The Nightingale Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “I’ll have Koivu with me, so make extra. He’s always hungry!” I hung up, then returned to the conference room, where the whole unit had gathered around the computer.

  The men stared wide-eyed at Ursula’s screen.

  “This can’t be right,” Koivu finally said.

  “There have been rumors,” Autio said.

  “A bunch of bullshit,” Ursula said angrily. “Who made this and why? We’ll have to check the porn sites to see if we can find it there. Come look, Maria. It’s a crazy mashup of Lulu and the president.”

  “What?” I pushed my male colleagues out of the way and looked at the screen. The picture was bright and showed President Tarja Halonen as the receiving partner and Lulu as the giving partner, and although Lulu’s face was covered by her blond hair, the body and tattoos were easily recognizable. The president was looking directly at the camera. “Someone had a good laugh. Is there any more material like this?” I asked. I felt nauseated. I knew that in theory anyone could be the victim of revenge porn, but I would never have expected something this extreme, even from the people who held a grudge against the president for having been chairwoman of the Seta LGBTI rights organization earlier in her career. I was a member of that organization myself—why should that matter?

  “This is one more reason to bring Sulonen in for questioning. Puupponen, you go at him again. I’m going home to count my children. One of them is going to get a little talking-to. Koivu, I’ll pick you up at six o’clock tomorrow morning. We’re going to have a chat with Lasse Nordström. And, Ursula, good job finding the notes about him and Lulu.”

  Then I left the room without looking back. I stopped by the grocery store on the way home. I still didn’t know where Antti was. I arrived in front of our building at the same time as he was getting back from picking up Taneli at day care. Antti’s bicycle had winter tires with sharp metal studs, but it still made me nervous when he rode with one of our children on bike paths without gravel.

  “I got your message just as I was about to call the school because Iida hadn’t come home yet. What happened?”

  “She got detention because she bit a fifth-grade boy.”

  “Why on earth?”

  “Didn’t she tell you?” The three of us crammed into the elevator. Usually I used the stairs, but the shopping bags were heavy.

  Iida sat in the kids’ room, scribbling something in a notebook. It looked like her religion homework. Antti stayed to help Taneli out of his snow clothes while I went to talk to my daughter. I lay my hand on her hair and bent down so I could look her in the eyes.

  “Iida dear, why did you bite that big boy?”

  Iida turned her gaze to the floor. “I only bit him a little.”

  “We don’t bite people at all. What happened?”

  “I don’t want to tell.” Iida squirmed away. “I have to do my homework, and I want to be alone!”

  “OK, but we’ll talk about this later,” I said, then went to the kitchen to unload the groceries and start dinner. The vegetable and fish stir fry was a snap. Antti could have a go with Iida—I’d noticed that sometimes she would open up to him and tell him things she didn’t want to say to me. Maybe that was because he was gone so much these days.

  I’d just started on the salad when Iida came into the kitchen. She had a doll in her arms and was bending its arms and legs in figure-skating poses and not looking at me when she said, “Mom, I bit Miro because he called me a whore. He’s said that a lot before, but I didn’t know what it was, but now I know because you told me. And I don’t sell anyone baby making so he can’t call me that!” Iida’s voice trembled, and tears filled her eyes.

  “You’re absolutely right, dear! Why didn’t you tell me or the teacher?” I swept my daughter up into my arms. Her hair smelled of baby shampoo, and her body still had the softness of a child.

  “Those fifth-grade boys always call people names. They call the boys in our class fags and they call Roosa a fat-ass dyke.”

  “Dad and I have always said it isn’t OK to call people names, and if someone does call names, you need to tell. I’m glad you told me now. You still shouldn’t have bit Miro, although I understand that mean names are upsetting.” Iida nodded and started to cry in earnest.

  After dinner I called Iida’s teacher, and I had to restrain myself from shouting. So far, we’d had a model working relationship with Iida’s school.

  “No one should be allowed to call eight-year-olds names like that, and definitely not eleven-year-old boys! I expect the school to take this seriously. According to Iida, this isn’t new behavior from these boys. This has to stop. I’ll continue teaching Iida that she should tell a teacher when something like this happens. Because this is exactly the kind of thing that happens when no one tells. Iida isn’t the problem here.” I felt like a mother lion protecting her cub. I didn’t want my children to live in a world where verbal sexual harassment was a part of little kids’ everyday lives.

