The Nightingale Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I went back into the hallway, then tested the keys on the lone door on the right side of the entryway. The lock was another Abloy, and once I got it open, I walked into another world, leaving the others to wonder at the possibilities of the Blue Nightingale. The room on the other side of the door was all brown and beige, decorated with a cold asceticism. Bed, desk, armchair, and television. One wall was filled with cabinets. The first, when opened, revealed shelves full of books. The second held normal clothes: jeans, jackets, and sweaters. The third was for underwear and more shoes. At the back of the room was the entry to the bathroom. Inside, I found its shelves weighted down by rows of makeup and hair products, and light bulbs surrounded the mirror like that of a theater dressing room. The medicine cabinet held the same medications as Lulu’s handbag. There were two boxes of condoms but no sign of contraceptive pills, so maybe Lulu used an IUD. I decided to search the bathroom more carefully once I’d been through the whole apartment. I walked back out into the hallway and, after again playing with the keys, found that one of two doors on the left side of the entryway led into a bathroom that was clearly part of the Blue Nightingale. The light was dim, the tiles black and red, as was the toilet, the sink, and the bidet. Somewhere Lulu had even managed to find black toilet paper. The other door led into a perfectly normal kitchen, which was decorated in the same Scandinavian style as the bedroom. Around the table were chairs for three, and on it the fruit bowl held a fresh pineapple and a couple oranges. Curious, I opened the refrigerator door. Light yogurt, fat-free buttermilk, several cups of cottage cheese, and various juices. Lulu and Tero probably shared the fridge. In the lower section were a couple of bottles of sparkling wine and one of expensive champagne. In the cupboards, I found muesli, nutritional supplements, pasta, and two bottles of Fernet Branca, one opened, one sealed. I collected those for analysis.

  “Are you hungry?” Koivu had snuck up behind me. “God what a place. It sure makes your imagination run wild.”

  “Save it for tonight with Anu. Now what do we have here?” I’d noticed another door between the cupboards.

  The servant’s quarters behind the kitchen appeared to be Tero Sulonen’s kingdom. The room was about ten by ten feet, with space for a narrow bed, a TV and DVD player, an armchair, and a serving cart that seemed to function as a table. The room smelled of sweat and aftershave. Koivu looked in the clothes cabinet crammed in the corner.

  Next to Sulonen’s bed was a red lamp. I asked Koivu to wait, then returned to the business side of the loft and pressed one of the panic buttons. Because the doors connecting the rooms were open, I heard a buzzing from Sulonen’s room. When I went back into Sulonen’s room, Koivu said that the light had also turned on.

  “You look around here while I search Lulu’s bedroom. Maybe her customer records are there,” I said.

  I went back into Lulu’s room. The door had been set to relock automatically, and this time I noticed that there was also a chain on the inside. The desk had a locked cabinet and four drawers, the topmost of which was locked. I tried an appropriate-looking key from the key ring, and the cabinet opened. Inside were a laptop and some file folders. I grabbed a plastic sack from my crime scene kit, but before I logged the items I took a quick look at the first folder. It was full of bills and receipts, all in careful chronological order. As I flipped through I found a paystub for Tero Sulonen’s February wages. His gross pay was two thousand euros a month, and the Blue Nightingale also paid the appropriate taxes and social security. Sulonen’s official title was security guard.

  I left the laptop untouched, since someone else would be able to figure out the passwords much more efficiently. The unlocked drawers contained normal office supplies like envelopes, pens, and stamps. The bottom drawer also had a stack of letters, all addressed to Lulu Mäkinen. The sender was a Horst Beckenbauer from Zurich. They were written in German, so I didn’t waste my time struggling to read them. Instead I put them in the sack.

  My phone rang, and I recognized the number as Ilari Länsimies.

  “Detective Kallio here.”

  “Hello, Detective. You called.”

  “Yes. Can you come in for an interview at one o’clock?”

  “There’s no way I can come to the Espoo Police Station today,” Länsimies said tersely. “Two o’clock might work, but I can only give you half an hour. I have a meeting here at three with Mining Counselor Raivionpää, so it would be best if you came here.” Länsimies spoke in an imperious tone, but then his voice softened. “I can promise some great coffee. Talking about serious business doesn’t have to be unpleasant. Come to Westend. You’ll be my guest.”

