Where Have All the Young Girls Gone

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Yes! Which is exactly why I need to ask you to move farther back. Now!”

  “Bossy broad, eh? So, it’s the women calling the shots these days, is it?” I didn’t even turn to look at him because the Black Maria’s lights were already flashing through the woods. Luckily the arriving patrol hadn’t turned on their sirens. They could worry about getting the bystanders away from the scene.

  I stepped carefully toward Tuomas and Rahim. I was only thirty feet away now. Tuomas had stopped crying. Rahim’s brow and neck glistened with sweat. Rahim looked like he believed Tuomas was capable of killing him. I didn’t know whether he thought he would be crowned as a martyr in the paradise of his religion if that happened, but if he did, it didn’t seem to be making him any less afraid of dying.

  An extremely tall figure appeared out of the darkness, followed by another nearly a foot shorter. They both looked familiar, but I didn’t remember their names immediately and couldn’t make out the name tags on their uniforms.

  “Break it up,” the taller one said, starting to shoo the crowd like they were a flock of chickens. “This isn’t a public performance.”

  “Don’t we get to be witnesses?” the old man grumbled.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it. The pay is terrible, and the trials aren’t televised,” the shorter officer said, and I recognized Mikkola’s face. He began roping off the area by stretching blue-and-white plastic tape around trees. Tuomas Soivio looked on as if a snare was slowly closing around him, and instead of being the hunter, now he was the rabbit.

  As I’d hoped, Himanen and Sutinen had also started to approach Tuomas. I took another few steps. I could already make out the color of the young men’s eyes, Rahim’s dark brown and Tuomas’s Finnish-flag blue.

  “What did Rahim admit to you?”

  “Just like I said on the phone! That he strangled Noor.”

  “Did you strangle her, Rahim?”

  Noor’s cousin remained silent, which made Tuomas push the blade of the knife closer to the other young man’s bare neck. Rahim felt its touch and flinched.

  “Say it!” Tuomas shouted.

  “Shut up, Tuomas!” I barked. Rahim flinched, nodded once and then again.

  The motion wouldn’t have any evidentiary value, because even the worst defense attorney would be able to demonstrate that the confession had occurred under duress. I doubted anyone but Tuomas and I had seen him nod. Maybe Rahim was making a calculation too, knowing this small movement of his head might both free him from Tuomas’s clutches and keep him from having to answer a murder charge.

  “There you go, Tuomas. You got your confession. We both saw it, as did my colleagues here. Now you can stop. Give me the knife and unlock Rahim’s handcuffs.”

  Tuomas turned his face from Rahim to me. I tried to look as reassuring and satisfied as I could, like a policewoman whose case had been solved with the help of an upstanding citizen, though in reality the upstanding citizen would now have to be arrested and hauled off for questioning. His defense attorney would be able to appeal to the trauma his client had experienced and the public’s sense of justice. I would rather have bet on a horse I’d never heard of than on what sort of sentence Tuomas would get in the end.

  I took one more step toward Tuomas. The knife he was holding looked like it had grown heavy—it was starting to pull his hand down, and when his arm was at a twenty-degree angle, the knife fell to the ground. Because I was closest, I walked the rest of the way and bent over to pick it up.

  “Hands up, Soivio,” Himanen shouted. He hadn’t drawn his weapon. “Stay where you are. We’re going to have to search you. And give me the key to those handcuffs.”

  Tuomas looked like he’d been betrayed in some horrible way, but he stayed put and slowly raised his hands. Himanen and Sutinen could handle frisking him. I turned my head away.

  “You’ll have to figure out how to open the handcuffs. I think I dropped the key when that pig tried to get away. You might be able to find it if you get a metal detector.” There was ridicule in Tuomas’s voice. Himanen went through the boy’s pockets; all he found was a wallet, a bus pass, and two paper clips.

  The tall policeman had walked to the other side of the tree Rahim was attached to and was looking appraisingly at the tightly stretched chain of the handcuffs.

  “These bracelets are kiddy toys. They probably wouldn’t even hold up in serious bondage play,” he snorted derisively. “Hey, Mikkola, do we have those bolt cutters in the van? They’d slice through this chain like a hot knife through butter, and then we could jimmy the lock with a paper clip once we get back to the station.”

