Fatal Headwind (7 page)

I nodded. I had more or less the same impression of Juha Merivaara. Then I asked Seija what her relationship was to the Merivaara family.

“I’m just here with Mikke.” Seija blushed a little. “I met him a few years ago, just after the construction company I worked for went bankrupt. Instead of complaining, I decided to learn new things. I took a coastal sailing class at the community college, even though I didn’t know anything about boats. Mikke was teaching it, and somehow we just hit it off . . .”

“Do you mean that you’re dating Mikke Sjöberg?”

Seija let out an embarrassed laugh. “No, no, of course not. We became good friends, and Mikke has let me come sailing with him a few times. The last time was in Estonia last month. I came here to spend one last weekend with him before he goes away for the winter.”

Something told me Seija Saarela wouldn’t have objected to a more intimate relationship with Mikke Sjöberg, but my intuition had been wrong before when it came to men I was attracted to.

Just then Hakkarainen from Forensics came in to say he needed me outside. I let Saarela go, grabbed a raincoat, and followed Hakkarainen back to the shore.

“We tried to find evidence of a fall from the cliff,” Hakkarainen said. “There was one set of the right kind of tracks, but they don’t quite line up.”

“They might be Mikke Sjöberg’s. The one who found the body. He said he slipped on his way down to see what had happened to Merivaara. We should maybe ask him exactly where he slipped,” I said.

Hakkarainen motioned to Juha Merivaara’s body.

“His head is in pretty bad shape, and the water has rinsed the wound so thoroughly that most of the bone fragments and brain matter are probably gone.” Turning his back to the wind, Hakkarainen started lighting a cigarette. The lighter wouldn’t cooperate, and he had to keep striking it for a while before a flame appeared. His first drags were long and luxurious, and then Hakkarainen pulled a plastic container out of his pocket to collect the ashes and filter. He never left any extra traces of his presence anywhere near a crime scene.

“No theories yet?”

Hakkarainen shook his head. He wasn’t in the habit of mincing words—he would give me the facts once he was 110 percent sure.

“But you can’t rule out the possibility of homicide?”

“No. I don’t like that there isn’t any obvious evidence of a fall. Let’s wait and see what the autopsy says. I have a strong suspicion that he was hit with something other than these rocks.”

I heard someone fumbling down the steep slope and looked up to see an agitated Puustjärvi.

“We need you, Maria. The Sjöbergs are trying to leave.”

“What? They can’t just take off whenever they want.” I started climbing back up toward the fortress.

Katrina Sjöberg stood in the kitchen with her hands on her hips.

“Can the police please do their job? We have to go. I need to be on Föglö by Thursday night.”

“Where is Föglö?” I asked. I didn’t remember ever hearing of it before today.

“In the eastern Åland Islands. That’s where I live, and I work at the library on Friday.”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t leave yet. The sequence of events is still unclear enough that we have to interview everyone who was present.”

“How long will that take? Will the police pay for a ferry ticket to Åland?”

I was just about to say that I would have to ask the lieutenant, but then I realized that was me.

“Yes, we will. And maybe it’ll be best for us to go to Espoo and handle the interviews at the police station.”

The Åland police could have handled Katrina Sjöberg’s interview too, but I wanted to at least start the process. I turned to Mikke Sjöberg.

“And you . . . I understand you were intending to leave the country for several months. You’re going to have to put that off for now.”

“For how long?”

“I can’t say yet. Best-case scenario is just a couple of days.”

Mikke shrugged in a way that was hard to interpret.

“Of course. There will have to be a funeral in any case,” he said in an indifferent tone.

I started arranging transportation back to the mainland. Anne Merivaara and Katrina Sjöberg went with me in the police helicopter. I wanted to get Anne home as quickly as possible. We would have to interview her officially later, just like Jiri, who had just sat in the kitchen looking apathetic. Puustjärvi would travel with Jiri, Riikka, and Holma on the Merivaaras’ motorboat, and Koivu would go with Seija Saarela and Mikke on the
Leanda
.

