Before I Go

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “You did make out wills, though, right? The house is in both your names.”

  “Yes.”

  Puustjärvi and Lehtovuori had interviewed Petri Ilveskivi’s parents and his sister’s family, but all they found were grief and bitterness. For years the father hadn’t had much contact with his son, and the mother had shut out of her consciousness everything about her son’s life other than his work and political activities. The sister had liked her brother, but her husband hadn’t wanted Ilveskivi to be in too close of contact with their sons. Lehtovuori’s report made it obvious that neither the interviewees nor the interviewers were comfortable talking about Petri Ilveskivi’s sexual orientation. I felt like rushing over to the parliament building right that very instant and protesting for marriage equality. Then I smiled at myself. Taskinen was right. The old fighter in me was reawakening. In a strange way, it felt comforting.

  Tommi Laitinen glanced at my smile in confusion. Since it didn’t look like I was going to get anything new out of him without telling him about Kim Kajanus, I decided it’d be best to leave.

  At the station I read through the reports of the interviews with Petri Ilveskivi’s coworkers and the other Green Party members on the City Planning Commission. There wasn’t anything noteworthy in them. Marko Seppälä seemed to be our only lead. So I decided to head home.

  At the front door, I ran into Koivu, who looked irritated.

  “What happened with that Seppälä sighting?”

  Koivu sighed. “Dead end. A patrol cop in Hyvinkää thought he’d seen Seppälä in a bar on Saturday, but then he started backpedaling. We went to the bar and showed Seppälä’s picture around, but nobody recognized him. We got nothing from Kotka either. One coat-check attendant who’s done time for fencing stolen goods said that he knows Seppälä but hasn’t seen him in a couple of months. Harry Houdini would be jealous of the disappearing act this guy pulled.”

  “We’ll have to go back and question the wife again tomorrow. And then we’ll see what Eriikka Rahnasto has to say on Wednesday when she gets back from LA. At least Patrol caught those skateboard bandits when they tried the same stunt again. Where’s Anu?”

  “At home changing. We’re going to look at that apartment tonight.”

  “So things are moving forward?”

  “Eh, we’re just going to look.” Koivu shrugged as if it was no big deal, but he couldn’t fool me. After giving him a friendly slap on the back, he left and I unlocked my front door and went inside.

  Dinner was macaroni and ground-beef casserole à la Maria from the back of the freezer. Iida wanted to squirt the ketchup on her plate herself, which resulted in ketchup all over the tablecloth and her previously clean pants. I somehow managed not to lose my temper. What did it matter after all? Spring had sprung, the sun was warm even in the evening, and I was going to a movie with a friend.

  A Long, Hot Summer was Finland’s answer to The Blues Brothers, and since the misadventures of its teenage protagonists were set sixty miles from my hometown, this was going to be a serious trip down memory lane. To get myself in the right frame of mind, I put punk rocker Pelle Miljoona’s greatest hits on the turntable and cracked open a beer. Then I pulled on my most faded jeans and an old white men’s shirt. Tennis shoes, my leather jacket from school, and an unfashionable amount of eyeliner finished off the look. Much to Iida’s delight, I started getting into the groove, even managing to do a few pogo hops to the beat, but “Violence and a Drug Problem” put a stop to it, since it reminded me of work, with its story of neglected children spiraling into street life.

  Leena was waiting in the lobby of the theater, dressed like the middle-aged lawyer that she was. I, on the other hand, bounced along in my sneakers as if there weren’t any gray in my hair. We had known each other since law school. She had been more into ABBA than punk rock, but she was just as familiar as I was with all the three-chord bands from our youth and their big dreams of breaking into the Helsinki club scene. Those days were so long ago that we could laugh about it now, and we probably made more noise than the fifteen-year-olds in the audience. By the end of the movie I was weeping and laughing at the same time from the pure joy of recognizing my own life on the big screen.

  “Now we just need somebody’s older brother to sneak us some wine coolers or hard cider,” I said to Leena as we were weaving our way through the teenage crowd toward the exit. “Let’s go to Corona. Nobody will care that you’re overdressed there.”

