Derailed

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Maria, come help!” Leena yelled from the bathroom. “I can’t reach Jutta’s face creams. This is so frustrating!” She backed her wheelchair out of the bathroom. “The night cream and the eye cream, please.”

  Jutta favored domestic cosmetics, and the firm that made them was also a sponsor of the Finnish women’s ski team and, if I remembered correctly, the figure skaters. In addition to the creams, there was also cleansing milk and toner, and an electric toothbrush and toothpaste. I glanced in the mirror cabinet, where I found hair care products and medicine. Beyond the usual over-the-counter medications, Jutta still had some strong prescriptions left over from after the accident, including sedatives and sleeping pills. That last package was almost empty. At the back of the cabinet I also found a pack of condoms. Jutta hadn’t said anything about her love life, and she hadn’t mentioned any exes who might be threatening her.

  “Jutta still won’t tell us who her source was for the Salo and Terävä doping story. She thinks it’s impossible the source has anything to do with these crimes. You know her better than I do. Who would she go this far to protect?” I couldn’t tell Leena that Jutta’s source had obtained the doping information illegally.

  Leena pondered my question for a long time. “Someone defenseless,” she finally said. “An older person or a child. Maybe an elderly person who happened to go to Salo and Terävä’s gym and happened to see them doing a drug deal.”

  It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Jutta’s calendars were heavy in my bag. I wanted to look through them, but that would have to wait. Instead I went into Jutta’s bedroom. On the nightstand were a couple of translated paperbacks and a clock radio. In addition to the bed, there was an armchair and a rattan dress form torso with dozens of press-credential lanyards from various competitions hanging around the neck. The large window faced the parking lot, and I realized that during my Peeping Tom routine, I’d been off by one window. But there was nothing around the window or on the sill that indicated explosives. Another wall was full of clothes cabinets. The bed was against the third wall, and the wall next to the door was decorated by framed sports photos of Finnish track-and-field athletes. It seemed as if the same photographer had taken them all, because they all had a slightly unusual perspective, and the feeling of motion was so strong that I almost expected Tommi Evilä to finish crashing into the sand or Markus Pöyhönen to break the tape in the 100-meter sprint and run right out of the picture. They weren’t just press photos, they were works of art.

  There was plenty of space in the cabinets, since Jutta obviously didn’t collect anything unnecessary. The bedding was ironed and folded, and in one of the cabinets I found a small clothes wringer. Jutta’s clothing was sporty and practical, tending toward the inconspicuous. She clearly didn’t want her appearance to call attention to her gender.

  The apartment was clean and thoughtfully decorated but gave an impression of . . . something I couldn’t place. Then I realized what it was: loneliness. Not just because Jutta lived alone. It was more that there were no signs of her having anyone else. No drawings from godchildren. No pictures of parents. No funny postcards from friends on vacation. Everything focused on work, on sports. The apartment wasn’t a place where people stayed late or came over for a drink. When I asked Leena how often she had visited Jutta here, she replied that she’d only come over once before. Usually they met in the city.

  Jutta was an only child, and her parents cared for her to the point of fussing, in Jutta’s opinion, Leena said. “They’re relatively old. Her dad turns seventy-five next year, and Jutta tries not to worry them with her own problems. Apparently, her mother’s greatest fear after the car accident was that Jutta might not be able to have children. She can,” Leena continued when she saw my expression.

  “Is she seeing anyone?”

  “I don’t actually know. She hasn’t mentioned anyone. And I didn’t ask, because Jutta tends to go into lockdown if you ask her anything too directly.” Leena rolled over to the balcony door and requested that I water the arborvitae outside. It was hard for her to get through the door with her wheelchair.

  After I did, I looked in the kitchen cabinets and cleaning closet again, but I didn’t find anything interesting. Leena had started to yawn, and my own bed was calling to me too. We took the trash with us, set the alarm, and outside the door I carefully turned each of Jutta’s locks. The building was quiet, and I banged the elevator door needlessly. Espoo was the second-largest city in Finland, but it already felt sleepy despite it being not quite midnight. Urban life was far removed from the neighborhoods of Espoo, although there were a couple of restaurants still open in the city center.

