The Nightingale Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  Dropping my bag loudly on the floor, I forced myself to walk into the living room. The way Antti flinched when he saw me only made me feel worse.

  “Maria’s here. Call if you hear anything new about Paris. Thanks . . . You too. Bye!” Antti hung up the phone but didn’t immediately look at me. “You’re home early. I thought you’d be out all night again. That was Virve. We were talking about our conference in Paris. It’s coming up in two weeks.”

  Of course I remembered. I would have gladly gone with Antti, since we hadn’t gone anywhere farther than Helsinki alone together in years. But I had to save my vacation time for the summer to make our childcare work.

  “Both copies of Mustajoki’s memoir were checked out, and there’s a waiting list, so I went to the bookstore.” Antti handed me a book, its cover a collage of action shots of Anna-Maija Mustajoki at various ages. “We can probably deduct it from our taxes since it’s work related. How’s the investigation going?”

  “Slowly. How’re the kids?”

  “Taneli’s napping. He skated hard at practice, and then we were outside all afternoon. Iida’s in our room reading. There’s chicken pasta in the fridge if you haven’t eaten. You up for a sauna today?” Antti drew me into his arms, but something about it felt awkward. “Virve’s throwing a party on Friday, and she asked me to stay for it. It would be nice to get to know some of the people from the university a little better. I can ask Mom or Marita if they’re available to come watch the kids. Do you have to work tomorrow?”

  “Yeah.” I pulled away and went to heat up the pasta in the microwave, even though that always dried it out. Iida padded into the kitchen carrying Venjamin. We’d tried to teach the cat that he wasn’t allowed at the dinner table, but when he smelled the chicken, he jumped out of Iida’s arms and tried to climb up. Iida laughed, and I dropped a piece of chicken on the floor and ordered the cat to stay there.

  “I did a good single loop today, so now I know that one and the toe loop and the Salchow and the waltz,” Iida said, planting her feet together in the loop-takeoff position. “Watch, Mommy, it’s like this!” Iida’s arm whacked the door of the refrigerator when she jumped, and Venjamin fled in terror. “Mom, why is it so cramped here, and why don’t I have my own room? I hate sleeping with Taneli!”

  What was I supposed to say to that? I remembered how wonderful it had been when I finally got my own room at the age of twelve. Before that I’d always shared with my sisters, Eeva and Helena. My room was just a tiny closet in the attic, but it had been mine alone, with a door I could lock. Now my parents lived in a big empty house in Arpikylä, and we were crammed into this two-bedroom apartment. That’s how life went.

  Antti had closed the bedroom door, and I could hear his tapping on the electric piano as he played with headphones on. His regular piano was banished to his sister Marita’s house because an apartment building and his intensity of playing weren’t a good match. I still had my bass, but I rarely played it anymore, and when I did it was usually unplugged. Our jam sessions were mostly a thing of the past, since we only would have had time for it after the kids were asleep, and then we needed to be quiet. I’d started longing for the days of being with my band in a grungy garage and turning the dials up to eleven. We weren’t always good, but the music was our own. Sometimes I played along with my favorite bands, and the children had a good laugh at my karaoke routine.

  Once Iida and Taneli fell asleep, Antti and I took a sauna. In my postsauna languor, I started to read Anna-Maija Mustajoki’s memoir. The much-talked-about sexual encounter only lasted a few pages, and for some reason reading it made me feel embarrassed. The male prostitute whom Mustajoki had visited had been a clumsy, frightening junkie with bad teeth. The act itself was a nauseating rut. In 1968, attitudes had been more conservative, and Mustajoki hadn’t been willing to talk about her experience publicly. Now she was trying to make it clear that the purpose of her memoir wasn’t to present a glossy portrait of herself.

