Derailed

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “We baked them with Dad,” she said. “Taneli put raisins in his pulla, but I think they’re nasty.”

  I sighed in satisfaction. “Pulla and sauna. My favorite.” All that was left to complete the Saturday evenings of my youth was a bottle of Omenapore apple soda, which I’d loved as a ten-year-old. It had been almost the same color as Coca-Cola, which my progressive parents refused to buy for us. My younger sister Helena would always secretly buy it at the ice cream stand, which was her way of rebelling.

  I helped Taneli with his building project, even though he was much handier, and then we went to get more wood for the sauna stove. A traditional wood sauna was our little luxury and a big reason why we’d bought the house. I felt slightly guilty that I’d be leaving again in the morning before anyone else was up, but for now I could enjoy the normalcy of home. Instead of bubbly apple soda, I shared a bottle of dry French cider with Antti, and after we’d had enough of the sauna, we all played cards and munched on more warm, cinnamon-scented pulla. For the moment, explosions and poisonings felt far away. After the children went to sleep, I lured Antti back into the sauna, and for half an hour, with skin on skin, I forgot everything that was happening outside.

  In the morning I accidentally slept in. I thought I’d set my alarm to go off at 7:45, but when I woke up to Venjamin jumping on my stomach, it was already 8:30. I started some coffee and rushed to dress. As I sipped my coffee, I called a taxi, because Koivu had taken the department car and Antti needed our family car to take the children on a mushrooming expedition after their skating practice. Antti came to the door to say good-bye.

  “There isn’t anything dangerous in Turku, is there?” he asked. The taxi was waiting at the curb, so I pulled myself from Antti’s embrace.

  “No.” It was hard to imagine Ilpo Koskelo trying to hurt me.

  “I’d stopped being afraid every time you leave, afraid that that might have been the last time I’d see you,” Antti said seriously.

  “Well, don’t start again. Everything is going to be fine, OK? I have to go, or I’ll miss my train!” I stretched up to kiss Antti and hit the end of his nose. The taxi driver, who had clearly seen everything, made no comment on my acrobatics in the back seat as I did my makeup, even when he braked suddenly before the Espoo train station, to avoid a drunk who’d stumbled into the road, and I smeared mascara across my forehead. I didn’t have time to buy a ticket, because the train was about to leave, so I ran to a car where I could pay a conductor onboard. I sat down in the first empty window seat I found and nibbled the pulla I’d grabbed on the way out the door. Based on the number of raisins, it had to be one of Taneli’s. My phone hadn’t buzzed all night, which didn’t bode well for the fate of Toni Väärä. I called Puupponen. He hadn’t heard anything about Väärä either.

  As the train left Espoo behind, Koskelo’s concerns began to worry me too. I tried to tamp it down by telling myself that Väärä had probably just found his first girlfriend and refused to leave her side. The great North Karelian thinker Seppo Räty had claimed that in addition to sports, a young man’s mind only had room for either studying or dating—although Räty had stated the latter in somewhat different terms—and maybe now Väärä had temporarily forgotten about sports. But did his religion allow him to date outsiders? Maybe Väärä’s family thought he was out sinning, because he hadn’t been in contact with them either.

  “Tickets, please. Anyone who boarded in Espoo.” The conductor snapped me out of my reverie. I bought a ticket to Kupittaa and then turned back to the window to watch the yellow-and-green landscape speeding by, past the suburbs and into the forest. Just before the Siuntio station, I caught sight of an idyllic pink villa with a calico cat in the yard. In Inkoo I saw a line of horseback riders in single file. When my mother had visited Antti’s parents’ cabin in Inkoo, she’d demanded to be driven to see former president Koivisto’s house, which was still a local attraction.

  I thought of Antti’s parting words. Things had been hard for him too after my assault, and it had taken months before I’d been able to have sex. It probably would have been easier for him to face danger himself than to fear for my safety, and that had nothing to do with gender. Antti wasn’t worried about me because I was a woman but because I was his wife and the mother of his children. He knew full well that a detective was rarely in danger at work, but logic didn’t always win out over emotion.

