Derailed

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Where would I need to be? And of course I’d like to help the police. Poor Tapani. He was only trying to help, and look where it got him . . .”

  With Koivu’s help, I shooed everyone but Merja Vainikainen out of the conference room. Then he set up the computer and tape recorder. Merja remained sitting at the head of the table, and we sat to either side. First, I asked if she had any idea why someone would want both her husband and Tapani Ristiluoma dead.

  “I haven’t thought of anything earth-shattering,” Merja Vainikainen replied. “It just seems so unfair that two people have lost their lives because of Jutta Särkikoski. I feel indirectly responsible, since I’m the one who hired her. I was only thinking about how her name would attract attention, just like Toni Väärä’s. I wanted publicity for our cause, but not publicity like this.”

  Vainikainen shook her head, but her hair helmet didn’t stir. Her hairspray must have been really strong.

  “Have you discovered anything new? I can’t bear to read the news about Pentti’s death. In line at the grocery store I turn my head away so I don’t have to see him smiling on the front pages. Before, I never paid attention to those gruesome headlines. Nothing like that could ever happen to anyone I knew. Now I’m living the news.” Vainikainen’s voice trembled, making her seem more . . . human. I told her what the autopsy had revealed, but I didn’t mention the small amount of the nicotine in his stomach. Technically, Merja was still a suspect.

  “Our main line of investigation assumes that Jutta Särkikoski was the intended victim, but we’re also looking into other possibilities.” Just then I remembered that I’d applied for a warrant with the district court to open Pentti Vainikainen’s phone records. I’d probably received it this morning, but Ristiluoma’s death had distracted me.

  “How is Jutta doing? I assume you’re protecting her from any more attacks. I was surprised that she came to the meeting on Friday, but she’s made of tougher stuff than other people, like that sniveling Hillevi.” I confirmed that Jutta was safe. A quick smile flitted across Merja Vainikainen’s carefully made-up face. I felt like telling her that losing control wouldn’t be the end of the world. It would be perfectly natural for someone whose husband had been murdered and whose child obviously suffered from a mental illness.

  The rest of the interview was like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. One thing Vainikainen did admit was that Ristiluoma had seemed to be interested in Jutta. Jutta hadn’t mentioned anything about that. Had she intentionally concealed it, or had she not noticed his interest? Frustrated infatuation could be a motive for violence. Even though I’d only met Ristiluoma once, he didn’t seem to me like a person who might accidentally poison someone or blow himself to kingdom come over unrequited love.

  “What kind of explosive killed Tapani?” Merja Vainikainen preferred to be the one asking questions. “I mean, was it the sort of thing anyone could whip up with instructions from the Internet? Haven’t there been cases like that? I’ve heard of kids doing that, kids like Mona . . .” Vainikainen’s voice cracked. “I haven’t been sleeping, and Mona’s condition is getting worse every day. Yesterday she made cakes out of rye flower and water and ate them raw. Then she passed out like an alcoholic. You don’t think that she could have had something to do with these crimes, do you?” It hadn’t occurred to me that Merja Vainikainen might suspect her own daughter.

  “Did she have a reason to hate your husband or Jutta?” I remembered the article about physical education in schools. Maybe kids had bullied Mona after its publication. Might she blame Jutta for her recent troubles? Merja Vainikainen pulled a white handkerchief out of her pocket. It looked to be freshly ironed. She wiped her eyes, though I couldn’t see tears in them. Her makeup remained perfectly intact.

  “Not really. I know my daughter! Pentti and Mona had a decent relationship, and she barely knew Jutta. But of course I keep thinking over and over about how all of this could have happened. At one point I imagined that Mona gave Pentti poisoned chocolate or something like that . . . I know, it’s silly. But her condition has gotten worse, ever since she spent two weeks with her father before school started. Who knows what happened between them.”

  “Do you suspect sexual abuse?”

  Vainikainen’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and she tried to force a smile, but all she managed was an uneasy grimace.

