The Nightingale Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “I know, I happened to be watching the program. Is a patrol car there yet?”

  “Saastamoinen and Akkila are there, and I alerted Forensics. Apparently, the victim is a celebrity prostitute. Jesus.”

  I pulled my nightshirt over my head and started to dress while continuing to talk on the phone. I promised Puupponen I’d be at the studio in ten minutes, then hung up. I felt adrenaline surge through my veins, and in an instant I was fully alert.

  “What now?” Antti asked when he saw me pulling on my jeans.

  “Work.” I grabbed a blazer from a hanger. It was a little wrinkled but would have to do. There was no time for makeup, so I just quickly ran a brush through my hair.

  “Do you really have to go?”

  “I’m just going to take a quick look. I won’t be long.” I gave Antti a peck on the cheek and grabbed my bag, then closed the front door softly behind me so as not to wake the kids. Outside the car windows were covered in frost, so after buckling my seatbelt I turned the heater on full blast.

  Once I arrived at the studio, I confirmed that the deceased was Lulu Nightingale. I didn’t know much about her, just that she was one of the more well-known sex workers in the country. She’d chosen her name because she thought she was doing the same kind of service for men that Florence Nightingale had done during the Crimean War.

  Lulu’s “office” in downtown Helsinki was named the Blue Nightingale. She’d waged a one-woman war against the prostitution laws, her activities constantly pushing the boundaries of legality. I knew she’d been under heightened surveillance by the Helsinki Police for years. If I remembered correctly, she was on probation for procurement, because a few years ago she’d hired some assistants and the courts saw that as equivalent to pimping. There were people who thought Lulu Nightingale was a hero and paragon of sexual freedom, and others who thought she represented the worst kind of moral decay. In their eyes, prostitutes weren’t supposed to be proud about their profession.

  The streets were quiet and most of the traffic lights just flashed yellow, so my drive took less than fifteen minutes. The television studio was on the first floor of a white industrial building, below a textile wholesaler and a software company. In the parking lot were two patrol cruisers and an ambulance. I tried the front door and found it locked, then rang the buzzer a couple times to no avail. My breath was visible in the clear March air, and there was only the barest hint of the moon in the sky. Just as I was looking for Mira Saastamoinen’s number in my phone, the door opened.

  “Kallio, hi. How did you get here so fast?” Akkila asked.

  “I was watching TV. Puupponen’s on his way too. How’s it look in there?”

  “Come have a gander,” Akkila said. I followed him inside. “This place is a mess right now. One woman is completely hysterical, and Nordström from the NBI seems to think he’s going to be leading the investigation. Mira’s having it out with him right now. Rasilainen and Airaksinen are with the others. We’ve ordered everyone to gather on the studio floor.”

  It was all happening too fast: half an hour ago I’d been looking at this set from my couch at home, and now I was stepping onto it. The cameras weren’t on anymore, but the lights still burned hot. The people who had been talking heads just a few moments ago were now suddenly standing in front of me. But instead of Ilari Länsimies, I was the one who would have to lead the discussion, which was unlikely to be convivial.

  “Good evening. I’m Detective Lieutenant Maria Kallio from the Espoo Police. For the moment, we’d like to ask that everyone remain in the studio. Please be prepared to provide your contact information for further questioning.”

  Ilari Länsimies stood up from where he’d been sitting on the armrest of Mauri Hytönen’s chair and approached me. My first reaction was astonishment: in person he was so short, barely five foot six. His dark-blue suit was well tailored, and he’d loosened his tie and undone his top button, revealing a dark shock of chest hair.

  Länsimies shook my hand without introducing himself, assuming that I would recognize him. The handshake was firm, and his clear blue eyes gazed straight into mine. “Detective Lieutenant Maria Kallio,” Länsimies repeated before releasing my hand.

  Mustajoki, Pihlaja, and Hytönen sat in the same spots they’d been in during the show. In addition to them there were three men, apparently the camera and sound technicians. I wondered who the hysterical woman was, the one who’d rushed out onto the stage to report Lulu Nightingale’s death. Where was she now?

