Below the Surface

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “It wasn’t me?” Halonen asked and began to shake even more violently.

  “If you were shooting at that moose with a hunting rifle, then no, it wasn’t any of you. Could someone in your party take you home or maybe to see a doctor? Hatakka, could you handle that?” I asked, addressing one of the Kirkkonummi officers.

  Once Halonen had been escorted away, my phone rang. It was Puustjärvi.

  “I’m a couple hundred meters east of the body. We found a pile of clothes and a purse. Will you come have a look?”

  I went immediately. Voices came from the forest, and I assumed the forensic team was coming for the body. The path along the lake was difficult, winding along bare rock and occasionally stopping at large boulders. Why on earth did this woman want to swim here? Based on the wet suit, swimming in cold water was something she did regularly, but why come swim in the middle of nowhere when there were more accessible shorelines?

  The clothing and handbag were at a relatively flat spot near a gently sloping, exposed bedrock shore where getting in the water would have been easy. The clothes were neatly folded inside a plastic bag. The lingerie was on top, a bra and matching dark-blue satin panties. This wasn’t cheap underwear, and the rain gear, thermals, and high-top hiking boots were expensive too. Whoever this woman was, she’d known how to choose the right footwear for this terrain. The underwear was strangely out of keeping with the pragmatic sportiness of the rest of the clothing, though. The plush, dark-blue towel didn’t have a monogram, so no clues there.

  I waited for Forensics to take their pictures before picking up the handbag. It looked new, and the leather was stiff. The wallet was intact. Carefully I opened it. Inside were credit cards, two twenty-euro bills, and a new-style driver’s license. The picture showed a stylish blond woman. Maija Annukka Hackman, born April 8, 1970.

  “I think we found Annukka Hackman,” I told Koivu, who had caught up to me.

  “So she wasn’t off cheating,” Puustjärvi said.

  “Nope. Not unless she had a date with a naiad,” Koivu said, trying to lighten the mood. Probably he felt it was his duty since Puupponen wasn’t around.

  When I looked at Annukka Hackman’s driver’s license more closely, I remembered why her name was familiar. Hackman was the reporter who’d interviewed me a few years earlier for the weekend supplement of one of the tabloids. It was just a little before my second maternity leave. I’d hesitated to agree to the interview because I didn’t like the theme of the article, which focused on “women in unique occupations.” In my mind female police offers were already commonplace, although there wasn’t exactly an oversupply of female detective lieutenants yet. Hackman had also interviewed a professor of theoretical physics, an army officer, and a fire chief. Two things had fascinated her most: that I was visibly pregnant and that the murder investigation I’d led the previous spring had connections to Espoo city politics. Hackman had tried to paint a picture of me as a fearless champion of justice who couldn’t be held back even by pregnancy. The article was so embarrassing I’d tried to put it out of my mind.

  Still, Hackman had given a very effective and professional first impression. She’d done her homework on policing and the gradual increase of women in the force. But the whole time I had felt like I had to watch what I said. Hackman had tried to create some sort of woman-to-woman connection that would make me tell her things I wouldn’t tell a male reporter. Seeing through the ruse had been depressingly easy. I didn’t know what paper Hackman had been writing for these days.

  Her husband had filed a missing person report, but that could be a cover. We always looked for the perpetrator in the victim’s inner circle first. I looked at my watch. One thirty. The day care closed at five.

  “Puustjärvi, if you’ll stay here and continue with the field team, Koivu and I can go deliver the bad news,” I said. Turning to Koivu, I asked, “Do you have the husband’s info with you?” Being the bearer of this kind of news was hard, but it was part of the job. Koivu and I had done this together more times than I could remember.

  Annukka Hackman and her husband, Atro Jääskeläinen, owned a small company called Racing Stripe Publishing, which produced a motorsports magazine of the same name, as well as a website. The company was located in a neighborhood in southwest Espoo called Nöykkiö, and the street address, 26 B, indicated that it was next to their home at 26 A.

