My First Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  Had Tommi arranged a meeting on the dock with someone he wanted to see in private? Or had he just gone outside and someone surprised him?

  The only way I was going to get any clarity was through hard work, good questioning, and careful listening. The homicides I had solved until now had been simple: a drunk putting a knife in a drinking buddy’s chest or a hatchet in his wife’s head. But those had all been manslaughter. Was this my first murder?

  2

  Surges battering bow and keel

  There was still no sign of Kinnunen at the station. The duty officer reported that the last time he had tried Kinnunen’s apartment, he had reached my boss’s new girlfriend. She had told him that Kinnunen was sitting on the esplanade on the patio of the Belle Époque Kappeli Café in the company of four pints. We had long since lost track of how many times we had been forced to cover for Kinnunen’s dereliction of duty and no longer even bothered cursing him anymore. Rane and I just decided to get down to business without him so we wouldn’t have to keep people hanging around the station all evening.

  I decided to interview the choir members in alphabetical order since I couldn’t come up with anything more sensible. I planned to ask the questions while Rane took notes. It was clear that he wasn’t going to be much help with the case. He was already checking out in anticipation of a Monday morning with no alarm clock and the opportunity to purge his mind of all the cares of the world. But Rane would still hear what the witnesses had to say, and I’d be able to get at least a few initial impressions from him before he disappeared for his vacation. Over the last few months, I had found that despite his prejudices and occasional mean-spirited comments, Rane could be quite insightful. Of course it ruffled his feathers to have a woman ten years his junior above him; he was a career officer who had worked his way up, unlike me, who had gone flitting from school to school.

  Sirkku Halonen was up first. She was extremely agitated, so I started with some routine questions to calm her down. I’m not the maternal type, and I’ve never been good at comforting people who are hurt. I do better with hard cases than, say, little girls scared to death from being molested. Timo Huttunen tried to force his way into the room to protect his girlfriend, but I bundled him back out into the corridor.

  Sirkku explained that she had known Tommi for about three years. She met him a couple of times before joining the choir, at parties thrown by Pia and her husband. She had been dating Timo for about a year. She thought Tommi was “really nice” and didn’t have any idea who would have wanted to kill him.

  “It looked like this was going to be such a fun weekend...I’ve got a summer job in the perfume department at Sokos downtown, and it’s such a total grind all the time. I was really looking forward to this getaway.”

  It sounded like Sirkku felt worse about her lost weekend than the death of her friend.

  At first it looked as though I wasn’t going to get anything out of her. According to her, nothing in particular had happened on Saturday. They sang together for a while, and their voices were meshing really well. Then Antti and Tommi went to heat the sauna, while Riku played the piano—“Just think of someone having a piano at their summer cottage!”—and Timo and Sirkku sat on the deck drinking strawberry wine. Mira and Tuulia were inside preparing dinner for everyone.

  “It was this really delicious ratatouille—though I thought there was a little too much garlic in it. Tuulia is a fabulous cook. Then Timo and I went out in the rowboat while the rest of the group headed off to the sauna. We felt like being alone and didn’t take our turn in the sauna until everyone else was done. I guess we came out around eleven o’clock.”

  When the lovebirds emerged from the sauna, the rest of the group was lounging around, drinking and listening to music downstairs in front of the fireplace. She recalled the mood at the time as relaxed.

  “What time did you go to sleep? Did you go to bed before or after Tommi?”

  “I guess we went to bed before him...I didn’t look at the clock. Timo and I were sleeping upstairs in the big bedroom. I went to the bathroom once during the night, upstairs. I never went outside. Timo didn’t either. He was asleep all night.”

  I wondered how Sirkku could know that if she had been asleep herself, though it was possible that they had been so tangled up in each other that the slightest movement would have woken her.

  “Did Tommi seem normal to you yesterday?”

  “Yes. He was in a good mood. He didn’t even lose his temper with Pia during practice, though she was screwing up the whole time. Pia is a second soprano, and she was supposed to start the song solo, but she just couldn’t get it. Tommi is always extra patient with Pia. I mean he was...”

