The Nightingale Murder

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I didn’t know how to answer him. Nordström returned to the couch and drank another half cup of coffee. He ignored the cookies. His stubble had grown since I’d last seen him.

  “The girls will be deported, and the Finnish justice system will wash its hands of the whole affair. Next week they’ll be in Switzerland or Poland, caught in the same situation,” said Nordström.

  “The operation was a success, but you’re left with a moral hangover?”

  “I guess. I’d prefer a physical one. Let’s go out for whiskey sometime, and if you don’t want to see Kristian, we’ll go just the two of us. I don’t have anything against you, Maria, I just wasn’t completely sure which side you were on.”

  “Law and order, of course,” I said, trying to smirk. It wasn’t easy.

  Nordström held forth for the time it took to drink another cup of coffee and then disappeared as suddenly as he had come. We agreed to revisit the whiskey-drinking idea, just as soon as the pub terraces opened.

  I asked Ursula about the crime report one night when we were having a girls’ night at Liisa Rasilainen’s place. I’d accepted the invitation because I thought it would cheer me up, even though seeing coworkers reminded me of work.

  “I thought I’d do it just to tease Kaartamo,” Ursula claimed. “The guy who asked me my price wasn’t exactly going to show up at the station. You were taking the whole thing way too seriously.”

  “I guess I was,” I admitted, all the while thinking that unfortunately I thought the same things as Nordström about some of my colleagues. You never knew who was on what side.

  “I’m no feminist,” Ursula proclaimed, as she had many times before, “but how do these guys think they’re going to get anything done if the educated women stay home? They’re afraid is what it is. We’re so much smarter than they are, and they’re such slaves to their drives. In twenty years we’ll be running circles around them. There are a lot of women in my generation who would rather have a career than children. That’s why the men are massing their forces now, but they’re still going to lose the battle of the sexes.”

  I was amused: before, Ursula had under no circumstances wanted to join forces with other women, but now her attitude had changed. I didn’t have a clue as to the reason why, but I guessed it had something to do with Kaartamo. Ursula had completely avoided our lady cops’ soccer team, but now she sat on Liisa’s couch declaring war between the sexes as vehemently as anyone else. Myself, I was tired of declarations of war. I wanted to build a peace in which neither sex would feel like they’d lost.

  “I’m still surprised Länsimies took the idea of running for president so seriously,” Katri Reponen said.

  “A lot of other people did too, based on how widely the rumors circulated,” I said, trying not to cringe at the sound of his name. Länsimies and his lawyer were still trying to pin everything on Riitta Saarnio, but it wasn’t going to work. The DNA evidence, samples of Riitta Saarnio’s writing, and the images from the Big Apple’s security cameras had been sent abroad for analysis, and even though that slowed down the investigation, it was worth it. A decisive factor would be that Länsimies didn’t have an alibi for the time of the attack on Sulonen. His fingerprints were found in Riitta Saarnio’s car, and as his bad luck would have it, the car had been detailed a couple of days earlier. Therefore the prints must have been from when he borrowed Riitta’s car to drive it to the mall. Riitta Saarnio just wasn’t around anymore to tell what the pretense had been for borrowing it.

  On the last day of March, Sauli Niinistö announced his candidacy for the presidency. So Länsimies’s dreams of ruling the realm would have collapsed in the face of a true political heavyweight anyway. Prime Minister Vanhanen announced his own intentions somewhat later, and his divorce set off frenzied rumors. The presidential race would be dirty enough without Länsimies.

  On the twenty-third of April, the doctors decided to allow Tero Sulonen to wake up from the medically induced coma they’d kept him in. Sulonen’s memory returned slowly, but he was absolutely sure of one thing: Ilari Länsimies had agreed to meet him in the men’s restroom at the Big Apple movie theater. Perhaps Länsimies had decided to try a more imaginative method. But the slingshot hadn’t been up to the job, and now he would pay for his audacity.

  Sulonen wanted to take revenge for Lulu’s death himself, which was why he’d taken the risk of meeting Länsimies, Koivu reported to me over the phone a couple of days before May Day. “Aarnivuori had bragged to Lulu about personally choosing the next president, and he also orchestrated the manipulation of the pictures of Lulu and the president. At first Lulu didn’t realize what was going on, and when she heard, she started making trouble. Länsimies must have panicked. One whore wasn’t going to stand in the way of his great plan.”

  Even though I was hopeful as I tracked the progress of the investigation, recovering from the rape was slow. I was surprised by the panic I felt when Antti tried to undress me for the first time. I was incapable of making love to him and had to retreat. He tried to be understanding, but my fear still wounded him.

  “Antti, give me time! My brain knows that what Länsimies did has nothing to do with you. My emotions and my body just don’t understand it yet. They’ll learn, though. I still want you.”

