Before I Go

by Leena Lehtolainen

  As he looked out over the crowd, he sang about the thick wine of dreams and endless dark forests. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.

  After the song ended, Kim slammed the microphone into its stand and pushed his way through the crowd, ignoring the applause and whistling. On a whim, I grabbed my jacket and turned to Liisa.

  “Sorry, I have to go. Work. I’ll explain on Monday.”

  My tablemates sent boos after me, but I hurried outside and took off running up the street. I caught Kajanus at the corner.

  “Hi, Kim,” I said, now out of breath. “How’s it going?”

  Kajanus looked at me angrily. “What the hell did you tell Lauri? I thought the police had to respect confidentiality.” He kept walking, apparently headed for one of the buses waiting at the station.

  “All I did was ask him if you were at the funeral. That’s all!” I tried hopelessly to keep up with him. Even though I was used to walking with men who were much taller than me, all the gin and the day’s physical exertion made my legs feel like lead weights. “You forget that I’m a detective. In homicide investigations we have to ask difficult questions.”

  “But Petri’s murder is already solved! That crook killed him. I read all about it in the paper.” Kajanus shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his suede jacket.

  “Why did you go to the funeral and then come to Café Escale tonight?”

  “The funeral announcement was in the newspaper,” Kajanus shouted. “And none of your business!”

  “What kind of relationship do you have with Eriikka’s father?”

  “What does Reijo have to do with this?”

  We had arrived at the bus station, and I followed Kajanus to his queue. He said hello to someone and tried to pretend we didn’t know each other. The bystanders presumably thought this early middle-aged woman was making a hopeless attempt to hit on a handsome man ten years her junior. I didn’t care what they thought. I had things to settle with Kim Kajanus. I marched after him onto the bus and sat next to him without hesitation.

  “Did Petri like Reijo Rahnasto? I assume he knew you were dating Rahnasto’s daughter.”

  Kajanus leaned over and shushed me.

  “My neighbors are sitting right there! Eriikka knows them. For God’s sake, be quiet!”

  Even though I had drunk three and a half drinks, I was still able to behave sensibly. I didn’t want to complicate Kajanus’s life any more than he already had on his own.

  “Come to my place!” he whispered unexpectedly. “Eriikka is in Brussels.” Turning to his neighbors across the aisle, he said, “This is my cousin from out of town. I thought I’d show her a good time in the city.”

  Kajanus really seemed to be getting into his role in this melodrama.

  “I’ve never been out to sing karaoke before,” I said, matching his artificiality.

  Kajanus lived in an imposing three-story apartment building. We wished the neighbors good night at the second floor and continued up the stairs.

  The apartment was spacious and refined. The large room was divided by a bar in front of the kitchenette and a movable gray-and-white Japanese screen, behind which Kim apparently hid his bed. The walls were white, decorated with just a few photo enlargements, and the furniture was black leather and chrome. A lot of money had been spent on the audio-visual equipment. Obviously Kim Kajanus was not a poor man. He rubbed his red eyes.

  “Damn contact lenses. Cigarette smoke always irritates my eyes. Wait here while I take my lenses out.”

  Kajanus slipped into the bathroom, and the water ran for a few seconds. When he returned, he was wearing brown-rimmed glasses that made him look older and less delicate.

  “So what is this about? What were you doing at Escale? You aren’t a lesbian, are you?”

  “I’m just like you. Trying to resurrect Petri Ilveskivi in my mind so I can figure out why he was attacked.”

  “Resurrect,” Kajanus said with a sigh. “Yes, I guess that’s right. I went to the funeral because I needed confirmation that Petri was really dead. But today . . . Petri said he liked to sing karaoke. He said he thought of me when he sang love songs. Fuck, I’m so pathetic!”

  Kajanus collapsed on the couch and covered his face. After a couple of minutes he stood up. “Would you like some coffee?” he asked, calmer now.