  I flipped back and forth through the book, trying to find something to latch onto, something that somehow related to Lulu Nightingale’s death. In one chapter, Mustajoki wrote about the role of human trafficking in international crime and the systematic subordination of women, but she presented facts and figures, not individual cases. She was an insightful and humorous writer who didn’t really reveal anything about herself. I did notice a few familiar names: Mustajoki and Ilari Länsimies had served on the same Foreign Ministry cultural policy workgroup in the early eighties. Mustajoki described Länsimies as one of those politicians brought up during the Kekkonen era who had more ambition than competence. Länsimies had made the mistake of siding with Ahti Karjalainen in the wrangling surrounding the 1982 presidential election, effectively resulting in an end to his political career.

  Antti lay next to me reading his own work papers, and I felt as if we were lying in separate beds, in separate realities. The good-night kiss we exchanged was only a formality. Without it, we both would have started to be afraid.

  The morning was bright again, but the snow in the yards and parking lots looked brown and tired. A large icicle hung over the downstairs door, so I stretched up to knock it down before it fell on someone’s head. A slight scent of earth thawing hung in the air even though the temperature was still well below freezing. Soon the willows would begin to redden, and the birch branches would turn violet, even though the trees would still have to wait most of a month to leaf out. I felt like I was living on solar power: everything would go fine as long as the sun continued to shine.

  I was at the police station well before ten, but I wasn’t the first. Ursula was already there and opened her door when she heard my footsteps in the hall. I let out a cry when I saw her bruised face and her right hand, which had a large bandage around the thumb.

  “Morning, Maria. I’m going to need to take some sick leave. But I wanted to see you before heading home.”

  Ursula wasn’t wearing any makeup. I’d never seen her au naturel before, not even in the gym. Her skin was pale, and a dark bag hung under the eye that wasn’t purple from bruising. Ursula was still at the age when she looked younger without makeup than with it.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I got beat up last night.” Ursula’s voice trembled. “Can we go sit somewhere? I haven’t slept all night, and I’m feeling a little unsteady.”

  “Let’s go to my office,” I suggested and took Ursula by the elbow, apparently not cautiously enough, because she let out a gasp of pain. I let go. “Who did this to you?” I asked once we were sitting on opposite ends of my couch.

  “Two men in Helsinki. They just wanted to scare me. They thought I was a prostitute trying to muscle in on their territory. They were Russians or something. Their Finnish sucked.”

  “What on earth were you doing?” Ursula’s short hair stood up at odd angles, and one of her long nails had broken.

  “Puupponen and I couldn’t really get anything out of the women we talked to. It was the wrong tactic—I told Ville he should have set up dates with them, but he said that would take too long. Better to talk to them on the phone as a cop. But no professional is going to talk to the police. This one girl named Agnuska said she’d known Lulu, but that was all we got. I was so irritated when Puupponen stole my idea about surfing porn sites, and then you praised him for it! Anyway, I had a date on Friday, so I couldn’t stay at work, and Ville ended up doing my stuff for me. The date was shitty too. He was just another asshole from Patrol. Then yesterday I got the idea to go over and test the waters at the Mikado, since that was where Lulu and Sulonen met, and I thought someone would have information about her and Oksana. I still think that Sulonen is guilty. Someone paid him off.”

  “Ursula, you have to tell me before you go out and do things like this! The idea was good, but you can’t do it alone.” I tried to keep my voice calm. Shouting wouldn’t help since the damage had already been done.

  “I didn’t take any ID with me, not my badge or my driver’
s license, since I didn’t want there to be any chance for someone to find out who I am. I thought in an emergency I’d just claim I was a reporter. It wasn’t my first time at the Mikado, and last time I was there I saw Assistant Chief Kaartamo. I think he was looking for company, not working, because he beat it fast when he saw me. But that was last year. Ow!”

  Blood had started to trickle from Ursula’s nose. I went to grab some tissues from my desk and noticed that my salmiakki box was empty, so I tossed it in the trash. Ursula put her head on her knees, and her spine poked through her shirt in a series of vertebral hills.

  “It was a normal night at the club, and there were other cops around. I definitely recognized one guy from the NBI. I remember him from a seminar. Pretty good-looking guy. I was constantly having to turn guys down—of course it’s easier to get them talking if they like the merchandise.” Ursula was obviously trying to act calmer than she was. “In the restroom, I attempted to talk to a few of the Estonian girls, but they said they didn’t know anything about anyone and that they didn’t have a clue about any Oksana. I claimed I was an old friend of Lulu’s from Zürich.” Ursula straightened up and took the tissue away from her face. The bleeding had slowed.

