Derailed

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I conveyed Detective Perävaara’s regards, and that he suspected the bomb was made by a professional. Puupponen whistled upon hearing that piece of information.

  “Särkikoski must know something she doesn’t know she knows! This can’t just be about doping. What if her unnamed source is still dealing steroids, or maybe something stronger, and he’s afraid that Särkikoski will eventually turn him in?”

  “Yes, we have to get that name,” Ursula said. I reminded her that Terävä claimed to know who exposed him and Salo. Ursula could question Terävä again even though we’d let him go after he was tested for explosives. If she talked to him long enough, he was likely to let the name slip. And maybe Eero Salo had sobered up enough for the Nokia police to grill him about what he was doing on the day of the crime. If they discovered anything significant, we could have Salo shipped to Espoo. Hopefully Jutta would finally reveal her source. My impression was that she didn’t think her source was the one who’d been threatening her, but now we’d need to be the ones to decide if he was a suspect.

  “OK, let’s turn to Miikka Harju and Ristiluoma. Ursula, did you find anything about Ristiluoma that could lead you to believe the bomb was meant for him?”

  “How could it have been meant for him? No one knew he would be in Särkikoski’s car—except, of course, Särkikoski herself. Do you suspect her? She has always seemed a little strange to me.”

  I shared my Munchausen idea, but Puupponen and Koivu didn’t warm to the theory, and Ursula thought it sounded pretty far-fetched too.

  “Could you work up a criminal profile based on these two cases?” I asked her. “I understand you did some training in Tampere.”

  “Male, under thirty-five, lives alone, unemployed or in danger of unemployment, problems with mental health or drugs, no long-term female relationships. Probably short.” Up until that last point, Ursula had us going. “Reads Woody Woodpecker comics and listens to Paula Koivuniemi, who serves as a mother figure.” She burst out laughing. “It isn’t that easy, but I’ll think about it! Although male and living alone are probably good guesses.”

  After grinning at us long enough to make Koivu scowl, Ursula returned to the topic of Ristiluoma. She pulled up a photo of him on her computer and projected it onto a screen that she must have ordered from IT the day before. In the picture, Ristiluoma’s bearded face smiled as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Now all that was left of that face was a shattered skull and scraps of flesh.

  “Hemmo Tapani Ristiluoma, who went by his middle name, Tapani. Originally from Kotka, now living here in Espoo, in North Tapiola to be precise. Has a master of business administration. Thirty-nine years old and unmarried, both parents deceased, father of lung cancer and mother of breast cancer, so he didn’t do that well in the gene lottery. His one sister, two years younger, lives in Kerava. I spoke with her on the phone, although I don’t know how reliable she was because she was so upset about her brother’s death. Ristiluoma was never married, but he did have two long-term girlfriends. Ristiluoma’s sister gave me the first one’s contact information, but she didn’t remember the second one’s last name. She promised to let me know if it comes to her. The property management office was closed when I called yesterday, but I’ll call back later—they should be able to give us the second girlfriend’s contact information from the lease on the apartment she and Ristiluoma shared.” Ursula paused and took a sip from her bottle of pear-flavored French mineral water. My phone rang, and I saw from the display that it was Leena, so I didn’t answer. Somehow she’d gotten hold of my work cell number. Maybe the switchboard had given it to her.

  “According to the sister, Ristiluoma was afraid of commitment, and that was why his girlfriends left him, because they wanted to get married and have children. Girlfriend number one, Eija Heikkinen, confirmed this. They started dating in their early twenties, when they were still in school, and Ristiluoma was throwing javelin. Then he got injured, which ended his athletic career. She said he’d been really upset about it, but he managed to turn his attention to his schooling, ultimately going for an MBA. That isn’t the easiest switch for an active athlete, but Ristiluoma wasn’t some dumb hick, even though he came from a small town. What is it, Ville?” Ursula asked as Puupponen waved his hand enthusiastically.

  “Ristiluoma fits your profile. Male, lived alone.”

