Before I Go

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “According to him, the poor girl sounded out of her mind with grief. He considered it his duty to go and see that she was alright, and he was also flattered that a young woman like her would call him, even though he is old enough to be her father,” Muukkonen said with a snort. “But let him go ahead and lie. Our team of investigators is making quick progress. Rahnasto isn’t just a good shot, he’s also an experienced lock pick. Kallio, you’re probably too young to remember Skeleton Key Salminen, the legendary lock pick? Nowadays he’s an upstanding citizen, a Christian even, and he trains security professionals on robbery prevention. This winter he was training at RISS and personally walked Rahnasto through all the tricks of the trade. With that background, opening the lock on the gate at the landfill would’ve been child’s play. Rahnasto claims the gun in question was stolen, but he never filed a police report because it would have been bad press for a company like his. He managed to look genuinely embarrassed when he talked about it.”

  “Slippery as a bar of soap,” Koivu said with a sigh. “Anu and Puupponen went to talk to the old man who lives behind the dump, and he was pretty sure that it was a van with the RISS logo he saw speeding by on the night of April twenty-second. But we didn’t have any luck with the Hertz at the airport. The worker who rented the car in Jani Väinölä’s name didn’t recognize Rahnasto’s picture and couldn’t remember how old or what the man who rented the car looked like. The social security number was fake, and according to it, our bogus Väinölä was born in 1970. We’ve sent the signature for analysis.”

  “Could the renter be one of Rahnasto’s employees, for example the guard who was fired after the explosives theft from that construction site?”

  “That crossed my mind too,” Muukkonen said. “We’re going to question him. And Väinölä is sticking to his identification. This morning he was transferred to Katajanokka to await trial. Rahnasto, on the other hand, got to sleep in his own bed at home in Westend, but we confiscated his passport. This is going to work out,” Muukkonen said reassuringly.

  I listened to my colleagues’ reports without joy or excitement. I felt strangely numb, as if it didn’t really matter whether Rahnasto answered for his crimes or whether the revelation of the Laajalahti Bay plan had any practical political consequences. What felt much more important was that Iida had just learned to roll her r’s with confidence, which she’d spent all Wednesday proudly demonstrating. Antti had set an appointment with our realtor to go look at a fixer-upper near a lake northwest of the city on Saturday. It even had a playhouse in the front yard. The rest of the weekend we would spend on the boat, since the weather was supposed to be warm.

  “Do you remember when Iida was so small that we had to put her in a bouncer on the boat deck?” Antti asked wistfully. The TV news was showing the latest turn of events in the Chechen conflict, and I muted the sound. “We’ll have to see how she likes being on the boat this year. We’ll probably have to tie her to the mast.”

  “And we’ll have to be prepared to read out loud to her 24/7.”

  “Why? Isn’t that what books on tape are for? And if we have to, we can get a portable TV for the boat,” Antti said with a grin, and I threw a pillow at him.

  “Hey, look!” he said as the screen changed to show the lobby of the Espoo Police Station and a reporter began explaining the scandal around Rahnasto. I caught a glimpse of myself with my arms akimbo and a withdrawn look on my face. Rahnasto smiled at the camera as if he was on his way to his wedding.

  The reporter ended on an ominous note: “If the charges involving a leading city politician’s role in two murders and a bombing are proven true, we’re sure to see more political bombs dropping in Espoo. The city government has admitted to participating in negotiations about the purchase of the land surrounding the Laajalahti Bay nature preserve and rezoning the area but flatly denies any involvement in the attack on City Planning Commissioner Petri Ilveskivi. It also remains to be seen how airtight the evidence against Rahnasto is and what pawn might be sacrificed in this game of political chess. Does this mean that political murder has come to Finland? These are the questions we will consider tonight on Studio A.”

  I stared at the news, my mind blank. I felt as if I needed to prepare myself for anything and everything, including the possibility that I would be branded a bad cop who, as a woman, had been driven by hysteria. And I didn’t want to get Mikke mixed up in any of this. But it was looking like he would have to come to court. And eventually I would have to explain why I had wanted to protect him.

