Where Have All the Young Girls Gone

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Evening.” The male voice spoke fluent Finnish. I only heard one set of steps. “Are you alone here?” the voice continued. I couldn’t make out Aziza’s response. Maybe she just nodded instead of using words. It was not completely dark in the kitchen because the streetlights shone through the windows. I could see Vala draw his weapon. He stepped from the kitchen into the living room. I stifled both a cry and the desire to rush him.

  “Hands up!” he said. Aziza cried out, and I heard a quick rustling.

  “Let the girl go.” Vala’s voice was tense.

  “No,” the man’s voice replied. “Who the hell are you?”

  I took the bread knife out of the drawer as silently as I could, even though I knew it would be little protection against a firearm. I peeked through the door, but I couldn’t see Vala. Instead I saw the other man, who was holding Aziza in front of him, using her as a shield. He also had a firearm in his hand, a small semiautomatic with a silencer. A professional criminal’s tool. He looked like a motorcycle gangbanger in his leather jacket, but I couldn’t make out any insignia. He was thirtyish and only about five foot six, but well muscled and solidly built. His long, light-brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and his beard was plaited into two braids that extended halfway down his neck. His face wasn’t familiar. I hadn’t run into him before, but it was obvious that this wasn’t the first time he’d stared down the barrel of a gun.

  “Whoever you are, you’d better give up while you’re ahead. I have the passports, the girl, and the jewels. Put down your weapon, and I’ll let you keep your life.”

  “Don’t waste your breath,” Vala answered.

  I eased myself over to the window and looked down. We were on the third floor; it would be too dangerous to jump down. The outer wall was smooth, and there weren’t any balconies on this side of the building. The ventilation window was narrow, so I would have to smash the larger window in order to get out, and that would certainly alert the man that there was another person in the apartment. Because I was able to see him through the crack in the door, he would also see me if I left the kitchen and tried to flee to the stairwell. It would be pointless to try to appeal to my authority as a police officer; for some motorcycle gang members, killing a police officer was a badge of honor.

  “Do you know who that girl is working for?” Vala asked. “Omar Jussuf, who is killing Finnish soldiers in Afghanistan. Think about whether you want to be a traitor to your country.”

  “What the fuck does it matter? And come to think of it, you don’t matter either,” the man answered. I heard a dull thud, and both Vala and Aziza cried out. Then I heard someone collapse, though the rugs muffled the sound of the fall.

  It took all I had not to rush in. The man with the passports had shown that he was prepared to kill any witnesses. I tried to burn his image into my mind. My heart was beating so hard I was sure he could hear it. I prayed that Aziza wouldn’t give me away. She had started to sob.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you if you give me what was promised. Where are the jewels?”

  “In my pocket . . .”

  “Good. Let me have a look.” The man came into my field of vision again. He turned on more lights. I saw that he was holding a piece of gold jewelry with small stones shining in it. He inspected it carefully and then shoved his pistol carelessly under his belt and dug a magnifying loupe out of his pocket. After peering at the jewels for a moment, he nodded.

  “Looks genuine. The passports are yours. Here . . . What the hell?”

  Even though my field of view was limited, I could see Aziza holding Vala’s weapon, which must have slipped out of his hand when he fell.

  “No, Aziza!” I screamed at the same moment she shot the man straight in the chest. Vala’s pistol didn’t have a silencer. Fired from such close range, the bullet penetrated the man’s body with violent force. Blood sprayed all around him. Aziza started to shriek. I opened the kitchen door, but the man’s fallen body blocked my way. I started to ease him out of the way and got blood smeared on myself too. Finally, I succeeded in hopping over the body into the hall. The man’s gunshot wound looked to be right to the heart. I had to turn my head away.

  Vala lay on the floor. He was conscious, but just barely. He’d been shot in the stomach. My cell phone had flown out of his pocket onto the floor. It was covered in blood, so I wiped it off with my shirt.