  After I hung up, my phone rang again almost immediately. It was my work ringtone, “Cops Are Heroes” by the Rehtorit.

  “It’s Hakkarainen from Forensics. Listen, we just made an interesting find in Lulu Mäkinen’s car. In a bag in the spare tire we found a small bottle, which seems like it’s what we’ve been looking for. Cyanide, I mean.”

  9

  “Can’t you understand I had to keep quiet about my connection to Lulu Nightingale? Nothing about the operation we’re working on can leak to the media. We’ve identified the members and funders of one of the two main gangs running prostitution in the metro area, and now all we need is proof. We don’t want the local cops bumbling into our investigation.”

  Lasse Nordström sipped his coffee. This was his third cup since we’d arrived. I poured more milk into my own, because the coffee Nordström had made was bitter and as thick as tar. Maybe coffee was like alcohol: as your tolerance grew, you had to increase the dosage.

  “As a detective, you have to know how important homicide investigations are, Lasse. If I was your boss, you’d be on administrative leave until Lulu Mäkinen’s murder was solved. You were questioned as a witness! The law is very clear that lying under those circumstances is a crime.”

  Some of Nordström’s coffee went down the wrong pipe and he spent a while coughing. Koivu spread butter on his third piece of bread and piled salami on top. He’d crawled out of bed five minutes before I picked him up.

  “You aren’t my boss, Kallio, and my boss has already talked to your boss. I met Lulu Nightingale twice. We weren’t interested in her, only in whether she’d been forced into working for one of the pimps.”

  “Mishin?” I asked quickly. Nordström looked startled but didn’t reply, and I immediately regretted my slip. Ursula’s adventure at the Mikado couldn’t come out under any circumstances.

  “Well, had Lulu been threatened or blackmailed?” I asked when Nordström remained silent. He glowered at me and snorted.

  “Don’t ask stupid questions, Kallio. It’s a miracle she stayed alive as long as she did. No one’s life means much to these Russian pigs. When they aren’t trying to bribe me, they’re threatening me. The image Lulu gave of her profession in the media was nonsense. There’s no limit to the ways they’re willing to exploit women, and sometimes it’s just human trafficking plain and simple. The girls don’t have any choice, and within a couple of years they’re all used up. They talk about savings and gifts for the family, but in reality the money just goes to pimps and drugs. If you ask me, they gave Lulu’s bodyguard two options: either kill Lulu or take a bullet in the brain. You’re wasting your time looking for other perps.”

  As soon as I’d heard about the cyanide turning up in Lulu’s car, I’d issued an order to have Tero Sulonen picked up, but so far, we hadn’t been able to find him. He hadn’t visited his apartment since Lulu’s death. Nordström didn’t know about the cyanide, and I didn’t intend to tell the media for a while either. First, we had to figure out how it ended up in Lulu’s car.

/>   “Why do you assume someone bought off Sulonen?”

  Nordström laughed and then stood up, walked to the bay window, opened one sash, and lit a cigarette.

  His apartment was different than I’d expected. It had a large but old-fashioned kitchen with a window that opened onto an inner courtyard. The bathroom was tiny, and I wondered how Nordström even managed to close the door. Maybe he didn’t have to since he lived alone. The best part was the combined living and bedroom, which had high ceilings and a stage-like elevated platform against one wall where Nordström slept. At one end of the platform was a small recess where Nordström kept his reading chair. He had a lot of books and an ample art collection, including statues and paintings I wouldn’t have thought someone on a cop’s salary would be able to afford. Maybe Nordström had received an inheritance. Or could the money be from somewhere else? I remembered what my coworkers had said about some of our colleagues who looked the other way when it came to prostitution. Finnish cops were considered honest, but maybe there were those among us who were ready to sell themselves for the right price. Nordström had always known whose songs it paid to sing.

  Solidarity among criminals was just a romantic notion cooked up by movie scriptwriters. Eat or be eaten, that was the reality. “Of course, we’ve made inquiries about Sulonen, and he’s no Boy Scout. When he was a bouncer he was also a pimp and small-time crook.” Nordström blew smoke out the window. He looked strangely out of place in the rounded recess, too big and bulky for such a small yet elegantly designed space.

