Derailed

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I didn’t put the digging bar down or make any other move. I just stared at Merja. How did she think she was going to get out of this situation?

  I had to play for time. I didn’t know how dangerous the explosive was, or how easy it might be to detonate it. At least there wasn’t a visible fuse.

  “I’ll come in, but just to get Mona,” I said, my voice shaking. Merja backed up a few steps, allowing her to see both me and Harju. His mouth was a tense line. In this situation, a familiar colleague, someone like Koivu, would have been better company. We would be able to predict each other’s reactions and calculate accordingly. Harju was a wild card, though I assumed that, as a former firefighter, he knew how to respond under pressure.

  There was the sound of a car driving up the drive. I heard a knock at the door, and then someone shouted my name. Once, twice.

  “So there are more of you,” Merja stated. “How many?”

  “One patrol now, but more are on their way,” I lied.

  “Detective Kallio!” They were now using a megaphone. I heard Mona shrieking from the window. The patrol officers wouldn’t shoot her, would they? I’d told them we were trying to arrest a woman suspected of murder, and from a distance Mona could be taken for an adult.

  “They’ll break down the door if you don’t open it. They have the tools. Give that”—I pointed to the bomb—“to me. There’s no reason to harm anyone else.”

  “Come off it!” Merja laughed again. “Fine, let’s go open the door. You two walk in front. Miikka, has Detective Kallio told you what I’m holding in my hands? Or maybe the police haven’t figured out what blew up Jutta’s car. This contains TATP, which can be set off by a hard impact. If I turn this little knob the other way and shake, it explodes. You saw what kind of damage it did in the parking lot of the Sports Building. And this contains a double dose.”

  My mouth went dry, and I saw stars in front of my eyes. Not again. Taskinen would be sorry if I died. But I couldn’t die. I couldn’t.

  “Kallio goes first, then you follow her, Miikka. You’ll do as I say or get this bomb tossed your way. Kallio will open the door.”

  The door was about ten yards from the living room, which felt like a long way. When I opened the door, I saw two faces I didn’t recognize. One of the officers was a young woman with dark hair, and the other was a slender man in his sixties.

  “Hello, I’m Senior Officer Väh—” the man said before a rough shove sent me flying out toward the young woman. I dropped the digging bar. The door slammed behind me.

  “What the hell—” the officer said. I urgently waved the two of them away from the door and the blast radius. Both were armed, but their pistols were holstered, and they didn’t have bulletproof vests or helmets. Their vehicle was a sedan rather than a van. I couldn’t see Mona in the tower window anymore.

  “There is—” I began, but my phone interrupted me. As I fumbled in my pockets, I realized that my hands were shaking.

  “It’s Miikka.” His voice was so tense he could barely speak. “Merja has some requests.”

  I turned my phone on speaker so my colleagues could hear, and Merja began talking.

  “You’re going to order any other police coming this way to turn back. The ones who are here can stay. Then you’re going to let me leave. I’ll be taking Miikka with me.”

  “Agreed.” I didn’t remind Merja about Mona, hoping she would leave her daughter behind.

  “Tell your colleagues what I have. Tell the others too. How do they say it in the movies? She’s armed and dangerous.”

  “I’ll tell them. Are you coming out?”

  “First I need to make some preparations and say good-bye to my beloved daughter. Although I doubt any tears will be shed. But be ready. This won’t take long.”

  Then Merja hung up. Quickly I briefed the patrol officers. The male officer introduced himself as Matti Vähämaa and his partner as Junior Officer Jonna Otala. He lived in the area and knew that, at the moment, there was only one road off the peninsula because a key bridge was temporarily closed on the other route. So Merja was trapped.

  “We should set up a roadblock at Eestinkylä, at the intersection there. Should I handle it?”

  “Yes! Tell them this is a very serious situation, and that the suspect has a hostage. She won’t get far, since I’ve already issued a travel ban. The most important thing is that no more lives are lost.” I decided to try to get Harju out of there, but I wasn’t going to offer myself in his place. What would I do if Merja tried to switch prisoners? A police officer was always more valuable than a civilian, so why had she pushed me out of the house instead of him?