  I snuggled closer into Antti’s arms and turned off the television. We sat in the summer evening light for another half hour, neither of us saying a word the whole time. We didn’t get up until we needed to let Einstein inside to stop his meowing at the back door.

  Rahnasto’s interrogation continued on Thursday, but I didn’t have time to think about it, since Lehtovuori had broken his wrist and was out for two weeks, and the unit had to be reorganized to cover for his absence. At noon I heard that a RISS employee had admitted to renting the car in Jani Väinölä’s name. He hadn’t known he was doing anything wrong because Rahnasto had told him the car was a gift for a special client. Why a special client needed a car rented with forged documents the man hadn’t bothered to wonder.

  After lunch my computer went on the fritz. The screen started to flicker, and to my horror, smoke began to rise from the power cable connector. I pulled the cable out, but the smoke alarm still went off, and Puupponen rushed to my office to see what was wrong.

  “You burnt out on the Rahnasto case?” he asked, but I didn’t have it in me to laugh. After spending a couple of hours watching a guy from IT fight with the machine, I finally decided to call it a day. Iida was thrilled when I showed up at three thirty again. I hate shopping, but we both needed new summer clothes. Iida wanted flowers and frills, and who was I to deny her such adornments?

  I bought myself a slim-fitting flowery dress too, the kind I never could have imagined wearing just a few years before. We both ended up choosing the same kind of wide-brimmed straw hats. Antti’s expression was dumbfounded as we showed off our purchases at home in the yard.

  “Your daughter is turning you into a shopaholic,” he said, and I just laughed.

  Taskinen called later that evening and said he had spent the past few hours with the county prosecutor. Rahnasto still hadn’t admitted anything, but the prosecutor thought the evidence was sufficient to file charges anyway. The janitor at the Suvela Elementary School had come forward and reported seeing Rahnasto and Väinölä in the parking lot together two weeks before.

  “The City Council chairwoman told me on the phone that she had always been afraid that Rahnasto would go too far someday. She intends to see to it personally that Rahnasto is pushed aside—either he’ll resign or be impeached.”

  “Never leave an injured man—unless it’s a political emergency,” I said. I still hadn’t forgiven Jyrki for what he’d done.

  “Come upstairs for coffee tomorrow morning. You have good reason to gloat after being right about everything,” he said. “Agent Muukkonen and I are embarrassed about getting all the glory for solving the case when it was really you who did it.”

  I didn’t want to gloat. Puustjärvi had caught Marko Seppälä’s trail, and thanks should also go to Suvi Seppälä, Eila Honkavuori, Kim Kajanus, and Mikke Sjöberg. Wang and Rasilainen had driven Väinölä to confess. I hadn’t actually done anything. And something still bothered me. As if I had forgotten something essential to the investigation.

  By Friday morning I was feeling better. The sun had been shining for days, and its warmth was starting to sink down into the earth. Antti’s coworkers at the Meteorological Institute predicted that the seawater would warm quickly. I turned off the last of the radiators in our house.

  The papers were still full of the Rahnasto incident. I was grateful for every article that didn’t mention my name. My car was nearly one hundred degrees inside, so I decided to bike to work. I was ther
e faster than if I had gone by car. I saw three different butterflies and a lesser spotted woodpecker and got to smell the freshly blooming clover.

  It was summer.

  I was in a cheerful mood as I locked my bike to the rack and walked to my office to fix my helmet hair and exchange my shorts for a skirt. Would it be completely improper to appear without pantyhose on a hot day like this? I decided it wouldn’t be. The sun blazed through the break room windows as fans tried to drive out the excess heat.

  Taskinen and the head of Narcotics were already digging into the sandwiches. I took one, even though I had just had porridge with Iida. Laine came for coffee too. He wasn’t wearing any socks with his boating shoes. The courtesy everyone else paid me was amusing. Once again I was a “good guy” and “our girl,” even though a few days ago everyone would have preferred to see me on an extended sick leave or gone for good.