  I shook my head but said, “OK. I’ll see you there.” At least I’d have time to prepare my questions for Länsimies on the drive over, and on the way back I could get ready for Nordström. I hung up the phone, then unlocked the top drawer. There I found three thousand euros in cash and five thousand US dollars, along with five large desk calendars. The most recent was from this year. When I opened it, I found what I was looking for—at least partially. This was clearly Lulu’s client calendar, but unfortunately, there were only initials.

  P. K.: sado session, wants restraint and BJ. J. T.: baby games. A. G.: erection issues, try oil massage. The addresses section of the calendar was empty. Lulu had to have a full client list somewhere. Only having a copy on the computer hard drive was risky, but I didn’t see any disks anywhere. I carefully checked the contents of the wardrobe, but I didn’t find any disks there either.

  I asked Hakkarainen to also search the desk, since he was better than me at finding false bottoms and hidden compartments. I moved on to the cosmetics—it wouldn’t have been any wonder if Lulu had hidden her disks there. The rows of bottles were out in the open. Boxes of tampons, panty liners, pads . . . Wait a second.

  I grabbed the box of maxi pads and shook it. Instead of the sound of soft, absorbent cotton, I heard a faint metal clinking. Reaching into the package, I found two disks and one mini CD. There were no labels on them. I placed each in a plastic baggie and recorded them in my list of evidence. Hakkarainen knocked around on the desk and then stood up.

  “This is just like a politician’s head. Solid wood. But out in the sex lair we found at least thirteen different fingerprints and a pile of hair, short and long. Should I send everything to the lab for DNA tests?” Hakkarainen asked.

  “No, there’s no point spending that much money yet,” I said. “Just look at the fingerprints for now. Although they won’t prove anything unless we find the same prints in Nightingale’s dressing room at the TV studio.”

  From out in the other room I heard Koivu guffawing. Outbursts like that usually only came from him when Puupponen told a truly terrible joke. The laughter drew closer, and then Koivu stepped into the room.

  “Maria, wait until you hear what a tender heart Tero Sulonen has. The cabinets are full of all the best legal nutritional supplements, from vodka to protein powder, and then there’s a little less-legal stuff too. ’Roids, I mean. But Mr. Bodybuilder is also a poet. Listen to this: ‘Your golden hair, beyond compare, sets my heart ablaze, each time I gaze.’”

  “You made that up!”

  “Did not. Look for yourself!” Koivu offered me a notebook. Sulonen’s handwriting was rounded and childish, like a first-grader tentatively practicing his letters. “There’s a whole stack of notebooks, and there’s no question about who his muse was.”

  I read a few of the poems. Some of the rhymes were off, but Sulonen forced them through, perhaps thinking that rhyming verse was the only real kind of poetry. In places, he crossed out stanzas and wrote new ones, but for the most part the poems were carefully transcribed. There was something tender and sincere about them, like the accounts of first love you saw in the pages of teen magazines. I thought of the bodyguard sitting in his room writing clumsy poetry and watching the light in case he had to rush to Lulu’s aid.

  “Put them back in Sulonen’s cabinet. Searching his room is a little questionable a
nyway, since he isn’t an official suspect yet. We’ll come back later if we find some solid evidence against him. Let’s head back to the station now. I want to get a look at Lulu’s computer and these disks I found. Hakkarainen, let us know when you’re done.” It was about time to let Tero Sulonen back into his home. Lulu Mäkinen’s next of kin were her parents, and they’d have to be the ones to decide what to do with the contents of the Blue Nightingale.

  I was sitting in the car when Puustjärvi called. “We found just a couple of interesting things on these tapes. We already knew that Länsimies was in and out of the dressing room hallway, along with Riitta Saarnio. But Tero Sulonen wasn’t sitting in the control room the whole time. The tapes show him going into Lulu Nightingale’s room with a glass,” Puustjärvi said.

  “A glass? But not a bottle?”

  “No, just a glass. I’ll print out some stills for you. Wasn’t Sulonen supposed to come in for questioning today?”

