My First Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “There’s never been anything between you?” I hated my own curiosity, but I wanted to know, even though it didn’t have anything to do with Tommi’s murder.

  “Well, no. I don’t make a habit of going to bed with girls out of pity. So no motive for me there either. I wasn’t jealous of who Mira was with. I was just angry at Tommi about his tactics.”

  “What tactics?”

  “You can ask Mira about that. I’ve already said too much about her business.”

  Antti looked out the window and must have noticed that the rain had stopped. I could see all too clearly the dark shadows under his eyes and the movement of his mouth, as though he had started to say something but then stopped short. It bothered me that all I could get out of him were evasive hints. Maybe I should arrest him for concealing evidence, but I didn’t want him to hate me. I obviously had a problem: I wanted to solve the murder, but I didn’t want any of my suspects to be the murderer.

  “You were one of the EFSAS auditors. Did you ever see last year’s accounts?”

  “Tommi handled them and said everything was in order. So I just signed my name on the report. Why?”

  “Well, look at this.” I brought the account ledgers over from my desk and looked for the receipts I wanted. It took Antti, the mathematician, only a moment to find the irregularities.

  “You mean that Riku...”

  “Evidently.”

  “Oh, that goddamn little idiot! Listen, I have to go. My parents are coming by my place tonight to get Einstein and take him out to the country. It’s a bit dull for him in my apartment, and my parents have a cabin in Inkoo where he gets to hunt mice.”

  At the door, Antti turned and said quickly, “You ordered me not to play private detective. But don’t you turn this into a game either. We have a hard time treating you like a real police officer, and not all of us even expect you to solve anything. Whoever killed Tommi might be unpredictable. You ought to be careful too.”

  Before I had a chance to reply, he was gone. A few moments later, I saw his dark figure striding up the street, hands in his pockets.

  I felt miserable and restless. I had thrashed my muscles in the weight room the day before, so vigorous exercise wasn’t an option. Wine would only make me feel more blue. The only alternative was work. I had plenty of questions, but I wanted to start by talking to Mira. She might already be home from the memorial service.

  I traded my funeral clothes for jeans and sneakers, and grabbed a tape recorder and a few of Tommi’s papers. Though it was a bit of a trip out to her place, I didn’t want to call ahead to make sure Mira was home. Surprise was the best strategy. I started walking toward the bus stop, wondering along the way whether Antti had wanted to warn me that he was the one I should be afraid of.

  10

  How shall the soul be saved from woe?

  Mira was home. Apparently she had just walked in, because she hadn’t yet had time to change out of her dress clothes into something more comfortable. She held a half-eaten apple in her hand.

  “Do I have to let you in?” she asked inhospitably.

  “No. We can go downtown to the station too.”

  Without saying a word, Mira moved aside and let me into the narrow entry hall.

  I took off my denim jacket and hung it on the crowded coatrack.

  The apartment was quiet. It being Saturday night, Mira’s roommates had probably gone into the city to party. On the phone table was a list of cleaning chores. No doubt Mira watched it like a hawk.

  “Let’s go up to my room.”

  I climbed the stairs up to the second floor, where there was a comfortable-looking kitchen and two small bedrooms. Mira’s room was dominated by a piano. A white, crocheted lace coverlet was spread over the bed, and the shelves were full of history books. A bright red, half-finished sweater lay on the armchair, and I found myself wondering whether Mira was knitting it for herself. So far I had only ever seen her in dark clothing. Like other heavyset women, she probably trusted them to have a slimming effect. Perhaps she was thinking of changing styles. Mira snatched the sweater off the chair and motioned me to sit there. Then she sat down on the bed with her knitting and started click-clacking away unnervingly with the needles.

  “How official is this interrogation?”

  “Unofficially official,” I said and turned on the recorder in my bag. If Mira told me something enlightening, I’d have to rethink my strategy when I got back to Pasila, but I would worry about that then.

  “We’ve spoken twice now, but on neither occasion did you tell me the most important thing about your relationship with Tommi. He paid for your abortion last spring at the Women’s Clinic. I’m guessing because he was the child’s father. Am I wrong?”

