Below the Surface

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Suuronen claims Annukka Hackman gave him the disk.”

  “When?”

  “In August. But that’s easy for him to claim when Hackman is dead. I’ll show you on the video how he scratched his nose and made other gestures that are typical of liars. But that isn’t enough evidence to keep detaining him.”

  “No, it isn’t. And actually, the fact that Suuronen didn’t destroy the disk is an argument in his favor. He probably assumed the police had the same version. Let him go. Then let’s have an interrogation-video watching party when I’m done with Jääskeläinen. Did you sleep at all last night?”

  “An hour. I’ll still come watch videos with you, though, if I can have popcorn. And by the way, is it true Ursula took back her accusation against Koivu?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Puustjärvi saw the workplace safety officer. Apparently Ursula sent an e-mail saying it was all a misunderstanding.”

  I felt like hugging Puupponen for delivering such good news. Of course Ursula had neglected to tell me.

  I hoped at least Koivu knew. I walked back to Interrogation Room 4. Ursula had turned the light so it didn’t shine on Jääskeläinen, and it seemed like they were having a friendly conversation about Sasha Smeds. Ursula smiled her prettiest smile, and Jääskeläinen didn’t seem so glum either.

  “Let’s continue the interview.” I switched the recorder back on, and it whined strangely as if it were breaking.

  “How often did Annukka show you the Smeds manuscript?” I turned the light back so it shone on Jääskeläinen’s face instead of the seascape picture that hung on the back wall. I hated that painting.

  “Annukka didn’t like anyone reading her unfinished drafts. I looked over the manuscript in the spring, at the point when Sasha pulled out of the project. After that Annukka said she got all sorts of new, shocking material. She assured me it was all true, and there would be no grounds for a libel suit.”

  “Did she deliver the manuscript to anyone or have anyone but you read it?”

  “No! Annukka was protective of her writing and her sources. Layout was supposed to start a week ago, and she said she asked our graphic designer for a written commitment that he wouldn’t breathe a word about the contents of the book. According to Annukka, it had some serious stuff in it that we needed to keep safe. She had a backup copy in her office safe, of course. Sometimes she mailed backups of her work to her parents’ house too, but she didn’t dare do that this time.”

  I made a note to ask Koivu to check with the parents, just to be sure they hadn’t received a version of the manuscript in the mail.

  Then I tried to turn the question around, but I still didn’t get the answer I wanted. There was no way to prove that Jääskeläinen knew about the later version of the manuscript. So I had to let him go too.

  Jääskeläinen looked relieved, but he lingered in the doorway. “What I said to Kervinen last night . . . was that what made him kill himself?”

  “We don’t know whether it was a homicide or suicide. I’d encourage you to stay reachable in case we need more information,” I said in farewell.

  Annukka Hackman’s funeral was coming up that weekend, and someone from the unit would need to attend. Perhaps Puupponen would be a good fit. I’d have to ask him later. For now, I desperately needed some fresh air, a long jog in the freezing wind or a few turns on the skating rink. Iida had taken to skating the previous winter, so I’d dug up my ancient skates at my parents’ house and tried to see if I could still do it. After a few falls I’d regained my feel for the ice, and we put Iida in lessons. I’d looked forward to the outdoor rinks freezing, since the indoor facilities had made me anxious ever since I almost lost my life at the Matinkylä Ice Arena while I was expecting Iida.

  “Do you want to go out for some fresh air?” I asked Ursula once Jääskeläinen had left.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” she said.

  “No, I meant real fresh air.” I headed up the stairs, and Ursula followed me. Outside the frigid wind blew right through my clothes. Exhaustion accentuated the chill, but at least it kept my eyes open and sharpened my senses. Ursula wrapped her arms around herself. It was comforting to see that her nose turned red in the cold too.

  “What do you think about Jääskeläinen?”

  Ursula snorted. “That man is an idiot. I doubt he knew half of what his wife was doing. Hackman married Jääskeläinen’s money and business, not the man. But so what? Idiots are made to be used, and they only have themselves to blame.”

  “You retracted your sexual harassment complaint.” I couldn’t help saying it, even though I should have let Ursula tell me herself.