  “He should already be in the building. Check with Puupponen and Honkanen. They promised to handle it.”

  I suggested to Koivu that we stop for food on the way to Länsimies’s house. We ended up at a Turkish buffet in Tapiola. Koivu piled his plate with kebabs and rice while I settled for the vegetarian offerings.

  “At this point I’d put my money on Sulonen, especially since he obviously worshipped Lulu,” Koivu said, then wiped garlic sauce from the corner of his mouth.

  “Yes. But why kill Lulu at the TV studio when he could have done it any other time? Why make it an obvious murder? Why not stage the death as an accident? And besides, there was so much hope in those poems. Or at least acceptance of the situation. Lulu was Lulu, and Sulonen was content with getting to live with her.”

  “I’m no literary critic. But I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to have the woman you love banging other men while you’re just the guard dog. You remember my ex, Anita . . . the one from Joensuu. Remember how messed up I was when she cheated on me? Maybe Sulonen killed her at the TV studio because he thought he wouldn’t be a suspect if it happened outside their home.”

  “He didn’t seem like a cold-blooded mastermind, but what do I know? Hopefully Ursula and Ville also think to ask him about Oksana.” I took a bite of my meal and just so happened to get a chunk of hot chili pepper. My mouth felt like it was on fire. It was so bad I had to go grab a glass of buttermilk from the buffet table to relieve the burning.

  “Think I’ll be able to get home by five? Anu has a hair appointment and I promised I’d take over childcare duty. She doesn’t get out much without the kids.”

  I coughed, then cleared my throat. “We’ll shoot for that. Depends on how talkative Nordström is, but first we have to handle Ilari Länsimies. You know much about him?”

  “Yesterday Anu was saying he’s like a poor man’s Jörn Donner. Not quite as smart or charismatic, and Finnish speaking besides. Didn’t he do some other programs before Surprise Guests, mostly cops-and-robbers shows? I don’t watch that stuff.”

  “For a while he hosted a financial show and reported on foreign news on the radio. If I remember right, he was on the Espoo City Council for a while, back when the Liberal People’s Party still existed. Now he’s unaffiliated. His wife has a shoe boutique in Helsinki. I went there once and felt totally out of place. There wasn’t a single pair of shoes under a hundred and fifty euros.”

  Back in the car, I read through the information about Ilari Länsimies that Puupponen had found on the web. The man had been in the public eye for decades. His father had been a diplomat, and Länsimies had spent his youth in the United States, Ireland, and New Zealand. At some point, he’d earned his doctorate too, and his dissertation dealt with relations between Finland and the US during the Paasikivi administration, right after World War II. My father, who was an amateur historian, had asked me to get it for him for Christmas when it was published ten years ago. I’d have to remember to ask him what he’d thought of it.

  Now, at fifty-five, Länsimies was a lieutenant in the army reserves and a doctor of political science. But he reported his profession as “private entrepreneur.” West Man Productions was owned by Länsimies, his wife, and Riitta Saarnio. Länsimies also owned one-third of the shares of his wife’s shoe store, Boutique Rosella. The couple had two children, a married daughter who lived on the outskirts of London, and a son who worked for Nokia in Singapore.

  Länsimies’s house in Westend was easy to find. A gate blocked the driveway, so I got out of the car and pressed the buzzer on the call box. Länsimies responded almost immediately.

  “Yes?”

  “Detectives Kallio and Koivu.”

  “Come on in,” Länsimies said, his tone welcoming. The gate opened, and by the time Koivu got our car parked in the carefully plowed driveway, Länsimies had already opened the front door. The house had two stories and was relatively new, with a backyard that abutted the sea.

  We walked up the few steps to the porch. Länsimies was dressed in a dark-gray three-piece suit with a black tie. I caught a faint whiff of his aftershave as the front door closed behind us. After shaking our hands, he took our coats and hung them up. “I didn’t get much sleep,” he said when he saw his reflection in the entryway mirror. On television he wore makeup, but now his skin looked gray, with blue shadows under his eyes. “The advertisers are furious about what happened. We have a contract for ten more episodes, but the network president asked me to come in to talk to him tomorrow. We’ll see what happens. This way. Please, come in. We’ll go to my office.”

