The private calendars contained exclusively personal business: choir rehearsals and gigs, meetings with girls, squash times, and the like. The name Tiina appeared now and then, but no more often than any of the other women’s names. The other names that came up repeatedly were Helvi and Merike. Had Tommi been playing boy toy for other wealthy women as well? Was that why he had gone to that nightclub? The calendar was also teeming with strange abbreviations like T. 10:00 H. I wondered whether T. could be Tuulia, whether H. meant home. What had really been going on between them?
I was perplexed that I couldn’t find any sort of address book among Tommi’s belongings, neither in the bag at the villa where we had found the calendar nor in Tommi’s apartment. There hadn’t been a list of numbers on the phone table in his apartment or in his office. Were we supposed to believe that he kept all of these different women’s phone numbers in his head? Could one of them have come to the summerhouse at night and killed Tommi out of jealousy? But then how would Tommi have known to meet her on the dock? And would she have come by boat? I could feel a headache creeping up the back of my skull. I had been thinking intently for half an hour with my shoulders hunched over.
I decided that a good jog would be a better headache cure than ibuprofen. I was just digging my running pants out from the bottom of the laundry bin—they still had one more run in them—when the doorbell rang. Probably Jehovah’s Witnesses or the TV license inspector. I could send the J Dubs on their way by explaining that I was Orthodox, which was a lie, but the television license inspector would be more of a problem. I had bought an ancient black-and-white TV with a screen about the size of a sheet of paper at a police auction a couple of years before, and for some reason I just hadn’t ever gotten around to paying the public broadcasting support tax. However, I also knew that I didn’t have any obligation to let a license inspector in.
I peeked through the peephole like an old lady and was delighted to see that it was Tuulia outside.
“What’s up, Master Detective? I was just one street away visiting my cousin and thought I’d come by and ask how the investigation is going.”
“Come on in,” I said, genuinely happy to see her. I decided to ignore whether Tuulia’s story was true. Maybe I didn’t need to go for a run so badly after all.
“Riku was foaming at the mouth on Monday, saying that you almost arrested him. Is he number one in the rankings?” Tuulia asked as she hung her denim jacket on a hook.
“Well, no. I had a couple of things I had to clear up with him. My rankings are still in flux at the moment, but I can’t really tell you anything more than that. I’ve interviewed others aside from Riku. Haven’t the rumors gotten around yet?”
“Well, yeah. Antti and Mira were there too. We went over to the student association to practice the songs for the funeral. Terrible rehearsal. Hopeless, I mean Hopponen, our choir director, was a wreck. It was like we—I mean the ones who were at the villa—and everybody else were two completely different groups. Sirkku lost it in the end and started screaming that she hadn’t killed anyone so stop staring.”
“Interesting.”
“The worst thing was we all lost it when Hopponen told us that Tommi’s mother wants to hear Sibelius’s ‘Song of My Heart.’ Nothing came of it since everyone went to pieces—except Mira, who just charged on with the alto part as if nothing had happened. Of course we want to sing whatever the family wants at our friend’s funeral, and as well as we can, but hell...even Hopponen fell apart.”
“Everyone who was at the villa is coming to sing?”
“If someone didn’t come, we’d just assume they were the murderer. Damn it, Mira pisses me off! She doesn’t even sing. She just shouts. Do you know what my cousin asked me after our spring concert? ‘Who was that soloist?’ She honestly thought that Mira was a soloist since her voice was so much louder than the rest of the group. I could almost kill her sometimes...I mean, figuratively speaking, you know,” Tuulia added uncomfortably.
I didn’t really feel like talking about work and changed the topic of conversation for a minute before turning to the matter of the calendar entries.
“Would you have had a date with Tommi the night before last if he had still been alive?” I asked suddenly. It was probably best to get through the official business first so that we could relax.
“How so?”
“Tommi wrote NO TUULIA MONDAY! in all caps on the notepad by his phone.”