  Otala inspected the surroundings as if preparing for an attack. I could read in her eyes that this was also the first truly dangerous situation she’d been in in her career.

  The weather had cleared as evening approached, and sunlight filtered through the trees from the west, illuminating the door as it opened. Miikka Harju came out first, followed by Merja wheeling a carry-on bag and wearing a quilted jacket with a fur collar. The coat was too heavy for the relatively warm fall day. In her other hand she carried the bomb. Harju climbed into the car first, and Merja watched as he backed it out of the carport. The officers and I retreated as the car approached. I guessed the range of the shrapnel would be at least twenty yards. I remembered Jutta’s mangled face and was barely able to keep myself from running away as fast as I could.

  “I’m a pretty good shot, but this revolver isn’t a precision weapon,” Vähämaa whispered.

  “Keep your pistols holstered,” I whispered. Our exchange caught Merja’s attention. She still held the bomb as a queen might her scepter. She set the suitcase in the back seat of the car and then sat down next to Harju. I held my breath as the car began moving across the yard. Soon it would be gone, along with the bomb, and we could save Mona . . .

  But then the car stopped as close to us as it could, and Harju rolled down his window.

  “Merja says you have to come over here right now,” he said to me. “Or she’ll blow me up.”

  Of course, Merja would die in the explosion too, as would I once I got close to the car. Still, I forced my legs to move. With each step I felt as though I had lead weights around my ankles.

  “Walk around the front of the car to Merja’s window,” Harju said. I did as instructed. She rolled down her window. Sunlight shone from behind her, turning her hair into a golden halo around her shadowed face.

  “Detective, tell me one thing.” Merja’s voice was almost cheerful. “How did you figure it all out?”

  “It was easy,” I said, though it was probably unwise to provoke her. “Fraud investigators were already on the trail of the Field Sports Fund, and your ex-husband Olli Salminen told me that you had a knack for explosives. And Mona helped us too,” I continued vengefully. I hadn’t heard any sounds of violence from inside, and I thought that Miikka Harju would have said something if Merja had harmed Mona. He probably would have risked his life to prevent it.

  “Olli Salminen! What a bastard! Tell me why I always have such horrible luck with men. Jari was a daydreamer I fell in love with due to naïveté and inexperience, and despite his profession, Olli was a tenderhearted idiot who always took Mona’s side. And then Pentti—God damn him! Instead of letting us enjoy life with his inheritance, he invested it in some semicriminal foundation! I married him because of that money! His monkey business with Laakkonen was so clumsy that I knew they’d get caught, and I didn’t want to be left out in the cold. I was so stupid! I didn’t ask for a prenup, and Pentti invested his inheritance without asking me, and then all my savings went into that blasted house! Pentti was just like Jari. He could never hold on to money. He always tried to live the way his wealthy CEO friends did, serving expensive cognac to every government minister and the other clowns who came around.”

  I didn’t have a tape recorder, and there was no way to discreetly start the voice recorder on my phone. Merja must have deduced from my use of the
digging bar that I wasn’t carrying a gun. Because she seemed to be in a talkative mood, I asked her a question.

  “I understand why you’d want to get rid of Pentti, but why Jutta?”

  Merja laughed like a character in a horror movie.

  “Jutta was such a useful idiot! She was already afraid. I knew that Pentti and his buddies had hired a couple of small-time gangsters to call and send her letters before her accident. I contacted one of them and wrote a few letters myself. Jutta ran straight to the police, just like I thought she would. It didn’t matter to me who or how many people died along with Pentti. And it still doesn’t. Remember that,” Merja said and suddenly turned toward Harju. I went to put Merja in a stranglehold, but she turned back and hit my wrist.

  “Drive!” she yelled at Harju, who stepped on the gas, leaving deep tire marks in the dirt road. The car disappeared around a corner, and I sat down on the grass. The danger had passed for now. Vähämaa and Otala ran over to me.

