My First Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “And Tiina knew where to get some?”

  “Tiina said the market was in kind of bad shape right now. All she had on her was a little weed. At that point Koivu brought her over to our table. She was somewhat surprised to find that there were two men now. I showed her Mattinen’s picture and asked whether we could get something a little harder from him. At that point she guessed who we were. We agreed we wouldn’t haul her in for possession if she gave us what we needed.”

  I admired the ease with which Tapsa had gotten used to cutting deals. In Narcotics, investigations were all about making trades with the smaller crooks to nab the bigger fish. Maybe I had been wrong about him; he didn’t get worked up over a few grams of weed anymore.

  “After cursing out Koivu for a few minutes, she turned cooperative. Koivu is a pretty boy—maybe he would have been a nice customer.” Tapsa’s face suddenly turned neutral again. Maybe he still remembered that treatment I had given his elbow so long ago at the academy. I had never been on the same easy terms with Tapsa as with Koivu when it came to joking around, and he probably thought of me as some sort of scary feminist battle-ax.

  “In any case, she recognized Mattinen and Peltonen. She was even the one who introduced them. Apparently, last fall, Mattinen had been looking for someone to bring cocaine in from Estonia to Finland, and Peltonen had agreed to do it. Over the winter, Peltonen brought in small amounts through customs while he was on business trips. It would be interesting to know how he pulled that off,” Tapsa said darkly.

  “As Tiina understood it, Mattinen had sold some, and Tommi got the rest. Tiina suspected that Tommi cheated Mattinen sometimes, because he once had some junk for sale that Mattinen didn’t know anything about. In May, Tommi brought a larger batch over. Mattinen had been in Tallinn at the same time, so he probably arranged the deal.”

  Tapsa thought they had probably stored the stuff in Tommi’s apartment.

  “We should take the dogs over there. You’d probably also be interested to know that Peltonen brought some goods over to Tiina’s place in his car once. Tiina threw the key out the window to him so he could let himself in and saw that there was someone else in the car with him. She was upset with Peltonen for being so careless, but Peltonen just said that whoever it was knew all about it. They had been along on the Tallinn gig too.”

  “Did Tiina say what this person looked like? Male or female?”

  “Tall and thin. A man, a friend.”

  “Some women can pass for men, at least from a distance. Did she see a hair color?”

  “No. Another thing that may interest you is that Peltonen had promised Tiina a gig for Friday night. The client came, and Tiina did the job, but she never got her money from Peltonen.”

  “Was that why she called Tommi?”

  “Evidently. Maybe she got so ticked off she went out to Vuossari and put an ax in Peltonen’s head?”

  “I doubt it. I’m still sure the killer came from the house. It isn’t Tiina or Mattinen. No, it’s definitely one of the choir members. And one of my suspects is missing now. Our perp is either him or one of his friends.” I sighed, worn out. Though it was frustrating that Mattinen had gotten away, I had still hoped he was Tommi’s murderer.

  I carried a big cup of coffee up to my office and started to sift through all the documents and notes I had amassed over the course of the investigation.

  Tommi had been selling alcohol, drugs, and women. He had sold Finnish moonshine as Russian vodka, swindling both his customers and Sirkku and Timo. Maybe he had gotten the labels on some trip to Russia. You could buy anything there these days. Tommi probably found them at some stall in an outdoor market, remembered the Muuriala moonshine, and easily combined them in his mind. He sold the bootlegging idea to Timo and Sirkku as an innocent little side business, even though it had been something else entirely.

  Tommi had also been pimping women. Maybe not actually pimping, but he had been skimming money for himself. Regardless, it certainly hadn’t been a charity operation. Tiina had probably needed money for drugs, and the other girls had almost certainly required cash for other things. Tommi’s own sexual and emotional life had always been confused. He had wanted to own his women. Pia had presented a challenge to Tommi because she was married. If Pia had agreed to a relationship with him, he would almost certainly have lost interest in her. Had the same thing happened to Tuulia? Had they just been “friends with benefits” at first and then she fell in love with him and became a drag?

