Derailed

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I changed to a local train in Espoo and quickly realized, given the stench, that someone had just vomited in the car. The car didn’t offer ticket sales, so the conductor wouldn’t be doing a walk-through. I went off to find someone to report it to. Even in the other car I could smell the reek of vomit clinging to me. That reminded me of Hillevi Litmanen and her constant smoking. How had she managed over the weekend? I couldn’t picture her in Pasila rigging a bomb under Jutta Särkikoski’s car.

  Because my route from the train station to the police station passed my house, I stopped at home to grab my bike from the yard. Our car wasn’t in the driveway, so apparently the family had gone on the outing they’d planned. Only Venjamin stood guard on the windowsill. I inhaled the scent of apples, and someone was baking a mushroom quiche somewhere. The crisp air rinsed me clean of all the nasty smells of the day.

  Koivu’s report was brief. He’d talked to the man the neighbor had spotted, the one who’d been taking pictures of Särkikoski’s apartment. He turned out to be a magazine photographer who later realized that publishing a photo of the apartment of a person who’d escaped death three times wasn’t necessarily a good idea.

  Puupponen hadn’t made any new breakthroughs with the phone records. Mikko Matilainen’s van hadn’t been inspected after the accident, since there had been no reason to suspect it was the cause of the crash. Ursula could call the family and ask where the van had been on the night in question. Koskelo’s daughter would probably remember the night when her father’s protégé was injured. The rest of the information I’d gathered in Turku mostly aroused amusement.

  “There’s typical Finnish male communication for you! One thinks one thing and the other thinks something else, and they never clear up the misunderstanding because they refuse to call a spade a spade,” Ursula said in exasperation. “When are these hicks going to come out of the woods and catch up with the rest of us? For God’s sake, turn on the TV and you’ll see three gay people an hour. But of course religious people like them don’t have TVs.”

  “Sure they do,” Puupponen said. “A family of Smith’s Friends used to live next door to me, until they moved to Siuntio to get a big house for cheap. At that point they already had six kids, with number seven on the way.”

  “Uh huh,” Ursula said, shuddering. “Did Koskelo really think Särkikoski could get Väärä to tell her something that he’d never told anyone else before, that all that was needed was a two-hour car ride? Especially since her feminine wiles weren’t going to work on him . . .”

  “Not everyone uses your methods,” Koivu snapped. “Anu’s brothers and their families are coming over for dinner soon. We arranged it a couple of weeks ago. Is this going to take much longer?”

  I went through the rest of our business as quickly as possible and then dismissed the team. Then I forwarded my most innocuous work e-mails to my personal address, so I could read them after the kids were asleep and I’d returned from Jutta’s apartment. As I biked home, I called Leena, who had just finished a half-hour phone call with Jutta. She could go with me to Kauklahti any time that night, since she didn’t have any meetings the next morning. She’d need to go in to the Adaptive Sports office at some point, because they had to figure out how to keep the MobAbility campaign going now that Ristiluoma was dead. Apparently Merja Vainikainen did the same thing as me, avoiding her troubles by overworking and demanding the same of everyone else. Leena had spoken with Hillevi Litmanen, who would also be going to the office in the morning.

  I rode home quickly, my thigh muscles complaining on the uphill. Our kitchen smelled of fried chanterelles, and Antti was threading mushrooms on a string to hang them to dry in the sauna. The children had seen three deer in the woods.

  “And then there was this really neat dog. His name was Haiku,” Taneli recalled excitedly. “I threw a stick for him, and he fetched it every time. Mom, Dad already said no, but . . .” What followed were the same pleas we heard every three weeks or so, and which Antti always countered with an appeal to his nonexistent dander allergy. A dog was all that was needed to make our three-ring circus complete.

