Fatal Headwind

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I related how we had run in to drag Ström off of Väätäinen.

  “It’s my belief that Väätäinen provoked Lieutenant Ström into attacking him. Ström has been investigating Väätäinen’s crimes for years, but we’ve never been able to put him away,” I said. “First the wife didn’t want to press charges, and then Väätäinen was sent to mediation. It wasn’t any wonder Ström got frustrated.”

  “It’s admirable that you’re trying to protect Lieutenant Ström, since you’re his boss, but you both know the law. There is no defense for using violence during interrogations. Väätäinen also referenced Lieutenant Ström’s own divorce, but that happened years ago. Why did that make Ström so furious?” Agent Suurpää asked.

  “I haven’t spoken with Lieutenant Ström about that because he doesn’t like to talk about his private life, so I can only offer guesses. Ström’s ex-wife got remarried two weekends ago. Ström never wanted to get divorced and didn’t want to lose his children. Maybe that’s why it felt so incomprehensible for him that someone would repeatedly abuse his own family,” I said.

  “You seem to understand your subordinate’s inner world very well. And it’s also clear you don’t want Lieutenant Ström to lose his job.”

  “I didn’t think that was the topic of this conversation,” I snapped, since I wasn’t sure myself what I thought about that. On the one hand, getting rid of Ström would be a relief, but to my own astonishment I almost found myself missing his sullen face around the halls.

  “At the time of this incident, Lieutenant Ström’s blood-alcohol level was 0.06,” Agent Suurpää said. “Lieutenant Kallio, did you notice that he had a problem with alcohol?”

  This was a trap for Ström and for me. If I said I hadn’t noticed, I would look like a gullible idiot. If I said I had noticed, I could be considered irresponsible as his supervisor.

  “I did. My intention was to bring the issue up with him at the earliest opportunity and direct Lieutenant Ström to treatment. I just didn’t have time. That will be my first order of business when Ström returns to work.”

  “That would be good. Can you comment on how long his alcohol abuse has been going on?”

  I shook my head, pointing to the fact that I’d been away from the department for the past year. Of course I remembered the empty vodka bottle I had found in Ström’s desk drawer just before I went on maternity leave, but he hadn’t necessarily emptied it during work.

  “Lieutenant Ström filled in for you as unit commander while you were on maternity leave. Did it cause problems for him becoming your subordinate after that?”

  I stared at Suurpää in confusion.

  “I thought this investigation was just about whether to charge Ström for assault and battery.”

  Suurpää interlocked his fingers and twiddled his thumbs.

  “Ström doesn’t seem to have been very well liked in your unit. What if someone paid Väätäinen to provoke Ström into hitting him?”

  Damn it, Ström, was that how you were trying to save your skin? Of course I asked whether Ström had suggested this theory himself and whether Väätäinen had confirmed it, and of course Suurpää declined to answer. In this situation, I wasn’t the one with the right to ask questions.

  “I think that sounds more ridiculous than anything. I could imagine Väätäinen cooking up something like that in order to get his own sentence reduced, but I can’t imagine anyone in my unit teaming up with a scumbag like him,” I said firmly, although I couldn’t help but think of Puupponen. He really did hate Ström. But even Puupponen wouldn’t have plotted against Ström with someone like Väätäinen.

  And I knew who everyone would think wanted most to get rid of Ström. Me. If Ström was trying to blame me for his own mistakes now, he could go to hell for all I cared. Once the interview was finished, I was so angry I marched out to the parking lot and kicked the tires of our car. Then I called Ström. I let the phone ring seven times and then hung up. Then I called again, letting it ring eight times. On the third attempt, Ström answered.

  “Hi, it’s Maria. How’s it going?” I asked, controlling my anger.

  “I was fucking sleeping,” replied Ström, sounding hungover. “What’s so goddamn important you had to call me?”

  “I’m here at the NBI talking about what you’ve been up to. Who did you blame for paying off Väätäinen?”

