Derailed

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “The lab tests aren’t yet completed.” As I said that, I remembered that Kirsti Grotenfelt hadn’t called me back yet. I would go to Adaptive Sports, but before then I needed to stop by my real office in Helsinki to say hi and read the e-mails Outi had told me about. If we had to put our investigation on ice for a couple of days as Pihko had requested, I could use the time to start getting ready to return to normal life. I’d make sure I couldn’t be forced to return to homicide investigation against my will again. Of course, I’d given in far too easily—or had some subconscious part of me wanted this assignment? Was it the need to help Jutta and Hillevi, whom I already knew?

  I jumped on a tram to go across town. The colors of the leaves in the park at Finlandia Hall were at their peak, so the neighboring construction site for the Helsinki Music Center looked even uglier. Antti had attended a couple of rallies for the preservation of the nineteenth-century railway warehouses that had previously stood on the site. He’d jokingly dubbed himself the defender of hopeless causes.

  I got off at the main train station and picked up a sandwich at the café, then went back outside to sit in the square and eat. Once the weather turned, the square would be converted into an ice rink. I’d promised Iida that this winter she could try to teach me a waltz jump.

  At the office, Jarkko and I quickly caught up. I didn’t get to chat with Outi, because she was in a meeting with a client.

  I sat down at my desk and turned on the computer, but I didn’t get a chance to open my e-mail before my police cell phone rang. It was the Espoo police station switchboard.

  “Someone is trying to contact you from Afghanistan. The line is terrible. Should I patch you through anyway?”

  “Yes.” A call from Afghanistan? I barely had time to wonder what was going on before a terrible squealing static replaced the dispatcher’s voice. Instinctively I moved the phone away from my ear, but thankfully the static faded, and I could hear a male voice.

  “Hello, this is First Lieutenant Olli Salminen. Am I speaking with the detective investigating the deaths of Pentti Vainikainen and Tapani Ristiluoma?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I just heard about the killings early this morning. We’ve been a little hemmed in, and it takes a while for us to get news of home. I’m a peacekeeper here in Afghanistan, working on bomb disposal.”

  The line started squealing again, and I didn’t hear what Salminen said next. When the line finally cleared, I asked him to repeat himself.

  “I’m Pentti Vainikainen’s wife Merja’s ex-husband,” Salminen shouted into the phone. “Is it true that this Ristiluoma person died in an explosion?”

  I answered in the affirmative, and then Salminen asked what explosive had been used. Detective Perävaara hadn’t released that information. I began wondering why Lieutenant Salminen had called me instead of Detective Perävaara. I received my answer when Salminen continued.

  “Detective Perävaara asked me to call you. Can you tell me what explosive was used?”

  When I didn’t respond immediately, Salminen yelled again. “I’m an explosives expert, and Merja learned a lot from me. Too much. But when I realized what she’s really like, it was already too late. I taught her how to make TATP—I’ve regretted it ever since. At the time, I was training a bomb dog to detect TATP at each of its stages of production, and he lived at home with us. I’ve been afraid that Merja would use it to hurt Mona. Some terrorists call TATP the ‘Mother of Satan.’ That’s a fitting description of Merja. Such a cruel woman . . .”

  Salminen’s voice faded, and the call dropped. I called the Espoo switchboard and asked for the number. I tried to call back, but all I got was a recording in Farsi. From the number prefix, I could tell Salminen had called from a cell phone, so I sent him a text message asking him to contact me again as soon as possible. Then I decided to call Detective Perävaara.

  As I was pulling his name up in my contacts, I opened my e-mail inbox. The third-most recent e-mail was from Hillevi Litmanen’s Adaptive Sports account. What could she need now?

  Perävaara answered, and I told him about Olli Salminen’s call while also trying to read the e-mail, whose sender seemed to be someone other than Hillevi. The multitasking didn’t work very well, and I looked away from the screen so I could concentrate on the conversation with Perävaara.

