Before I Go

by Leena Lehtolainen

  12

  I ordered Lähde and Mela to come with me to the landfill, since the others were busy with their own cases. Forensics had already left, so we took my car. It was faster than taking one of the Soviet-made Ladas that the department was still issuing from the motor pool. Mela insisted on driving. He was clearly excited by the acceleration of my Saab, which was only a couple of years old, and pushed it into high gear once we got out to the Turku Highway.

  Rasilainen’s patrol car had been nearby when the call had come in from the dump. The crew whose job it was to spread dirt and form the hillside along the outer slope of the landfill had noticed a foot sticking out of the trash heap. According to Rasilainen, all that was visible was a size-seven boot. Based on the shoe size, it could just as easily belong to a small man or a woman.

  “Have you ever seen a corpse?” Lähde asked Mela as we approached the dump.

  “Yes, I have,” Mela replied and sped up again as though in a hurry to get to the body. “At home a couple of years back a neighbor dude strung himself up. His wife came and got me and my dad to cut him down. Of course we didn’t. We called the police and told them to come look at the yo-yo.”

  “Oh, so you’ve seen a ‘yo-yo,’ have you,” Lähde said dryly.

  “Yep. And when I was in school there was this car crash, and then in the morgue of course,” Mela hurried to add.

  We announced ourselves at the front gate to the dump, from which we were directed on to the actual landfill. A flock of hundreds of seagulls circled over the burial mound of discarded goods, with sparrows flitting in between. The line of garbage trucks at the gate was stopped, but there was still activity at the composting facility, and bulldozers were working on an expansion area. A couple of patrol cars and the forensics vans were parked higher up on the mound. We drove toward them, passing a sign pointing toward the asbestos-disposal area.

  “Landfill gas danger,” Mela said as we passed another sign. “No smoking today.”

  The smell of methane became stronger the higher we climbed. The lower portion of the mound was covered in grass, and the coltsfoot already looked tired next to the bright-yellow winter cress. While Mela parked next to a front-end loader, I searched my investigation kit for a respirator. Even with it on, outside the car the stench was almost overwhelming, and I pulled on a plastic cap to protect my hair. I completed the outfit with plastic booties over my shoes.

  Rasilainen waved from behind the forensic team. The crime-scene photographer was hard at work, and Airaksinen was setting out blue police tape around the area. Surrounded by broken chairs, lime-green sheets of insulation, and scraps of tent fabric, a left foot with a heavy boot on it protruded from the trash.

  “Is there a whole body, or is this like Hyvinkää again?” Mela asked.

  “Looks like more than a foot,” Hakulinen from Forensics replied. “Kallio, do you want to have a closer look or should we dig him out? The manager of the dump thinks he’s probably been in the trash for a while. The last time the compactor ran through here was just before May Day.”

  “Yeah, go ahead and start digging,” I said and then went in for a closer look, though I didn’t really want to. Carefully the forensics team began removing trash from around the foot. First they revealed a slender leg in black leather pants, then hips and the other leg. It was definitely a man’s body, but his build was more like a teenager’s. The stench grew worse when they dug out the torso. Worms had sucked out the blood, and flies had laid eggs in the gaping chest wound.

  “Must have been shot,” Lähde said expressionlessly.

  The head was covered with a garbage bag. Scraps of black plastic also lay around the legs, so the body may have been covered with two bags that had been ripped by trash or machinery. Hakulinen carefully uncovered the face. It was blackened by decomposition. I asked Mela to get the computer from the car and pull up the lists of missing persons and APBs.

  “What do you think, Mela, could this be our guy?” I asked when he came back with the laptop. Trying to hold the computer in one hand while plugging his nose with the other, he looked back and forth between the mugshot and the body lying in the trash. Even though the face was in pretty bad shape, its narrowness, small jaw, and crooked nose were still distinguishable.

  “I think we found Marko Seppälä,” I said quietly.

