Where Have All the Young Girls Gone

by Leena Lehtolainen

  We also needed to find out where Noor had been going when she left home. Ruuskanen had asked Patrol for help interviewing the neighbors and anyone out and about around the school, and a request for information about Noor’s movements had been delivered to the print media and the radio stations and put up on the police public website. Dozens of tips had already come in, but I hadn’t had time to do anything more than glance at them. It would take quite a bit of work for the department secretary to record them.

  A pouch of instant tomato-basil soup would have to serve as lunch. When I was teaching for the Police University College, I’d developed the habit of always carrying an energy bar and a packet of soup with me. My foreign students were often eager to chat after class, so my breaks were frequently cut short. I continued to slurp the soup from its paper cup while taking the elevator downstairs to meet Mrs. Ezfahani. Her first name was also Noor. Did her husband just call her “Mom” too, to avoid confusion? I’d told Antti that I would divorce him immediately if he ever addressed me as “Mom,” unless he was talking about me to our children.

  The waiting room was full, but even so the Ezfahanis stood out from the crowd. They weren’t the only immigrants by any means, but they exuded a deep sorrow; it was like they were curled up around each other, even though only the oldest man and one of the younger men were standing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Mrs. Ezfahani stood at the edge of the group, her head bowed. She wore a floor-length, dark-blue woolen coat and a white scarf covering her head. Puustjärvi and Lehtovuori were there, and Koivu scampered into the lobby just behind me. This was so there would be a separate interviewer for each member of the family, a tactic chosen by Ruuskanen. I didn’t know if it would save time. The information would have to be combined afterward anyway, so we could compare notes and look for holes and contradictions. Even Noor’s mother couldn’t be crossed off the list of suspects. In the Afghan prison I’d met young women who’d had to flee their mothers after attempts on their lives for entertaining overly Western ideas. One of the young women had been badly burned by her mother, who had thrown hot oil over her when she declared she didn’t want to marry the man—thirty years her senior—the family had chosen for her.

  Still, I couldn’t help but remember that the woman standing before me had lost her only daughter. Her teenage daughter.

  “Mrs. Ezfahani? Detective Maria Kallio. We’ll be going upstairs. Please follow me.”

  The woman said something to her family in a language I didn’t understand a single word of. The men muttered something disapproving in reply, but no one tried to stop us from leaving. I took Mrs. Ezfahani to the elevator. She did not have a purse, but she was clutching an embroidered handkerchief in her gloved hand. Her gloves were made of caramel-colored leather, and they were worn at the knuckles. I took her into my office, because I didn’t want her seeing the pictures of her dead daughter that had been hung on the case wall. I kicked the door to the conference room closed as we walked by. Ruuskanen’s passwords were useless when the door to our room was open and anyone could peek in. I asked Mrs. Ezfahani if she would like coffee or tea, but she shook her head.

  The beginning of the interview felt formal as I asked for her personal details. She’d been born in Iran, in Ilam Province, in April thirty-eight years before. The exact date was unknown, so she’d chosen the eighth of April as her birthday, because it sounded beautiful, and having an exact date was necessary to get a Finnish social security number. The family had ended up in Finland six years earlier, as UN quota refugees from a camp in Afghanistan. They’d been forced to flee Iran because the grandfather, Reza Ezfahani, had run into trouble with the authorities because he’d refused to pay protection money for his butcher shop. I’d read all this from the background report, and Mrs. Ezfahani confirmed what I’d heard with nods, shakes of the head, and monosyllabic responses. She had spent four years in Finland without even the most rudimentary knowledge of the language, and even after two years of study, her language skills were still very basic. In my early years at the Espoo Police Department, I’d been called on to speak Swedish to elderly Finnish Swedes and Swedish nationals who ran into trouble in our country, since our official bilingualism was highly theoretical in the police force. Now a Finnish police officer was supposed to be proficient in languages I’d never even heard of back in school in Arpikylä.

