Fatal Headwind

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “The smoke divers are heading in,” the fire chief told Kaarela.

  “What’s the possibility of success?” the insurance investigator asked.

  “About sixty percent. Hard to know what shape they’ll be in. If they’ve been breathing smoke this whole time . . .” The fire chief spread his arms in a way that said it all, and Kaarela swallowed. I noticed my abdominal muscles clenching. Fortunately I had a good reason to leave. I couldn’t help the trapped workers, but at least I could try to figure out what had happened.

  We drove nearly a mile before the smoke had completely cleared. After getting on the freeway, I opened the windows and turned the fan on high. Normally around this time of day I started getting hungry, but now the thought of any food but raw vegetables nauseated me.

  The Animal Revolution kids sat in the police station seminar room surrounded by five officers.

  Yliaho said that they had been quiet and were obviously scared. Jiri Merivaara sat on a chair in the corner with his legs crossed, playing with the drawstrings of his army coat. Now and then the drummer beat his muddy instrument.

  “Shouldn’t they be in school?” Yliaho asked.

  “Yeah, probably. Do you have a list of their names and information?”

  Two of the girls were under fifteen, so attempts were being made to contact their parents. The other interviews could begin immediately. I walked to the front of the room.

  “Hello. My name is Lieutenant Maria Kallio, and I’m leading the investigation into the Malinen Meats fire. We have good reason to believe this was a case of arson. You have been brought here on suspicion of participating in that arson, which may end up claiming multiple lives. Can any of you tell us how you happened to be protesting at the meatpacking plant at the same time it caught on fire?”

  No answer. My eyes scanned the room of young, withdrawn faces. Most of the protesters stared at the floor. Only one of the girls met my gaze.

  “All of you are going to be interviewed. You may be kept in custody for up to two days. Aggravated arson and arson-homicide, which are the two possibilities here, are serious enough crimes that anyone suspected of them may be jailed indefinitely. If you don’t want to spend the next few weeks of your life hanging around the Espoo Police Station, I recommend that you cooperate.”

  “Don’t count on it, pig,” said one of the boys, and the drummer hit a mocking tremolo. The cell phone in my pocket rang, and at first I thought to turn it off, but something told me I should answer it. It was the desk officer at the fire department, who told me that the two workers caught in the refrigerator had been saved and that the fire was generally under control. I listened silently. It was only once the call ended that I realized how incredibly angry I was. Looking back up at the Animal Revolution activists, I kicked the table before I could speak again.

  “Whoever set that fire came very close to being a murderer. You should be thankful the smoke divers got the last two workers out of the storage room at the last minute. They’re unconscious, but they aren’t in any immediate mortal danger. Maybe you should think of some better way to change the world than fucking killing people!”

  I kicked the table again, and a lump of mud came loose from my shoe and flew in an arc, hitting the front protester in the cheek. This caused a stir in the group.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,” I said to the girl as she wiped her cheek. I forced myself to calm down.

  “Malinen Meats murders innocent animals whose lives are just as valuable as humans’ lives are,” the bald girl said.

  “This isn’t debate class. According to Finnish law, slaughtering animals is not a crime, but killing people is, so . . .”

  “That law is wrong!” shouted a girl sitting next to Jiri Merivaara.

  “Which law do you mean, the one that forbids killing people or the one that allows slaughtering animals? I sincerely hope you mean the first,” I said sharply.

  “Why are you always after us? Why don’t you chase the people selling drugs at our school?” asked a small girl with angel curls whose red sweater extended all the way down to the tops of her black rubber boots.

  “Our narcotics officers will be more than glad to take that information. You can give any tips during your interviews. If you’re under fifteen, we’ve already contacted your parents. You older ones can tell the officers who interview you who you’d like us to notify of your detention. You have the right to legal counsel during your interview if you wish. Does anyone have anything to say about how the fire started now?” I asked, although I didn’t expect an answer. The group’s discipline was strict, so we were only going to get any information in the individual interviews, if even there.