  Finally, Tommi had been running drugs. Those pirate games they’d played when they were kids had turned strangely real. The ME hadn’t found any traces of hard drugs in Tommi’s own system, so he’d probably just smoked the odd joint now and then. It was unlikely Tommi had been playing honestly with his business partners in this matter either. He had probably been skimming, or even outright cheating Mattinen.

  On his last day alive, Tommi had needed money badly. He had been afraid. The news about the drug ring getting nailed and the arrest of the Estonian prostitute had spooked him. He had obviously been planning to flee the country. He couldn’t have been in a total panic yet because he didn’t just make a run for it. No, he had stayed on and tried to scrape together as much money as he could before he left.

  Maybe I would never know all of Tommi’s dealings. Or understand why he had done what he did. What did he want to accomplish with all of this? Was he looking for adventure, or power? From all appearances, he was the epitome of a successful, handsome, and wealthy young man. Tommi had an advanced degree and an interesting job, and he had found “good” hobbies in music and sailing. None of that had been enough for him though, and in the process of going after what he wanted, he had pulled someone else down with him into his twisted world.

  Riku and Mira hadn’t been along on the Tallinn trip, so I could count Mira out of the drug running. Riku could have been the friend in Tommi’s car though. He wasn’t tall, but who could accurately judge the height of a person who was seated?

  Timo and Sirkku had been on the trip. But you couldn’t call Timo thin, and there was no way anyone would mistake Sirkku for a man, even in the dark. How much weight could I give Tiina’s testimony, given that we could haul her in for solicitation the second we didn’t like what she was telling us? Tommi’s companion could also have been Peter Wahlroos, in which case Pia would have had an obvious motive for killing Tommi—he could have been blackmailing them over the drugs. Or Tuulia, who could pass for a man in the dark, or Antti, the tallest and thinnest of them all.

  I read through all of the papers several times, and gradually the pieces started to fall into place. However, I didn’t like the picture that was coming into focus. I had seriously misjudged one of my suspects.

  14

  Or have they lied?

  By four o’clock that afternoon, I was sure. I made a few calls and checked my papers one last time to verify my facts. At six o’clock, I went into motion. I still hadn’t heard from Antti, and the thought of what might have happened to him was weighing on me. If Antti was dead, it would be my fault. I hadn’t figured out the truth soon enough.

  I parked my car a couple of buildings down from my target’s home. I hadn’t called to see if she was home, but I was ready to wait all night if I had to. I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the old wooden building and rang the doorbell. The steps that came to the door were not the least bit hesitant. If the woman who answered was surprised to see me, she didn’t show it.

  “Hi, Maria! I hoped you’d return the visit. I just put some tea on. The water’s probably already boiling. Do you want some? Come in, come in.” There may have been a bit too much bustling energy in her voice.

  “Thanks. I’d love some.” I walked into the kitchen, which had a round red dining table that made it feel cramped. The aqua blue of the drapes matched the chairs and the tablecloth, and the indigo-colored tea setting was a handsome contrast. I sat down at the table and put my shoulder bag on the windowsill.

  “Have you
heard anything from Antti?” Tuulia asked as she set some thin slices of cake on the table.

  “I could ask you the same thing. Tell me right now if you know where he is. It will save us all a lot of time and effort.”

  “I don’t have the foggiest idea. Do you think he’s the murderer?”

  “No. I think he knows who is though.”

  Tuulia poured my tea. Her hands didn’t shake, and not a single drop of the jasmine-scented liquid splashed on the saucer. There we sat with our teacups between us like two old ladies having a social visit. Outside, the evening sun was shining, and I could hear the eager shouts of children in the distance.

  “I came to get Tommi’s car keys. Would you give them to me?” Tuulia didn’t protest—she just disappeared for a moment into the other room and then returned with the familiar Vectra keys.

  “Do the Peltonens intend to sell the car? I guess they need all the keys for that.”