  “Did you have a bad experience with toy handcuffs like that?” Mikkola asked his partner with a grin. The situation had de-escalated, and now we all needed a little humor.

  “You don’t want to know,” the tall policeman answered. I still didn’t get a look at his name tag, because he left to get the tools from the vehicle.

  It was already growing late, and I really didn’t feel like spending my Friday night doing more interviews, but my mental law book said that even though we had multiple grounds for detaining Tuomas Soivio, the same was not true of Rahim Ezfahani. Despite that nod of his head, he was the victim here, not the suspect. On the other hand, the best time to question Rahim would be right now, while he was still frightened. Tuomas could spend the night in a cell thinking about how idiotically he’d behaved. We would also take Rahim down to the station so he could tell us what Tuomas had done to him before the police showed up. If he wanted to talk about the cause of the ambush, he would of course be given that opportunity.

  I sent Antti a text message saying I had to go to the station. Rahim went in the van, Tuomas in the patrol car. We wouldn’t talk to him until tomorrow. Rahim was not technically under arrest, but he didn’t question why he had to go with the police. I asked Himanen to wait with him in the lobby. I followed the patrol vehicles in my car, and while driving I heard a text message alert on my phone. I thought that it would be Antti responding to my text, likely commenting on how quickly the workdays had become ridiculously long after my return to active policing, but when I looked at my phone in the station parking lot, I discovered the sender was Ursula.

  I’m pretty sure I’ve found the gray Corolla, model year 1992, license COI-235. The owner’s name is Omar Hassan. Should we pick up the car for forensic analysis?

  I wondered if the message had been sent only to me or if Ruuskanen had received it too. Obviously, Ursula hadn’t heard about the incident with Tuomas and Rahim, so I called her.

  “Hi, it’s Maria. I’m in the parking lot outside the station. I’ll be in shortly. We have Rahim Ezfahani with us. I’ll meet you in my cell’s case room.”

  Then I started to think about what tactic to use with Rahim. Ursula and I could play bad cop/bad cop, but would intimidation get us results? Or would sympathy and kindness work better? And would he even be able to understand us? This late at night we might not be able to get an interpreter. I left the car in the parking lot but went in through the back door, which was used by employees only. I got a double helping of coffee from the vending machine and a sparkling water—it was time for the big guns. Then I went hunting for Ursula.

  “Good work with the car. Does Ruuskanen know?”

  “Oh, I think I forgot to send him the message. My fingers must’ve slipped.”

  “You need permission from the lead investigator for a forensic analysis.”

  “Oh, OK.” Ursula shrugged dramatically. “But I want to get my hands on that Toyota ASAP.”

  “Remember that civilians usually don’t know how little it takes to put together good forensic evidence. No matter how thoroughly the car has been cleaned and vacuumed, we may still be able to find fibers and fingerprints. Call Ruuskanen so we can pick it up today. I think the suspicion that Rahim might have had access to the car will be enough at this point.”

  I told Ursula about what had happened in the forest. Any police officer could sense th
e opportunity the confession gave us to solve the case, but Ursula was more enthusiastic about the forensic evidence than Rahim himself. We agreed that I would get in touch with Ruuskanen about both issues: questioning Rahim and what we were going to do with the car. I had to leave two messages on Ruuskanen’s voice mail before he called me back.

  “Well, so arrest him already!” Ruuskanen said over the phone, exasperated. “I mean the Ezfahani boy. I would have thrown him in a cell days ago, but I was afraid that all the PC bleeding-heart liberals would accuse me of racism. And make sure the Soivio brat doesn’t talk to the tabloids. Damn it! His little stunt is going to be all over the web.”

  Ruuskanen didn’t sound entirely sober, but I didn’t know him well enough to judge his degree of intoxication. He wasn’t on duty, but in theory leadership of the investigation was his responsibility 24-7. Obviously, I wouldn’t be getting him down to the station tonight, so we arranged to talk on the phone the next day. Someone would have to question Tuomas Soivio, and I was sorely afraid that someone would be me.

