Before I Go

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I felt desolate for the rest of the evening, even though Iida was adorable, demanding to play hairdresser. My Mother’s Day hairdo was five different pony tails, a heap of barrettes, and a piece of streamer left over from May Day. It was wonderful.

  “I should go to work like this,” I said to Antti, who replied with a kiss. Even that didn’t make me feel any better.

  In the morning I pressed my most businesslike pinstriped pantsuit, gathered my hair into a low ponytail, and took more care than usual with my makeup. The woman who stared back at me from the mirror was someone who had no intention of apologizing for her ideas. I made it to the police station in good time for the leadership coffee klatch on the top floor. Bright clear blue shone down through the skylights. Summer was almost here.

  Another drug raid had happened over the weekend, this time turning up a large cache of weapons along with the illegal pharmaceuticals. I asked Narcotics to check all of the pistols against the bullet that killed Seppälä, although I had no hope of finding our killer that way.

  On Friday I had checked Reijo Rahnasto’s gun licenses. I was shocked. He was a real collector. He owned more than thirty firearms, from normal hunting rifles to revolvers, semiautomatic pistols, and one rarity, the legendary Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun. Once Koivu got the report back from the ballistics expert, he would compare it to Rahnasto’s armory.

  “Can’t we send the Ilveskivi preliminary investigation to the prosecutor now?” Taskinen asked, and Laine from Organized Crime nodded. “There isn’t going to be a prosecution anyway, since the killer is dead.”

  “I wouldn’t close the case yet. Someone paid Seppälä,” I said irritably.

  “Do you really believe the shit his old lady is shoveling? She’s just trying convince herself and her kids that her husband wasn’t really a murderer. We’ve been tracking their family for years. The wife should get the Finlandia Prize for her storytelling. You can bet she was just as mixed up in all the fencing as Marko was. She was just better about covering her tracks so we could never charge her with anything,” Laine said, his face a study of disdain.

  “You have an amazing talent for interfering with cases that don’t have anything to do with your unit,” I said and turned my back on Laine. “Jyrki, let’s talk about this after we see what our backlog is like from the weekend. I’ll go have a look at that now.”

  Backlog was right: three assaults, one suicide, one domestic violence incident, and an unusually nasty rape. On Saturday night, a sixteen-year-old boy had attacked his forty-year-old neighbor, knocked her out, and raped her. The woman had remained partially conscious during the rape but couldn’t fight back against her larger attacker. The rest of the family, a husband and twin ten-year-old girls, had come in just as the boy was finishing and slamming the woman’s head against the floor as he did.

  The husband said that if the children hadn’t been there, he would have killed the kid on the spot. The boy got away as the man tried to help his wife and call the police.

  “We issued the APB immediately,” said Lehtovuori, who had been on duty over the weekend.

  “Does the boy use drugs?” asked Wang, who knew that the case would be assigned to her.

  “Not according to his parents, but when do parents ever know anything? They blame the victim for wearing short skirts and sunbathing in her yard in a bikini. Quit a hot-blooded chick if she’s already started tanning this year,” Lehtovuori said, but then his expression froze when he saw the way Wang and I were looking at him.

  Koivu said that the bullet recovered from behind the landfill was from a .22-caliber pistol. According to our records, Rahnasto owned two, a Hämmerli and a Pardini. I wished we could have a look at them to check whether they had been discharged recently, but we didn’t have enough evidence for a search warrant. At this point I didn’t want to share my suspicions with anyone but Koivu. After the meeting, I asked him to come to my office. There I told him that Petri Ilveskivi might have found out about a secret land-trade deal, which could have been why Rahnasto wanted to keep him away from the City Planning Commission meeting.

  Koivu sat quietly for a couple of minutes and then looked at me long and hard. His blue eyes seemed distant behind his glasses.

  “That’s quite a theory. What deal could be so important?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m trying to find out. Eija promised to dig up everything she could on Rahnasto.”

