The Nightingale Murder (The Maria Kallio Series Book 9)

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I decided to leave talking to Kaartamo until tomorrow. God, how I missed Taskinen. The conversations and the lunches, even though those hadn’t happened often enough. I didn’t dare e-mail him about Ursula’s screwup, because I feared it might end up in the wrong hands. I needed someone to talk to. So in the car I called my friend Leena.

  “Have time for a cup of tea tonight? Or take the kids out for a walk?”

  Leena had moved to a neighborhood on a bay to the west of us, and during the cycling season we’d made a habit of riding back and forth between each other’s homes.

  “No dice. I’m baking like a madwoman for Aunt Allu’s funeral. Are you going to be able to make it?”

  “Oh right, the funeral!” Leena’s godmother, her aunt Allu, had died two weeks earlier, after a brief illness. Allu had owned a car dealership, and she’d had incredible stories about the early days of her business in the 1960s. Some men simply refused to do business with a woman. But Allu had smashed the glass ceiling with a sledgehammer, and Leena and I had often talked about how much her example meant to us. “I’d love to come.”

  “Five o’clock Wednesday at the Tapiola Church, then food afterward at our place.” Allu didn’t have any family of her own, so Leena and her mother were the next of kin.

  “Any chance the priest doing the service is named Terhi Pihlaja?” When Leena said yes, I decided I’d definitely be there. I could almost call it official business.

  That afternoon we took the whole family skating outside, although Iida complained about the lumpy ice. Antti was adorably clumsy in his size twelve and a half skates. Iida tried to teach him a loop, but it was next to impossible in hockey skates. I helped Taneli work on his spirals. Finally the adults had to give up because our ankles hurt too much.

  “Julia said Taneli has a lot of talent. The angles and trajectories come naturally for him,” Antti said as we were hopping up and down to stay warm on the edge of the rink. “Iida has more dedication than ability, so maybe we should think about moving her from individual to synchronized.”

  “Oh, let her enjoy her ice princess dreams a little longer! I really don’t think we need to start thinking too far into the future. Let’s at least wait until next winter. By the way, when was the last time someone put snow down your shirt?” What followed involved considerable rolling around in the snow, and despite the chill, I felt good once I lay defeated in a drift, pinned under Antti. At least we still knew how to have fun together.

  In the morning, I felt guilty for how chipper I was when I saw the exhaustion on Puupponen’s freckled face. But he had an enthusiastic glint in his eyes, because he’d managed to dig up a considerable amount of information about Igor Mishin, a Russian citizen with permanent residence status in Finland.

  “Was he the one who was responsible for the pimping scandal at the Russian trade office last fall?” Koivu asked.

  “No. Our Igor isn’t guilty of anything. He owns an import business. He sells pickles and frozen kulebyakas.”

  “What’s a kulebyaka?” Koivu’s gastronomical knowledge didn’t extend far beyond Finnish and Asian cuisine.

  Puupponen looked at him and chuckled. Ursula joined in, and I couldn’t help smiling too.

  “Meat pies, dunderhead,” Ursula cackled. “He runs a meat pie company.”

  “More like a fur pie company,” Puupponen said and started laughing again. Once he’d regained his composure, Puupponen told us that both the Helsinki Patrol Division and the National Bureau of Investigation had Mishin under elevated surveillance and that they’d interrogated him a couple of times for pandering but hadn’t found enough evidence to charge him. Mishin lived in the Eira neighborhood, not far from the Blue Nightingale. Rumor had it he was one of the big fish in Helsinki’s prostitution business.

  “It’s a good system. He forces the restaurants to buy his food and charges them astronomical prices, which is really protection money,” Puupponen said. “And if things start to get too hot, he can just skip back home to St. Petersburg. He actually owns his own helicopter. And a bakery and apartments all over Helsinki, supposedly for short-term bakery workers. Because sometimes there’s so much demand for kulebyakas that they have to import temporary workers. Since Finns don’t know how to bake them right.”

