Where Have All the Young Girls Gone

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I was about to go back into the living room to ask what Samir and Aune Kämäräinen knew about Sara’s friend Tommi when my phone rang. It played the theme music to Pippi Longstocking, Iida’s ancient ringtone, which she was constantly demanding I change to something with more street cred. Because Iida never called during school unless it was important, I answered. Was she sick and needing to come home?

  I could tell immediately that it was something serious.

  “Hey, Mom, I just got a text from Anni. Noor, our friend from Girls Club, has been murdered. I’m not kidding. She was found in the snow somewhere in the woods in Olari. Anni texted that she’d been strangled with her own headscarf.”

  5

  I tried in vain to calm Iida down by saying that her friend might be wrong. Puupponen had turned on his laptop, and as we spoke he logged in to the Espoo police intranet where information about new cases was posted. If a homicide had occurred in Espoo, the Violent Crime Unit led by Markku Ruuskanen would of course be the first to investigate.

  “I’ll be home at about four thirty. Yes, I’ll find out. Don’t get hysterical,” I tried to say and then heard the school bell ring in the background. Iida’s break had ended. Thankfully there was a strict cell phone ban at Iida’s school during classes, so she wouldn’t be able to stoke her fears by texting the whole time with her friend Anni. The emotional part of me wanted to rush to my daughter’s side to protect and comfort her, but that wasn’t possible right now. Iida had mentioned Noor a few times and said she was as beautiful as a Persian princess. She was several years older than Iida.

  “There is a priority one here. The deceased is a young woman,” Puupponen said from the computer. He was sitting with it on his lap on the desk chair in the women’s room. “The body was found in Central Park behind the school in Olari at 10:15 a.m. The discovery was made by a retiree named Juhani Huttunen, seventy-six, who was out walking his dog.” Puupponen’s tone of voice grew more intense the further he got in the report. “The body was later identified as Noor Ezfahani, sixteen years old. She is the daughter of an Iranian family with Finnish asylum status. Cause of death one-three, strangulation.”

  “Has anyone been arrested?”

  “No.”

  The body had been found about four hours earlier, and already there were text messages circulating about the incident. Presumably there were also rumors being spread online. Ruuskanen’s team would be up to their necks in it by now.

  “I’m sure this has something to do with our girls. There has to be a connection here. All of the girls are teenagers, immigrants, and Muslim, though the Amirs seem to be pretty liberal. Just think what kind of shitstorm this is going to set off!” Puupponen said, almost shouting.

  “I agree that this is connected to our cell’s existing cases and should fall to us. I’ll get in touch with Ruuskanen and Taskinen as soon as we leave.”

  My desire to rush to Iida’s school and take her home to comfort her was almost overwhelming. Today I wouldn’t be the only parent who would have to answer questions about why things like this happened. To people who didn’t know her, Noor’s death would be just another story in the daily parade of horror on the news, but to the girls who went to the Girls Club, to her schoolmates, and to her neighbors it would be a gruesome part of their own lives. The mass killings in Finland over the past few years may have woken some people up to the fact that anything could happen to anyone, but who wanted to prepare for the worst? Who even knew how? All I could hope for was to never have to bury my own children, but there were no guarantees. Two of Aisha’s daughters had died of hunger. People my grandmother’s age had been forced to watch their children succumb to epidemics right here in our own country. You could get an insurance payout for a child, but that was only money; it couldn’t make up for a lost life.

  Puupponen and Koivu decided to go find Ayan’s brothers, but they would drop me off at the station first, so I could ascertain the status of the inquiry into Noor’s killing. I didn’t have any desire to get into an argument with Ruuskanen about who would handle the investigation.

  “Oh, hell no,” Koivu swore when I told him about Noor Ezfahani’s death. His face turned a shade paler. Koivu drove while Puupponen clicked at his computer. We’d left Aune Kämäräinen with Samir Amir to keep him company, and she had gotten the boy to calm down. I still didn’t know the original reason for the howling. According to Kämäräinen, Samir didn’t take antipsychotics and didn’t go to therapy, but for the time being he was receiving a disability pension.

