Wolves and Angels

by Jokinen, Seppo

  Koskinen mumbled something nebulous about a chronic lack of man power, and then quickly asked when they had last seen their son. Kaija Ketterä unhappily wrung her hands and lamented that Hannu didn’t have much time for his parents anymore. They hadn’t seen him in months, but a couple of days ago they had talked to him on the phone about Raimo Timonen’s death. Since then they hadn’t heard anything from their son.

  At this point Iiro brusquely interrupted his wife and noted that obviously the reason for Koskinen’s visit was that their son was missing. Koskinen tried to calm them down—it was still too early to be thinking in terms of a disappearance. Hannu could just be visiting friends and had neglected to tell anyone.

  But Iiro Ketterä wasn’t buying what Koskinen was selling. Their son didn’t have any friends like that. Iiro said he knew what was going on. Hannu had disappeared and the police suspected that the same thing had happened to him as to the two other Wolf House residents. In fact, they had guessed it the night before when a concerned call had come from the center asking whether Hannu might have come home for a visit. And upon reading in the morning paper about the elderly woman’s death, their suspicions were confirmed: Hannu was in trouble. Iiro ended his outburst with an accusing question about why the Finnish police didn’t seem better able to protect the citizenry.

  Koskinen felt a painful prick of conscience, and Kaija Ketterä’s tearful voice didn’t ease his feelings of remorse in the slightest. “I’m afraid the same thing has happened to our Hannu as happened to Raimo. Their fates have been so similar all along. First Raimo was paralyzed diving, and then Hannu fell skiing.”

  “Did you know Raimo Timonen well?”

  Hannu’s mother looked at Koskinen with her mouth agape as if she hadn’t understood the question.

  “Of course we did. Hannu and Raimo were best friends since they were children.”

  “Really?” Now this was interesting. “They’ve known each other that long?”

  “Practically since they were in diapers,” Iiro interjected. “They were like two peas in a pod. They played soccer together and did all kinds of other sports too, everything that young bucks do. They quit school suddenly at the same time too, and went to work for Tampella doing odd jobs in the machine factory. And both bought motorcycles. And that was it from then on, cruising around town chasing tail.”

  Kaija Ketterä threw an angry look at her husband, presumably ashamed of his frank language.

  “Raimo was like a second son to us,” she told Koskinen. “That’s why it was such a shock when we heard the news on Wednesday. How could anyone do something like that to someone in Raimo’s condition?”

  Koskinen noticed that Iiro Ketterä was constantly glancing through the window of the porch over toward the neighbor’s yard. The same man in overalls was staring at them over the fence. A cigarette was still smoldering in the corner of his mouth, and he didn’t seem the least bit ashamed of his curiosity.

  “And we’ve got that son of a bitch skulking around. He must’ve guessed it was the police coming.”

  Ketterä turned angrily to Koskinen and explained, “Ulpukainen has lived there thirty-two years, just as long as we have here. He knew Hannu and Raimo since they were kids.”

  Koskinen could see from Ketterä’s expression that there had been more than a few breaches of neighborly relations since then. And Ketterä wasn’t making any attempt to conceal that there was no love lost between them. “The man is a vulture. Ulpukainen. You’d never guess what he said on Wednesday when he heard about Raimo’s death.”

  Koskinen shook his head, obviously interested in what was to follow.

  ‘‘He came over that evening. Supposedly to offer his condolences for the death of Hannu’s best friend, but then he started running his mouth about how it was probably better that way. The poor boy’s out of his misery.” Ketterä was fuming. “I was this close to socking him in the mouth.”

  Koskinen looked at Ketterä thoughtfully. Aggression didn’t fit at all with the impression he was sure that everyone got from the small, white-haired man. More likely he would be taken for a nice old grandfather who passed out candy to kids. But he had experienced plenty of hard knocks over the years.

  Suffering was written all over Kaija Ketterä’s face as well. Koskinen saw her son in her: grayed hair, but a few individual strands revealed how red it had once been. The earlobes were pointed, and the eyes slightly squinty. Now they were welling with tears, and her voice was almost choked off with swallowing.

