After his practice, Taneli and I ran together to the bus stop through the endless rain, which managed to seep into my rubber boots and through my Gore-Tex coat. Taneli had yet to complain about taking the bus to practice instead of the car. Iida, on the other hand, regularly took her father to task on the subject, and sometimes I had to excuse myself to go to the bathroom to laugh, since watching the two of them duke it out was just too funny. When it came to stubbornness, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
We didn’t notice the strange car in the driveway until we were rushing to the door. The storm lantern Antti had lit guttered on the porch. It was a silver Renault, but I couldn’t tell the model in the dark. When I opened the front door, I heard a familiar voice: Leena was holding forth on some topic. The lovely scent of green tea found my nose, and Antti must have warmed up some of the chanterelle pie we’d made. While Iida told her godmother and Jutta Särkikoski stories about school, I changed into something comfortable and took my wet clothes to the laundry room. Then I went into the living room, where the women were laughing politely at Iida’s imitation of her teacher.
“Hi, Maria! I’m sorry we showed up unannounced, but Jutta wanted to chat with you,” Leena blurted out before I’d even managed to lean down to hug her. Jutta sat on the couch, petting Venjamin, who was curled up in her lap. Antti brought me a cup of tea and asked Iida if she would help him do some ironing. He closed the living room door behind them.
“Is there any new information about Pentti Vainikainen’s condition?”
“No! Merja isn’t answering her cell phone or Pentti’s,” Jutta said. “But if it was poisoning, as it appears, that poison was delivered to the wrong address. I have celiac, and everyone knows I eat gluten-free. Pentti took one of my sandwiches by accident.”
“What was in the sandwiches?”
“I don’t know! I never got a chance to taste them . . . Thank God. What kind of poison could act that fast?”
I thought for a moment. “Cyanide . . . A mushroom-based poison like gyromitrin would take effect more slowly, but ibotenic acid or muscarine can take effect in twenty minutes. I guess nicotine would be fast acting too.”
“Our office secretary is incompetent enough to have used dried false morels that hadn’t been boiled or some other poisonous mushroom.”
“There’s no point speculating since we still don’t know anything yet. Maybe Vainikainen really did have a heart attack. That can be accompanied by nausea.”
Jutta stared at the chanterelle pie, looking like she might never eat mushrooms again, although she was probably just examining the crust and wondering about its gluten content. Without her saying anything I returned to the kitchen and grabbed some rice cakes and cream cheese. What I really wanted was some peace and quiet. I was tired. Back in the living room, Jutta asked whether I could call the Espoo police to see if they knew something about the incident. I said I’d already spoken with Koivu.
“If Pentti survives, will they bother to investigate?”
“Of course, if they suspect poisoning. Try to calm down, Jutta. What you witnessed was horrible, but even if it turns out to be a case of poisoning, those sandwiches aren’t necessarily to blame.”
Jutta pursed her lips. Other than the one time I’d seen her smile on Friday, she seemed to always be in a constant state of tension. I remembered how my colleague Palo had reacted when a convict who’d threatened us escaped from prison. He’d literally been afraid of every little rustling, but even his hypervigilance hadn’t saved his life.
Jutta’s smartphone sat on the table, and she tapped at it for a moment. “There isn’t anything new online,” she said. “But I’ll call Miikka. He might know something.” Holding Venjamin under the front legs, she carefully shifted him onto the couch. Offended, he meowed and jumped to the floor to stretch. Jutta stood up, grabbing her crutches, and then hurried into the kitchen to make the call. Her movement was quick and jerky.
“What the hell is going on here?” I whispered to Leena. “Do you know anything about this Pentti Vainikainen? I only know his name.”
“Of course I do, being a true sports authority,” Leena said sarcastically. “I know the long-distance runner Lasse Virén, and that some guy named Räikkönen drives a car. All I have patience for is figure skating.” Leena wasn’t about to give up her sports-hater image, and she’d never admit to watching hockey on TV. It was funny that she’d become friends with sports fanatic Jutta, but the relationship made sense given their common experience.