  “Hey, Kallio!” Lasse Nordström yelled from the studio door. “You’ve got yourselves some pretty damn bureaucratic patrol officers here in Espoo. Some hardheaded chick just shooed me away from the body even though I told her I was a colleague.”

  I went over to Nordström and pulled him into the hallway. He pumped my hand as if we were good friends, although in truth our acquaintance was limited to a few drinks during college and a few seminar sessions sitting in the same room.

  “What’s the situation?” I asked. “Are you sure this wasn’t just a sudden illness?”

  “I know this woman, and I think it’s best to take every possibility into account. And besides—well, you should see the body.”

  “Are there signs of violence?”

  “No, but the convulsion of the body suggests poisoning,” Nordström whispered.

  “Who found the body?”

  “Riitta,” Ilari Länsimies said before Nordström could reply. Apparently Länsimies had followed me into the hallway, and now he started to jabber. “Our program tonight was a little unorthodox. Usually our makeup artist, Nuppu, gets the guests, but she had a childcare snafu and left early because Lulu said she could do her makeup herself.” Länsimies loosened his tie even more. “We work with a small team, just two cameras and a floor mixer, and Riitta said she could bring the final guest in because the cameramen know the routine.” Nordström shot Länsimies a glance that was an obvious warning to shut his trap. The show belonged to Länsimies, but Nordström was a cop. Their jockeying for position was pointless, however, because from here on out, I was in charge.

  “Riitta?”

  “The producer.”

  “Where is Riitta now?”

  “In my dressing room, resting. One of your lady officers is there.”

  Just then Puupponen and Saastamoinen appeared. I asked Saastamoinen to start collecting contact information and told her that I’d want to interview everyone after I talked to the person who’d discovered the body. When my phone rang, I was unsurprised to see the number of a crime reporter from one of the newspapers. I didn’t have anything to pass on yet, so I set my phone on silent and tucked it in my jacket pocket, where it continued to buzz. I asked Länsimies to show Puupponen and me the way. It would be easier to get information from him without the others listening.

  “I understand that the concept of this show is that the guests don’t know anything about each other. How does that work in practice?”

  “Well, everyone has their own dressing room, and they’re only supposed to come out when accompanied by our makeup artist or me. Nuppu is something of a master of ceremonies, but today was different. We stagger the guests’ arrival times, and Nuppu or Riitta meets them at the entrance and delivers them to their rooms, then fetches each one for their turn in the makeup chair.” Länsimies fished in his pocket for a handkerchief and then dabbed his brow. The handkerchief came back with makeup stains.

  “How do you prevent the guests from wandering the halls? Are their doors locked from the outside?”

  “No, from the inside. Everyone understands the spirit of the game. People want to be on TV, and we’ve never had any trouble finding guests. Riitta’s resting in Anna-Maija Mustajoki’s dressing room—here we are.”

  “Thank you,” I said, indicating to Länsimies that he could return to the studio. I subtly tried to copy Länsimies’s on-camera style of speech to place us on the same level. “We’ll pick up this discussion again in a moment.” Just then two para
medics came out of a room farther down the hall and walked toward us.

  “There was nothing we could do,” one of them said. “We just need to take some pictures, and then we’ll haul her off if we don’t get another call before then. Is there any coffee here?”

  Perhaps the ambulance crew was no longer in a hurry, but I was. Liisa Rasilainen must have recognized my voice, and she poked her head out of the dressing room to call me in. Puupponen followed me into the small room, which just had space for a couch, a chair, and a narrow dressing table screwed into the wall in front of a large mirror. On the couch lay the thin woman in a skirt and suit jacket whom I’d seen briefly on television half an hour before. Her face was gray, and her eyes, red from crying, stared at the ceiling. She had the smudged remains of mascara on her cheeks. I introduced myself and Puupponen, but she didn’t seem to hear and didn’t react to my questions at first. Then she began to cry again.

  “I don’t want to talk about it. It was too horrible!”

  “She’s in shock,” Liisa whispered. “Here name is Riitta Saarnio. Age fifty-six. Should we take her to Jorvi?”

