My First Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  Hopponen sat at the organ. I saw his hands shaking and found myself fearing for the members of the choir, for Tommi’s mother, for myself. I feared the anguish behind those red eyes, that it would flood out of control, and that the orderly singing would turn to weeping and wailing. I feared that someone would cry to the heavens “Who?” and “Why?”—questions I still did not know how to answer. Maybe Tommi had the easiest time of it. After all, it was over for him.

  Hopponen played the first chords of the opening hymn. I had always enjoyed singing, so I picked up a hymnal and joined in. Hymn 613, first and second verses. From the beginning of the first verse, I began to wonder at the choice of song, and the words of the second seemed even more apropos of the situation, perhaps too much so: “Neither magnificence nor majesty, neither youth nor skill may save, when thrown open is the grave. The moment of departure shall come, and all shall meet that reward. But when and how knoweth only the Lord.” I found my voice shaking. It must have been because I hadn’t sung in so long.

  After the congregational hymn, it was the choir’s turn to sing. I recognized the “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem. Its strains were haunting and cruel, as were the dark, menacing words: “Lacrimosa dies illa, qua resurget ex favilla, judicandus homo reus. Huic ergo parce, Deus.” Tears when man rises in his guilt for judgment...Had Tommi been evil? He toyed with people, yes, but evil? Would God, if there was a God, forgive him? I couldn’t take my eyes off the choir. I could pick out Riku’s fluting tenor and Mira’s splendid, dark alto. Maybe the most beautiful thing about her was her voice. The basses thundered the low notes, and the sopranos climbed higher and higher, their voices never faltering. A light flush appeared on Tuulia’s pale face as she sang.

  The prayers and Bible readings washed right past me. The priest, a young man with an appropriately solemn demeanor, directed his words toward Tommi’s parents. I noticed Pia digging a handkerchief out of her purse and remembered that I needed to interview her soon. Sirkku grabbed Timo’s hand again. I still hadn’t been able to come up with a sufficient motive for those two. I could imagine Timo accidentally killing Tommi in a rage if he had been making fun of Sirkku. Timo seemed like the kind of guy who thought it was a man’s duty to retaliate against any insults directed at his woman. No one had ever defended me like that, but I didn’t want that kind of man in my life. On the contrary, I remembered punching a drunken idiot who had shouted that Harri the birdman was a long-haired queer while we were standing in line at a hot dog stand.

  But would Timo and Tommi have had any reason to meet secretly at night? What if the letter T on the calendar did mean Timo? And what if we found the distilling equipment in one of the love birds’ apartments? The priest stopped talking. Hopponen walked discreetly from the organ to stand in front of the choir, and the men stood to sing. “Grove of Tuoni, grove of night! There thy bed of sand is light, thither my child now I lead...” They had evidently decided to sing the men’s version, because the women simply couldn’t stand to sing it. There were only six men, and Riku and Antti appeared to be alone at the outer edges of the vocal range.

  Tommi’s mother began to cry, and a surge of weeping swept like a wave back through the rows of friends and family, drawing the women in the choir along with it. Tuulia didn’t even try to hold back her tears, and I would have liked to go and comfort her. Pia hid behind her dark, bobbed hair, and a girl I didn’t know blew her nose so loudly that I could hear it all the way up in the gallery. Hopponen led on with a trembling hand, his goatee shaking. Only Mira sat, calm and expressionless, the grief all around her having no effect on her whatsoever. I wondered how much of her placidity was an act. Or had Mira truly hated Tommi so much that she was actually rejoicing over his death? If so, why?

  I admired the boys’ self-control. It’s true that society doesn’t give men permission to turn hysterical with grief. But how were they able to sing amid the general weeping, with Tommi’s mother practically howling despite all the sedatives? Riku’s first tenor was light and beautiful. When he sang, his shrill speaking voice turned ethereal, like it was an instrument of the divine. The intermediate voices were a bit rough in places, and the first bass’s cheek twitched dangerously. Antti sang in his astonishingly low voice straight to Tommi’s mother, as though wanting to assure her with his eyes that Aleksis Kivi’s words were indeed true: “Far from hatred, far from strife...” After the song ended, I tasted blood in my mouth. I had bit my sun-chapped lower lip until it cracked.

