My First Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Be quiet, Mira, you’re just messing it up!” Pia shouted, surprisingly sternly.

  “What exactly is so hard about this beginning?” Hopponen asked, scratching his bald head.

  “We don’t dare start when everyone is just waiting for us to screw up,” explained a plump, harried-looking redhead next to Pia.

  “I can sing with them until the second alto starts,” Mira suggested and received several furious complaints in reply. It took awhile for Hopponen to get the situation under control.

  “It sounds stupid if you sing with the second sopranos from over there on the other side. Tuulia, could you sing the first measure with them?” Hopponen finally suggested.

  This solution seemed to work, and the song finally gained momentum. As I really started listening, I realized that the piece was truly touching, almost like it was written for Tommi’s funeral: “Drifting on the tide, along this endless road we glide, no man, not one, its length may know.”

  The choir began to improve. I was standing closest to the altos, and Mira’s voice often overpowered the others. Tuulia’s soloist story was probably more than simple malice. Mira just charged on through the song, singing in the same unhesitating forte throughout. I wondered whether the person singing next to Mira was deaf in one ear. Closer to the middle of the alto row, Sirkku swayed in time to the music as she sang, which made her look idiotic.

  Behind the altos sat the tenors. Timo sang with his nose in his sheet music and never even glanced at Hopponen. Riku’s expression was one of concentration. When he sang, he looked less childlike than usual. My eyes moved along the back row to Antti, who was just belting out in his low bass, “All, all shall fade away.” For a moment I thought I could detect tears in his eyes.

  “Thank you!” Hopponen yelled midline. “Thank you means shut your trap!” he continued, when some of the group failed to stop singing. “All shall fade away, page three, line three. There are two Fs there. What might that mean?”

  I could see many irritated looks in the ranks. This scene had also obviously been repeated often.

  “Fortissimo,” came a general muttering.

  “If you know what it means, then why isn’t anyone but the second altos doing it?”

  “But they always sing fortissimo,” I heard Tuulia huff. She grinned at me as she said it, and I couldn’t help but grin back. The smile warmed me, making me forget the claustrophobic atmosphere.

  “And tenors, your high Gs are always flat. Every one of you should be able to hit it.”

  I saw Riku glance at Timo again.

  “Sopranos, a bit bolder through the whole thing, and basses, you’re just a smidgen behind. Pick it up! Page three. Basses, your first entry, please.”

  I continued looking at Tuulia. She had quickly regained a serious expression. Tuulia’s singing sounded both beautiful and effortless. Jaana had said that Tuulia was naturally a very high soprano, who didn’t even have trouble hitting the occasional B above the staff.

  Pia seemed to be troubled though. She had stopped singing, and I could see tears running down her face. The plump redhead offered her a handkerchief.

  The choir sang the song one more time, without interruption this time. They were finally starting to sound rather melodious. Then Hopponen declared that it was time for a break, and I started weaving my way through the benches toward him. He disappeared in a flash into a back room. I accidentally knocked someone’s music onto the floor. When I picked it up, I saw that its owner had improved Leino’s poem: “One is born to treasure and another has no brain, but within each heart the tick of a clock. When it stops ’tis time for this choir to give me pain.”

  At the part “No man, not one, its length may know” he had drawn a vulgar picture. Next to the line “A new dawn yet will break” was a crudely sketched sun passing gas. And this wasn’t even the engineering school choir.

  I bumped into Antti, who was breaking pieces off of a large head of cauliflower and shoving them in his mouth.

  “Hi, Maria. Want some?” He extended the cauliflower to me.

  “No thanks. Where did Hopponen disappear to?”

  Antti pointed toward the back room, where Hopponen was currently explaining something to Timo. I walked over and interrupted them with a loud greeting.

  “Hello...” Hopponen replied uncertainly. “Would you like to join the choir?”

  “No. Detective Maria Kallio of the Helsinki Police Violent Crime Unit.”