  “Do you think that those two things together, a possible leak and seducing his daughter’s boyfriend, could have pushed Rahnasto over the edge?”

  “No. I don’t think Rahnasto knew about Petri and Kim.” Koivu nodded and then said he had to go. I stayed in my office, wondering whether I was right. Maybe I wasn’t the expert judge of human nature I thought I was. Of course everyone would want to protect Petri’s memory, Tommi and Eila and even Kim, and they wouldn’t freely divulge drug use or other secrets.

  And was Eila Honkavuori the right person to investigate a possible zoning scheme? The big political parties, the National Coalition Party and the Social Democrats, usually found common ground in zoning issues. Eila had said she was in the opposition on the Planning Commission, but did that apply to everything? Should I be talking to Petri Ilveskivi’s own party members, like his successor on the Planning Commission?

  Then I remembered that I was supposed to be leading others’ investigations, not going solo.

  Time for some salmiakki licorice from my drawer stash. I dove into my paperwork, and I was just getting into a good rhythm between the work and the candy when my door buzzer rang. I pressed the green light and was surprised to find that it was Jyrki Taskinen behind the door rather than one of my subordinates. Quickly I hid the bag of licorice under a pile of papers.

  “I came to talk about Seppälä and Ilveskivi like you asked,” he said, sitting down on the couch. “Laine shouldn’t interfere, but try to tolerate him. He’s doing a good job with his unit, and we don’t need any in-fighting around here.”

  “Why can’t he let me do my work in peace? You agree with me that we shouldn’t cut off the Ilveskivi investigation yet, don’t you?” I asked. Taskinen’s expression changed to one of embarrassment, and he crossed his legs before replying.

  “We may never know Seppälä’s motive. Continuing the investigation would be a waste of your unit’s resources. Focus on Seppälä’s murder instead. Even though it seems impossible right now, with time these kinds of cases usually reveal themselves to be part of other ones. Even a well-organized drug-running operation has someone with loose lips. I don’t think we should say anything publicly about Seppälä being hired. Let’s just say he killed Ilveskivi by accident during a robbery. We could hint that he took his own life after he realized what he’d done.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. The world seemed to slip off its rails, becoming distorted like a Dalí painting in which everything was what it looked like but also something else, strange and repulsive.

  “The mayor’s office wants this investigation closed as soon as possible. Naturally all of our elected officials have been concerned about their personal security after such a shocking incident.”

  “When did you talk to the mayor?” I asked in a voice that seemed to be coming from somewhere far away.

  “He called Assistant Chief Kaartamo this morning. Kaartamo suggested that we have a lunch meeting in his office tomorrow. The police chief would also be there. We can celebrate solving the Ilveskivi case.”

  “Actually, Iida has a dentist appointment at noon tomorrow,” I said quickly. That was true, although Antti had been planning to take her for her checkup. “I’ll call off the preliminary investigation if I receive a written order to do so. But the case will stay open, because we’re still investigating Seppälä’s death. We’re not going to bury it with the cold cases.”

  “Do what you want,” Taskinen said with something besides exhaustion in his voice that I couldn’t quite interpret. “Think about the lunch, though. Ask Antti to take Iida, or
maybe you could change the time.”

  “The clinic has a two-month waiting list, and Antti is giving a lecture,” I said, lying through my teeth. “If you think you have something to celebrate, by all means do so without me.”

  Taskinen sat for a moment without saying anything and then stood up.

  “You’ll receive the order to suspend the preliminary investigation as soon as possible. I’ll expect your report by Wednesday at the latest.”

  He slammed the door after him. That meant a lot, coming from him.

  I tried to refocus my thoughts. I still had one day left. First I could question Jani Väinölä, or assign someone else to question him, I thought, mentally correcting myself. I’d ask Koivu and Wang to handle it as soon as they finished interviewing the rape victim and her husband.