  “The second time I was in the restroom, trying to avoid this one drunk guy, I heard Russian coming from one of the stalls. There were two girls in there. I’m sure they said the name Oksana, but that’s all I could catch. I spent a long time on my makeup, hoping they would come out. That was probably a mistake. One of them did eventually, a short redhead about forty years old. Her Finnish was terrible. Finally, I had to get out of there because it must have started to look suspicious, with me just sitting there sipping the same Garibaldi and not leaving with anyone. And every time a guy got irritated, it attracted attention.”

  The nosebleed had stopped, and Ursula lifted her face again. Suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

  “I walked to the taxi stop, but there wasn’t a single car around. So I thought I’d take a bus. When I got to the little park in front of the Scandic Hotel, two thugs jumped me. I swear, they came out of nowhere. They both started hitting me, and they had some kind of blackjack or something. One held his hand over my mouth, and I bit him hard. They said the Mikado was ‘Mishin’s’ territory, that independents weren’t welcome, and that I had better remember that. I tried to scream and left a good scratch on one of their cheeks, but they were pros. It only lasted a minute—they just did their job and disappeared.”

  “In the middle of the city? And no one intervened? Were there any eyewitnesses?”

  “I guess there was probably someone around, but you know how it is. Would you intervene in the middle of the night if you saw two big brutes beating a woman dressed like a whore? And there weren’t any cops around. I do remember that one of the guys had a coat with a fur collar. I probably still have hairs from it in my pocket. I was afraid my cheekbone was broken, and I finally got a taxi to take me to the ER, even though the driver complained the whole time about me bleeding on his seats. I said I fell. The nurses asked me if my boyfriend had hurt me and whether I wanted to call the police. I almost laughed. Of course, I couldn’t tell them I was a cop, so I said I was a waitress. They gave me a sick leave order until Wednesday. There was a line at the ER, so I didn’t get home until six, and I couldn’t sleep, so I took a shower and came here.”

  I sighed. Of course, being a police officer entailed the risk of bodily harm, but it was stupid to take those risks heedlessly. My mind and my body carried reminders of violence, some of which had resulted from my own recklessness and inexperience. In the center of my left palm was a scar from my summer as a sheriff in my hometown of Arpikylä, and I could still remember how it felt when I was pregnant with Iida and a murderer threatened me with the sharp end of an ice skate. A couple of years ago I’d been threatened with a gun, and the bomb that went off in the mailbox of our old house could have blinded me or one of my family members. I knew how vulnerable a person really was, and how little the police could do to protect anyone. I looked into Ursula’s eyes.

  “You’ve notified the Helsinki PD, right?”

  “No. What good would that do? There’s no chance those two are here legally, just like Oksana. They’re probably using fake names.”

  “But every assault has to be reported! Don’t you have any sense? We have procedures for undercover work!” I’d been able to stay calm but now began shouting, and my voice bore a strange resemblance to my mother’s when she caught me drinking whiskey back in high school.

  “I didn’t do anything illegal! I can sit in a bar, can’t I?”

  “Did anyone ask you your price?”

  “I told one guy I cost five hundred a night. And what do you know, he would have paid it! I might just go ahead and change jobs . . .” Ursula tried to grin, but it turned into a grimace.

  “Damn it, Ursula! That’s selling sex in a public place, which is a crime. I’m going to have to report you to Kaartamo. Do you realize that we could both end up out on our asses if this goes sideways?” I stood up and walked to the window. If Ursula didn’t file a crime report, we could sweep this all under the rug. But I was worried about the NBI agent. If Ursula remembered him, he probably remembered her. And if he said anything this would turn into an official misconduct case. For a moment I wished that Ursula hadn’t told me any of this, but she had.

  Kaartamo would be overjoyed to finally get rid of me.

