“I doubt it. But she might hold the key to this case. Call me at home right away if you find her, and arrest her if you have to. I’ll come down to the station to talk to her. Call me either way when the bar closes. I think we can go ahead and use the overtime the boss has been promising on this case.”
After Koivu left I tried to reach Antti at the university again, but all I got was the department answering machine. I called Antti’s direct line—no answer—and the library number, where a guy who was half asleep told me he didn’t think Antti had been in the building all day. Though my reason for calling wasn’t terribly important, I was still annoyed. Maybe university researchers got to go to the beach on beautiful days like this. Or perhaps Antti had gone to visit his parents and Einstein at their cabin—without notifying me.
Tapsa came back to the station sooner than I expected, his long nose all aflutter with excitement. “I just issued an arrest warrant for a Mauri Mattinen, also known as M in certain circles. He hasn’t been home for a while, and he’s on vacation from work.”
“So you found out who he is? What was his name? Mattinen! Hell, yeah! The same name shows up on Tommi’s consulting bills for work. Does he have a record?” I was already dialing as I spoke.
“Mattinen, Mauri. Born 1949. One six-month stretch for possession of marijuana.”
I called the lab and asked them to look specifically for Mattinen’s fingerprints in Tommi’s car.
Next I called Marja Mäki, who, after thinking for a moment, told me that she thought Mattinen’s company had been surveying transportation subcontractors in Estonia.
“So my husband has been cleared of any suspicion?” Mäki asked.
“Yes. His alibi has been confirmed by several different people.”
“So where was he?”
“He can tell you that himself,” I replied, trying to bring the conversation to a close, but Marja Mäki didn’t give up that easily.
“He was with some boy, right?” Her voice swelled with uncontrollable rage. “How old was he this time?” I was stunned. Why did the Mäkis have to drag me into their business? Suddenly I understood.
“You listen to me, Dr. Mäki! You never suspected your husband of killing Tommi Peltonen, did you? You just wanted to use the police to trace where your husband had been. Next time hire a private detective!” I slammed the phone in her ear. Lovely. Maybe Marja had just used Tommi as a pawn to get back at her husband. I wouldn’t have to watch The Bold and the Beautiful for a while now—real life was just as warped.
I gathered up my papers and headed over to Tapsa’s office, where we started trying to line up what we knew. Another narcotics cop joined us, a man in his sixties named Makkonen—whose hastiness had been the cause of the premature arrests—and Koivu, who had just had time to go home and pull on his bar-trolling clothes. In his sky-blue shirt and white pants, he definitely looked like a man who could attract the attention of girls beyond the nice brunettes he was so sick of.
“Should we inform Kinnunen?” Makkonen asked scrupulously.
“He headed up to Haaga with Virrankoski a couple of hours ago,” I said quickly. I couldn’t deny that I was protective of my case. This was the first murder case I’d handled on my own, and I didn’t want some alcoholic boss messing it up.
After several cups of coffee and half a box of smokes in the hallway for Makkonen, we had assembled all the facts we had up to this point. Tapsa had just received confirmation from the lab that they identified Mattinen’s fingerprints on the driver’s side door and around the trunk lock of Tommi’s car. Koivu had just begun to read a summary of our conclusions when the phone rang.
“It’s for you, Maria. Some Mrs. Sarkela.”
“This is Marjatta Sarkela. How do you do?” asked a sophisticated-sounding, middle-aged woman with a hint of alarm in her voice. “You are the policewoman investigating Tommi Peltonen’s murder, correct?”
“Yes. And you must be Antti Sarkela’s mother.”
“Yes. I don’t know whether I’m overreacting, but it seems that my son has disappeared.”
“He isn’t at your place in Inkoo?”
“No...Did he say he was coming out here?” Antti’s mother explained that they had picked up Einstein from Antti’s apartment on Saturday night and then left for Inkoo. She tried to call Antti on Sunday to tell him that the cat had woken them up at six in the morning by dragging a mole into their bed. Antti’s roommate told her that Antti had gone out somewhere Saturday night and hadn’t come back. Now it was Monday, and no one had heard from him.