  Next to me, Mela took a deep breath. All the color had drained from his face. I pulled him off to the side and made him sit down and put his head between his knees. Then I ordered Forensics to call in reinforcements and asked Lähde to get the rest of our unit.

  “And the meat wagon, right?” Hakulinen said.

  “Yes. I want this body opened up as soon as possible.” According to his police record, on his right upper arm Marko Seppälä had a tattoo of a heart with the word “Suvi” in large letters and smaller hearts with their children’s names that had been added later. That would be enough to identify him, assuming the decomposition hadn’t progressed too far. Unfortunately, because it had been under the trash and partially covered in plastic, the body had stayed warmer than the air outside.

  Mela still sat with his head between his knees, and Lähde gave me a wink. Hopefully he wouldn’t give Mela too hard a time, because this body was an awful sight for anyone, even someone with experience. I felt sick too. I walked toward the car to make a task list. As I passed Mela, I started to say something but then decided to leave him in peace.

  Reinforcements from Forensics arrived within about fifteen minutes, and I ordered them to search the area for a potential murder weapon and any other clues. A recent dismemberment case nearby in Hyvinkää was on everyone’s mind, and the jokes flying around were even darker than usual. Koivu and Wang arrived with the ambulance. I tried to schedule an autopsy for the same day at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, because determining Seppälä’s time of death was critical.

  “I’m glad you came,” I said to Koivu, who jumped out of the car but then quickly retreated to look for a respirator. “You two start interviewing the landfill staff, and try to figure out how the body got here. They keep records of every load of garbage, and the area is fenced off, so it wouldn’t be that easy to just pull up and dump a body out of a trunk. Mela, you could start going through the security logs and figure out when the loads for this area came in. Ask the office how we get access to those records.”

  Mela nodded, clearly relieved at the chance to get away from the smell of methane. I would be going to witness the examination of the body and possibly the autopsy as well. If all else failed, dental records could conclusively identify the body. If this really was Marko, Suvi Seppälä would have to perform the official identification, but that could wait until the body had been cleaned up. What time did the Seppälä’s older children get out of school? Who could come to support Suvi, and who would go to tell her we had found Marko? I remembered I had promised to pick up Iida from day care, but that wasn’t going to happen now. Luckily I reached Antti.

  “I’m going to have a few long days here,” I said dejectedly, realizing to my horror that I was on the verge of tears. “I’ve got another homicide on my hands, and I have no idea when I’ll be home. We’re out of milk and cheese, so you’ll need to hit the store too. There’s some soup in the freezer.”

  The mention of soup reminded me of lunch, but the stench of gas quickly drove away any feelings of hunger. I was able to keep my composure while I organized everything, but when I got in the car the anxiety hit. How stupid had it been to think that finding Marko Seppälä would solve the Ilveskivi murder? Now we were just going to have to start the investigation over again with even more complications to deal with. We had all agreed to meet back at the station at four thirty, and Lehtovuori was there consolidating everything he could dig up about Seppälä.

  Even though everyone besides Mela knew the routines and could handle their parts, this was going to be rough. As I approached the exit I usually took, the thought occurred to me that I could drive to the station and send Puupp
onen to identify the body in my stead, but the part of me that was still functioning wouldn’t let the weaker me turn the wheel. I turned on the radio for some comfort, and the best I could find was Kauko Röyhkä’s “Before I Go.” I wished I could be somewhere else too.

  When I arrived at the institute, I went to see the forensic pathologist on duty.

  “I want to do the identification as soon as possible. This is essential for our investigation. As far as I’m concerned, the actual autopsy can be postponed, but I want at least an examination now so we can be sure the deceased is the person we’ve been looking for,” I said to Dr. Kervinen, who was an old acquaintance. He’d changed aftershaves since I’d seen him last.

  “There’s already a line. A suspected case of SIDS and an old lady found dead in her home. You’ll have to wait your turn.”

  “I certainly will not. This is only going to take you ten minutes, tops. Is the body already in the cooler?”