  Hopponen glanced at me, looking confused, and then took my outstretched hand. Foiled by my jeans again. Maybe I should consider making the uniform skirt and bun a permanent look.

  “Oh, yes, I almost forgot about you.” Hopponen shooed Timo away, closing the door after him.

  “What exactly is it you wanted to know?” he asked, twiddling his goatee.

  “Tommi Peltonen was the assistant choir director, right? What duties did that entail?”

  “The assistant director doesn’t do all that much. Sometimes we split the choir in two, and Tommi practiced with one half while I took the others. In theory, the assistant director leads the choir if the director isn’t around, but I try never to miss performances or rehearsals.”

  “Was Tommi the assistant director the entire time he was in the choir?”

  “I don’t remember things like that. I can’t be expected to keep track of which year each person joined the choir. Tommi was with us for a long time though, probably close to ten years.”

  “Isn’t this supposed to be a student choir? Tommi had already graduated and was a bit old for it.”

  “Student choir is a flexible concept. We’re happy to keep good singers on even after they leave school. And Tommi seemed to enjoy being involved.” Hopponen smiled lecherously. “And I’m sure he didn’t mind the crop of new young girls who show up every year.”

  “So Tommi was popular with the girls in the choir?” I asked, as if I hadn’t heard anything about it before.

  “Oh, yes, Tommi had girls to spare.” The smile flashed again, then disappeared. Maybe Hopponen thought it unseemly to talk of the dead in such a jocular manner.

  “To spare? What do you mean?”

  Hopponen pushed his shirttails into his pants, looking abashed, and refused to elaborate. When I asked whether I could interview a few of the choir members during the rehearsal, he grew irritated.

  “This is our last practice before the funeral, and the whole choir is in their typical summer shape.”

  I had to remind him once again that this was a murder investigation before he agreed. Then he glanced at his watch and saw that the break had already gone on far too long.

  The choir members had broken up into small groups and spread themselves around the various student association rooms. It looked to me like the ones who hadn’t been at Vuosaari were in a standoff with those who had been there. Only Riku was chatting amiably in the smoking room with one of the altos. Glued to Timo’s side, Sirkku stared at me fearfully from the sofa in the entryway.

  When Hopponen declared that the break was over, Timo climbed onto the conductor’s platform. He waited—to no avail—for the group to settle down and finally yelled in frustration, “Listen up for a minute! We need to go over Saturday’s schedule. The funeral will be at Temppeliaukio Church at two o’clock. We’ll meet at one so we have time to get warmed up and go through the program one more time.”

  “What hymns will they be singing?” Mira asked.

  “They didn’t know yet,” Hopponen said, breaking in. “Mr. Peltonen promised to notify me tomorrow, and I’ll call Timo so he can start circulating the words. It would be good for everyone to scan through them a little beforehand.”

  “After the funeral, there will be a short memorial at the Laulumiehet Restaurant,” Timo continued. “We’ve been asked to come and sing one or two songs. They are Chorale 62 from the St. Matthew’s Passion and Genetz’s ‘Land of Peace,’ and that’s what we’ll practice for the remainder of our rehearsal. Any questions?”

  �
��What clothes?” Pia asked.

  “Sunday best. No choir costumes,” Timo answered.

  “The same clothes you would normally wear to a friend’s funeral,” Hopponen added. “Dark suits for the men.”

  “So no flowery dresses or too much makeup for the women,” Mira said sternly.

  “Did you want to say something?” Timo asked me next, stepping down off the platform to make room for me. I bounced up, and for a moment I had an urge to start waving my arms around like Hopponen. With some effort I controlled myself.

  “Good evening. I’m Detective Maria Kallio from the Helsinki PD Violent Crime Unit. I’m investigating Tommi Peltonen’s death. I’m hoping that if any of you knows anything that might shed light on the case, you’ll come forward now. I’ll be back in that smoking room, and I’d like each of you to come have a chat with me before you leave this evening.”

  “What about the ones who have already talked to you?” Mira asked antagonistically.

