The Nightingale Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “And now Sulonen has been shot, the same day we really start interrogating Lulu’s customers. Damn it! We should have kept him in a cell. At least he would have been safe.”

  “Calm down, boss,” Puupponen interjected.

  The area around the Big Apple was full of police vehicles: three of our cruisers, a forensic van, and another unmarked Saab, which I recognized as Kaartamo’s. “What the hell is he doing at a crime scene?” I muttered to myself. I also spotted a TV news van. A shooting in a mall was unheard of in Finland. In the afternoon, the Big Apple was full of schoolkids. In a few years, Iida would be hanging out along with them.

  An ambulance was parked right next to the freight elevator, and suddenly the elevator door opened. Men carrying a stretcher rushed out. The victim’s head was bandaged and he lay on his side, a temporary IV already inserted into a vein. We moved out of the way, but I caught a glance of a pale face with eyes staring, wide open but empty. The paramedics loaded the stretcher into the ambulance and jumped in behind it, and the vehicle took off at full speed, sirens blaring and lights flashing. I hoped Tero Sulonen would survive, although I didn’t know whom to petition for that favor.

  The escalator on the second floor of the north side of the mall was cordoned off. I stepped over the tape and flashed my badge to the guard posted to keep civilians out of the upper floor. It seemed that whoever was in charge of the crime scene had asked the mall security for assistance. Maybe it would have made sense to call in the military.

  Assistant Chief of Police Kaartamo seemed to be the one holding the reins. He was in the middle of an intense phone conversation when we walked up. He hadn’t cleared out the mall yet, so curious onlookers were jostling to see what was happening, even though there was no longer anything to see, just an outline on the floor where Tero Sulonen had fallen. It felt somehow surreal, like something was out of place. Then I realized the reason for the strange feeling: the only sound was the muted buzz of conversation. The music and advertisements that usually echoed through the halls of the mall had been shut off. Good. At the moment, I didn’t really need an ad for cheap coffee or the latest pop hit.

  “Kallio, what are you doing here?” Kaartamo shouted. “I thought you were up north.”

  “Not anymore.” I scanned the crowd for Mira Saastamoinen and spotted her just rounding a corner.

  “Hi, Maria! They just took Sulonen to Jorvi Hospital. The bullet left a nasty mark. The whole back of his head is a mess.”

  “Bullet? You just said you didn’t know what the weapon was.”

  “We don’t, because no one heard the shot or saw the gun.”

  “A pistol with a silencer?”

  “No, it’s something higher caliber,” Mira’s partner Akkila said. “The wound looks more like something a rifle would make. The bullet might still be in his head.”

  Mira and Akkila had been in the mall, on a coffee break at the time of the shooting. They had been the first to respond to the mall security guard’s call for help. The eyewitnesses were still sitting in the coffee shop: a middle-aged woman in a leather jacket who was clearly trying to look younger than she was judging from the highlights in her carefully tousled hair, a teenage boy, and a young mother with a baby in a sling. They’d been walking near Sulonen when he suddenly groaned and collapsed. The boy said he thought Sulonen must have had a heart attack. “You know those bodybuilders.” The middle-aged woman was the first to notice the blood and started shouting for security. The young mother said all she could think about was protecting her baby. But there was no sign of a shooter.

  The ballistics experts would be able to determine where the shot had come from. I watched the familiar bustle of the crime scene, the measurements, the interviews, the searching. I wasn’t alone in this, even though I felt devoid of strength despite Puupponen’s mother’s nourishing stew. I looked up at the third floor. People often leaned on the railing and looked down at the main level. Could someone have fired a shot from there without anyone noticing? But where would they go? Next to the movie theater was an elevator and stairs, which lead down to the parking area. The shooter would have been able to flee, practically before any alarm had been raised. An hour had passed since then. He could be anywhere.

  What was the profile we’d just constructed? This shooter was a person who was willing to take risks. But was this even the same person who’d killed Lulu Nightingale? What if Sulonen had been running his own blackmail operation, and this is where it had led?