  “Let’s get in touch with her family and then decide what to do with her. Where’s the body?”

  “In the dressing room, next door. Here’s the key.” Liisa handed me a perforated plastic card with the number two printed on it. “Nordström and the paramedics have been in there, but everyone says she’s in exactly the same position as when she was found.”

  I retraced my steps back into the hallway, but before I could open Lulu Nightingale’s dressing room door, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I hadn’t heard any footsteps, so I jumped. When I turned around, I saw a mountain of a man with black stubble and sad eyes.

  “It wasn’t my fault!” he shouted. “I was in the control room the whole time, I swear. Can I see Lulu now?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Tero Sulonen. Lulu’s bodyguard. And her friend . . .”

  “I’ll speak to you later. Please move aside,” I said. Then Puupponen grabbed the man by the shoulders and steered him away.

  When I opened the door, the first thing I saw was a red vinyl boot with a nearly six-inch heel. Puupponen and I carefully slipped in and closed the door after us. The body of Lulu Nightingale lay on its side between the couch and a toppled chair. Blond hair covered the face, and a red-and-black leather skirt clung tightly to the hips and rump. Her fishnet stockings had a rose pattern. There was no sign of blood, but the table was askew and a long, black leather jacket with red fur collar and cuffs was lying on the floor. On the table was a bottle of Fernet Branca and an almost-empty glass with a small drop of dark-brown liquid at the bottom. On the rim of the glass was a thick lipstick print. The contents of a cigarette case were strewn around the body.

  “Do you have gloves?” I asked Puupponen, who nodded and pulled two pairs of white exam gloves out of his pocket. After gloving my hands, I bent over Lulu. As I moved the hair from her face, I could feel the warmth of her skin through my glove. I shivered. Lulu’s makeup was so thick that I couldn’t discern the actual color of the underlying skin of her face, which was contorted in an expression of eternal torment. However Lulu Nightingale had died, it had been gruesome.

  3

  “Lulu!” The bodyguard, who had been waiting in the hallway, opened the door and pushed Puupponen in an attempt to force his way into the room, but the two of us managed to keep him at bay.

  “Are you sure she’s dead? Can’t you do anything?”

  “The paramedics examined her. I’m sorry.”

  At this he burst into tears. Puupponen and I dragged him back into the hall, where we found the forensics team marching up with Hakkarainen in the lead.

  “Hi there! So we’ve got a lieutenant on the case, do we? Where’s the body?” Hakkarainen asked, and I stepped aside so that he could enter.

  Freed to move on, I decided to start the interviews with the bodyguard. The door to dressing room number four was open, and so I led Sulonen inside. There I found a pair of men’s overshoes tucked under a chair and a thick, dark-blue overcoat hung neatly on the wall. I guessed this room had been Lasse Nordström’s.

  I gestured for Sulonen to sit on the small couch, and I turned the chair around and took a seat. Pupponen stood next to the doorway. “How long have you been working for Lulu Nightingale? And what’s her real name?”

  Sulonen wiped the tears from his cheeks and took a deep breath. “I don’t want to tell . . .” he said, like a stubborn child. “She hated it. She changed her first name from Lilli to Lulu, but the government wouldn’t approve Nightingale as a surname. So she was Lulu Mäkinen. I told her that she could take my last name, but . . .”

  I interrupted his torrent of words and repeated my first question.

  “She hired me after a client attacked her. That was two years ago last January.”

  “Where did Lulu find you?”

  “I was a bouncer at the Mikado, and she came there sometimes to pick up guys. We happened to talk once, and she said I seemed like a man she could trust. But I wasn’t! Look what I let happen!” Sulonen pounded his fist on the couch, which gave a muffled thud. His hands were as large as heavyweight wrestler’s.

  “What were your terms of employment? Were you Lulu’s only bodyguard?”

  “I was. I lived with her. I slept in the room next to hers and was always supposed to be on guard whenever clients were around.”

  “Did Lulu have any specific reason to fear for her safety? Did anything unusual happen recently?”

  “I don’t know! She chose her clients carefully. Sometimes religious people would come around and preach at her about the fires of hell, but she just laughed at them and said they were pathetic.”