  “Have you issued an arrest warrant for Rahnasto yet?” I asked Taskinen quietly.

  “Yes. No one but the leadership knows yet, though. We’ll see how things develop. You seemed to have caused a real political firestorm.”

  Deputy Chief Kaartamo had a new light-blue summer suit, and he gave me an unctuous smile.

  “You may not have heard yet, Maria, but you don’t have to worry about Salo for a while now,” he said and placed his hand protectively on my shoulder. “Salo gave one of his fellow prisoners a serious beating. The man suffered a traumatic brain injury and isn’t likely to recover. Salo will be in solitary until the trial. The prison staff intends to demand that he be kept in isolation indefinitely, and I think they’ll get what they want.”

  The world went momentarily black. All I could hear was my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. Not him. Don’t let it be him. Not Mikke.

  “Maria?” Taskinen’s voice came from somewhere far away.

  “Did they tell you the victim’s name?” I asked. My voice sounded muffled and distant in my ears.

  “Some Estonian guy. One of Salo’s underlings.”

  “Õnnepalu? Oh thank God!” I slumped against the table and buried my face in my hands. Fortunately everyone misinterpreted my relief and began to reassure me that everything was over now. I wished I could cry. Bodies, funerals, beatings. What I wanted were weddings and christenings.

  After that we avoided talking about work. The detective lieutenant from Narcotics was going fishing for a week, and Kaartamo and I compared our experiences at the guest marinas at Hanko and Barösund. Taskinen smiled at me inquisitively now and then, but I didn’t say much.

  When Deputy Chief’s Kaartamo’s phone went off, no one paid it any attention. I was probably the first one to notice his voice rising and his free hand loosening his tie. Gradually the others fell silent too, waiting for the call to end. Kaartamo wiped his brow a couple of times before he managed to say, “Reijo Rahnasto was just apprehended at the West Harbor. He was on his way to Estonia with a fake passport. The border guard recognized him from the news. He was carrying nearly half a million US dollars.”

  The others were completely silent, but something inside my brain clicked into place.

  I realized what had been bothering me the night before.

  “Goddamn it!” I shouted and threw my half-eaten sandwich on the floor, sending a sprig of dill flying right onto Taskinen’s plate. “Which one of you warned Rahnasto?”

  I gazed around, and everyone looked completely thunderstruck. Except Laine. The color had gone out of his face, and he couldn’t keep us from seeing the trembling of his hands.

  23

  Laine is a common name. When Agent Muukkonen and I had studied the list of Rahnasto Industrial Security Service investors together, neither of us paid any attention to the name Maritta Laine. But she was my coworker’s wife.

  Laine didn’t admit anything, even though the phone LUDs showed that he had called Rahnasto from his cell phone on Thursday night. He claimed they only talked about hunting-club business. Why did Laine want to hinder the investigation? Did he think he would be able to take over my position in the VCU when Organized Crime and Narcotics merged, or was there something else behind it? I didn’t get a chance to ask him, since he went on sick leave the same day that Rahnasto was arrested at the West Harbor terminal.

  There was also general consternation that Rahnasto had resorted to a gambit like traveling on a false passport. What had driven him so far? Had the mayor signaled that he wasn’t going to receive any sympathy, or had the City Council chair made Rahnasto believe that she and her supporters were going to wash their hands of the whole business? Maybe Rahnasto had acted alone in the Ilveskivi case. Maybe the others had known the truth but thought it best to keep quiet.

  The City Council chair swore up and down that the Laajalahti Bay plan would have been presented according to standard procedure to the appropriate democratic bodies once the time was right.

  “‘Standard procedure’ means they make the decision and then ignore the rest of us,” Eila Honkavuori said. We were eating ice cream on the patio at the Tapiola Stockmann department store. It was my treat.

  “I can’t see it going quite like that now that the plan was leaked so early on,” I said.

