Deep as Death

by Katja Ivar

  I felt dizzy myself, but it wasn’t because of the champagne. The enormity of what I had committed myself to had started to sink in, and my brain was a jumble of numbers. What if I had misjudged the situation? Would I even be able to pay? I had asked Sofia to keep it a secret, to tell no one about our plans, but I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist sharing the news with her father, cousins and closest friends. In a matter of hours, all of Helsinki would know.

  “Chief Inspector?” Little Anita was standing in the doorway, clutching a paper file. “I’ve collected the information you requested this morning.”

  I threw my jacket over the back of my chair, beckoned for her to sit down. “What have we got on him?”

  “Mr Steve Collins,” Anita said, and her voice wobbled, “was born on 11 August 1918 in Helsinki.”

  “Hey,” I said gently. “Anita. You’re not betraying your friend. You’re just compiling background information on a suspect. Have you ever met him?”

  She nodded, her eyes bright. “Once, briefly. He came over to Hella’s place to fetch something.”

  “And what did you think of him?”

  A helpless shrug.

  “Anita,” I said, “we need to find out all we can about Mr Steve Collins. If he’s not the one who is killing those innocent young women, the earlier we cross his name off the suspect list, the better. And if he turns out to be the killer, our job is to stop him. Put him behind bars. I’m sure even Miss Mauzer would agree with that. Wouldn’t she?”

  Anita mumbled something I couldn’t hear. She was still clutching the paper file.

  “Say that again?”

  “Hella says she doesn’t believe he – Steve – could be involved. She … she was furious when I suggested it.”

  “No kidding? And you’re still living with her? Shouldn’t you start looking for a different place?”

  Anita nodded and let go of the file.

  I was careful not to seize on it too quickly. “Did you find anything?” I asked, as I leafed through the pages. “Something that could make us think he’s our guy? Something that… Oh, I see.” So she had found it. I’d been right about the girl: she had beauty and brains. A good addition to any team. Maybe too good. My men were already having trouble concentrating on their work as it was. “Well, thank you, Anita. Good job. How did you find out?”

  “I talked to his colleagues at the radio station. The receptionist told me about a woman Mr Collins knew some years back. She drowned.”

  “Right. This changes everything, doesn’t it? What was the woman’s name?”

  “Matilda Reims.”

  “Reims, you said?” I stood up quickly. “Go to the archives, see if —”

  “I already did.” Anita smiled nervously. “I called Ranta. He’s coming up with the file. Does the fact that…” She hesitated. “Is it really significant? I mean, from what Ranta told me over the phone, another man was the prime suspect.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t investigate that case. I only heard about it in passing. But the fact that Mr Steve Collins was involved with another mysteriously drowned woman… It’s too much of a coincidence to be ignored.”

  “We need to question him,” Anita said, reluctantly, perhaps feeling that that was what I expected to hear. She kept glancing at the Nellie Ritvanen file that was sitting on my desk; she wanted to consult it, had asked for it twice already, but each time I had denied her access.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Good thinking.” I smiled at Anita, but she was biting her lower lip and didn’t smile back.

  40

  Chief Inspector Mustonen

  When I got home that evening, after a short stop at the jewellers to discuss the design of the brooch I had ordered for Sofia, my wife and child were both screaming. At first I thought Arne had fallen and hurt himself, so I rushed towards my son and grabbed him, checking his body for injuries. Immediately, he stopped sobbing and stared at me.

  “What are you doing?” Sofia asked in an icy voice. She, too, had stopped screaming; she was standing in the middle of the living room, arms folded across her chest, eyes narrowed.

  I set Arne on the floor. “What? What happened?”

  Sofia unfolded her arms and stabbed at the air. “This happened!” There was a tremor in her voice now. I looked in the direction she was pointing. This turned out to be the hideous art nouveau floor lamp, Sofia’s family heirloom, the glass globe that crowned it neatly broken down the middle.