“So you weren’t invited to the campaign launch event?” I asked Leena.
“I was, but I didn’t want to go because I was afraid I’d end up in the press photos. I’m not interested in pretending to be braver than I am or pretending that I’m OK with the possibility that I might never walk again. But the purpose of campaigns like this is to get people excited. Of course, I reviewed all of the campaign contracts, even though some of them were written up before my time. Toni Väärä still doesn’t have a manager, so the Athletics Federation is handling his affairs.” Leena cut herself a piece of the mushroom pie before continuing. “I haven’t met Pentti Vainikainen, but his wife, Merja Vainikainen, is my boss. She’s about my age, and about as grouchy as the two of us combined. But I get along with her just fine as long as I do my job. One day I overheard her laying into our temp, Miikka, and he’s a grown man. All I could think was: so much for the myth of female leaders being easygoing and empathetic.”
Jutta returned to the room. “Miikka hasn’t heard anything either. He’s planning on going to the office tomorrow. He says he’s seen convulsions like that before and that it isn’t necessarily anything serious.” Jutta sighed, looking like a tightly strung bowstring that had been momentarily released. “Maybe it had nothing to do with me. Maybe I’m just self-centered and paranoid. Now where did that cat go?”
Before the visitors could leave, Taneli came in and insisted on showing them how he could do a turn and a half in the air, the equivalent of a single axel on the ice. Jutta scored some points by saying that a few years ago she’d interviewed his and Iida’s top skating idol, Stéphane Lambiel, when he was just starting to make his breakthrough and had barely placed in the Finlandia Trophy.
I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of person Jutta really was. She didn’t seem like someone to get worked up over nothing. She’d flatly refused to reveal who had leaked the information about Salo and Terävä’s doping, and when I’d gone looking for articles about the accident, I found that Jutta hadn’t been the one to claim that someone had intended to kill her specifically. That was some other reporter’s theory.
“Let me know when you hear something,” I said as Antti and I helped Leena into Jutta’s car. Once Taneli fell asleep and Iida went to bed to read, I turned on our home computer and googled Pentti Vainikainen. The search turned up a long list of results, including people with the same name who weren’t the head of social affairs for the Finnish Athletics Federation. From the picture on the organization’s website, it was easy to believe that the forty-eight-year-old Vainikainen still ran a marathon in under three and a half hours.
Vainikainen had degrees in business administration and exercise science, and his hobbies, besides marathon running, included floor hockey and fishing. His greatest sporting achievement was getting third place in the 10,000 meter at the Finnish nationals in 1983. That had landed him a spot in the Finland-Sweden Athletics International, which had been his last competition.
Vainikainen’s first wife was Eva Fagerström, and they hadn’t had any children. They’d been married from 1985 to 1998. His second wife, since 2003, was Merja, born in 1962. I didn’t find mention of children from that marriage either. The name Eva Fagerström triggered vague memories, so I googled it. During my time at the police academy, I’d worked security at one of the Finland-Sweden Athletics Internationals and admired the final sprint of the Swede who won the women’s 10K, although of course I should have been paying attention to the crowd. That Swede
was Eva Fagerström. She’d represented Sweden in the 5K and 10K at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 but hadn’t made it into the final round of either event.
My uncle Pena had bought a color television in 1976, just before the Montreal Olympics. During the summers I spent on his farm, we’d watched the Olympics with my father and Pena’s cat. For Pena, a Finland-Sweden matchup was a great battle akin to the Winter War, but this time against our western neighbor instead of the Soviet Union. To him anyone who beat Sweden at anything was a great hero.
As a child I’d never thought to wonder about Pena’s hatred of Sweden. Even though my uncle was generally tolerant, for him anything connected to Sweden was like a matador’s cape to a bull. My mother teased her brother-in-law by sending him a postcard of the Swedish king whenever she found one, and later I adopted the same tradition.