  “I did, but don’t think that’s the end of this. I have my connections.”

  Ursula turned and went back inside. I yelled after her to check with Traffic for possible sightings of Jääskeläinen, but she didn’t answer. It felt ridiculous standing and shouting in the middle of a half-empty parking lot. Instead of Ursula I tried to think about Annukka Hackman. We still didn’t know why she’d gone swimming in that lake. Could it have had something to do with Sasha Smeds?

  Maybe Hackman really had only married Jääskeläinen because he offered her better job prospects. But could a person really just choose to love someone and stop loving someone else? Maybe their marriage wasn’t about love at all. And so what, if they both knew the truth? Marriages of convenience caused fewer messes than marriages built on love. God, I was becoming so cynical.

  The cold became unbearable, so I had to head back inside. I fetched my tenth cup of coffee of the day, then went to knock on Puupponen’s door.

  “Yeah,” came the sleepy reply. Puupponen had made an emergency bed out of his desk chair and two others, and he was lying down with his coat over him. “Oh, is it the interrogation video? Do you have popcorn?”

  I laughed. “You’ll have to settle for salmiakki. Do you want me to grab some?”

  Puupponen went for coffee too and lifted a couple of chocolate cookies from Lähde’s supply. As I was looking for the right channel for the VCR, I caught a glimpse of a familiar face on the news. Sasha Smeds.

  “Rally driver Sasha Smeds is recovering well from the skin-grafting procedure he underwent yesterday,” the news reader said. In the corner of the screen they again showed the car rolling down the hill, then the rescue helicopter that rushed Sasha to the hospital. Heli had returned to Finland instead of staying with her husband. Did that mean she’d chosen Andreas?

  When Puupponen came back, I moved on to the video. It was apparent looking at Jouko Suuronen that he’d spent the night in jail. His clothing was wrinkled and he hadn’t bothered to put his tie back on. His lawyer stayed in the background, but I recognized him from law school. Suuronen claimed he’d met with Annukka Hackman in late summer on the terrace at Tapiontori Restaurant.

  “I told Hackman it was in her best interest to let me read the manuscript before it went to press. She didn’t want to face libel accusations, so she agreed to have me review the text.” Suuronen really did rub his nose as he spoke; he also fiddled with his shirt buttons and shifted nervously.

  “I would have expected Hackman to think the more noise, the better,” I said to Puupponen. “Politicians’ memoirs sell better the more they bad-mouth other people in them.”

  Suuronen stayed almost calm through the whole interview. It wasn’t until Puupponen asked if he’d talked to Annukka Hackman about Heli and Andreas’s affair that he became agitated. The irritation overwhelmed his entire bearing, as if Heli had been his own wife.

  “Why did that woman want to humiliate Sasha like that?” Suuronen shouted.

  “Are you talking about Heli Haapala or Annukka Hackman?” Puupponen asked.

  “I don’t know!” Suuronen waved a hand impatiently. “To do something like that to such a good man. It’s incomprehensible . . .”

  Puustjärvi was almost out of the picture. I could only see his left leg, whi
ch twitched nervously as Suuronen shouted. Puupponen had handled the talking. Puustjärvi usually preferred to stay in the background if possible. Just then, Puupponen pushed the pause button.

  “I don’t believe him,” he said. “Maybe he stole the disk from Hackman’s purse after shooting her.”

  “But why would he have kept the disk at his house?”

  “Because Hackman was dead and no one else could prove she didn’t give him the disk!” I could hear the impatience and exhaustion in Puupponen’s voice. We both needed to go home and sleep.

  I almost felt too tired to drive, but I didn’t have a choice: in the morning someone would need to get the kids to day care if Taneli was healthy enough to go. I drove slower than normal, far under the speed limit, and by the time I made it to our parking lot, I was wiped out. I noticed that there was something strange about the landscape: a digging machine had appeared in the middle of our tiny patch of forest, and some of the pine trees had been knocked down. Tears came to my eyes.