  I was happy Ström was miles away and couldn’t see the way my hand was shaking with rage, barely able to hold on to the phone.

  “What the hell are you talking about? You mean someone paid him to do it?”

  “You’re saying you didn’t know anything about it?”

  “About what?” Ström’s voice was already sounding much clearer. “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind. Forget about it. Apparently it’s just these G-Men screwing with me.”

  I didn’t know who to believe anymore.

  “So did you squeal on me? Tell them I’m a shithead always looking for a fight? Glad to get rid of me, right?” Ström’s voice had that familiar testiness to it, and in the background I heard the sound of a refrigerator opening and then a bottle cap coming off.

  “I just told them what happened. I have enough work here without having to explain what was going on in your head to all these idiots! Hopefully they get this cleared up fast so you can get back to work.”

  “Come off it, Maria. You know as well as I do I’m never coming back,” Ström said and hung up.

  I tried to call again, but the line was busy. He had probably pulled the cord out of the wall. I walked to the nearby river and sat down on the grass. While I waited for Koivu, I had a chance to handle a few other phone calls.

  This time I reached Kantelinen on the first try. He suggested meeting after five—apparently his schedule was booked solid for the rest of the week. I considered it momentarily but then said no. I wanted to see my family, and I was worried about Iida.

  “What about tomorrow morning? I can come in early. How about seven thirty?” I suggested. Kantelinen complained, but then gave in after a little wheedling. Puustjärvi wasn’t particularly thrilled about meeting early, since it would mean he had to leave home before seven to make it in from the suburbs. I felt like a bitchy boss, and for some reason that was gratifying.

  Was Suurpää asking Koivu his opinion about whether I could have bribed Väätäinen to push Ström’s buttons? That thought made me so mad I decided not to wait and just left a note on the car saying I had left and telling him about the early-morning meeting. Then I started walking to the nearby train station. The science museum south of the station shone in the sun like a space monster. Once I reached the platform, my phone rang again. The caller was Seija Saarela.

  “You asked Mikke about Harri Immonen. Was his death not an accident after all?”

  “That’s hard to say at the moment. Did you have something new to tell me about him?”

  “Yes, but it’s a little hard to talk right now. I have to get these crystals polished by tomorrow morning.”

  “Come down to the police station tomorrow, then.”

  “That won’t work either. I promised to spend the whole day covering for a friend who runs a health-food shop, and it’s going to give me an opportunity to sell my own jewelry too.”

  “Let’s see if one of my officers can make time to meet with you,” I said bitterly. Today felt like everything was merrily going to hell.

  “But you’re the one I want to talk to. It’s about more than Harri. There’s Mikke too. Finding that boy who committed suicide was another terrible blow for him. Why did he kill himself?”

  “That’s none of your business. I need to go now.”

  The train was coming, so I hung up. To my misfortune I ended up in the same car as a pack of noisy, foul-mouthed teenage boys. At the point one of them started spitting on the floor, I almost intervened, but didn’t dare let myself. There was so much rage pent up inside me that I could easily lose it just like Ström. I didn’t want my care
er ending because I hit some punk kid over nothing.

  Eventually I made it to the Helsinki train station. I felt like going for a beer, but my bad-mother complex hit me again. Of course I would take the first bus home to my injured child. There was enough time until the bus left, though, that I stopped by the state liquor store. I bought a fifth of anise vodka and mini bottle of whiskey, which I opened as soon as I hit the street and poured down my throat. The burning coursed through me, and by the time I climbed on the bus, I started to calm down. I changed buses once, a couple of blocks from Ström’s apartment. I wouldn’t have gone to visit even if I had the time. Not until I was walking down the dirt lane toward our house did I begin to fully relax. The fields were alternating brown and golden yellow, and a flock of sparrows was stripping a rowan tree of its berries. But the constant noise of drilling and blasting from the Ring II freeway construction site shattered the idyllic scene. Then there was an explosion and a cloud of dust spread over the field like a Mars storm in a science-fiction movie.