  “Arne…” I kneeled next to my son. “Did you do this?” He screwed his eyes shut, shook his head no. “Who was it, then? Was it Sara?”

  Sofia snorted. “Right, blame the cleaner now!”

  “Arne?” I prodded gently. Two big tears rolled from under my son’s closed lids. I pulled a handkerchief out of my pocket. “Arne, a good man can sometimes do wrong, but he always admits to his mistakes and asks for forgiveness. Tell me who did this, and I promise I won’t punish you.”

  “I will punish him,” Sofia said. “Your dear son was playing with a ball. I’ve warned him.”

  “I’ll buy you another lamp, Sofia,” I sighed. “I’ll try to find one just like it. It’s important that Arne learns to tell the truth. When a child is penalized for his honesty, he begins to lie.”

  “Out of curiosity,” Sofia scowled, “is that how you were brought up? No punishment, whatever you did?”

  “No,” I said. “But that’s the whole point. My father was straight out of the Old Testament: lots of rules and no mercy. I don’t want to turn into him.”

  “Still,” Sofia said in a clipped voice. “Your father brought you up to be a good man. A good man who’s too soft on his precious son, and who’ll turn him into a misfit. And that lamp was one of a kind.” She turned on her heel and left the room, slamming the door shut behind her.

  Arne stifled a sob. He was trying to say something, but I couldn’t understand him.

  “What is it, buddy?”

  Arne threw his hands around my neck and buried his snotty face in my shirt.

  “Are you asking me if I always told the truth when I was a little boy?”

  Arne nodded.

  “I always tried.” Now that Sofia was gone, Arne’s sobs were quieting down. “Now you tell me.”

  “It was me,” Arne said and sniffed. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know you didn’t.” I picked him up and carried him over to the bathroom. “I’ll wash your face and then we’ll go and see Mummy, and you’ll tell her you’re sorry.”

  41

  Chief Inspector Mustonen

  On my way to the office the following morning, I stopped by the antique store on Aleksanterinkatu. There were no lamps on display that looked similar, or even vaguely art nouveau, so I pulled the broken piece of glass out of my pocket and showed it to the owner. “Could you find me something like this? My wife loved that lamp.”

  The antique dealer peered at me from above his glasses. “Not sure I can promise you anything. And if I do find something, it won’t come cheap.” He cradled the shattered remains of the globe in his palm.

  I nodded, resolutely pushing away the unwelcome thought of another fancy object that Sofia wanted and I couldn’t afford. “Of course. Please get in touch with me.” I left my card with the dealer then hurried to the office, squinting in the bright sunshine that was suddenly flooding the city.

  The pile of documents on my desk had grown by an inch or so in my absence. The Matilda Reims murder file was on top. I started working through it, on the lookout as much for the hard facts as for the things that hadn’t found their way into the paperwork but kept simmering under the surface: the inconsistencies between witness statements, the hidden motives. It was a pity I couldn’t talk to the investigating officer any more: Inspector Krigsholm had died of cancer in 1946, in the months following the investigation’s closure. All I had to go on were Krigsholm’s notes, and these were few and taken in a shorthand that at times I had trouble deciphering.

  The case seemed straightf
orward enough. A young, pretty banker’s wife, a string of lovers. Steve Collins had been one of them. There were just two mentions of him in the file: the first one to say that he was in Helsinki at the time of the drowning, the second to mention that he didn’t have a motive. It didn’t mean anything either way. Where was the motive in the prostitute’s murder? I supposed any half-decent detective would think first and foremost of her pregnancy, but wouldn’t a married woman be able to pretend she was carrying her husband’s child? I leaned back, making my chair squeak. Could Steve Collins really qualify as a suspect? Could a jury find him guilty? I didn’t really know the man, not personally in any case, but from what I’d heard, Collins lacked the drive, intensity and passion to make a successful murderer. I could quite well imagine the DJ killing someone in self-defence; a premeditated, cold-blooded murder, let alone several, was a different matter.

