The Nightingale Murder (The Maria Kallio Series Book 9)

by Leena Lehtolainen

  The charge nurse bustled into the room and apologized for the cramped conditions. We would be able to use her office if the patient’s bed would fit. An orderly rolled the bed down the hallway, and Koivu and I followed. Once we moved the chairs out of the way, the bed fit in between the desk and the doorway with just enough space to get the door closed.

  Lady X’s face bore a withdrawn expression. I introduced myself and Koivu, and then asked her her name. She gave no reply. The who, why, and where questions yielded similar results. I began to doubt whether this young woman understood Russian after all. Maybe she was from Poland or Slovenia. I tried Finnish, Swedish, English, and German without any luck. Her brown eyes stared at the blanket, and her attractively shaped lips remained closed. After fifteen minutes of trying to get her to say something, I asked Koivu to leave the room. Maybe she was afraid of men. But one-on-one didn’t help either. Frustrated, I went to talk to the doctor.

  I found the attending physician scribbling on a chart just down the hallway. He believed the girl’s wounds had been caused by an abnormally sharp, small knife.

  “She might be in shock and that’s why she won’t talk. I’m used to seeing the kind of cuts she has on her cheek and torso,” he said. “But the mutilation of the genital area indicates that there was either an intimate relationship between the perpetrator and the victim or that this was part of an attempted rape. However, there were no traces of semen in her vagina. The cutting happened an hour or two before she was found, indicated by the fact that the blood had already begun to coagulate.”

  “How severe was her blood loss?”

  According to the doctor, they’d only had to give her one bag.

  “Does she have any identifying marks, like a birthmark or tattoos that might help us identify her?” A living, conscious person couldn’t be examined like a corpse, which lost all rights to privacy in the pathologist’s lab, so we had to rely on what the medical staff might have noticed as they treated her.

  The doctor riffled through his papers. “An old, poorly stitched cut under her left shoulder blade. No other scars, no tattoos. One large birthmark on her left buttock. At least one poorly performed abortion, which supports our theory of her origin. Russian abortion hospitals are still practically torture chambers.”

  “Did any drugs turn up in her system?”

  “We don’t have the funding to perform expensive tests like that as a matter of routine. Do you want me to order one? We did run an HIV panel. Other than these injuries, she seems healthy. All vitals are good, her nutrition is fine, and she has good muscle tone.”

  “Where are the clothes she was brought in with?”

  “In that closet.”

  “Wallet? Phone? Keys?”

  “None of those, but her jewelry is in the box by her bed.”

  “Jewelry?”

  “A couple of rings and a necklace with a cross. An orthodox cross.” To do a legal search I’d have to get the girl’s permission first. I left the doctor and returned to the charge nurse’s office, then asked the orderly to roll the girl’s bed back to her room. Her eyes now were closed, and they stayed that way as we went. In the room, the woman with the curly hair watched us closely. The patient in the middle bed still slept. I asked the girl if I could look at her jewelry, first in Finnish and then in Russian. When she didn’t say anything, I opened the box sitting on the bedside table. That’s when her eyes snapped open, and I thought I could see fear in them.

  “It’s OK,” I said. “I’m just going to take a quick look and then put everything back where I found it.”

  The cross was small, about an inch long, and the gold didn’t appear to be very high quality. The chain was thin. It really was an orthodox cross with a second, slanting crossbeam below the main one. I looked in vain for an inscription. One of the rings had an enormous ruby with diamonds set around it like the petals of a flower. This one looked valuable. No inscription on it either. The other ring was simpler, a thin double band with small stones set here and there. They looked like garnets. I held the ring up to the light. This one had an inscription: Nad Oksanu. A.

  “Nad Oksanu . . . Oksana? Is that your name?” I asked in Russian, and I saw the girl swallow. Still she remained silent. Just then my phone began to ring. Apparently, I’d neglected to turn it off when I entered the hospital. I recognized District Prosecutor Katri Reponen’s number before powering down the phone. I’d have plenty of time to call her later.