  “No need, unless you have something new to tell me, and I don’t ask for you specifically. Here on the board is a telephone number where you can reach me later if something comes to mind.” I jumped down off the platform and motioned for the short alto sitting next to Mira to follow me. I refrained from asking her whether her hearing was still normal in her left ear.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t learn anything noteworthy from the other choir members. Antti, Tuulia, Riku, and Pia seemed to have known Tommi best. A couple of the women implied that they’d been involved with Tommi at one point or another, but it seemed that it had been quite some time since all of that.

  Anu, the plump, redheaded second soprano, was the first one to have anything of real interest to tell me.

  “The last time I saw Tommi, we were playing kyykkä and then we went for beers at the Three Liisas. The ladies’ room there was small, so we had to line up outside. The pay phone was right next to us, and while I waited in line, I could see that Tommi was having a fight with somebody on the phone.”

  “About what?”

  “Money, I think. He said, ‘one fifth now, but that’s all there is.’ When he noticed me, he said, ‘Listen, Emma, I can’t talk now,’ and hung up the phone. Then he snapped at me, something along the lines of what the fuck was I doing eavesdropping. I guess it was something important.”

  “So Tommi was speaking with a woman?”

  “That’s the impression I got.”

  “Does the name Emma mean anything to you? Maybe an old choir member or someone else Tommi might have mentioned?”

  “No, I can’t think of anyone by that name.”

  There hadn’t been any mention of an Emma in Tommi’s calendars either.

  “Which of you were playing kyykkä that day and who went to the bar?”

  A sly look crept over her face. She must have understood what I was getting at.

  “All the regulars. If I’m remembering correctly, then it was everyone who was out at the summerhouse. Oh, no, except for Antti. That was why Mira looked so disappointed. She went home after the game and didn’t come to the Liisas. But there’s no way she could have made it home in time for me to overhear her on the phone with Tommi, since she lives so far away.”

  No one else had anything enlightening to say. I felt like chatting with Tuulia just for fun, but I couldn’t come up with any excuse for calling her in. It may have been that I was just feeling shy, like I had revealed too much about my inner self when we’d been out together the other night.

  I could feel the previous night’s interrogations in my temples and my arms and legs. I listened a little while longer as the choir practiced the familiar Bach chorale, and hummed along a bit with the sopranos.

  Where had Tommi sat? He had been a first bass, so that would have put him in the middle of the back row. Did the bass part sound different without Tommi?

  So Tommi had been talking about money with some woman. Had he been in debt to someone? Was that the secret behind the expensive car and the other luxury gadgets? Was that woman why he had demanded his money back from Riku?

  “Do you think someone else is going to die soon too? Do we need a police guard during rehearsals?” Antti asked as he appeared in the hallway and marched toward the phone. From what I heard of the beginning of the call, I concluded he was calling the Peltonens to inquire into the details of the funeral arrangements. I stuck my tongue out at the back of his black T-shirt and slammed the door on my way out.

  What a pain in the ass, I thought as I ran down the stairs. First he offers me cauliflower, and then he taunts me. The whole lot of them are crazy. People generally think of singing as a perfectly decent hobby, but based on the rehearsal I had just seen, it mostly brought out people’s bitchiness. No doubt every person in the choir had experienced moments of wanting to do away with their neighbor or the conductor. Maybe someone had just gotten fed up with Tommi criticizing their singing...

  I bumped into a couple of law school friends in Kaisaniemi Park on their way to dinner and drinks near the train station. After a bit of persuasion on their part, I decided to join them. After all, I could always clean my apartment tomorrow, and there would be plenty of time for sleep when I retired.

  9

  Sea and sky and land—all, all shall fade away

  Work remained chaotic. For the rest of the week, it felt like half the city had decided to start abusing their families. After dealing with five domestic violence cases in three days—one dead elderly mother, two beaten wives, one drunk husband pushed off a balcony, and one little brother with his foot shot off by his father’s hunting rifle—I was ready to swear off ever getting married or having children. I only had time to think about Tommi’s case intermittently, but when I finally got a chance to do another read-through of his papers, I found I had only more questions.

