Below the Surface

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “So being tested won’t bother you. I imagine we already have your fingerprints. We’ll come back to this later.”

  Kervinen sat down again, but then stood when he realized the conversation was over. I asked Officer Rasila from Patrol to take him to the forensic lab.

  “That was something,” Koivu said after Kervinen left. He tended to be embarrassed by large displays of emotion.

  “It was that. Isn’t it strange how everyone in love automatically thinks that no one could ever feel anything so powerful and genuine? Let’s check Kervinen’s phone records from Tuesday night. His landline might save him or a ping from his cell phone might betray him.”

  Koivu took a sandwich and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  “Sini Jääskeläinen gets home from school at three. We can meet up with her if we leave soon.”

  “Good. And I want to have a look at that book about Sasha Smeds. I’m curious about this previously unpublished information. I want to know what it is.”

  4

  I’ve always found it interesting to visit complete strangers’ houses. They make up the facades in the drama we present to each other. I’ve never been much for decorating, and I’ve always avoided knickknacks and frilly curtains. When Antti and I were looking for a new home, we toured several houses and apartments. Antti didn’t want a row house—he thought they were the very lowest form of residential living. Many of the houses we visited were being sold because of a divorce, and they exuded a certain sadness. Maybe we were superstitious, but we didn’t want to move into any place like that.

  At first glance, everything appeared normal in the Hackman-Jääskeläinen home. But tiny details revealed that someone had lived there who didn’t exist anymore. In the master bedroom, there was an empty cell phone charger and on the living room table sat a dry bouquet of roses. There were blond hairs on the curlers in the bathroom. On the kitchen counter was a coffee cup that said “Annukka” and had pink lipstick on the rim. I’d seen grieving parents preserve a lost child’s room like a museum, and once I had to comfort a man who was hysterically throwing away all of his dead lover’s clothes on the day he died because seeing them hurt too much. Maybe Atro Jääskeläinen wanted to preserve the touch of Annukka’s lips on her coffee cup; maybe he would never wash it.

  The Hackman-Jääskeläinens had only lived in the house for six months. They’d bought it almost complete after a previous buyer backed out of the construction contract at the last moment, Jääskeläinen explained. He was calmer than he’d been the previous day, but he smelled of beer and his speech was slow.

  “Was Annukka a cold-water swimmer?” I asked.

  “Not anymore. Apparently, a few years ago, she was into it, but the wet suit she has now is from when she did triathlons. Annukka got bored easily and switched sports a lot. Recently, she’s been really interested in rally racing, and she’s even ridden in a few cars to see what it’s like.”

  “In Sasha Smeds’s car?”

  “At the beginning of the book project, yeah, but lately it’s been with less well-known drivers.” Jääskeläinen listed some names I’d never heard before.

  “Did Annukka tell you she was going to Lake Humaljärvi to swim?”

  “She didn’t say where she was going. She just said she was going out to check on something important. She said she’d be gone a couple of hours. Annukka doesn’t like anyone keeping tabs on her, but of course I was immediately concerned when she didn’t come home on time, especially given that Kervinen guy . . .”

  “Why didn’t you file a police report about his harassment?”

  “Annukka said she could handle it. She was sure Kervinen would chill out after a while. Do you think he killed Annukka?”

  “We’re looking into that. Do you have any idea what your wife went to the lake to check on?”

  “No! I don’t know what she was doing there. As far as I know, she’d never been there before.” Suddenly Jääskeläinen stood up. “I’m grabbing a beer. Do you two want one?”

  I would have, but since I was on duty I declined. The beer was dark and German, and Jääskeläinen poured it into a glass with a certain reverence before waiting for the head to collapse.

  “How did the Sasha Smeds book project start?”