  I went online and brought up all of the City Planning Commission minutes from the past year. The only useful piece of information I could find was that the meeting Petri Ilveskivi never got to ended at nine fifteen. According to Suvi Seppälä, Marko had reached his client at nine thirty and then left immediately. I remembered the neighbor’s mentioning the van he’d seen on the back road to the landfill that same night. Rahnasto didn’t own a van, but several vehicles were registered to RISS—Rahnasto Industrial Security Systems—including four vans. The company’s logo was a patriotic blue and white. The man who had seen the van on the west road to the dump had mentioned white lettering.

  Part of me wanted to call Reijo Rahnasto and ask him directly why he hadn’t wanted Ilveskivi at that meeting. Of course I didn’t do that. Instead I called Tommi Laitinen and asked if I could send someone to collect Ilveskivi’s papers from the Planning Commission. Laitinen said he would be home at three fifteen.

  “I thought the case was closed, even though no one knows why Seppälä killed Petri,” he said.

  “No, we haven’t closed the preliminary investigation yet. I was hoping you might remember what Petri had been talking about lately in regard to zoning and city planning. Did he ever hint that he had run into something shady?”

  “All the time. Important decision are always being made behind closed doors in Espoo. The decisions are already made before they’re even brought to the Planning Commission or the City Council. Sometimes I wondered how Petri put up with it. It seemed like he was hitting his head against the same wall over and over again.”

  “Politics look that way to everyone else too. By the way, how was the funeral?”

  Laitinen made a grim sound. I didn’t know whether it was a laugh or a growl.

  “Just as horrible as I had expected. Strawberry jam in my wounds. I don’t usually drink much, but after the funeral I went out and got good and hammered.” He grunted again. “Didn’t your redheaded detective give you a report on the funeral?”

  Redheaded? My thoughts raced—Puupponen hadn’t gone to Petri Ilveskivi’s funeral. Then I realized that Laitinen meant Kim Kajanus. I didn’t feel up to lying anymore.

  “We didn’t send anyone to the funeral. But one of us will be at your door today before four o’clock. Don’t hand over the papers before seeing a badge and receiving a receipt,” I instructed, and then realized what I had just said. I wasn’t usually paranoid, but Taskinen’s strange behavior had put me on guard.

  The general development plan for South Espoo had been in the works for years, but it had been delayed because the powers that be couldn’t come to a consensus about extending the Metro line. Recently, some of the most obstinate proponents of private driving had cautiously begun to swing their support to the Metro because the major tech companies had announced their support.

  Could there be something about the Metro project that someone didn’t want the public to know about? Had the mayor told Assistant Chief Kaartamo to end our investigation?

  Koivu came to tell me that the teen rapist had been caught, and he and Wang were starting the interrogation immediately. Jani Väinölä, who still wasn’t home, would have to wait until the next morning. Mira Saastamoinen from Patrol came by and plunked down two thick folders full of Petri Ilveskivi’s Planning Commission documents on my desk. I took them home with me.

  When I went to pick up Iida, Helvi was standing in the yard, looking depressed. Iida was the only child left. It wasn’t even five yet, so she couldn’t be upset that I was late.

  “I’m just so furious,” she said when I asked what had happened, and she fetched a letter with the Espoo City seal on it—a horseshoe with a crown above. “My contract goes through July. I haven’t worried about it, because the city has such a shortage of home day-care providers. But apparently I was an idiot not to. The city still wants to use my services, but they want to outsource them. So I’m supposed to form a company so the city can buy childcare services from me.”

  “To avoid paying social security costs?”

  “Exactly. I don’t know the first thing about running a business!”

  “Terttu Taskinen, my boss’s wife, is a day-care administrator with the city. Call her. I also know a labor law professor who might be able to help. And of course I can call the day-care office myself. If they fire you that would mean all the parents would have to find new a day care for their kids. And none of us wants that.”

  “Where am I supposed to go? No one wants to hire a fifty-year-old lady,” Helvi said, but there was a healthy dash of fighting spirit in her voice now. I gave her the phone numbers I had promised and said I would do what I could.