  “Good point. And I think you fit it too, don’t you? Now let me finish. Because of his arm injury, Ristiluoma became interested in mobility assistance devices for athletes and founded MobAbility with an occupational therapist and a physical therapist. Five years ago, he bought them out, which turned out to be profitable for him. I spoke with his former partners. One used the proceeds of the sale to start a physical therapy practice on the Costa del Sol and had nothing bad to say about Ristiluoma. The occupational therapist is an academic now. He mostly writes textbooks, but he also designs devices for MobAbility as a subcontractor. He was a little bitter about not receiving an invitation to the launch party, because the lumbar spine belt Toni Väärä showed off was one he designed. So everyone but Toni Väärä thought Pentti Vainikainen was a perfect angel, and now we have another guy who everyone thought was just swell too, except maybe his exes. But his not wanting a wife or kids isn’t a crime. I’m meeting with the MobAbility office staff today if you don’t have anything more important for me to do. The secretary, Satu Häkkinen, has been with MobAbility since the beginning and probably knew her boss better than anyone.”

  “How long had Ristiluoma been without a steady girlfriend?” Koivu asked.

  “About two years, as far as I can tell. Are you wondering where he was getting sex during that time? Trust me, Koivu, there are nonmarital options. You can always pay for it or get it for free if you aren’t too picky. According to ex-girlfriend number one, Ristiluoma was very active in that department, at least when he was younger.”

  “Should we check Ristiluoma’s bank account to see if there’s anything that points to his using prostitutes? Like regular deposits to strange accounts or unexpectedly large cash withdrawals,” Puupponen said, trying to redeem himself.

  “I still think Ristiluoma’s death was an accident,” I said. “And that for our main line of investigation, we should assume that the bomb was meant for Jutta.”

  “So I don’t get to try the Casanova angle . . .” Puupponen said, trying to be funny again. The rest of us just stared at him. That fall, there had been public discussion about the sexual harassment female police officers encounter in the line of duty, because more than a fifth of us had been victims at some point, myself included. Someone who didn’t know him well could easily take Puupponen’s joking as harassment. But over the years I’d learned to accept Puupponen’s corny jokes as simply part of his personality, or a way to cope with a job in which beauty was less frequently on display than misery.

  The sound of Antti’s ringtone startled me. My husband wasn’t in the habit of calling me at work unless it was important. I went into my office to answer.

  “Sorry for bothering you.” Antti’s voice was tense. “Your friend Leena has already called me three times demanding to know what hospital Jutta Särkikoski is in. She says you aren’t answering her calls.”

  “You shouldn’t answer them either” was the only guidance I could give him. “You can’t officially know anything beyond what can be found in the newspaper. As a lawyer, Leena should understand that.”

  “But she’s so damn persistent! She seems to feel involved in the case because she introduced you and Särkikoski.”

  “As I said, don’t answer her calls. And if you go by the liquor store, buy a bottle of Laphroaig. I think I’m going to need a stiff drink once I get out of here. Give everyone a hug from me.”

  After Antti hung up, I sat at my desk and stared at my phone. I didn’t have any obligation to keep Leena informed about the progress of the investigation, but I knew my friend well enough to guess how concerned she was. So I typed out a quick text message: This case is
intense, but Jutta is fine. I’m meeting with her later. Want me to tell her something? I’ll let you know as soon as you can see her. That would have to suffice.

  I returned to the conference room, and Puupponen filled me in on the progress investigating Miikka Harju. Coincidently, the fire and rescue crew Harju had worked with had been called out to the explosion in Pasila the previous day, and they had been very open to Puupponen’s questions. Most of them had known Harju, and they didn’t bother to hide their opinions of him. Harju’s claims of back trouble had elicited hoots of laughter.