  I had been confused at first when I saw the Women’s Clinic bed charge bill mixed in with Tommi’s tax deduction receipts. There had been no patient name, but there was a date from the spring of the previous year. Tommi’s old calendar had contained an entry that read M WC 18-19 on the day before the payment date. Some notes on the page had included the abortion department’s phone number. The reference in Antti’s letter to Tommi’s “playing” with Mira fit my theory too.

  Rage burned in Mira’s eyes. I had clearly hit the mark.

  “Of course you had to dig that out! How many people have you told about it so far? I thought that hospitals were confidential.”

  “There was a copy of the bill in Tommi’s papers.”

  “The fact that Tommi paid for the abortion doesn’t necessarily mean he was the father.”

  “So you were such good friends with him that you told him about your abortion and asked him to lend you the money even though you didn’t tell anyone else?”

  Mira clutched the red sweater in her hands and then angrily hurled it into the corner. I saw that her hands were trembling. Next to her head, above the headboard, was a large photograph from some EFSAS concert of Mira, Tommi, Antti, Tuulia, and a few others singing in dreadful blue performance gowns. Maybe Mira wanted to see Antti’s picture every night before she fell asleep. Why the hell had I thought working would improve my mood?

  “Do you want to hear my theory about how it all happened? You were sitting up one night with the choir like you always do. You were upset because you felt like Antti never paid any attention to you”—at this point my courage almost failed me, since this really and truly was none of my business—“and Tommi didn’t have anyone keeping him company that night. You decided to show Antti what he was missing, and, uncharacteristically, you started flirting with Tommi. But the game went further than you meant it to. Of course you understood that Tommi knew exactly why you were suddenly interested in him. Your infatuation with Antti was no secret. And maybe Tommi even wanted to taunt Antti, to show him how easy it was to have you. What I don’t understand is how you were both so stupid that you managed to get pregnant.”

  Mira burst into a strange, jerky laugh that sounded like a cross between sobbing and giggling. Gradually, her laughter morphed into an odd hiccupping, through which she explained:

  “It was classic tragicomedy! The great lover’s condom broke. Do you know why Tommi kept his mouth shut about the whole thing? It would have hurt his reputation if his women had found out he didn’t even know how to use a rubber!” Mira grimaced poisonously and stopped laughing. “You seem to know my business even better than I do. It was Antti’s birthday, in February, in his apartment in Korso. I was wearing mascara for the first time in my life, and I didn’t realize how strong the punch was. I danced with Antti—he still asked me to dance back then—but he was as aloof as ever. Then Tommi cut in, took me from Antti, and started kissing me. For once I just let myself go, and I ended up at Tommi’s place.”

  “And you got pregnant?”

  “On the very first try. Like in the old movies where an innocent country girl comes to the city to work as a maid and gets seduced. Maybe I should forget school, get married, and start making babies.”

  “Is that what Tomm
i said?”

  “No way. At first I thought I wouldn’t tell him at all, but...it would have been his child. And it was Tommi’s fault, so I thought it was only fair that he at least pay half.”

  “What did he say?” I was guessing that Mira had never told anyone about the abortion and that the only other person who knew about it was now dead. We were using each other—I was abusing her need to talk and she was taking advantage of my official position. A police officer is like a priest in that she is bound to discretion. Mira knew that I would never tell anyone what I heard if it didn’t have a direct impact on the investigation.

  “He was shocked, of course, almost more shocked than I was. Then he tried to turn it into a joke and said he hadn’t ever been a daddy before. ‘You aren’t going to be one now either,’ I said and told him I intended to have an abortion. He was relieved and told me that he would pay all the expenses, because he had so much more money than I did. Why wouldn’t I have let him pay? But he couldn’t buy away the shame. He didn’t have to go through any medical examinations or tell his life story to a social worker. He didn’t have to lie with his legs spread on a table to have his uterus scraped out or have the nurses snap at him when he said the anesthetic wasn’t working. Yes, sometimes I wanted revenge...He made me a murderer either way.”