  I went to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. It washed off the last of my makeup, not that how I looked mattered. Another text came in, this time from Lauri Vala. I remembered that I hadn’t listened to his voice mail yet. There was no point putting it off, since the rest of the night was going to be one disagreeable thing after another anyway. I punched in my passcode and discovered a voice mail and a text.

  “Vala here. You probably already heard. Your work has been bombed to shit. Omar Jussuf, the drug lord, made good on his threats. You should have listened to me. Call me, Kallio. I think I can help you.”

  The text message was more of the same: Is something wrong with your phone? Call me ASAP.

  Just having Lauri Vala’s name in my telephone irritated me. I felt like erasing it, but then I might accidentally answer one of his calls. At some point I would have to talk to him, but now was not the time. I used my phone to check if I’d received any new e-mails. My inbox was empty. I imagined my former students had other things to do right then than reply to my message. At that very moment they might be digging through the ruins of the police academy, trying to save those who were still trapped. Perhaps they were waiting to be rescued themselves. My powerlessness ate at me.

  I sent an appeal for protection upward, even though I didn’t know whose god I was addressing. Every now and then I had a confused theological discussion with Pastor Terhi Pihlaja while we were out Nordic walking together. I would have liked to believe in a higher power, but I didn’t know how to articulate what that was, and I got annoyed with myself for being so indecisive. Saying I had faith, just not in the way the churches teach, sounded so hackneyed. Antti was a committed atheist, but sometimes I wanted to believe that everything had a purpose. Pastor Pihlaja claimed I didn’t need to analyze so much. Faith and doubt didn’t rule each other out. Doubting was something I could do.

  Himanen and the tall policeman were with Rahim in the Violent Crime Unit’s conference room. One of them had started the coffee machine, and the smell of cheap grounds and the rarely cleaned pot wafted through the air. The tall policeman was picking the lock on the handcuffs, which were still around Rahim’s wrists.

  “Welcome to metal shop class,” he said, laughing. “This wasn’t as simple as I thought. I can coax this one open, but that other one is going to need cutters. It’s messing up the blood flow to his wrist, so we have to get it taken care of now. Mikkola went to find tools.”

  Rahim was still pale, and he sat with his eyes closed, mumbling to himself. The tall policeman got Rahim’s right wrist free. The handcuff had pressed into the skin, leaving behind a deep red indentation, which oozed blood in places. It would have to be cleaned and bandaged. I turned toward the first aid cabinet, which used to be in the corner of the conference room, but it wasn’t there anymore.

  “Where can I find Band-Aids, gauze, and disinfectant?” I asked Himanen.

  “In the locker room. Should I go get some?”

  “Yes, please. Then you and Sutinen can go about your business. I can manage here. Rahim, do you want coffee or something else to drink? Should I let someone know that you’re at the police station?”

  No reaction. My head was starting to hurt—I should have asked Himanen for some ibuprofen for myself. Mikkola came back with some heavy-duty bolt cutters, and the tall policeman took them from him. The beanpole clearly enjoyed this. He ordered Mikkola to hold Rahim’s left hand in place and then started breaking the hinge of the handcuff. It wasn’t easy, because there wasn’t any space between the metal and the skin. Rahim opened his eyes, and the last of the color drained from his face when he saw the compound cutters.

  “Don’t cut it off!” he screamed, startling us. The bolt cutters slipped from the tall man’s hands.

  “I have to. Otherwise we can’t get it off.”

  “Not my hand. I’m not a thief!”

  “Rahim, we don’t cut thieves’ hands off in Finland,” I said quickly. I could have added that at least the police didn’t; some criminal gangs had taken up the barbaric practice. Even worse was done to murderers.

  Though my Afghan students had been an enlightened group, with some of them I’d been forced to have long philosophical discussions about the justness and equity of sentences, because some of them strongly supported capital punishment. I remembered a discussion in which Ulrike Müller had reported crying when Saddam Hussein was executed. Not for Saddam Hussein’s sake, since he was pure evil. Ulrike’s tears had flowed in shame because, by allowing Saddam’s execution, we had lowered ourselves to his level. We weren’t supposed to demand an eye for an eye anymore. It was the twenty-first century, after all. But there would always be people who thought our punishments were too lenient.