Tuulia seemed to be thinking hard. “No, that was...We had arranged to go to Theater in the Park, but then I decided I wasn’t interested because everyone who had seen the show had totally ripped it to shreds, so I asked Tommi to cancel the tickets. I’d already forgotten the whole thing.”
“According to Tommi’s calendar, you two had quite a lot of dates. Were you playing squash or something?” I picked up the calendar, but Tuulia snatched it away from me, surprisingly covetous, and started to flip through it before I could stop her.
“Oh, you mean these Ts? Those don’t have anything to do with me. I wonder what T could mean. Tommi always had all kinds of crazy coding systems. In school a black square on his calendar meant that he had been drinking that day and a heart meant he had gotten...And you can bet he scattered more of both around than was really true. Sometimes he was a little childish. This is probably some woman.”
“Do you know anything about any of these other people? Who is Tiina? Or Merike?” I took the calendar from Tuulia and started to read the names aloud to her. Tuulia could explain who many of them were: choir members, relatives, coworkers. There were only a couple of names I mentioned that Tuulia couldn’t identify.
“Do you know anything about Tommi’s secondary income?”
Tuulia looked dumbfounded. She didn’t have a clue about any side jobs, but after thinking for a moment, she remembered something.
“I think they were some sort of temporary gigs. Sometimes he talked about some sort of consulting work, and he seemed to know a lot about certain specific laws. Maybe he was doing something off the books, dodging taxes.”
I mentioned that Tommi had been receiving additional income regularly.
“Do you know anything about a trust fund or anything like that?”
“Yeah! That must be it!” Tuulia said excitedly. “They’re all high-finance types, so they probably pay out their inheritances ahead of time to avoid the taxes. Tommi’s parents have so much money they don’t know what to do with it. I doubt that Heikki would admit it to you if you asked him though. Henri’s going to have money pouring down on him now. It’s a good thing he’s off in the States—aren’t people usually killed for money?” Tuulia paused for a moment. “Hey, I like your apartment just fine, but is there any beer here? I had a pretty intense squash match this morning and now I’m starting to feel it.”
My refrigerator contained the dregs of a liter carton of yogurt, a container of processed cheese spread, and that bottle of kiwi liqueur. The rest of my food reserves consisted of a package of coffee, half a loaf of rye bread, and three desiccated apples. Trips to the grocery store had been few and far between lately.
“Nothing? Really? Well, let’s head down to Elite, then. Or does some professional code of conduct say you can’t?”
I thought about my jog and remembered what they had taught us in the academy about cops staying neutral. I figured a couple of beers would work as a neck relaxant just as well as running.
“Yeah, sure, but on one condition.”
“Yeah?”
“That we not talk about the case. We can talk about anything else—music, politics, books, even reindeer herding—but not my work. I’m just going to get more and more mixed up if I keep churning this over in my mind all the time.”
“Are you mixed up? You poor dear,” Tuulia said with a grin. “Well, hey, so am I. It’ll probably do us both good to think about something other than Tommi for a while.”
I washed the makeup off my face, applied a fresh coat, let my hair down, and was suddenly very th
irsty. Thirsty for beer, thirsty for laughter, thirsty for friendship. I didn’t have the energy or the desire to think about professional ethics. Maybe going drinking with Tuulia was wrong for me the cop, but it was definitely right for me the person.
And we had fun. Tuulia was in rare form and regaled me with stories about all her escapades and mishaps. Her cheerful, anarchistic approach to life sometimes made me feel like I was already dead and in the grave. Tuulia’s tales of summer hitchhiking trips, screwing around at rock festivals with sixteen-year-old boys who suffered from virgin complexes, and swimming in the Tapiola fountain pond in downtown Espoo made me envious. Some might have said that Tuulia didn’t want to grow up, but I thought it was more like she didn’t want to dry up.
“I don’t want to be on any set track: graduate—buy an apartment—pay a mortgage—get a husband—make babies. Be respectable. I want to be irresponsible and do exactly what I feel like for my whole life,” she explained and then tipped half a glass of beer down her throat so that part of it ran down her jaw onto her neck. She laughed and wiped it off with the back of her hand. Her open-neck blouse emphasized her clavicles, and her neck rose high and proud from between them. She wore gold half-moons in her ears, and a similar ring with sparkling gems adorned her finger. Pretty kitsch.