  There were tears in Antti’s eyes, and that made me burst out crying. Thank God the kids were already asleep. They didn’t know much—all I’d told them was that a bad man had hurt Mommy but that I’d get better soon. Taneli was confused because I didn’t have any visible wounds, but Iida understood.

  “Sometimes the hurt can be inside a person and you can’t see it. Like Tuulia’s dad’s ulcer.”

  Playing music helped, so I strummed my bass almost every day, and during that last week of April I even made it to a band practice. Beforehand I’d listened to the Flatfeet’s demo tape. I got along surprisingly well at the practice. The band didn’t have any gigs booked at the moment, so I had time to learn the songs. Luckily for me, “police punk” turned out to be pretty basic three- or four-chord rock ’n’ roll, so I didn’t have to try to be any Pekka Pohjola or Geddy Lee.

  On May Day Eve, Finnish workers everywhere were given another reason to rejoice when it was announced that Arto “Hatchetman” Saarnio was resigning from all professional duties effective immediately. Saarnio had made the decision soon after his wife’s passing but waited to make it official until his replacement at Copperwood had been found. In the meantime, Länsimies’s confederates had leaked Saarnio and Oksana’s relationship in an attempt to cast suspicion on Riitta Saarnio. That had hurt the already bad reputation he had as one of the least popular swine in the country, but it had also increased some men’s admiration for him. Oksana was deported from Finland, and in his final interview Saarnio said that after he stepped down, his first order of business would be to go on vacation in Ukraine.

  “From here on out, I’m a private person, with no need to share my personal business with the public,” he said at the end of the interview. I suspected it would still take a few years before the death threats against him would end.

  After May Day, I decided that it was time for me to work up the courage to jog by myself again. Until then I’d only gone on walks with the family or jogging with Anu Wang-Koivu or Leena. I knew I’d feel safer in more populated areas, so I ran up Olari Street to Central Park. Buds still gave the brownish forest a sense of renewal, and green forced its way from under the dried brown grass. A Nordic walker had stopped to look at the wood anemones growing along the path. At first, I didn’t pay any attention to her, but I stopped when she said my name.

  It turned out that the walker with the poles was Pastor Terhi Pihlaja. She looked at me with a serious expression. “How are you doing? I’m glad to see you out exercising.”

  “This is actually the first time I’ve gone by myself since . . . well, you know. They say you have to get back in the saddle as soon as your wounds have healed from the fall. I guess that’s what I’m trying to do.” />
  Pastor Pihlaja nodded. “It’s good to see that you’re on the mend. And I’m glad that I ran into you. I thought you might like to know that I went to Lilli’s funeral. I believe her parents were comforted to know she had tried to help that other girl, that she wasn’t just looking out for herself. And it was a great relief to all of us to hear that her murder was solved before she was laid to rest. The horrible truth is better than uncertainty. Poor Lilli. It’s strange to remember how I hated her during school! I begged God to take away my anger, but gradually I realized that was my own task.”

  I had given myself permission to hate Ilari Länsimies, and that hate hadn’t yet worn away. I knew that the memory of what Länsimies had done would follow me, just like he’d wanted. In a way that was worse than the rape itself: Länsimies had wanted to break me.

  “I’ve been praying for you. I hope that doesn’t offend you.” Pastor Pihlaja’s expression was serious. I smiled.

  “No, it doesn’t offend me. But I have to admit that I am a little afraid of priests.”

  “Why on earth is that?”

  “For the same reason some people fear the police. I imagine you can see my innermost thoughts and my most shameful deeds.” My own words surprised me, and I laughed in embarrassment. “So . . . would you like to go out walking sometime and help me get over my clergy phobia?”

  Now Pastor Pihlaja laughed, and we arranged to go out together the following Thursday, assuming nothing unexpected came up. We’d have to do it sooner rather than later—my sick leave was quickly running out.

  We said our good-byes, and then I continued with my run. I jogged along the river, past the community garden with its cottages. People tinkered about in their yards, planting and turning the soil, helping new life to grow. The previous Sunday, after a long break, Antti and I had resumed our house hunting. One house in Saunalahti had tolerable access to the Kauklahti station and downtown Espoo, where there was a bus connection to the airport. The yard had berry bushes and apple trees, and the house itself was the same homey postwar wood model as the one we’d lived in before the White Cube. We decided to make an offer on it if the preinspection report came back clean. The house would need remodeling, but Antti would have time over the summer. Maybe next spring I would be puttering in my own garden.

  On my last day of sick leave, Leena came to visit. I imagined she sensed I was afraid to go to work. Friends pick up on things like that. Sitting over a mug of tea, she was clearly working up to saying something, but I couldn’t guess what it was.

  “Aunt Allu left me three hundred thousand euros,” she finally revealed.

  “Wow! Now you can take that sabbatical you’ve always wanted!”