  “Luckily he can live with his parents. He wouldn’t make it on his own,” Kämäräinen said as I was closing the door behind me. Thankfully, she hadn’t started asking questions about Noor’s murder, even though she’d probably overheard what Puupponen had read to me.

  “A press release was issued at twelve o’clock about Noor’s killing, so the family must have been notified and they must have identified the body. The armchair detectives online are already at their battle stations.” Puupponen sighed. “They always know how things went down better than us. The cause of death is already out, but at least this site doesn’t say that she was strangled with her own headscarf. That isn’t in the press release. Where did Iida’s friend hear that?”

  “Anni is Iida’s old skating partner and goes to the Olari Middle School. It’s in the same building as the high school. All it would take to get rumors started is one of the students having seen the body.”

  Koivu turned into the police station parking lot, and I jumped out of the car. The building had just been completed when I first came to work for the Espoo police. It wasn’t the slightest bit inviting, giving the impression that the only reason to be there was if something had gone wrong, though downstairs there was also a permit office for getting passports and driver’s licenses. I walked past the people waiting in line, opened the door to the stairwell with my keycard, and climbed to the second floor. I dropped off my coat and bag in my office, then went to find Markku Ruuskanen. We had talked very briefly on the day I returned to work, and we’d agreed to cooperate with each other. Ruuskanen had said he was happy that there would be more resources for investigating violent crimes. In recent years the focus had been more on white-collar crime, and those investigations could drag on for years. Those perps were a far cry from the alcoholics Violent Crime usually dealt with, who tended to confess after the first night in the cooler, when the withdrawal symptoms hit.

  The Violent Crime Unit hallway had its familiar stale-coffee smell, but there was also a new scent in the mix, a deep, musky perfume. Its source, Sergeant Ursula Honkanen, was just stepping out of the women’s restroom into the hallway. I hadn’t had a chance to greet her yet, and I didn’t know how happy she would be about my return to the force. During the last string of cases we’d worked on together, she’d been overcome by a sudden surge of emotion and told me that she wasn’t able to have children because of a hysterectomy. Later she clearly regretted the revelation, distancing herself from me yet again.

  She didn’t rush to give me a hug or even shake my hand. She just stared at me with a crooked smile.

  “Look what we have here. Maria Kallio! Are you lost? Isn’t your special unit or cell or whatever you’re calling it over on the other side of the building?”

  There was a time when Puupponen and I had made bets every morning on how high Ursula’s heels would be that day. We hardly ever saw anything under three inches, but now Ursula had on nearly flat, trendy, knee-high boots made of a mottled black-and-purple suede. The perfume smell grew even stronger—perhaps she’d added some in the lavatory—and she had more makeup on than I used in a week. She looked familiar, unchanging, safe. I guess I’d missed her too.

  “Hi, Honkanen. I hear you have a homicide in progress.”

  “Yep. And a teenage girl at that. Lehtovuori is putting the case wall together right now. Ruuskanen is in Turku giving a speech, but we’ll do just fine getting the basic investigation together without a lead investigating office
r. We have three detectives, including me and a trainee who starts next week. Apparently, her father worked here sometime in the Stone Age. The guy who shot himself.”

  I knew immediately who Honkanen was talking about. Halfway through my last teaching stint, a young, blond police cadet had come up to me in the police college cafeteria. There was something familiar about her, though I wasn’t able to put my finger on what it was. She had brown eyes, and her straight hair, cut short in a trendy, asymmetrical style, was delicate as a baby’s. She’d covered her skin with foundation, but the marks of adult acne were still visible if you looked closely enough. She was nearly eight inches taller than me and broad shouldered, and her police jumpsuit fit her perfectly.

  “Hey, aren’t you Maria Kallio?” she’d said.

  “Yes. And you are?”

  The young woman extended her hand in greeting. A showy amethyst ring glinted on the ring finger of her right hand.

