Before I Go

by Leena Lehtolainen

  Kajanus leaned back in his chair, and the spring afternoon sun flooding through the window tinted his auburn hair copper. The color was almost certainly natural, unlike my own faded bottle red, to which I seemed unable to discover an alternative. The room was warm, and beads of sweat glistened on Kajanus’s forehead. Before long I’d have to start keeping the blinds closed.

  “What did you want from Petri Ilveskivi?”

  “I don’t know. I was living one day at a time. I guess now I don’t have to worry about it!” Kajanus stood up suddenly, walked to the bookshelf, and stared at a dreary row of binders. His eyes didn’t seem to register what they saw. “That’s all I have to say. I just want to help find Petri’s murderer.”

  “Do you know where Eriikka was last Tuesday between five and six o’clock?”

  Kim turned abruptly, and his voice rose to a shout.

  “What does Eriikka have to do with this? She had the day off. But Eriikka . . . no woman would do something like that.”

  I didn’t agree in the slightest, since someone physically weaker would be the one to use a knife. After calming him down, I escorted Kim Kajanus down to the door of the police station, where I ran into my colleague Liisa Rasilainen. We chatted for a while about soccer as I watched Kajanus leave. He had a black hybrid bike with a fat frame.

  “The first game is scheduled for the first week of May,” I told Rasilainen. “Kettunen from Narcotics already asked when the men’s team can play us.”

  “Man sweat. Yuck,” said Rasilainen. She didn’t usually advertise being a lesbian, but over the winter we had started trading crude antichauvinist banter when no one else was around to hear. I asked her whether she ever sang karaoke at Café Escale, which had been Petri Ilveskivi’s regular hangout.

  “That’s my secret life!” she exclaimed. “Karaoke princess of Escale. You want to come?”

  “Do they ever play any punk rock?”

  “I think we could probably find you something on the playlist. Tell me if you ever want to go, seriously.”

  I laughed. “Sounds tempting,” I said and then returned to my office. My next task was to run a background check on Eriikka Rahnasto. She didn’t have a criminal record, but according to the database, her father’s name was Reijo. Was that the same city councilman who had called me? He hadn’t been following his daughter’s boyfriend, had he?

  I grinned at the thought. We weren’t in Italy after all. Then my grin froze, because the vehicle registry database turned up an interesting hit.

  Eriikka Rahnasto owned a motorcycle, a Harley-Davidson 883 Sportster DLX. I checked Puustjärvi’s list of motorcycles that could use a Metzeler ME 99 tire, and Eriikka’s bike was on the list.

  No wonder Kim Kajanus was worried.

  8

  On Sunday I rode the bus to Inkoo, where Antti picked me up. The sea was still frozen, the waves rocking their icy shell slowly but purposefully, waiting for rain to make it brittle enough for the next south wind to break it up. Iida threw rocks off the dock onto the ice on the shore, which boomed and crackled strangely as the rocks skittered across its surface. Finally a rock the size of Iida’s head penetrated the ice with a loud plop, and water droplets sprayed out, glittering in the sun.

  On Monday I returned to the office for our usual morning meeting, which turned out to be as fraught as usual. The warm April weekend had drawn people out, and the residents of the city seemed to have acted as rationally as calves set loose in a pasture for the first time. There was a fight at a beach that ended with three people needing patching up, and then there was another one in town. Robbery had transferred a purse snatching to us because the two skateboarding assailants had tripped an eighty-two-year-old woman as they were making their getaway, resulting in a broken hip.

  “Puupponen, you go with Virtanen from Robbery to interview the victim. Gerda Grönberg. How’s your Swedish? Grönberg’s Finnish isn’t great.”

  “I know a phrase or two,” Puupponen said, “although I might offend her if I use them. But I guess I can ask vad hande sen, and maybe Virtanen will understand the answers.”

  Our police district included several neighborhoods and small towns with majority Swedish-speaking populations, but we’d long had a shortage of officers who spoke the country’s official second language. We were used to having to use Russian, Somalian, and Arabic interpreters, but everyone was supposed to know Swedish.