  To my surprise, the door to the seminar room opened and Taskinen walked in.

  “Excuse the interruption. Lieutenant Kallio, could you join me in the hall for a moment,” Taskinen said in a formal tone. Once I got outside, I saw that the chief of police was there too.

  “You haven’t started the interrogations yet, have you?” the chief asked.

  “No. I was just giving them a little sermon on morality,” I said with slight embarrassment.

  “We’re interrupting the investigation. Security Intelligence and the Bureau are taking over,” Taskinen said. From his expression I could tell he had been afraid of what my reaction would be.

  “What the hell?”

  “They’ve had a special team investigating environmental groups for the past six months. This arson is going to them. SIS is sure that Animal Revolution is being led from overseas,” said the new chief of police. He was the old head of the Criminal Division, and getting along with him had always been a bit of a challenge. Of course it was understandable that a chief of police had to be a bootlicker, and maintaining relationships with the people who determined police appropriations was important. In our meetings over the fall I had noticed the chief becoming increasingly cautious.

  In theory I should have been relieved that our unit wasn’t going to be burdened with yet another investigation, but I wasn’t. My interest in Animal Revolution’s antics had started to move beyond Jiri Merivaara’s involvement.

  “What happens now? Do I let them go?”

  “The opposite,” the chief said with satisfaction. “They’re being taken into the city for questioning by the SIS. This is not their day. The vehicles are waiting downstairs.”

  “There are two kids under fifteen, but their parents aren’t here yet.”

  The chief snorted. “I guess they’ll have to drive into the city too. That’s what they get for raising terrorists!” I wondered what Juha Merivaara would have said to something like that.

  “Who at SIS is in charge of the investigation?” I asked. The chief didn’t want to answer at first, but after I pressed him, he named Agent Jormanainen.

  I was embarrassed by my old-lady sermon, so I didn’t go back into the seminar room. Instead I climbed the stairs to my office and called the Security Intelligence Service. Agent Jormanainen answered quickly—he was probably waiting for his victims to arrive.

  “Hi. This is Lieutenant Maria Kallio from the Espoo Police. I’m investigating a homicide that might have links to Animal Revolution. I want all your information on the group. I’m not interested in what certain individuals have been doing, just the organization’s principles and who belongs to it. And I want the information now, preferably by e-mail.”

  I refused to listen to his protests, and eventually Agent Jormanainen promised to send me a memo, although not via e-mail because that wasn’t secure enough for a spook like him. He would send it by courier later in the day.

  All this wrangling had brought back my appetite. First a good lunch, then it would be time to interview Riikka Merivaara. We already had a search warrant for the house, and there was no way I was going to be able to keep my grubby fingers off of Jiri’s room.

  10

  The sea was deep blue and the wind whipped up whitecaps on the bay. The view from the Merivaaras’ living room was
amazing. Originally Martti Merivaara’s mother’s ancestral home had stood on the lot. Martti had had it demolished in the midsixties, building in its place a boxy two-story house that hugged the shoreline. The structural solutions harkened back to a time before the energy crisis of the early seventies: the entire seaside wall was one enormous window. The blond wood surfaces and Alvar Aalto furniture made the living room look more like an exhibition space than a private home.

  Only Riikka was home. She was very pale, her dark-brown hair combed to one side of her head, falling almost like a veil over her face. Her long, black knit skirt and cement-colored knit jacket made her look like a little girl wearing her mother’s clothes. Had Riikka Merivaara always dressed more conservatively than other women her age, or had a change in style come along with her romance with Tapio Holma?

  “The police were here once before and took our clothes and shoes. When do we get them back?”

  “When our forensic team doesn’t need them anymore. Are the others home?”

  “Mom is at work, and Jiri is at school. He should be back soon. I think he gets out at two.”

  Koivu cast me a significant glance, but I didn’t mention anything about Jiri Merivaara’s real whereabouts.