  I walked over to Kaartamo. He was talking on the phone again and nodding.

  “You’re right. No, there’s no cause for worry. This is an isolated case, and the man who was shot had connections to the underworld and a recent murder. There isn’t any insane shooter on the loose. You can put the public’s minds at ease. I can come too if necessary. Yes, this is a significant-enough operation, which I’ll be taking responsibility for. She’s a perfectly competent girl, but maybe I’ll still—” Kaartamo gave a start when he noticed me. Kaartamo knew exactly what I thought about his habit of calling female professionals “girls.”

  After a moment, he got off the phone and turned toward me. “Listen up, Kallio, we need to have a meeting. That was the minister of the interior. He’s worried about public safety. We need to get this case solved fast. As of this moment all vacations are canceled for everyone in the department, and every last person with a badge is going to come down here and start questioning this crowd. God damn all these traffic accidents tying up our men. We can’t even get help from Vantaa because there are so many of them. I can handle the press conference. You just focus on investigating Lulu Nightingale’s murder. You have information on Sulonen from that. Is there anything you’ve uncovered recently that will help with this?” Kaartamo appeared agitated. Usually he enjoyed being at the center of attention and getting to show what a tough guy he was. “And we need to get in touch with Nordström’s crew,” he hissed. “They know more about these whores’ clients than we do. This could have turned into a code red. Thank God our shooter only needed one shot.” Kaartamo’s chatter was getting on my nerves. I walked over to the window of a barber shop to call my mother-in-law.

  “Hi, it’s Maria. How’s it going?”

  “Everything’s fine. We just had Karelian stew, Taneli’s favorite.”

  “Good. Can you plan to stay the night? I don’t know how long I’m going to be here. You’re going to hear about it on the news anyway, so I’ll tell you now. There’s been a shooting at the Big Apple, and I’m going to have to start the investigation. The victim is one of the suspects in another case I’m working on.” After she confirmed that she could stay, I said, “Say hi to the kids. I’ll call when it’s time for good-night hugs if I’m not home by then.”

  I mentally riffled through the contents of the cupboards and decided we’d be able to manage until tomorrow. Then I climbed the spiral staircase to the third-floor landing in front of the movie theater. Based on the direction that Sulonen was walking and the angle of the shot, it appeared probable that the shooter would have been standing right here, outside the theater. I put my hands in my pockets and tried to imagine having a revolver. I could have aimed it from inside my jacket, and probably even a sawed-off shotgun too. But a rifle . . . I couldn’t conceive of any way that would be possible.

  My phone rang. It was Mira. I saw her standing in the coffee shop downstairs, and she waved at me. I could hear her voice in the receiver very faintly over the noise of the shopping center.

  “Update from Jorvi. Sulonen is in surgery, and the bullet is still in his head. His condition is critical. He’s suffered severe damage to his skull and his brain. They promised they’d tell us when they know more, but so far it looks like the operation will last several hours. I asked them to call you directly.”

  “Thanks,” I said, although I didn’t know what Kaartamo would say. It was true that we needed to have a meeting. In an operation this large, with this many people to interview, responsibility had to be shared.
It was strange that Kaartamo hadn’t immediately asked the NBI to join the investigation.

  In situations like these, civilians were usually helpful and cooperative. If someone saw the shooter, they would say so, as would the dozens and dozens who had just thought they’d seen something. But the doors of the mall hadn’t been closed when the alarm was raised, and that probably meant the perpetrator had escaped. Maybe the security cameras would tell us something. Hopefully they’d been set to record.

  I walked back to Kaartamo, who was currently giving a statement to a TV reporter. His tone was soothing, just like when he’d spoken to the interior minister on the phone: this wasn’t an act of terror or the action of a mass murderer, just an attack directed at a single individual, Tero Sulonen. But when the reporter asked about the status of the Lulu Nightingale murder investigation, Kaartamo sicced him on me, and I had to explain that the investigation was proceeding but that no one had been arrested beyond temporary detentions for questioning.