  “We still have to do more looking into Mishin’s girls,” Autio added. “Today I’ll review all the temporary bakery workers’ permits and contact the visa office. He probably has illegal immigrants working for him too, but our Oksana might be one of the girls with legit papers.”

  “Do we know whether Mishin’s goons have killed anyone before?” I asked. Autio didn’t know. For now we’d have to leave it at that.

  Immediately after the morning meeting, I went to see Assistant Chief Kaartamo. His office was impeccably clean, probably due to his secretary’s efforts.

  “What’s the big emergency?” Kaartamo didn’t invite me to sit, but I did anyway. My chair was lower than his, so I had to look up at him.

  “One of my subordinates, Ursula Honkanen, had a bit of a screwup.” I tried to keep my voice from trembling when I spoke to Kaartamo, but it wasn’t easy. Kaartamo listened to me with his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the surface of his desk. There was already a lot of gray in his thin hair, and he’d recently switched his glasses to square frames. Kaartamo wore a suit, but unlike some of our more fashionable colleagues, his suits often looked too tight and shabby.

  “Didn’t we have some trouble from Honkanen a few years back?” he asked once I was finished.

  “Yes, but we straightened that out with a couple of conversations and a short sick leave.”

  “So Honkanen hasn’t filed a criminal report?”

  “No, but I think she should.”

  Kaartamo uncrossed his arms and leaned forward, squeezing the edge of the desk with his hands.

  “Well played, Kallio. You brought this to me so I’d get dragged into the muck too. I’ll talk to Honkanen.”

  “If I hadn’t notified you, I’d be guilty of misconduct!”

  “Exactly. I said it was well played. Is Honkanen in the building now, or is she home recovering?”

  “She’s here even though she shouldn’t be.”

  “Send her up right now. Forcing people to work when they’re injured doesn’t look good.” Kaartamo’s voice was pure ice. I stood up and left, feeling like a cat who’d been shooed away from the dinner table. Ursula was in her office, working on the computer.

  “Go talk to Kaartamo. March!”

  Ursula had tried to cover her bruises with makeup and been reasonably successful. A scarf tied as a hairband covered the worst contusion on her temple. Ursula never wore anything like that, so to me it looked out of place.

  “What does that mean?” Ursula’s voice was uneasy.

  “I don’t know. Go find out.”

  Suddenly Ursula jumped up and snapped at me.

  “I just had to go and tell you . . . I was so messed up from not sleeping. I should have just kept my mouth shut. You’re such a goody two-shoes, you’ve probably never even had a parking ticket. Your life must be so boring.”

  I didn’t have the energy to argue, so I just left. When I closed my own office door, it banged more loudly than normal. In my e-mail inbox, I found an edited draft of my article for a book the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health was publishing about domestic violence. Since this was still considered a women’s issue, and I was a female violent crime detective, I’d been asked to write one of the chapters. I thought that was like putting responsibility for motor vehicle theft on the car owners, rather than the car thieves. Still, editing was a nice change of pace. I was about to send out my new draft when the phone rang. It was Iida’s teacher.

  “Good afternoon, Maria. I’m calling to let you know that Iida will need to stay after school for detention today. She bit a fifth grader named Miro Miettinen during recess.”

  “She bit a fifth grader?”

  “Yes. She bit the back of his hand hard enough to b
reak the skin. We had to take him to the health center. The hand will heal, but Iida is going to get some time to think about why she did it.”

  “Did she say why? Did the boy say anything?”

  “No. I’d like to ask you to talk to Iida about the incident at home and contact me again if you find out something. Of course, we tried to talk to the other students, but so far we aren’t clear about what started the incident. We do know that Miro’s friend reported to the recess monitor that Iida was biting. Miro is a full head taller than Iida, but her bite was so strong that he couldn’t shake her off him. You can call me this evening if necessary. We need to get to the bottom of this.”

  I was so thrown off that I initially sent the edited article to the wrong e-mail address. Then I had to send a message to apologize. Iida wasn’t usually violent. When she was a little younger, she sometimes pushed Taneli if he messed up her games, but that had stopped once she’d started school. And now to attack a boy three years older—why would Iida do something like that?