  Iida toddled up to me in the front hall. Her injury didn’t seem to be slowing her down; though, with her eye patch, she looked like a pirate baby. Picking my daughter up, I kissed her little cheeks, which smelled of porridge.

  “Let’s go rest for a little while. Mommy’s tired.”

  “Iia owie,” was her response, pointing at her eyelid.

  “What? Say that again,” I begged, because until now Iida had never said more than one word at a time, and even those were rare. But Iida never repeated her first sentence. She just snuggled deeper into my arms. I grabbed a banana from the kitchen, and Iida demanded half. Antti was perusing the latest issue of Finnish Nature in the living room and sat up to kiss me.

  “You smell like whiskey,” he said in surprise.

  “You caught me. No one can deal with the NBI sober. Let’s go snuggle with Iida.”

  “I’m going out for a walk. And you remember that I’m going to that symphony concert tomorrow night, right?” Antti asked. I gave a vague grunt because of course I had forgotten the whole thing. I carried Iida upstairs and listened to her cooing and looked at her little fingers, which alternated between building Duplo towers and playing with my hair. Then she snuggled in next to me with her head against my breast as if she still wanted to nurse.

  Nursing had been one of those few aspects of being a mother in which I had felt adequate. My milk had been plentiful, and my baby learned to eat within a couple of days. For me it was fascinating that my body was a source of nourishment and safety for my baby, a big, warm nest where she could doze off after filling her belly with the greatest food she knew. Iida had smiled for the first time at three months old one day after her lunch milk, and I could tell it wasn’t just an involuntary expression. The most enchanting thing about Iida was the sparkling joy in her eyes just after she woke up from a nap, when I picked her up still swaddled and sucking her pacifier. Thank God the corner of the piano hadn’t hit her an inch more to the center . . . I kissed Iida’s eyebrow, snuffling and growling until all both of us could do was laugh and kiss each other’s faces. I didn’t feel the need to open that bottle of anise vodka anymore.

  13

  When the alarm went off at six thirty, I joined everyone else in cursing my enthusiasm for an early meeting. The light of the moon, one day short of full, cast shadows across the dark, frosted fields. The mercury said twenty-eight degrees. Hopefully our elderly Fiat would cooperate. I hadn’t plugged in the block heater the night before.

  After putting on the coffee and Iida’s morning porridge, I padded out to the mailbox to get the paper. The cold stung my face, opening my swollen eyes. The forest smelled of decomposition, as if its potent aroma it was trying to protest the fall and death. The alder leaves collected around the mailbox were dark gray, and the frost had decked them in strings of pearls.

  My Fiat started after a little coaxing, but the steering wheel was so cold I couldn’t hold it without gloves. Almost immediately I got stuck in traffic and attempted irritably to find a radio station that wasn’t playing artificially perky music. Fortunately someone else was feeling cantankerous too and one of the stations was playing Apocalyptica. The hysterical cellos on their rendition of Metallica’s “The Unforgiven” almost put me in a good mood.

  Puustjärvi and Koivu sat in the conference room, talking about the previous night’s hockey matches and drinking coffee.

  “Why’d you disappear yesterday?” Koivu asked when he saw me.

  “I was in such a bad mood I didn’t feel like waiting around. Did they keep you long?”

  “Forty-five minutes. Some of their questions were really strange, though. Like they asked me if you had any reason to get rid of Ström. They were trying to make it sound like you bribed Väätäinen to get Ström to hit him. I told them you were such a raging feminist there was no way you would ever work with a wife beater like that.”

  I gave a feeble smirk. I didn’t quite understand what was going on. If Ström hadn’t suggested the bribery theory to Agent Suurpää, then who did? And who were they trying to get rid of, Ström or me?