  Once I got rid of the reporter, I suggested to Kaartamo that we have all the trash cans inside and outside the mall searched in case the shooter tossed the gun or some article of clothing on his way out. Kaartamo glared at me and said that would cost too much, but then he agreed to call out the Guard to help. The soldiers could sort through the trash.

  “Let’s head back to the station,” I said to Puupponen. I called Koivu and asked him to bring the unit together, since the attempt on Sulonen’s life suggested that we needed to focus more resources on the Helsinki pimps. It was already six o’clock, but now was a time for overtime if there ever was one.

  The lower level of the police station was already quiet, and the officer at the desk waved as we passed. When I saw my reflection in the mirror in the elevator, I flinched: my skin was pale and blotchy, my lipstick had worn off, and my bangs were sticking up. I looked like a sloppy middle-aged woman. Puupponen didn’t look much better: under his freckles he was pasty, and I could smell the sweat coming from under the arms of his wool sweater.

  Puustjärvi was making coffee in the conference room, and Puupponen and I had grabbed cardamom sweet rolls and sandwiches on the drive in. Even Ursula obviously hadn’t been getting her beauty sleep lately, because she couldn’t stop yawning. Mascara had flaked under her eyes, and her bruises had turned yellow under her makeup. Even she wasn’t capable of looking completely put together after an intensive week of investigation.

  Lulu seemed to have had a steady, rich clientele, a clientele who had a lot to lose if their escapades were ever found out. These weren’t your average johns; they were the pillars of society with money to pay for their predilections.

  “Do you have any idea where that picture of Lulu and the president came from? Maybe she had a customer who had a fantasy about that,” I said to Ursula, who laughed.

  “Not a clue! The IT guys say it’s an obvious forgery. These days you can photoshop almost anything.”

  “The IT guys? They don’t have that picture pinned up on their wall yet, do they?” I asked, fearing the worst. “I’m going to hoist every last one of them up a flagpole by their balls—and you by the ovaries—if that picture ends up in the press. What did you find out from the interviews with Lulu’s clients?”

  Ursula blushed. “Endless requests for confidentiality and assurances that it was just a temporary relationship, which Lulu had handled with perfect professionalism. Nothing indicating any blackmail. Most of the clients didn’t know anything about Sulonen. At most they knew that Lulu had a bodyguard but never saw him. But most of the men whose names show up in Lulu’s customer list claim the list is false.”

  “Puustjärvi?”

  “You already heard about the DNA results from Lulu’s body, and there isn’t anything new from the other forensic analysis or Lulu’s computer. And the damn bank secrecy laws won’t let us get at her safety deposit box information.” As he spoke, Puustjärvi stood up to get more coffee.

  “Did Lulu have a will? Who’s her lawyer? Is that in our files? Who defended Lulu in the trial against Hytönen? Talk to him. Petri, what about the liquor stores?”

  “Their product tracking system isn’t detailed enough. The EAN codes don’t reference individual bottles. Our only hope would be cross-referencing all the receipts in the system with credit card records. But the court isn’t going to give us a warrant for that since we don’t have an actual suspect. We can’t ask them for information on the booze purchases of half of Finland.” Puustjärvi sat down, and coffee splashed from his cup onto the table and his pants, eliciting a muffled curse.

  “But there is still a murder victim! Let’s get Lulu’s card information. See if you can get it through. I’ll sign off on it,” I said.

  “But what if she paid cash? I always do that when I shop at Alko, for this very reason,” Autio suddenly said. “And I never use any kind of customer loyalty cards.”

  “I think it would be nice if Alko had a customer card. Every tenth vodka bottle free? Sign me up!” Puupponen said, trying to lighten the mood, but we only laughed out of a sense of duty.

  “Let’s see who Patrol tracks down from the mall. Autio and Puustjärvi, you two go through the preliminary interview reports and try to sift out the most reliable witnesses. We’ll focus on them first and then move on to the flakier ones. Mira Saastamoinen is our point of contact. Ursula and Puupponen, you handle the actual questioning, and Koivu and I . . .”