  “Not as such. I don’t think Linnakangas would touch her. But Mona might have seen her father having orgies with girls almost her own age. I’m sure that gives a wonderful impression of male sexuality. That reminds me—I need to take her to the doctor now. Maybe I’ll finally be able to convince him that Mona needs to be admitted to a hospital!” Merja Vainikainen stood up and left without saying good-bye.

  “Let’s hope so,” I called after her. Koivu verified that the recorder had been working and labeled the tape containing Vainikainen’s interview.

  “Who next? Vainio?” he asked.

  “Let’s wait a minute.” A strange idea had popped into my head, and I was trying to find the words to express it. I stood up and walked to one of the two windows, which faced the courtyard. To the north I saw the MTV3 and Channel 4 buildings. The Sports Building was in the center of the media district and close to the Helsinki police station. Exploding Jutta’s car had been a daring, public crime, a veritable feat of cold-bloodedness.

  “Listen, Koivu. What if we have two perps? Perp number one kills someone during the campaign at the Waterfall Building in Espoo, though whether the intended victim was Jutta or Vainikainen, or maybe even Toni Väärä, is still unknown. Then perp number two sees an opportunity and blows up Jutta’s car, believing that we’ll assume the crimes are connected and so overlook him, because he doesn’t have a motive for the first crime.”

  Koivu sighed. “So does that make one of the perps Satu Häkkinen since, according to Anneli Vainio, she was jealous of Jutta? Let’s pump Vainio for information about that. Should I get her?”

  “Go ahead, and tell Harju that he’ll be next. Then we can use the thumbscrews on him.”

  Right away, Anneli Vainio gave the impression that she didn’t completely comprehend that her boss was dead. She still talked about Ristiluoma in the present tense.

  “I wondered why Satu declined to stay and organize the food for the campaign launch, since she usually does anything to please Tapani. I helped set up but couldn’t stay at the event, because every Tuesday I watch my granddaughter while her parents are at their ballroom dance class. Satu just snorted and said that if Jutta Särkikoski was organizing the event, then she could organize the food too. So we both left before people started to arrive.”

  “Was Hillevi Litmanen already working in the kitchen at that point?”

  Vainio frowned and put on a pensive look. “I didn’t know who was working in the kitchen. I only caught a glimpse. I didn’t realize it was her until you asked. She’s amazingly skittish. She practically hugs the walls. Although that’s no wonder after what’s been going on. Anyone would be scared. I spent the whole weekend trying to figure out a way to retire immediately. I’m already sixty, but I need to hang on for a few more years. I’m just not excited about getting a new boss, and I have no interest in staying at MobAbility after all of this. But an old lady like me isn’t going to find work anywhere else. I’ve done OK in this small firm, since we control when and how often we update our computer systems. I thought I’d be able to survive until retirement on last year’s new system, but now I’m not so sure . . .”

  Crow’s feet surrounded Anneli Vainio’s eyes, and her lower lip had begun to narrow. Even so, she looked much younger than my grandmother had at sixty. Would Iida’s generation be allowed to age at all, or in fifty years would wrinkles be considered so uncouth that getting a face lift would be like a civic duty?

  Vainio frowned again and fingered her rings nervously.

  “Forget what I said about Satu! Delete it from your tape! She’s a good girl. There’s no way she had anything to do with these inciden
ts. At most I could imagine her slipping laxatives into Särkikoski’s coffee. And Satu could never build a bomb. She’s just a regular small-town girl, and her mom works at the MobAbility factory.”

  Vainio stood up, straightened her black-and-gray woolen jacket, and from her inside pocket took out a grave candle of the kind that would burn for three days. Then she took me by the hand and led me to the window.

  “That’s where Tapani died, right? Where the asphalt is cracked? Where the police tape is?”

  “Yes.”

  “There isn’t anything down there to remind us of him. I’m going to go light this candle. I asked the building manager if he would put the flag at half mast, but he said not until the day of the funeral. Is there anything left of him to bury?” Anneli Vainio started to cry, and after a moment I let her go.