  The tall policeman couldn’t get the handcuff open, so he started in with a hacksaw. Himanen returned with the first aid supplies, and I began to clean and bandage Rahim’s other wrist. The young man sat, completely passive, seeming to have lapsed into his own world in which none of the rest of us were allowed. Sometimes his lips moved, but there was no sound.

  By the time the tall officer got Rahim’s left wrist free, the boy’s fingers were completely numb. The policeman rubbed them for a while, and then I bandaged them.

  “Do you need anything else?” Mikkola asked, nursing his cup of coffee. “They’re shorthanded out in the field, and it’s Friday night.”

  “Go on. And hey, let’s be careful out there!”

  Mikkola was probably too young to understand the Hill Street Blues reference, but the tall policeman laughed and replied that he was always careful. Then they were gone. Now it was just Rahim and me, and he was still in another reality. I’d have to find a way to get in there with him.

  “Rahim?” I said, testing the waters. “Does your wrist hurt? Do you need some painkillers?”

  He opened his eyes, glanced at me quickly and then at the rest of the room, and closed his eyes again. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Was he unable to see me, or did he just not want to? Was being alone with a woman without a headscarf so dangerous that he couldn’t even look at me? If that was the problem, then my situation was hopeless. I tried again.

  “Rahim, Tuomas Soivio shouldn’t have handcuffed you. He’s going to be facing criminal charges for doing that to you. Do you understand?”

  A slow nod.

  “You should tell me how Soivio captured you. If you need an interpreter, we can arrange one, but not until tomorrow. You would have to spend the night at the police station. If you tell me what happened, you might be able to go home by tomorrow.”

  Now Rahim’s color was more normal, but he still didn’t open his eyes. Because I was addressing him as a victim instead of as a suspect, I didn’t need to worry about getting him a lawyer. I gave him time to search for words as the clock ticked on the wall, reminding me that Taneli had gone to bed ages ago. Finally, he opened his eyes but kept them glued to the floor. Then he spoke in a quiet voice.

 
“Don’t know anything. Tuomas came to bus stop and threaten to hit me with knife. Put on handcuff. Me told send away from Finland if fight again, so I not fight. Tuomas take to forest, put on tree.”

  “Did he ask you if you murdered Noor?”

  Rahim nodded.

  “What did you say?”

  “Not say anything. Tuomas not police.”

  “He claimed that you admitted you murdered your cousin.”

  His brown eyes closed again.

  “He said kill if no say what he want.”

  “You admitted to doing it because you didn’t want to die?”

  Rahim nodded.

  My head was hurting even more. I was sure even Rahim would be able to hear the pounding in my temples. The smell wafting from the coffee machine became increasingly difficult to bear, and the siren that suddenly screamed to life outside sliced right through my head. I stood up and turned off the coffee machine, picked up the filter, and emptied it into the trash can, which had finally been upgraded to a system for separating recyclables. Thin snowflakes were falling outside again. It might not be too long before snow was a distant memory here in southern Finland and all that would fall would be rain. It felt crazy to think there might come a time when we would long for sleet.

  I walked back to Rahim and sat down in the chair across from him.

  “You confessed to Tuomas because you didn’t want to die. But were you telling the truth? Did you strangle Noor?”

  Rahim didn’t answer, but tears started running down his cheeks.

  13

  Rahim ended up spending the night in the cell next to Tuomas Soivio. I didn’t get anything more out of him; he just continued to cry. I decided to try again the next day with an interpreter, unless Ruuskanen wanted to handle the interrogation himself. I was also preparing myself to take responsibility for Rahim’s arrest if anyone raised a ruckus about it. My police sense told me that keeping him locked up while his friend’s car was with Forensics would be justifiable. Maybe he wasn’t just a young man who’d been scarred by the refugee camps and was mourning the death of his last female cousin. He might also be his cousin’s murderer. I wasn’t a psychologist or a clairvoyant, so I didn’t know how a night in jail would affect him.