  The situation at home wasn’t much more pleasant.

  “A real estate agency called,” Antti yelled as I was taking off Iida’s coat. “The owners want to put our house up for sale. They’re offering us the right of first refusal.”

  Antti’s face was pale and dour, and two vertical lines had formed between his eyebrows.

  “How much are they asking?” I said as I brushed Iida’s dark curls out of her eyes. She scampered off to watch TV. The Moomins had just started.

  “First they have to do an inspection and have it appraised. They aren’t going to find much wrong with it. It needs some paint inside and out, but the lot is big, half a hectare, and according to the zoning there’s enough room for a second house. The location is quiet, since we’re at the end of the road. The asking price is going to be at least a million and a half. Prices have gone up so much lately. It’s crazy.”

  “What a day. It’s like the sky is falling,” I said with a sigh and went to grab a beer from the fridge. As luck would have it, we still had some paella in the freezer from the week before, so I put it in the microwave to thaw and went looking for fresh saffron in the spice cupboard. That and a splash of white wine would bring it back to life.

  Antti came over and wrapped his arms around me from behind, and we rocked gently to the music playing on the TV while the microwave thawed dinner. The beer disappeared quickly with two people drinking it. Neither of us knew what to say. A million and a half Finnish marks was an enormous sum. We had a couple of hundred thousand in savings after having paid off the last installments of our student loans the year before. Paying off a home loan of more than a million marks wouldn’t allow any room for maternity leaves or sabbaticals.

  As if by mutual agreement we left the issue to stew and drowned our sorrows with the rest of the white wine over dinner. The buzz built a protective wall between me and my problems, and reinforcing that wall with a glass of whiskey or two would have been easy, but I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole. Instead I played store with Iida—which was currently her favorite game—even though I kept forgetting what I had just bought. After she fell asleep, I read through Petri Ilveskivi’s papers. The first thing I learned was that zoning decisions weren’t simple. Petri had been interested in the Metro project, apparently giving it guarded support as a member of the Greens, whose positions on the issue had been all over the map.

  In addition to the Metro, naturally Petri was interested in the situation in his own neighborhood and in the idea of creating a second central park. Petri support
ed the growth of dense residential areas that made the preservation of more green space possible.

  There were also documents related to the development of Laajalahti Bay. There was intense pressure to expand the Otaniemi technology parks, but there wasn’t enough land. Keilaniemi was already full, and I found a draft plan for reclaiming the land between Karhusaari Island and Hanasaari Island. Karhusaari was a nature preserve, so there was no hope of constructing office buildings or luxury apartments there. Espoo was proud of its connection to the sea, but now it seemed that the city was moving toward privatizing public shorelines.

  I fell asleep with my clothes on and the papers on my lap, which was what I got for drinking wine that early in the evening. I woke up when Antti shook me, so at least I managed to brush my teeth and put on a nightshirt before crawling under the covers. In the morning I woke up at five. The daylight was so bright that it would have been pointless to try to catch the hem of the Sandman’s robe, so at six I got out of bed, drank a glass of juice, and went out for a run.

  The sounds of humanity were still faint, just the occasional car braking on the highway. The birds were all the noisier for the quiet, and I had to look twice before I could believe my eyes when I saw a moose on the edge of the forest. It was probably a lost yearling. After noticing me, it stood still and flared its nostrils. Mist hung in the low spots, and the lilies of the valley had unfurled into bundles of swords with flowers concealed by the green outer leaves. Marsh marigolds glowed on the ditch bank.

  The others hadn’t woken yet by the time I returned. I made coffee and put oatmeal on to boil, and then spent a long time stretching. Einstein wanted to go out exploring. The thermometer had suddenly shot up to nearly sixty degrees.

  I arrived at the lobby of the police station at the same time as a bleary-eyed Jani Väinölä, who was being escorted by two officers.