The Nightingale Murder (The Maria Kallio Series Book 9)

by Leena Lehtolainen

  Ursula got out of the car and grabbed the bag of food and a flashlight from the back seat. I’d also brought a flashlight. In its beam, I saw that Ursula was wearing a holster under her arm. Suddenly she buttoned her coat.

  “You never know. Maybe someone’s following us,” she whispered.

  “Like who?”

  “I wasn’t expecting those two guys who jumped me after I left the Mikado that night either,” she replied. We walked through the yard of the neighboring cabin to the Mäkinens’ lot. There were tracks in the snow, in the size and shape of a man’s boots, that led to the shed. Instead of following them, we approached the front door and knocked, but no one answered. I turned the door handle—nothing. The windows that faced the road were covered on the inside with thick fabric, so we couldn’t see in.

  “Is anyone there?” I yelled in Finnish. “Police, open up!”

  No answer. We circled to the other side of the cabin, where there was also a window. It had curtains as well. We walked to the outhouse and lifted the latch. The smell was unmistakable: it had been used recently. If it had gone unused all winter, the excrement would have frozen and wouldn’t smell.

  We walked back to the porch of the cabin and knocked again. I raised my eyebrows at Ursula and motioned for her to give talking a try.

  “Hello, Oksana, open the door! My name is Ursula. I’m a friend. Lulu’s friend. I’ve come to help you. I have food,” Ursula shouted in English loud enough that it echoed all the way to the shore. Her hand was on her holster.

  We listened hard. From inside we heard a faint rustling, as if someone was trying to tiptoe across the floor. I took off my winter gloves and traded them for latex. Then I took out my lock picks.

  The lock was a simple Abloy model that took about five minutes to open. I wasn’t any expert picklock, but I knew the basics. I reasoned that Oksana might be starving and maybe even in danger because of her infected wounds, which justified these illegal means. When the door finally opened, I let Ursula enter first. She shined her flashlight in, holding it in her left hand. Her right hand was on her holster. There was a rustling from the corner at the back of the room. We moved closer and saw someone huddled on the floor. I recognized Oksana Petrenko, although she looked even worse than she had in the hospital. Her hair was matted from not having been washed. The wound on her face was swollen and seeping. Instead of a fur coat, she wore a dark-green quilted coat and pants, which looked like they were from the 1970s. She cautiously crawled toward us. The flashlights dazzled her. She was shaking. In her trembling hand, she held a bread knife.

  “Don’t worry, Oksana. We are friends. Lulu’s friends. We have food for you. Here.” Ursula showed her the bag of food. Oksana stared as if she didn’t believe her eyes. Her gaze was glossed over and feverish. Ursula ordered Oksana to put the knife away, but she didn’t comply. She did stand up slowly, though, leaning one arm on the table. The knife shook in her hand so violently that taking it would have been child’s play. Ursula stepped closer and smiled.

  I intentionally stayed in the shadows.

  “Gde Lulu?” Oksana had difficulty speaking, as if her throat hurt. “Lulu umer?”

  I knew Ursula didn’t understand that Oksana was asking where Lulu was and whether she was dead. Instead of saying anything, Ursula nodded toward the oil lamp on the table, and when Oksana didn’t object, she lit it. Oksana lowered the knife a little and stared at the bag of food. Then she noticed me. Her expression, which had relaxed a little, changed back to terror. Ursula noticed, dropped her flashlight on the table, and grabbed her wrist. Even though Oksana tried to resist, she was no match and the knife dropped to the floor, where I lunged to grab it.

  “Sto eto? Ana milisiya . . .” Oksana tried to wrench free of Ursula’s grip, but Ursula was stronger. She grabbed onto the same wrist with her other hand.

  “There’s no reason to get rough,” I told Ursula. It was obvious the girl was exhausted. “The key is in the lock on the inside, so I’ll lock us in. Let her go.”

  Ursula obeyed and made Oksana sit at the table. Sitting down obviously hurt, and Oksana’s eyes welled up. I took care of the door. Then I took a few steps toward her.

  “My tvoi druz’ya,” I said gently. “Don’t worry. We come as friends,” I continued in my clumsy Russian. Druz’ya—every school child forced to watch the Finnish-Soviet propaganda film Trust in the 1970s knew that word.