  “Annukka interviewed him for our magazine last year. Smeds has an interesting family. They all live in the same house: Sasha’s parents, his brother, and Sasha’s wife, Heli. The brother and wife are organic farmers. Andreas was also a promising driver, but then he screwed up his career and had to quit. Of course, Sasha had the world championship stolen from him last year. That was some serious drama. And this year’s championship is going to be really tight; it’s going to come down to the final rally in a couple of weeks.”

  “Did Sasha participate in the book project?”

  “In the beginning.” Jääskeläinen sipped his beer, and I could practically taste it on my own lips. I wondered if I should stop by the liquor store on the way home and drink a bottle or two after the kids fell asleep. “Sasha didn’t like the angle Annukka chose, so he backed out. But that doesn’t hurt the marketing. Unauthorized biographies are perfectly common out in the world. In Finland we’re just too considerate to celebrities.”

  But celebrities weren’t considerate to themselves or their loved ones. They exposed everything about themselves there was to expose, I thought, and remembered a story Ursula had been reading aloud in the break room about the unique sexual proclivities of a former beauty queen’s boyfriends. In my job I was always learning too much about strangers’ intimate business, and I had no interest in reading more in the tabloids.

  “Where did Annukka keep the manuscript for the book?”

  “In the office. The source material and backup copies are in the safe. Don’t think I’m going to let you take them.”

  “They’re evidence for the investigation, and if I have to, I’ll go to a judge to get them,” I said firmly.

  “And then you’ll sell the information to the highest bidder?”

  “That’s not how I operate.” I could only speak for myself, though, because I knew that more than one of my colleagues made a little extra on the side by letting the papers know whenever a celebrity got pulled over for speeding or drunk driving.

  The door opened, something was thrown on the floor, then there was a clatter of coat hangers.

  “Dad, who’s this?” Sini Jääskeläinen appeared in the living room. She was a standard-looking sixteen-year-old with her hair cut short in one of the current styles. She wore jeans with exaggerated bell bottoms and a sweater that left her navel bare. Koivu introduced us to her, and she looked like she wanted to leave.

  “Were you two home the night before last?” Koivu directed this to Sini.

  “The night before last? I had aerobics and then I went with Laura to McDonald’s in Tapiola. I came home at about nine thirty to watch The Sopranos.”

  “Could we get Laura’s phone number?”

  Sini glared, but then she looked up the number on her phone. I didn’t want to ask about her stepmother while her father was listening. It took Atro a few seconds to realize we were checking his daughter’s alibi.

  “Come on, you don’t think Sini shot Annukka, do you? She’s just a kid.”

  “Whatever, Dad, I am not! At least not to all the guys I run into who are your age but want to get in my pants. But I didn’t kill Annukka. Why would I? She was OK.”

  “How about we go have a look at Annukka’s papers?” I suggested to Jääskeläinen. I thought Koivu could get more out of Sini than I could.

  Jääskeläinen stood up and brought his beer with him. To get to the office, we had to go outside along a covered walkway. The wind rustled the hedge, and a drill whined in the yard next door. Inside, the graphic designer, Jalonen, was on his computer.

  The safe was high quality and could have stood up to almost anything. Even an experienced safe cracker would have had a hard time with it. Jääskeläinen had to use the crib sheet he
kept in his wallet to get it open. There was a large box of Smeds materials: newspaper articles, video recordings, notes, and rally results. And disks, backup copies of the backup copies. I would need a garbage sack for all of it.

  “What computer did your wife use?”

  “She used a laptop and the desktop in her office.”

  We would have to search both, which was something Ursula could add to her task list. She was extremely good with computers. Someone could come back for those, but I was going to take the papers now. I wrote out receipts for all of it for Jääskeläinen.

  “I don’t have a clue about her passwords,” he said bitterly.

  In the car Koivu said Sini hadn’t given him much.

  “I get the feeling Sini and Annukka didn’t pay much attention to what the other was doing. I doubt her father keeps track of her either. She seems to live her own life. She eats dinner at restaurants with friends and just comes home to sleep. Her friend backed up her alibi from six on. They were in aerobics class together, then went to McDonald’s, just like she said.”