  “You probably don’t recognize me. Jenna Ström. Pertti’s daughter.”

  I had known that one day I would run into Pertti Ström’s children. Nearly a dozen years had slipped by since his death, but I still thought of him often. Jenna had inherited her father’s skin, his physique, and his facial features, but her eyes were from her mother, Marja, whom I had only met twice, once when I informed her of Pertti’s death and once at the funeral.

  I shook Jenna’s hand, then pulled her into a hug. Jenna responded to the hug without hesitation, which felt good. When we released each other, I looked at her again. The patch on her breast said “Ström,” and the familiar name brought back painful memories. Pertti and I had attended the old police academy together, lived in the same dormitory, and taken each other’s measure on the firing range and the track. After school our paths diverged for about a decade, but then they met again in Espoo. Jenna had been eleven when Pertti died.

  I’d then returned my lunch tray, but I wasn’t in a hurry. My courses for the day were finished, and the ride a colleague had offered back to Espoo wouldn’t leave until the evening. I asked Jenna if she had time for a cup of coffee, and we made our way to the most secluded table we could find.

  “So, you’re a police cadet,” I said as we stirred our cappuccinos. Pertti Ström had steadfastly refused to drink this kind of “foreign sissy coffee.”

  “The latest batch. I went to military police school and then applied here. My brother, Jani, is doing his service right now and then he intends to enroll too. Mom isn’t too thrilled about it, just like everything else connected to Dad.”

  “How is your mother doing?”

  “Just fine. She lives with Kai, her current husband, and their kid Hannina, and runs a private rest home. Kai works there too, and Mom wanted me to take over the business from her someday. This job is more stimulating, though. I want to work in Violent Crime, just like Dad. Jani is more interested in highway patrol.”

  Jenna had also inherited her style of speech from her mother, because I didn’t hear Pertti’s tone in her voice. Hopefully Kai Hirvi had been a good stepfather. I could see in my mind the good-bye letters I’d found in Pertti’s apartment. In the one addressed to his children, Ström had left all of his police equipment to Jani and his mother’s amethyst ring to Jenna. Jenna noticed me looking at the ring.

  “I imagine you recognize this?”

  “I know what it is.”

  “Dad didn’t leave much. We didn’t see him very often, and Mom doesn’t like to talk about him. She just says he was an unhappy person. But was he a bad policeman? You knew Dad, or at least that’s the impression I get from Mom.”

  “We were in the same cadet class, and then we were colleagues. We competed for the same position once. I don’t think I made life any easier for your father. One reason for his suicide might have been that he lost out on the position of unit commander to a woman younger than himself who, to add insult to injury, was about to go on maternity leave.”

  “Really? Who would promote someone starting maternity leave?”

  “No one nowadays. That was during the economic boom, and times were different. And it was also a rap on the knuckles to your father. He wasn’t a bad policeman by any means, but he didn’t work well with others. Our idiot bosses made him my temporary replacement while I was on leave, supposedly as a consolation prize. Wasn’t that considerate?” Jenna Ström seemed like a woman who didn’t need the facts to be sugarcoated. She had also inherited that trait from her father.

  “Mom said that Dad had a serious drinking problem and that sometimes he beat up people he was questioning. I think she hoped I wouldn’t get into the police academy and have a chance to follow in his footsteps.” Jenna smiled faintly and stirred her coffee, which she hadn’t even tasted yet.

  “I only saw your dad get violent once. The guy your father was interviewing intentionally provoked him.” I remembered from the interrogation video Ari Väätäinen’s triumphant expression when Pertti hit him. It was just what Väätäinen had wanted. “It is true that he drank too much. The rest of us should have intervened, especially me, since I was his immediate superior during that last period. Your father stopped me from jumping into an icy lake—I was going after a criminal who was trying to commit suicide. I was pregnant then, and my daughter, Iida, might not be here if your father hadn’t acted so quickly. There wasn’t only one side to Pertti, just like with all of us.”

  “Mom claims that Dad was in love with you.”