  “Riikka, we need to set up a time for a formal interview. Could you come to the police station next Monday around noon?”

  “I have a music-theory test next Monday at twelve. Can’t we talk now?”

  “We can talk, but it won’t be official.” I sat down in a bright-red lattice armchair. I felt like putting my legs up on the matching stool but decided against it, since my shoes were still covered in mud from the chase in the field. Of course it would have been polite to remove them, but a police officer sneaking around in her socks seemed too much like the punch line of a joke.

  “Did you know Harri Immonen?”

  My question surprised Riikka, making her turn suddenly. Her hair swung, concealing her eyes even more.

  “Harri? I didn’t really know him, but I saw him a few times. He was Mikke’s friend. Sometimes I’ve thought that Tapio and Harri would have had a lot to talk about. Too bad they never met.”

  “Did you hear about Tapio’s dustup with your father on your mother’s birthday?”

  Riikka turned back toward the window, then brushed her hair off her forehead with an irritated swipe of her hand.

  “Yes, they all told me about it—Dad, Jiri, and Tapio—each with their own versions.”

  “How did the versions differ?”

  “Jiri was the only one who told me what they said.” Riikka’s voice was emotionless, but she clenched the fabric of her skirt. “It was so stupid . . . but I had to ask Tapio if he really said something so gross to Dad.” Riikka glanced at Koivu, who then looked at me.

  “I’ll go have a look in the garage,” he said.

  After Koivu had left, Riikka came over to sit next to me in another armchair. The skin on her face was thin in the same way as her mother’s, and in ten years she would have the same network of expression lines around her eyes and mouth. Her dark eyebrows were carefully plucked and didn’t need any emphasis.

  “You aren’t going to write this down, are you?” she asked in embarrassment. I shook my head, and it wasn’t actually a lie, since I didn’t intend to make any notes. If what Riikka Merivaara told me had some significance to her father’s murder investigation, we would have to return to it during an official interview.

  “In the sauna Dad said something like, ‘Is that all you’ve got to screw my daughter with?’”

  Two irregular red splotches appeared on Riikka’s cheeks.

  “Then Tapio said, ‘I know you’d prefer to be screwing your daughter yourself, but unfortunately that’s illegal.’ Then they started hitting each other, and Jiri intervened.”

  “Did your father ever make any advances on you?”

  “No!” Riikka’s face was suddenly young and bewildered. “Dad wasn’t a pervert. I don’t know where Tapio came up with that.”

  “Did your father treat your previous boyfriends as negatively as he has Tapio Holma?”

  “There hasn’t been anyone else. I haven’t dated anyone before,” Riikka said quickly. I remembered Holma’s talk of marriage and having a child and wondered whether Riikka would want to settle down that quickly.

  I started asking Riikka about the other events of Saturday evening, but she wasn’t able to tell me anything new. The only interesting piece I got out of her was that she had thought of Seija Saarela as a gatecrasher.

  “Seija is Mom’s friend in a way, or at least she wants to be, but I don’t understand her crystal thing. Crystals are beautiful, of course, but it seems so stupid to think that they have some kind of energy. She gave Tapio some quartz cuff links and an amulet that’s supposed to help him get his voice back. As if some rock was going to help with that!”

  “Tapio must be pretty depressed about losing his voice.”

  “Just imagine losing your legs so you couldn’t be a police detective anymore,” Riikka said.

  “Has he decided about having the operation yet?”

  “Actually he’s with the laryngologist right now for a consultation. Apparently there’s this surgeon in the United States who specializes in cases like Tapio’s, but it would cost a ton of money . . .”

  Riikka Merivaara would inherit half of her father’s shares in the family company. If she sold those, the profit would be in the millions. But Riikka and Tapio couldn’t have killed Juha Merivaara for that, could they? Although I had been thinking there must be at least two members of the Rödskär party involved in the murder, the idea of Tapio Holma and Riikka Merivaara sneaking around in the dark and pushing people off of cliffs wasn’t very convincing. Neither of them would have had the nerve for that.