  Sirkku seemed to be suggesting that Pia had been included in the performance lineup for reasons other than her singing ability.

  “To be honest, I think Pia and Tommi must have had something going on. Peter, Pia’s husband, is off racing yachts in the US for almost six months. Isn’t that a horribly long time? But Pia gets to go see him next month. Anyway, Tommi moved in on Pia as soon as Peter left. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this...But Pia talked about it herself, and there probably isn’t anything wrong with mentioning it. I mean they go to movies and stuff together. Luckily Peter is safely on the Marlboro of Finland, their boat, I mean, because he certainly would have a reason to kill Tommi. Well, no, not a reason to kill him, but he was pretty jealous.”

  “So Tommi didn’t have any shortage of women? What was your relationship like with Tommi? Did you and Tommi ever have...‘something going on’?” I vaguely remembered that the last time I had seen Jaana, she had griped about Tommi “lowering his standards” and that he was “doing it with any little bitch he could get into bed.”

  “Oh, well, just a little fling once in Germany, but nothing serious.” Sirkku did not appear to be ruffled by my direct question. Talking had clearly calmed her down, and now there was a faintly proud edge to her voice. “Tommi and Jaana had already broken up, but I know for a fact that Jaana’s flirting with Franz bugged Tommi. Tommi and I had a good time together, and I hadn’t even noticed Timo at that point. But it didn’t last beyond that trip, especially since I was going out with a guy named Jari here at home.”

  “Was Timo jealous of Tommi?”

  “About Germany? Nah, why would he be? There was nothing between us after we got back, and I would never cheat on Timo.”

  Even though you cheated on your boyfriend at the time, I thought with amusement. “Last night, when you went to the bathroom, did you hear or see anyone else moving around?”

  “The upstairs bathroom was right next to our room, so I didn’t have much time to see anything, especially since I was so groggy and still a little drunk. And I fell right back asleep, though I did hear Tuulia snoring downstairs. I can’t understand how Pia and Mira were able to sleep through that racket. Pia would have had a better chance of getting some sleep with Tommi, whatever else he might have wanted.” Sirkku’s expression turned guilty. “At some point after the sauna, I went upstairs and they were having some drama about Tommi asking Pia to sleep with him and her saying that she didn’t want to. But that’s all I heard.”

  “What woke you up in the middle of the night?”

  “I had to pee, of course!” Sirkku’s expression turned contemplative. “Well, I don’t know...Maybe I heard some bang, but I’m not sure. I usually have to go the bathroom in the middle of the night if I’ve been drinking that late.” Sirkku glanced at Rane and blushed.

  I don’t particularly like girlish flirting—maybe because I’m not any good at it myself. I let Sirkku go with a warning that I might need her again later in the week and asked her to send Timo in to see me.

  “Why on earth is she advertising her sister’s romance with Tommi? Does she think it has something to do with what happened?” I asked aloud, speaking half to myself and half to Rane. “In any case, we’ll have to check whether the Marlboro of Finland—do you remember all the noise about cigarette ads agai
n this summer?—anyway, to check whether it’s in port right now somewhere and whether this Peter Wahlroos might have come to Finland for some reason in the middle of his race. I’d imagine that’s pretty well impossible. Who knows though. Maybe the guy has hot Viking blood in his veins: if Penelope isn’t up to fending them off, then Odysseus has to teach the suitors some manners.”

  I stopped mixing my myths as Timo Huttunen walked in. The thought of a vengeful husband hiding in muddy deck shoes in the bushes did not feel nearly as believable as Sirkku’s hopeful suggestion that the murderer was probably some random passerby. I imagined they all hoped that.

  Timo mostly seemed bored. With his blue-gray eyes, straw-colored flattop, and sturdy frame, he brought to mind his namesake from Aleksis Kivi’s Seven Brothers. At first glance, I would never have guessed that he did anything art-related, at least not classical music. He was the kind of guy you saw hanging out at the pub next door to the gym, working on his third beer. His opening line took me by surprise:

  “I hope that neither of you was unkind to Sirkku. She is completely devastated by what happened.” The image of the jock with the tankard crumbled in the face of his refined, almost prim manner of speaking.

