Darling

by Sipila, Jarkko

  “Especially if the fight was about sex, or the lack of it, a woman wouldn’t turn her back and give the man a chance to attack.”

  “Like I said before, without pictures of the crime scene this is mere speculation,” Römpötti said. “But it does seem that Laura Vatanen was taken by surprise; she wasn’t expecting the attack.”

  Lind thought about getting a reconstruction made for the court. But first she’d have to figure out how that would help Korpivaara.

  CHAPTER 17

  SATURDAY, 10:10 A.M.

  LEPPӒVAARA, ESPOO

  Takamäki sat at the table reading a newspaper, his coffee steaming in front of him. The room was so quiet he could hear the clock ticking on the wall. He had pulled on a pair of sweats, and noticed the stubble showing up on his cheeks. His legs still felt the strain of last night’s jog. After the run he’d taken a sauna and watched a movie on TV.

  He looked out the window into his backyard—the white snow brightened the darkness of the early winter. The sun had been up for an hour, but it hadn’t made it much above the horizon.

  He scanned the headlines, and quickly turned to the real estate ads. There usually weren’t many on Saturdays. Takamäki had been planning for some time to move. His wife died in a car accident eighteen months ago, and his older son was attending college in Vaasa, a few hours away. The younger one was doing his one-year mandatory military service, so at the moment Takamäki lived alone in his townhouse in the Leppävaara neighborhood of Espoo.

  He was okay with being alone most of the time, but sometimes he still missed his wife dearly.

  A new relationship would’ve perked up his mundane life, but twenty years of marriage had left him timid. He wasn’t meeting any good prospects at the police station, in grocery store lines, or on the jogging trails. And if he had, he wouldn’t even have known how to start a conversation.

  His work had taught him to be suspicious of everyone, and now that included himself.

  Takamäki figured he could get around four hundred thousand euros for his house, and that would be more than enough to get a one-bedroom somewhere in the city, or maybe in Töölö. He could sell his car, too. Until now, all of these decisions had been made based on family needs, and it was hard when he realized that it was no longer necessary to consider others’ needs.

  A fifty-year-old, a jogger, a policeman, and a widower. That’s how he defined himself, but not necessarily in that order. He found it interesting that Kaarina’s death and the boys’ moving out hadn’t altered the first three definitions at all, but the fourth had definitely hit him hard. Some things you never pay enough attention to until they’re gone.

  Takamäki had considered describing himself in those terms on a dating website, but luckily had come to his senses. Even if the Finnish prime minister had looked for love online, it didn’t necessarily mean that a detective should.

  Takamäki turned the page, skipped the car ads, and ended up on the last page. He wondered what was on TV. He still subscribed to several movie and sports channels that he had ordered for the boys when they still lived at home, but now he was thinking about cancelling. Nowadays he only watched the news on TV, and even that had become strange, just like his interview with Römpötti yesterday. He knew the police administration would require an explanation, but Joutsamo had taken care of it.

  He thought again about the movie channels. Was making up his mind on such a small thing as this so difficult because it required a decision? A decision that would confirm his loneliness, that is.

  The ring tone of his phone jolted Takamäki from his thoughts. His unit was on call for the weekend. Even though the new system included a lieutenant on call at the station, Takamäki knew that Joutsamo would call him if anything significant came up.

  The call was from an unknown number.

  “Hello,” Takamäki said.

  “Is this Detective Lieutenant Takamäki?” a male voice asked. The man, who sounded like he was in his fifties or sixties, spoke with a marked Finnish-Swedish accent, and Takamäki could tell he wasn’t one of the usual anonymous tippers.

  “Yeah,” Takamäki confirmed. “It’s me. Who’s calling?”

  “Never mind who, but I wanted to warn you to watch your back.”

  Takamäki wondered if this was a threat.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yesterday you were on the news about a homicide case.”

  “That’s right,” Takamäki replied. He guessed the caller was a native Swedish speaker.

  “It’s about the female lawyer, Nea Lind.” The caller said her name with disdain.