“Use the motor. It should be faster with this wind,” I said to Mikke before I climbed into the helicopter.

“And what if I don’t have enough gas?” he said.

“Hard to believe, since you were headed all the way to Africa,” I replied. Mikke snorted and then disappeared toward the shore while I boarded the chopper and tried to collect my thoughts. As the helicopter rose over the sea, I turned back to look at Rödskär Island. My last sight was Juha Merivaara’s body being carried on a stretcher toward the dock.

4

We made the flight in silence. Anne Merivaara sat with her eyes closed and beads of sweat on her face, while Katrina Sjöberg stared down into the foggy abyss below.

From the island I had called in to the department and asked Puupponen and Wang to be available so we could get started on the interviews as soon as we landed. In my mind I tried to list the questions, even though the turbulence made my brain feel like mush. As we reached the larger islands just offshore and the fog started to dissipate, Anne suddenly yelled into her microphone.

“Juha always knew what to do. Last year when we found Harri, Juha knew exactly who to call and that we shouldn’t touch anything. And now Juha is gone . . .”

Katrina Sjöberg and I glanced at each other, and that was when I realized it had been a mistake to separate Anne from her children. We would arrive significantly earlier than the motorboat, and Anne would go home alone. Someone would have to accompany her.

As we banked sharply to the northeast, we flew over my house. We were low enough now that I could make out the rowan trees heavy with berries in the yard and remembered that Antti and I were going to pick them today and start making wine. Picking them in this rain wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway, though. Apparently Antti and Iida were on an outing in defiance of the weather, because the baby stroller wasn’t on the porch.

Officer Anu Wang was waiting on the helicopter pad. I thought she would do a better job with Anne Merivaara than Lähde or Puupponen might. My opinion didn’t have anything to do with Anu’s gender but rather her sense for when to talk and when to stay silent. Koivu was another one with that skill. I asked Anu to take Anne Merivaara home and wait there until Jiri and Riikka arrived. Then I wondered why I assumed the Merivaara children would take care of their mother rather than the other way around. Maybe that was because Anne looked so small and fragile. She was even shorter than I was and at least twenty pounds lighter. Her wrists were slender, like those of a child. Riikka, tall and self-confident like her father, seemed like the responsible one, which was often the role of the eldest daughter.

Puupponen was already waiting in Interrogation Room 2. After the helicopter ride, I was in serious need of coffee and food, so I asked for something to be brought in. Katrina Sjöberg was probably hungry too.

Puupponen turned on the recorder, and I dictated the time and place and the names of the interviewers, and then asked Katrina Sjöberg to list her personal information.

“Katrina Wilhelmina Sjöberg, formerly Merivaara, maiden name Sjöberg. Born January 25, 1934, Föglö, Åland Islands. That is also my current residence. I am an artisan by trade. Now and then I fill in for the church organist, and once a week I volunteer at the local library.”

The routines of a police interrogation seemed to amuse her, despite obviously being upset by the death of her stepson. Perhaps the amusement came from experiencing the situation as unreal. Comprehending a sudden death could take a long time, and being interviewed by the police was hardly normal for most people.

“So you have some reason to suspect that Juha’s death wasn’t an accident or a heart attack or something?” Katrina Sjöberg asked before I had a chance to begin.

“Why do you suggest a heart attack? Did he have heart trouble?”

“Last winter he had two serious heart attacks. The doctors said they were caused by stress, and it’s probably also partially hereditary. The men in our family have always had heart trouble.”

Anne and Riikka hadn’t mentioned this. Had they known that this could have been a heart attack? Just then the coffee arrived. I greedily grabbed an egg-anchovy sandwich while Katrina chose a smoked-meat sandwich and started wolfing it down with equal gusto.

“About your family . . . so you were your former husband’s cousin?”

“Second cousin. Our grandfathers were brothers. The Sjöbergs are an old sailing family. Our great-great grandfather was a sea captain, as were my grandfather and uncle.”

“At what point was the family name Finnishized?”

“Juha’s father married the daughter of an ardent Finnish nationalist. Changing his name was a condition of the marriage and the inheritance that would follow.”