  Had Ilpo Koskelo been able to sleep, as worried as he was? At least Jutta got to take sleeping pills at the hospital. And what about Merja Vainikainen . . . ? That was where I shut down this train of thought. My job wasn’t to grieve for victims or their loved ones; it was to make sure the crime was solved as quickly as possible. Until then we would all live in limbo, and only by learning the truth could we move forward.

  About halfway to Turku, I received a text from Ilpo Koskelo. No sign of the boy at the track. I’m going to the restaurant at the soccer field for coffee. Call when you get here. Ursula had determined that Väärä hadn’t left the country by plane, by ship, or on the train to Russia, but no one monitored car traffic across the borders with Sweden or Norway. Of course, it was possible that Väärä’s phone had been stolen, but then wouldn’t he have borrowed a phone to call his family and Koskelo to let them know where he was?

  I didn’t know the city of Turku very well. The last time I’d visited was a couple of summers earlier when we’d toured the castle and the Suomen Joutsen, a three-masted square rigger on display in the harbor. The distance from Arpikylä to western Finland had always been bigger in my mind than on the map, and when I was studying at the police academy in Tampere, I’d adopted some of the locals’ ridiculous prejudices against Turku, which had taken time to shake. Unfortunately, I probably wouldn’t have time for lunch at any of the floating restaurants along the river or to stop by the art museum or the market square, which always seemed to be bustling. I understood that for a country boy like Toni Väärä, Turku was a big city where he could be free and anonymous.

  I caught a taxi at the Kupittaa station. When I told the driver to take me to the sports park, he cast me a strange glance but didn’t say anything. I could have walked, but the driver knew the exact door at which to drop me off. I called Koskelo, who said he was still in the restaurant at the soccer field, on the second floor of the building. I took the stairs to a large open lobby and then found my way to the restaurant, which was nearly empty. The only people there besides Koskelo were a middle-aged couple holding hands and looking blissful. Koskelo shook my hand, his fingers trembling slightly. I ordered a cheese sandwich, because one piece of pulla had been a light breakfast.

  “I talked to the boy’s mom, Liisa Väärä, again. She doesn’t know where he could be, and she already called everyone they know in the capital, but no one has heard from him. They just said that they’d pray that nothing bad had happened to him. He couldn’t have been in Pasila when that bomb went off, could he? What if he went to the Sports Building and somehow . . .” Koskelo covered his face.

  “That isn’t possible. Jutta Särkikoski was alone when she tried to start the car. Then, when she couldn’t, she got out and asked Ristiluoma to try. There was no sign of a second body. And we’ve already checked the jails, the hospitals, and all the border crossings in southern Finland. Are you absolutely sure Toni doesn’t have a girlfriend in Helsinki?”

  If the girl wasn’t a Smith’s Friend, Väärä might want to conceal the relationship so that his parents wouldn’t hear about it. And Koskelo was so attached to his athlete that I could imagine him being jealous of a possible love interest.

  “Toni doesn’t have a girlfriend,” Koskelo replied, almost angrily. “He’s putting sports before everything else right now. Only another athlete would understand him anyway. It was too bad he got in that accident last year and didn’t make it to the national camps. A lot of romances start there, with all those kids training together. Another coffee, please,” he said to the server, who’d arrived with my tea and sandwich. The f
irst bite of the whole wheat bread tasted heavenly. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.

  “Toni is a really great boy, and he’s going to go far. Kids these days don’t know how to work hard, and everything’s about instant gratification. They’d rather get drunk and have sex in front of the whole country on reality TV than take the time to accomplish something. Toni’s not like that. People like that get forgotten, but medals get remembered.” Koskelo stopped and wiped his nose with a crumpled tissue. I handed him an extra napkin.

  “Toni’s been running seriously his whole life. There wasn’t much else to do out there in the country, and I worried a little when he moved to the big city. But everything was fine, since he put running front and center. He did his school work, of course, but training was his top priority. The only thing I was concerned about was that he didn’t really have any friends. He stopped going to church too, which was probably his way of rebelling against his parents. That’s only natural, for a young person, and it usually passes in time.”