  “Puustjärvi and Lehtovuori, you handle the beach fight, and Mela and Lähde, you’ll take the other one. Koivu and Wang will stay on the Ilveskivi case, and everyone else, you’ll help them when you can. Wang, will you check Kim Kajanus’s alibi with this author, Laura Laevuo? Let me know what she says. Koivu, do you have any ideas about how to approach Eriikka Rahnasto?”

  On Saturday night I’d called Koivu and told him about Kim Kajanus’s visit. Koivu had been just as frustrated as me: the case branched off every which way, and every branch seemed like a dead end.

  “We could say that we’re interviewing all potential Metzeler ME 99 tire users,” Wang suggested.

  “Will that work? Well, it’s worth a try. You two go find her. Then report back to me. It’s probably time to start going through Pete’s list of motorbike owners too. And the APB is still out for Seppälä as well.”

  The day went well, with subordinates dropping in every so often to ask my advice. Wang left a message on Laura Laevuo’s machine and fretted about not being able to reach her. At noon Koivu called, irritated that Eriikka Rahnasto was on a flight to Los Angeles and wouldn’t be back until Wednesday afternoon. I told him to ask Finnair about Rahnasto’s schedule the previous Tuesday. Ten minutes later he called back to report that Rahnasto had indeed been off the day of Petri Ilveskivi’s killing. He and Wang intended to look for Rahnasto’s motorcycle in the airport parking garage.

  “Does Eriikka Rahnasto ride her Harley to work?” I asked in surprise.

  “So her neighbor claims. We’re going to go check so we don’t have to meet her on Wednesday unnecessarily,” Koivu said, sounding tired. “Even though motorbikes can use different tires, and changing them isn’t a big deal. Plenty of places will do it while you wait.”

  “Tell me some more good news,” I said sarcastically and then went back to putting together my presentation for the safety seminar on Wednesday. I wasn’t the slightest bit interested anymore, but I couldn’t cancel after having promised to speak. I was too conscientious, at least when it came to work. After finishing the presentation, I decided to get out of the building for some fresh air. No one had been able to make time to interview Tommi Laitinen again, so maybe I could do it myself. Koivu and Wang were leaving the airport to talk to a cop up north in Hyvinkää who claimed to have seen Marko Seppälä the previous night.

  I arranged to meet Laitinen when he got off work at three. A faint green had appeared on the trees, and the aronia bushes already had thumbnail-size blackish-green leaves. Friday was May Day Eve, which every cop in the country hoped would turn out rainy. I hadn’t been out on the town for May Day since I was in college, and if I did end up going out, I’d just spend the night nursing drunk teenagers and breaking up fights. Fortunately, this year we had been invited to the Jensens’. Except that if Lauri had also invited Tommi Laitinen to the party, I would have to stay home. Mixing my work with my private life would only cause problems.

  When I got out of my car in the parking lot of Laitinen’s kindergarten, I saw a man with light-brown hair and a deep tan jogging down a nearby walking path. For a split second, I thought he was Mikke Sjöberg and my heart skipped a beat. Then the moment passed, and I knew that Mikke was far away, in prison. Once the man was gone, I turned and leaned my head on the car. I had to calm down.

  Then it hit again, this uncontrollable, paralyzing pain. A year and a half had passed since I had arrested Mikke for killing his brother. Now he was serving seven years in prison, which for a first offender would mean only three and a half. There wasn’t any sense in grieving over a man who had only bri
efly crossed my path, but I did. I tried to be cynical and laugh at myself, but it didn’t work. Recovering from Johnny, my first love, had taken almost twenty years. Now that was passed. The momentary pain of our reunion a few years ago had faded, and all that was left was a warm friendship. We talked on the phone now and then, and we saw each other when I was home visiting my parents. Johnny put me in a good mood.

  I didn’t want to mourn Mikke for the next fifteen years. That would be pointless. I was a sensible adult, not some twenty-year-old police-academy cadet who was going to fall for the first charming blackguard who happened along. With Mikke I had acted like a professional and done the only thing I could.