  Timo explained that he was working at an agricultural machinery dealership over the summer. He had been singing with EFSAS for three years. His account of the events of the previous night more or less matched Sirkku’s version: sitting around the table and on the deck, fooling around in the sauna (he blushed with pride, and the beer tankard image flashed across my mind again), sweet nothings whispered in front of the fireplace. Timo had slept like a log and not woken up when Sirkku went to the bathroom, so he was unable to say how long she had been away. Interestingly, Timo had his own theory about why Tommi might have been murdered.

  “I don’t personally have anything against Tommi, but I had a hard time watching his screwing around. I didn’t like the way he flirted with Pia. She’s married, for God’s sake. Antti didn’t like it either, and he said as much to Tommi.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Peter—Pia’s husband—was Tommi and Antti’s old buddy. Pia probably met Peter through them in the first place. I went to take them a couple of beers in the sauna and couldn’t help overhearing Antti saying to Tommi something along the lines of, ‘Don’t mess up your friend’s life, he’s got enough problems as it is.’ Then Tommi said that she didn’t seem to have anything against it. At that point, I turned around and went back inside because I didn’t want to hear any more.”

  “So neither of them said explicitly that they were talking about Pia and Peter?”

  “No, but who else could it have been about?” Timo’s light blue eyes stared at me inquiringly. “Tommi was a pain when it came to women. He always had to hit on every girl he saw. I only got to know him better when he and Jaana broke up—you were Jaana’s old roommate, right?—and since then he’s constantly been on the prowl. Musically he can really, I mean could really, bring it; he was a good singer. Which he knew all too well himself. He was the leader of the group, after all.”

  There was clearly some bitterness in Timo’s tone. Had Tommi criticized Timo’s singing ability?

  “He had a good degree, and I think he had just been promoted at work. I suppose he got paid pretty well too—at least that’s the impression I got judging from his clothes and stuff...He had plenty to think about besides women, but somehow, I got the sense that they were what he mostly thought about.”

  I got the feeling that Timo was relieved to have Tommi out of the business of seducing other men’s women.

  Riku Lasinen, on the other hand, at first seemed genuinely grief-stricken. His eyes were so red that it was almost pathetic. Tommi had been one of his best friends. I thought about how I would feel if I woke up with a hangover, only to find my friend’s corpse floating in the water. Riku had been singing in EFSAS for only a year, but he had spent several years in chamber choirs in Eastern Finland and Savonlinna.

  “I hadn’t ever been to Tommi’s summerhouse before, and, damn, is it a swank place. Totally sweet. We went in Pia’s car, and I drove ’cause I wanted to feel what it was like to be behind the wheel of a Bimmer. Timo and Sirkku were with us in the car. The others were ahead, and I wanted to pass Tommi, so I did a little rally move to get around him. That last dirt road was really fun to drive.” Riku’s strange, high voice was like that of an excited child. Judging from his breath, I deduced that he had fortified himself with a few pick-me-ups on the return trip to the city. Still, his enthusiasm over the car seemed inappropriate.

  “Tommi was a good driver, but he scared the hell out of me a couple of times weaving across the road like a maniac—he had the girls screaming. Then when we got to the house, we started practicing. We sounded good as hell, and I was already getting my parts down. When we didn’t feel like singing anymore, I sat down at the piano for a bit since the music for ‘Lensky’s Aria’ was sitting there—do you know it?” Riku hummed the first few bars. I had never heard of Lensky before, but I concealed my ignorance by smiling lamely. Rane looked incensed. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought this experience should have sobered Riku up a bit more than it had.