  “Are you alright?” Otala asked. I nodded, unable to speak. I had to get inside and drink some water. I had to save Mona. I heard her voice again, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  Then I smelled smoke. I looked toward the south side of the house and saw fire through the windows on the first floor. Suddenly I was in motion again, running toward the house. Mona pushed her head through the window.

  “Help! I can’t get out! There’s a fire!”

  Just then the house’s fire alarm went off. Otala, who had run after me, pulled out her phone and called the fire department. The nearest fire station was in Kirkkonummi, back on the highway, and the fire trucks would be slowed by our roadblock. It would probably take fifteen to twenty minutes for them to get here. I left Vähämaa and Otala to handle those arrangements and rushed toward the house.

  “Mona, don’t worry! Help is coming! Can you tell where the fire is?”

  “On the stairs. I can’t get the door open. Mom locked it from the outside!”

  “Keep the door closed. It’s protecting you! Are there any fire extinguishers in the house?”

  Mona didn’t answer. She kept trying to force herself through the small window, which would have been too narrow even for Iida. There was another, bigger window, but the drop from it to the ground was more than twenty feet. I looked around for a fire ladder but didn’t see anything on the front of the house or the water side. Under the carport I found a ten-foot ladder, but that would barely reach to the lower level of the roof.

  “We need a ladder!” I yelled to Otala.

  “We have a rope. And a fire extinguisher.”

  “OK, let’s try to locate the fire through the windows.” I hadn’t had a chance to really look around when I’d been inside the house, but I recalled that there had been stairs to the second floor right under the tower. Through a window, and I could see flames leaping distressingly high. They might not reach Mona before the fire department arrived, but how would she avoid breathing in the smoke? I ran back to stand below the tower window.

  “Mona, are there any towels or sheets in the room?”

  “There’s a shawl . . . and a tablecloth.”

  “Stuff them in the crack under the door! Be brave. Help is coming!” Only the thought of my own children prevented me from charging into the house.

  “Do you have water?” I yelled when Mona returned to the window. Thank God Merja hadn’t drugged her! But maybe her not doing so was worse. Had she thought that her daughter didn’t even deserve to die of smoke inhalation peacefully, in her sleep?

  “Yes, one bottle!”

  “Get your hair wet! If you have a handkerchief, get it wet too and breath through it. Or use a pillowcase!” Oh, let the fire department come now, I prayed. I remembered how winding and narrow the road was, and that a fire truck wouldn’t be nearly as agile as our car had been.

  “Hold the ladder. I’ll climb onto the second-story roof,” said a male voice suddenly from behind me. I turned and saw Miikka Harju. There was a scrape on his right cheek, and his pant leg was shredded. An open wound was visible through the hole in the fabric. He was breathing heavily—he must have been running.

  “Miikka! How did you . . . ?”

  “Merja said you’d need a firefighter and threw me out of the car. I didn’t see that she’d started . . . The tower’s fire escape is on the west side. You get to it through the roof. It’s a shitty design, which is why I noticed it when I was here with Pentti. Cops carry rope, yeah?”

  This last question was directed at Vähämaa, who hoofed it back to their car to get the rope.

  “And you have that digging bar, right, Maria? Go get it and bring it here. I can use it to break the window if I can’t find anything else.” I took off running as Mona screamed above. The flames had spread throughout the downstairs now as well. The roof must be hot as hell already, and Harju didn’t have his firefighting gear.

  “Bring that tarp from the carport too!” He yelled. “You’ll use it to catch Mona!” I got what he’d asked for and ran back to the tower.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t wait for the fire truck?” I said as Vähämaa, Otala, and I supported the ladder so Miikka could climb onto the roof. He’d tied the rope around his waist.

  “No time! And if I hadn’t been such a coward, none of this would have happened. OK, are you ready?”

