Fatal Headwind (9 page)

“The worst damage is to the front of his head. If he slipped, it would be more likely that he would have fallen on his back. There aren’t any rock fragments in the wound, which you would expect to find if he fell. I doubt the water would have washed all of them away. My best guess is that something struck him other than a rock, but I can’t say what it was yet. I did find a couple of glass fragments, but they could have been from his glasses. Have they been found?”

“No. We’ll have to look in the water. Could this have been a result of a heart attack followed by a fall? He had some heart trouble last winter.”

“I haven’t gotten to the organs yet,” the pathologist said irritably. From the phone came a grinding sound I could imagine was a drill going through a skull, but it probably wasn’t. “They said you wanted to know as soon as possible if we could rule out the possibility of a homicide. At least at this point, doing that would be out of the question, but I’ll know more tomorrow once I’ve had time to take a look at the internal organs and do some analysis. Pictures of the scene would help too.”

When I returned to the interrogation room, Koivu’s inquisitive gaze greeted me. He had probably guessed it was the pathologist calling. I shrugged. Mikke Sjöberg seemed to be dozing in his chair, with his head leaning against the wall and his eyes closed.

“Let’s call it day,” I said, but my voice didn’t wake him up. He couldn’t have fallen that deeply asleep in the middle of a police interview, could he? No, suddenly he opened his eyes, yawning and stretching like a napping cat.

“So that’s it?” he asked, seeming a little surprised.

“We’ll probably have to go over this again, but this was enough for today. Your mother is waiting for you in the lounge. We’ll show you the way.”

Sjöberg pulled on his sweater. His movements were strangely slow. Did Mikke need professional help too? Some of my colleagues—Ström, for example—outright laughed at the crisis-help brochures I always handed out, but my experience told me that talking to a professional did a lot of good.

“Mikke, you just found a dead body,” I said, touching his arm. “Don’t try to carry that alone. There is help.”

He stared at me with his sad sea-blue eyes for what seemed like a long time. Then a grin appeared on his lips, but it didn’t extend to his eyes.

“I’ve got my mom to take care of me!”

Sjöberg turned and walked out, with Koivu following behind. For a few seconds I stood there with my face in my hands, wishing I were someone else. Someone more rational.

5

In our Monday morning meeting, we reviewed the events of the weekend and all our unfinished cases. I was a good way into the Juha Merivaara case when I realized that Ström hadn’t made an appearance yet. That momentarily broke my concentration.

“So we still aren’t sure whether Merivaara’s death involves a crime,” Puupponen summed up after my pause had stretched to fifteen seconds.

“Forensics and the lab are promising more results by the afternoon. Let’s hope it turns out to be an accident. We have enough work already,” I said with a sigh and suggested that we move on to Friday night’s brawl. A heavy silence followed, and I realized that it was Ström’s case.

“Where is Ström? Has anyone heard from him?” I asked, hoping I wouldn’t sound like a schoolmarm asking about the class troublemaker. I scanned the room until my gaze rested on an uncomfortable-looking Lähde.

“Do you know where Ström is?”

Lähde shifted his short, pudgy legs.

“Well, I don’t know exactly, but . . . Ström’s ex-wife’s wedding was this weekend.”

I didn’t have a chance to ask whether Ström was watching the kids while his wife went on her honeymoon or whether there was some other connection between her nuptials and his absence before Puupponen jumped in.

“So Ström doesn’t just have a sensitive stomach, he has a sensitive heart too?” he said.

This time the guffaws weren’t very loud because the whole unit knew what a tender spot Ström’s divorce was even after four years. After a long period of stalling, Ström had let his wife go back to work as a lab technician at Jorvi Hospital once their youngest turned three. After six months at work, his wife had announced that she was moving out because she had fallen in love with a hospital orderly. A custody dispute ensued, but eventually Ström agreed to give the kids to their mother, because a cop’s work hours weren’t conducive to single parenting.

The worst thing for Ström had probably been that the children grew fond of their stepfather. Maybe Marja’s wedding and new pregnancy made him feel even more shut out of his children’s life. It was typical that Ström hadn’t told anyone but Lähde about his ex-wife’s wedding. For a moment I felt some sympathy for Ström, but it passed quickly. The rest of us were overworked as it was, and nothing gave him the right to keep drinking after a weekend off. At least he could have called and lied about having a sore throat.

Although I wasn’t going to put up with excuses and boozing for long. I would have to talk to him about this, no matter how hard it was.