  Five days had passed since Pentti Vainikainen’s death, four since my appointment as lead investigator, and three since my return to the department. It felt as if an enormous clock was ticking somewhere nearby and I was Captain Hook, always listening for danger. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to relax until I solved this case. My mind and body screamed for rest, but after Iida turned off her light, I took our family car to pick up Leena, since I’d left the official car in the department garage. The moon was almost full, illuminating everything, even the blind spots where the streetlights didn’t reach, painting the leaves on the ground a deep yellow, and burnishing the apples waiting to be picked in the trees. A brown hare stood guard in Leena’s front yard, glaring at me before bounding off to the left of the house.

  Leena opened the door almost immediately after I knocked. I pushed her wheelchair down the ramp built over the front stairs and across the yard, part of which had been paved to make it easier for her to get around.

  “I don’t believe for a second that we’re stopping by Jutta’s apartment just to be nice. This isn’t only about collecting the mail and watering the plants,” Leena said as I backed out of her driveway. “You don’t have probable cause for a search warrant, so you need an excuse to snoop around. In which case, you should have taken one of your colleagues instead of me. I’ll know the instant you overstep your bounds.”

  Actually, I’d brought Leena with me as a sort of shield, and I’d had no doubt she would notice. Most of all I hoped I would find some indication of Jutta’s source at her apartment. No major clues had shown up in her phone records, even though Puupponen had contacted each number.

  “Jutta’s apartment has a burglar alarm,” Leena said as we pulled into Kauklahti. “What will you give me if I tell you the code?”

  “You know I’m trying to solve a double homicide, right?”

  “Using traditional Maria Kallio–style law-bending. Fine. The code is seven-one-seven-one. Is that simple enough to remember?”

  Not many people were out and about in the model neighborhood anymore, so I was able to park across from Jutta’s building. A couple of teenage boys were skateboarding, the sound of their boards echoing off the walls. A pair of dog walkers were so deep in conversation that they didn’t noticed that their pets’ leashes were wrapping together until one of the dogs was so tightly wound that it began howling pitifully. The light of the moon shining between the buildings formed a path to the courtyard, which I pushed Leena’s chair along. The main door to the building opened with one of the two keys Leena handed me, which were connected by a blue-and-white sleeve bearing the logo of the state lottery, presumably swag distributed to sports journalists. The wheelchair fit in the elevator, and we proceeded to the second floor. I was just about to open Jutta’s door when everything inside me started to scream danger. The sensation of a ticking time bomb disappeared, replaced by the feeling of a steam engine about to boil over.

  “Maybe this isn’t a very good idea after all,” I whispered to Leena, since I didn’t know what the soundproofing was like in the landing. “Jutta’s apartment has been empty for two days. Whoever failed at MobAbility, and then with Jutta’s car, is sure to try her home next. There may be explosives inside. Wait here!”

  Leena stayed on the landing outside the elevator, and I ran down and across the street to my car. In the glove box I found a flashlight and the small binoculars Antti used for incidental birdwatching. Pointing the flashlight beam at the balcony I assumed to be Jutta’s, I brought the binoculars to my eyes. I had to refocus them twice before the image was sharp enough. On the balcony was a small, round rattan table and a chair of the same material, along with a folded lounge chair and a few potted plants. The balcony was about fifteen feet up, so accessing it would require a ladder. There would be a high probability of being seen, but an intruder could try to pass for a window washer or somethin
g. Too far-fetched, I thought, but then again someone had managed to set a bomb underneath Jutta’s car. The balcony door appeared to be shut.

  Walking around the building, I tried to determine which windows belonged to Jutta’s apartment. The opposite side of the building had no balconies, and I saw no telltale signs of forced entry on Jutta’s windows. Just then someone opened a third-floor window. All I could make out was a man’s silhouette.

  “What the hell are you doing with those binoculars, bitch?”

  “I’m from the police.”

  “So they all say. You’re a reporter, right? This place has been crawling with you people. Give it a rest and let us sleep!”

  I turned off the flashlight and returned to the stairwell. If the Cerberus I’d just met was any indication of the kind of people who lived in Jutta’s building, no way a bomb maker would have been able to get into her apartment or onto her balcony.