  The cabin was only about fifty degrees Fahrenheit and smelled of oil, though apparently the oil heater wasn’t working. There was a fireplace, also cold. Of course, any smoke rising from the chimney would have revealed that someone was in the cabin. On another table was a radio and a small portable television set from a time before anyone ever dreamed of a digital receiver. Beyond that was a small kitchenette: two gas burners, a faucet that provided only cold water, and a sink. In an alcove was a three-tier bunk bed. All the bedding from them was piled on the foldout sofa. There weren’t any paintings or books in the cabin, but woven rugs and embroidery covered the walls. On one wall was a lighter spot where Oksana had removed a hanging rug to cover the window facing the road. Curtains covered the windows that opened onto the forest.

  “Yes, we are the police,” I told Oksana. Ursula pulled out a lighter and lit the oil lamp, then started unloading the food onto the table. A baguette, cheese, apples, orange juice, meatballs, and tea bags. I noticed a pot next to the cooktop, filled it with water, and started looking for matches. I couldn’t find any, just two empty boxes. Ursula noticed my attempts and threw me her lighter. Oksana hadn’t made any move to take the food. In the kitchenette, I found a butter knife and a cheese plane, which I gave to Ursula so that she could make some sandwiches. In the cupboard there were heavy, brown ceramic coffee cups, which would have to do for drinking tea.

  “Here you are,” Ursula said and handed Oksana a sandwich. The girl hesitated for a moment before accepting it. Ursula passed me the bread knife for safekeeping, then opened the packet of meatballs and pushed it toward Oksana, who’d managed to wolf down the entire sandwich in that short amount of time. She now began scarfing the cold meatballs.

  Maybe keeping her hungry would have made her more cooperative, but Oksana had already suffered enough. When the water boiled, I added three bags of tea. I looked for sugar in the cupboards but didn’t find any. There were only the remnants of a tube of mustard and a quarter-full bag of ground hot cereal. Maybe Oksana hadn’t known what it was. But upon closer inspection I noticed a tear in the packaging and some mouse droppings inside.

  We sat down at the table with our tea, and I tried to question Oksana. At first, she wouldn’t say anything. She clearly didn’t trust us and just glared at Ursula angrily, avoiding my gaze entirely and struggling against the chills that repeatedly wracked her body.

  “Oksana, who did this to you?” I moved my hand as if slicing my own flesh with a knife. My Russian vocabulary was lacking, but I understood Oksana’s response. “Ya.” Me.

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want . . . I wanted to get away . . .” Oksana’s speech was husky, and understanding her was difficult. She sipped the tea, and a few tears dripped into her cup.

  “I have a friend . . . Arto. He promised to help me get a visa and find a real job. An honorable job. He is a rich man and very nice. But he won’t want me any more now that I look like this.”

  “Why didn’t you call Arto Saarnio?”

  “I didn’t have his number,” she said. “And my phone is back in Espoo.”

  “Who took you to the park where you were found?”

  “The girls. Sveta and Ludmila. They were afraid I would die . . .” Oksana explained something so quickly that I didn’t have any chance of understanding. I asked why Sveta and Ludmila had left Oksana out in the cold, that she could have frozen to death.

  “They wanted me to go to the hospital. But I wouldn’t go. We fought,” Oksana replied. “It doesn’t matter if I die.”

  “Who is your pimp?” Ursula asked in English.
“Who are you afraid of?”

  Oksana didn’t answer because she was fighting back tears. I took her by the hand, which was alarmingly hot. We had to get her treatment. I took one of the blankets from the sofa bed and wrapped it around her, then poured her more tea. The cheap bagged tea was bitter but warming. Ursula and I had left our coats on, and the cabin seemed to grow colder by the minute. The wind had picked up outside, and tree branches angrily tapped on the metal roof.

  “I not say,” Oksana finally replied, now in English. “They kill me. In Finland, at home. They kill me wherever I go. Police cannot help.”

