“Hi, it’s Suvi. You said I could call you anytime. I’ve been thinking. I think I should tell you everything. Jari took the kids to a movie and McDonald’s so I could have time now.”
I didn’t even give it a second thought.
“Good. We can come there. Yes, I’ll bring another officer with me, Anu Wang. We’ll see you in half an hour.”
Jogging back over to the group, I nodded to Wang to follow me.
“Suvi Seppälä has decided to talk. There’s a laptop in the car we can use to take her statement. If we get lucky, we may be able to split that bottle of vodka.”
14
We didn’t bother changing, even though driving in cleats wasn’t ideal. Wang was at least wearing a proper track suit, but my T-shirt had split a seam in the previous wash cycle, which I hadn’t noticed this morning in the rush of leaving the house. Warming up had got me sweating a bit, and while we drove it dried into a clammy film.
The grass was growing wild in the Seppälä’s tiny front yard, and an aging tricycle looked pathetic next to three brand-new child-size bicycles. Diana still needed training wheels. Tony’s BMX bike was every little boy’s dream, and Janita’s bike was bubblegum pink. Grape hyacinths bloomed in the flower bed under the window.
The door opened before we could ring the bell. Without makeup on Suvi looked young and tired, and the loose men’s shirt that hung off her accentuated how slim she was.
I kicked off my muddy cleats at the door. Wang did the same. This time Suvi escorted us into the living room. Wang set up the computer on the coffee table, but then changed her mind and set it on her lap.
The cramped bedrooms were visible from where we sat. One had no room for anything beyond a double bed and a crib, while the other had a bunk bed and the floor was covered in toys.
“I didn’t feel up to cleaning,” Suvi said defensively. “I’ll probably have to before Child Protective Services sends their spies again.” She opened the window and lit a cigarette. Wang brought up a personal data form on the computer. Suvi was born in April 1973, so she had been seventeen when Janita was born. Now she was twenty-six, a mother of three, and a widow.
I remembered my grandmother, who had been through a similar situation. Maybe she would have known what to say to Suvi. Maybe she would have done what everyone in her generation did and encouraged Suvi to buck up, comforting her with the knowledge that others had survived what she was going through now. But what could I say?
“Was Marko shot?” Suvi asked after finishing half her cigarette.
“Yes, he was shot.”
“Did he die quickly?”
Lying would have been easier, but I told the truth.
“So he suffered. Oh God!” Suvi’s face had the translucence of fat-free milk, and her eyes burned with rage. “Of course you think he deserved it because he killed that fag. But Marko wouldn’t have agreed to kill anyone. I heard the phone call when he finally reached the guy who hired him. He’d been promised that the fag was a pathetic wimp who just needed a little roughing up. But he wasn’t a wimp. He attacked Marko, and Marko had to defend himself.”
“So you’ve known the whole time?”
“Yes. Are you going to send me to fucking prison now too, for being an accessory? Marko never told me about his jobs so I couldn’t be accused of anything. He wouldn’t have said anything about this either except he had been so scared.” Suvi vigorously tamped out her cigarette, leaving only the crushed filter in the Viking Cruises ashtray.
“You said that after Marko got home he was trying to call someone, but there weren’t any calls from your phone that night. What is the truth?”
Suvi glared at me.
“Marko thought the cops might be listening in on our phone. He said he didn’t dare call but that he’d send a postcard with a false name as soon as he knew how long he would be gone. But no card ever came. He left, and I never heard from him again.” Suvi staggered as she walked to the window, and for a moment I was afraid she would fall, but she managed to catch herself. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “This is Marko’s shirt. I took it out of the hamper. It still smells like him, like the sheets do. I’ll never be able to change them again.”
“Suvi, where did Marko call from? According to our information, he didn’t have a cell phone. Or did he?”
“The person who hired him gave him one. Marko was supposed to use it to tell him when the job was done.”
“Who was the client? What did Marko tell you about him?”
“Nothing! I already said that Marko never told me about his jobs. Whoever it was had money, though. They promised Marko seventy thousand marks when the job was done. We were supposed to take the whole family to Euro Disney. Our kids have never been anywhere farther than Tallinn. When Marko got out of prison last time, we took them on a trip. We took the elevator to the top of the Viru Hotel to look at the view. Marko said that one day he was going to be able to give me and the kids everything we wanted.”
Suvi wrapped her arms around herself and swallowed. She looked cold but didn’t close the window.
“Marko only wanted good things for us. No one would hire him after he got out last time. His parole officer said he should go back to school. But with what money? We already had one kid and another one on the way. Then he got caught working under the table at a construction site, and I had to go on welfare. And now it’s all starting again.”
Suvi lit another cigarette. Wang carefully recorded everything, and I tried to take Suvi back to the night of Marko’s disappearance.
“Try to remember, Suvi. Everything is important. What kind of cell phone was it? Did Marko give you the number? When did he get the phone?”
Based on the new VCR and the bikes out front, Marko had received at least a few thousand in advance. The serial number on the bill hadn’t led anywhere, so Marko’s client must have earned the money legally.