  Koivu fiddled with the tapes again while I stayed at the window. After a minute, Vainio appeared in the parking lot, raised the police tape enough to slip under it, and lit the candle with a cigarette lighter. When she crouched to set the candle on the asphalt, the guard rushed out. I didn’t hear the exchange that followed, but in the end the guard allowed the candle to remain where it was. After he left, Vainio bowed her head and crossed her arms. Even though the Monday afternoon hadn’t begun to darken yet, the lone candle in the sea of cars looked as bright as a fallen star. Passersby stopped to stare, and few moments later someone brought another candle from inside. Soon a third person came to take pictures of them.

  “Maria!” Koivu’s voice snapped me back to reality. “I’ll go get Harju now, but first I’m going to go on a treasure hunt. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I kept looking out the window at the parking lot. A young woman placed a vase of African violets next to the candles. The guard returned to the parking lot, speaking into his cell phone and looking agitated. I wondered whether he was taking orders from his security company or Detective Perävaara.

  Koivu returned with Miikka Harju, both men carrying cups of coffee. The smell nauseated me. Was I coming down with something? As Koivu sipped his mug, I opened the recorder, inserted a new tape, and then rattled off the usual formalities of time, location, and participants. I’d thought I was done with that forever.

  Harju had taken a seat at the end of the table by the window, so we were side by side. I remembered how upset he’d been on Friday after the explosion, but now he seemed calm, if overly alert, like a hunting dog expecting the command to set off after prey.

  I asked a couple of warm-up questions and then got to the point.

  “How did you end up in your position at the Adaptive Sports Association? Did the employment office randomly assign you the job, or did you ask for it?”

  Harju sipped his coffee, and the sight of oiliness on the surface brought back the nausea. From the street side of the building came the wail of a siren, which made us all jump. The sound gradually receded.

  “I don’t remember anymore. I think I got to pick the job myself. They gave me a list . . . A job is a job. I guess I thought that working with disabled people would be useful.”

  Harju wore all black: a sports coat, T-shirt, and jeans over the tops of his boots. There was a silver ring in his left ear, which I didn’t remember from the previous interview. When Harju lowered his coffee to the table, I saw that his hand was shaking.

  “The agent you worked with at the employment office remembers it differently. According to her, you specifically requested work at Adaptive Sports. You practically begged. Why?”

  Harju’s right wrist was on the table, so close to me that I could see his rapid pulse. A polygraph machine would be redlining right now.

  “Well maybe I did! What does it matter?” he suddenly bellowed so loudly that Koivu knocked over his coffee. Fortunately, only a splash of liquid was left, which formed a coin-size puddle on the tabletop. Harju looked at it, embarrassed, and then threw his own almost-empty cup into the trash can. Then he stared at me intently.

  “The papers say you believe that the person who’s recently tried to murder Jutta is the same one who ran her and Toni Väärä off the road last fall. Is that true?”

  I knew how to stare too, a look my husband called my angry cat face. I turned this on Harju, trying to make my expression as intense as possible.

  “That’s one possibility, but only one.”

  “Then you’re on the wrong track!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think that the purpose of the car accident was to kill Jutta Särkikoski, right?”

  “Yes, that’s our assumption. Doesn’t everything that’s happened recently suggest that someone wants to get rid of her?” I continued to stare at Harju, and he didn’t turn away from my gaze. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a vein throbbing in his forehead. His heart rate must have been twice its normal speed.

  “I don’t have a clue about what’s happening now, but the car accident last year was just that: an accident. I should have confessed earlier. I was the one who ran them off the road.”

  18

  Koivu’s jaw had dropped, and his eyes widened behind his glasses. Maybe I didn’t look quite as astonished, since I’d suspected all along that Miikka had some connection to Jutta’s accident.

  “Did someone order you to run Jutta’s car off the road?” I asked.