Now the Finland-Sweden Internationals seemed like a silly relic of the time before the EU. The Swedish teams were full of second-generation immigrants, and sponsors’ logos were larger than national flags. Switching nationalities in order to compete wasn’t unheard of. I didn’t have an opinion about these new developments, but there were many who did. Koivu and Ström had gotten into a big argument during a 1997 national hockey tournament about whether it was appropriate to use the charismatic General Ehrnrooth to pump up the home team. Koivu had talked about his grandfather and three great-uncles who’d died in the Continuation War, insisting that comparing hockey to war was an insult to the veterans and those who had fallen. That had shut up even Pertti Ström. Sometimes I wondered about the use of military terminology, like “destroy” and “enemies,” in sports. Although I was also inclined to support Antti’s half-joking notion that wars should be settled on the soccer field, because it was the world’s most popular team sport and was as beloved in Muslim countries as in the Western superpowers.
I clicked back to Pentti Vainikainen. The pages that interested me most were the Athletics Federation press releases concerning campaigns or sponsorship deals with athletes. One page revealed that Merja Vainikainen, of the Adaptive Sports Association, who at the time used her second husband’s name, Salminen, had started working as the youth-fitness project manager for the Athletics Federation in 2002. Wedding bells had rung a year later.
“What are you looking for?” Antti had come up behind me in the office, where we kept my bass guitar and Antti’s piano. The kids were only allowed on the computer when neither of us was playing.
“Just information about Jutta.” I opened a news site, which didn’t mention that Pentti Vainikainen had fallen ill. I turned off the computer and followed Antti into the bedroom, where we engaged in my favorite relaxation technique. Right after, I fell fast asleep.
I’d left my phone on, and a message woke me up around six. It was from Koivu. You asked about this Vainikainen guy. We just got word that he passed away at Jorvi Hospital. It looks like poisoning. This is going to be a mess.
4
Soon after receiving the text from Koivu, my phone blew up with messages from Leena and Jutta. On the bus I replied to both of them. There would be a police investigation into Vainikainen’s death. Even if poisoning was confirmed as cause of death, it could still be deemed accidental or at least noncriminal.
Behind me a group of kids were liberally using the f-word, and I closed my eyes and tried to ignore them. For a bit I kept a tally to pass the time, but when the number reached one hundred before the Lauttasaari Bridge into Helsinki, I started to get annoyed. Even though I cursed like a sailor when mad, I didn’t approve of ten-year-olds swearing as punctuation. Iida would get an earful if she ever started talking that way.
At the office, I read my work e-mail and found that my first meeting of the day had been canceled. It was the third time Jarmo Paukkunen had failed to keep an appointment. He was a single parent with two children, and this time the excuse was that one of them had come down with a cold. Following the divorce, the court had granted him custody. Paukkunen had been referred to me by District Attorney Katri Reponen, who had brought charges against Paukkunen’s wife based on a report of abuse from Child Protective Services.
With a sigh, I dived into some statistical work I’d been putting off, since placing numbers in columns and rows wasn’t my favorite activity. I heard the muffled sound of voices coming from Outi’s office, then an ambulance siren as it sped along Vilho Street and over the tram tracks past the Ateneum Art Museum. My fingers fumbled some numbers, and I came up with 156 percent of male children as having been victims of domestic violence.
I couldn’t count how many times people had asked whether I’d taken into account the risk of Taneli getting bullied at school because of his figure-skating hobby. As if bullying was a fact of life and anything that deviated from the norm, and therefore might attract it, should be avoided. Even though it had been ages since I believed we could have a world without violence, I still didn’t want to give up. And these obnoxious spreadsheets were part of that effort.
My phone rang, and the screen identified the caller as Koivu. I answered, happy to put off statistics for a minute or two.
“Hi, Maria, how’s it going?”
“Fine. Things are pretty quiet.”
“Well, they aren’t quiet around here. The death of this Vainikainen guy is turning into a circus. We suspect the poison was intended for that reporter lady.”
“I know. I talked about it yesterday with Jutta. But that’s none of my concern now, is it?”
“Don’t gloat. Puupponen and I just had our first coffee in six hours, and time to piss is a rare treat. Anu already said I could go ahead and sleep here, and she’ll ask her mom to help with the kids.”