  “It was definitely TATP,” he was saying. “That stuff is easy to make at home but unpredictable, even in the hands of a professional. But apparently Mrs. Vainikainen received good training?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “If TATP gets wet, it can delay the explosion. Maybe the car was supposed to explode immediately when started, but everything didn’t go according to plan. Or Mrs. Vainikainen figured out a way to set the bomb in the Sports Building parking lot without anyone seeing her. That would be pretty risky, though.”

  “Which one of us is going to get the search warrant for the Vainikainen home? It’s your jurisdiction, since technically the Ristiluoma case is Helsinki territory. Will a bomb dog be able to find traces of the explosive even if it’s no longer in the house?”

  “Maybe. What should we do about Mrs. Vainikainen?”

  “I’m actually on my way to see her at her office. Get one of your patrol cars ready to back me up if I need it.” Then I told Perävaara what I’d learned about the Vainikainens and the Field Sports Fund. Were whatever actions we took in the next few hours going to endanger Pihko’s operation? That was mostly about money, however, and this was about human lives.

  Finally, I got a chance to read the message from Hillevi’s e-mail address. The subject was simply “Hello Detective Maria,” but when I read the body of the message, it felt as if the whole world had lurched like a rudderless ship in a thirty-knot gale.

  Hi Detective Maria. I finally realized you’re the same person I was writing to before. This is Mona Linnakangas, but I’m also the Snork Maiden. Maybe you’ll believe me now since I’ve told you about the Groke and Hemulen before. But now Hemulen is dead, and I’m sure that the Groke, my mother, Merja Vainikainen, killed him. I’m writing this from Hillevi’s computer, and hopefully the Groke won’t interrupt me. She isn’t a mother, she’s a monster, and Hemulen finally realized it too. My former stepdad Olli was smarter, and in the beginning things were good with him. He made the Groke treat me better and wouldn’t let her hit me. The Groke told Hemulen that I won’t listen otherwise and that Hemulen couldn’t understand because he didn’t have any children of his own. I’m lazy, stupid, fat, ugly, evil, bad, and I don’t know how to do anything right, and that’s why it’s OK to hit me. And sometimes I believe that too, and then the only thing that helps me feel better is to eat and eat and eat.

  But you never know about the Groke. Sometimes she slips me a twenty and tells me to buy whatever I want. You can get a lot of chocolate for twenty euros. Sometimes she makes me food, healthy things like carrot soup, and says that I have to eat. But I don’t want the Groke’s food anymore, because I think she puts sleeping medicine in it. After I binge, I usually fall asleep, but there shouldn’t be anything in carrot soup to make me pass out.

  They fought about me, the Groke and Hemulen. It started in August when it was so hot, and one day I was just wearing a T-shirt and Hemulen saw the burns on my arm. He asked if I was burning myself, and I said no. Where did the scars come from? he demanded. I said I didn’t know. He brought the scars up with the Groke and said that they had to take me to a doctor. I was supposed to visit my dad that summer, but the Groke said she didn’t want me in Lapland and that my dad had never cared about me, and that he hates ugly women.

  The Groke thought Hemulen wasn’t coming home until late that night, and she burned me again with the iron, but Hemulen was in the garage and heard me screaming. The Groke said it was just an accident, because I was so clumsy, and that she wasn’t going to let me use the iron anymore. Hemulen asked if that was true. I said it was because the Groke was standing right there. After that the Groke never let me be alone
with Hemulen, and now Hemulen is gone. The Groke says he ate poison.

  I don’t remember much from these past few days. The Groke must be slipping me something again. She says we have to go to the doctor now. She told Miikka that I’m going to finally get treatment and that she’s so relieved. I don’t know where she’s taking me. The Groke says all you can eat there is carrot soup and sauerkraut, and that every day you have to walk ten kilometers and go to the gym, and that there are beautiful thin anorexics there too but that they won’t see me because they’re afraid of fatsos like me, that they’d rather die than be like me.

  I’m afraid of the Groke. The Groke didn’t just shout at Hemulen about me. She also yelled about money and trips and stuff. I don’t want to be the next one to die, so it’s good that I get to go to the hospital. Maybe I can tell them where the scars are from. Maybe we can iron all that fat away, the Groke said once. Can you help . . .