  “Did Jääskeläinen’s concern for his wife seem genuine?” I asked as Koivu was turning out of downtown Kirkkonummi back toward Espoo.

  “Hard to say. I wasn’t at my sharpest this morning. You know what it’s like being up all night.”

  “Unfortunately. How’s Anu holding up?”

  “You know her. She never complains. She just keeps getting paler every day. We’ve tried everything for the colic. Fennel tea and all that. I guess it has to end someday, though.”

  Koivu’s wife, Anu, also worked in our unit but intended to apply for a transfer as soon as her maternity leave ended. I missed Anu’s methodical attention to detail and sharp wit, as well as having another woman around to laugh at our male colleagues’ strange logic. At first I’d thought Ursula might be a sort of replacement for Anu, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “We’ll have to ask Jääskeläinen to identify the body. And the bottom half of the face isn’t a pretty sight. Do they have any children?”

  “Not together, but Jääskeläinen has a daughter from a previous marriage who lives with them. Her name is Sini, and she’s sixteen. According to her father, she didn’t know anything about where her stepmother was, and he avoided saying anything else about her.”

  “So stepmother and daughter didn’t have a good relationship?”

  “Apparently. But usually it’s the teenager who runs away, not the thirty-something stepmother.”

  Neither of us was about to rule out the possibility that the girl had shot her stepmother. A few years ago I might have, but recent events had shown me that teenagers were capable of anything. In addition to Atro Jääskeläinen, Sini would be a prime suspect.

  For a few seconds I leaned my head back and tried to figure out how I would tell Atro Jääskeläinen the news. Maybe we should have asked the police chaplain to join us, but I didn’t know whether the family belonged to the church. I did have contact information for the parish crisis group and the mental health office in my bag, though. When I started as a cop, groups like that didn’t exist, and there were frequently times when I hesitated to leave grieving people alone. I still felt helpless around them, but I’d learned to hide it better than when I was younger. I knew I still worried too much about other people’s problems and tried to help too much when there was nothing I could do. Even though people claimed knowing was better, I had no desire to tell Atro Jääskeläinen that he’d just become a widower.

  3

  When we pulled off the highway, Koivu asked me to read the map. And for good reason: this part of east Espoo had gone from fields and forest to sprawling housing developments so quickly in recent years that even the police had a hard time navigating all the new streets. The lots had been chopped up as small as possible, and you could pay a hundred thousand euros for less than a quarter of an acre. Out of necessity I’d become an expert on Espoo housing policy over the past few years.

  The Hackman-Jääskeläinen residence was a duplex with Racing Stripe Publishing in the northern half of the building. A recently planted hedge was still too short to block the view of the construction site to the west of the house. There were two cars in the driveway, a red Audi and a beat-up yellow VW Beetle with light-blue stripes running over the hood and top. We walked to the office first but didn’t manage to ring the bell before the door opened.

  The man in the doorway was average in height, maybe a couple of years past forty, and plump like someone who doesn’t get much exercise beyond walking to his car and back. Round eyeglasses gave his face a childlike look.

  “Are you from the police?” he asked, out of breath.

/>   “Yes. I’m Detective Lieutenant Maria Kallio, and this is Sergeant Pekka Koivu. Are you Atro Jääskeläinen?”

  “Is it . . . is it about Annukka?”

  “May we come inside?”

  Jääskeläinen didn’t move from the doorway. I knew that expression. It was the look of a person who understood that the worst was coming but wanted to hold out hope for just another moment.

  “Where is she? Is she alive?”

  Taking Jääskeläinen by the arm, I led him inside like I would have led Taneli to the dinner table if he didn’t want to go. In the entryway was a low bench, and I sat Jääskeläinen down on it. Then I told him the bad news, that his wife had been murdered, without revealing the exact cause of death or where the body had been found.

  “Are you sure it’s Annukka?”

  “Your wife’s purse and wallet were found near the body, and the description matches. We’d like you to come in and identify her as soon as you’re up to it.”

  For a moment Jääskeläinen said nothing. His eyes welled with tears and his hands clutched his thighs.