  “Why not? This might be a long night.” I sat down on the same couch Kajanus had just left. It was nice and soft. I kicked off my shoes and folded my legs under me. On the opposite wall was a black-and-white portrait of Eriikka Rahnasto. The stark light and shadow emphasized her high cheekbones and straight nose. Her shoulders were bare, and her blond hair fell over her right ear.

  On the other wall was a picture of a sofa. The same red sofa that occupied Petri Ilveskivi and Tommi Laitinen’s living room.

  Kajanus returned from the kitchen and saw the direction of my gaze.

  “Petri’s sofa . . . it’s a good photo, so I had it printed and framed. You would think looking at it would be painful, since Petri isn’t in it. He was standing there to the left, grinning, and the shadow of his left arm fell on the white floor there. Can you see? Every time I look at that picture, I fill in Petri, and his image overwhelms everything else—the couch, the window, the picture itself. I should probably take it down and tell Eriikka I was bored of it.”

  Kajanus hadn’t closed the curtains, and I could make out a few pale stars between the birch branches. Suddenly I was terribly tired, but the scent of espresso wafting in from the kitchen kept me awake.

  “I made lattes. You aren’t lactose intolerant, are you? Eriikka is,” Kajanus said and then disappeared into the kitchenette. A few moments later he came back, pushing a stainless-steel serving cart with two saucer-size latte cups and a few orange-flavored cookies.

  “Let’s get this over with. Ask me whatever it is you want to ask,” Kajanus said, then took a sip of his coffee.

  “What did Petri say about Reijo Rahnasto?”

  “They seemed to disagree about everything. Petri was shocked when he found out who I was dating. He even asked me if Eriikka was very close with her father.”

  “Is she?”

  For a moment Kajanus didn’t answer, instead eating several cookies in a row, as if he were starving. The coffee was strong and hot. The cup didn’t have handles, so it warmed my hands nicely as I drank.

  “I don’t really know. Eriikka doesn’t talk a lot about her parents. Her mother lives in Turku. Apparently the divorce was so contentious that her parents couldn’t stand to even live in the same city, but that was long before I met her. Reijo has been seeing one of Eriikka’s coworkers lately. Why do you ask about him?” Kajanus inquired, and then when he realized, his face flushed with anger. “You don’t think that Reijo knew, do you? That he would have . . . no, I’m the one he would have had beaten up if he had found out, not Petri. Never Petri!” Long fingers ran through red hair and then moved, trembling, toward his coffee cup.

  “Is he a violent man?”

  “He beat Eriikka’s mother and his second wife, but that’s a secret. Eriikka let it slip once when she had drunk a bit too much, but she’s never been willing to talk about it again. Eriikka’s mother has, though. She asked me to be better to her daughter than Reijo was to her. God help me!”

  “What did Petri say about Rahnasto?” I asked again.

  Kajanus stood up and walked to the window. From outside came the squealing of brakes and the blowing of a horn as a freight train rumbled down the railway tracks. I took one of the chocolate cookies, and the orange marmalade filling spurted out on my chin. I took a napkin from the serving cart.

  “Petri thought that Reijo was breaking the law by not putting all the initiatives that members suggested on the Planning Commission’s agenda. He was relieved when he saw I didn’t like Reijo much either. Reijo could go to all the public-speaking seminars in the world, but it would never change his basic ruthlessness. I guess ruthlessness still works in the business world, where you’re s
upposed to only think about your own advantage, but in politics I have this strange idea that you’re actually supposed to represent your constituents. Would you like more coffee?”

  “Yes, thank you. So I take it you didn’t vote for Reijo Rahnasto in the last election?”

  Kajanus laughed. He fetched the coffee and milk from the kitchen and refilled our cups. Then he asked why I was still digging into Petri Ilveskivi’s death.

  “Because I suspect that Reijo Rahnasto hired Marko Seppälä. Why else would he be so interested in the investigation of the murder of someone he detested? You know him. Could he do something like that, hire a thug to beat someone up and then shoot the guy after he bungled the job?”