  I stood up before the temptation to stretch my legs could get too strong.

  “Would you take me to your parents’ bedroom?”

  Riikka led me down a wide hallway to the east end of the house. The Merivaaras’ bedroom was spacious, at least three hundred square feet. A full-wall window provided a view into the small grove of trees that separated the Merivaaras’ lot from the neighbor’s. The furnishings were blond birch and linen, and above the bed hung a stylized portrait of Anne Merivaara. The only exception to the room’s look was the other painting: a romantic-style seascape depicting a sailboat passing a lighthouse. I could feel my clothing tainting the room with the stench of burned meat.

  “And your father didn’t have an office at home?”

  “No. And those other police officers already went through all the drawers.”

  On the south wall of the bedroom was a walk-in closet. Juha Merivaara’s clothing was expensive and conservative. The leisurewear mixed in among the suits was easy to imagine being worn at sea or playing tennis. I hadn’t expected to find a collection of men’s-size evening gowns or something, but I was still disappointed that I didn’t find anything in Juha Merivaara’s bedroom that could have shed any light on his death.

  “And Jiri’s room?” I asked, remembering that the SIS might be showing up at any minute.

  “What about it?” There was irritation in Riikka’s voice, which poorly concealed the fact that she feared for her brother. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who considered Jiri suspect number one.

  “The search warrant covers the whole house. I’ll just have a glance.”

  “It’s right by the kitchen. Jiri doesn’t like people going in his room without permission.”

  Just then Koivu yelled from the entryway, where there was a door into the garage. “Maria! Come here for a minute!”

  I left Riikka in the bedroom and walked through the entryway into the garage. There was space for two cars, but according to Anne, the family had given up using one of them and started taking the bus. So the second spot was taken up with brand-new mountain bikes, boat ropes, tarps, and paint cans.

  “You can tell this is a paint-manufacturer’s garage. You could paint a whole cruise ship w
ith this stuff,” Koivu said.

  “No, this isn’t Merivaara boat paint. Most of it’s house paint,” I pointed out and then started lifting the tarps, but all I found were the normal tools anybody might have.

  “There are foreign cans here too. What language is this? Saugoti nuo saules sviesos,” Koivu said, trying to sound out the words with difficulty. “Sudetis . . . well, it isn’t Estonian or Polish.”

  “Maybe Latvian or Lithuanian, but I can’t tell them apart. Strange that Merivaara would be storing competitors’ products in his garage. Did you want to show me something in particular?”

  “This flashlight,” Koivu said, trying to sound nonchalant, even though his eyes were beaming. Wearing protective gloves, he picked up a foot-long black flashlight from one of the metal shelves that covered the back wall of the garage. The glass was broken. “I came in here Monday too, but this flashlight wasn’t here then.”

  I nodded. I had worked with Koivu long enough to know that he was thinking the same thing I was: whoever returned the flashlight thought the police wouldn’t come back to the Merivaaras’ garage.

  “Send it to the lab. It might’ve been washed already, but they can tell us if there are any prints and whether the glass matches what they found in Merivaara’s head wound. If we’re lucky, there might still be some blood.”

  There wasn’t anything else interesting in the garage. According to Koivu, everything was in the same place as on their previous search. So we went back inside. I couldn’t help peeking in the kitchen as I passed. It was brightly lit and had the clean simplicity of a laboratory. The food processor, blender, juicer, and the potted herbs decorating the windowsills suggested that plenty of healthy cooking happened here.

  A thick black curtain was drawn over Jiri’s window. The dark-purple walls completed the cave-like impression. I turned on the light. I couldn’t help giving a start when I saw the poster on the wall above the bed depicting a cat connected to electrodes. The animal’s eyes and nose were running, its mouth was open as if the cat were struggling to breathe, and its body looked convulsive. It was hard to imagine anyone voluntarily keeping a picture like that on their wall.