“I can’t help but be concerned, given what happened to poor Tommi...And Antti and Tommi were such good friends. What if whoever killed Tommi has done something to Antti?”
I tried to calm Mrs. Sarkela down, though I was immediately concerned myself. I recalled Antti’s words from Saturday: “If only I...if only I knew which things were significant and which weren’t.” And later: “Whoever killed Tommi might be unpredictable. You ought to be careful too.” Had Antti been careless himself? Or was he on the run?
13
That from atop the fells, come winds of days soon to wake—
“What now?” Tapsa asked curiously when I hung up the phone.
“Oh hell. It looks like one of my prime suspects is missing.” I remembered that Monday was the EFSAS kyykkä night at Kaisaniemi field. Antti might be there, or at least I might find someone who knew something about his whereabouts. I decided I needed to go pay them a visit.
The cars were all booked, so I jumped on my bike, fervently praying that it wouldn’t start acting up again. I booked it all the way down the hill to Kaisaniemi in fifteen minutes. The evening was still warm, and I wished I was wearing shorts instead of greasy jeans. I realized that my neck was stiff, and my head was reeling from all the new information.
Tapsa’s dealer had finally agreed to give up M’s identity. Here’s what I knew about the mysterious Mauri Mattinen: one conviction for marijuana possession and sale; fines for importing human growth hormones across the Russian border; currently the principal shareholder and CEO of Mattinen Consulting; and missing, just like Antti.
Mattinen had delivered the goods to the dealer, who always had to pay in cash. According to the dealer, Mattinen had had a relatively large batch of cocaine in his possession, which Mattinen had been selling slowly in order to keep the price high. Luckily there wasn’t much cocaine available on our market. It had been top-notch stuff, evidently out of the Middle East, and had arrived in Finland “on a boat from Tallinn,” according to the dealer.
After hearing that little tidbit, I put in a call to Heikki Peltonen—how many calls had I made today?—but no, Tommi hadn’t stopped in Tallinn on the Maisetta this past sailing season. I had been disappointed when that nice little theory fell apart. But then Peltonen remembered that Tommi had been there earlier in the summer with Henri and Peter Wahlroos on a test run of the Marlboro of Finland. Henri and Peter were getting the feel for the new boat, as every member of a crew did before a big competition. Peltonen couldn’t tell me who else had gone on that trip, but he guessed that at least Pia and Antti would have accompanied them.
The Marlboro of Finland would certainly have been an excellent hiding place for the cocaine. There had been such a fuss about the boat all spring that it was likely quite a familiar name even on the other side of the border. There was no way customs would have done anything more than a perfunctory inspection. Tommi and his possible accomplices had taken a pretty big risk, but the risk had paid off—for a while.
According to the dealer, Mattinen had brought him the cocaine in his car, the same Opel Vectra that showed up a couple of times in the pictures that Makkonen’s team of investigators had taken before arresting the dealer and the street runners. The Department of Motor Vehicles hadn’t been able to find the plates that appeared in the pictures, so they must have been fakes. And Tommi’s car was exactly the same color, make, and model.
I wondered why Mattinen had specifically used
Tommi’s car. Maybe his own was too easy to recognize. At least that was Makkonen’s guess. In any case, we now had an APB out on Mattinen, and Forensics was going over Tommi’s car with a fine-tooth comb. I was irritated at myself for having let the lab just do a cursory search originally.
I found the choir on the grass next to the tennis courts. There were about twenty of them present, including Hopponen and all my suspects—all, that is, except Antti.
Kyykkä didn’t appear to be a particularly fast-paced game, and the players didn’t look very sporty with their beer bottles in hand. Kyykkä seemed to be some sort of Finnish version of lawn bowling with sticks. After watching for a while, I realized that one team was trying to use one piece of wood to knock the other team’s pieces of wood out of the square. When it was Tuulia’s turn to throw, she took her position, her bobbed hair swinging, and neatly sent three of her opponents’ kyykkäs flying out of the square, receiving enthusiastic cheers for her accomplishment. There was a fascinating elegance to Tuulia’s movements, which were simultaneously boyish and feminine. I turned my eyes away. As Riku was cheering for Tuulia, he noticed me standing nearby.