  For ten minutes I sat in the car bawling about everything: about Kervinen, about this hopeless investigation, about the dead trees. Antti and I had found so much comfort in being able to see that strip of green from the windows of the White Cube. Soon even it would be gone. Maybe Antti would know what was going on in the forest.

  When I got upstairs, Antti had just given Taneli half a Panadol for his fever. I picked him up and took him to the couch to sit, where he sobbed and squirmed in my arms. I was ravenously hungry, but I couldn’t do anything about that right now. Iida very helpfully brought us a book about tools, which I read to Taneli to try to calm him down.

  “Today was really fun at school!” Iida proclaimed. “I learned to crochet. I’m going to make Grandma a pot holder for Christmas, but your present is a secret, Mom. Hopefully I don’t get sick too since there’s so much work to do at school. And they sent a note home. Parent night is next week. I drew the cats on the note, and Roosa drew the hearts.” Iida brought me the lavishly decorated announcement. “Mom, when can we get another cat?” she asked.

  “When we move,” I replied and tried to continue reading but realized that Taneli had fallen asleep. I carried him to bed. He wouldn’t be going to day care for the rest of the week.

  With Iida chattering behind me, I dragged myself into the kitchen.

  “Is there any food?” I asked Antti, who sat at the table reading.

  “Iida and I made veggie pasta. There weren’t many options. The cupboards were empty and I didn’t feel like going to the store with a kid with a fever.”

  I heated the leftover pasta in the microwave. I felt like a beer, but we were out of those too.

  “Do you feel up to making a trip now?” I asked Antti hopefully.

  “Gladly. I’ve been sitting around here all day! I’ll take a quick walk at the same time. The chainsaws have been howling all day. All the trees are being leveled, and apparently they’re putting in a parking garage.”

  “That isn’t funny,” I said with a mouth full of grated cheese.

  “Unfortunately it isn’t a joke. People want a roof over their cars. Maybe we’ll buy a spot in it too.” Antti stood up and started opening cupboards. “I’m going to buy everything I can think of. Any requests? And can you be home tomorrow?”

  “No, absolutely not! And we aren’t buying a covered parking spot. We’re moving out of here to somewhere . . . to somewhere with trees and where we can have a cat.” I looked outside. From the kitchen window I could see bright lights and a parking lot, behind which there were other buildings. Learning to pick out our window from the parking lot had taken me a full year. That had to say something about how much disgust I felt for this apartment.

  “Well, you should probably hold on to your job so we can at least keep paying for this place. Hopefully no one in my job interviews asks what my wife does. I’ll have to lie and say we never have any childcare problems,” Antti said and disappeared into the entryway. After a few seconds he returned in his coat and boots with a winter hat pulled down to his eyes and started looking for shopping bags in the kitchen cupboard. I always forgot them and had to settle for plastic.

  Once Antti was gone, I poured myself a stiff shot of Laphroaig. I knew it was stupid when I had a six-year-old to entertain and a sick two-year-old sleeping, but I didn’t have it in me to be sensible. Iida asked what the funny smell was, but I was able to redirect her by suggesting that we read Pippi. That became overwhelming too at the part where Pippi was about to go with her father to the South Seas and leave Tommy and Annika behind in tears.

  “Mommy, she doesn’t really leave,” Iida said consolingly. That made me cry even more. A child wasn’t supposed to have to comfort her mother. In my work I’d seen too many children thrust into adult roles, and I didn’t want that for my kids. Forcing myself to calm down, I decided to leave the rest of my glass of whiskey until Iida was asleep too.

  She was tired like the rest of us and was asking for her bedtime snack by seven thirty and was asleep just after eight. I checked her for a fever too by placing my hand on her forehead, but she wasn’t hot. Taneli had kicked his covers off, so I tucked him back in. Then I went back out to the living room and drank the rest of my glass of whiskey, before pouring a little more.

  There was no sign of Antti, but the store was open until nine. I tried to think about tomorrow’s work. Maybe after the morning meeting I could come home. But that would depend on what sort of lab results were waiting for me. Before seeing those, I couldn’t promise Antti anything. I felt helpless in the face of his despondency. Our generation was the first not to exceed their parents’ standard of living. Antti had declined any sort of advance on his inheritance, even though his parents’ help might have made it possible for us to live somewhere other than a White Cube in the middle of a construction site. When we got married I hadn’t even considered things like Antti’s career. I only thought I was responsible for my own.