  “Oksana, we’re here to help you. Whoever did this has to be brought to . . .” When I couldn’t remember the Russian word for justice, I let the sentence trail off. “Here’s my phone number,” I said and left my card on the bedside table, next to the box. Then I opened the standing closet next to Oksana’s bed. The fur coat cascaded out. Its fur was long and thick, stained with blood on the front. I didn’t recognize the blue-gray pelt, but Koivu thought it might be dyed chinchilla. In the pockets, I found a two-euro coin and a tissue. The boots were black lace-ups, with very high heels and narrow tips. They reminded me of the movie from the previous night. The side of the right boot had a small rip that someone had tried to patch with glue.

  The old lady in the middle bed had woken up and was now complaining loudly that she needed to go to the bathroom. Her spirited roommate called the nurse. I tucked the fur coat back in the closet and then shut the door. As we were leaving, I exchanged a few more words with the nurse at the desk. She promised that they would alert us to any changes in the girl’s condition.

  “We’ll have to get a Russian-speaking psychologist to talk to her,” I said to Koivu as we walked from the elevator back to our car.

  Koivu had arranged an interview for that afternoon with the woman who had found Lady X. He’d already checked the list of missing persons, but no one fit Lady X’s description. We’d need to get a crime report posted online as soon as possible. Koivu and the department press officer could handle that. Maybe mentioning the jewelry would help us get some leads.

  “There is a risk that the attacker will come at her again if he sees the crime report,” Koivu said, stating the obvious. Of course, we wouldn’t reveal that Lady X was at Jorvi Hospital. If a customer had attacked her, the pimp would probably go after him. But if the pimp had wanted her to get to the hospital, wouldn’t he have brought her in?

  “Just to be sure, check all women named Oksana living in Finland. There can’t be that many. Call all of those who are between the ages of fifteen and thirty. How carefully has the place she was found been searched? Could we have missed a phone or a purse somewhere?”

  “Rasilainen and Airaksinen did the search, and they didn’t mention anything.”

  “There isn’t a whole lot we can do if she refuses to tell us where the cuts came from. We can’t arrest her for withholding that information, but we do have to find out who she is before we can do anything else. Contact the Pro Centre, even though they don’t like giving out information about their clientele. Emphasize that Oksana is a victim, not a suspect. We’ll need to contact the Immigration Police too.”

  Koivu yawned again, and I felt sorry for the poor guy. Juuso wasn’t quite three yet, and Sennu was only eighteen months. The Koivu family certainly had their hands full. Fortunately, tracking down the identity of this girl, whom I now thought of as Oksana, wouldn’t demand much thought.

  Back at the station, I left Koivu to correct his botched parking job and headed to my office. A brief e-mail from my direct superior, Jyrki Taskinen, was waiting in my inbox.

  Everything’s fine here in Quebec. Silja’s doing well, even though she’s uncomfortable, and Terttu seems to enjoy fussing over her. The big day is next week. Is there still snow on the ground in Finland? The skiing here in the mountains is fantastic. How are things at work? Say hi to everyone from me. Jyrki.

  Taskinen was on a six-month leave of absence, which he and his wife were spending visiting their daughter, Silja, in Canada. Silja was expecting her first child, so Taskinen would soon be a grandfather. I missed
him every day, even though the weekly lunches we used to schedule often didn’t actually happen. Several years earlier, Taskinen’s wife had been gravely ill, but two surgeries and a hysterectomy had beaten back the cancer. When it had become clear that Terttu would survive, Jyrki promised to take a break from work. Arranging that had taken more than a year. No one had been hired to fill in for him while he was gone, so in the meantime I was reporting directly to Assistant Chief of Police Kaartamo, which didn’t please either of us. Kaartamo was retiring at the end of the year, and I wasn’t the only one in the department counting down the days. Even the chief of police seemed to share the sentiment.