  “And then that nasty man was saying the same thing in town about our Hannu. That it was better for him to die so he’d stop suffering. He didn’t have the nerve to say it straight to our faces, but it got back to us all the same. He’d been singing the same song about Raimo since the poor dear got hurt out at our cabin.”

  “Cabin?” Koskinen perked up. “His accident happened at your summer cabin?”

  “Yes,” she replied, and, unlike her husband, addressed Koskinen respectfully. “Just imagine it, Lieutenant Koskinen! It was the first time the boys were there together. We bought the place in the summer of ’82, but it wasn’t until four years later that Hannu took his friends out there.”

  Iiro Ketterä broke in. “Hannu was like that. He was generally a very social boy, but at the cabin he liked to keep to himself. On this one hillside he built his own little hideout and then slept there all alone during the summer. Hannu loved that place. Up until he took his friends there for the first time.”

  Kaija Ketterä wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron. “Could that outing have ended any worse? Raimo dove into the lake and hit a rock.”

  “Where is the cabin?” Koskinen asked, pulling out his notebook.

  “In Teisko.”

  “Is it possible that Hannu would have gone there now?”

  “No.” Iiro Ketterä shook his head. “We sold it the summer after Hannu’s accident. We couldn’t bear to keep it—too many memories.”

  From somewhere farther back in the house an old spitz padded out on shaky legs. Its fur was matted and faded, and most of the color was gone from its muzzle as well. The dog sniffed Koskinen’s pant legs, and his curled tail wagged tiredly.

  “Lucky, out to your house!” Ketterä opened the entry door and shooed the dog out into the yard. “Go on!”

  Either the dog was deaf or didn’t care much about its master’s commands. It sat down on Koskinen’s left shoe, so he crouched down to scratch the bristly fur on its neck. “Let her be.”

  “She’s already sixteen years old.” Kaija Ketterä looked at the dog with her head cocked. This obviously brought back even more memories, because her voice went tight and teary again. “Lucky misses her owner. She’s Hannu’s dog. She understands things much better than most people would think, and Hannu’s paralysis was hard for her too. Just like for all of us.”

  Kaija had to swallow before she was able to continue. “I was especially sorry for Sanni and the children.”

  “Sanni and the children?” Koskinen asked as he let the dog lick the back of his hand. “Whose children?”

  “Hannu and Sanni’s of course.”

  Koskinen sprang up. “Hannu has a wife and children?”

  “Had,” Iiro Ketterä corrected. “But not anymore. Hannu divorced Sanni a year after the accident.”

  “And the children?”

  “They stayed with her. The older one was three when Hannu was paralyzed, and the baby had just been born.”

  Koskinen felt Lucky nudging him with her nose. But he couldn’t scratch her anymore.

  “Where can I find her?” he asked impatiently.

  “She remarried and lives in Toijala now.”

  “Have you had anything to do with her since the divorce?”

  “Not enough,” Kaija Ketterä said, sniffling. “Sometimes Sanni used to bring the children to visit us, but not this summer. We still talk over the phone sometimes.”

  “The last time was yesterday,” Iiro Ketterä said. “But I get the
feeling that her new husband doesn’t really like her keeping in touch with us.”

  “Could I have their address?” Koskinen asked and then turned to a fresh page in his notebook.

  Kaija Ketterä turned and walked toward the kitchen with waddling steps. Lucky stood up and followed her with a similarly laborious gait, probably thinking she was going to get something to eat.

  “What are you going to do with Sanni’s address?” Iiro Ketterä asked, his brow furrowed. “You won’t find Hannu there. They haven’t had anything to do with each other since the divorce.”

  “Just a few routine questions,” Koskinen said dismissively. “It’s just part of the job.”

  Ketterä took a step closer and lowered his voice so his wife wouldn’t be able to hear in the kitchen. “You’re thinking that the same thing happened to Hannu as Raimo and that old woman. Right?”