  “I don’t know if the car will make it to the lot now. The insurance may or may not pay for the damage to the interior now that we’ve turned the whole car inside out. Why did you have the keys?”

  “I have copies of all of Tommi’s keys. He was afraid of losing his own and thought it would be good for one of his friends to have spares.”

  “Your fingerprints were all over that car. I guess you drove it a lot?”

  “Now and then, when I needed it.”

  “Was Mauri Mattinen one of Tommi’s trusted friends too, since he had the third set of keys?”

  I noticed how the hand holding Tuulia’s teacup shook as she said quickly, “Mauri who?”

  I looked at Tuulia’s hands. She had on a long-sleeved T-shirt, whose sleeves had stretched some. Evidently she was in the habit of pulling them down to cover her hands when they were cold. On her right fourth finger was a ring that would have eaten at least a month’s worth of wages as a cop. I had thought it was high-quality kitsch, but apparently it was real.

  “Don’t you know Mattinen? You must have met him on Mother’s Day in Tallinn when he turned over that shipment of cocaine to you and Tommi. And I imagine you took Tommi’s car to the door of Mattinen’s garage a few times when Tommi couldn’t take it himself. That must have been what the ‘No Tuulia Monday’ on Tommi’s notepad meant. You couldn’t take the car to Mattinen because he was afraid he was being watched.”

  “Who told you that? Was it M, I mean Mattinen?” Tuulia noticed her slip too late.

  “That’s for me to know. Though you had a good cover, quite a lot of people knew about different parts of this mess. Tommi just had to get his hands into everything. I don’t know where he first met Mattinen—maybe in some nightclub where Tommi was running girls. Mattinen had good contacts with the drug runners in Estonia and distribution channels ready here in Finland, but he needed someone clean to bring the merchandise through customs. I imagine Tommi brought a few deliveries of marijuana through over the winter. He was probably surprised by how easy it all was and started to think he could handle some bigger jobs. Around the same time, Mattinen learned there was a big load of coke available. Henri and Peter were planning their test run on the Marlboro, and it was easy for Tommi to talk them into going to Tallinn under the cover of listening to that choir concert. Everything went just as you had planned. You and Tommi probably just disappeared into the city together for a few minutes, during which time you met Mattinen and took possession of the goods.”

  Tuulia smiled at me the way one smiles at a small child who says they’ve seen monsters in the forest.

  “Maybe Tommi was mixed up in all that. All I knew was that he sold a bit of black market vodka and arranged escorts for people now and then. Even if he did bring drugs home on the Marlboro, why would he have dragged me into that?”

  “You were Tommi’s trusted sidekick. I’m guessing it probably all started a couple of years ago with Tommi’s prostitution business. You had a chronic shortage of cash, and you agreed when Tommi suggested going to bed for money. Not all of his women were from across the border—he also had normal Finnish student girls. Like you. But you had had enough pretty quickly. You know better than I do what it’s like. It’s not the most enriching way to make a living. But you still needed money. You told me yourself when we were together at the Elite what kind of life you want to live. Wild, free, not getting stuck in the usual ruts. And I envied you then. So when you told Tommi about your money problems, he offered you a different kind of work. You carried marijuana to Mattinen, and it looks like you sold it yourself a few times too. Then Tommi needed an assistant on the boat job since it isn’t safe to walk around alone at night in Tallinn anymore. The two of you probably also had some sort of plan for how to make it through if customs got too interested in you. Then I imagine that Tommi must have gotten greedy. Mattinen was taking too much frosting off the cake, so Tommi wouldn’t give him everything he had brought all at once, and instead parceled out small amounts at significant commissions. He wouldn’t even meet with Mattinen, so he made you drive his car to and from Mattinen’s place. Mattinen agreed because he didn’t have any alternative.”

  “And so Mattinen killed Tommi because he got so greedy?”

  “No, Mattinen didn’t kill Tommi. Mattinen called Tommi’s answering machine on Sunday night. He was skipping the country. You killed Tommi. And for nothing. Mattinen didn’t get caught. No one could have burned you or Tommi.”