  “So in theory she could have been with her stepmom at the lake, but she would have had to find a way back by hitchhiking or using public transportation.”

  “Or a taxi. Some of these teenagers have a crazy amount of money,” Koivu said.

  “If she hitchhiked from anywhere near the scene of the crime, someone might call it in as a tip. Let’s check the buses and taxis in the area. We’ll see if canvassing the houses nearby turned up anything. The latest reports are probably waiting in our in-boxes.”

  After I dropped Koivu off at the station, I went to pick up my kids. On the way I plugged in my hands-free earpiece to call Ursula and ask if she’d made contact with the Smeds family. Apparently none of the five family members had answered the phone.

  “They have cows that have to be milked twice a day. Someone has to be home,” Ursula said.

  “Take a trip out there then. Maybe take Autio with you.”

  “Now? It’s almost four. I can’t. I’ve got other plans.”

  “This morning you were dying to meet Sasha Smeds.”

  “He probably isn’t even coming home between the Australian and British rallies. He’s probably training near Versailles at the Citroën rally facility.”

  “Ursula, just do it!” I hissed, then hung up even though I knew I should have given Ursula a real talking-to. For some reason it was easier giving orders to men. Somehow it seemed strange that my recalcitrant subordinate was the other woman.

  Being so surrounded by men, I was used to the few of us women in the department sticking together. Last week our women’s soccer club had played its final matches of the season. Ursula hadn’t participated.

  “Soccer? Just with women? No thanks. I prefer other sports,” she’d replied when I told her about our club. I suspected that if the club had been for men and women, she would have come to stand on the sidelines and hand out water bottles.

  I was at the day care at five to four. Iida was in the middle of a game with Roosa and had no interest in going home. Roosa joined in the tantrum. By the time I got them calmed down by promising that they could continue their game tomorrow, I was exhausted. Luckily I didn’t have to bother making dinner; we had frozen macaroni casserole at home. During my second maternity leave, I’d systematically learned to cook something other than simple foods, and to my surprise I’d even learned to like cooking. Ingredients usually behaved the way they were expected to: egg whites whipped to stiff peaks, flour soaked up water, and butter melted in the microwave. The outer leaves of a head of lettuce might be a little wilted, but underneath the rest would be fresh. You could throw away a rotten tomato without a second thought. People were different. The ones I had to deal with in my job tried to hide and to hustle, and I never knew when I started a case what final result I’d end up with. Criminal investigation was like setting bread dough to rise but with someone else choosing the rising time and baking temperature.

  I had the power to interrogate and arrest, but I had no influence over the consequences of a crime. Domestic violence charges were dropped; rapists got off with suspended sentences and came back a few months later to be interrogated about their next attempt. A pedophile stepfather claimed his wife and daughter were crazy, and the prosecutor couldn’t find enough evidence to get a conviction. Sometimes I thought about going into prosecution since I had a law degree after all. My own vengefulness scared me sometimes.

  After dinner it was time for the kids’ shows. I’d have at least the running time of Tiny Two to read the Smeds papers. I left the bedroom door open a crack and started going through the contents of the box. Our unit secretary had made copies of everything, which Koivu had. He understood more about rally racing than I did and would be able to spot anything out of place that I didn’t have an eye for.

  Hundreds of articles had been written about Sasha Smeds in the domestic and foreign press. Annukka Hackman had been a systematic person; the articles were in chronological order. The first newspaper article was from 1983 when eleven-year-old Sasha had won some sort of go-cart race. His sparring partner had been his brother, Andreas, who was two years older. Their parents, Rauha and Viktor, were farmers in Degerö. That was in Inkoo very close to Antti’s parents’ summer house, so I knew the area.