  Nordström had set out breakfast in the kitchen but asked us to sit in the living room. Would the discussion have felt too intimate if we’d sat around the kitchen table? Lasse Nordström seemed like the kind of man who always wanted to be in control.

  I wanted the same thing. I’d worn my most masculine outfit, a black pinstripe pantsuit. My blouse was white, and my hair was tied back in a bun that had been exasperating to put up so early in the morning. My heels gave me an extra two inches, but that didn’t help at all next to Nordström. He’d intentionally put me in a low armchair, which was comfortable but left me nearly two feet below his eye level.

  “So you visited Lulu’s studio? Did you see anything there that might help move our investigation forward?” I asked, trying to make my voice sound pleading. Koivu gave me a confused look. Would the damsel-in-distress act work on Nordström? It was a waste of effort. Nordström saw right through me.

  “If I knew anything that would help you, I’d tell you, but I don’t.”

  “What about Oksana? Who was—is—she?”

  “I don’t have a clue. These girls come and go, since most of the customers want variety. Maybe someone bought her as his personal plaything and then lost his cool when he didn’t get what he expected for his money. Maybe Lulu Nightingale’s murder will solve itself once we finish our operation. Then everyone’s going to want to sing. I’ll tell you what I hear then.”

  “What do you know about Mishin’s bakery workers’ visas? Are they in order?”

  Nordström didn’t answer for a while, waiting until he was done with his cigarette and then stepping down from the recess to get his next cup of coffee.

  “If I’d know what a hullabaloo would come from going on Länsimies’s show, never in a million years would I have agreed to it,” he said with a sigh and then took a sip of coffee. “Don’t you understand that when we take Mishin out of the game, his competitor will try to establish a monopoly? Then we’ll surround him too. That will give us a couple of years of quiet before the next set of clowns can build their organizations. Maybe by then the lawmakers will come up with some new rules that aren’t quite as difficult for us to enforce. But, Kallio, if you and your people mess up our operation, you’re going to have trouble.”

  Koivu stood up and walked past Nordström to the bathroom.

  Nordström moved right up next to me, leaned over me, and hissed, “You should have come alone. Off the record. I don’t want all this ending up in your report.” Nordström crouched so we were on the same level. “Remember that everyone has their price, and that price isn’t necessarily monetary. You have two children. What if someone threatened to hurt them if you looked too close?”

  Nordström’s gaze was cold, and I could smell the coffee on his breath. When the bathroom door banged behind Koivu, Nordström stood up.

  “I need to get going.” He grabbed the sandwich tray and coffee pot and carried them into the kitchen. I frowned at Koivu, who made a face back and pointed at his stomach. He would have liked another sandwich. “You two aren’t stupid,” Nordström said as he walked back into the room. “You already know that Lulu Nightingale had clients in high places, men who naturally avoid the prostitution run by the mafia because they don’t want to be blackmailed. But wasn’t Nightingale just as greedy as all the others? And we know that things always end badly for people like that. Look at her client list and think about who would be the most likely suspect—or who would have enough money to buy off Sulonen.” He smiled and politely opened the door for us.

  “‘My dad is stronger than your dad!’ What the hell!” I huffed as we walked out of the arched gateway onto the street. The wind was blowing in off the sea, and the Kruununhaka neighborhood felt bleak. Still, I wondered what it would be like to live in the very heart of Helsinki, so close to all the shops and theaters and cafés, not to mention the sea itself. But it wouldn’t work with the kids. I thought about what Nordström had just said. Was that meant as a threat to me, or had he been telling me indirectly about his own choices? What was he trying to tell me?

  “Kaartamo isn’t going to be much help,” Koivu said. I didn’t answer. Even Koivu didn’t know that Kaartamo and I were colluding to cover up Ursula’s misconduct. I would have wanted to vent about the situation to him, but I couldn’t. I felt completely alone, and I didn’t like the feeling. I was used to sharing my work worries with my colleagues, especially Taskinen, and my family worries with my girlfriends. It was crazy that I was going to a funeral to see my best friend because otherwise I wouldn’t have time. Life shouldn’t be like this.