  Länsimies led us upstairs. Light flooded in through the skylights, illuminating a large landing with a stately fireplace. He opened the door on the south side of the room and led us into his office, its dark walls and heavy furniture a contrast to the previous brightness. It was what I would call a masculine room. The desk was next to the window, giving Länsimies a view of the sea. Over a seating area with room for five hung a photograph of Länsimies shaking hands with Ronald Reagan, who was wearing a Stetson. Under it on the table was a thermos pitcher, three coffee cups, and some tempting chocolate pastries. Länsimies pulled out a chair for me and then sat down beside me. His hair had a slight wave to it, and while he had a touch of gray at his temples, that only made him more attractive.

  The corner of Länsimies’s mouth went up in amusement when Koivu brought out the recorder. I hadn’t managed to begin the actual interview before my phone rang. The display said it was Puupponen, so I answered.

  “Hi. I checked all the criminal records. They’re all clean except Länsimies has some speeding tickets. Then there’s Hytönen. He’s got a tax evasion charge going to appeal. The District Court only fined him, and the prosecutor wasn’t satisfied. And that isn’t all. Guess who the plaintiff was in that assault case against Nightingale and Sulonen? Mauri Hytönen.”

  5

  “I didn’t lie. I’ve never been a client of Lulu Nightingale. You didn’t ask if I knew her from anywhere else.” Mauri Hytönen sounded amused. I’d excused myself and left Länsimies’s office to call him. I’d walked downstairs to the entryway, poking my head into the living room on the way. Light-brown leather furniture, colorful Indian textiles, and wooden carvings. Impeccably stylish. There wasn’t a single magazine lying around or a dry flower in a vase, not to speak of dirty dishes.

  “Didn’t you think it might be worth mentioning that you and Nightingale went to court for assault?”

  “She was the one who attacked me, her and that brainless gorilla, who somehow didn’t recognize me at the TV studio. It’s been two years since then, so why should it matter? I didn’t kill her. Maybe she had HIV and thought it was best to off herself before it got her.”

  “You knew full well I wouldn’t have let you go home if you’d told me about this incident.”

  “It never even crossed my mind. And why are you coming on so strong? I didn’t even know Lulu was going to be on the program. That’s the whole idea. Surprise Guests!”

  Over the phone
Puupponen had given me a summary of the assault case. Two years earlier Mauri Hytönen had approached Lulu Nightingale at the Mikado and announced out of nowhere that he wasn’t interested in whores like her, that he held a higher standard. In a fit of pique, Lulu had slapped him across the face, and one of her large rings had left a gash on his cheek. He then started screaming at her, which drew the attention of Tero Sulonen, who at that time was still working as a bouncer there. Sulonen hit Hytönen several times and literally threw him out of the restaurant, resulting in a dislocated thumb. According to witnesses, Hytönen didn’t put up a fight, so the court found Sulonen guilty of excessive force.

  “You’re planning on leaving the country for work soon, right?”

  “Yes. At the end of next week, I’m supposed to go to Tarttu in Estonia. We’re working on a remodel there. Am I suspected of something?”

  “How about murder?” I said and hung up. Now I had less than half an hour to question Länsimies before his guests arrived. The fact that Hytönen had known Lulu and Tero Sulonen beforehand wasn’t enough to arrest him, but I still didn’t like that he was going to be two hundred and fifty miles away from Espoo.

  One thing was certain: my unit wasn’t going to have the weekend off. That would hit those of us with small children at home the hardest. Autio’s boys were already in high school, and, as he told it, mostly just needed him to drive them to hockey practice.

  I returned to the office, where Koivu was keeping Länsimies company. They were talking about soccer. I’d read that in his youth Länsimies had played in the Elite League, but he’d never made it onto the national team. He still had the solid frame of an athlete, and nowadays he played water polo and tennis with partners from the upper crust of society.

  “People are made to be in motion. What do you do, Detective?”

  “I jog when I have time. I like that I don’t need all that gear or have to depend on other people—all I have to do is walk outside,” I replied. Maybe letting Länsimies ask some questions was the best way to get him to talk.