  “Not yet. We don’t have any damn room. There were five suicides over the weekend. Springtime and alcohol seem to make people depressed. Twelve alcohol poisonings are going to funeral parlors this afternoon, which will open up a spot for your boy.”

  “A visual inspection isn’t going to take long,” I said and crossed my arms. “We need hair and blood samples to send to the lab ASAP. This victim probably committed a homicide himself, and we may be able to solve that one with these samples.”

  “So you need me to help your case statistics, is that it?” Kervinen said, but then he realized he wasn’t going to get rid of me until he agreed to my request.

  “Just wait a sec. I’ll see what I can do. Are you going to stay to watch the cutting yourself?”

  “Depends on whether this is the person we’ve been looking for these past two weeks.”

  “OK, come on. Himanen, will you call the clerk in? Our esteemed colleague here seems to be in a terrible rush. Kallio, put on a suit and we’ll go have a look. This may be a little unorthodox, but at least we can see where we are.”

  After donning a protective suit, I followed Kervinen. The refrigeration corridor had twenty-eight stainless-steel doors and a cement floor that was easy to spray clean when necessary. The body still lay on the stretcher it had been brought in on from the landfill, and the stench made me cringe. Himanen lifted the sheet, and the forensic pathology clerk prepared to record everything that was said.

  I forced myself to look at the dead man’s face again. The grimace frozen there was the worst I had ever seen, though his jaw already hung limp. There were fly eggs in his eyelashes, but otherwise the face was intact.

  A motorcycle jacket covered his neck and shoulders, but there were no gloves on his hands. On his left ring finger was a silver Kalevala Jewelry snake ring. Suvi Seppälä wore the same one, and she had listed their wedding bands as an identifying mark for her husband.

  “Will you take off that ring?” I asked Himanen, who scraped the grime off it into a plastic pouch and then handed the ring to me. Even though the ring was tarnished, I could still make out the inscription: Suvi and Marko 21.6.1990. Together Forever.

  I asked them to open the sleeve of the leather jacket, which had a zipper running up to the elbow. Himanen unzipped the sleeve and then pulled it up farther to reveal a tattooed heart and four letters around it. The smaller heart added to commemorate Toni’s birth was also visible, but Janita and Diana’s hearts were obscured by swelling and bruising.

  “That’s enough for now,” I said calmly. “Please send hair and blood samples to the lab and put him on ice. Looks like a single GSW. His name is Marko Seppälä, and you’ll find all his information in our file.”

  “We should be able to get to the autopsy around three. Can you send someone over?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Leaving the morgue always gave me the same feeling of relief, but the shadow of death seemed to follow me into the parking lot, and the gentle breeze did little to wash away the stench that clung to my clothes and hair. Leaning against the car, I dialed Koivu’s number. He answered after five rings.

  “Hi, it’s Maria. It is Seppälä. Any idea yet how he ended up in the landfill?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s stick with the old plan, then. Four thirty at the station. Puustjärvi and Puupponen can go to the autopsy, which the ME said would be at three. We’ll need to keep looking for a bullet, a gun, and Seppälä’s motorcycle at or near the dump. I’m going to the station to drum up reinforcements.”

  “We’re going to need them if we want to find the bullet. The dump manager said the killer had bad luck. He didn’t know not to leave the body close to the outer slope, since that area gets leveled out and cleaned up more often so the trash doesn’t slide off the edge. If the body had been buried closer to the center, it might not have been found for years, if ever.”

  “But how did the body get to the landfill in the first place? Wouldn’t the trash collectors notice if there was a garbage sack that weighed as much as a man? Let’s think about that in the meeting.”

  Low blood sugar was starting to make my hands shake, so I grabbed a slice of shrimp pizza from a nearby takeout joint. At the first stoplight I wolfed it down and wished that I had thought to buy a bottle of water too. At the next light I had a moment of hesitation. I hadn’t assigned anyone to deliver the bad news to Suvi Seppälä. Somehow I had the feeling that I should do it myself, but now or later, when Suvi was done with her class? Maybe now would be better so she could have some time before the older children got home from school.