  Kaartamo was a holdover from the Urho Kekkonen years, and he was used to operating through the good old boys’ club. He’d never bothered to conceal the fact that he hadn’t wanted me to head up the Violent Crime Unit. In Kaartamo’s mind, it was fine for women to be cops, just so long as we weren’t given too much power. Otherwise we might mess things up for the men. Our most recent conflict had been over participating in an exchange program with the Nordic-Baltic Network of Policewomen. The themes of the program were violence against women and children, and prostitution. Kaartamo thought that it was nothing but a waste of resources. After that conversation, I’d concluded that Kaartamo was an honest-to-god misogynist, and that those days weren’t behind us after all, even though we thought we were living in an age of equality. Still, working as a female police officer now was much easier than it had been twenty years ago when I’d graduated from the academy.

  I decided to wait to reply to Jyrki’s e-mail. There were more important things to deal with. I dialed Liisa Rasilainen’s number in Patrol. She and I had become friends over the years, and I’d tried in vain to lure Liisa out of the field and into my unit. But she liked the variety of patrol work. From our last conversation, I knew that we were both looking forward to the beginning of the soccer season so we could play in the department women’s league again.

  “Hi, Maria!” Her voice was oddly muffled. “Sorry, hold on, my mouth is full. I’m just grabbing some pizza with Jukka at the Big Apple.” Jukka Airaksinen was Liisa’s partner, a quiet man who didn’t seem to have any issues working with a lesbian. That wouldn’t have been the case for everyone in the department.

  “Were you two the ones who dealt with the knife attack downtown last night?”

  Liisa swallowed, then said that they were. “We showed up at the same time as the paramedics. We did a routine sweep of the area, but we didn’t get a chance to question the victim because they whisked her off to the hospital right away. I sent the photos we took of the scene and the paperwork over to Koivu. It didn’t seem like a job for Forensics, although it also didn’t seem like the standard domestic violence incident. Who’s the girl?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  I heard Airaksinen’s phone ring, and soon Liisa said that they had to go after a shoplifter in the mall. My next order of business should have been turning in the monthly time sheet report, but my mind kept drifting to my rusty Russian skills. All the states that had recently gained independence from the former Soviet Union needed modern police training, and there might be demand for a female trainer who spoke Russian. In the fall, I’d spent a week in Cologne training Afghan police, and the work had felt productive despite the enormous cultural differences. Our class discussions had renewed my faith in my own work, and my belief that an independent legal system and an incorruptible police force were cornerstones of democracy. I’d begun yearning for new challenges, but going abroad for long stretches while my family waited at home seemed impossible. Our childcare situation was difficult enough as it was.

  While I’d been thinking, the department press officer had e-mailed me the press release to review.

  The Espoo Police are seeking information regarding the identity of a woman found yesterday with knife wounds in downtown Espoo. The woman in question is about 170 centimeters tall and slender, with blond hair and brown eyes. At the time she was found, the woman was wearing a dark blue-gray full-length chinchilla fur coat and black high-heeled boots. Anyone with information concerning the identity of this person is asked to contact the Espoo Police.

  A telephone number was listed at the end. After giving my approval, I left for lunch.

  The fur coat and boots aroused such a powerful mental image that the media were sure to take an interest. Maybe someone would pay Oksana to tell her story—cash often succeeded where the police failed. That might allow Oksana to buy herself protection and maybe even a new life.

  After lunch I went to my Helsinki-Espoo-Vantaa Interdepartmental Coordination Meeting, the memory of which had entirely left my mind by the time I was in the car, driving to the day-care center to pick up the kids. I called Koivu to ask how the interview had gone with the woman who’d found Oksana, but his line was busy. Hopefully the press release would yield results.

  First I picked up Taneli, then Iida, who was in after-school care at the house of one of her classmates. We’d really lucked out with that, since otherwise we would have been forced to leave our eight-year-old home alone for hours every day. Even though there was a law that was supposed to guarantee access to after-school care, the system was faltering. On top of that, there were some who were calling for an end to the entire public childcare system and scaling back of maternity leave benefits. From my perspective, it was better for a kid to spend her days in an overcrowded day care than with her inebriated parents. Our regular customers, the Janatuinens, were a good example of that. In day care, at least their kids would receive breakfast and lunch, which those two drunks couldn’t be relied on to fix.