  I loved Antti, and I was happy with him. Of course the initial infatuation had passed, and in August it would be seven years since we’d started dating. As far as I could tell there was no seven-year itch on the horizon, so we were doing well. Still, there were memories that could hurt so damn much that they sent me running to the nearest whiskey bottle.

  Earlier in the year I had given a presentation about the homicides the unit had solved during my time as unit commander. I spoke about Juha Merivaara’s murder and Mikke Sjöberg’s conviction with cool professionalism and answered questions as if I were talking about the weather. Koivu saw right through me. After the presentation he took me outside and dressed me down.

  “Don’t be an idiot! You were just doing your job when you sent Mikke Sjöberg to prison. End of story! There isn’t anything to feel bad about.”

  Because Koivu was so ruthlessly realistic about the case, I almost always talked to him when the grief hit. He knocked me back into reality. I had deserved the bruises that fall had inflicted.

  Now I kicked myself in the mental shin and headed for the kindergarten. A squirrel scampered up the trunk of an enormous spruce tree, and then a pack of children streamed out the doors to the playground.

  “Atte, come play cops and robbers! I’m going to arrest you!” yelled a little guy, who had big eyes and was about five years old, to a larger boy with a round head.

  “Whose mom are you?” asked a nicely dressed little girl.

  “Iida’s.”

  “Is she in our class?”

  I answered no just as the tiny cop ran smack into me and instinctively wrapped his arms around me to reduce the impact.

  “Oops. I think you caught the wrong robber,” I said with a smile, which he returned sweetly before running off. The little boys kicked up a terrible clamor. Would Iida do that too if she had a partner in crime?

  I watched the children’s antics for a few minutes. In that time the kid with the big eyes had captured his friend twice, using a jump rope as handcuffs. Then Tommi Laitinen appeared in the doorway, and all forty little voices happily yelled “bye” as we exited through the gate.

  “Should I take you home or should we go to the police station?” I asked. Tommi still looked exhausted, and his jacket hung limply from stooped shoulders.

  “Home. Although it isn’t a home anymore.”

  Laitinen sat down in the passenger seat, the harsh sunlight revealing his pinched cheeks and the wrinkles under his eyes.

  “How can you stand to work right now?”

  “Luckily there’s one place where I’m still needed. Anyway, there isn’t any money for substitutes, and if someone is gone, it isn’t just the other staff who suffer. The children need us. Our enrollment levels are completely illegal.”

  “But you still enjoy it there?”

  “I love being with children. Yes, I know why you’re asking. Of course you would have found out about how I had to leave The Little Lamb.”

  “Why didn’t you take them to court when they fired you?”

  “I wasn’t fired; I was pressured to resign. Little Lamb Kindergarten is a private Christian school, and for some of the children’s parents, my sexuality was simply too much. I didn’t have the energy to start making trouble. I had enough of the church condemning me when I was young, even though I tried to be a good Christian. I was lucky that I was able to get a new job so quickly.”

  We drove past a field being taken over by nearly identical two-story houses. On the sidewalk I saw Silly String scattered around. Apparently the children had already begun their May Day celebrations.

  Laitinen’s house smelled of loneliness. The turtle was nestled on a boot in the entryway. Was it able to miss its master like a dog or cat would?

  The living room looked the same as it had on my first visit, but on closer inspection I could see dust on the bookshelves and smudges on the surface of the table. I flung myself down on the red couch, which felt heavenly. Could I afford one of these on my salary?

  “What have you discovered?” Laitinen asked and leaned back in his red easy chair, which made his Adam’s apple and the veins in his neck momentarily tense.

  “Does the name Marko Seppälä mean anything to you? Here, take a look at this.”

  I took Seppälä’s mug shot out of my bag and set it on the table. Laitinen looked at it greedily, but gradually the expression faded.

  “I’ve never seen him or heard of him before. Is he a suspect?”

  “We have an arrest warrant out for him for Petri’s killing, but we also have other leads. Think hard. Seppälä is a small-time crook. He has three children. He rides a motorcycle or drives a Datsun Cherry.”