Koivu’s account simultaneously amused and annoyed me. He was one of my best friends, so of course he could vent about his work troubles to me. And anyway I was the one who had asked him to do something about the threats against Jutta Särkikoski.
“Have you heard who made the poisoned sandwich?” Koivu continued. “It was Hillevi.”
“Hillevi? Wait a second . . . You mean Hillevi Litmanen?”
“None other. She’s the secretary at the Adaptive Sports Association. She was the one who ran over to the Stockmann in Tapiola to buy gluten-free bread. And apparently now she’s going completely off her rocker.”
“So it couldn’t have been an accident?”
“I don’t think so, and neither does Anni. By the way, I’m worried about Anni. She’s pale, and she always seems upset. And she keeps disappearing. If I didn’t know how ambitious and hard-working she is, I’d think she had the same problem as our old friend Pertti Ström. Booze, I mean. But I guess Anni is probably just nervous, since this is such a high-profile case. Half the planet is breathing down her neck.”
“Poor Anni,” I said sincerely. “Tell her she can call me if she needs advice. I know how reporters can be.” I regretted those words the instant they left my mouth. Vainikainen’s death had nothing to do with me, and I had no business trespassing on my successor’s territory.
“Guess what just occurred to me?” Koivu said, almost talking over me. “Hillevi’s ex-husband isn’t out on furlough, is he? Maybe Jouni Litmanen thought she was buying those bread rolls for herself.”
“Doesn’t that seem a bit far-fetched? I think you’ve been spending too much time with Puupponen. But yeah, you should check. Have you identified the poison?”
“No, but the samples are being rushed through at the lab. Oops, Anni’s calling . . . Gotta go. Good to at least hear from her, even if sightings are rare.”
On my way to work I’d been distracted, so I hadn’t noticed the newspaper headlines. Now I went online. Only one of the tabloids had managed to file a story so far, with the subdued headline “Sports Boss Dies at Campaign Launch.” The story mentioned a health emergency. That would be updated as soon as someone provided more information. Much more column space was devoted to coverage of a bomb disposal team made up of Finnish peacekeepers who had been stranded in the mountains of
Afghanistan for two days. Although even that was minor news compared to the latest twists and turns of reality TV: someone had punched someone else on Big Brother, and now everyone was wondering if assault charges would be filed. I didn’t understand what the fuss was about.
I looked up Hillevi Litmanen. She’d never mentioned where she worked, just that she was a secretary. I could just barely imagine Hillevi poisoning her abusive husband, Jouni, but it was ludicrous to think that she would knock off anyone else. Though she did seem like someone who could make serious blunders when nervous.
An incoming e-mail alert interrupted these musings. The sender line said “The Snork Maiden.”
I haven’t been going to school, and I don’t know if I’ll ever go back. The world is a black hole, but at least the Groke is gone at the moment. I don’t know when she’s returning, or if she’s ever coming back. Maybe I’ll be locked up in this house for the rest of my life. At least there’s food and water. No one but the Groke can get in without breaking a window or calling the police. If only someone would. I’d tell them that even though I made some of the scars myself, some of them are from the Groke. I wish I could stick a knife in her throat and see if her blood is the same color as mine. Or is it black like orc blood? How can I prove that the Groke made these marks? No one would believe me.
The Groke and Hemulen went off somewhere again and left me here. Maybe they’re hoping I’ll die, since the phone doesn’t even work.
Wait, someone’s coming. Help! I’m
The e-mail broke off alarmingly. Maybe I finally needed to ask for permission to trace the address. It was strange that the school nurse or someone hadn’t noticed the marks the Snork Maiden had mentioned.
At noon I went out for lunch with Jarkko and Outi. Passing a newsstand, I saw that the headlines were singing a different tune from the ones in the morning. “Sports Boss Dies Under Suspicious Circumstances. Poisoning Suspected,” said a tabloid. “Wrong Person Murdered?” said another, the word “murdered” filling half of the front page.
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