  When I was younger, I hadn’t hesitated to tackle opponents larger than myself on the soccer field, but I’d never attacked someone for no reason. I knew girls got in fistfights these days, but I thought that didn’t start until puberty. Early in the winter Koivu had questioned three fourteen-year-old girls who’d kicked a classmate badly enough to put her in the hospital. The reason they’d given was that the girl was “too snobby.”

  Puustjärvi knocked on my door. He had good news.

  “IT got into Lulu’s computer! They’re going through the files now, but at least one has the word ‘customers’ in the title. I’m going to head down there right now and see if we can get any names.”

  “Excellent. Let me know if you find anything significant. It’ll be interesting to see who’s in there.”

  “Probably just normal Finnish men whose wives don’t put out or aren’t interested in experimenting,” Puustjärvi said bitterly. A few years ago, he’d told me about his one-night stand with Ursula, and I think he still regretted that. At last year’s department Christmas party, he’d come over to talk to me about it, and I assured him I’d forgotten about the whole thing, which I almost had.

  I tried to reach Antti, since it would be good for him to know Iida would be coming home an hour late, but he didn’t answer the home phone or his cell. Maybe he was swimming. I went to eat with Koivu and vented my astonishment about Iida’s behavior.

  “Tell her that her godfather is going to come give her a talking-to,” Koivu said, then scarfed down his stroganoff and three large boiled potatoes. “I only had a roll for breakfast,” he explained when he saw my expression. “Anu said we should ask her brother’s girlfriend’s sister about Oksana. I guess she’s been running with a pretty questionable crowd. I’ll handle it.”

  “Good. I think we’ll start seeing some progress now that we have access to Lulu’s computer.” A piece of carrot was stuck between my teeth, and I tried to get it out with my tongue. When that didn’t work, I had to resort to a toothpick. My phone started ringing—it was Kaartamo.

  “I need you right now,” he said without asking if I was available.

  I glanced at my plate, which was still half-full of veggie pasta. All I could do was heap some on my fork, shove it in my mouth, and mumble a quick good-bye to Koivu. As I climbed the stairs, I wondered whether this would be the last meal I’d ever eat in the department cafeteria. Maybe I would be relieved of duty and eventually fired after some messy administrative proceedings.

  Kaartamo stood in the middle of his office, and Ursula sat in a chair near the window.

  “Close the door,” Kaartamo said. Once I did, he began speaking. “I’m only going to say this once, and then this matter is closed. Ursula Honkanen never visited the Mikado. She fell cycling.”

  “But we can’t just . . . We have to report the assault—”

  Kaartamo interrupted me. “Listen up, Maria. I’m taking full responsibility for this decision. You can feel free to hide behind me if this ever comes up again. I hope you’ll keep your mouth shut and not gossip about this at your knitting circle or soccer club or whatever it is you women are doing these days. Loose lips could cost you your job too. Dismissed.”

  I stared at Kaartamo for a moment and didn’t like what I saw. Then I turned around and walked out, slamming the door behind me. I didn’t bother to wait for Ursula. At the bottom of the stairs I kept right on walking out of the building. The people waiting in the lobby to collect passports and driver’s licenses stared—my expression must have been quite a sight.

  “Hey, Kallio, where’s the fire?” yelled a young officer from behind the glass of the crime reporting desk.

  I walked through the parking lot to the few pine trees that remained of the forest that had once grown here. Their bark was already turning red as it did every spring, and cones dotted the ground. I picked one up and crushed it between my fingers. The wind picked up and blew my hair into my eyes. I hadn’t gone back to my office for my coat and was now cold. Kaartamo had decided to take the easier way, but it was the wrong decision. I didn’t believe we’d get caught, yet that possibility did exist. Should I take the initiative and start looking for a new position as a village cop?

  A great tit twittered in one of the trees. Soon a blue tit flew up next to it. The wind felt as if it were coming straight from Siberia, and spring seemed further away than ever despite the other signs.