  Fortunately, the funeral homily snapped me back to reality. It made me angry to hear the priest dance around the way Tommi had died. Admittedly, it was a difficult subject since the case had yet to be solved, and it was likely that the murderer was present in the chapel. According to the priest, however, God had, in his infinite wisdom, decided to allow Tommi to “pass from among us.” I hated euphemistic language about death. There was no way the priest would have spoken that way if he had seen Tommi’s body. That was the sort of image that kept a person up at night.

  The choir stood again to sing “Drifting on the Tide.” The sopranos’ first words trembled slightly, and Pia looked seriously distressed. This was the song they had been practicing in such a carefree way at the villa. How different it must have felt to them now. “All, all shall fade away,” thundered the basses. “That spring will come again and a new dawn yet will break,” the choir sang optimistically a moment later. “Or have they lied?” came the doubtful basses once again. One thing was certain: spring would never come again for Tommi.

  Next came the laying of the wreaths. I fanned my indignation by thinking about all of those beautiful flowers that would bring no joy to the person lying in the casket. Tommi’s mother barely had the strength to stand next to the coffin for a moment, even supported by her husband. The relatives followed, then came Tommi’s coworkers. Tommi’s secretary carried the wreath, and Marja Mäki read a vapid message of sympathy in a confident voice.

  Finally Hopponen and the first bass with the twitching cheek lowered the choir’s wreath onto the casket. I noticed that none of Tommi’s friends—Riku, Antti, Tuulia, or even the choir chairman, Timo—had qualified for the job.

  As far as I could tell, almost everyone present in the church had taken a turn at the casket, but no flowers had been left by the women or by the man named M mentioned in Tommi’s calendar. Heikki Peltonen had told me that the family wanted a small service, and there hadn’t been an obituary in the paper.

  I had probably come to the funeral for nothing.

  It had also been pointless to think that the murderer might crack during the funeral. My foul mood worsened as I watched every one of my suspects looking so righteous singing the Lord’s Prayer. “Thy will be done”—did the murderer really think that? According to Christian ethics, the murderer would get caught. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—God, how I wanted to catch Tommi’s killer! Did I want revenge? Did I want to succeed? Did I want to mete out justice?

  But did I have it in me to throw the first stone?

  In the early days of my career on the police force, I had involved myself emotionally in every case I investigated. I had felt empathy toward the victim, but I also wanted to understand the criminal. Was I back at that same level of involvement again? I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to start projecting my own sense of morality on every case, weighing the blameworthiness of the acts against the proportionality of the punishment. By going from being a person who made arrests to being one who determined the punishments, I hoped to have the opportunity to dispense real justice. A police officer was supposed to arrest the brats who scribbled graffiti on cement office building walls and the stupid college kids who sampled a joint—but a judge could assess the justice of a given punishment. Was I really capable of taking on that responsibility?

  Hopponen returned to the organ and began to play Handel’s “Largo.” The funeral party sat in their pews, waiting for the immediate family to leave first. Tommi’s father lifted his wife carefully by th
e arm. Maisa Peltonen stood on slightly shaky legs and then suddenly began shouting over the organ.

  “You monster! You murdered my son, whoever you are! How dare you stand here in a church! How dare you sing at Tommi’s casket! How...” Her voice dissolved into halting sobs, and Tommi’s father turned his wife’s head toward his chest as if to quiet her. Hopponen fumbled through the rest of “Largo” on the organ, while the rest of the party stared uncomfortably at the ceiling or the floor. The choir members looked anywhere but at each other. Timo was beet red and held Sirkku’s hand tightly. She had shoved her knuckles in her mouth as if to stifle her own cries. Pia had buried her face in a handkerchief. Riku’s face twitched. Only Mira remained calm.