  My phone rang, emblazoned with Kaartamo’s name like a threat. I considered it best to answer.

  “Where did you disappear to? I said we needed to meet.”

  “I’m back at the station. You seemed to have things under control.”

  “Come to my office. Nordström will be here soon too. We need to talk now.”

  Normally violent crimes came straight from Patrol to my unit, but bad luck had caught me on the plane from Kuopio when the call came in, and the location of the crime had caused Kaartamo to intervene.

  “I’ll come as soon as my own meeting is done. Why are you getting Nordström mixed up in this?”

  “He’s the NBI’s specialist on this, and he’s a good man! And we won’t wait for you forever.”

  I’d had just about enough of people who constantly needed to prove how much power they had. To make it worse, Kaartamo was one of the old-school cops who thought the department should be run like the army. Most of the leadership thought differently nowadays, and habits had changed. Despite Kaartamo’s bluster, I took my time wrapping things up with my unit before heading upstairs to his office.

  Kaartamo and Nordström stood at the window, drinking orange Jaffa soda. Kaartamo motioned for me to sit. Neither man shook my hand. I didn’t like the setup, because Nordström was still one of my suspects for Lulu Nightingale’s murder. And I didn’t have any interest in getting mired in an interagency power struggle.

  Nordström sat down next to me and pulled his chair over close enough to touch me. He was wearing faded blue jeans and a denim jacket the same color. His T-shirt said “Hawaii.” Kaartamo’s suit was wrinkled, and there was mud on his shoes. He glared at me in irritation before sitting down behind his desk, which was cluttered with papers. His cell phone beeped to indicate a new text message, but Kaartamo didn’t look at it.

  “You finally came. Just don’t say you have to rush off to take care of your kids now.”

  “I won’t. Which of us is going to lead the investigation into Sulonen’s attempted murder now, you or me? That’s mostly what I came here to check.” I stood up and walked to the window. Kaartamo’s office had a view of the parking lot and the small strip of pine forest that remained between the police station and the next building. It was already dark, but the ice crystals on the tops of the cars glittered brilliantly. It was getting colder.

  “You will,” Kaartamo said, “but I’ll set the pace. We can’t let the investigation get in the way of the NBI’s big sting.”

  Nordström nodded in satisfaction.

  “If everything is supposed to
be so hush-hush, why did you go on that TV show?” I asked Nordström. “I would have thought you’d avoid publicity before your big moment. Or did you think you’d get more glory if you were already recognizable?”

  Nordström stared at me, his jaw clenched, but then he poured himself more Jaffa. “Relax, Kallio. We’re all on the same side. I might even be able to solve your case for you. I was just sitting here thinking about which of the pimps would use a paid assassin, and I always come back to the same name. Mishin.” Nordström’s expression wavered a bit. Some people reacted that way when they talked about their lovers, but Nordström’s archenemy seemed to arouse even stronger feelings.

  “How about the NBI gives us Mishin’s stooges? You have files on them, I presume. What happened here is probably the standard story: they gave Sulonen the dirty work, to knock off Lulu I mean, but he got too greedy. Mishin’s boys wouldn’t stand for that,” Kaartamo said and gave me a stern look.

  “Sometimes Mishin uses a guy named Yevgeni Urmanov as his enforcer,” Nordström said.

  “He’s wanted in several cases, but nothing seems to stop these fuckers from getting into the country on fake passports. Do you have any eyewitnesses for the shooting?”

  I said that the interviews were still in process. Nordström threw out a few more names and promised that his undercover detectives would keep their ears open. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: even though Nordström himself was technically a suspect for Lulu’s murder, he was assigning his own subordinates to do their own investigation of the same crime! Usually I avoided leaking insider information to the press, but now I really wanted to. What would that nice fellow from MTV3 say if he heard about this?

  “When are you going to run this big sweep of yours?” I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral, even though it kept slipping toward a snarl.