  Mira snorted at my dismayed expression. “I didn’t kill Tommi. My parents belong to the Christian League, and they raised me to think abortion is murder. If they knew what I had done, they would probably disown me. I don’t regret it though. What would have become of the child? Tommi and I couldn’t get married. We detested each other! Those two weeks before the abortion were the worst weeks of my life. I felt like I was tied to Tommi because there was someone growing inside me who was both part of him and myself. I was throwing up all the time. It was like my body was trying to get the creature out, but it just didn’t want to come. Have you ever had an abortion? Although I guess I have no right to ask.”

  “No. I mean no, I haven’t had an abortion. I’ve been poisoning myself with pills for years.” It’s true that Mira didn’t have any right to ask, and I didn’t have any obligation to answer, but for some reason I wanted to.

  “Did Tommi threaten to tell your parents? Or did he threaten to tell Antti? Maybe he teased you about Antti and said he’d tell him all the dirty details about what you did together, or maybe he mocked you for being in love with Antti. That was why you hated Tommi.”

  “I didn’t hate him. It was more like contempt. He teased me about Antti, and I teased him back about his clumsiness, which he was ashamed of. He wouldn’t have wanted to tell anyone about me. But what right did he have to mock my...my love. How is that anyone’s business? How is it your business? Do you think I like having everyone know I’m hopelessly in love with Antti? In love! You’re the first person I’ve said that to out loud.” Mira started laughing her strange laugh again. It felt wrong.

  “‘Poor Mira, so ugly and so serious, how can she possibly think she could ever snag someone like Antti?’ That’s what they all think, including you. And Antti is kind to me. If he were mean, it would be easier not to care. Sometimes I hate myself. I hate this humiliation. Love is so much more destructive than hate. If Tommi had done something to Antti, I could have killed him...” Mira broke into sobs, and she cried hideously, gasping, her face swelling and turning red hidden behind her hands.

  I bent forward and touched her on the shoulder, but she shook me off like a maggot. “Go away,” she croaked through her fingers. “Go ask Tuulia why I didn’t hear her snoring at five in the morning when I got up for a drink of water. Or go ask Timo how much a bottle of moonshine costs.” Mira’s sobbing grew even more hysterical. “Piss off!”

  I left. I grabbed my jacket from the coatrack and started tramping through the rain toward the bus stop. What could I have said to Mira? She didn’t want my words; I couldn’t do anything for her. Not for Mira, and probably not for any of the others either.

  I decided to follow Mira’s suggestion and go look for Timo. Sirkku lived in Haaga, which was more or less on the way back into town, and they might be there together. The bus was just pulling up to the stop, and I ran to catch it. I felt some satisfaction that I had likely correctly guessed the identity of the person responsible for making the moonshine.

  At Sirkku’s apartment, I found only a roommate, who said that Sirkku hadn’t even dropped by for the past few days. I headed downtown to Timo’s address, which was near the cathedral, but no one answered there either. As I stood in the stairwell admiring the elegant art nouveau paintings on the walls, I thought about what to do next.

  I was sure Riku wouldn’t be home on a Saturday night, so I walked over to Kaisaniemi and jumped on the tram, which took me to Lauttasaari Island. I might as well try Pia too.

  The Wahlrooses’ end row house was easy to find. Although I had no complaints about my own apartment, I still felt a slight twinge of envy. The west-facing windows of the building opened onto the bay, and a few sailing yachts and a couple of muscle boats bobbed at the nearby dock. Given that they essentially had sea access from their backyard, I guessed that one of the boats was probably theirs. I had never gone sailing, but it looked fun. Jaana had gone out with Tommi a few times, but had complained that she hadn’t been able to do anything except try not to be sick.

  Light shone from the windows on the side of the house. I rang the doorbell, and after a moment, Pia’s voice came from somewhere. “Who’s there?” I was confused for a moment because I had only ever seen an intercom on an apartment building.