  First, I called dispatch and reported that there had been a shooting with two victims. Then I called Koivu, and thank God he answered. I asked him to bring a first aid kit. I could hear noises in the hallway. The shot and Aziza’s shrieking had apparently roused the building’s residents. I went back into the kitchen to get my scarf out of the arm of my coat and with it tried my best to quell the flow of blood from Vala’s belly. The wound was more or less where his appendix would be, but because of the amount of blood, I couldn’t tell whether the bullet had passed through or remained lodged inside. The scarf wasn’t enough by itself to staunch the flow, but it did slow it a little. Vala moaned quietly.

  I checked the other man’s pulse after binding Vala’s stomach. It didn’t seem like there was anything to be done for him.

  The voices in the hall grew louder.

  “Out of the way, I’m a police officer,” I heard Koivu say on the other side of the door. “Maria, are you in there? Open up!”

  I jumped over the dead body to the door. Koivu was wearing his pajamas with a winter coat on top. On his feet he had felt slippers with rubber soles. In his hand he carried a first aid kit, which I’d seen before in his car.

  “No unauthorized personnel!” he yelled into the hall. “And don’t close the downstairs door! The paramedics will be here any second.”

  I took the first aid kit from him. Aziza had dropped Vala’s pistol and was now vomiting in the corner of the living room near the window. I undid the scarf, and blood gushed from beneath it. It took some effort to stifle my nausea as I bound Vala’s wound as best I could. Koivu tried to resuscitate the man in the leather jacket, but his heart had already stopped pumping. Sirens began to wail outside, and in a moment the parking lot was full of blue flashing lights. The paramedics arrived, and I backed into the corner of the living room that wasn’t covered in blood or vomit. I put my head between my knees. When I finally looked up, I saw Vala being taken away on a stretcher. He was being carried away headfirst.

  As I’d guessed, the man who had brought the passports had been a member of a motorcycle gang. His name was Riku “Ricky Bruch” Konttinen, and he belonged to Gunners MC. He’d done some time for attempted murder and four shorter stints for drug dealing. He’d been free for the past year. According to intelligence from the National Bureau of Investigation, the Gunners had connections to the international drug trade and human trafficking, and forging passports was something they excelled at.

  Konttinen had shot to kill. The only thing that saved Vala’s life was that he’d received first aid within two minutes of being shot. I didn’t feel like a hero. Quite the opposite. I’d gone along with Vala’s games for too long. He’d come to Finland because his commanders had ordered him to take sick leave. The continuous close calls he’d experienced during the fall and early winter had gradually disturbed him to the point that he was no longer fit for duty. But he’d become fixated on Omar Jussuf, and when he heard through the grapevine that the drug lord might have connections to Finland, he decided to seek out Jussuf’s second cousin’s family.

  After the explosion at the police academy, Issa Omar had fled to Sweden through Russia and Estonia. A Finnish passport issued in the name of Issa Jussuf Hasan had been intended for him. The passports had been in Riku Konttinen’s breast pocket, and when Aziza shot him, they were almost completely destroyed. But Aziza told us everything she knew in our case room at the station. We’d stopped by Koivu’s so he could swap his pajamas for a uniform, and I’d taken off my bloody blazer and sealed it in an evidence bag. I wore Koivu’s bathrobe, which somehow made me feel more secure, the more
so because it was so big on me.

  Aziza had been married to her second cousin Issa in an Islamic ceremony. According to Swedish law, the marriage was not legal, because Aziza was underage. Issa had pressured Aziza and her parents into cooperating, threatening them with the loss of their refugee status or deportation to Afghanistan, where they were on the Taliban’s hit list. After Aziza went abroad, the family had disappeared without a trace. State Intelligence had been aware of Omar’s connection to his cousins, who had received residency permits in Finland, but predictably they hadn’t seen fit to tell the regular police. Vala hadn’t yet revealed where he’d gotten his information from, but someone had probably leaked it while he was hosting a SIS delegation in Afghanistan just before Christmas.