“What are you thinking about, Maria?”
“How much fun it is to talk to a sensible woman. I’m surrounded by way too many men at work. For some reason the only women I can really understand are the vagabonds, I mean the kinds of women who haven’t settled into any traditional roles.”
“You seem pretty lonely. Jaana said sometimes that you were kind of a hermit.”
“I just can’t stand putting myself out there. People are OK, even men, but playing the dating game just makes me gag.”
“Do you have someone special? I mean a man?”
“No. I’ve had a few who’ve hung around for a while. Pete drank all my money away. The second one, the bird guy, was a total emotional cripple, and then the most recent was this one study partner in law school who couldn’t stand that I got better grades than he did. That’s it in a nutshell. And I don’t have it in me to just go in search of some man because I’m supposed to have one. I’m too interested in my own comfort to put up with just anyone. I don’t think that all men are idiots, but there haven’t been many bright spots lately. Do you have somebody?”
“Not for ages. Tommi was...” Tuulia bit her lip, and I suddenly remembered Antti’s appeal in his letter not to hurt Tuulia. “Sorry for mentioning the taboo subject, but Tommi was...special in a way. A kindred spirit. Fucking infuriating sometimes.” She paused. “Barkeep! More of the same! You want another one too, don’t you, Maria?”
“I wouldn’t mind a third.” I noticed that Tuulia was choking back tears, and I started to talk about the latest Aki Kaurismäki film, which I had seen the previous week. From there, we started debating men’s and women’s roles, criticizing the government, and laughing until our sides ached. A couple of smug-looking guys tried to join us, but Tuulia wrapped her arm around my shoulder and said crossly that our own company was quite enough. We chuckled at the abrupt change in their expressions.
As we stood at the tram stop, I realized I was drunk. Tuulia said that she couldn’t walk to the railway station to catch her bus, so I had promised to wait for the tram with her. The evening air was cool, and Tuulia pulled her hands up into the overly long sleeves of her sweatshirt.
“I have really bad circulation; my hands are always cold.”
“Do you remember playing clapping games to stay warm at recess when you were a kid? How about we try that?” We started slapping hands, slowly and stiffly at first, but then the old knack came back and we were clapping hands faster and faster, ignoring people’s quizzical looks and giggling like ten-year-olds.
“You have really warm hands,” Tuulia said. “Warm hands, cold heart. Is it true?”
“According to that logic, you have a warm heart. Is that true?” I tossed back.
We hugged each other before the streetcar carried Tuulia away. As I walked home, I thought about when I had last touched a person like that, in a way that brought me pleasure.
8
Drifting on the tide, along this endless road we glide
No man, not one, may know
I was tied up with the Malmi stabbings for the rest of the week. One more victim came in on Friday when the youngest son of one of the Roma families stabbed a first cousin of the other family. I was trying to understand their perspective on things, but that would have required a better understanding of Roma culture than I had, and I simply didn’t have time to delve into it right then.
I tried to contact Hopponen, the choir director, several times and finally reached him on Monday.
“I’m still on summer vacation. I only came back to the city to rehearse for the funeral, and I’m in a bit of a rush. I have a lot to get done before tonight,” Hopponen explained.
“This is a murder investigation,” I said, trying to force some authority into my voice.
“Yes, of course I want to help. Could you maybe come to the student association tonight when we take our rehearsal break? Around seven thirty?”
That was fine with me. It would give me a chance to meet some of the other members of the choir and ask them about Tommi.
Martti Mäki had called me on Thursday. After a moment of hesitation, he had told me that he hadn’t been home at all on the night of the murder. When I asked whether anyone could corroborate that, he was flummoxed.