  “Nothing points that way,” Koskinen said, feeling another twinge. “We don’t have any information that would make us suspect anything like that.”

  Except for his wheelchair and pillow we just found in the woods in Hervanta, he thought. But he didn’t have the heart to tell them about that. And he didn’t need to until they found the body.

  Mrs. Ketterä returned with a beautifully embroidered, cloth-backed address book. Maybe it had been a gift from her grandchildren. She leafed through the pages to the right spot and then offered it to Koskinen.

  “Sanni has such a difficult name these days that I still can’t quite pronounce it.”

  The name was Sanni Standerskjöld, and Koskinen had to copy it letter by letter. He added the address and phone number below the name and then put the notepad back in his breast pocket.

  “Thank you, I have to go now, plenty of work at the office,” he said. And then, against his better judgment, said, “I’m sure he’ll turn up soon…maybe he’s already back at Wolf House.”

  But when he saw a dim glimmer of hope in the Ketteräs eyes, he had to leave. Once he got outside he remembered something he had planned to ask. He walked back to the door and scratched his neck uneasily.

  “Um, I just meant to ask…do you have any idea about who stretched that rope across the ski track?”

  The hope in Iiro Ketterä’s eyes died and the corners of his mouth turned down in a bitter frown. “The police are asking us? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?”

  However, his wife was more conciliatory: “The police investigated it for a long time, but never found anything beyond two footprints in the snow.”

  “And when the snow melted, the little investigating they were actually doing ended there,” Iiro snapped.

  “It was just a prank,” his wife said more equably. “Some kids just played a joke without any idea what the consequences might be.”

  As Koskinen walked to his car, he glanced back one last time. Iiro and Kaija Ketterä were standing on the steps of their house watching him go. Lucky, the dog, was sitting between them with her pale pink tongue hanging out. On the other side of the fence, the neighbor was pushing a wheelbarrow with his head down, and on the railroad tracks a murder of crows was having a cawing free-for-all. Apparently some animal had been hit by the train.

  Koskinen drove south slowly. His mind was busy with all the facts that had just come to light. How was it possible that Hannu Ketterä’s family status hadn’t come out earlier? Why hadn’t he told them about his ex-wife and children himself? It was strange.

  He turned into the parking lot of the Neste gas station. He turned off the engine, and searched his notebook for the Wolf House number. It took a while before anyone answered. The nurses had been complaining constantly about how short-handed they were, and Koskinen worried that they wouldn’t be able to make it to the phone at all. He was just about to give up when he heard, “Wolf House, Lea Kalenius speaking.”

  Koskinen went straight to the point: “Didn’t you ever think to mention that Hannu Ketterä was married and has two children?” Koskinen realized that his voice was unnecessarily crabby. But he doubted that the silence that fell on the other side of the line had anything to do with that. Koskinen heard Kalenius’ astonished intake of breath and guessed what was going on. “You didn’t know either?”

  “No, I didn’t have a clue.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “The people here are just residents. We don’t know anything more about their pasts than what they tell us.”

  “Did Ketterä ever have visitors?”

  “Just his parents, and lately even they were coming less and less.”

  “What might be the reason for the secrecy?”

  “Not a clue,” Kalenius replied bruskly. “Frankly, him lying like that makes me pretty angry.”

  “Lying?”

  “What else would you call it! I had all sorts of intimate conversations with him. At least I thought he was confiding in me. We talked about his accident pretty often, and Hannu always had this habit of commenting on how lucky he was that he didn’t have a wife or kids and how horrible it would have been to be a burden like that.”

  Koskinen found it odd too. After becoming paralyzed, family support should be irreplaceable. Why didn’t he even want to keep in contact with his children?

  “I’m sorry, but I’m in a terrible rush,” Kalenius broke in.

  “Of course,” Koskinen said, snapping back to reality. “I won’t bother you anymore. There is a police guard there, right?”

  “Yes. He’s lounging on the lobby sofa as we speak.”