  I didn’t want to think about our situation right now, though, so I decided to handle one more work task. I called Heli Haapala’s cell phone. After a few rings she timidly answered. Of course she didn’t recognize my number.

  “Hi, it’s Maria Kallio from the Espoo Police. I saw on the news that you’re back in Finland.”

  “Onnikki is calving soon, and the organic inspector is coming next week, and I couldn’t do anything in England because Sasha’s being kept unconscious for now. He doesn’t know if I’m there or not. As soon as they let him wake up, I’ll fly back,” Heli said as if she was under some sort of obligation to explain her decisions to me. I heard her stand up from a chair that creaked, and a television was audible in the background. Then a door opened with a squeak. “I’m sorry for going on like that. I feel like I might explode if I don’t talk to someone.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Jouko Suuronen has read Annukka Hackman’s manuscript. He knows about you and Andreas.”

  I didn’t know why I wanted to tell Heli this. I heard her walking up some stairs, perhaps on her way to her bedroom.

  “Jouko? Has he told Sasha?”

  “No, and I don’t think he will anytime soon. He’s only thinking about Sasha’s recovery.”

  “As we all are, including Rauha, even though she mostly just fusses over Viktor. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to explode with all this acting and pretending. Now at least I have an explainable reason to cry. Of course I realize that Andreas and I had a strong motive for killing Annukka, but we didn’t do it.”

  I tried to imagine what she would see from the windows of the house on a dark November night. The yard was illuminated, and the cows were sleeping in the barn. I hadn’t milked a cow since I was a kid, but there was something homey and calming about the smell of a barn, which probably had something to do with my memories from my Uncle Pena’s place in the country. Maybe beyond the barnyard lights there was only darkness. I envied that.

  “Andreas read online that Annukka’s old boyfriend was found dead. Was he guilty?” Heli continu
ed. I said I didn’t know yet and ended the call.

  I turned off all the lights and tried to use the blinds to shut out the streetlamps blazing outside. Annukka Hackman had been interested in DNA. Was it possible that Viktor wasn’t Sasha’s father? The couple had been married for years before Andreas was born. Perhaps when it came to Sasha, Rauha had resorted to outside help? Had Annukka discovered that? If so, how? And who had murdered her to keep that knowledge secret?

  16

  The next morning before our meeting I tested out my theory with Koivu. He’d come to work early to move his things back into his office, and I was glad to help him.

  “They always say maternity is a fact but paternity is a matter of opinion. But is that the kind of thing to kill someone over?” Koivu asked, then collapsed contentedly into his chair.

  “I guess it depends on who Sasha’s father is or whether Viktor knows he isn’t.”

  “Rauha Smeds has an alibi.”

  “The Smeds brothers don’t, and Andreas has been at the top of my list of suspects all along. But why would he have killed Kervinen? What did Hannu know?” I sat down at Koivu’s desk and grabbed a piece of the pulla he was munching on. Anu had baked the night before and sent her husband in with treats for the whole unit.

  “If Andreas is having an affair with his brother’s wife,” I continued, “would he kill to protect that same brother? I doubt it. But maybe he would kill to protect his mother, who may have been in his situation in the past, caught up in an illicit affair. Or hey—how do I know Heli told me everything? What if she had an abortion because she didn’t know whether the child’s father was Sasha or Andreas?”

  Koivu began to laugh. “You and your theories! Detective Kallio’s crime-solving strategy: if you try every possible option, sometimes you’re right! Maybe we should go look at the lab reports. We need some facts, boss.”

  Taneli had been almost fever-free that morning. I’d taken Iida to day care and promised Antti I’d try to come home early so he could go to work in the evening. Luckily Antti could work from home on the laptop, but only so long as Taneli was asleep. All morning long we were both in low spirits: November 21 had been our cat, Einstein’s, birthday, when he traditionally received a mountain of shrimp for dinner. I hadn’t bought them at all since his death.