calendar to the side pocket of his shoulder bag, then asked quietly, “Do you know when Petri’s funeral will be?”

>   “The medical examiner hasn’t released the body yet.”

  “Why am I even asking? Petri taught me more about myself than anyone, and I can’t even go to his funeral!” Kajanus said dramatically.

  “Why not? You knew each other through work,” I said, once again meddling in business that wasn’t even remotely mine.

  “I’m a terrible actor,” Kajanus said angrily. That was exactly the sort of line a criminal with a few days to plan ahead would feed the police.

  “Was Petri afraid of anyone? Had anyone threatened him?”

  “He told me about the time those skinheads attacked him, and some people had threatened him on the street after he came out against the new amusement park and the loan guarantees the city wanted to give for that ice arena, but he said that was just a normal part of local politics. He told me that Tommi wasn’t very interested in politics, that he spent his days taking care of children and his evenings cooking. I can just imagine him bustling around in the kitchen with his apron on!” Kajanus snorted, and then closed his eyes and clenched his jaw.

  “I don’t know who would have wanted to kill him, other than Tommi if he had found out about me. But then he probably would have done it at home. But no—this way he’s more likely to get away with it . . .”

  “Have you ever met Tommi Laitinen?”

  “In passing, in the cheese aisle at the grocery store. It was a crazy situation. Eriikka and I were buying a gift for a party a friend of ours was throwing, and suddenly I heard Petri’s voice. We just said hi and didn’t even introduce our partners. In the checkout line, I couldn’t help sneaking glances and neither could Petri.”

  “What did the two of you plan to do? You said that Petri wasn’t going to leave Tommi. Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Kajanus said without the slightest hesitation. “And Eriikka and I . . . we’ve been talking about getting an apartment together for a while now, but Eriikka wants to live near the airport and I want out of Espoo. I’ve put the brakes on that a little, though, since first I need to figure out if there are other men in the world I could love like Petri or if he was just an anomaly in my safe, normal, heterosexual life.”