  When they didn’t have any of the cheap drinks I wanted, I settled for beer, which I had drunk plenty of as a teenager too.

  “That was good. Now when my kids ask what it was like when I was young, I can show them that movie.” Her son was ten, and Leena had already been forced to talk with him about drugs and pedophiles.

  “But we can’t tell them everything we did, the drinking and the sex, can we?” I asked, almost shocked. “I mean, I’ve smoked a few joints in my day, but drugs are going to be absolutely off limits for Iida. Is that hypocritical?”

  “No more hypocritical than demanding more power for the police to prevent crime and then getting upset when the police slaps you with a speeding ticket for going forty in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour school zone. That happened just last week by Juho’s school. Some important CEO type had just written a letter to the editor about security for business property and the need to increase police authority. But when he got pulled over, somehow speed limits didn’t apply to him.”

  “The losers think they’re outside the law and the leaders think they’re above it. But we’re here to forget about work. I’m going for another. You want anything?”

  We moved on to chortling about the mishaps of everyday life, and the medicine of laughter made me breathe easier and drink slower. Neither of us had a quiet laugh, and I noticed people staring at us with as much interest as disapproval. This wasn’t the first time I had noticed that laughing women drew attention, that we evoked attraction and fear. Maybe we were occupying a space that people didn’t think belonged to us, or that they couldn’t believe we could laugh and have fun without a man around to tell the jokes.

  After two pints it was time to head home. Two men were kissing passionately in front of Con Hombres. That took my thoughts back to the Ilveskivi case, but I pushed it out of my mind by recalling the movie I had just seen. During the time period it depicted, the most any girl could hope for was to play roadie, so I really had been an exception with my bass guitar. Thank goodness Iida wouldn’t be a freak if she wanted to play in a band, whether an all-girl one or one with boys. No one would think anything of either.

  I walked to the nearest bus stop. The sky was cloudy and the temperature was noticeably colder than it had been the previous two days, and since it was eleven, the sun was down. I had left my bike at another bus stop between this one and home, because public transit wouldn’t get me all the way there this late. At the bus stop, a Somali boy of about fifteen was waiting. We both jumped when two people suddenly emerged from the little park across the street. I recognized the small, burly bald man from his gait, and the bigger one seemed familiar. Then the light hit their faces: Jani Väinölä and his pal Pirinen.

  I stepped back into the darkness because I didn’t want to interact with Väinölä. Ignoring the honks of a taxi, the men crossed the road and then stopped to dig into their pockets. A well-dressed middle-aged man walked up to the stop, giving the skinheads a wide berth. Pirinen was already lighting a cigarette when Väinölä said, “What the fuck are we doing smoking our own cigarettes when that licorice kid probably has some?”

  Väinölä moved over to the Somali boy, and even though Väinölä was shorter, he had at least sixty pounds on the boy. When Pirinen also approached, the boy seemed to shrink even further.

  “Hey, blackie. Give us a smoke. Or don’t you understand fucking Finnish?”

  The well-dressed man smoothly slid away, back into the night—he had no intention of getting involved. Civilians had the right to make that choice,
but I was a police officer.

  “Leave the kid alone,” I said and stepped out into the light. Just then there was a flash of steel as the boy flipped open a butterfly knife.

  “Fuck off,” he hissed. No one noticed me until I shoved my way between the men.

  “Väinölä, leave the kid alone!”

  “What the hell, bi . . .” Väinölä began as he turned to me, and then his expression changed from hostility to amusement.

  “Oh, it’s you, Detective. Night off, eh? Or are you under cover? Infiltrating hippie punk gangs?”

  “Give me the knife,” I said to the Somali boy. “I’m a cop.”

  The boy looked confused. He was obviously having a hard time believing me. But finally he handed me the knife.

  “And you two beat it!” I said to Pirinen and Väinölä.

  “This is a fucking free country. We can stand at whatever bus stop we want. And we didn’t do nothing. Asking for a smoke isn’t a crime. He’s the one who pulled the knife.”