  “Yes,” Kajanus replied quietly. “I imagine you know Reijo collects guns.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Last fall he tried to get me to go moose hunting with him. When I declined, he suggested that I at least come and take pictures. I imagine he wanted to immortalize himself with his rich friends standing around the corpses of the animals they’d killed. Reijo is a skilled hunter. He’s shot at least five moose and one bear. I have no doubt he could kill a person if he had reason to.”

  “The only thing missing is a motive,” I said, half to myself. “It has to have something to do with the City Planning Commission meeting or at least something they were dealing with, but what?” I rubbed the coffee cup between my hands, but it was no crystal ball.

  “Listen, Kim, do you and Reijo ever get together to take a sauna or anything? Drink half a case of beer and a bottle of cognac and talk man to man?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad.”

  “But I can try to think of some way to talk to him . . . I could say that I knew Petri. My name is on all the photographs in that magazine article after all. It’d be perfectly natural for me to be interested in the murder of someone I knew through work.”

  After another fifteen minutes chatting with Kajanus, I ordered a taxi. My bike could wait at the bus station until tomorrow. Being surrounded by the metal shell of a car made me feel safe, even though, as time passed, the effect of Salo’s threats was fading. At home I ate a hefty sandwich and fell asleep quickly despite how much coffee I had drunk. Early in the morning I awoke to the sound of a scooter and knew that it must be a little past five. The paperboy’s routine was consistent. A little later, I heard the sound of a car idling for a moment before driving on. Sometimes lovebirds used the end of the road as a love nest.

  Soon our room was hot, and the sunlight mercilessly assaulted my bleary eyes. I put on sunglasses before venturing outside in my pajamas and slippers. Einstein slipped past me, darting off like a much younger cat toward a wagtail that was mocking him from the birch tree next to the mailbox.

  It happened in the blink of an eye. When Einstein bounded past the mailbox, there was a flash. The sound was deafening, but I was able to see a piece of shrapnel hit my cat and throw him in an arch into our ash tree.

  17

  For a moment I could only stare, and then I started to scream. Iida and Antti rushed to the door. When I saw the look of horror on my daughter’s face, I tried my best to calm down.

  “Antti, take Iida inside and call the police! Tell them to send the bomb squad.”

  The mailbox had been completely destroyed, and a tatter of a newspaper advertisement blew past me. Shoes two ninety-five, skateboards one fifty.

  There was no sign of Einstein. I called him, but he didn’t respond. I didn’t dare walk to the tree, because I didn’t know how many bombs might be in our yard. I tried to return to the house by exactly the same route I had come. My car was parked by the shed. That was another likely bomb target. Antti was on the phone, giving a confused explanation of what had happened to the emergency operator. I grabbed the handset—this was my department.

  “Yes, a bomb. With a pressure timer . . . No human casualties, but it hit my cat . . . No, of course not . . . Good.”

  Iida was crying, and I stroked her hair as I dialed Koivu’s number with my other hand. Antti grabbed the binoculars from the coat rack and scanned the yard, trying to spot Einstein.

  “It’s Maria. A bomb just went off in our front yard. Einstein might’ve been hit; I don’t know if he made it. You handle the meeting—we’re going to be stuck here for a while.”

  I gave Koivu my instructions as calmly as if I was missing work because Iida was sick. Koivu was a professional, so he didn’t waste time on exclamations of shock.

  “Salo?”

  “Who else? This will go to the NBI for sure.”

  I picked Iida up and held her in my arms. Some mornings she went out to the mailbox with me, and on the weekends she even fetched the paper herself. She thought it was a big-girl job. What if she had gone out first this morning? Or Antti?

  “What will happen now?” Antti asked when I walked into the kitchen, where he was peering out the windows.

  “We wait for the bomb squad. Iida, come eat your oatmeal. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I can’t leave our cat out there to die! I’m going to look for him,” Antti said angrily, avoiding my gaze. “We have to get him to the vet.”