  “Why did you contact Lulu?” Ursula poured herself more tea. Oksana was quiet again for a long time and then began an explanation in Russian that I only understood in bits and pieces. Oksana and Lulu had met a while back in a restaurant, and Lulu had warned Oksana about an investigation that the National Bureau of Investigation was conducting. When Oksana decided to flee the hospital, she called Lulu. Lulu had come to pick her up and offered her sanctuary at the cabin. On Wednesday night Lulu drove Oksana to Barösund and promised to figure out how to smuggle her into Sweden. Oksana told Lulu about Arto Saarnio, and the women had planned to ask him for money.

  “Lulu said she would be on TV on Thursday. She told me to watch the show because there would be a surprise. I watched even though I didn’t understand what anyone said. The policeman was the one Lulu had warned me about. The one who wanted to drive me out of Finland. But then something strange happened, and Lulu didn’t come on the show, and from what the people did, I knew there had been an accident. I didn’t dare call her or answer the phone.”

  I had to struggle to keep up with Oksana’s rapid, breathless words.

  “We have to get you to a hospital for those cuts. You must be in pain,” I said.

  Oksana nodded. “Lulu gave me medicine, but it ran out. The pain is bad, but I’ve experienced worse. Abortions. Sometimes customers are bad and Yev—” Oksana cut herself off, but I completed it:

  “Yevgeni Urmanov”—here I made a hitting motion because I didn’t remember the Russian word—“you.”

  At the mention of this name, Oksana’s expression turned fearful, though she tried to control her reaction. I continued to look at her, and she lowered her eyes to her tea. Her hands were small, with slender fingers, and her nail polish had almost entirely worn off, leaving only a few dark red stripes around the edges.

  “Do you have cigarettes?” she asked.

  “No. Mishin—is he your boss?”

  Oksana didn’t reply, but the look in her eyes said enough. Even though no one had committed a crime against Oksana, we could continue questioning her with an interpreter because she had seen Lulu the day before her death. This girl would also be a godsend for Nordström, and eventually we would have to tell our colleagues at the NBI about finding her. But I was determined to protect my witness, so I wasn’t going to notify Nordström just yet. That meant that under no circumstances could Kaartamo learn about our finding her.

  The lights of a passing car swept through the cabin, and for a brief moment I saw how dusty the room was.

  “We need to get Oksana to medical care,” I said to Ursula in Finnish.

  Oksana, understanding this much, shook her head.

  “They find me,” she said in English. “I don’t want to go! You will tell the newspapers that I am at the hospital again so that they will think you are good.”

  “We won’t tell. We have a guard for you, to keep you safe,” I said, trying to assure her. Oksana looked defeated, but she didn’t have any other options. She must have been desperate after being trapped in this cold cabin without food for so long, without any idea of whom to turn to for help. Apparently, she had understood enough of the TV news to know that Lulu was dead.

  I wiped our fingerprints from everything that Ursula and I might have touched. There was nothing I could do about Oksana’s prints, though. Lulu Nightingale’s parents didn’t need to know that a fugitive, a woman in the same industry as their daughter, had been living in their cabin. The austerity of the cabin told the same story about Lulu’s parents that Autio and Puustjärvi had told: they didn’t have much extra money. I straightened a cross-stitch of a kitten that was frayed at one corner.

  We found Oksana’s fur coat under the blankets on the sofa bed. The fur was damp with a mixture of blood and water, evidence of Oksana’s failed attempt to clean it. Her high-heeled boots turned up behind a chair, and in them Oksana slipped and slid her way to the car.

  Ursula drove, and I sat with Oksana in the back, both because I wanted to keep an eye on her and because I wanted to win her over. I called Jorvi Hospital and announced that we were bringing in the patient who had disappeared a week and a half earlier. That would give them time to look up her records. Then I arranged a guard for Oksana. That meant one fewer patrol officer in the field, but there was no way to help it.

  In the dark car, it was easy to smell her festering wounds. Leaning back with her eyes closed, she looked as if she’d given up. Still I tried to ask her about the surprise Lulu had been planning to unveil on the television show, but my language skills were insufficient and Oksana didn’t have the energy to struggle with English. I was able to get out of her that Lulu had promised to come back on Friday the eleventh, right after Surprise Guests, and bring more food and money. But then she clammed up and shivers shook her frame.