  I didn’t want to call in the bomb squad unnecessarily, and I certainly didn’t want to end up a laughingstock if they failed to find anything. Still I ordered Leena to stay in the hallway while I opened the three deadbolts and stepped into Jutta’s entryway, which was illuminated by a narrow shaft of moonlight. The steam engine in my chest continued to boil, and even though my eyes were wide open, all I could see was red. The burglar alarm flashed on the wall, so I entered the passcode. Nothing happened other than that the light stopped flashing. Where was the light switch . . . there. Did I dare? Sweat broke out on my forehead as I pressed the switch.

  The light felt blinding, but only silence followed it. I stalked from room to room, wary as a cat who knows she’s crossed into another feline’s territory and is ready for a fight. There were no signs of any break-in. For safety’s sake I even turned on the coffee maker, the microwave, and the TV before helping Leena over the low threshold. Now the search could begin.

  16

  If Toni Väärä’s studio was full to overflowing with furniture, Jutta Särkikoski’s one-bedroom apartment was the opposite. Furniture and other objects were kept to a bare minimum, and everything was modern and economical. In the bedroom was a narrow bed and an exercise bike, and one corner in the living room was devoted to a computer and printer. The kitchen fixtures were stainless steel, so I felt as if I’d entered a laboratory, but the stench wafting from the compost bin shattered the impression of sterility. I glanced in the refrigerator for spoiled food that needed to be thrown out. A half-empty milk carton had passed its expiration date the previous day, so I poured the contents down the drain and placed the carton in the recycling. A head of lettuce was a little wilted but wouldn’t start crawling on its own for a few more days. Jutta didn’t seem to be much for home cooking, based on how bare her cupboards were. She must have lived on packaged soups, dried fruit, and green tea, plus the berries and espresso I found in the freezer.

  The doctor hadn’t wanted to predict when Jutta would be released from the hospital, and I didn’t feel any need to rush her. Guarding her was simpler in an institutional setting than at home.

  Leena collected everything Jutta had asked for in a plastic bag while I watered the plants, except the cacti and ficus, which I left alone. Jutta’s computer seemed to call to me, but I knew that anything interesting would probably require a password. On the desk, shelves held binders full of her archived stories. I opened the first one. Jutta had started writing articles in 1992, when she had been seventeen years old. She’d landed a summer job at the local paper in her county and been assigned to cover local news and interviews as well as sports. Jutta had studied journalism at the University of Tampere, graduating in 1999. During college, she’d written for Aamulehti and the Valkeakoski Times, where she gradually came to specialize in sports reporting. Her writing was fluid and nimble, and she often wrote about coaching methodologies and, very critically, of abuses of power in the sporting world.

  A familiar face in the picture that accompanied one story happened to catch my eye, and the caption confirmed my initial impression. The photo was of Mona Linnakangas, whom Jutta had interviewed for an article named “Physical Education in Schools: Worthless or the Best Thing Ever?” Jutta’s point was that many children and teenagers didn’t exercise at all on their own time, so getting them active while in school was important. Five years had passed since that article, and Mona had been eleven at the time. In the photograph, she looked unsmilingly into the camera, a little embarrassed. The heading for her section was “Competition is Stupid.” None of the other interviewees had been nearly as critical as Mona.

  The boring thing about PE is that we always have to compete, and all the results are measured. PE would be a lot more fun if we could just skate or dance without all the pressure. I don’t like team sports, because I’m bad at them, and no one wants me on their team. My mom says that competition is a part of sports, but schools should teach exercise, not sports. Those are two different things.

  I wondered whether Jutta had known who Mona’s mother was when she interviewed the girl. I couldn’t imagine Merja Vainikainen being pleased about her daughter stating opinions like that in public. On the other hand, it took a pretty smart eleven-year-old to recognize the difference she’d identified. Maybe she’d heard conversations about sports and exercise at home, or maybe Jutta had gussied up Mona’s statements.