“It was just a normal gray Nokia. It didn’t have any games or anything. Marko kept it in the pocket of his leather jacket, away from where the kids might find it. He got it a couple of days before he disappeared. Maybe it was Sunday.”
A charm of finches flitted past the window and then made a black latticework in the sky, which grew and shrank according to its own laws. A gust of wind broke off the tip of Suvi’s cigarette, and ash flew in her face, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m used to not asking so you all won’t lock me up too. The first time Marko went in for a couple of assaults and concealing stolen goods, the cops tried to nail me too. We were living in a little apartment, and Marko kept stolen CD players and car stereos under our bed. But he never told me where they came from. He just told me he was transporting them from one seller to another. He never had a real job, but he promised that he’d never get mixed up with drugs, even though that’s where the real money is. Now I wish I had asked more about this job. If I knew who hired him, I could go spit in his face. First he made my children’s father a murderer and then killed him. And buried him in the dump like he was trash.”
Suvi sniffed and wrapped her flannel shirt tighter around her. “I want a nice casket for him, not the poor-people model, and a burial plot near the sea. We used to sit at the cemetery sometimes when we were first together. We climbed over the wall. For ten years we could go there and be by ourselves, before jerks started going around knocking over gravestones. I want to bury him there. And I can dress him in his favorite clothes, right? His Levis and his Born to be Wild shirt?”
“Of course you can,” I said before remembering Marko’s partially decomposed corpse. Maybe the mortician would be able to convince Suvi to leave the dressing to him. Anyway, we wouldn’t be able to release Marko’s body for a while, since the medical examiner and the lab were busy trying to determine time of death and caliber of the murder weapon. “Did Marko have a gun?”
Suvi shook her head.
“I don’t know. I haven’t let him bring guns into the house since Tony found one once and thought it was a toy. I c
ame back from the laundry and my son was in here waving a pistol around! He had the safety off and everything. Luckily it wasn’t loaded. You think I didn’t yell at Marko for that?”
I nodded and smiled cautiously. Wang looked impatient, but I thought we should let Suvi go at her own pace. The chair creaked under me. The thing must have been forty years old. Someone had recently painted the wooden parts of it a light blue and covered the seat with a flowery fabric. The couch had a slipcover made of the same fabric, and the same theme repeated in the curtains. Suvi seemed to be good with her hands.
“Was Marko’s client a man or a woman? And why did he or she want Petri Ilveskivi attacked?”
“I think it was a man,” Suvi said, obviously thinking. “Marko only talked about one client, and I assumed it was a man. And it must have been, because Marko kept swearing about not being able to get the bastard on the phone!” Suvi’s face brightened for a moment, as if determining the gender of the client could bring Marko back. “Of course I thought it was some sort of torpedo job. Like maybe the queer hadn’t paid his debts, and whoever he owed was sending a torpedo after him. Marko had never gotten to do torpedo jobs before. He was so proud of himself. He said he was finally going to earn a little respect. That’s what he wanted.”
Wang and I nodded—that was what everyone wanted. But at the same time I was horrified. Had Laine from Organized Crime been right?
“Marko’s client was furious, and Marko was afraid. He knew he had screwed up, but he told me he was going to demand more money because the mark attacked him instead of being an easy target as promised. He was going to ask for a hundred thousand. He was too goddamn greedy! And now we’re all paying for it!”
Suvi looked out the window, blinking rapidly, but the tears still came.
I asked who’d connected Marko with the client. Suvi didn’t know, but she promised to ask around. Maybe Marko’s friends would talk to her, though to police they wouldn’t even admit to knowing him.
“How are the children holding up?” I asked, indicating to Wang that she didn’t need to get this part down for the record.
“They miss their dad,” Suvi said and swallowed her tears. “I can handle my own pain, but when they start asking questions and crying, it’s just too much. I want so badly to lie to them. To tell them that Dad will be home if they just wait. Maybe say he’s in prison and we can’t go visit this time. We missed him when he was gone then too, but he could write and call, and we could visit him sometimes. But not now. He’s never coming home.”
Suvi stopped trying to hold back the sobs. The tears left red splotches on her pale face, and I thought of a lingonberry in August, when it was only red on one side.
“It’s just lucky the queer didn’t have any kids,” Suvi said after blowing her nose into a handkerchief she had found in her shirt pocket. “Right?”
“No, he didn’t have any children. Which of Marko’s friends are involved in drugs?”
“At least Tomppa Matveinen and Hannu Jarkola. Hannu and Marko were in the same cell block in prison, and they made moonshine together. Hannu is always ready to help—he’s fixed our Datsun before, even got us the parts. He’s a nice guy when he isn’t hopped up on speed.”
“And Jani Väinölä? Was he Marko’s friend?”
“Who?
“Jarkola’s friend Jani Väinölä, also a skinhead. He was with Marko in prison too.”
“Oh, the crazy one? No. Oh my God . . . Hannu beat up a fag a few years ago! Was this . . . was Marko’s target the same one? It couldn’t have been Hannu . . .” Suvi hopped off her perch on the windowsill, and a toy forgotten on the floor flew in an angry arc against the wall. “If Hannu had something to do with Marko’s killing, I’m going to rip his balls off!”