  Though it was not imperative that I be there for the investigation, I wanted to be present for Tommi’s funeral. Tommi’s father had told me about the funeral arrangements when I called him to inquire further into Tommi’s finances. Although Heikki Peltonen had denied any illegal prepayment of an advance on Tommi’s inheritance, I didn’t fully trust him. The family’s doctor had forbidden anyone from questioning Tommi’s mother so far. I knew that I could get permission if I needed to, but I didn’t want to pressure her.

  The forensic technicians didn’t find anything worthwhile in Tommi’s car. It was covered with several people’s fingerprints, some unidentified, but none of them raised any flags in our database. There were no bloodstains, and nothing was stashed in there. As far as I was concerned, the impound could release the car to the Peltonens.

  On the day of the funeral, I walked to Temppeliaukio Church from home. My old black dress was tight across my shoulders. My parents bought it for me for my high school graduation, but I hadn’t been lifting weights back then. Black stockings covered my unshaven leg hair. I hadn’t bought any flowers, because Tommi didn’t need them, and the living might take a dim view of a police officer bringing them. Besides, I wanted to concentrate on the other people with flowers, to see whether Merike, Emma, Tiina, or this M person might be among them. I had no intention of invading the private memorial service that was to take place after the funeral.

  The day was cloudy and it looked like it might start raining at any moment. Perfect funeral weather. There was no thunder, just a resigned, almost thirsty anticipation of rain. The groundsels growing on the slopes of the bedrock into which the subterranean church was built looked like they were yearning for moisture after several weeks of drought.

  I slipped unnoticed into a corner of the balcony. I thought about the last time I had been in a church—it had been my friend Annikka’s wedding the previous winter. Churches always felt foreign to me, and I didn’t know how to act in them. I always felt clumsy and loud, and the priests’ sermons never succeeded in getting through to me. Religion was something I thought about only rarely, mostly because I didn’t want to. Now, however, I tried to think about where Tommi had truly gone. A
round the station there were rumors that, twenty years ago, one of the most effective cops in the VCU had regularly visited a spiritualist to move homicide cases forward.

  Apparently, it had worked pretty well. I had a hard time believing in anything like that, but what did I know? I suppose anything could be possible—maybe Tommi was in the place believers called heaven. Or was his place in hell?

  Maybe every person’s heaven was different. I imagined Tommi cavorting with voluptuous female angels, then realized that was an inappropriate thought in a church—no one had noticed me smiling to myself at a funeral, had they? On the other hand, perhaps Tommi had simply ceased to exist. Completely. The dark tone of Antti’s letter came back to me. He certainly didn’t think there was a Tommi anymore, in any sense. The only thing that came after death was a black, irrevocable finality.

  I looked down from the balcony. The church was only sparsely filled. The choir sat in their places in front of the mourners, almost facing me directly. A simple oak casket rested before the altar. It would soon burn along with Tommi. Heikki Peltonen sat in the first row, and the woman in the mourning veil hunched against him was obviously Tommi’s mother. How many tranquilizers had been stuffed into Mrs. Peltonen before the funeral?

  All of my suspects were in the group preparing to sing. Pia and Tuulia were on the right edge of the soprano row. Pia, whose eyes were already red, was dressed in an elegant black gown though the fabric looked almost inappropriately fancy for a funeral. Tuulia wore a slim, black sweaterdress that made her hair and face look whiter than normal. Sirkku sat with her head bowed, holding Timo’s hand behind her. Mira was scanning the crowd, and her eyes flashed with obvious hostility when they fell on me.

  The men sat in the back row; Riku was barely visible behind the altos, and Antti’s head rose above the others in the back corner. His black suit trousers were too short, revealing a band of slender shin above his black socks. Antti had pulled his shoulder-length hair back in a ponytail with a black scrunchie.