  Back inside, I grabbed some hot cocoa in the cafeteria and then walked up the stairs to get my blood flowing again. Puustjärvi and Ursula were sitting in the conference room, working in seeming perfect harmony through Lulu Nightingale’s computer and disks, all of which had now been accessed. In the end, it turned out that Lulu’s passwords weren’t anything special: the computer password was “Paavo” and the disk password was “Anita”—her parents’ names.

  “We’ve already found a few familiar names,” Puustjärvi said. “I’ll try to get a summary together for the morning report, and then we can talk about which ones we should pull in for questioning. One is a former government minister, and there are a couple of CEOs and a hockey team owner.”

  Ursula said that on the disks were some sort of combination diary/notebook with more details about Lulu’s encounters. I left them to work and went to consult with Puupponen about a rape case he was investigating.

  “Typical story. The woman was a little drunk and accepted an invitation from a neighbor for a nightcap. The man claims she kissed him first. The woman says she never agreed to sex. The case is going to Katri Reponen to consider charges. It’ll be interesting to see what the defense is like. There aren’t any witnesses, but the woman has injuries that make her story more convincing than the man’s, at least to me.”

  “It’s good this is moving along. We have access to Lulu’s computer now, and we’re likely to have a new list of names for interviews. Well done,” I said and patted Puupponen on the shoulder. Then I tried to reach Antti again, with as little success as before. I thought about Tero Sulonen. Maybe he would be able to tell us about these people in Lulu’s notes.

  All of a sudden Ursula burst in without knocking.

  “Maria, I found something strange!” The largest bruise on Ursula’s face had begun to turn yellow around the edges. A few years ago, one of the makeup trends had been black eye shadow that made everyone look like junkies. When would that be replaced by bruises to make everyone look like battered women?

  “What is it?”

  “There are notes here about Lulu being questioned twice by Lasse Nordström. Listen. ‘That Nordström fucker grilled me again today. He showed up at the door in the middle of the day and demanded to talk to me. Wasn’t it enough for him to make me come down to the NBI office? I don’t have the information he wants, and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t tell him. I’d prefer to protect girls like Svetlana and Oksana.’ The entry is from February of this year. But Nordström said he hadn’t had any contact with Lulu.”

  “Yes, he did.
Does she mention this Nordström’s first name?”

  “No. But it would be an incredible coincidence if there was another prostitution investigator named Nordström. I can check, though.” Ursula seemed overly enthusiastic.

  “Yeah, find out and then let me know.”

  I looked up Lasse Nordström’s number, and when Ursula came back to tell me that there wasn’t another agent or detective in any of the Helsinki area police forces with the same last name, I called the National Bureau of Investigation.

  “Where should we meet, Lasse? You lied in your interview. You do have a connection to Lulu Nightingale. You interviewed her once at your office in Tikkurila and once at her home. There’s no point denying it, since it will be in your case files.”

  There was a moment of silence on the other side of the line, and then Nordström started to laugh. It sounded forced.

  “No, Kallio, you’re wrong. Those documents aren’t public yet. We’re in the middle of a huge operation, and you’d better not screw it up.”

  “I interviewed you as a witness, not as a suspect. That’s definitely recorded in our reports. That means you can’t lie.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with that whore’s murder. I just happened to be unlucky enough to be on the same TV program. Are you going to believe me, or do I need to get our bosses involved?” I could imagine how Lasse Nordström looked sitting in his office, free hand clenched in a fist, brow furrowed, lips pursed. I felt my own body tense, and my voice dropped an octave.

  “Don’t you try to threaten me. Besides the fact that you knew Lulu, apparently you also know something about the woman who disappeared from Jorvi Hospital a few days ago. Oksana. You haven’t mentioned anything about that either. What time are we meeting tomorrow? How about first thing in the morning, at nine o’clock?”

  Nordström didn’t speak for a moment. He clearly wanted to choose the best option for himself, the one that would require the most concessions from me.