  Mrs. Ezfahani had not taken off her gloves or unbuttoned her coat. It was so loose that only hints of her body’s contours were visible. The uniforms of female teachers at the Afghan Police Academy had included long, dark-green skirts and scarves of the same color. Only Muna had chosen the long pants worn by the men, even though she knew how risky that choice was.

  “It’s hard to climb in a skirt. I’d rather be able to function, even if that means someone will disapprove of my outfit. Hopefully the next generation of policewomen won’t need to think about things like this.”

  Loose trousers peeked out from underneath the hem of the elder Noor Ezfahani’s coat. Her shoes were low topped and looked awfully thin for the slushy weather. The toes were streaked from having been soaked repeatedly.

  “When did you last see your daughter, Noor?” My instincts told me to be more formal, but I knew that informal speech might be easier for her to understand, because no one used formal forms of address in the Finnish media or on shows on television.

  “Tuesday. Six.”

  “By Tuesday do you mean Tuesday the second of March, at six in the evening?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where was Noor then?”

  “At home. Went out.”

  “Where? Who was she going to see?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Doesn’t your family have a practice of asking where your underage daughter is going?”

  Mrs. Ezfahani didn’t answer. Her nose started to redden, and she blew it noisily, afterward wrapping the cloth handkerchief into a careful bundle.

  “Weren’t you interested in where Noor went?”

  Still no answer.

  “Did Noor have a boyfriend?”

  “No!”

  “The police have been told otherwise.”

  Mrs. Ezfahani was quiet. Drops of sweat trickled from beneath her headscarf, but she still didn’t open her thick coat. Was it part of Islamic culture to not speak ill of the dead? Was keeping the wrong company something that had to be kept secret?

  I asked about the boyfriend again.

  “The police know that Noor had a Finnish boyfriend. Didn’t you know? Didn’t Noor tell you?”

  Now Mrs. Ezfahani was completely red. “He was not a boyfriend! He was one stupid boy who wanted to be with Noor, but Noor didn’t like him! That bad boy killed my Noor, believe me, policeman!” Mrs. Ezfahani sighed deeply and clenched her handkerchief. Then she dried her brow with her other gloved hand.

  “Do you or your family have any evidence that this boy is the killer? What is the boy’s name?”

  “Not remember.” After losing her temper, Mrs. Ezfahani went back to speaking simple Finnish. I wondered if she was pretending to have poorer language skills than she really did. “Finnish names hard. Not remember.”

  “Did the boy come to your apartment?”

  “No! Was in Noor school.”

  “Noor’s school friend?”

  Again, violent head shaking. “Bad, bad boy.” Water was flowing down Mrs. Ezfahani’s cheeks, partly sweat from her forehead, partly tears from the corners of her eyes. Her facial features were delicate, but she was not stunningly beautiful in the way her daughter had been. The Ezfahanis’ eldest son was twenty-one, so he had been born when she was seventeen years old.

  “When we bury Noor? Two days already gone.”

  “How do you know that Noor died on Tuesday? She was only found yesterday.”

  Mrs. Ezfahani flinched and fell silent, shaking her head and muttering something in her own language. I thought about whether her slip could be considered a breakthrough. We still hadn’t been able to dete
rmine Noor’s time of death with any precision.

  I asked what they had eaten for dinner that night.

  “I make rice, egg . . . what is it?”

  “Eggplant?”

  “Eggplant, yes, and chicken. We eat at five. Then said she going and did go.”

  That was useful information in terms of the autopsy that would be carried out the next day, since it could help narrow down the time of death by a few hours. Noor’s last meal had been perfectly ordinary. Could a mother have fed her daughter eggplant with chicken and rice and then sent her off to die at the hands of her father, brothers, or grandfather? Not that her being a mother ruled her out—mothers could still enact violence toward a child. I remembered the sixteen-year-old Afghan girl who had killed her three-month-old infant as a sacrifice to Allah. That wasn’t why she was in prison, but rather because she was psychotic and had also threatened to kill the god who had demanded such a thing. Prison was her refuge from the rage of society, though she should have been in a mental hospital.