  “Maria Kallio, from the police.”

  “Wait just a moment. I’ll come open the door.” The moment lasted a couple of minutes, and then Pia appeared in a thick, cream-colored dressing gown, with a matching towel covering her hair. She smelled like luxury skin cream, for which I had neither the resources nor the nose.

  “I was in the bath,” she said brusquely.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have a few questions for you.”

  “At this time of night on a Saturday?”

  “This is a murder investigation. But would some other time work better for you?” Pia seemed to think for a moment, then motioned me in.

  “So you didn’t arrest Antti?” she asked, looking disappointed as I took off my muddy tennis shoes. My department-store denim jacket looked like an orphan among the Wahlrooses’ couture.

  “I couldn’t find any reason to. Was the memorial service nice?”

  “Tommi’s mother didn’t come, if that’s what you mean. The mood was still a bit uncomfortable though. We sang a couple of pieces and then left because we felt like everybody was staring. Sirkku and I thought the whole fuss would finally be over if you arrested Antti. Not that I would wish any harm on Antti, or anyone for that matter, but this business is starting to get on my nerves...And I absolutely have to be able to fly to San Francisco in two weeks—that’s the finish line for Peter’s race. I can go, right?”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that anyone might leave the country. Did I need to confiscate all of my suspects’ passports?

  “Hopefully the case will be over by then. Finding a resolution as quickly as possible is in my best interest too.” There was something about Pia that made me more stiff than usual.

  “Would you like some tea? I always have a cup of chamomile tea after my herb bath. It’s very relaxing.”

  I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast except for a slice of bread and cheese with Antti. Tea sounded nice. Pia ushered me into the living room and then disappeared into the kitchen.

  After Mira’s student apartment, with its standard furnishings, and my own flea-market-decorated home, the Wahlrooses’ living room looked lavish. The view of the sea was undeniably impressive. The blue-and-beige furniture formed cozy enclaves where one could hole up to read or listen to music. Small, unusual objects adorned the shelves and tables, obviously keepsakes acquired around the world. The only thing that bothered me was the sterility c
reated by all the tidiness. There were no half-read books lying around or newspapers folded open to the television schedule on a coffee table. It was like an interior decorator had just finished with it.

  The ceramic teacups Pia brought were the same shade as the sofa slipcovers. Alongside the tea, she served delicious buttery scones, presumably straight from the microwave. I was so hungry that I took one before Pia even had a chance to offer me any. If this had been a movie, Pia would have been the murderer and the scones would have been poisoned. As the poison paralyzed me, she would confess her crime and then push me off the dock into the sea. If this were a movie, the hero would show up at the last second to save me. But this was reality, and I could take care of myself.

  “Very good,” I mumbled, my mouth full of pastry.

  “Peter made them. They’re from the freezer. He’s an excellent chef. In fact, he cooks on the Marlboro too.”

  “Did you meet Peter through Tommi?” I discreetly clicked the recorder on again in my pocket.

  “Tommi and Henri were Peter’s sailing friends. Antti sailed with them sometimes too. When Tommi turned twenty-five, he organized a big party out at the Peltonens’ villa and invited the choir and his other friends. That’s where we met.”

  “Love at first sight?”

  “In a way. I had heard of Peter before, since he was in the papers a lot during that last big maxi-boat race.”

  “Were you and Tommi romantically involved prior to that?”

  “No! He was dating Jaana at the time. In the beginning, we spent a lot of time together as a group. It was the Peltonen boys and their girlfriends, Antti and Sarianna, and us. Henri and Peter have a boat together, that one there.” Pia pointed to the most beautiful sailboat moored down at the dock. “It sleeps eight comfortably.” “How do you have money for all this?” I asked before I had time to think.

  Pia looked taken aback for a moment, but then she replied, somewhat mockingly, “I don’t. Peter does. It’s money he inherited. Stocks. Have you ever heard of a company called Kymi Timber? Peter’s grandfather sold it five years ago, when it was still a thriving business. Peter is the only grandchild.”