  “Annukka,” he said, as if repeating the name might somehow bring his wife back. “Annukka was writing an unofficial biography of Sasha Smeds for our company. It was supposed to go to press next week. There are things in the book that no one knows, and it’s going to sell big. If Sasha wins the British rally in a couple of weeks, he’ll be the new world champion.”

  Suddenly Jääskeläinen loudly burst into tears. Rarely had I seen a man weep that way, howling like a little child.

  “It was supposed to be our breakthrough . . . in Finnish and English . . . Annukka was so good. Now it’s all ruined. Annukka’s gone. Who killed her? Why wasn’t she more careful? Why didn’t she defend herself? She always had a gun with her.”

  “A gun?” Koivu and I both exclaimed.

  “Your wife carried a weapon?” I asked. Few Finns carried guns. Even as police detectives we were rarely armed. In my whole career I’d only been forced to discharge my service weapon once. “Why did your wife carry a gun? What kind was it?”

  Jääskeläinen didn’t answer. It is always frightening to watch someone completely lose control of themselves, and that’s what was happening to Atro Jääskeläinen. He was crying so violently now he couldn’t speak.

  “What’s going on here?” A slender man with a ponytail stepped out of a red door at the end of the hallway.

  “Detectives Kallio and Koivu from the Espoo Police Department,” I answered. “And you are?”

  “Jouni Jalonen. I’m the graphic designer here. Are you here about . . . ?” Jalonen didn’t finish his question as he stared at Jääskeläinen sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Unfortunately Mrs. Hackman has been murdered,” I said.

  “How?” Jalonen’s voice shook.

  “We aren’t at liberty to say.”

  “Oh God . . . Atro, I’m so sorry,” Jalonen said, but he didn’t reach out to touch Jääskeläinen. Koivu and I exchanged glances.

  “Do you know if Mr. Jääskeläinen has any family who could come stay with him?”

  Jalonen shook his head. “Sini will know. Atro and I don’t work together directly that much. I’m just on contract to do the layout for the magazine.”

  Jalonen had the prematurely lined, gray skin of a smoker, and the nicotine stains on the first two fingers of his right hand told the same story, as did the smell of him.

  “How well did you know Annukka Hackman?” I asked.

  “Annukka? She wasn’t an easy person to get to know. She was a damn good reporter, but she kept her distance.”

  Jalonen promised to keep Jääskeläinen company until the crisis group arrived and Sini came home from school. Together we took Jääskeläinen next door to his house and found some sedatives in the medicine cabinet. But he refused to take anything and just continued crying. We left him sobbing on the black leather couch in the living room. Identifying the body could wait until tomorrow.

  Jalonen did know enough to tell us that the pistol Hackman carried was a Hämmerli-brand .22 caliber. Hackman was a recreational shooter, and her carry permit was in order. The gun had a silencer, because she used to practice in the family’s garage.

  “The impression I got was that Annukka feared for her safety mostly when she was on long drives alone working on stories. And I guess she had an old boyfriend who bothered her, but I don’t know much about that.” Jalonen put a cigarette between his lips and looked at us inquisitively. “Is there anything else, or can I go back to the office?”

  I’d need to write up a search warrant before I could have our team go through Annukka Hackman’s things, and Koivu could interview Jalonen later, so we took off.

  “A twenty-two like that can also fire long rifle rounds,” Koivu said once we were sitting in the car.

  “And because we didn’t find it in her bag, she might have been shot with her own gun. Let’s have Forensics get going on dragging the lake after all. Maybe the murderer threw the pistol in the water. The perp must have been someone who knew Hackman carried a gun. At least that narrows down the pool a little bit.”

  We turned off the beltway toward the police station. Even though my family and I had moved away from this area two years ago, seeing the old familiar landscape of rolling fields still stung. Our former rental house didn’t even exist anymore. In its place stood three new houses worth three hundred and fifty thousand euros a piece. We hadn’t even considered buying one of them, since we wanted to preserve the illusion that there was more to life than paying a mortgage.