  The rest of the mourners only began to leave once Tommi’s parents had exited the church. The memorial was likely to be fraught. The flower-strewn coffin remained in its place at the altar, to be burned in silence.

  I tried to slink away without being noticed, but Antti was faster than I was. He ran after me outside and grabbed me painfully by the arm.

  “Damn it, you’ve got to do something fast!” Antti hissed at me, his eyes narrowed like a cat preparing to pounce. “Maisa is at the end of her rope. She’s promising to get revenge, to murder us all. She won’t be able to stand this much longer.”

  “Well, confess then!” I hissed back, shocked by my own words and at least as angry as he was. Antti let go of my arm and stared at me in horror.

  “Listen, you’re on totally the wrong track! If you really suspect me then it’s no wonder nothing’s happening!”

  “You could at least be a little more cooperative.”

  “So it all comes down to my willingness to cooperate?”

  The other members of the choir had surrounded us. I recalled the old blindfold game in which one person spins in the middle of the group with her eyes covered and then has to guess who her finger is pointing at. Could I use that technique to reveal the murderer?

  “Antti, let’s do a quick run-through before the memorial,” Hopponen said. The clouds had darkened while we were in the church, and a few tentative drops of rain landed on my forehead.

  “I’ve told you already that I’m not coming. This was my last time singing with EFSAS. And besides, I’m in the middle of a conversation with Nancy Drew here.”

  “Antti. We need you,” Mira said in a commanding voice.

  “Come on; let him be.” Tuulia started dragging the rest of them away. A moment later, Antti and I were alone in front of the entrance to the church. Only Mira glanced back at us.

  “I’m really not interested in coffee and sweet rolls or reminiscing about Tommi’s childhood,” Antti said to me as though to explain himself. Then he set off down the street, clearly expecting me to follow.

  “How did you get it into your head that I killed Tommi?” he asked when I caught up to him.

  “That was just a gamble.”

  “Have you tried that technique on the others? No results, eh?”

  “No, I haven’t. But try to get it through your head that I really do want to figure out who the murderer is, and I’ve been doing the best I can. But I’m not some kind of fucking superwoman who just solves murders—snap—like that. I need help, not shouting. I don’t know who’s guilty yet, but I have some ideas. There are all sorts of things we have to check out, but it all takes time. If you don’t trust that I can get the job done, then don’t. But I still have to try to trust myself.”

  Antti kicked a crushed beer can with the tip of his scuffed shoes and said, “I’m sorry. I just got worked up in the funeral...But I agree with Maisa: Someone in there is a first-class hypocrite. If only I...if only I knew which things were significant and which weren’t.” He looked embarrassed.

  “It would be best for you just to tell me everything and then let me decide what matters. Don’t you go trying to play private detective. And don’t go telling the person you suspect that you and only you know something incriminating. You’d find yourself hanging out with Tommi again—wherever he is now.”

  I told him my image of heaven, in which Tommi was living it up with angels that looked like Playboy centerfolds. For the second time since Tommi’s death, I saw Antti laugh. The tension in his face relaxed for a moment, and the furrows in his cheeks melted into laugh lines.

  “It’s a nice thought, but I can’t make myself believe in any kind of heaven. To me Tommi just doesn’t exist anymore. Period. But not completely, not yet. Despite everything, he was my best friend.”

  “Despite what everything?”

  “Well, we had slightly different values—and lifestyles—the last few years. I could never understand all of his exploits. He had to live every day like it was his last.” Antti snorted at the figure of speech he’d used. “Maybe he sensed that he wouldn’t be hanging around long. He always claimed he would die of AIDS or liver cancer. But like that hymn says, only the Lord knows how we’ll leave here.”

  I wondered what Antti would say if he knew I had read his letter. My attempt to treat people with a professional distance was failing with Antti now too. We had come to the corner of the cross street that led to my apartment, and the rain had begun to come down in earnest. I wasn’t in the mood to get wet.