Katrina Sjöberg smiled dryly. She said that Juha Merivaara’s mother had died of leukemia when he was only eight years of age. Katrina was twenty-five then, having graduated a couple of years earlier from the Wetterhoff School of Arts and Crafts. She was working in one of the best dressmaker’s shops in Helsinki, but she dreamed of founding her own studio.

“We Sjöbergs have always been opportunists. I took up with my second cousin Martti because I knew he knew a lot of rich people. I thought I could get customers through him. After the death of his wife, Martti was lonely, and of course I was attracted to this older, self-confident man who had money for flowers and restaurants. Maybe in my stupid little head I thought of Martti as a tragic figure because he was a widower. Then what happened happened, the classic mistake. We got married quickly, in the summer of ’61. A week after the wedding I had a miscarriage.”

Katrina Sjöberg gave another crooked smile. “Martti probably never would have married me if I hadn’t been pregnant. I wasn’t much of a trophy wife. Too much ambition and too many of my own ideas. I tried to be the best mother I could for Juha, but I didn’t do a very good job. The fact that I got pregnant again delayed the divorce, but in the fall of ’64 I moved out with Mikke in my arms. He was only a year old at that point. We lived in Helsinki so Mikke could visit his father and brother. My relationship with Martti was not so good.”

Katrina lifted the coffee cup to her lips and took a couple of sips before continuing.

“Martti died in ’82, the same year Mikke graduated from high school. He inherited half of his father’s fortune, so one quarter of the company. At that point I thought that my responsibility to look after him was done and went back to my home island, which I had been missing for a while.”

During her account, I had been scratching names and dates on the notepad in front of me and now had most of a Sjöberg-Merivaara family tree. Still some of the family members and the ownership positions in the company were mixed up in my head. Hopefully the recording and Puupponen’s notes would clear them up.

“Let’s move forward to last night. So you came from Föglö to celebrate Anne’s birthday?”

“We weren’t that close. I came to see a couple of my friends on the mainland and my son, of course. Mikke suggested that we sail back to Åland together, and Rödskär was on the way. I never know about Mikke’s voyages. This one might end up lasting a year or more. That’s why I take whatever opportunities I have to see him.”

Katrina’s voice was melancholy, and suddenly she looked old and tired.

“Had you heard about how Anne Merivaara’s birthday celebration ended last year?”

“Mikke told me. I met Harri Immonen a couple of times myself. Pleasant man. No inane chitchat.”

“What was the mood like at the birthday dinner?” I asked, taking another sandwich.

“The usual. Juha saying the banal things you always say on someone’s birthday, Jiri sulking, Riikka and Tapio concentrating on each other. The rest of us tried to keep up the mood.”

I was trying to find a reason for Juha Merivaara’s drinking, even though I still didn’t have a blood-alcohol count from the autopsy. And if Juha turned out to have fallen because of a heart attack, that would close the case.

But his head injuries had been strange. Koivu had thought so too.

“What time did you go to sleep last night?”

“It was 1:12. I remember, because when I lay down, I wondered when the last time was I had stayed up so late. The life I lead is very regular. I fall asleep at ten thirty and wake up at exactly five o’clock.”

Katrina Sjöberg said she assumed that Juha had gone to sleep at the same time she had. She thought for a while before continuing.

“I slept very restlessly, both because I’d had alcohol and because I’m not used to sleeping in the same room with complete strangers. Around three someone was up and about, probably on the way to the outhouse. And a little after that I woke up to the sound of a motor.”

“A motor? Do you mean another boat came to the island?”

“I couldn’t say. That wasn’t very likely with the weather and how dark it was. But the sound did seem to be coming from somewhere close.”

The idea that someone else could have visited the island during the night opened up too many possibilities. For now I decided to concentrate on who I knew had been on the island. I asked Katrina Sjöberg what kind of relationship Juha had with his wife.