  “Find out everything you can about Hackman,” I told Koivu. “Employers, former lovers, vices. That book about Sasha Smeds sounds interesting and might have something to do with the case.”

  I didn’t know much about rally cars, but avoiding the name Sasha Smeds would have been impossible over the past few years. The previous season he’d narrowly lost the world championship, forced to drop out of the final rally during the third special stage because of engine trouble, after which the team pulled him from the competition, allowing their other driver to take the overall championship by a single point. After that, the conversation in the Finnish media about the unfairness of motorsports was intense. Apparently this year Sasha was doing even better than the previous season.

  “Smeds is even with Carlos Sainz, and there’s only one rally left. Don’t you read the newspaper?” Koivu asked me as we ate a late lunch in the station cafeteria.

  “Not the sports section. I’ve never been interested in men wearing racing suits in metal boxes. I prefer to look at them with less clothing on.”

  “Antti probably knows everything about rally racing,” Koivu said, teasing me. A couple of years earlier my husband had attended an environmental protest against the Jyväskylä Grand Prix. The protesters staged their own “race” with toy cars. After Taneli’s birth he’d gone through another of his intense do-gooder phases, but lately he’d maintained a steady level of disgust with everything. Hopefully the work trip he was on would perk him up a bit.

  “A tell-all book a publishing company thought was going to make them piles of money might be a motive for murder,” I said, bringing the conversation back to the case. “Put together a team to search Hackman’s belongings tomorrow. I’m glad to come too if I survive my leadership meeting. I could probably be there around noon,” I added as I got up from the table. “But for now I have to hit the day care before I head back to the White Cube.”

  The “White Cube” was the name Antti had given our new apartment. It had two bedrooms, a balcony, and a sauna, all totaling about a thousand square feet. Our bedroom and the kids’ room had views of a small pine forest. That had been a deciding factor for us, because at least we could see birds, squirrels, and rabbits in the forest. The living room and kitchen looked out on the more urban landscape of the parking lot and the next building. A lot of people would have felt at home there, but we didn’t.

  “When is Daddy coming home?” Iida asked for
the thousandth time as I drove home.

  “Two more nights, dear.” Antti was at an EU climate conference in Edinburgh, which was the culmination of a project he’d been working on for the past year. His contract with the Meteorological Institute ran out at the end of the year, and there was no word about an extension. Nowadays even a doctorate didn’t ensure a permanent job in the academic world.

  At home, I fed the kids, did the laundry, and read two bedtime stories. I wasn’t really present, though. Annukka Hackman was on my mind. Was the interview she did with me still somewhere in the stacks of newspapers we kept? Taneli fell asleep easily, but as I started rummaging through the random files in our room sometime after nine, I could still hear Iida tossing and turning. I finally found the crumpled newspaper article mixed in with some book and music reviews Antti had kept. Annukka Hackman and the photographer had demanded that I wear a police uniform for the photos. Because I was so pregnant, the only thing I could fit into was a pair of men’s tactical coveralls, with sleeves and pant legs several inches too long for me. I looked ridiculous.

  The headline of the article was “The Mother Who Investigates Murders.” I’d asked Annukka Hackman if she would have used a parallel headline for a male detective. Puustjärvi, Koivu, and Lähde were all fathers who investigated murders, and their families affected their work too. In fact, statistics showed that the fathers of small children worked the longest hours. Koivu, in particular, fit that description.

  Detective Lieutenant Maria Kallio, age 35, has a master’s degree in criminal justice and heads the Espoo Police Violent Crime Unit. There aren’t many female detectives in Finland, and the typical image of a Finnish homicide detective is still a tall, broad-shouldered man with a beer gut.

  Kallio comes from a Northern Karelian family of schoolteachers. Her choice of profession was easy, though, and she made it into the police academy on her first try. That isn’t common. Kallio was at the head of her class in technical subjects and, after graduation, she worked for a couple of years in the Helsinki vice squad. Ambitious as always, she soon applied to law school at Helsinki University—once again she was accepted on the first try.