  “Booze was Harju’s problem,” Puupponen said. “They asked him to turn in his resignation after he came in not quite sober and blew a 0.06 on the breathalyzer. That wasn’t the first time he’d gotten in trouble—he’d already received a couple of reprimands. Still, according to his coworkers, when he wasn’t intoxicated, he was a damn good firefighter and was always the first one into the flames. He seemed to enjoy taking risks, which is something of a prerequisite for both firefighters and cops. He hasn’t kept in touch since he left the fire station. One of them tried to call him early on, but Harju hung up on him. They didn’t even know he’d sobered up and was working at Adaptive Sports.” Puupponen had also met Harju’s former fiancée, whose name and cell number he’d gotten from Harju’s old boss. She said she’d grown tired of Harju’s drinking, although the relationship had been on the rocks for a while before he’d really started losing it.

  “She said she fell in love with the uniform and the feeling of familiarity. Apparently, her dad and brothers were firefighters too. I guess I should go back to Patrol, since apparently uniforms really do bring luck with the ladies,” Puupponen said with a laugh and then blushed. He had never been in the habit of talking about his private life, and sometimes I’d wondered how such a great guy managed to stay single. Ursula’s wiles had had no effect on him when she tried to seduce him early on, so she must have come to the same conclusion that I had: either Puupponen was asexual or gay.

  “This woman, her name is Teija Koskivuo. She’s a pharmacist, and she actually tried to patch things up with Harju about six months ago, after she heard he was in recovery. But Harju said there was no going back. Apparently Harju’s finances have always been a mess. He still owes money to some of his old coworkers at the fire station, and Koskivuo said she’d basically supported him. Occasionally he’d go gambling and hit a jackpot, but he always just blew it right away. When he lost his job, he also lost his credit, but he managed to keep his apartment because it’s privately owned rather than by the city, and Harju always paid his rent even if he didn’t keep up on his credit card bills. A guy who always has a hole in his pocket is awfully easy to bribe.”

  “You mean, like pay to commit a homicide? Are you suggesting that Harju went for the job at Adaptive Sports because he thought that would be the best way to get at Jutta Särkikoski?” Ursula asked.

  “The employment office is closed on the weekend, so I won’t be able to ask them until Monday. But maybe Merja Vainikainen would know, since she hired Harju. Maria, can we contact the grieving widow?”

  “The grieving widow was at her office yesterday, and I imagine she wants this case solved quickly too. But who would have hired Harju to kill Jutta? Who did he used to drink with?”

  “I got a few names, but they aren’t interesting. A couple have drunk-driving convictions and speeding tickets, but they aren’t exactly career criminals, and there’s nothing about drugs. And nowadays Harju is on the straight and narrow and spends his evenings at AA. And as we’ve already said, getting information out of his pals there would be like questioning a Catholic priest. Although I guess we could try to bribe his sponsor with a bottle of the hard stuff.”

  “Ville, come on. That’s over the line.”

  “Don’t you remember that with Maria, you’re only allowed to tell politically correct jokes?” Ursula said, and I found it necessary to count to ten in my head. I still blamed myself for not intervening more when Pertti Ström was drinking on the job, because he still might have been alive if someone had interrupted his downward spiral in time. But to Ursula, Ström was just a name, since he’d died before she’d entered the department, and all she knew about him were colorful stories. Even though we hadn’t gotten along, these days I tended to remember Ström’s rare bursts of humanity more than his rages. I also honored his memory whenever I happened to visit the urn cemetery at the old Espoo church, where there was a space reserved for remembering those buried elsewhere.

  “Ville, you continue digging into Harju. Ursula, you work on your profile and bring Terävä back in,” I managed to say before my phone rang again. I didn’t recognize the number, but the voice I heard when I answered was familiar from many of the Women’s Police Days I’d attended.

  “Hi, it’s Anne Kauppinen from the Nokia Police Department. Do you have a second? We just finished talking to a very hungover Eero Salo.”

  I put my phone on speaker so the others in the room could listen. “I’m here with my team. Go ahead.”

  “We sent him over to the health center to get treatment. Eero Salo hasn’t left Siuro in the past month. In August he went to the theater festival in Tampere, although I get the impression that the only culture he imbibed was beer culture. His friends are all drunks, but the staff at the pub can vouch for him. He’s been sitting there with a pint in front of him every day. There’s always someone willing to treat the hometown boy who definitely would have won Olympic gold if that pesky suspension hadn’t gotten in the way. Back in the day, Eero stole the county discus record from a guy in Tampere, and the folks in Siuro are still proud of it.”