  At home, we ate a quick dinner before it was time to leave for Iida’s figure-skating practice, which was held at the Matinkylä Ice Arena twice a week. Venjamin meowed his complaint—I felt bad leaving our poor kitten home alone again.

  During Iida’s lesson Taneli and I killed time at the public library attached to the Big Apple Mall. The whole area had changed immensely in the nine years since I’d investigated the murder of the figure skater Noora Nieminen. The city of Espoo was like a jigsaw puzzle that could never be finished because new pieces kept appearing, pieces that didn’t quite fit into what was already there. A few months back Antti had suggested that we reverse the national migration trend and move north to Vaasa. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to work as a local cop in some tiny village up there. The Swedish-speaking population along the coast weren’t in the habit of killing each other, but I’d probably end up investigating eco-terror attacks on fur farms. That wasn’t particularly appealing.

  Despite my chilling memories of Noora’s murder, it had seemed like a good idea to enroll Iida in skating lessons. To my surprise, Taneli had also wanted to get on the ice, and he seemed to learn everything much faster than his sister. I knew how much time and money serious figure skating required in the long term, but for now I didn’t want to quash my children’s enthusiasm. Fortunately, children this young didn’t have to compete.

  As Taneli and I were making our way back to the ice arena, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Hello, this is Mirja Helin. I’m a nurse in the surgical ward of Jorvi Hospital. You asked us to inform you if there were any changes in the condition of the Jane Doe who was brought in last night with knife wounds.”

  “Yes,” I said, although I’d asked for any new information to be passed to the duty officer at the station, not directly to me. “What’s changed?”

  “She disappeared.”

  “What?”

  “When we went to make our evening rounds, we found her bed empty. She must have ripped out her IV and put on her fur coat and shoes over her hospital gown. We don’t have a clue where she’s gone.”

  2

  I had to devote the rest of the evening to updating the press release with the public relations officer. Oksana’s description was sent to all patrol units. According to her hospital roommate, Oksana had walked out into the hall with her IV
still attached. Then she suddenly returned in a rush, grabbed her clothes out of the closet, and left. The IV turned up in the elevator. Hundreds of people were constantly going in and out of that hospital, so hopefully someone would remember seeing a woman with a bandaged face in a full-length fur coat covered in blood. Interviewing all the witnesses who came forward would be a big job, so we’d have to ask Patrol to help.

  Our notice was printed in the Thursday morning papers, and the local radio stations were talking about it as I drove to work. Less than two weeks remained until the vernal equinox, and it was already easier to get up in the morning because it was no longer so dark.

  So far, we’d received a few tips, but none of them had led anywhere. An elderly woman from Kirkkonummi had been sure the missing girl was her neighbor, but we found the neighbor safe and sound at her job. A drunk had called to tell us he’d had a whore named Oksana in Estonia. The other tips had been even more absurd. The Pro Centre staff didn’t know any Oksanas, but they promised to ask the sex workers they provided services to.

  “We’ve had people questioning all the taxi and bus drivers, but so far no one has reported seeing her,” Koivu said in our morning meeting. “She probably left the hospital in a private car.”

  “I guess all we can do is wait,” Puustjärvi said.

  “Maybe the press release will bring us something.”

  Puustjärvi was the most patient person in our unit, a skill he cultivated by playing the Chinese game Go and tying flies. He also did yoga with his wife. He had recommended it to the rest of us, but I hadn’t tried it yet. The thought of blond, heavyset Puustjärvi bending himself into strange positions seemed silly, but then again there might be a side to Petri he didn’t show at work. And I knew Autio even less, despite having worked together for nearly three years. The suits he wore were a costume he hid behind, and though he got along with everyone, he was no one’s friend. He ignored Ursula’s occasional attempts at flirtation, which obviously annoyed her. She was one of those women who had to take a shot at every man she met just for the hell of it. At first, that had irritated me, but now I just thought that it was a little pathetic.