  “No, you aren’t! There could be more bombs. We’re staying inside. Iida, would you like strawberry jam in your oatmeal?”

  I felt as if everything was happening to someone else. Some other person had just walked toward certain death, only to be saved by a cat prematurely setting off the bomb. I fed my daughter her porridge just like I did every morning, drank my coffee, and forced down a hunk of baguette. I would have to get dressed and brush my teeth before my coworkers showed up.

  A patrol car arrived first, but it hung back from the edge of the property. The senior officer called my work phone and said that they were closing the road and talking to the neighbors. I put clean clothes on Iida and started a load of laundry while I waited. The rhythmic thumping of the drum was like the soundtrack of normal life, where there was nothing but smooth sheets and safe mornings. I tried to remember the sound of the car I had heard that morning. It had still been dark, maybe around five thirty.

  Taskinen called too. He had made it to the station before hearing the news. I could hear the agitation and anxiety in his voice, and he encouraged me to take some vacation time if I needed it.

  Along with the bomb squad, the National Bureau of Investigation also sent an agent named Muukkonen. He called me on my work phone, and I could see him through the window talking into his own phone at the edge of the forest. Muukkonen said he was going to Sörnäinen Prison to question Salo as soon as his partner, Agent Hakala, was available. Numerous people had witnessed Salo making death threats against me. After receiving his conviction, Salo had threatened to kill me, the prosecutor, and the Narcotics detective who put him away. He had no shortage of underlings. In my mind I made a quick list of them, even though I couldn’t interrogate them myself. I had shifted from investigator to victim.

  Through the curtains I watched the bomb squad’s slow-motion dance in our yard. Metal detectors groped about like inchworms seeking a new destination, and a bomb-sniffing dog executed its search pattern, simultaneously confident and wary. It was announced that the way from the door to the mailbox seemed clear, after which I asked the squad leader to check the way to the ash tree. I didn’t dare hold out hope that Einstein was still alive. His cat dish sat on the kitchen floor with scraps left over from the night before.

  Leaving it there was an effort, which reminded me of Tommi Laitinen, who had started cleaning out their coat rack the very night that Petri had died. A call came in that Einstein was lying under the tree, and that he was partially conscious.

  Antti immediately went looking for the cat crate and some towels.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m getting Einstein and taking him to the animal hospital.

  “Let me call a taxi!”

  Antti had been pale and taciturn the whole time, and I had noticed him avoiding me. Einstein was his cat
and had been for years before we’d started dating.

  “Follow the bomb squad’s instructions. I’ll ask the taxi to come to the neighbor’s house. Shall I call the animal hospital too?”

  “Yes, please,” Antti said. “You’ll take care of Iida? We can’t take her to day care, since her presence could endanger the other children.”

  “Iida isn’t a danger to anyone. Whoever did this is the dangerous one,” I hissed, but Antti had already gone. As I dialed the number for the taxi service, I watched him stride across the tender grass with his long legs, completely ignoring the bomb squad. He had his back to me when he picked up the cat. Einstein lay limply in his arms, and at the sight of blood dripping on Antti’s jeans, I gasped. Just then the taxi dispatcher answered.

  Antti wrapped Einstein in a towel and carefully set the bundle in the carrier. Then he waved to Iida, who was standing at the window with me, and walked past the remnants of the mailbox to the street, where the patrol car was parked. Just then Agent Hakala from the NBI arrived. The way to the house was clear, and Muukkonen and Hakala came inside.

  “That was good luck that it only hit the cat,” Agent Hakala said and glanced at Iida. It wasn’t until after Iida’s birth that I had finally realized that my job description did not include endangering my own life. Prior to that I had a tendency to do thoughtless soloing, but in recent years I tried to avoid taking needless risks at work. And yet the job seemed to bring risks that I couldn’t avoid and that could even extend to my family. Salo and his underlings couldn’t have known that we had a cat. Had they watched us long enough to learn that I usually went out for the paper while Antti put on the porridge and coffee? Or did it not matter to Salo who in my family he hurt?