  “No! Weren’t you listening? It was an accident. If you can really call it an accident, since I was drunk as a skunk. I was coming back from my friend’s cabin. We’d been drinking since the previous night, and I was supposed to stay for another night, but then there was some sort of disagreement, and we’d thrown back a lot at that point, and then he started talking about knives, and I thought it was best to leave quickly. At the time it seemed more logical to stay off the freeway and drive through Inkoo. I didn’t remember that the 51 has traffic cameras. I was in a big hurry to get home because I still had a half bottle of vodka and some beer there. Normal alcoholic thinking.”

  Harju finally dropped his eyes. His fingers tapped the table, and his breathing was rapid. The wind had picked up outside, rattling the windowpanes. Harju took another deep breath, and I wondered whether he was hyperventilating. There should be a paper bag in my investigation kit. After a minute, he continued.

  “I was going over a hundred easy and wasn’t paying much attention. And I probably would have blown close to 0.2. Hard to say. I’d already almost hit someone out jogging, and the rain was really coming down. I had maybe a millimeter of tread left on my tires, and when I tried to pass that Renault . . .” Harju whimpered, then lifted his gaze and looked at me. “The van started slipping and sliding, and I couldn’t get traction. I remember screaming—I was so afraid, I thought I would die. I hit the other car again, and that’s when it went off the road. I kept going, and my bumper was rattling like a demon from the impact. I just kept driving. I was such a coward I didn’t even stop to see what I’d done. What a fucking bastard I am!”

  Koivu’s phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket and then set it down after glancing at the display. Harju continued staring at me as if I was a judge about to hand down his punishment. I didn’t say anything, not wanting to interrupt the flow of his story. The time for that would be later, once we’d established whether he was telling the truth.

  “The next day I woke up in Kirkkonummi without any idea how I got there. I must have found some dive to drink in, and they gave me as much as they dared before I went and passed out in the back of the van. That’s where I woke up, soaked in my own piss. I must have taken back roads the rest of the way because I was afraid of the cameras. What a fucking genius. And like I said, when I woke up, I didn’t remember what had happened. I thought I was just imagining the accident, until I saw the state the bumper was in. That was when I got scared. Then the magazine headlines started screaming about a reporter and a star athlete’s tragic injuries, and I knew I’d really stepped in it. I’d already lost my license once and . . . Well, you’ve seen my record. Prison wasn’t an option. I’d been
tossed out of the fire department, and my old lady had left me. I had to get my life back together.”

  “The van—what happened to it? As I understand it, the police contacted every body shop in southern Finland to ask about a dark-colored van.”

  “It wasn’t in my name! It was my uncle’s. He started going blind a couple of years ago, and they took away his license last year. I didn’t have the money for a car since I spent it all on booze, but my uncle kept the van insured, and I brought him a few cases of beer, some potatoes, and a vat of pea soup every week. He lives out in the woods behind Siuntio, and he doesn’t have any neighbors. By the time the cops came to check his van, my friend Sakke had already fixed the bumper. He’s got a little shop of his own, and he kept the job off the books. And the cops didn’t visit him anyway. They did stop by my uncle’s place, and he swore the van hadn’t left his yard the whole week of the accident. Who was going to argue with an old blind man? I guess the cops asked if someone might have borrowed it, but my uncle said they should go see if they could even get it started. I’d drained the battery and cut the fan belt after Sakke and me brought it back to Siuntio. Destroyed a perfectly good van. So that’s what happened, and that’s the kind of man I am.” Harju looked away. His breathing had calmed, but I heard him swallowing.

  “I haven’t told anyone about this at AA, although I’ve come close. During my last relapse I almost confessed everything. Luckily no one died, or it would have been the end of a rope for me.”

  “Is that what made you get sober?”

  “Try to get sober.” Harju grimaced. “I’m still struggling. Seeing this job at an organization for disabled people was a twist of fate. There were so many stories in the newspaper about how this young kid, this Olympic hopeful, might never run in the white and blue again. I guess I was just being naïve, thinking maybe I could make amends somehow . . .” Harju laughed mirthlessly. “So what I’m saying is no one tried to kill Jutta or Toni Väärä. It was just a drunken idiot who happened to run his van into theirs.”