  I’d lived in Espoo for the past twelve years and watched it become increasingly urbanized. Five distinct districts had gradually grown together, forming a band of dense rows of single-family homes and new high-rise apartment buildings bordering the train tracks. The metro extension would bring even more intensive land use, and the building of a tunnel over the beginning of the Ring 1 beltway, with new structures on top of it, would mean expansion in the Tapiola area. The city planners had to find solutions to the lack of housing and commercial space, because Finland was a free country and companies could transfer their operations wherever they wanted, which almost always meant south. And we’d all need to use public transit more. If I intended to stay in Espoo, at some point I’d have to stop mooning over the fields of Hentta or any other undeveloped oases. I couldn’t have both city life and wandering through untouched forests with the moose.

  I dropped off Leena at her house. She’d agreed to take Jutta the books and cosmetics in the morning. As I backed out of her driveway, my eyelids began to droop. I turned on the radio, and after some scanning, finally found a decent station. Hector was singing about lost children, and I joined in to stay awake. My next rehearsal with the Flatfeet was scheduled for Wednesday, but I was probably going to miss it. The rest of the band would understand. I’d been so busy I hadn’t even dropped in to say hello to our guitarist, Söderholm, who worked in the Espoo Police Department as a ballistics expert. So far, I hadn’t needed his help with this case.

  I made it home in one piece. For a moment I stood in our front yard in the light of the moon. Our house looked safe in its normalcy, one modern Espoo single-family home among tens of thousands. I thought about all the people who didn’t have the patience for routine, who thought it was boring and meaningless. It wasn’t until a car accident or a violent death disrupted normalcy that it rose to its true value. I was willing to bet Merja Vainikainen would have preferred to be a nobody living with her husband rather than the grieving widow of a famous sports figure known by the whole country. Tomorrow I’d go to Adaptive Sports, and hopefully I could kill several birds with one stone at the Sports Building. Merja would be at work despite it all.

  My eyes started drooping again, and a cold wind whipped my hair against my cheeks. I went inside and managed to sneak under the covers without waking anyone except Venjamin, who soon settled down and purred me to sleep.

  In the morning I dragged myself up at 6:30, because no matter how tired you are, the body needs exercise. I jogged around the neighborhood, organizing my thoughts as I went. In the exhaustion of the previous night, I’d completely forgotten Jutta’s calendars, and my first job after the morning meeting would be to study them.

  The run woke up my brain better than another hour of sleep would have. The others were having breakfast when I returned. I gave the morning paper a glance. Everything they reported about my case was true. Also, the missing peacekeepers in the mountains of Afghanistan had been found, cold but alive. A drunk had run down a cow in Heinävesi.

  Iida was worried about an English language vocabulary test. She had a tendency toward the dramatic, and I anticipated her full-fledged adolescence with horror. Antti promised to practice with her while he took them to school. I hopped in the car and drove the few minutes to the station, since we might need an extra car during the day. In the garage I ran
into Anni, who looked exhausted.

  “How’s the investigation going?” she asked politely in the elevator. I didn’t have the nerve to leave and take the stairs, which Anni’s doctors must have encouraged her to avoid.

  “I guess it’s moving along, but you know how it is. Do you have a lot of cases on ice right now because so many of your detectives are working with me? Things must have piled up over the weekend.”

  “Actually, it’s been pretty quiet. Summer vacations are done, and the Christmas party season hasn’t started yet. There are always plenty of house calls and bar fights, of course. Since the staff doesn’t monitor the sidewalks and alleys outside their bars, and after a few drinks people like to start arguments, which sometimes escalate. I’m not really sure about the new smoking law’s impact at this point.”

  The elevator stopped, and I opened the door for Anni. Then, out of nowhere, she asked me if I would fill in for her when she went on maternity leave. In other words, she wanted me to take my old job back. She’d probably end up taking the longer parental leave too, since triplets would be a handful. I hated to disappoint her, so I said the thought had never crossed my mind.