  “Then Tuulia came and told me not to play any sad songs, so I started going through this old volume of Songs of Hope that I found in the piano bench. Then I guess we ate and headed over to the sauna. Tommi and I went swimming and raced, and I won. By then, I was pretty drunk—Tommi had some real whiskey, Jack Daniel’s, you know?”

  I had had the pleasure of making the gentleman’s acquaintance, a bit too intimately perhaps, on more than one occasion, and now I recognized the smell on Riku’s breath was Jack as well.

  “Tuulia and me danced a little, but the Bach on the CD we were playing didn’t really work for that. Then I guess I passed out, and in the morning I didn’t feel so hot.”

  Rane was tapping away furiously at his keyboard. I wondered whether he was trying to mimic Riku’s eastern drawl. Riku was in constant, nervous motion. Despite his bloodshot eyes and two-day stubble, he was actually a very stylish young man. His slightly reddish hair—was that its real color?—was cut in a trendy style, and his outfit looked like it had been carefully coordinated, with his socks matching his violet Burberry checked shirt and the frames of his glasses. Short and slender, he looked even younger than he was, almost like a boy.

  Riku had found the body, and Mira had mentioned that Riku had been wandering around downstairs during the night. I asked him about this, and he flushed like he was guilty of something.

  “Yeah...I didn’t even remember that. I was still pretty drunk, I guess. It was sometime after midnight. I had gone to bed, but I couldn’t sleep, so I went to see what Tuulia was doing. She was lying on her back snoring, and Mira was sitting on the bed staring at me, but Pia...she wasn’t anywhere.”

  “You didn’t see her upstairs either?”

  “She must have been up there, with Tommi...Yeah, well, see, when I was lying there trying to sleep, they were talking on the landing upstairs and Tommi told Pia that she should come sleep in his room. Pia said she wouldn’t, that kissing and screwing were two different things. I guess you already know they were fooling around...”

  Though everyone appeared eager to share information about Pia and Tommi’s relationship, Riku seemed to speak of it with a certain degree of admiration.

  “And after that?”

  “Nothing. I guess Pia went downstairs and then Antti came up to bed. When I still couldn’t sleep, I waited for a while and then went to see Tuulia, but, as I said, she was sound asleep on her back snoring. I had one more whiskey to drown my sorrows and then I really did pass out.”

  “What time did you finally fall asleep?”

  “Probably somewhere around three...”

  “And Tommi was in his room then?”

  “I don’t know. The door was closed. And I don’t know if Pia was in there or not.”

  “When you found Tommi in the water, w
as there anything significant about it?”

  “Significant? Well, he was dead. That’s significant. I can’t say that I noticed anything; I didn’t really want to look...And then my hangover hit, and I started puking.”

  “You didn’t go back down to the water after that?”

  “No. Mira and Antti went down there. Mira came back first, and then Antti, who said it was best not to go gawking and messing things up.”

  After Riku’s torrent of words, Mira Rasinkangas’s phlegmatic gravity was even more irritating. Mira clearly wanted to convey that she had no faith in my abilities as a police officer. This reminded me even more vividly of Mira’s visits to our apartment and her way of treating me as a second-class citizen because I didn’t play “real music.” Punk bass didn’t count. Then, during one of the usual evening gatherings after their practices, just out of spite I started criticizing one of the songs that made up the foundation of the EFSAS repertoire. It was a lament about wanting to return to Karelia, which the Russians took during the war, and I had been listening to it through the wall for the previous three hours. In reality my attitude toward classical music wasn’t nearly as negative as what I expressed at the time, and no one but Mira had actually taken me seriously.

  More than anything I was annoyed by my own reserve toward Mira—a proper police officer should approach any potential witness with the same neutral frame of mind.

  “We arrived sometime around six,” Mira began. “Riku and Tommi were being stupid and driving recklessly on the dirt roads—it was lucky we didn’t end up in a ditch—and I was feeling quite ill by the time we arrived, but of course we had to practice. That was why we were there, to practice, even though it seemed that some people had forgotten that. We did manage to work quite productively for a couple of hours, but then things started to slide and Riku started demanding beer and so on.”