  Tuulia suddenly looked tired. I wondered how long she was going to have the energy to resist. All I had against her was circumstantial evidence. If I wanted to charge her with Tommi’s murder, I would have to get her to confess. Did I want Tuulia to confess? I had to keep pushing myself, my own feelings, aside the entire time. I was a police officer investigating a murder. Nothing else mattered now. I took a swig of tea and continued my monologue, which seemed to glance off her without any effect. Tuulia was smiling sort of crookedly, as if she were watching a boring TV show and waiting for whatever idiotic thing the pathetic comedians were going to say next.

  “Tommi had gotten wind of the arrests on Thursday, presumably from Mattinen, who figured it out when his dealer didn’t show up,” I continued. “He got worried and started arranging his affairs in order to leave the country. The news on Saturday exaggerated somewhat about a drug ring being rounded up, and Tommi probably panicked. He wasn’t a very good loser. You arranged to meet him that night. You had to talk. You knew that if Mattinen had been arrested, you were both in deep shit. While you were talking, you got into some sort of argument, and you hit Tommi with the ax. Maybe you thought Mattinen didn’t know your name. So with Tommi dead, there would be no one left to expose you.”

  “I slept through the whole night. Everyone can tell you that. Remember how they all said I was snoring so loudly? I always do that when I’m a little drunk. And why didn’t the famous ax have my fingerprints on it if I used it to hit Tommi?”

  “It was your snoring that did you in actually. According to Riku, you were sleeping comfortably on your back snoring. But Mira said she tried to turn you off your stomach to stop you snoring. Don’t people usually only snore in one position? Your act wasn’t quite flawless. And the fingerprints—your hands were cold while you were standing out there on the dock so early in the morning. You simply grabbed the ax with the sleeves of your shirt, which you’d already stretched out over them, and you carried it up to the sauna the same way. You showed me that last week too. But of course, you thought I wouldn’t catch on.” I couldn’t hide the indignation in my voice. “When we went to the Elite, you just wanted to find out what I knew. All your fun stories and everything you said about friendship and how alike we were—it was all just a game. And to think I took you seriously!”

  “It wasn’t a game,” Tuulia said, looking out the window. “I really thought you understood me.”

  “Did you think I would approve of you supporting yourself by dealing cocaine?”

  “I didn’t know it was cocaine!” Her violet teacup clinked angrily against the saucer.
Tuulia stood up to pour herself more tea and then slowly, weighing every word carefully, said, “I guess that’s it, then. It’s probably best that I tell you the whole story. Then at least you’ll be able to understand it a little better. Do you want more tea, by the way?” I nodded, and she poured some in my cup, then set the pot back on the counter and sat back down at the table. Her movements were heavy, like those of a wounded animal, and her voice was quieter than usual. Tuulia stared out into the yard. A white wagtail landed on the windowsill, looking hopefully through the window for breadcrumbs, and then flew away. Tuulia finally began to tell her story.

  “You were mostly right. It all started by accident,” Tuulia said, snorting at her own memories. “A couple of summers ago I was with Tommi at the Kaivohuone Club listening to a rock band. I was more dressed up than usual—a lot of makeup, my hair up, high heels, a miniskirt. Toward the end of the evening, this lost-looking middle-aged hick came up to me and asked me how much I cost. At first I didn’t get what he meant. Then I said—just joking, of course—that I was one grand, and that he had to pay up front. He practically started waving the money right under my nose. I barely had time to say ‘ciao’ to Tommi before we were in a cab to the guy’s room at the Meri Hotel.

  “Of course I told Tommi about it, and a couple of weeks later, one of his work friends needed some company. Tommi set me up with him, for money again. We tried to make a business of it, just kind of playing around for a while. It was fun. Back then the market for girls wasn’t what it is now, and guys would pay anything. Tommi lured a few other girls in, because he’d started to develop a reputation in business circles as someone who could get you a good, clean one-night escort.”