  By around two in the morning, Aziza had become so pale that we started to worry. We took her to the lounge so she could lie down and rest. Koivu’s eyelids were drooping, but I was wide-awake. I didn’t dare drive home, though, so I shared a taxi with Koivu. At home I took my bloody shoes off outside and put them in an evidence bag I’d brought along. I went straight to the shower, where I washed my hair and poured half a bottle of verbena-scented shower gel over myself. Still, I felt like nothing could make the stench of blood go away.

  The following days were taken up with answering inquiries from other colleagues and the media. The new homicide seemed to overshadow Noor’s murder. According to the news reports, Aziza was either a cold-blooded terrorist bitch or a heroine. She would probably get to stay in Finland under the supervision of the child welfare authorities.

  She was also in line for mental health treatment, but because hers wasn’t an acute case, she would probably have to wait for the better part of a year.

  “Finnish prison will be safe for me. Issa can’t get in there. No one can get in there,” she had said during the preliminary investigation, which of course I wasn’t able to carry out because I was one of the parties involved in the incident. The trials would probably take years. But Aziza would be able to get out on bail while the process worked itself out. And maybe the prosecutor would decide she had killed in self-defense. Only I knew that she hadn’t had any reason to kill Konttinen other than her own fear.

  More and more people I saw walking on the street seemed to carry fear within themselves, and every new killing spread the anxiety further. I concentrated on investigating the case of the woman who had assaulted her brother. As I’d guessed, it turned out to be a case of incest: the brother, who was three years older, had been molesting his sister since she was ten years old. The sister said that she only regretted that she hadn’t had it in her to kill him, and that her revenge had been incomplete.

  Unfortunately, Heini Korhonen’s group succeeded in their goal. The anti-immigrant conversation remained extraordinarily tense throughout the spring. After a few minutes online, which led to a headache and nausea, I stayed away from the Internet hate speech boards. Sylvia Sandelin fired Heini from the Girls Club for spreading false information about its members and exploiting them.

  Sylvia looked old and frail when we ran into each other on the evening of the Tuesday before Easter, on a side street in the center of Tapiola.

  “I’ve always considered myself a good judge of character,” she said. “Having that pride was stupid. If I hadn’t hired the wrong person, Noor would still be alive, and Samir Amir might not be lying in a mental hospital, more dead than alive. And Ayan—where is she, the poor dear? I was trying to do something good when I founded the Girls Club, but I created so much anger and sorrow. But Easter is a celebration of mercy. I’m trying to have mercy on myself. It will still be some time before I can forgive Tuomas. Hate is just so exhausting, though. It doesn’t agree with me. Happy Easter, Detective. Come by for lunch sometime with your mother-in-law. Being around girls and young women can be exhilarating, but sometimes I feel the need for more experienced company.”

  Vala called me on Maundy Thursday. He was still in the hospital, but he’d been released from intensive care into a normal ward.

  “I just wanted to say thank you. I went a little off my rocker there for a while. I was so sure that there was a secret message in the necklace Ulrike gave you, that it was supposed to tell you where Issa Omar was. I guess I was wrong.”

  “Totally off your rocker. It’s just a necklace.” I didn’t feel like telling Vala that I’d almost believed his story and hidden the necklace in the freezer. I’d taken it out, ashamed, the day after the shooting.

  “I started seeing enemies everywhere, at SIS, in our own ranks, all over the place. Those Swedes getting shot was the last straw. But I just tried to put my head down and keep going. What kind of Finnish man asks for help, especially one who believes he’s as good as ten Taliban soldiers and eleven Afghan drug lords? But that attitude just doesn’t work in war. If I’d met that chopper gang shit alone, I would now be picking up my air force wings at the Pearly Gates. It was good you were there.”

  “Lauri, I came to that apartment because of Aziza, not you.”

  “I know, and I’m not going to bother you anymore, Kallio. You have my word on that. Stay alive.”

  “You too.”

  “I hear they’re transferring me to headquarters to push paper. The only thing people die of there is boredom.”

  When I hung up the phone, it was well past three p.m. The holiday was about to start, and it wasn’t my turn to be on duty. I would glance at my e-mail again and then leave to enjoy the weekend. I had promised to teach Iida her great grandmother’s pashka recipe.