  In the end, the consensus of those working on the case was that the husband had done it. Mr Reims was questioned, repeatedly, but he never cracked under pressure, never confessed to anything. It was thus no surprise that the prosecutor refused to press charges. The handwritten note, scribbled across the case file, was clear enough: more evidence needed. There must not have been any, because after a couple of months the case had been archived and forgotten. I wondered what would happen if the police reopened it. Would any new witnesses come forward, perhaps someone who had been suffering from a guilty conscience all these years? On balance, I thought that unlikely. The police would be stuck where they had left off, chasing after shadows, never able to prove anything, even less able to prosecute. Unless they attacked it from a different angle. Questioned the husband again, found out what he had to say about Mr Collins’ involvement in his wife’s death. Would he become more cooperative now that he was not at the centre of the investigation?

  There was a knock on my door and Tarja’s anxious face peered at me. “Mr Steve Collins is here to see you, Chief Inspector. Shall I bring him in?”

  The man that Tarja had ushered into my office was handsome in a loose-limbed, feline kind of way. Nothing American about him except maybe his accent, which had a mid-Atlantic twang to it; I wondered how much of it was fake. After all, as Anita had discovered, the guy had been born in Helsinki.

  “Why don’t you take a seat, Mr Collins.”

  The man sat down casually, his eyes scanning the room. He refused my offer of coffee. “Don’t the police always come in pairs?” he asked.

  I smiled back at him. “Frequently we do. If it makes you more comfortable, I’ll ask one of our trainee officers to join us.” I picked up my phone, called Anita and waited. I watched the suspect closely as Anita came in and there was no mistaking the look on the man’s face: she was his type of woman. She was also the polar opposite of Mauzer, so I wondered how Mr Steve Collins had managed to stick with my former colleague for so long. Might he have been interested in the sort of immunity a relationship with a police officer could provide? Was this something that could be exploited?

  “Thank you for coming to see us at such short notice,” I said as Anita sat down.

  “My pleasure.” Steve Collins looked relaxed, but I knew he couldn’t possibly be. “Would you mind telling me the reason for this sudden interest?”

  “This.” I pointed to the madam’s little black book. “It mentions you as one of the clients. We’re investigating the alibis of everyone involved.”

  Collins extended a hand towards it. “Can I take a look? I have a hard time believing my name could be mentioned in here.”

  “No, you can’t. Why don’t you answer one simple question, Mr Collins. Were you a client?”

  “I wasn’t. But even if I had been, it wouldn’t make me a murderer.”

  Next to me, Anita was scribbling away on a legal pad, the tip of her pink tongue protruding slightly out of her mouth.

  I tried another angle. “Your house is up for sale, Mr Collins. Are you thinking of running away?”

  The man laughed, but I thought I spotted a shadow crossing his face. “My wife left me. I don’t need a big place like that any more.”

  “Did she leave you before or after Nellie Ritvanen was murdered? Because the police received an anonymous letter urging us to take a close look at your whereabouts on the night of the murder.”

  Steve Collins looked aghast, and for a moment I thought I’d scored a point. But then Collins shrugged. “I’ll only be able to answer that question if you tell me when exactly the poor girl was murdered.”

  “February the seventeenth. We looked at the programme schedule, and you weren’t on the radio that night. Were you with your wife?”

  “I doubt it. The seventeenth is Hella Mauzer’s birthday. I was with her.” Collins rose from his seat, smiling slightly. “Why don’t you ask her for confirmation?”

  “So tell me, Anita, is Mr Collins a liar? I’ve heard women have the intuition for such things. Or is he too handsome to kill anyone, except by breaking their heart?”

  “I don’t know,” Anita mumbled.

  “I think you do – you’re only afraid to speak your mind. So let’s do it another way. Did Hella Mauzer think he could be a murderer? She saw that little black book. She must have spotted the reference to him.”