Forensics had promised me their first report on Juha Merivaara around noon. Turning on my computer, I answered a couple of e-mail queries from the Helsinki Police Department. Internet communication saved time, but I preferred to talk to a real person over the phone. But since I was online anyway, it occurred to me to check the Merivaara Nautical website.

I found the address and then waited for it to load as I cursed the slow network connection. I was naturally impatient, and waiting for machines irritated me whether it was a computer, an ATM, or my old home answering machine.

When it finally loaded, the website showed two ships sailing off into a wide expanse of sea with blue skies overhead. The menu offered information about the company’s products, navigation, environmental issues, and the Rödskär lighthouse. I opened the page about the environment.

Everyone who travels the water wants to protect the irreplaceable beauty of Finland’s nature. The magnificent lakes and archipelagos of Finland are a national treasure we all have a duty to protect. At Merivaara Nautical our goal is to offer you the most environmentally friendly boating products available, including paints, primers, toilet chemicals, and lubricants. Our research and development team is the best in the business, backed up by the deep, personal relationship every one of our employees has with boating and sailing. Trips to Rödskär Island are a regular part of employee training.

Even though something like the composition of your boat’s bottom paint may seem like a small factor in polluting our waterways, small trickles form great rivers. Did you know that if you mainly operate in fresh water, your boat doesn’t need antifouling products? For sailboats on lakes, such as the waterways of Saimaa, Merivaara Nautical Sweet and Soft paint provides sufficient hull protection. Our bottom paints meant for boats operating in salt water also avoid the use of chemicals that might harm marine life.

The site felt a bit thrown together. As I continued browsing, I found various recycling tips and instructions on what kinds of eco-friendly products boaters should buy. “Eco-friendly” was an easy hook for selling nature lovers just about anything. Not many people ever bothered to check what the term concealed. I knew I was more than a little lost in the current jungle of environmental certifications: Who knew whether any of those little green stamps meant anything at all? According to their site, Merivaara Nautical had recently applied for EU Ecolabel status.

Traffic hummed outside my office window, and a patrol car took off from the garage with sirens wailing. Hopefully it wouldn’t be anything for us, I thought, when the phone rang. The forensic pathologist confirmed that based on the condition of Juha Merivaara’s lungs, he had been dead before he entered the water.

“Did a heart attack cause the fall?”

“Merivaara’s heart wasn’t healthy by any means, but his death had nothing to do with heart failure. As I said yesterday, the skull fracture was the cause of death. He was hit in the head with an object of indefinite shape. There was rust on his skin and we found shards of glass in the wound. The rest of the injuries to his body were caused by the fall. The height was about five meters, right?”

I took a breath and didn’t answer. Although the doctor wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t been prepared for, starting my first homicide investigation as head of the unit felt fraught, especially since it meant I would have to dig into Harri’s death too.

Why was this happening to me again? Why couldn’t I escape my past? Harri reminded me of a version of myself I didn’t particularly like: the thoughtless, irresponsible, selfish girl I hoped I had grown past.

“Are you still there?” the pathologist asked.

“Yes. I’m here.”

“Based on the lividity, the body was moved a few hours after death.”

“The person who found the body pulled him out of the water. What can the lividity tell you about the body’s position in the water?”

“He probably fell on his side, with his neck bent. It’ll be easier to explain if you come look.”

I sighed. “When I find the time,” I said and then asked whether he could give me any estimate of the size or strength of the attacker. He didn’t want to start guessing. The blow that caused the skull fracture hadn’t been terribly powerful, and he couldn’t estimate what position Juha Merivaara had been in when he was hit. Based on the shape of the wound, the weapon hadn’t been very heavy, and it was blunt but angular.

Forensics had scoured Rödskär Island until dark, but they hadn’t found any appropriate murder weapons or the victim’s glasses. Based on initial analysis, there were foreign fibers on Juha Merivaara’s clothes, and a fingerprint other than his own had shown up on the metallic insignia on the collar of his jacket. Although that could have been from sometime earlier, it was still a place to start. I asked Koivu to come into my office.

“You’re going to go take fingerprints from everyone who was on the island the night of the murder. I’m also going to want all the clothes they were wearing for fiber analysis. Puustjärvi can go with you to inspect the clothes. He might remember what everyone was wearing that morning,” I said, cursing the fact that I was already a day behind. We should have made all the suspects strip yesterday.

I glanced at my calendar. At one o’clock I had the Criminal Division commanders’ weekly meeting, which I couldn’t miss. Koivu and Wang would have to interview the Merivaara family without me. I found Koivu at the coffee machine, and Wang was with Lähde in Interrogation Room 2 working on some of the brawlers from the weekend. Koivu wasn’t surprised when I told him that the Rödskär case had turned out to be a homicide.