  “Should we go to Elite to wait out the rain?” Antti asked.

  “Actually, I live in that green building over there. If you aren’t in a hurry, I could make you a cup of coffee. I don’t have any sweet rolls though.”

  “Too bad. I could go for some rolls now,” Antti said with a smirk. “I guess I could try to tell you more about Tommi. Maybe that will help somehow.”

  We climbed up to the third floor. I apologized for the mess, though my flat was actually in a remarkably tidy state. It irked me that I immediately started playing the part of a woman for Antti instead of that of a police officer. I made the coffee and put some bread on the table. Thankfully, I had finally found time to visit the grocery store the day before. In the meantime, Antti inspected my bookshelves and plucked at the electric bass standing in the corner.

  “On Sunday, you said you’ve known Tommi your whole life.”

  “Since elementary school. Just like Tuulia. They were both pretty brave when they were kids. I was the one who was always a little dull and overly cautious, but I read all the adventure books and had good ideas for games. Tommi was a natural leader and organizer. And a showman. He was always a little cold, using people, doing anything to get what he wanted. But you could get along with him if you didn’t give in to him.”

  Antti clearly hoped that talking about him would get Tommi out of his system. I let Antti talk without interruption as he reminisced about the choir, about sailing outings with Tommi’s brother and Peter Wahlroos, about incidents that had taken place when they lived together. As I listened, I mentally recorded the picture of Tommi that Antti was sketching: free with money, into conquest and control with women, greedy for power, adventurous, cheerful, selfish.

  “Did you have any differences of opinion about his actions, for example with women? Did he ever try to get between you and Sarianna?”

  “Yeah, he tried making a pass at Sarianna, but she made it clear there wasn’t any point. No,” Antti continued, as if heading off the question that was on my lips, “we didn’t stop dating because of Tommi. We just didn’t have anything in common anymore. So much for my motive. That is what you thought, right?”

  I tried to stop myself from blushing. Despite the relaxed atmosphere, our conversation felt a bit like an interrogation. For some reason, it made me sad that Antti regarded me only as an interrogator, that he didn’t consider confiding in me to be a sign of friendship.

  “What about the other women who were already spoken for, like Tommi’s boss?”

  Antti smirked and shoved a big piece of bread in his mouth.

  “Oh, so you know about that. There was no way Tommi could keep his hands off a classy woman like that, and apparently she couldn’t keep her hands off him either. I got the impression that
it was even-steven on both sides.”

  “How straight was Tommi being with Pia?”

  “I think Tommi was probably more in love with her than he knew himself. I imagine her unavailability played a part in it; it was rare for Tommi not to get what he wanted easily. Pia was a challenge.”

  “Did something happen between them that Tommi could have used to blackmail Pia with later?”

  “Blackmail?” Antti looked flabbergasted.

  “There was a lot of extra money in Tommi’s bank account lately. What if some of it came from the Wahlrooses?”

  “Oh, come on. He wasn’t an extortionist...or, what do I know?” Antti stared contemplatively into the bottom of his coffee cup. I poured him the last drops from the pot while he made himself a third open-faced cheese sandwich.

  “I imagine he had his ways of making money—under the table?” I prompted tentatively.

  “How should I know! This is starting to feel an awful lot like a grilling.”

  “You’re free to leave if you don’t feel like answering,” I said coldly.

  “Sorry. But this is hard. You are a police officer after all.”

  “I am. And I want to ask you some questions. Were Timo and Tommi friends? Or Tommi and Sirkku?”

  “Well, there was something between Sirkku and Tommi once, on a trip to Germany a long time ago. They weren’t friends, but they could get along. Timo’s a bit stiff; he wasn’t a fan of Tommi’s style.”

  “Tommi and Mira?”

  “Once.”

  I tried to conceal the interest this bit of information piqued in me.

  “Mira’s desperate attempt to make me jealous,” Antti continued. “I don’t loathe Mira the way Tuulia does, but her constant fawning over me has been a nuisance. I’m just not interested in her in that way.”