  Koskinen wished Kalenius a good day and ended the call. He sat and stared at the service station’s blue and green sign pillar. Why had Hannu Ketterä wanted to conceal the existence of his ex-wife and children? He wasn’t going to figure it out just by sitting and thinking, but there was one person who might be able to tell him. Koskinen punched the number Kaija Ketterä had given him into his phone.

  A girl’s bright voice answered immediately. “Hello, this is Katri.”

  “Hello, could I please speak with Sanni Standerskjöld?”

  Koskinen almost ended up with his tongue tied in a knot trying to say the name. However, he got his point across, because the girl answered happily, “Mom isn’t home. She went to the store.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “In about an hour.”

  Koskinen thanked the girl and hung up. He tapped on the steering wheel of the Vectra, deep in thought, and looked at the candy cane-striped apartment buildings on the other side of the street. He was thirty miles from Toijala. He could drive there, and even back, in an hour.

  He started the car, turned onto the highway, and started driving. But his determination didn’t last long. Three miles later he was already having doubts. Did the head of the investigation have time for a trip that might turn out to be a wild goose chase? But on the other hand, the information he had just received from the Ketteräs was forcing him to reevaluate his thoughts. He knew from experience that driving alone would be the best place for that.

  He chose the quickest way over to Highway 3. His phone rang as he was passing the Tampere Exhibition Center, but he decided not to answer it. They had found Ketterä’s body. He would have plenty of time to hear that news later.

  In his mind he saw Hannu’s parents, the slumped, white-haired man and the plump, red-faced woman, and Lucky with his eyes shut enjoying a good scratching. He reversed his decision and dug his phone out.

  The caller was one of the patrol officers. “This morning we got a pick-up job from Sergeant Pekki in Violent Crime. We were supposed to bring some lady named Pirkko-Liisa Rinne down to the station.”

  “Yes, I know,” Koskinen said. “Have you done it yet?”

  “No,” the officer replied blandly. “Looks like she’s disappeared off the face of the planet.”

  23.

  The police had rung Pirkko-Liisa Rinne’s doorbell for a while and then called the building superintendent to open the door. Upon entering the apartment, they had determined that Rinne had
left in a panic: drawers were pulled out and clothes were scattered all over the floor. The lights were still on, cheese and sausage sat out on the kitchen table, and a wet towel lay in the doorway of the bathroom.

  Koskinen spent the whole drive to Sanni’s house in Toijala digesting this news. Where could Pike have gone? And what did it all mean? She didn’t fit the profile of the previous victims, and she probably wouldn’t have run away from a killer anyway. But then this raised an entirely new question: what reason would Pike have for leaving in such a hurry then?

  Koskinen was just as much bothered by the behavior of the policemen, who had gone to pick her up. They had clearly overstepped their authority. They had not had any right to barge into her apartment, and they should have known it. Unless there had been a misunderstanding. What if the patrol officers had thought they were looking for someone suspected of a monstrous crime? Had Pekki’s instructions been that vague? But Koskinen had a hard time believing that. Of course the crimes were serious, but they didn’t have any evidence against Pirkko-Liisa Rinne.

  Koskinen ran out of time to think. A sign on the roadside announced that he had reached the Toijala city limits, and he suddenly found a large hole in his local knowledge—he had no idea where he was going.

  A gang of boys on mopeds were buzzing around in the parking lot of an old wallpaper factory. Koskinen swerved across the road, but couldn’t make it out of the car before the boys opened up their throttles. They must have thought he was the police. The whole crew, leaning over their handlebars, shot down the walking path along the river, and disappeared behind the decrepit red brick factory.

  A sign affixed to the wall of the building had been shot full of holes with BBs, and Koskinen had a hard time reading it. Something about unauthorized trespassing. One of the mopeds had died just below the sign. A boy, not more than fifteen, was desperately trying to get his precious ride to restart, but the engine wouldn’t turn over.

  Koskinen walked over calmly. He pulled Sanni Standerskjöld’s address out of his pocket and asked for directions. The boy practically collapsed in relief. The shiny black, visored helmet looked disproportionately large on his narrow shoulders, and his voice creaked like an out-of-tune violin.