It took nearly ten minutes to calm Suvi down. I tried to get her to understand that she shouldn’t try to solve Marko’s murder, that the best way she could help was by discreetly asking the questions we had given her. I appealed to the fact that her children needed her more now than ever. She couldn’t take any risks.
“We have an APB out on Hannu Jarkola, so we’ll be able to talk to him soon. Remember, Suvi, we’re on the same side. We all want Marko’s murderer to pay for what he did.”
“It’s a little hard wrapping my mind around the idea of teaming up with cops. You’ve always made things hard for us. Although social workers are worse. One even came around after Diana was born to spy on us. She tried to teach me how to boil potatoes, and I told her, ‘Listen up, I’ve been cooking since I was eight, whenever my mom was working nights and my dad was drinking. To this day my brother’s favorite food is my home-cooked lasagna. I ain’t no helpless leech, even if I do buy a frozen casserole from the store every once in a while.’”
“I do too,” I said, smiling, in an attempt to create a connection with Suvi. The sound of a car came from outside, and she ran to the kitchen window.
“Jari and the kids are back. You have to go now. I couldn’t tell the kids their dad had been shot. I told them he was in a motorcycle accident. I can protect them that much, can’t I?” she asked with panic in her eyes. “Or will they hate me when they learn the truth?”
“You don’t have to figure all of this out by yourself. Talking with a therapist might be good for them.”
“They aren’t crazy, they’re just half orphans!” Suvi huffed just as the door opened and the sounds of children filled the entryway.
“Dang, whose cleats are these?” Tony shouted.
“It’s good you called us, Suvi. This information has been a lot of help. Call again whenever you need to,” I said quickly. Wang closed the computer and stood. For a few moments the entryway was a complete traffic jam, because Suvi’s brother was about three times thicker than his sister.
“Do women play soccer too?” Tony asked me dubiously.
“Yes,” I said and patted him on the head.
“Dad and me play all the time, but we don’t allow girls,” Tony said confidently and rushed to hug his mother. Suvi drew all the kids into her arms and tried to distract from the evidence of her tears by asking a question.
“Was the movie fun?”
Wang and I slipped out. We drove a while in silence, and then Wang cautiously asked, “Should we look into the drug theory a little more now?”
“Nothing indicates that Ilveskivi used or dealt drugs,” was my cold reply, even though I knew we should at least ask around. “Let’s focus on finding Jarkola. Patrol should check his apartment again. Would you be up to questioning him if we can get Koivu to help?”
“Yes, assuming I can get some real clothes on.”
But Jarkola wasn’t around, so Wang and I both went home. After Iida fell asleep, I decided to make up for my missed soccer practice with a jog. It was a little before ten, and light still lingered, golden rays shining through the tops of the trees, making the buds and emerging greenery of the lindens glow. Familiar dogs with their walkers passed. I usually remembered the animals better than I did the people. A digging machine was still churning up the earth at the construction site, which smelled of freshly poured cement. My glutes were tight from sitting, and I knew I would have to stretch out properly at home. Just as I was having this thought I noticed a car cruising slowly behind me. Since the road was narrow, I moved over to the grass on the ditch bank so it could pass. But the driver didn’t seem to want to pass.
I didn’t have a bulletproof vest, a helmet, or even a cell phone. The house key in my hoodie was the only thing I had to defend myself, and it wouldn’t be any use against a firearm. The dog walkers seemed to have disappeared, and the forest was suddenly silent.
It was all I could do to keep myself from looking back. Then the car pulled up next to me.
“Do you know where Tikaskallio 10 is?” a man asked in broken Finnish. “There are so many new roads here I can’t find it.”
When I turned I saw a brown face behind the wheel of a yellow-and-red pizza delivery car. I pointed him in the right direction, kee
ping my guard up the whole time. I would have to start bringing a phone with me when I ran, even though I didn’t like the idea. But it was a better alternative than a gun, a bulletproof vest, or helplessness and fear.
Overnight, Helsinki Narcotics had conducted a raid on a restaurant that was selling Ecstasy pills, and they happened to find Hannu Jarkola for us in the process. Our Helsinki colleagues promised that once they were done pumping him for information, they would send him over to us for questioning. Thursday was full of meetings and went by quickly. In the afternoon word came that our search team had found some bloody scraps of leather and fabric about a kilometer from the landfill. I was just about to go home when I heard about the bullet. Using the metal detector had turned out to be worth the effort. The department press officer and I wrote up a brief release announcing that we were close to solving Petri Ilveskivi’s homicide, although the motive remained unclear. I still didn’t want to call a large press conference, even though Taskinen and one of the deputy chiefs of police were pressuring me to. I wasn’t as satisfied with our results as they were.
After our Friday morning meeting, I went with Koivu and Wang to look at the place where Marko Seppälä had apparently bled out. There wasn’t anything special about it. Untouched willow stands, black-and-white birch trees, white wood anemones, and great blue tits enraptured with the spring. What had Seppälä’s killer done while his victim bled out? Smoked a cigarette or two? Destroyed the burner phone’s SIM card? Or had he left and then come back later in the night to dump the body?
Before I Go Page 19