  Vähämaa bent under the ladder so that part of the weight rested on his shoulders, and Otala and I strained to hold it steady. Harju weighed nearly two hundred pounds, and it took all the strength the three of us could muster to help him onto the roof.

  “Go under Mona’s window and fold the tarp over four times, then get ready to catch her.”

  Harju had already managed to climb onto the roof of the tower and seemed to be looking for a place to tie the other end of the rope. It was already getting dark outside. The flames illuminated the area around the house, but the electricity had gone out inside. What if there were more explosives in the house? If the fire reached them, we would all be goners.

  Harju had secured the rope, and he was using it to lower himself down, until his feet reached the windowsill of the tower room. Otala prepared the tarp. I hadn’t practiced catching a jumper since my time at the police academy twenty years earlier.

  “Mona, can you break the window?” Harju shouted. “Look, there’s a metal chair. Throw it through the window! I’ll get out of the way. Look out below!”

  There was an enormous crash, and then a heavy office chair flew out, accompanied by a hail of glittering shards. Otala grabbed the chair and tossed it aside. Harju returned to the window and brushed the worst of the glass fragments out of the way. His face was wet with sweat, and the heat made me sweat too. The house was fully ablaze now. It would be pointless to try to use the fire extinguisher.

  “Mona, you have to be brave now.” Miikka’s voice was kind. “Take my hand and slide down the roof a little. Then you can jump onto the tarp. Come, get onto the windowsill.”

  “I can’t. I’m too heavy!”

  “Yes, you can! I’m coming to help you.” Harju jumped into the room, and after a moment he assisted Mona onto the windowsill and then climbed up after her. The windowsill shook under their combined weight. We stretched the tarp tight. Hopefully it would hold.

  “I’ll hold the rope in place. Slide now!” Harju ordered.

  Mona howled like an injured animal as the rough rope burned her hands. Her grip failed almost immediately, but we got the tarp under her and kept her from hitting the ground. I pulled the weeping girl into my arms and walked her away from the fire. She was breathing heavily. I heard a siren and couldn’t remember a time when that sound had ever been sweeter.

  Miikka Harju had climbed out the window and now hung by the rope around his waist. The flames were coming out of the downstairs windows toward him. I shouted a warning, but the flames had already caught Miikka’s pant leg. He screamed and tried without success to put out the flames. Then he pulled a knife out of his pocket, cut the rope, and dropped to t
he ground, where the tarp no longer waited to catch his fall.

  22

  Miikka Harju was still alive when the police and firefighters arrived. He’d been knocked out on impact, and I’d used my jacket to put out the flames on his jeans, then put him in the rescue position and covered him with the tarp to keep him warm. Thankfully he’d only received second-degree burns.

  The firefighters had begun the daunting work of putting out the blaze. I warned them of the possibility of explosives. They’d reached Porkkala Road just as the roadblock was being set up and so had almost certainly passed Merja Vainikainen driving the other way.

  The other police officers were taking care of Harju, so I could turn my attention to Mona, though there wasn’t much I could do for her beyond giving her something to drink and wrapping her in a blanket from the fire truck. She seemed slightly drugged, though that could have been the shock.

  About twenty minutes after the fire truck arrived, my phone rang. The caller was Liisa Rasilainen.

  “I’m on my way, in the ambulance. It’s taking a while, because the ambulance arrived at the roadblock at the same time as Merja Vainikainen. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “What about Vainikainen?” I walked away from Mona, though I doubted she was listening.

  “She’s on her way to Holding. I’ll fill you in when I get there. The paramedics want me to ask about injuries there.”

  I told her, and after a few minutes, the ambulance pulled up. Liisa Rasilainen jumped out after the paramedic team. They’d been followed by another fire truck, which had a hard time fitting in the yard and didn’t hesitate to drive over the berry bushes. When the paramedics began working on Harju and Officer Otala took charge of Mona, I took Liisa by the hand and led her far enough away so that I could hear her over the crackling of the flames and the blasting water.

  “Did Merja Vainikainen hurt anyone else? Did the bomb go off?”