“It had to be someone on the island, so let’s focus on them. I doubt whoever it was will be able to hide it for long.”

“That Holma guy seemed familiar for some reason,” Koivu said, frowning.

“He’s a pretty famous opera singer,” I said, surprised because Koivu was more of a Bon Jovi type.

“I didn’t mean that. I was just looking at my files because I remembered he had something to do with a case I investigated back in April.”

I hadn’t made the time to look up Holma’s police record because I didn’t think I’d find anything worse than a parking ticket.

“Holma saved a girl from an attempted rape.”

Then I remembered the interview where Tapio Holma said he had been forced to play a hero in real life, not just on stage.

“And the girl’s name was Riikka Merivaara?”

Koivu nodded and told me where the folder was with the case files. He had followed the case because one of the attempted rapists had also been involved in an aggravated assault a few weeks earlier.

If I got lunch from the cafeteria, I would have just enough time to look at those case files before my meeting. After grabbing a cup of coffee, cheese sandwich, and a yogurt, I retreated to my office.

Over the years I’d developed a talent for building a coherent narrative out of the disconnected, often contradictory statements in a pretrial investigation file. Now the chain of events I was reading was like a soap opera.

On the last Saturday in April, Riikka Merivaara had been partying in downtown Helsinki. The closing bell at the bar came at three thirty in the morning, and an old school friend who happened to be at the bar offered Riikka a ride home.

Riikka hadn’t hesitated long. The night buses drove all over Espoo, so getting back to her house in the south part of the city would take at least an hour. A taxi from Helsinki would cost nearly two hundred marks. Her school friend, Aki, swore that the driver, who had also gone to the same school, was sober.

Riikka didn’t like the third man in the party. Tuomo Haaranen was big and hairy, and he had more than the average number of tattoos. She could tell from his eyes that he had messed up his head with more than alcohol. But Riikka had drunk five lemon grappas and was exhausted. The trip home on the empty freeway would only take twenty minutes. Riikka decided to take the ride.

Riikka and Tuomo Haaranen had sat in the back seat of the Mitsubishi. Riikka was disgusted when Tuomo lit up in the car, and she asked him to throw his cigarette out the window. Haaranen responded with an arrogant laugh, saying that he would be setting the rules in the car. That was when Riikka started to be afraid.

About halfway home, Haaranen had started complaining that he hadn’t had his Saturday screw. He asked if Riikka was willing and started touching her breasts. Riikka tried to struggle away, but Haaranen continued groping her, and the two in the front seat didn’t intervene. When they turned off at Riikka’s exit, she asked the driver to stop. But Haaranen told him to keep driving to the marina.

Riikka couldn’t understand why Aki and the driver weren’t trying to stop Haaranen. Later she learned that Haaranen was an Ecstasy dealer to whom both boys owed a couple of thousand marks. Haaranen had a bad reputation. That spring someone who couldn’t pay had ended up with a cigarette in the eye.

At an intersection, the car had to slow down, and Riikka had jumped out. In her fright she ran the wrong direction, though. At four o’clock on an April morning, the city was deserted and dark. It was drizzling and just one bird was singing.

Tapio Holma had decided to drive out to Porkkala Peninsula to spend Sunday watching the spring bird migration, which was expected to be swift and dense. He was driving along the West Highway carefully because earlier he had nearly run over a rabbit. At an overpass, the beam of his headlights illuminated Riikka running on the road below with a large man in pursuit. Holma realized instantly that something was amiss, and he took the off-ramp. Haaranen was just about to catch Riikka when Holma’s car screeched to a halt, stopping them both.

“What’s going on here?” Holma had asked as he got out of the car.

“Just a little disagreement with my girlfriend here,” Haaranen said calmly.

“I’ve never seen this guy before in my life! He’s trying to rape me!” Riikka screamed and literally threw herself into Tapio Holma’s arms.

Holma had looked at the girl, who was surely twenty years younger than he, and at Haaranen, who was several inches taller than he, and he told the latter to get lost.

“Get lost yourself, runt!” Haaranen replied.

Then Holma grabbed his spotting-scope tripod out of the car. He was used to life in big cities and had learned to decide quickly when to stand a fight and when to just give your money to the junkie waving the knife around. On the dark street, Haaranen couldn’t quite make out what Holma had in his hands, but he was a realist. He had missed his Saturday screw, and it was best to clear out. So he started trudging back to his friends, throwing a few last insults as he went. Holma attempted to calm the sobbing Riikka as best he could. He took her home and demanded that Riikka file a police report.