  “Leave now unless you want to spend the night in jail,” I said as I reached for my phone. I couldn’t do anything to two men by myself, but the place was public enough that they wouldn’t dare attack a police officer.

  “Detective, I’m getting a little sick of you fucking with my business,” Väinölä said menacingly. The spit landed two inches from the tips of my shoes. “Come on, Pirinen. Let’s go get a beer.”

  “Where are you going?” I said, turning to the boy, who clearly would have liked to get away from me too, but didn’t dare leave my protection.

  “Home.”

  “Where?” I asked quickly. My own bus would be arriving any second, but I didn’t want to leave the boy alone.

  “Kivenlahti.”

  “When does the bus come?”

  “Eighteen after.”

  “My bus is coming now! Come on. We’ll go to the Tapiola transfer station. You can switch there.”

  The boy glanced at me, clearly suspicious, but he followed. Once aboard, I took a seat next to him on the bench reserved for senior citizens.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Abdi.” The boy stared at his shoes.

  “I’m Maria. Why did you pull out that knife? You know that carrying something like that in a public place is a crime.”

  “They would have beat me up.”

  I didn’t have much to say to that. Abdi would just buy a new knife tomorrow to replace the one I’d taken. Most of the Somali refugee kids only traveled in large groups, because they weren’t safe if they were alone and in the wrong area.

  We sat in silence for a few stops, and then I dug a card out of my wallet.

  “I’m the boss of the Violent Crime Unit in the Espoo Police. If those two or anyone like them threatens you, call me instead of pulling a knife. Nobody ever wins a knife fight.”

  Abdi didn’t answer, but he took my card before getting off at the transfer station. Not until that moment did I realize that Väinölä and Pirinen might be coming on the next bus and would see Abdi at the station. I probably should have paid for a taxi.

  My trek home from the bus stop was a solitary one. Only a few cars drove by, and Abdi’s knife weighed heavily in my pocket. I hadn’t told him that I always carry a knife too. I had only had to use it once.

  The night smelled of the memory of the sun and opening leaves. I couldn’t help but flinch at the sound of the wind in the old trees that lined the road. My sleep was restless again, and I had a dream about skinheads and punks squaring off in a knife fight. Abdi and Petri Ilveskivi were there too.

  9

  The next morning I asked the duty officer if anyone had been attacked during the night. I was relieved when the answer was in the negative. I took Abdi’s knife to the confiscated property locker, where it would stay until some indefinite point in the future. In the morning meeting, I again thought of Jani Väinölä, who was unlikely to be a free man for long. Väinölä was one of those people who needed enemies to know who he was. There seemed to be more people like that every day. Racists, anticommunists, EU opponents. Some friends had tried to convince Antti to run in the local elections, and we had spent a hilarious night coming up with ridiculous campaign slogans about opposing plastic bags and motorsports. Ultimately he decided not to run. I had been relieved because I already caught enough flack at work about Antti belonging to the Nature Conservancy, and the boys in Organized Crime always managed to stay surprisingly up to date on my husband’s life. One of these days I was going to bribe somebody in IT to hack into the Organized Crime and State Intelligence databases to see what they were saying about my husband.

  Except for the Ilveskivi case, everything was moving along nicely for the unit. Mela was pleased with himself because he had quickly solved the fight he had been investigating, and he imagined it was because of his brilliant police work. The case had been extremely simple, and Mela’s partner, Lähde, had known the parties from a previous incident. But I let the boy gloat, because in policing, success was never in excessive supply.

  “I’m still trying to get in touch with Laura Laevuo,” Wang said when I asked about how the Ilveskivi investigation was proceeding. It took me a few seconds before I remembered that Laevuo was the writer Kim Kajanus had said he was photographing at the time of Ilveskivi’s attack.

  “The DNA results from Ilveskivi’s body should be in this afternoon,” Koivu said. He sounded tired. “Maybe they’ll tell us something.”

  I wondered how I could put some fight back in my unit when I was short on it myself. Just as the group was dispersing, my phone rang.