  “Noor’s body is in the care of the police for the time being. It will be turned over to you when the forensic analysis has been completed.”

  “When? Allah wait to receive her. Not good if wait.”

  “Our law trumps religion at the moment. That’s the way here.”

  “Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji´un,” Mrs. Ezfahani said tearfully. That phrase I understood, since I’d heard it several times in Afghanistan. Surely we belong to Allah, and to Him shall we return. Did murdered Muslims get into their heaven? What if they’d been killed because they’d transgressed against their religion?

  I tried to ask more about Noor’s life, but Mrs. Ezfahani was growing increasingly uncommunicative. It was as if she’d said what she’d come to say, and that was all we were going to get out of her. So I took her downstairs. None of the male family members were back yet. She sat on one of the uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room and stared at her gloves.

  When I opened the door to the stairwell, I almost ran into Ursula Honkanen. She sneered at me, revealing a smudge of lipstick on her front teeth.

  “Ruuskanen sure is showing his sensitive side, sending you to interview the mother of a murdered teenage girl. Did you get anything out of her? It’s a miracle they even let her be interviewed. Aren’t the women not supposed to know or say anything?”

  “It isn’t exactly like that.”

  “Come on, Kallio, take off the blinders! Guess how many times I’ve been in some restaurant where these holy Muslims throw back beers just like the Finns, and no matter how big the litter of pups they have at home with the missus, they still want to get in my bed.”

  “Not all of them practice their religion actively, just like Christians.”

  “Oh, you poor liberal patsies! Miina Sillanpää and Helvi Sipilä must be rolling over in their graves. Can you imagine one of those feminists hearing about Finnish women wanting to convert to Islam and return to the oppressed state they all did their best to free us from? Why do so many women need men to boss them around? I don’t understand. Do you, Kallio?”

  “No. But I don’t suppose religion is meant to be understood logically.”

  Our cell phones beeped at the same time. It was a message from Ruuskanen: Have ordered arrest of boy harassing Noor Ezfahani. Tuomas Juhani Soivio, 19. Ezfahani men all claim Soivio killed her.

  7

  “So, this Tuomas Soivio was infatuated with Noor and wanted to date her, but Noor wasn’t interested in him.” In questioning, all of the Ezfahani men had told the same story.

  We were sitting in the Violent Crime Unit’s big conference room. The table was packed: in addition to the violent crime detectives, we also had the forensics crew and a group of patrol officers. Liisa Rasilainen, who was in her final year of police service, was also there. Her hair was completely steel gray these days, and she’d painted her nails the same color.

  “We’re tracking down Soivio. We didn’t find him at home, but he could still be on the way back from school. He’s in his third year at Olari High School, but he’s going to have to stay for a fourth. So he’s a real genius.” Ruuskanen was trying to be witty, but no one laughed, and Puupponen looked as if this attempt at humor had been so wretched that it was a personal insult.

  “I had a conversation with Heini Korhonen, the director of the Girls Club, on the phone yesterday, and she had a different understanding of the boyfriend situation. Korhonen claims that Noor was dating a Finnish boy, and that her male relatives had threatened her over it,” I interjected. This caused murmuring among those gathered, which Ruuskanen was forced to silence by knocking on the table.

  “Are you claiming that all of the Ezfahanis are lying? Seven men told the exact same story,” said Ruuskanen.

  “I’m just reporting what Heini Korhonen said. Mrs. Noor Ezfahani also talked about a ‘bad, bad boy’ who had threatened her daughter. I think it would be important now to talk to Noor’s friends and figure out what they know about Noor and Tuomas Soivio’s relationship.”