  “But I’ll think it over,” I added. That was as much lying as I could manage. Hopefully Anni wouldn’t share her bright idea with Taskinen.

  Ursula was already in the conference room, sitting with her back to the door and speaking on the phone so heatedly that I felt sorry for whoever was on the other end of the line.

  “Why didn’t you inspect it? You morons, why didn’t you crosscheck all the cars? Because it belonged to one of the victim’s coach’s son-in-law. Do I have to spell it out for you? The coach’s son-in-law. It’s no wonder you never catch anyone! If you’d bothered to actually do your jobs, two people would still be alive. No, there’s no point doing it now. Matilainen or his father-in-law has had plenty of time to repair any damages. Thank you ever so much!”

  After she hung up, Ursula turned her belligerent gaze on me.

  “Rough morning?” I asked, aware that the question would probably only add to Ursula’s irritation.

  “Minna Matilainen, maiden name Koskelo, returned my call. Surprise, surprise, she didn’t remember if her dad borrowed their van on the night of Väärä and Särkikoski’s accident. And there’s no way to find out, thanks to those nitwits in Lohja. Did Särkikoski say something about the lead investigator having a conflict of interest? There might be something to that, since they handled the case so incompetently.”

  “So it was the cops in Lohja that got under your skin?” I asked, trying to commiserate. I never could tell when Ursula might be feeling friendly.

  “Not just them, men in general!” Ursula put her feet up on the table and put a pen in her mouth. Her attempt to look tough didn’t quite work.

  “Is it Kristian? Did he not tell you the whole truth about the status of his divorce?” I remembered all too well his tendency to paint himself in the most advantageous light.

  “No, Kristian’s divorce has been final since May. But guess what he had the nerve to suggest to me yesterday? It’s insane, because he already has three kids with his ex-wife. Now he wants to breed with me too.”

  I would have expected to see triumph in Ursula’s expression, but instead she only looked mad and sort of disappointed.

  “Isn’t it pretty common for people in love to want to have children together?” I asked.

  “Who said anything about love? He wants to tie me down and then leave me in five years for someone younger and more fertile!”

  “You certainly have a sunny outlook on men,” I said. Just then Puupponen walked in. Ursula didn’t notice.

  “What reason is there to think otherwise?” she asked. Puupponen snuck up behind her and covered her eyes. She screamed. Koivu arrived just in time to witness Ursula trying to stab Puupponen in the face and groin with a pen. Fortunately, Puupponen had the sense to let her go before suffering bodily harm.

  “I can’t listen to insults to my sex without retaliating,” he said in his defense. “And besides, I had to test these new shoes. Look! I ordered them all the way from the Unites States—supposedly they have special soles that make your footsteps perfectly silent. They cost five hundred dollars, but I think they’re worth it.”

  To my surprise, Puupponen’s buffoonery seemed to put Ursula in a better mood. I used the opportunity to take the box of memory sticks out of my bag and put it on the table. “Here’s a new job for you. They’re Jutta Särkikoski’s.”

  Ursula glanced at the USB drives and nodded. There wasn’t much to go over, so we quickly disbanded to start on our tasks. Leena had told me that the meeting at the MobAbility office would be held at eleven, so I would try to be at the Sports Building a little before noon to catch them as they finished.

  I withdrew to my office to go through my e-mails. The bomb investigation had progressed: The explosive had almost certainly been TATP—acetone peroxide—which was commonly used by terrorists but had only been seen occasionally in Finland. The risks associated with it were well-known, but some terrorists were prepared to risk their own lives, not to mention the lives of bystanders. The whole incident seemed increasingly bizarre: Why would an international terrorist group be hunting Jutta?

  I’d received the official report saying that no explosives residues had been found on Sami Terävä’s body or clothing. There was no new information from Pentti Vainikainen’s autopsy. Ristiluoma’s would be the following day. The law required that the autopsy be performed, though not much was left of the body. There was no rush, because the cause of death was already known.