  I looked at the timestamp on the e-mail. It was sent the previous day at 1:25 p.m. Mona had written the message while we’d been interviewing her mother in the conference room a few feet away.

  Was Mona telling the truth? Merja claimed that her daughter had spent two weeks with her father over the summer and had come back even more disturbed. What was Mona’s father’s first name? All of my interview notes were at the police station, and I couldn’t access the police databases from this office. I closed my eyes and tried to remember.

  Jari. That was it. A common Finnish name. I called Information and asked for a phone number for Jari Linnakangas, and was soon connected. A female voice with a Russian accent answered.

  “Jari meditating. I not bother him now.”

  “This is important! Who are you?”

  “Tatyana Morozov, member of the Crystal Commune. Who can I ask Jari call once he finished in about half hour?”

  “Do you live there permanently?”

  “Yes, this my third year. I already know good Finnish . . .”

  “Did Jari’s daughter, Mona Linnakangas, visit there in August?”

  “No, no, no! That woman not let her, Jari old wife. Won’t let Jari see daughter at all. He very sad. Who I talking to?”

  I told her who I was and asked her to have Linnakangas call me, even though what she’d told me was enough. What else had Merja been lying about? Had Mona really gone to a treatment facility? I had to find out right away.

  While I was on hold at the hospital, I tried to organize my thoughts. It was easy to understand why Merja Vainikainen had killed Pentti. She had both motive and opportunity. Merja had probably been the one who’d moved the Field Sports Fund money to Switzerland. But why would Merja want to kill Jutta or Ristiluoma?

  The voice of the receptionist at Lapinlahti Hospital interrupted my thoughts. At first, she refused to divulge any patient information, because I wasn’t family. And I didn’t want to reveal any more details about an ongoing investigation than I absolutely had to. Finally, the switchboard operator agreed to connect me to the charge nurse.

  “This is Detective Maria Kallio from the Espoo police. I’m investigating two homicides, and I need information about a patient who was admitted yesterday, Mona Linnakangas.”

  “My, the police . . . Well, I can tell you right now that we didn’t admit any new patients yesterday. All of our beds are full.”

  “So you don’t have a young woman named Mona Linnakangas there? She’s sixteen years old and suffers from compulsive overeating.”

  “No. Try the Children’s Hospital. Maybe she’s been admitted there.”

  I searched in vain for Mona in the region’s hospitals. As I finished my last call, I looked out the window to the other side of the square. There were plenty of taxis lined up in front of the train station.

  Without checking whether Merja Vainikainen was in her office, I ran down the stairs and across the square to the nearest waiting car. I asked the driver to take me to the Sports Building. On the way I tried to find Mona’s cell phone number, but there was none listed under her name. That was strange. What kind of sixteen-year-old doesn’t have a phone?

  Mona didn’t, as Jari Linnakangas confirmed when he returned my call during the taxi ride.

  “Mona lost her phone in the spring, and Merja thought her punishment should be six months without one. I don’t care much for material things, but that seemed awfully harsh. How was she supposed to keep in touch with her friends? According to Merja, I don’t have any right to interfere in my daughter’s life because I don’t pay child support. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I haven’t had any income in the past couple of years. Here at the Crystal Commune, we try to get by on as little as possible.”

  “When did you last see your daughter?”

  “The summer before last, when I was in Helsinki. I know Merja bashes me to Mona, so it’s no wonder she doesn’t care for me. My relationship with Merja was a mistake from the start. I was attracted by her lack of fear, her ski jumping and speed skiing . . . And there was plenty of fast living with her. Too much, really.”

  “Was Merja violent toward you or Mona?” I saw the taxi driver’s eyes flash in the rearview mirror. Hopefully he wasn’t in the habit of tipping off reporters. The driver was an average-looking young guy, and I’d guessed he was an emigrant from Estonia, based on the way he’d pronounced his Finnish.

  “As far as I know, she treated Mona fine. I wouldn’t have let her have full custody otherwise! She slapped me a couple of times, but I didn’t think it was a big deal. Back then . . . Well, now I think differently. Our community eschews all violence. Why are you asking?”

  “Don’t you watch the news at your commune?”