  “She did. But as the man who attacked me outside the brothel couldn’t possibly be Steve Collins, she thinks he was just a client, that’s all.”

  “Well,” I said. “Maybe the man who attacked you will prove to be irrelevant to our investigation. Probably some drunk who spotted a pretty girl and thought he’d give it a try. If he was a mass murderer, you wouldn’t have got away so easily.”

  “Maybe.” Anita was looking at the drawing on my desk to avoid making eye contact with me.

  “Not maybe,” I countered. “Certainly. And your friend Hella Mauzer knows it very well. Do you realize that she’s possibly shielding a murderer? Just because he was her special friend?” I leaned forward. “I really appreciate Hella, you know. She’s brave and opinionated, and even though she sometimes acts in a reckless manner, she always means well. But this time she’s gone too far, don’t you think?”

  Anita nodded, looking miserable. I thought I had her on board when she asked, “Did we receive an anonymous tip about Mr Collins?”

  “No. That was my invention. Any other questions?” I could see that Anita was burning to ask me something.

  “You didn’t question Mr Collins about the Matilda Reims murder. Why?”

  I drummed on the table with my fingers. “Because I wasn’t ready yet, and I want to be a hundred per cent certain of my information before I move in to interview a potential murderer. So far, I’ve only read the case file. I haven’t even talked to the victim’s husband.”

  Anita wriggled on her chair. “But didn’t you…” she started in a small voice, then looked away.

  “Go on.”

  “No,” she said quickly. Too quickly. “It’s OK. It was just a stupid comment.”

  “There are no stupid comments in a murder investigation. Every little idea, every little uncertainty matters. If we are to work as a team on this one, I don’t want us to have secrets from one another. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  Two bright spots were now blooming on Anita’s cheeks. “Inspector Krigsholm,” she said. “The one who investigated Mrs Reims’ murder. He was your partner. In 1945 and 1946, you worked all your cases with him. So how could you not know about the Matilda Reims case?” She bit her lip. Probably expecting a nasty comment from me, or a dismissal, or both.

  I smiled instead. “Glad you asked. This is something I believe we should address during the next morning briefing, so there are no questions about my motives.” I picked up my phone. “Tarja, could you please come over here?”

  We waited in uncomfortable silence. Anita was wringing her hands, not daring to look at me, looking anyway.

  “Tarja,” I said when the door opened at last. “Would you care to tell Anita where I spent the summer of 1946?”

 
42

  Hella

  St John’s Church in Ullanlinna is a fine example of Gothic Revival. It stands on a hill that for many centuries was a place for Midsummer bonfires, and this is where its name, that of the feast day, comes from. I took a seat on one of the benches at the back, my eyes on the girls huddled together in front of the altarpiece that showed Saul’s conversion. The girls were wearing lace and mink, their faces heavily made up. I wondered which one was the new madam.

  I didn’t try to talk to the girls – the wary glances they shot me were enough to convey their state of mind. Instead, I concentrated on the pastor’s words. In a tuneless voice, he spoke of redemption and forgiveness, of life choices and the mistakes we all made. I wondered if he’d known the victim, or if there was a set speech for those who, like Klara Nylund, had chosen a different path.

  There was no body – it was still in Tom’s morgue. So once the final prayers were over and the girls had left, their arms locked together, I stood outside, trying to convince myself that I’d made the right choice. That morning, I had written two letters and received another, from Irja, informing me that Maria had arrived in Käärmelä and that she was settling in well. I had written back to her, saying that I was coming. Somehow it had felt necessary, even if in all likelihood I’d arrive before my letter did. The other letter had been for Elsbeth. I had informed her that after having thought it over, I had decided to decline her offer. Steve was a big boy, I had written, he could take care of himself. I had posted the letters, then, on my way to the church, I had stopped at a children’s goods store and exchanged my last coffee coupon for a knitted bunny for baby Margarita. Its long ears were now sticking out of my bag.