  8

  Ursula stayed for the morning meeting. She didn’t actually want to take any sick leave, though she was certainly entitled to it. She must have understood that losing even one detective would be a huge problem for the rest of us. We agreed that she wouldn’t do any interviews and could just handle IT issues, lab results, and background research. Ursula told the rest of the unit she’d fallen cycling.

  “You were wearing a helmet, right?” Koivu asked. He and Ursula got along passably these days, even though he hadn’t really forgiven her for accusing him, without cause, of sexual harassment a couple of years back soon after she joined the unit. I’d thought Ursula had learned from that episode.

  We compiled the results of the previous days’ interrogations and forensic studies. The Fernet Branca bottle had only had Lulu’s fingerprints on it.

  “We know the cause of death, the circumstances of the death, and the place of death. All we’re missing are a couple of minor details like a perpetrator and a motive. Ideas?” I asked once Puustjärvi had finished his summary. Autio immediately opened his mouth.

  “My three votes are for Saarnio, Länsimies, and Sulonen.” In honor of Sunday, Autio was wearing a black pinstripe suit and a pink shirt. He looked completely out of place in the cluttered break room, which the custodian hadn’t visited since Friday morning.

  “So you believe the theory that the perpetrator was someone in the studio. On what basis?” I asked as if I were his teacher.

  “Only they knew Lulu would be on the program. All of them had access to Lulu’s room. Saarnio or Länsimies could have arranged to deliver the Fernet Branca to her room and poisoned it ahead of time. Sulonen could have done it at home.”

  “It’s easy to think of motives for the bodyguard, but what about Länsimies and Saarnio?” Koivu asked.

  “Länsimies is easy. Blackmail. He’d been one of Lulu’s customers and didn’t want anyone to know.” Autio poured himself more coffee.

  “In that case, why did he invite Lulu on his show?” I asked.

  “Hey, what if Lulu threatened to tell on live TV what a terrible lover Länsimies was and that’s why he had to kill her?” Puupponen grinned, but then the smile turned to a yawn. “Maybe Lulu blackmailed Länsimies to get on his show so she could advertise her services, but then Länsimies had misgivings about what she would say.”

  “But what’s the sense in killing her during his own TV program?” Koivu asked.

  “It’s the ultimate reality TV!” Puupponen said. “And what about Saarnio? Isn’t her husband some kind of big
-shot businessman? Those are exactly the kinds of guys who visit whores. What if Riitta Saarnio discovered a relationship between her husband and Lulu? Do we need to check whether she happens to be a butterfly collector, perhaps with some poison stashed in her gardening shed?”

  “I can guess what her husband collects,” Koivu added, and he and Puupponen guffawed like two teenage boys. Ursula grinned at me as if wanting to comment on how childish the men were being, and the gesture was so out of character for her that I found myself bewildered. Ursula wasn’t usually interested in “us-girls” networking, preferring to make alliances with men.

  “What about Nuppu Koskela, the makeup artist? You interviewed her, right?” Autio asked Puupponen. “She doesn’t have any connections to Lulu, does she?”

  “None we’ve discovered so far. She seemed much more interested in her daughter’s ear infection than in murder.”

  “Wait until you have kids,” Puustjärvi said to Puupponen, and once again I had to play kindergarten teacher and remind my subordinates to stay on topic.

  “What about Nuppu Koskela’s keycard? Is it accounted for?”

  “We found it on the makeup table under a powder box. We sent it for fingerprint analysis,” Puupponen said.

  “Good. Let’s move on to our other main line of investigation then: What if Lulu Nightingale was killed because she’d stepped on the toes of some pimps? We have at least one name to start with: Mishin. Ville, start figuring out who he is. Autio—Gideon . . . You be Ville’s partner, maybe for the next four hours. Ursula has to rest.”

  “I don’t need—” Ursula said.

  “No, you have to take it easy. You should really be at home.”

  Around noon I realized it was time for me to go home too.

  Two assaults and one rape had happened the night before, so my unit would have to add those to the pile. We knew who the perpetrators were already—the assailants were in Holding and the rapist was the victim’s ex-boyfriend—so completing those preliminary investigations would be purely routine.