  “What about her?”

  “That’s exactly the sort of thing you could expect from her. She goes on TV and starts talking garbage. Claims the police are wrong. Why would the police say the man confessed if he hadn’t?”

  “Yeah…” Takamäki said slowly.

  The man got the hint to fast forward.

  “I’ll get to the point. I knew Nea Lind when she worked for a large business law firm and even back then she had noticeable gaps in her professional competence. She seems to be traveling down the same path, so I would urge you to be careful in your dealings with her.”

  “You worked for the same firm?”

  “I didn’t say that,” the man retorted, but Takamäki knew from the answer that this was the case.

  “But thank you for calling.”

  “Wait. One more thing. There’s something strange about Lind’s past. I tried to investigate, but could never quite get to the bottom of it. She’s from Western Finland, and something must’ve happened there. Unfortunately I don’t know what, but the police have better resources for investigating.”

  Takamäki knew that jealousy and long grudges were common among lawyers, but even so he was surprised to receive an anonymous call of this nature.

  “We’ll look into this if it becomes necessary. Thank you for calling,” Takamäki said and hung up.

  He had never met Lind at the station because Joutsamo had taken care of the meetings with Korpivaara. He opened his laptop and searched for “Nea Lind, attorney.”

  Two clicks later he was on her website. The heading promised reliable and expert legal services. Takamäki thought the photo of the smiling Lind in a gray suit looked classy. Her office was on Dagmar Street in Töölö.

  Her bio said that Lind was born in 1973 and graduated from law school in 1995. She became a member of the Lawyers Association in 1999. Takamäki wondered why her previous employer wasn’t mentioned, especially since it was a large firm. Maybe she really did have something to hide.

  Takamäki scrolled down and read that Lind’s hobbies were traveling, the outdoors, and culinary arts. He looked at the photo again and thought that the woman must really love the outdoors, because food clearly wasn’t her biggest passion.

  * * *

  Joutsamo sat at her desk once again. In Police Academy ads, the Violent Crimes Unit was depicted as a place for heroes, and the photos showed flashing lights and big police action. In reality, life in the crime unit was totally different; a lot of the time it meant menial office work.

  The sergeant sifted through the night’s crime reports. Friday night into Saturday had again been busy. Eight cars were burglarized in Lauttasaari; thieves smashed the side windows with a hammer and took electronics and anything else of value they could get their hands on.

  An apartment stairwell in Kumpula was smeared with fecal material. A daycare center in Herttoniemi was burglarized, leaving bloody stains on the glass from the perpetrator’s hands. Joutsamo contemplated how both cases would be easy to solve if the police had access to a national DNA registry. It would’ve been helpful in Korpivaara’s case as well.

  Closing time at downtown restaurants and bars had seen a few squabbles that fortunately resulted in no serious injuries. There were dozens of other incidents: at 2:30 A.M., in Oulunkylӓ suburb, a man in his late twenties took a baseball bat and smashed the headlights, windows, and hood of the car driven
by of a group of teenagers who had taunted and threatened the man’s younger brother. The man ended up in jail for destruction of property and terroristic threats. Joutsamo wasn’t surprised to find out that the “baseball man” was a hang-around member of the Skulls, a motorcycle gang that was heavily involved in the Helsinki narcotics trade.

  But that case would be investigated by the Patrol Unit rather than the Violent Crimes, since the man attacked a car, not a person.

  Joutsamo’s day had begun with a typical “grandma” gig. An eighty-two-year-old female hadn’t answered her phone. Her daughter had gone to the apartment and found her mother dead in the bathtub. The police had been notified at eight in the morning.

  Joutsamo, who came to work at nine, had started her day by going to the apartment on Tehdas Street and determined the death was accidental. The woman’s naked body hung over the bathtub ledge and she had a severe head trauma. The tub had water in it, so it seemed obvious that the woman had slipped and hit her head while trying to get into the tub. Lucky for the other tenants in the building, the faucet was turned off, and the building avoided extensive water damage. Joutsamo had completed the cause of death report.