  Suddenly we found ourselves at the ferry landing. Ursula must have taken a wrong turn at an intersection, and I was too busy talking to Oksana to have noticed. We turned around, and I tried my best to read the map by flashlight. At the turnoff to the Inkoo harbor, Oksana began to retch.

  “Ursula!” I shouted. “Stop the car!” We’d just barely pulled over to the side of the road when Oksana opened the car door, leaned out, and threw up. The ground was frozen solid, and some of the vomit splashed back on her clothing.

  I was relieved to see the streetlights at the Siuntio crossroads. I wouldn’t want to live in such darkness. It felt unsafe. After our mailbox was bombed at our rental house in Hentta, we’d moved into our current apartment building with a locked entry door, which had felt like a haven. This time around, Antti and I hadn’t thought beyond looking at apartments and houses with good access to a train station and to my work.

  I realized that it might be difficult to get a Russian interpreter on a Sunday, although someone would be on call. Could I leave Oksana’s interrogation to Ursula? We wouldn’t need two witnesses since it would be an unofficial interview. Antti would be terribly disappointed if our house hunting date fell through.

  At the hospital, the same nurse I’d met when I tried to interview Oksana before was on duty. When she saw the girl’s wounds, her expression turned grave. “This swelling is bad. Are you sure she doesn’t have blood poisoning?”

  “We aren’t doctors,” Ursula replied brusquely. We took a seat in the hallway to wait for the results of the doctor’s examination. Officer Haikala was already there waiting too.

  “Who will be paying for her hospital bill?” the nurse asked.

  “I’ll look into it,” I said and left it at that. Of course, the girl didn’t have a Finnish health insurance card, and her home country wasn’t a member of the European Union. Maybe she’d be able to turn to Arto Saarnio.

  When—if—Oksana was nursed back to health, she would be interviewed by immigration officials and the border police, and that would alert Nordström to her whereabouts. Why, if we were on the same side, did I want to keep Oksana out of Nordström’s reach?

  Officer Haikala asked whether he was supposed to protect Oksana from intruders or make sure she didn’t run away again. I said both. After fifteen minutes, the nurse came into the hall looking grim, and the doctor that followed her was equally dour.

  “The patient has blood poisoning in the wounds on her breasts and her genitals. One more day and she would have been too far gone. The wounds haven’t been cleaned properly, and she’s also dangerously dehydrated.
We’re going to move her to the intensive care unit for at least tonight,” the doctor said. Then they moved on. Ursula and I stood in the hallway, neither able to leave.

  “It looks like we saved at least one life,” Ursula finally said.

  “I’m glad you called immediately about that phone ping in Barösund.”

  “You were the one who thought of the cabin. And we were lucky that Oksana didn’t resist. Maybe she realized how close to death she was. She isn’t stupid.” Ursula paused. “How do you think it felt?”

  “What?

  “To cut herself like that.” Ursula touched her own beautiful face. “That cut on her face is going to be there for the rest of her life. How could someone do that to themselves?”

  “Maybe the other options were worse,” I responded quietly. I thought about the stories I’d heard at international training events, stories about women and children kidnapped and forced to be sex slaves or whose families had sold them for a few dollars or a new television. What if someone kidnapped Taneli or Iida . . . That thought prompted such anxiety that I quickly pushed it out of my mind. Oksana had been lured to Finland with promises of a job as a waitress, but she had ended up selling herself. I’d always thought that, when it comes to sex, as long as there was free choice and mutual consent then anything goes. But how did you define free choice? And even if you were making what appeared to be a free choice, did you always have to pay for sex one way or another? Was Mauri Hytönen right after all?

  I elected to distract myself from these unanswerable questions by checking in on Tero Sulonen. Ursula decided to come with me, so together we marched through the quiet buzz of the hospital ICU, where Sulonen still lay unconscious. Officer Saari was guarding him.

  “A man called today claiming to be Sulonen’s father,” the ICU nurse said. “He asked for information about his son’s status. According to our information, the patient doesn’t have any next of kin, and since the patient is here as the victim of a crime, we decided to notify the police. The media calls constantly, so maybe this supposed father was one of them.”