“Hi, Maria,” he said lamely. “Did you come to watch the game?”
“Have you seen Antti?” I asked. Riku’s expression turned to alarm.
“Um, I’ve been trying to call him, but he hasn’t been at home or at work. I thought he would be here.”
Riku seemed to think I was asking after Antti because of his own mess. If he wasn’t here, where the hell was he then? I motioned to Pia, who had been glancing over curiously, and we stepped away from the game.
“You were on the Marlboro in Tallinn this past spring, right?”
“Yeah, at the beginning of May. I think it was Mother’s Day weekend. It was really cold. Why?”
“Who else went along?”
“Peter and I. Peter’s dad. Henri and his girlfriend. Niklas Bergman, who’s racing with them now. Sirkku wanted to come sailing too, and of course she brought Timo. And then Antti and Tuulia came along too.”
“Ten people?”
“Yeah...We went to an Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir concert that night that Tommi was dying to hear.”
“Do you remember what your customs inspection was like when you came back?”
“Customs inspection? There wasn’t any. They don’t usually check racing boats.”
It looked like a drug run on the Marlboro was a distinct possibility. I asked the choir members to tell Antti to call me. None of them seemed the slightest bit disconcerted by his absence, and no one knew where he was. I noted that none of them looked nervous or acted guilty.
No one had heard anything from Antti since he left my place to go meet his parents on Saturday night. On Saturday night after the funeral, Mira and Pia had been home—I could attest to that myself—Sirkku and Timo had been on their way to Muuriala or were already there, and Riku and Tuulia had gone to a bar together. Had any of them also seen Antti that night?
I cycled back to the station. It was only a little before eight. Tapsa had left with Koivu for the Little Parliament. On my desk was a curt message: “We went to hunt down Tiina. Mattinen flew to London the Monday before last. Shit. Interpol on him. Koivu & Helminen.”
Mattinen hadn’t left the country until after Tommi’s death. What if he was the murderer? If he’d already been in London for over a week, finding him would probably be impossible, even with Interpol’s help. Annoying. Just minutes before, I had been so jazzed about discovering all these new connections, but now it looked like they weren’t going to give me anything solid.
Antti’s roommate answered when I called his apartment. He hadn’t actually seen Antti Saturday night. He’d been asleep in his own room because he had a night shift coming up at the hospital. He vaguely remembered having heard Antti giving Einstein to his parents and then leaving some time later. And neither roommate had seen him since then.
“No one came to pick him up?”
The roommate wasn’t sure of anything except that the doorbell hadn’t rung.
“It usually wakes me up. Same with the phone. That didn’t ring either,” he explained.
“Did Antti call anyone?”
He couldn’t say. Nothing was missing from Antti’s belongings aside from his tennis shoes and a jacket, but the roommate said he wasn’t all that familiar with Antti’s belongings.
I called the Sarkelas’ cabin. Antti’s parents were very concerned at this point and wanted to put a missing persons report in the newspaper and on the radio. They appeared to believe that the same person who had killed Tommi had also attacked Antti.
“But Antti isn’t dead,” Marjatta Sarkela said at the end of the call. “Animals know things like that. Einstein isn’t any kind of genius, but he would sense it if something had happened to Antti. As it is, he’s acting completely normal, sitting here purring hopefully at my feet. In fact, it’s his dinner time.”
I hoped the cat was right, though that might mean that his owner was guilty of murder and was now on the run from the police. Poor Einstein. Neither option looked good for him.
It was just barely 9:00 p.m. The guys probably wouldn’t be back from the Little Parliament Club until around midnight. We had arranged that they would give me a call once they were done for the evening, so I decided to head home and try to get some sleep before then.
I flew home on my bike, changed into my workout clothes, and went out for a run. As usual, I felt like molasses for the first few minutes, but then I started to get into my groove. The cool air flushed out my lungs, and my stiff shoulders relaxed. Sweat poured down my temples, and my steps felt lighter and lighter. I went all the way to where the bridge goes out to the Seurasaari Island Open-Air Museum—nearly two miles—before forcing myself to turn back. I had to get some sleep.