  Jutta had often written about women’s, children’s, and handicapped sports and exercise. She wasn’t an expert in motorsports or soccer. In addition to track and field, sometimes she reported about skiing and women’s ice hockey and ringette. Jutta had written a series of articles about javelin thrower Aki Parviainen’s preparations for the 2001 IAAF World Championships, concluding with Parviainen’s winning a silver medal and returning as a conquering hero. Even there, she had managed to insinuate her doubt that a second-place finish for a woman would have been celebrated quite as widely as Parviainen’s accomplishment. In a different article, she offered a perspective on sports celebrity and the place of female athletes in the media. She mentioned a few athletes who received more public attention for their appearances than for the strength of their performances. Public interest could be guaranteed if the loveliness of the competitor matched the violence of the sport.

  One of the few articles Jutta had written for a women’s magazine covered track-and-field athletes’ winter training camps in the south. She’d cited the sports managers’ and the coaches’ names, but kept the female athletes anonymous, because “women’s issues aren’t something we talk about.” Of course, the camps’ main purpose was intensive training for the competition season, but sometimes hard work demanded hard play, and in such an isolated environment, hormones often run wild.

  National team competitor “Maija,” age 22, not long ago considered leaving her January training camp in South Africa. “I don’t need to listen to filthy stories and comments about my ass while I’m training. This is my job. Some of the male athletes are outright chauvinists, but the worst thing is that the managers don’t do anything about it. They just laugh or sometimes even join in. They consider peeping in the shower and throwing condoms onto my balcony to be harmless practical jokes. Do other people have to put up with that at work?”

  I remembered reading the tabloid headlines the article spawned, and the online forums had been full of discussion of who this brave “Maija” could be. When a B-level 100-meter hurdler failed to qualify for the European Athletics Championships, even though others with the same results found spots on the team, I suspected that she was the straight-talker Jutta had quoted.

  Doping and attitudes toward it were among the subjects Jutta had written about the most. She’d even written a full-page article about Pertti Hemánus’s book Doping: The Good Enemy. I skimmed the article, since I’d read the book soon after it appeared.

  Jutta’s printer was also a copy machine. I turned the power on, startling Leena.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m copying one of Jutta’s articles. Just because I’m interested. Do you know if J
utta keeps a diary or a blog?”

  “There’s definitely no blog. And she probably would have asked us to bring her diary to the hospital if she kept one, unless she had it with her at the time of the explosion.”

  I looked around for a diary, but all I found were some old calendars from the last few years. I picked up the previous year’s calendar and flipped through the entries Jutta had made. The 2006 calendar was A5 size, with plenty of space for notes but no address book. Maybe that was with this year’s calendar. I put the calendars in my bag, even though I knew it was against protocol. I hadn’t filed for a search warrant, and any evidence I collected illegally wouldn’t hold up in court. And I was mixing Leena up in my law breaking.

  Next to the computer was a small metal box. I opened it and found it full of memory sticks. Some were labeled, some weren’t. I also took this box. Ursula and Puupponen could go through the files, if they could get past the passwords. Now I might also be causing trouble for my subordinates.

  On the shelf above were a couple of photo albums, which depicted the life of a typical Finnish woman: baptism, Jutta riding a tricycle, her first-grade portrait with eight more following it, then confirmation and graduation. Jutta didn’t smile in the pictures, instead simply looking directly into the camera. There were a few sports photographs mixed in, with Jutta sometimes standing on the top of the podium and sometimes on the lower steps. In one snapshot, Jutta posed with Aki Parviainen. That seemed strange, because as I’d understood it, Jutta generally tried to keep a professional distance from the athletes she wrote about. In the newer pictures there were dates automatically superimposed by the camera, ending in 2003. Apparently after that Jutta had moved to a digital camera. I didn’t find any printed versions of later pictures.