  She also made sure the documents for Korpivaara’s imprisonment were ready. Takamäki would come to Pasila in the afternoon.

  Suhonen stepped into their shared office and threw his leather jacket over the back of his chair. He was wearing jeans and a black sweater.

  “Hey,” Joutsamo said. “You’re late.”

  Suhonen was the other VCU detective on duty for the weekend. Their shift went from nine in the morning to nine in the evening. Suhonen only took weekend shifts in extreme circumstances. This time it was on a bet he lost to Kulta. A month ago he had played Tetris on his work computer. Kulta asked how good he was, and Suhonen bragged that he was at least better than Kulta. Suhonen bet him fifty euros, thinking Kulta wouldn’t accept the bet, and threw in a weekend work shift. Suhonen was confident he would win, and of course he lost.

  “Sorry,” Suhonen said, and Joutsamo noticed his tired eyes and slightly puffy face.

  “Were you at a bar last night?”

  “Yup.”

  “Work-related?”

  “Nope, off-duty.”

  “Were you out late?”

  “Pretty late,” Suhonen replied and turned his computer on. “But don’t worry, no need to drag out the Breathalyzer, I already did it downstairs and I’m clean.”

  “Well, good,” Joutsamo said.

  Sitting at his computer, Suhonen seemed a little glum.

  “Everything alright?” Joutsamo asked.

  Suhonen looked Joutsamo straight in the eyes. “Not really.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “I’m alright, but you might remember Eero Salmela.”

  Joutsamo knew of Salmela, though she didn’t know him personally. He was Suhonen’s old friend and informant.

  “Did something happen to him?”

  “He’s in the hospital because he had a severe heart attack last week and another one yesterday, luckily milder this time.”

  “Oh, no,” Joutsamo responded. “Is he in Meilahti?”

  Suhonen nodded.

  “He’s in good hands, then. How’s he doing?”

  “They wouldn’t let me see him yesterday.”

  Typing his password into the computer, Suhonen said, “I’ll call tomorrow and see if I can drop by.”

  “He’s your…I mean our age, isn’t he?”

  “He’s had a tough life,” Suhonen said, “but it’s still hard to believe when it happens to one of your friends.”

  “Yeah,” Joutsamo agreed, and reminded herself that she should call her dad in Hyvinkää to see how he was doing.

  “I guess he’ll be alright,” Suhonen said. “How are things around here?” he asked, opening the police database and typing in his password.

  “Nothing urgent…a busy night, but nothing came to us. I already went and flipped over a grandma this morning, though.”

  “It’s been a while since I had to do that.”

  “I’d venture to say you may get a chance today.”

  The Violent Crimes Unit did about 1,500 cause-of-death investigations every year, with cases varying from someone jumping under a subway train to someone hanging themselves in their home, from heart attacks to crib deaths to accidents. These investigations kept them much busier than violent crimes. The police investigated every single death that didn’t occur in a hospital or other institutions.

  “I can hardly wait.”

  He typed the name Maiju Rahkola into the police database. The results were what he expected: The woman was reported missing by Turku Police in June 2010. The case was still open, which meant that she hadn’t been found.

  Salmela had mentioned that name to him at the hospital, and maybe he was onto something.

  “Anna,” Suhonen said. “Does the name Maiju Rahkola ring a bell?”

  Joutsamo shook her head.

  “She’s a woman who disappeared in Turku a couple of years ago. She was seventeen at the time.”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar. We constantly get missing person reports. I can’t even keep up with the cases in Helsinki.”

  “We could check out a lead I got on the case,” Suhonen said. “But first I need to do something else.”

  CHAPTER 18

  SATURDAY, 12:30 P.M.

  KAARINA, SOUTHWEST FINLAND

  The Mercedes taxi turned off the main highway onto a narrow dirt road not wide enough for two cars. The road was flanked by small single family homes with traditional wood siding, surrounded by yards just big enough for a couple of apple trees or a small garden.