  The leather-sewing class was being offered at a nearby vocational school. Earlier, in my days as a sergeant, I had visited the school to pick up students for questioning, but since then the place had changed completely. The old villas on the south side had been bulldozed and replaced by a dense high-rise apartment complex, over which screeched the official Espoo city bird, the construction crane.

  I asked the office where I might find Suvi and was directed to the textile shop. The class was made up of a couple dozen women of various ages bent over sewing machines. The purpose was to teach unemployed sewing machine operators specialized leatherworking skills and to encourage them to start their own businesses. Entrepreneurship and self-employment were supposedly the magic ticket to ending structural unemployment. Everything depended on the person herself, and if you were enterprising enough, you could become a millionaire Nokia shareholder or win a trip to the Turkish Riviera on Wheel of Fortune, or so the theory went. The course also seemed to be teaching independence, since there was no teacher present.

  Suvi sat in the middle of the back row and seemed to be unaware of anything but the thin red piece of leather she was trying to shape into a sleeve. When I walked over to her, she jumped, and the needle skittered across the material’s shiny surface.

  “Shit!” Suvi said and lifted her foot off the pedal. “What are you doing, sneaking up on a person like that? Wait, is it Marko? Is he . . . is Marko . . . ?”

  “Could you come out into the hall?”

  Suvi grabbed her bag and coat, not even bothering to turn off her sewing machine. The hallway didn’t offer any privacy, but I pulled Suvi away from the doorway to the sewing class before talking.

  “Yes, we found Marko. His body was discovered this morning in the city landfill. I’m sorry.”

  Suvi stood perfectly still for a few seconds. Then suddenly she lunged at me and grabbed my hair.

  “Why didn’t you catch him in time? Why didn’t you do your fucking job! Marko!”

  I felt pain in my scalp and the corner of my eye. I grabbed her wrists and squeezed until she released my hair, then twisted her arms behind her back. I held her there until she started whimpering quietly. When I let her go, she slumped down onto the floor and put her head on her knees.

  “Quiet in the hall, you’re interrupting our class,” an older gentleman said from the doorway of the nearest classroom. I waved him away, then collected Suvi’s things from the floor. Her purse had fallen open
and a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a tube of mascara had spilled out. I straightened the fringe on her leather jacket before wrapping it around her shoulders. Sobs wracked her body.

  “How?” she finally asked, her voice choked. “Was he killed?”

  “We can’t say anything for sure yet. There was a wound in his chest that looked like it came from a gunshot. The autopsy is this afternoon.”

  Suvi stood up quickly.

  “I want to get the hell out of here,” she said and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. “I’m going to get my children.” Suvi started running down the stairs, and I followed.

  “I can take you,” I said, because Suvi’s eyes were still full of tears and her face was swollen.

  “I’m not leaving my car here for someone to steal! I’m fine to drive. The kids get out of school at one.”

  Suvi’s voice was thin and punctuated with sobs. She wrapped her arms around herself as if for comfort, and a black line of mascara ran down her face like the strange mourning symbol of an ancient tribe. I couldn’t leave her alone, so I switched on my car’s immobilizer and alarm and asked Suvi for the keys to her Datsun. When I got back to the station, I would send someone from Patrol to retrieve my Saab.

  In the passenger seat of her car was a beat-up car seat, which Suvi moved to the back. The car stank of cigarettes and oil, and dice and a tree-shaped air freshener hung from the rearview mirror. Before I had my current work car, I had driven a small Fiat, and before that my uncle’s Lada junker, but they had been luxury cars compared to this. Finding the correct relationship between ignition and gas pedal in order to start the car took a minute. Suvi dried her face with an unused diaper she had produced from somewhere.

  “When did he die?” she asked once we were on the road.

  “I can’t say for sure. The autopsy will tell us more.”

  “And you’re sure it’s Marko?”

  When I said I had seen the tattoos, Suvi began to sob again. I had to concentrate on driving because even at such a moderate speed, the Datsun shook so violently that I could imagine it breaking apart at any second.