  Leena smiled. “I intend to quit my job and start a new life. I’ve been asking myself what Allu would want me to do, and yesterday I found the answer: I’m going to start my own law firm that serves the underprivileged. For people who wouldn’t otherwise have the money to hire a good attorney.”

  I looked into Leena’s dark eyes and saw the flash of enthusiasm there. We’d become friends during college when we were both hopeless do-gooders. Kristian had mocked us incessantly. According to him, people only chose to go into law for the money.

  “I don’t want to do it alone,” Leena continued. “I need a partner. You.”

  “But I’m not licensed!”

  “Not yet, but you have the education and there will be plenty of legal advisory work for you to do. Maria, I’ve been worried about you for a long time, and then all this happened . . . You need a change before you burn yourself out completely. I think it would be amazing to work with you. Aunt Allu’s capital will mean we can choose our cases and our pace.”

  “An idealistic feminist law firm?” I couldn’t help smiling. This was what we’d dreamed about in law school, but Leena had ended up as legal aid counsel and then as a criminal lawyer, and I’d returned to my career in policing.

  “Exactly. We could call ourselves Allu’s Angels.”

  “Are we talking more Drew Barrymore or Jaclyn Smith?” I asked. “I’ll have to think about it and talk to Antti. How long do I have to decide?”

  “As long as you need.”

  The next afternoon I stood in the parking lot outside the Espoo Police Station. My first day of work was behind me, and I’d managed as well as could be expected. My stand-in had praised my unit, and my subordinates said they’d missed me. Kaartamo took me out for coffee and told me about all the kudos we’d received “from the very top” for handling such a complex and sensitive criminal investigation so quickly. Rumors were already circulating in the building about Kaartamo’s successor, and most were placing their money on Taskinen once he returned to Finland. That would mean the directorship of the Criminal Division would open up, and Kaartamo hinted that the chief of police had said he wouldn’t mind seeing me in the position. I didn’t feel much of a calling to that, however, since it would be entirely administrative. I got along better with people than with papers.

  The sun shone, and the grass was gradually turning green and covering a landscape tormented by winter. No one would ever call the Espoo Police Station beautiful, but over the years I’d become used to it. I thought of Pertti Ström, my deceased coworker, whose downward spiral had started when I was named head of our unit instead of him. Nearly eight years had passed since then. While his loss was infinitely greater, gaining this position had placed me on a hamster wheel of constant stress. A hamster wheel that only I could free myself from.

  I tried to call Leena, but her phone was off. So I sent her a text message: Let’s meet ASAP and start planning Allu’s Angels. We only live once.

  I decided to leave my work car in the garage and walk. If I got tired, I could hop on a bus. If I left the Espoo Police, I would miss my colleagues, especially Koivu and Puupponen, and the lovely women of the Patrol Division, but I could handle that. If we were real friends, we’d keep in touch.

  I walked through the tunnel under the Turku Highway along with a small white dog. It was like a miniature Samoyed, but I didn’t know the name of its breed. The dog’s nose quivered ecstatically as it investigated the scents of spring and left its marks along the side of the path. It rushed back and forth, then suddenly sprang toward me and sniffed my shoes. Smelling Venjamin, it harrumphed and continued on. I laughed at the dog, whose collar said “Luna.” It wasn’t on a leash, so its owner was breaking the law. I couldn’t have cared less.

  For the first time in a long time, I felt free.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2011 Tomas Whitehouse

  Leena Lehtolainen was born in Vesanto, Finland, to parents who taught language and literature. A keen reader, she made up stories in her head before she could even write. At the age of ten, she began her first book—a young adult novel—and published it two years later. She released her second book at the age of seventeen. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the 1997 Vuoden Johtolanka (Clue) Award for the best Finnish crime novel and the Great Finnish Book Club prize in 2000. Her work has been published in twenty-nine languages.

  Besides writing, Leena enjoys classical singing, her beloved cats, and—her greatest passion—figure skating. Her nonfiction book about the sport, Taitoluistelun lumo (The Enchantment of Figure Skating), was chosen as the Sport Book of the Year 2011 in Finland. Leena lives in Finland with her husband and two sons.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Photo © 2015 Aaron Turley

  Owen F. Witesman is a professional literary translator with a master’s in Finnish and Estonian-area studies and a PhD in public affairs from Indiana University. He has translated dozens of Finnish books into English, including novels, children’s books, poetry, plays, graphic novels, and nonfiction. His recent translations include the first nine novels in the Maria Kallio series, the dark family drama Norma by Sofi Oksanen, and Oneiron by Laura Lindstedt, 2015 winner of the Finlandia Prize for Literature. He currently resides in Springville, Utah, with his wife, three daughte
rs, one son, two dogs, a cat, five chickens, and twenty-nine fruit trees.