When I woke up, the sun was high in the sky. It was eight thirty in the morning, and I had slept almost ten hours. The guys hadn’t called. What the hell happened?
Then I realized why my phone had stayed silent. I had disconnected the cord the previous morning, fearing that my mother would call at 6:00 a.m. just to tell me she had left her toothbrush on the edge of the sink. I cursed, set the coffee on to percolate, and called the station.
“No sign of Koivu or Helminen,” the person at the main desk said coldly. The duty officer for my unit, however, had a message for me from Koivu: “We found Tiina and heard all sorts of charming stories. We had no reason to arrest her. Are you out hunting Sarkela? I’ll be in at eight.”
I gulped down my coffee and what little was left of the ham and onion quiche. My best jeans were still greasy, so I pulled on my other pair, which were faded and patched at the crotch. I didn’t want to risk getting them dirty so I took the tram to work. Having overslept, I was now late, hungry, irritated—and curious.
When I arrived, Koivu was off with Kinnunen investigating some robbery, and Tapsa was busy executing yet another search warrant. I hoped it was for Mattinen’s apartment. Then, just as I was getting settled in, I got a call ordering me over to the Cholera Basin at the harbor to have a look at a drowning victim. I didn’t get back to Pasila until after noon. At that point, Koivu had come and gone, but I caught Tapsa and we arranged to meet for lunch in half an hour.
The lab worked fast. In addition to locating Mattinen’s fingerprints, they had now found traces of cocaine in the first aid kit in the trunk. Apparently some small amounts of it had been stored recently between the packages of gauze. Most of the fingerprints were on the license plate, which, judging from the scrape marks on the paint, had been screwed on and off repeatedly.
I realized I was starting to feel ill from lack of food and all the tension. The taste of onion rose in my mouth as I jogged down the stairs to the cafe. There was no sign of Tapsa yet, so I forced myself to choke down some salad and roasted vegetables. Then Tapsa showed up in the food line, freshly shaved and wearing a pressed shirt. He set a tray full of food down in front of me: five potatoes with hamb
urger gravy, two glasses of milk, and three pieces of bread. Apparently, this was going to be a long meeting.
“I just came from Mattinen’s apartment. Were you looking for these?” Tapsa took a small plastic baggie containing a set of keys out of his shirt pocket. I could see the familiar letters through the plastic: Opel Vectra. I would have been willing to bet quite a bit that those were the missing keys to Tommi’s car.
“On the way to the lab, we found Mattinen’s own car in the parking lot. It’s a beat-up VW that wouldn’t have even fit the new-size plates we found in the apartment, the same ones that were in Makkonen’s pictures.”
“So Mattinen was using Peltonen’s car to move his merchandise in order to throw us off his trail.”
I had already told Tapsa my theory about the Marlboro of Finland being used for smuggling, and he had thought it plausible. We had to work back and trace Mattinen’s movements. He might have been in Tallinn at the same time as the Marlboro and delivered the cocaine to Tommi on the boat.
“What about last night? I gather you didn’t make any arrests.”
“We got what we needed without having to arrest anyone. I went over with your boy Koivu, since my old school buddy is a bouncer at the Little Parliament, and I thought he might recognize Tiina. I haven’t spent a whole lot of time hanging around bars lately.”
Tapsa had a wife and two small children, one of whom was only about six months old, if I remembered correctly. There were probably days when Tapsa left before they woke up and came home after they went to bed and he didn’t get to see his kids at all. I had occasionally wondered what it would be like to be a cop’s wife, and figured it must practically be like being a single mother.
“At around ten, Masa, the bouncer, came to say that Tiina had arrived. She was clearly looking for company.”
“How did you know that?” I asked, simply curious. Next time I was in a bar I would know to behave exactly the opposite.
“Well, she was alone, dressed to the nines, glancing around, smiling. You know. Koivu strolled over to chat her up. After only a few minutes, they had arranged to go to a hotel, but Koivu said he needed a little pick-me-up first. He’s a good boy,” Tapsa said with all the eminence afforded him by a difference in age of barely ten years.
My First Murder Page 19