  “Does Salo have any friends who might have wanted to take revenge on his behalf?”

  “Well, those guys certainly know how to talk, but the cases you’re investigating are more complex than Eero’s crew would be capable of. The only one that could have built a bomb is named Rissanen, and he’s already doing a three-year stint. He’s about to be moved to the new prison in Turku. I doubt the views will be as nice as those at the old prison up on the hill. You know, I’ve known Eero for practically his whole life.” Anne had been a police officer in Nokia for more than twenty years, since before Salo was born. “He was always up for some petty shoplifting or sneaking beer out into the woods. That is, if someone else suggested it. But he was never the instigator. Thankfully Harri Timonen started throwing shot put, and Eero got into sports too. At the time I thought that we weren’t going to have to worry about him anymore. But I guess down at the pub they knew before the doping commission and the Athletics Federation that Eero was using something.”

  Before hanging up, Anne promised that she and her team would keep their ears open for rumors circulating in the area about Salo having a part in the homicides we were investigating. They had their local sources. Anne had always been good at finding informants, and she claimed that it was because she was a country girl. She’d actually come from the same village as Eero Salo. She seemed to have real pride about it—a few years before, at a Women’s Police Day karaoke event, she’d sung Kari Peitsamo’s “From Shanghai to Siuro.” She’d brought the music herself because the song wasn’t on any of the karaoke lists.

  “So no immediate need to go to Nokia,” I told my team. “What about Turku? Did Toni Väärä and Ilpo Koskelo go straight home after their interviews?”

  “Koskelo did, but we haven’t been able to get in touch with Väärä,” Koivu said. “Koskelo took the train, and he said that Väärä had jumped on the 109 bus to go visit some friends. I must have left ten messages on his phone. Koskelo took the two o’clock from Espoo Central and was home in Rusko around four thirty. He met people he knew on the train, including the mayor of Rusko, coming home from a meeting. Should I check the alibi?”

  “Not at the moment. Doesn’t Väärä have training with Koskelo today?”

  “He should, at three o’clock at the Kupittaa Sports Park. If he hasn’t called me back by then, I’ll get in touch with Ko
skelo.” Koivu stretched, and when I asked him how the table hockey had gone, he reported with feigned dejection that Juuso had wiped the floor with him over three ten-minute periods, five to one.

  “You let him win,” Ursula scoffed.

  “I did not! I just didn’t wear my glasses, and without them I can barely tell where the puck is. And the kid really is fast. He takes after his mother that way. Speaking of which, Maria, Anu has tickets to the ballet for Tuesday. Can I have that night off?”

  “Unless the sky falls on us,” I said. “OK, let’s get back to work. Koivu and I are going to Töölö Hospital. I’ll call when we’re free, and we can all go out to Kauklahti to figure out who’s been skulking around Jutta Särkikoski’s car lately.”

  On the way, Koivu and I stopped at an Indian fast food joint. As Koivu was maneuvering the car out of the ridiculously cramped parking garage, I received a call from the forensic lab.

  “Hi, it’s Pirre from the lab. We’re still running drug panels, but I have one result for Pentti Vainikainen. It looks like it was nicotine poisoning. That is, we found nicotine in his stomach, but only about thirty grams. It seems like it was in the sandwich spread, probably the garlic butter. But let me emphasize: it was only thirty grams. That’s not enough to kill a person.”

  13

  I asked Koivu to pull over so I could get the autopsy report open on my laptop. The lab had started its analysis with the stomach, since we’d assumed Vainikainen ingested the nicotine with the sandwich. But could someone have injected him with something? The autopsy report listed in detail every mark they’d found on the body, but there was no mention of a needle site. They would have noticed that, and Ursula would have told me that already, since she attended the autopsy. The mucous membranes in Vainikainen’s mouth were badly burned, but that was assumed to have been caused by the nicotine. According to the eyewitnesses, Vainikainen had downed the sandwich in two large bites.