  Just then there was a commotion in the hallway, and I heard Mira Saastamoinen shout that under no circumstances would the media be allowed into a crime scene, and then Ilari Länsimies begging to be allowed to give a brief statement. Puupponen closed the door, even though the dressing room already felt cramped and stuffy. Sulonen blew his nose on his sleeve. I fished in my pockets, but I couldn’t find a handkerchief. Fortunately, I spotted a box of tissues on the dressing table. I tossed it to him and gave him a moment to collect himself before continuing the interview. “You said you were sitting in the control room the entire time. What control room do you mean?”

  “The access control room. It’s next to the sound booth. There’s only one way in to the studio, and I wanted to make sure no one who didn’t belong tried to get in.”

  “From the access control room can you also see who’s moving around inside the studio?”

  “There’s a camera on the main door and another one at the beginning of the hall.”

  “Could that camera see Lulu’s dressing room door?”

  “No, but it fucking should have. Are you absolutely sure there’s nothing that can be done? In the emergency room they can bring people back after all kinds of horrible accidents. Maybe if they could intubate or something . . .”

  “So your address is the same as Lulu Mäkinen’s?”

  “Yes, in Helsinki. Where will they take her?”

  “To the forensic pathology institute. Do you have a friend you can stay with?” I’d have to ask Mira Saastamoinen to arrange a hotel for him for the night and for a patrol from Helsinki to go seal Lulu’s apartment and the Blue Nightingale, which was adjacent. We would need to search both premises as soon as possible. Maybe our perpetrator would turn up in Lulu’s customer files.

  “Why can’t I go home?” Sulonen asked.

  Instead of answering his question, I said, “How did you and Lulu get here?”

  “In Lulu’s car. I drove like always.”

  “Could I please have the keys? We’ll need to search the car as well.”

  “But how will I get around?”

  Rather than respond, I simply held out my hand, and after staring at me for a moment, Sulonen pulled the keys out of his pocket and gave them to me. Then I left and, in t
he hallway, asked Saastamoinen to write him a receipt. Back in dressing room two, the forensic photographer was trying to get as many angles as he could in the narrow space. Lulu looked like a model in an avant-garde fashion magazine as she lay on the floor with her limbs spread wide and her face hidden under her hair. I noticed that her red thigh-high boots were embroidered with black leather.

  “Of course there’s a whole battalion of fingerprints in here,” Hakkarainen from Forensics said sourly. “Can we keep everyone in the building long enough to get their prints? Mikkola, you’re young and you have lots of energy, you go do it. Get moving, kid, and no screwups this time!” I grinned at Hakkarainen. He was a precise and reliable colleague. Once or twice, over coffee, I’d listened to his appalled harangues about the portrayals of crime scene investigation on TV. “They’ve got Joe Blow CSI pulling off DNA analysis with a microscope. I shit you not!” he’d yelled in exasperation. Hakkarainen and Puupponen spoke the same ungodly eastern Savo dialect, to the point that sometimes no one in the department could keep up, not even me, though I’d grown up in the neighboring district of Northern Karelia.

  Another cop from Forensics was logging Lulu’s purse into evidence. I stepped back out into the narrow dressing room hallway. There were six rooms, each with a number except the one that said “Ilari.” I tried that door, which was locked. The restrooms were at the end of the hall. I wondered how the guests would remain separate from each other if they had to use the same bathrooms. Luckily there would be security camera tapes, so we could review those. But first I wanted to figure out who had been the last to see Lulu Nightingale alive.

  I returned to the studio, where Mikkola was currently busy taking fingerprints. Ilari Länsimies was pacing and swearing into his phone. Probably all the lines to the television station were jammed. Five messages were waiting on my cell too. I motioned to Länsimies, indicating that I wanted him to get off the phone so that I could talk to him. One of the cameramen was chain-smoking, and Pastor Pihlaja sat in her chair with her eyes closed. Anna-Maija Mustajoki appeared the calmest of anyone in the group, but when I looked closer, I saw beads of sweat along her hairline. No one had had the sense to turn off the studio lights yet.