  Jari Linnakangas laughed, his voice ringing like a little boy’s.

  “We aren’t completely backward, even if we live somewhat off the grid. We get the newspaper, and we listen to the radio. What happened? Is Mona OK?”

  “I don’t know. Her stepfather was murdered a week ago, and now I can’t find her. Apparently Merja has been abusing Mona for some time. Have you ever noticed burns or other scars or bruises on her?”

  “No! But . . .” Linnakangas paused to think. “It’s been a few years since I’ve seen her in anything but very modest, sack-like clothing. She’s ashamed of her body. I tried to get her to go swimming with me in the sea when I was with her last time. It was that really hot summer, but she wouldn’t do it. You don’t suspect Mona of killing Vainikainen, do you?”

  Jari Linnakangas wasn’t laughing anymore. He said something but not into the receiver. It seemed there were other people in the room. The taxi driver braked to let a gaggle of first graders pass on the crosswalk, and the sudden movement made nausea rise in my throat again. The children were just as small and delicate as Taneli, but together in their little pack they were safe. I wanted to believe that mothers couldn’t burn their own flesh and blood with irons, but I knew all too well that wasn’t the case.

  I asked Linnakangas to contact me if he heard anything from Mona. I’d managed to unsettle him enough for him to say he was leaving for Helsinki as soon as possible. I realized I didn’t know anything about Mona’s grandparents. Had Merja isolated her from them too? Hadn’t anyone noticed what was happening?

  Mona had turned to me, and I hadn’t done anything to help her. And now here we were.

  The taxi dropped me off in front of the Sports Building. I looked out across the now-familiar parking lot. Workers were repairing the damage to the wall of the building left by the blast, and the broken window had already been replaced. Just as I finished paying the taxi, Koivu called.

  “Hi, Maria. Where are you?”

  “At the Sports Building, on my way to Adaptive Sports to see Merja Vainikainen. I have some questions for her.”

  “A new witness volunteered. Jutta Särkikoski’s neighbor’s father, who was at his daughter’s apartment last week watching her cat. I just interviewed him. He’s seventy-six and half deaf, but he’s still sharp enough. He used to work as an auto mechanic. At first,
he didn’t realize what he saw. He says that last Thursday he hadn’t been able to sleep, so he went out for a little walk. He claims to have seen a ‘blond girl’ messing with the bottom of a car and asked if she needed help. He remembered the exact model of the car and the license plate number except the last letter. It was Jutta’s.”

  “What do you mean . . . did Jutta set the bomb under her own car?” A man walking by glanced at me curiously, and I realized I was speaking louder than I’d meant to. I was only fifteen feet from the place where Tapani Ristiluoma had been blown to smithereens, and now the area was covered with flowers and candles. Some of the grave candles had already gone out, and their white plastic shells looked somehow obscene. Had Jutta lost her mind and decided to take out Ristiluoma? But no—the explosive pointed to Merja.

  “We showed this new witness Jutta Särkikoski’s picture. He didn’t get a close look at the woman’s face, but he said that she was thin and blond and definitely didn’t have any crutches.”

  “Merja Vainikainen is thin and blond, and she knows how to make TATP.” I briefly filled Koivu in on the conversations I’d had during the day.

  “Have the team meet at the station at five. I intend to arrest Vainikainen, assuming she’s in her office as planned.”

  The guard was still in the lobby of the Sports Building, and today he had a German shepherd with him, who stared at me with altogether too much interest. In the elevator an acquaintance greeted me—she was one of the head coaches for my children’s figure-skating club—but I had a difficult time conversing with her even for the short ride. I practically ran to the hall that led to the Adaptive Sports offices.

  I knocked on the door that said “Vainikainen.” No one answered. I tried the handle, which moved but was locked. I poked my head into the conference room, but there was no sign of Merja Vainikainen there either. Hillevi Litmanen’s office was empty. When I closed that door, Miikka Harju peeked out of his own.

  “Are you looking for Merja? I haven’t seen her all day. She left to take Mona to the doctor yesterday and hasn’t been back since. She isn’t answering her phone either. Maybe she’s finally taking some time off.”