  Perävaara called and we discussed public relations strategy, ultimately deciding not to publicize the nature of the explosive at this point. We needed to buy some time. While I was still on the phone, a knock came at the door. “Come in,” I said, expecting a member of my team. Instead Taskinen stood on the threshold.

  “Hi, Maria,” he said once I’d wrapped up my conversation with Detective Perävaara. “How are things progressing?”

  “As I understand it, I’m still not obligated to report to anyone, or have the orders changed?”

  Taskinen walked in and closed the door. I turned my chair toward him but didn’t stand to shake his hand. Suddenly I felt like I understood Ursula.

  “Are you still sulking?” Taskinen sat down in the armchair. He’d been the one to encourage me to look for a position outside the Espoo Police Department, and we’d always gotten along well, despite tensions over the years. At times our working relationship had lapsed into friendship, but neither of us had ever been ready for more than that. Now I couldn’t comprehend how I’d almost become infatuated with Taskinen, though I still liked him, despite this unpleasant assignment.

  “I’m just doing the job I’ve been ordered to do. That was Detective Perävaara on the phone. They’ve identified the explosive. So we’re moving along. I’m about to head to the Sports Building.”

  “Good. I was just talking to Anni and—”

  “Me too,” I said, cutting him off. “I’ve thought about it, and the answer is no. Shouldn’t you be asking around to see who might want to go for commander training? I think Ursula Honkanen is just about ready to move up to lieutenant.”

  “Can you really imagine Honkanen leading your old unit?”

  “Yes. It would probably bring them all together in a whole new way.”

  Taskinen burst out laughing, and I joined in, not because I thought what I’d said was all that funny, but simply because I wanted to laugh with him. Then I told him honestly how far we’d made it in the investigation. Naturally he was angry that I’d taken the calendars and memory sticks from Jutta’s apartment. I said I’d return them before Jutta got out of the hospital.

  “You needed her permission. Hopefully the wrong person doesn’t hear about this. I’ve heard rumors that there’s a pretty big internal affairs investigation going on in the Helsinki Narcotics Division about breaches of protocol like this. I don’t want that h
appening here.”

  “I understand the importance of the rule of law, but no one can fire me, since I don’t work here anyway,” I said sarcastically. “Listen to me, Jyrki. I’m sure the identity of Särkikoski’s source is going to be key to the investigation. It has to be significant, or Särkikoski wouldn’t be so tight-lipped.”

  “I guess you know what you’re doing,” Taskinen said with a sigh. “Tomorrow it will be a week since Vainikainen’s poisoning. The Interior Ministry called again this morning. The Council of State is watching this case closely, since it’s the perfect test for the new supplementary police appropriations law. I’m not quite sure whether you should succeed or fail in order to get them to loosen the purse strings.”

  “I imagine the prime minister is happy to have the media savaging someone else for a change. Could there be something political in this, what with the explosive possibly pointing to terrorists?”

  Taskinen’s face twitched, but before he could say anything a knock came at the door. This time it was Ursula, who glanced curiously at Taskinen. He stood quickly, said good-bye, and left.

  “I hadn’t noticed how Jyrki has aged. How many grandchildren does he have now?”

  “Two. What’s up?”

  “I went through those memory sticks. There were nine of them. Three are completely locked down, and four had no passwords at all. On the other two, I can see the files, but they all have individual passwords. So I just looked through them superficially. Nothing about the file names stand out. I suggest we take the ones with the most security to our experts right away.”

  “We can’t take them to IT because they were obtained illegally. You can ask IT how to crack the passwords, can’t you? Use those feminine wiles we keep talking about!” I hoped that the sisterly comradery I’d felt between us earlier was still in effect, but Ursula sneered.

  “You’re so out of the loop. The department’s new head of information technology is a chick. She’s under thirty, she has a doctorate and three kids, and she’s the former aikido world champion. Apparently, they’re paying her twice the last guy’s salary because she’s so valuable to White Collar Crime. But I can go beg. White Collar always takes priority these days, so don’t hold your breath.”