  The server brought another coffee, into which Koskelo dropped two sugar cubes. The sun peeked through the large windows, shining right into his eyes, and Koskelo moved his chair slightly to get out of the glare. “I said he could go out and have fun, but he wasn’t interested. Once Toni came to practice really upset, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. He claimed it was nothing. We went through our normal routine, and then I asked if he wanted to go for a sauna. When he hesitated, I said it was coach’s orders. While we were in there, he told me that his back had been bothering him, and he’d needed some extra massage. Our club has a regular sports masseuse, but she was out sick. So the boy decided to try a Thai massage place over by the train station. I guess it really shocked him, when he realized they offered more than the usual treatment. He was horribly embarrassed to tell me, and he never would have dreamed of talking about something like that at home. He doesn’t even like it when the other guys tell dirty jokes, even though that’s just how it goes in the locker room.”

  The female half of the middle-aged couple stood up and walked past us. Her face bore a wide smile, so euphoric that it was almost frightening. Had the man proposed, or had the woman just learned that she was pregnant at long last? Koskelo didn’t pay any attention to her. But my next question made him spit his coffee out on the table.

  “Why did you call Jutta Särkikoski on your granddaughter Olivia Kämäräinen’s cell phone on Thursday the thirteenth of September?”

  I’d clearly taken him by complete surprise. Face red, he coughed and coughed. For a moment, I was afraid he’d choke, and the server looked over at us with concern and then brought a glass of water. Once Koskelo was into his third minute of coughing, I realized he was playing for time.

  “Särkikoski taped all of the calls,” I lied. “And we checked her phone records. But you didn’t think of that. Really, sending death threats from an eight-year-old’s cell phone!”

  “It wasn’t a death threat!” Koskelo said, walking into a classic trap. He suddenly tugged at his beard as if to punish himself.

  “Technically not, but it was still a threat. How many other calls did you make to Jutta Särkikoski from prepaid phones? Were you the one writing her letters? We’ll need to go down to the police station to take your fingerprints and a DNA sample,” I said, continuing to bluff.

  “It wasn’t anything like that! I swear that was the only time I called. The boy and me didn’t have any idea that Jutta Särkikoski would be part of the MobAbility campaign. Seeing her wasn’t good for the boy, and his recovery was going so well. It only reminded him of that terrible accident. It wasn’t just his hip that broke in that crash. Part of his mind went too. No one wants to remember a thing like that.” Koskelo’s southwestern accent became more prominent as he became more heated.

  “So you only called Jutta Särkikoski to scare her away from the campaign? Did you think one threatening call would do the trick, even though you didn’t even say what it was about?”

  “If I had, she could have guessed who was calling her! I’m not that stupid. And they never solved the car accident. How do I know she didn’t intentionally sabotage the boy’s career? Maybe she thought he was using banned substances and that if he ended up in the hospital they’d find it in his blood. But he wasn’t using! When we were leaving the police station after our interviews, he said he never would have given in to Vainikainen, and he didn’t want any coach but me. Everything was fine between us, and I can’t stand the thought of that being the last time I see him!”

  Now the tears in Ilpo Koskelo’s eyes weren’t from his coughing fit. Because his own napkins were wet from the coffee, he grabbed another one of mine and wiped his eyes. “I didn’t tell you or the other detectives because it wouldn’t have mattered. I didn’t poison anyone or put a bomb in anyone’s car. Why would I do something like that? You won’t tell my daughter about the call, will you? My daughter and my son-in-law will never speak to me again if they knew I’d used my grandchild’s phone for something like that. And I didn’t know the call would affect Särkikoski so much. I promise I’ll apologize to her. I won’t go to jail for this, will I?”

  “The maximum sentence for criminal intimidation is two years in prison,” I replied. Koskelo could chew on that for a while. People thought threats were no big deal as long as words didn’t turn into actions. He wiped his eyes again, apparently concerned for himself now. I considered whether I should tell him that in his case the court would probably apply a lesser punishment, and that he would get off with a fine if the prosecutor bothered pressing charges at all.