  I burst into laughter, which was so loud that everyone in the cafeteria turned to look at us. Jenna turned red and stared steadfastly at her cappuccino. I started hiccupping and had to hold my breath to make it stop. Of all the things I never thought I’d hear, that was the last.

  “Sorry,” I said once I’d gotten myself under control. “If that’s true, your father had a very strange way of showing it. Your mother was probably just imagining things.”

  After we met, I kept in touch with Jenna Ström via e-mail. In her last message she had complained about not being able to find a trainee position. But apparently her luck had changed.

  I’d mentioned our meeting to the Koivus only once, and over the years, even Puupponen’s distaste for Pertti Ström had abated, so Jenna’s arrival in the department wasn’t likely to cause any feelings other than astonishment at how fast time flew.

  To Ursula Honkanen, Ström was just a name. I noticed there was a ring on her left hand, but instead of congratulating her I decided to keep quiet. She had rings on so many fingers, and the one in question wasn’t necessarily an engagement ring. I would hear about Ursula’s romantic life before long anyway, at least if the guy on deck this time had any significant social standing.

  “About the Noor Ezfahani case,” I began, but I didn’t get any further before Ursula interrupted.

  “You aren’t my boss anymore. There isn’t any sort of chain of command between us, so I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  “But you must know what our cell is investigating. Three teenage girls with immigrant backgrounds have disappeared. No bodies have been found, but there’s no evidence that they aren’t dead either. Don’t you see that this could be part of the same case?” What on earth had gotten into me, missing Ursula Honkanen?

  Ursula closed the door to the conference room behind her so I wouldn’t get a glimpse of the case wall. Her smile was still crooked.

  “Poor little Kallio, you have about as much authority to stick your nose in our case as a beat cop directing traffic. Meaning none. Sure, I know you’re going to go cry to Taskinen about how nasty I am. He’s on cloud nine now after getting you back in the building. That man has always had a perverse taste in women.”

  I laughed in response and set off for my office. Ruuskanen was in Turku, so there wasn’t any point in negotiating about the division of labor right now. Back in my office, I started putting together a memo on what we’d discovered about Ayan’s and Sara’s disappearances. I wanted to ask Sara’s mother about the birth control pills, but she didn’t have a cell phon
e. We’d have to wait for her to come home. Maybe I could meet her tomorrow on her lunch break from the florist class.

  I clicked open the police bulletin about Noor’s death. The larger newspapers’ websites had already been updated, but so far, their information about the slaying was limited. Could Ruuskanen’s team know that Noor had been a regular visitor at the Girls Club? How would the club react? Heini and Nelli would probably be questioned by the police and also interviewed by the newspapers. Then, if it hadn’t already, the disappearance of the other girls would make it into the press, and the media circus would begin in earnest.

  I couldn’t question Heini and Nelli about Noor’s killing in my official capacity of police investigator, because I didn’t belong to Ruuskanen’s unit, but I could call them as Iida’s concerned mother. I would be furious if one of my own colleagues went behind my back like that, but the temptation was too great. I looked up Heini Korhonen’s number in my case file. She answered after the first ring.

  “Finally the police call! Guess how fun it is to find out from a text message that one of our girls has been murdered!” Heini’s voice was simultaneously furious and tearful. She was obviously outside on a street, the background noise of the cars making it difficult to hear.

  “Yes, this is Detective Maria Kallio from the Espoo police. I’m not really—”

  “Can I call you right back? I’m walking to the club. I’m just a couple of blocks away. It’s really hard to hear next to this road.”

  “Sure.”

  Fate was giving me an opportunity not to go through with my scheme, but I didn’t take it. When Heini called back, I let her jabber away unrestrained.

  “I assume you know that Noor wanted to stop dressing according to the Islamic faith and start wearing Western clothes? You know what that means in some families? Noor’s father couldn’t stand that she came to the Girls Club, but Noor was a smart young woman and knew how to stand up for her rights. She was one of the best we’ve ever had here.” Heini was crying as she talked. “I can’t understand how something like this could happen in Finland!”