  “This is Kallio,” I responded, slipping into the hall away from the clinking of coffee cups and Lähde’s heavy sighs.

  “Hello, this is Suvi Seppälä. Have you caught up with Marko yet?”

  “No, why?”

  “Shit. Goddamn it.” Suvi’s voice cracked, and I heard a sob on the other end of the line. “Something isn’t right. The neighbors said the cops have been coming by all the time to see if Marko is home.”

  “You still haven’t heard from him?”

  “No! And . . . he would kill me if he knew I was talking to the cops, but . . . he’s never been gone this long before, at least not without telling me. And I lied: he isn’t in Kotka.”

  “Are you at school now?”

  “I’m on a smoke break. But I can leave if I need to.”

  “Can you come to the police station? Ask for me downstairs.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Suvi said and hung up the phone.

  I noticed that my hands were shaking with excitement, and I rushed to Koivu’s office to tell him about Suvi’s call. We decided that three of us would question her: Koivu, Wang, and I. Suvi must have pushed her Datsun to its limits, because within fifteen minutes she was sitting in my office.

  “So you want to change your story about what happened last Tuesday?” I said amiably.

  “I know I don’t have to testify against my husband.” Suvi’s sharp jaw rose defiantly, but fear shone in her heavily made-up eyes.

  “That’s correct, but the truth might help him. What happened Tuesday night?”

  Suvi squirmed in her chair, her skinny limbs twisting in acrobatic positions. I gave her time, since she had volunteered to come.

  “Of course you won’t let me smoke, right?” she said.

  “Go ahead. Koivu, will you go grab a cup from the break room to be used as an ashtray? Would you like some coffee?”

  “No,” Suvi said, and lit up. Koivu rolled his eyes as he left the room. I didn’t like tobacco smoke, but sometimes you had to compromise a little to get what you wanted. Hopefully the smoke alarm in my office wasn’t overly sensitive.

  “I’m sure Marko is in some kind of deep shit,” Suvi said after taking a few deep drags. Wang opened a window, and the noise of the Turku Highway came in. The exhaust fumes didn’t improve the air much.

  “He was on a high all weekend, drinking beer and bragging about how our life was about to c
hange, that he had a big job coming up. I just kept quiet, because he’s always dreaming about a job that will let us move to Majorca and never have to see rain or sleet again. He wants so badly for us to have the same things other people do. To buy new clothes for the kids instead of always going to the flea market . . . He said that if he could just get some capital, he could set up a motorcycle shop on Majorca. One of his friends went there and complained that there weren’t enough good repair shops. Although I don’t know how he was going to run the shop, since he’s all thumbs. He’s lucky if he can pound a nail into a wall! I had to weld the Datsun’s tailpipe myself, since Marko couldn’t figure out how.”

  Suvi sniffed, and a tear blackened by her eyeliner rolled down the side of her nose. “I knew there was never going to be a big job. Marko is a little like my mom, always dreaming of hitting the jackpot. Mom is always telling the kids she’s going to buy them a nice TV and movies and a computer and all the games they could want when she wins the lottery.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone whose big job came through,” I said almost sympathetically. “Marko didn’t happen to tell you what kind of a job it was, did he?”

  “I don’t usually ask. I’ve made him swear he wouldn’t get mixed up in drugs. I don’t want our children having anything to do with that crap. He has a reputation that he can be trusted with money, and I thought he might have some courier job. Maybe somebody killed him for that.”

  “Tell us what happened Tuesday. Was that when Marko was supposed to do this big job?”

  “Yeah.” Suvi twisted in her chair again, and I marveled at how she could move so easily in such tight jeans. “Like I said, he’d been talking about it all weekend, and he even took us to McDonald’s and everything, since there was going to be money for once, and he bought the kids a video.”

  “Did Marko get an advance for the job?”

  “No!” Suvi said intensely. “We . . . we have some savings.” She lit another cigarette, and I saw a vein in her gaunt neck pulsate. She was lying. So where was the money Marko had been paid? If we could get our hands on a bill, we might be able to trace it by its serial numbers.