  A message had come from the police in Tampere, from a Sergeant Irma Halli-Rasila in their white-collar crime division. I remembered seeing the unique name before on an attendee list for some women’s police event.

  Detective Kallio,

  Early last month we received an attempt-to-locate request from you about a young woman named Ayan Ali Jussuf. We recently found her here in our jurisdiction. We suspected a restaurant in the Pispala neighborhood of cooking their books. The restaurant owners are ethnic Afghans and Kurds. We conducted a raid on the restaurant last week. Ayan Ali Jussuf had been working there as forced labor, sleeping in a back room with three other women. She had been receiving two hundred euros under the table every month, plus board. She says she was recruited at the Tampere train station and went with the restaurant owner because she didn’t have anywhere else to go. We plan to put her on a train to Helsinki in the next few days. Would the Espoo police like to interview her?

  I answered briefly that no, we didn’t, but I asked Halli-Rasila to tell Ayan that her mother now knew that Heini had been lying. I thought of Miina Saraneva. Was she still sitting at the Girls Club, jumping every time the door opened, hoping it would finally be Ayan? Adey would no longer need to wait in vain.

  When the Tampere restaurant’s financial shenanigans came to trial, the news media would squawk again about forced labor and immigrant criminals. The strains of hate were already ringing in my ears. A couple of thousand years ago, that same hate had nailed one Jew to a cross, but now the outcome of that event was celebrated as a triumph over death.

  Even though finding Ayan alive was good news, I was still glum. It would do me good to try to forget work for a few days.

  Taneli was home when I got there. We ate quickly so he could make it to his extra practice. A real figure skater practiced on Maundy Thursday too. The snow had finally started to melt, and the streets were in full flood. Taneli’s own rain boots had gotten too small, so he borrowed mine. Boys’ feet grew so fast.

  I hadn’t had a chance to check the mail, so I didn’t notice the letter until that night when Taneli was already asleep. The postage stamp was familiar; I’d pasted the same ones onto the cards I sent from Afghanistan. There were two on this envelope, so it must have more than just a letter in it. I borrowed Antti’s paper knife to open it. It was written in English.

  Hi Maria, I mean Detective Kallio,

  You may have been told that the rebuilding of the police academy has gotten of
f to a good start. We are thankful that the EU has granted more money despite everything. Everyone has been working night and day, from the director of the academy to the recruits and the new kitchen staff. The only professional builders are the electricians. We continue to mourn for the dead in the explosion, but that terrible event has brought the rest of us closer together. We know that this country needs us. We look forward to the time when it will be safe enough here for you to dare come to visit. It would be nice to see you again. Maybe we will get to go to Finland once more to learn new police techniques. The training city in Hervanta is something we can only dream about here in Afghanistan right now. Our first goal is to get all our new recruits to be able to read and learn a little English.

  Greetings from Afghanistan where the first fig trees of spring are blooming,

  Sayeda, Uzuri, and Muna

  Folded into the letter was a picture of the police academy’s new building site. Muna had a hammer in her hand; Sayeda and the academy director were carrying boards. In the background was a Massey-Ferguson tractor with Uzuri leaning on its side. Everyone was smiling.

  I looked at the picture for a long time. Venjamin came to rub up against my legs. He meowed to be stroked and fed, and Jahnukainen peered from his favorite place behind the couch to see what was on the menu today, kibble or something special. I cut up a piece of pig heart for the cats, and Jahnukainen immediately began killing his own piece. A cat didn’t think about whether its actions were justified.

  Humans did, though. Even the homegrown Finnish punk music I’d been listening to since I was a girl wrestled with the subject. Pelle Miljoona sang about fear and hate, and Luonteri Surf asked whether we should love or hate. Maybe I was like Sylvia Sandelin—hate didn’t agree with me. And I had a lot of people to love—and two cats, who were dragging pieces of a heart across the kitchen floor. I poured them some milk to wash it down and then went into the bedroom, where Antti was reading. I took his book away and kissed him. Easter vacation would start with love.