  Kantelinen came three minutes late. First he gave us a brief overview of the Merivaara Nautical finances, which were unremarkable. The company had survived the last recession without damage, and exports had been picking up, especially over the last fiscal year. Apparently the combination of a tradition-rich family company and a modern eco-friendly approach was appealing to customers. Their accounting was impeccable and their investments sound. In addition to improving the company’s image, purchasing Rödskär Island had been a clever tax trick. The only odd thing about the otherwise flawless financial picture was the shareholding company Mare Nostrum. The company’s papers didn’t have any information about it, other than that odd post-office box on Guernsey Island.

  “Does that point to tax evasion?” Puustjärvi asked.

  “It could be that or something else,” Kantelinen replied. “The company hasn’t paid much in dividends for the past several years, so this twelve percent stake wouldn’t have meant much. Maybe a million marks total. Is that really enough to make it worth getting into some risky scam? If this were tax evasion, then we’d expect to see that the same people are behind Mare Nostrum and Merivaara Nautical. I don’t understand why that would be the case, though.”

  “So what is it, then?” I asked impatiently.

  “Mare Nostrum bought its stock in Merivaara Nautical at the bottom of the recession, right when the company started rebranding. What it looks like is that they mostly used the money from this stock sale as startup funds for the eco-paint operation. That’s why both companies having the same ownership doesn’t make sense from the tax-evasion standpoint. Real money changed hands.”

  “The members of the board have to know who owns stock in the company, don’t they?” Puustjärvi asked. “Why are we sitting here guessing when we can just ask them? Why not ask Anne Merivaara?”

  “I can take a trip to Guernsey to check on that mysterious PO box,” Koivu suggested hopefully.

  “Yeah, because that would be much more efficient than sending an e-mail! We’ll contact our colleagues there, but first let’s do like Puustjärvi said and ask Anne Merivaara and Halonen. That was the CFO’s name, right? Puustjärvi, you track down Marcus Enckell. Koivu and I will head over to the corporate offices after the morning meeting.”

  “Do you really think this Mare whatever-it-was stock thing is going to mean something?” Puustjärvi asked.

  “It could. Juha Merivaara was a little too slick for my tastes, and so far we haven’t found any motive for his killing other than some petty family feuds. Mare Nostrum—isn’t that what the ancient Romans called the Mediterranean? What could that mean?”

  Koivu snorted. “Latin wasn’t in the curriculum at my school.”

  Kantelinen started collecting his papers, and we arranged that he would contact Scotland Yard’s white-collar crime unit, where he already had contacts. The chances of getting anything on the Guerns
ey post-office box through them weren’t great, but we had to try everything.

  “That Enckell guy is pretty old, by the way,” Kantelinen said with his hand on the doorknob. “He was born in 1918. And I won’t be available the rest of the week. I’m in court today, then I’m taking comp days the rest of the week. Should I have Scotland Yard contact you directly?”

  I nodded and left for my office. For once I would have time to prepare properly for the morning meeting. Everyone else’s cases were progressing nicely. Wang had interviewed the missing mushroomer’s coworkers and learned that over the past few weeks, a handsome young Estonian man named Toomas had been dropping by the office regularly.

  “So what you’re saying is that this lady really went out looking for Estonian puffballs,” Puupponen said between sniffles.

  Wang blushed but maintained her composure. “We haven’t found her passport. According to her husband she always carried it in her purse, which is also missing. Should I pull the Tallinn ferry passenger manifests?”

  “Absolutely. What about her clothing? A woman isn’t going to leave for a weekend with her lover in her mushrooming gear,” I said.

  “What if it’s one of those weekends where you don’t need any clothes . . .”

  “Shut up, Puupponen,” I said like a mother to a three-year-old who won’t be quiet. “Wang, look into this Toomas character too. Check with the Estonians to see if they’ve found any unidentified female bodies.”

  Taskinen burst in just as we were wrapping up.

  “Good news, Maria. Väätäinen is being charged with aggravated assault. We’re finally going to nail him.”

  “Yippee,” I said unenthusiastically. “Was it Väätäinen who started this bribery rumor?”

  When Taskinen looked confused, I told him what the NBI agents had asked me and Koivu. He listened silently, but I could see his lips narrowing.