  Reading all the articles would take days, and I was more interested in Annukka Hackman’s manuscript. I tried in vain to find a paper version. There were two disks, one labeled “Sasha Manuscript” and the other labeled as the backup copy (clearly, Hackman wasn’t about to risk losing her work to a corrupted disk). Our only computer was with Antti in Edinburgh, so that reading would have to wait for tomorrow. I found the previous year’s articles in which Smeds explained how team orders were just a normal part of motorsports.

  “Of course it’s disappointing that I was so close to the championship, but the team would have done the same thing for me if they could have ensured me the win,” the article quoted Smeds as saying. He was trying to smile in the picture, and the caption said the small brunette next to him was his wife, Heli.

  A scream from the children’s room interrupted my reading. I hadn’t even noticed that they were done watching TV. The scream was followed by another, then I heard Taneli burst into tears. I rushed to their room. Taneli lay wailing, surrounded by Duplo blocks. Blood dripped from his forehead. In her hand Iida had a red hammer used to pound blocks through holes.

  “What the hell’s going on in here?”

  “Taneli broke my Lego dollhouse!”

  Lifting my son off the floor, I wiped off most of the blood with Iida’s doll blanket. Head wounds often bled a frightening amount even when the injury wasn’t serious.

  “No matter what he broke, you still don’t hit him!” I yelled at Iida. I knew I shouldn’t shout. It made Iida cry, and I wasn’t far from tears either.

  “Let’s go put a bandage on that,” I said as I tried to calm Taneli. Band-Aids made children think the pain would go away, just so long as no blood was showing. In the bathroom I washed the blood out of Taneli’s hair. It looked like the wound was only superficial. Still I decided to let him sleep with me. Hopefully Iida wouldn’t feel rejected.

  Iida and Taneli had three and a half years between them, and sometimes I thought that was at least one year too long. Iida wanted to play quiet games of house and princesses with her dolls. Taneli spent his time with cars and toys that made as much noise as possible. At least they both liked stuffed animals, but it terrified me the way their games diverged along traditional gender lines, even though Antti and I tried to break those roles. Taneli was putt-putting around with toy cars before he could talk.

  I got the kids calmed down by reading them a Moomin book, but I still felt bad about shouting. Maybe I was expecting too much of Iida to think she could ignore all of Taneli’s provocations. She probably needed more company her own age outside of school. Antti was more patient than I was and could always seem to calm troubled waters and find something sens
ible for each child to do.

  After the Moomin story, I turned on the TV. One of the endless news programs was on.

  “Today the Finnish Road Safety Council launched a new campaign to cut down on young drivers speeding,” the announcer said. “The public face of the campaign is rally star Sasha Smeds, who had just enough time to visit his home in Finland before the final race in the World Rally Championship in two weeks in Great Britain.”

  The Road Safety Council ad began. It started with Sasha Smeds spraying champagne on an awards platform. Then it shifted to a close-up of Sasha’s face, and his jubilant expression turned serious.

  “I only drive fast on the racetrack. On the road I always follow the speed limit. I never get behind the wheel when I’ve had alcohol, and I don’t let my friends either. You should do the same!”

  Then the picture shifted to a tricked-out Citroën hatchback with Smeds behind the wheel. There was also a woman who looked like a model, two school-age children, and a golden retriever. The woman wasn’t the same one who had posed with Smeds in the newspaper picture. A lot of rally and Formula 1 wives had created their own careers in advertising, but apparently Sasha Smeds didn’t want to get his family mixed up in his sponsorship business.

  “Sasha, isn’t it a contradiction for you to be acting as a role model for safe driving?” the reporter asked. Smeds was being interviewed at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport. Maybe Ursula was right that he would be impossible to contact before the decisive race.

  “I don’t think so. One purpose of car racing is to develop new safety technology. You’re free to check if I have any speeding tickets,” Smeds replied. He was obviously prepared for these sorts of questions.

  “The campaign also talks about drunk driving. Your brother, Andreas’s, rally career ended because of a drunk-driving conviction. What do you have to say about that?”

  “My brother made a mistake, but he’s suffered the consequences and made up for his bad choice.”