  “Two lives is too high a price to pay for this,” Eila said and closed her eyes in pleasure as the cherry from the top of her ice cream disappeared into her mouth. “But I don’t think this incident changes anything. Petri and Marko Seppälä are still dead and Rahnasto is in prison, but everyone else got away practically unscathed. You heard the mayor’s statement. You never know, even with reliable members of your own party. Everyone has their weaknesses.”

  Under interrogation Rahnasto still denied everything besides the Laajalahti Bay plan, which he tried to pin on the mayor’s office. He maintained that he had never even met Marko Seppälä or Jani Väinölä. However, his attempt to flee the country was considered an aggravating factor, and the prosecutor was preparing to charge him with two counts of conspiracy to commit murder and murder in the first degree.

  Detective Lieutenant Laine, however, wasn’t going to be charged with anything. Ultimately he admitted to leaking information to Rahnasto about the Ilveskivi attack and later about the progress of the investigation of Seppälä’s shooting. He claimed he was acting in good faith, simply trying to maintain good relations with a local politician who was also a hunting buddy. Maybe Laine didn’t know that Rahnasto was a murderer. Or he had just wanted to make my job more difficult. His sick leave continued until August, and by midsummer I heard a rumor that Laine was taking over as the new head of the guard-security division of Rahnasto Industrial Security Service.

  The City Council removed Rahnasto from his position during their last meeting before the summer break. The reshuffling resulted in Eila Honkavuori becoming the deputy chair of the City Planning Commission.

  “I’m still worried about Tommi,” Eila said. “He just sits at home alone, surrounded by pictures of Petri.”

  I had visited Tommi Laitinen to tell him everything that had happened in the case of Petri Ilveskivi’s death. Outside it had been eighty-five degrees, but in Tommi’s house November was still in full swing. Everything was neat and dark, the shades pulled down to keep the sun at bay. There were dozens of candles and pictures of Petri everywhere. Maybe Tommi felt that all the life blossoming outside was an affront to his sorrow.

  “Tommi largely lived through Petri. He didn’t have his own friends, other than his coworkers. I’ve invited him over for dinner or to go to a concert, but he won’t,” Eila told me.

  The Jensen men had said the same thing, and Eva had ordered them to keep trying. I remembered my deceased colleague Pertti Ström and my school friend Sanna, and thought about how easy it was to leave a person alone with their sorrow. They weren’t grateful for the attention, driving friends and family away so they could go back to their brooding. Then the day came when it was too late. I said that to Eila, even though she already knew it all too well. She promised that she wouldn’t leave Tommi a
lone.

  “Turo and I are still thinking about children,” Eila said. “We’ve decided to try adoption again. No one’s going to give us a baby, but we’re ready to take an older child. To give a home to someone who doesn’t have one. Maybe that’s meant to be our lot in life.”

  “That’s not a bad lot at all.”

  “We aren’t going to set any conditions. Race, sex, or health status don’t matter. I couldn’t put any conditions on a child I was going to give birth to. And the crazy thing is that I feel like somewhere out there a child is waiting just for us. Hopefully we won’t have to wait for him or her for very long.”

  Eila and I were quickly becoming good friends. I had promised I would attend a belly dancing class with her in the fall. She had been doing it for years. I needed variety, some sort of soft and feminine movement to offset the soccer tackles and weight lifting.

  Suvi Seppälä exuded vindictiveness. Death had turned Marko into a saint for her. Suvi told herself that Marko had only intended to rough up Ilveskivi. The fact that the situation had gotten out of hand was just bad luck. Suvi intended to demand half a million marks from Rahnasto in compensation for Marko’s death. Seven magazine sent the family on a vacation to Majorca in exchange for exclusive rights to Suvi’s life story.

  The media debated about what had driven a man like Rahnasto to such a desperate act as murder. I wondered that myself as I watched a tape of his interrogation about Seppälä’s slaying. He insisted that he had only met Seppälä in passing, and the expression on his pleasant, anonymous face never wavered. His attempt to travel to Tallinn on a false passport he tried to explain away, claiming that he had essential business to conduct in the city.