  “Don’t tell me how to do my work! I intend to tell the press that we have a suspect and have issued an arrest warrant.”

  “If Soivio really is guilty, that will only make him go on the run!” Ursula snapped. “Let’s issue the warrant, but not tell the media yet.”

  Ruuskanen’s expression was that of a man mentally counting to ten. “I’m in charge of communications, and I’ll take responsibility for the consequences of my actions. If I hear even a whisper of what has been said in this meeting from a single newspaper or Internet chat room, I will personally find the leaker and hold him or her accountable. That is all. This meeting is now adjourned. Whoever wants to can come to the press conference, but keep your mouths shut!”

  Part of me understood Ruuskanen. Eight witnesses who agreed was eight witnesses who agreed, and every police officer wanted homicides to be solved as quickly as possible, especially when the crime attracted a lot of media attention.

  Ruuskanen had distributed Tuomas Soivio’s photograph to the meeting attendees, taking it from the same Olari High School roll as Noor Ezfahani’s picture. Soivio was a handsome boy with perfect skin and short, curly blond hair. His blue eyes were open and sincere, and his smile was happy. He would have been a perfect fit for one of those travel brochures about how idyllic Finland is. Tuomas lived with his parents in Tapiola, close to the Girls Club, and was on the math and science track at Olari High School. He was just a regular high school kid, with no criminal background. He wouldn’t be able to evade the police for long.

  I exchanged a few words with Liisa Rasilainen. Liisa had been on the patrol that had informed Noor Ezfahani’s family of her death. They hadn’t found any identity papers on Noor’s body, and her bag was missing, but she’d been wearing a locket around her neck that said “Noor,” and there weren’t many girls with that name in the metro area. Identifying her had taken only a couple of hours. Unrestrained weeping and wailing had begun in the Ezfahani household, and everyone had been so hysterical that there had been no point in trying to conduct interviews.

  “It isn’t often you see grown men crying like that. It could do Finns some good.”

  “Whatever! Who the hell wants to watch men blubbering?” Ursula had snuck up behind me and Liisa. “And you have to remember that it’s a lot easier to fake extreme emotions than restrained sorrow. You just splash some onion juice in your eyes and start bawling.” Ursula contorted her face like some C-list soap opera actor.

  “I’ve been ordered to interview Noor’s girlfriends,” Ursula continued. “Koivu managed to squeeze a few names out of Noor’s older brother. Do you gals have any tips on how to approach them? I’m sure they’re tracking the case online, so it would be silly to think we can get unbiased information from them.”

  “Tell them that we only want to talk to the boy because he was close to Noor, not because he’s guilty. Her girlfriends will know whether she really wanted Soivio’s attention or not.”

  “M
aybe she didn’t know what she wanted. At sixteen you don’t necessarily know who you want to be with, and any attention can be flattering,” Liisa said. “Although that can go for sixty-year-olds too,” she added with a grin. “I’m going to go do the rounds in the Ezfahanis’ neighborhood. You going home, Maria?”

  “In theory.” I told my colleagues about the memorial at the Girls Club. “Maybe we could better connect with Noor’s friends there than in an interview situation.”

  “Oh, so you’re saving the cherries for yourself, and I get the shit jobs. Just like old times,” Ursula snapped. “At least tell me who you talk to, so we don’t do the same work twice. That would be a complete waste of resources, don’t you think?” Ursula rummaged around in her bag, pulled out a bottle of perfume, and started spraying it on her neck without a second thought. Liisa and I took a step back.

  But the musky scent clung to me as I left to walk home. The sleet had stopped. There were a few blue patches in the gray blanket of the sky, and they were expanding promisingly. A brook babbled down the street as energetically as if it were late spring. My cats, Jahnukainen and Venjamin, were lounging on the porch. They rushed over to butt against my legs but didn’t follow me inside. I assumed that my father had arrived, because his presence made the cats shy, though Venjamin was likely to be purring in his lap before the night was out.