“Well, see...I don’t know the woman’s name.” She had been a chance acquaintance he made at the Kaivohuone Club in the park. Mäki had spent the entire night with her at Hotel Vaakuna. I arranged to meet him immediately after he returned to Finland on Tuesday. Perhaps I was naive to trust him, but I didn’t have any choice. Why would Mäki have bothered hiding the ax under the sauna? While Koivu was doing his rounds of the downtown nightclubs, he might as well stop by the Kaivohuone Club with a photograph of Mäki.
I left Pasila a little before seven. The previous night I had been up until midnight interrogating one of the assailants in the knifings. I was tired, and my head felt empty. I wished I had someone waiting for me at home with a hot bath drawn and a cold beer. Or even just a purring cat. I hoped that my meeting with Hopponen at the rehearsal wouldn’t take long. I needed to clean up, do some laundry, and sleep more than six hours.
As I rode the tram downtown, I thought about Koivu’s experience at the Hesperia Club. At first the bartender on shift had said he remembered Tommi well, but then he suddenly claimed that he hadn’t had time to pay attention to what he was up to. Koivu said that chatting up the women had been even more difficult. None of them had been willing to admit to knowing Tommi, though Koivu easily detected the recognition that flashed in some of their eyes when he showed them Tommi’s photograph. Maybe Koivu had been too soft.
The choir practiced in the Eastern Finland Student Association’s space on Liisankatu. Their singing carried from an open window all the way down to the street. I recognized Kuula’s tune: “Drifting on the Tide.” That was what they had been rehearsing at Vuosaari too. Did EFSAS intend to perform that at Tommi’s funeral?
The elevator was out of service, so I had to climb the stairs to the fifth floor. The singing was even louder in the hallway, breaking off from time to time, and then starting over from the beginning. Didn’t the neighbors ever get upset?
The door was locked, so I rang the bell. After a long wait, Mira came to open the door. She did a double take when she saw me.
“Hello. I came to meet your choir director,” I explained.
“Our break is in about ten minutes,” Mira replied and then marched back into the practice room. I was a little early, and Hopponen didn’t seem to be in any hurry to stop for their break, so I had a chance to observe the rehearsal for close to half an hour. I had an excellent vantage point from the side door of the large room and could see not only the w
hole choir but also their conductor sweating it out in front of them.
The choir’s autumn season had not begun yet, so only a couple dozen singers were present. There were decidedly fewer men than women, and only one tenor aside from Riku and Timo. Despite the relatively small number in the group, the hall felt crowded. Even with one of the windows open, the air was stifling.
Hopponen, or Hopeless as they called him, led the choir from a platform that stood about a foot above the ground. He was short, fat, and bald, with the exception of a few long wisps of hair around the sides and back of his head, and he had a white goatee that waggled when he moved. Hopponen’s baton work was strange to say the least—at least to my untrained eye, it was impossible to tell what time the song was in, let alone what was the downbeat. As he conducted, he hummed various parts, seemingly at random, like Glenn Gould. His shirt was too short and kept coming untucked from his loose jeans. Every now and then, he pushed it back in with one hand. Apparently, the ladies in the choir made a habit of checking to make sure Hopponen’s hair was combed, that his tuning fork was in his pocket, and that his fly was zipped before performances. I wondered whether perhaps he was trying to use absentmindedness to bolster his image as an artist.
“Shut it, tenors!” Hopponen suddenly bellowed. “Can’t you read music? That’s the bass solo!”
I saw Timo’s cheeks flush with embarrassment. Riku stood next to him grinning maliciously.
“Take it from the top; there was a lot of sloppiness all through there. Sopranos and altos, clear break between the dotted eighth notes and triplets at the beginning of the second page. And basses, don’t lag! From the beginning! Second soprano, may I have that D?”
Hopponen received at least two different versions of the requested note. The other voices sighed in exasperation. The same spectacle had obviously played out all too often before.
“The higher version is correct,” Hopponen observed dryly before motioning to the second sopranos to begin. At first there wasn’t a peep. Then someone began, very uncertainly, and a voice rose from the alto row to back up the second sopranos. General chaos ensued.
My First Murder Page 11