  After the academy, I’d worked on the Helsinki Vice Squad, which was soon disbanded. Prostitution had been completely different in the mideighties. Instead of drugs, alcohol had been the big problem, and the women and girls were locals. Compared to how it was now, everything was much more innocent and amateurish back then. But the fall of the Soviet Union and the recession in the early nineties had set off an explosion in the sex business, with no end in sight. Even though Nordström and company were fighting it, I feared that soon Finland would be offering flesh for every taste: yellow or black, twelve years old or four hundred pounds. And of course, rich men could always travel to fulfill their needs in countries where parents were willing to sell their children to tourists in hopes of raising their standard of living.

  We started driving west, back to Espoo. Of course downtown Helsinki was backed up, and we had to wait at the traffic light in front of the Ateneum Art Museum for several minutes. Koivu whistled and tapped the dashboard, and I caught him glancing at the women who walked by, despite the heavy winter coats that concealed their bodies. The sun had risen, and there might be some time later in the day when a coat would feel excessive.

  “Maria, look! Isn’t that Sulonen?” Koivu suddenly shouted. I braked and saw a broad-shouldered man with a crew cut disappear into the tunnel down to the metro station.

  “Shit!” Koivu threw his door open. “I’m going after him. I’ll call you. Try to get some local backup. Now we’ve got that SOB.”

  I saw Koivu careen down the stairs, nimble for such a large man. Immediately I called Helsinki Dispatch and gave our location, along with Sulonen’s description. I wished I’d gotten a better look, since all I could tell them was that he was wearing a black leather jacket. I parked in front of the Helsinki Central Railway Station and set out my official identification. Then I headed for the nearest set of stairs down into the tunnels. I clipped
my phone to my belt, and the hands-free earpiece was still in place. Koivu answered almost immediately.

  “Do you have a visual on Sulonen?”

  “Yeah. He just stopped at a newsstand to buy some gum. Do you think he’s dangerous? Can I try to take him alone?”

  “Wait for me or the uniforms. I can see two of them coming out of the metro, but they probably don’t know Sulonen.”

  “Now he’s going into the record store,” Koivu announced, which made me feel better. The store in question was small, and getting out of it without being noticed would be difficult.

  “Go guard the door, but stay inconspicuous. He doesn’t know you. I’ll be there in one minute.” I sped up and caught the two patrol officers, whose nametags said Montonen and Konkola, at the top of the escalator. I briefly laid out the situation, and then the three of us walked to the record store, where Koivu was browsing the heavy metal section right next to Sulonen, who was currently looking at the latest release from Timo Rautiainen and the Neckshot Trio. Sulonen would have looked right at home in a heavy metal band.

  “Hi, Tero. Could I have a word?” I said, and Sulonen spun around with a start. When he saw me and the uniformed officers, he dropped the record as if it were something shameful.

  “Oh yeah? About what?” Bags hung under Sulonen’s bloodshot eyes.

  “I have some questions for you. Let’s take a drive to Espoo. We’ve been trying to reach you, but you haven’t been answering your phone.”

  “It’s broken.” Sulonen’s voice was full of fear. I stepped closer.

  “Come on. We have a car right upstairs.”

  I tried to interpret Sulonen’s expression, but I couldn’t tell whether he was terrified or just surprised. Koivu took up a position to one side of Sulonen, and Montonen and Konkola followed behind. They were both tall, Konkola well over six feet, with a shaved head. Montonen had a flat top spiked up like a punk rocker. Sulonen looked small in front of the three of them, and I didn’t dare think about how I looked. We all walked toward the stairs that led up to the railway station square, but as we passed the ethnic store before the stairs, Sulonen turned, pushed Koivu, and took off running in the other direction. A couple of seconds passed before our brains kicked in and all four of us took off after him. Konkola and Montonen had long legs, but they bumped into people as they ran. I soon caught up to them and watched as Sulonen climbed onto the railing of the upper level of the tunnel area, intending to jump down to the metro entrance. Sulonen threw himself over the railing and spread his arms like wings as he fell toward the large compass rose inlaid in the floor. Someone screamed as his body hit the ground. We rushed down the escalator, shoving people out of the way. Sulonen stood up, tenacious as a comic book hero, and headed for the longer escalator down into the metro, but his left leg wouldn’t hold his weight. It was easy to catch him.