  Real estate developers had built some new, larger houses in the area, but they hadn’t yet gotten their hands on this little islet. Reporter Sanna Römpötti wondered if one of the homeowners was too stubborn to sell, thus making it unfeasible for the developers to buy the other lots. But eventually these homes would be torn down and replaced by a townhouse ghetto.

  “Number four would be the one on the right, the green one,” a silver-haired, fifty-year-old cab driver said with a west coast drawl.

  “Okay,” Römpötti said.

  “That’ll be twenty-two euros,” the driver told her, and Römpötti handed him a credit card. She had taken the train from Helsinki that morning, and now the taxi had brought her to the small town of Kaarina, about six miles southeast of Turku.

  The driver piped up just as Römpötti was getting out of the taxi and thanking him.

  “If I might say, I like your stories. They always have good angles.”

  “Well, we’ll try to keep them that way,” Römpötti replied with a smile.

  Once outside, Römpötti looked around and listened for a minute. She noticed the house could’ve used a new layer of paint and other upkeep. Traffic hummed on the Helsinki-Turku freeway half a mile away, but otherwise it was almost eerily quiet here. Römpötti drew in a deep breath of the fresh autumn air, which felt nice after the cab driver’s cheap cologne. She wondered why Helsinki got a lot more snow than southwest Finland.

  Römpötti lifted the wooden hook off the top of the waist-high fence gate. Crooked concrete squares paved the way to the house. Römpötti climbed the steps and knocked on the door.

  “It’s unlocked,” said a woman’s voice from inside the house.

  Römpötti opened the lightweight door. A blue table and one chair sat on the covered porch; perhaps the widow drank her afternoon coffee here. Römpötti recognized the cold and damp smell of an old house: a mixture of mold, mice, and insulation.

  “Hello,” said a seventy-year-old woman dressed in a brown cardigan and black pants. She had deep creases on her face and looked like she had worked hard her whole life.

  “You’re Römpötti?”

  Römpötti nodded and shook the woman’s cold, bony hand and then hung her coat on a hook on the wall. The home décor dated from the sixties; the colors were faded and the fur
niture was worn. A staircase led upstairs from the front door, and on the left was a beige door with a sign for the bathroom and sauna. The living room opened to the right and a small kitchen and dining room were tucked behind it.

  “Römpötti,” the woman repeated. “Are your roots in Karelia?”

  “No, born and bred in Helsinki. Third generation,” Römpötti replied.

  She knew there was a village by the name of Römpötti in Karelia, but her last name didn’t come from there. At least she didn’t think so—she had never done the genealogy. But the reporter would rather have claimed Swedish royalty. She had read somewhere that Römpötti was the common name for the Sprengtporten family of counts and military leaders.

  “Your news reports are a bit Helsinki-centric, too.”

  Römpötti didn’t quite know what to say to that. She didn’t want to irritate the woman in any way, especially after all the coaxing it took for her to agree to the interview in the first place.

  “The news stories are meant for everyone,” Römpötti said softly. She wanted to keep the conversation going.

  “Would you like some coffee?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, please,” Römpötti replied and dug a small paper sack from her purse. “I brought some sweet rolls.”

  The woman’s face lit up, and Römpötti knew her stop on the way there had been worth the trouble.

  Ansa Korpivaara had set porcelain cups on the coffee table in the living room. She brought the coffee in from the kitchen, along with saucers for the sweetbread. They each had a large cinnamon roll.

  “So, you wanted to talk about my son,” Ansa Korpivaara offered. She knew that her son was a murder suspect. “But I have one question first. What makes this case so interesting that you had to come here all the way from Helsinki?”

  Römpötti had pondered the same thing and didn’t quite have an answer. When the news chief had made a comment that homicides didn’t get their fair share of investigating, he meant it as a joke. But perhaps that was the reason. The fact that the victim had a mental disability made the case extremely intriguing. What kind of a man was capable of killing a mentally disabled woman?