  Laitinen wasn’t looking at the picture anymore, though, just leaning back with his eyes closed.

  Had he sensed that Petri Ilveskivi had been seeing someone? And if he didn’t, would he want to know?

  I thought of Antti. Would I want to know if Antti had another woman?

  Of course I would.

  My cell phone rang, and I asked Laitinen to excuse me while I went into the hall to answer it.

  “Hi, it’s Koivu. We found Eriikka Rahnasto’s motorbike. Just a little seventy-thousand-mark toy. Pink saddlebags and everything. The tread pattern and tire width match. What now?”

  “Meet her at the airport on Wednesday. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

  “We’re still going to hit Hyvinkää to check on that Seppälä tip.”

  “OK, call me after. I really hope we find him,” I said half to myself. We’d issued the APB for Seppälä late enough that he already could have slipped over the border. We hadn’t seen his name on any passenger lists, but he could have bought fake papers. Maybe he had driven up to Lapland and crossed into Sweden or Norway. I had asked Patrol to send a car by the Seppälä house a couple of times a day to see whether he had come home, but so far there hadn’t been any sign of him.

  I returned to the living room, and Tommi Laitinen opened his eyes.

  “I don’t know if I’m just imagining things,” he said slowly, “but have you spoken to Turo Honkavuori? He called me yesterday. At first I thought he was just expressing his condolences, but then he started complaining about Eila and Petri’s baby plan. He claimed Eila hadn’t told him until last weekend, but I got the feeling he was lying.”

  I added interviewing Turo Honkavuori to the constantly growing list of tasks to delegate. Laitinen offered to bring me something to drink. A moment later the sounds of a juicer started coming from the kitchen, and then Laitinen returned with two glasses of bright-yellow liquid. It was grapefruit mixed with orange, and it had a fresh, bitter taste.

  “I don’t really know Turo. They were here once for dinner and for Petri’s birthday party in February, but Turo didn’t seem to like us much. He always looked away when Petri and I showed any affection.”

  “Why do you suspect he was lying?”

  “Because he kept pressing me to tell him whether I knew about the plan and what I thought about it. When I said that I thought it was a bad idea and had fought with Petri about it, he almost sounded pleased. I don’t know.”

  That was what Kim Kajanus had said too. And so I asked Tommi Laitinen to recount the past month’s events one more time.

  “Sometimes Petri seemed upset. A couple of times I saw him going through some
papers and muttering to himself about wishing he knew what to do. But when I asked him about it, he wouldn’t answer. I thought it must be something political. The Planning Commission has been working on the new master plan for South Espoo, and they’ve been under a lot of pressure. Ask Eila’s or Petri’s party colleagues. They’ll be able to tell you about it.”

  “Alright, I will. For now, I’ve brought these phone logs with me. Would you mind taking a look at them?” I asked.

  At first Laitinen looked confused, but then he started going through all of the calls that had been made to or from their home and mobile phones. Ilveskivi didn’t have a separate work phone, just his personal cell. Laitinen didn’t recognize some of the names and numbers, like Kim Kajanus’s, as well as a few that Detective Lehtovuori had already determined were Petri’s clients.

  “There isn’t anything strange here. Eila calls here every day, and these calls are from Järvinen, another Green member of the Planning Commission. These are from Rahnasto, the chairman. This is Petri’s mother’s number.”

  I knew all of this already, but I had hoped that something might jump out at Laitinen. But nothing did.

  “The body will be released tomorrow,” I said when I couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Yes, to Petri’s parents. They’re the legal next of kin.”

  “Even though you’re the one listed on all of Petri’s medical records? Is there some sort of disagreement between you and Petri’s parents about the funeral arrangements?”

  “Petri’s father still only talks to me when he absolutely has to. And Petri didn’t leave any instructions for his funeral. I really have no idea what kind of a funeral this is going to be. Petri probably would have wanted me and his friends to carry the casket, but his dad is rounding up relatives who didn’t mean anything to Petri. Maybe his ‘friends’”—Tommi added a derisive emphasis to the word—“will hold our own celebration of his life.”