  Down below, a women’s soccer team was jogging out onto the grass to warm up. The coach was a man, as usual. Was I too traditional as a mother because I hadn’t encouraged Iida to take up soccer or the shot put and instead put her in figure skating, traditionally a girl’s sport? But that’s what she’d wanted. It was probably discouraging for those on the medal-winning women’s team to have to listen to the whole country talking about the men’s national team just because they’d made it past the qualifying round at the European championships. Although I had to admit that I went to more men’s games than women’s games. So maybe I should just keep my mouth shut.

  “Should we go?” Koskelo asked once he finished his coffee.

  “Go where?”

  “To the police station. To take those samples. They already took fingerprints in Espoo, ‘to rule me out’ was what that grouchy blond lady cop said.”

  “That will do for now. You said Toni Väärä damaged more than his body in the car accident. Was his mind damaged enough to make him want to take revenge on the driver?”

  “The boy isn’t like that! He thought he was a sinner, so he was to blame for the accident. He thought he was being punished for having too much pride about his win at the international competition, and because he was lusting after more gold and glory, getting above the station God had allotted him. They’re good people, his parents, I mean, but some churchgoers have really strange ideas about sin and hell. When we started working together, Toni was sad I was going to hell because I don’t believe like they do.”

  I thought of my friend Terhi, who was a priest, and how angry that idea would make her. She’d been told plenty of times she was going to hell because women aren’t supposed to be in the clergy. Fanaticism could lead to delusions of persecution and grandeur no matter what the religious persuasion. Even though Koskelo claimed otherwise, it was possible that Toni Väärä had demonized Jutta and then decided to take God’s judgement into his own hands. It was possible but seemed unlikely.

  Koivu called and reported that a woman who lived in a building near Jutta Särkikoski’s had contacted him. She hadn’t been home the previous day but had seen our flier. According to the woman, on Thursday evening a man had been hanging around the yard and taking pictures of Särkikoski’s building, especially the balcony. The man had seemed suspicious and likely foreign, and the woman had feared he was planning a robbery. From Koivu’s
tone, I took it that he considered this eyewitness to be unreliable, maybe even a little flaky, but he still intended to interview her and then spend a little more time canvassing the neighborhood.

  “Ursula is still talking about that search warrant. What if I just took a little gander inside, if I can get the keys from the property manager? Maybe Särkikoski would like it if we brought her a book from home or something.”

  “Don’t you dare!” I’d thought about an unofficial visit to Jutta’s apartment myself, and I knew that Leena had keys. Maybe I’d give her a call on the train ride back to Espoo.

  As I hung up the phone, I heard Koskelo’s breath catch. He grabbed my arm with his left hand and pointed with his right at the parking lot in front of the soccer stadium. Jogging toward the practice track was a young, slender man. Toni Väärä.

  Koskelo didn’t hold back as he sprinted out of the restaurant and down the stairs. I left the server thirty euros, which hopefully would be enough since I had no idea what Koskelo had ordered while waiting for me. I followed behind, glad that I’d worn jeans and sneakers.

  “Toni! Wait!” Koskelo shouted.

  Väärä turned and started to run toward his coach. We reached Koskelo at the same time, but Väärä didn’t seem to notice me.

  “Ilpo,” he said and was about to hug Koskelo, but then he drew back. “I couldn’t stand it anymore . . . All the lying. I had to . . . Even though it’s a sin straight from Satan. I couldn’t face you yesterday, and I can’t go home ever again. Ilpo, what have I done?”

  15

  I understood from Koskelo’s expression that he hoped I would leave, but I had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Now I understood why he hadn’t wanted Väärä talking to Jutta Särkikoski, and why Koskelo had been so uncomfortable when I asked him about Väärä’s girlfriends. Toni was gay, and he’d wrongly thought that Koskelo hadn’t known. Hiding in the closet seemed like wasted effort to me, but I had to admit I couldn’t name a single openly gay professional Finnish athlete offhand, at least not a male one. And it was probably safe to assume that Väärä’s church reserved sex for marriage between a man and a woman, which might explain Väärä’s feelings of guilt and the demons Koskelo had mentioned.