“Well . . . I don’t know if I’m the right person to answer that. I imagine things were good enough, since they did stay married for more than twenty years. Although Anne has changed in the past few years. When she was younger I thought of her as an ordinary girl who was happy simply to have married well. Definitely not the trophy-wife type, though, since she’s always worked in the company except for short maternity leaves. But recently she developed more of an edge, more depth, like she’d started looking at things from a new perspective. The eco-paint idea really came from Anne, and the children’s passion for other environmental issues also seemed to rub off on her. I think that Anne and Juha had some disagreements about their worldviews. Nature and the sea were certainly important for Juha too—that’s in the Sjöberg blood—but we aren’t idealists.”

Katrina Sjöberg sipped the rest of her coffee and then poured more from the thermos.

“I didn’t realize I was so tired,” she said when some of the coffee spilled on the saucer. “Are we close to being done?”

The expression on her face, lined by weather and time, changed quickly. Now it was exhausted again, the laugh lines turning to the deep furrows of age.

“Where are you going to stay tonight?”

“Good question. Usually I stay with Mikke, but that probably won’t work. I imagine the renters have already moved in. I don’t know. Anne could probably put me up, but I don’t think I want to go there. I should let them mourn in peace. Maybe I should just wait for Mikke. We can always sleep aboard the
Leanda
if there isn’t anywhere else. When will I be able to go home?”

Now the expression of amusement was back, which made Katrina Sjöberg’s eyes look decades younger.

“I’d say we can probably manage that within a couple of days. One last question, though. So your son, Mikke, inherited one quarter of the stock of Merivaara Nautical. Following his parents’ death, Juha controlled the remaining three quarters. Is that still the case?”

Katrina Sjöberg shook her head.

“No, Mikke sold his shares to Juha years ago. He graduated in nautical engineering, but boat manufacturing never interested him. Sailing has always been his love. I don’t know exactly what the company’s ownership arrangements are anymore. Juha is still the majority shareholder, but he isn’t the only one. Mikke sold high during the worst period of the last stock bubble. A few years later when the market crashed, Juha had to broaden the ownership base in order to keep the company afloat.”

I didn’t have anything else to ask Katrina Sjöberg just then. Because she didn’t have anywhere to go, I arranged for her to use one of the lounges at the police station. Mikke Sjöberg wouldn’t be showing up for about another hour, so I went back upstairs to our unit. I wanted to brush my teeth and send a message to the Trade Register office and confirm a list of Merivaara Nautical owners. I told Puupponen to go home. Koivu and I could handle Mikke Sjöberg once the
Leanda
finally made land.

Even for three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, the unit was quiet. The previous evening’s brawlers had been interviewed and most of them released, with the most dangerous offender sitting in a holding cell waiting to be remanded for trial.

The ambulance boat would be docking soon. If the on-call pathologist started work immediately, we would have some initial test results by tomorrow evening. The pathologist probably wouldn’t be able to tell us anything more precise about Juha Merivaara’s time of death than we already knew—sometime between one thirty and seven in the morning. The most important thing would be to figure out what had crushed his temple.

The telephone rang.

“Hey, it’s Puustjärvi. We just got to the marina. What do I do with these people?”

“Let them go. Wasn’t that what we decided? Tell them that I’ll call them in for official questioning later.”

“OK, sounds good. I’m feeling a little groggy. I fell asleep on the boat, since I was awake the whole night.”

I sighed. I had no doubt Puustjärvi was dead tired, but I had wanted to hear whether anything interesting was said during the trip back.

“Go ahead and go home if you don’t need to come back here for anything.”

“I need to grab my car.”

“OK, swing by my office then. I won’t keep you long.” Puustjärvi was what they called a good old-fashioned cop, even though he was barely forty years old. In his previous job working on a small-town police force, he got to know all the crooks, petty thieves, drunks, and moonshiners, and he learned to get along with them. I wondered why he had chosen to come to Espoo during the recent reorganization, since more than once I’d noticed how confused he could get working with hard-core professional criminals. He was used to the bad guys playing fair. Puustjärvi’s reaction to working for a female boss had included some hiccups during the first week too, but since then there hadn’t been any problems.