My First Murder (22 page)

“And made himself an accomplice by writing up a falsified audit report? Why on earth would he do that? And why did he start demanding his money back?”

“It sounded like he was leaving for somewhere,” Riku said, clearly pained. “What I told you about that Thursday was mostly true. But he also threatened to tell the cops I’d been siphoning off choir money. He said you could get probation for that; he knew a guy who had for less.”

“When were you supposed to give him the money?”

“He gave me till Monday.”

“How were you going to get the money together?”

“I was supposed to pawn everything I could. My stereo, my TV, even my leather jacket...” Riku explained, sounding depressed.

“But Tommi died on Saturday, and so you were in the clear. If you whacked him because you were drunk and angry, then you’d better confess right now! You’ll get off easier if you confess voluntarily.”

Riku buried his head in his hands. I almost felt sorry for him. Murderer or no, I should probably hand over the cooked books
to the White-collar Division to deal with. Maybe the shame would teach Riku a thing or two. A few grand was small potatoes compared to everything you heard was happening in banking circles all the time. But that was how it was: you could lose billions, and even get caught, and at most you’d lose your job but still get full retirement. Nicking a few thousand, however, could land you on probation. And poor Antti had also unsuspectingly put his name on the audit report that Tommi had manipulated, thus unwittingly participating in the fraud. Did I really have to sic the prosecutors on Riku? Did I have a right not to?

“I didn’t kill Tommi,” Riku said, his voice teary. “I was just so damn disappointed when he started being so difficult all of a sudden. But I would have gone and pawned all my stuff on Monday. I would have gotten the money from somewhere...And Tuulia promised to loan me some.”

“Did Tuulia know about this?”

“I just told her that Tommi wanted his money back.”

“Listen, Riku. The duty officer has an Breathalyzer. Let’s go have you blow in it, and if it registers anything, you call work and tell them you can’t come back in today. Then you get in touch with Antti and work out this mess. He already knows all about it. You and EFSAS can decide how you want to handle it. But one more time: if you killed Tommi, admit it right now. You might still get off with manslaughter. We’re going to find out sooner or later. Fraud and murder are a nasty combination.”

I knew how hollow my own words sounded.

The duty officer’s Breathalyzer registered zero, so Riku went back to work.

I decided to try reaching the Mäki family again. Martti Mäki was home this time. I told him what we had found out, and he didn’t even bother trying to deny it.

“We spent that night at the Vaakuna Hotel. I imagine you can find our names in the hotel register.”

“It would be best for you to give me this Tomppa’s full name and address so we can check your alibi.”

“Oh hell...Is that really necessary? Tomppa isn’t going to get in any trouble over this, is he? He’s such a nice boy.”

“I don’t suppose he’s done anything criminal,” I said dryly. I didn’t want to start snooping into whether Mäki had paid Tomppa. Mäki gave me Tomppa’s contact information.

“Um...you don’t have to tell my wife about this, do you?” Mäki asked me as I was about to hang up.

“You can work out your relationship problems on your own,” I said, more angrily than was strictly necessary, and hung up the phone. The Mäkis must have a ball together.

I tried to reach Sirkku and Timo, to no avail, then switched over to finishing up the rapist’s statement and worked on some other paperwork. Actually I was free to do as I pleased—I was only on call—but since I had time to spare I figured I might as well catch up on a few things. My next commitment wasn’t until that evening.

I left work just after three and walked through Central Park in the fog, around Töölö Bay, and then made my way home from there. In the interim, I had had to go look at a middle-aged woman who had hanged herself from the carpet beating rack on her balcony, after which I needed some fresh air. Along the way, I bought a large ice-cream cone from a kiosk.

At home I changed my clothes and then ran over to the women-only gym where I had a membership. Wrestling with weights usually energized me, and my muscles had had time to recover from the other day. The run had been a good warm-up, so I just stretched my arms for a few minutes before getting down
to business. It was arms and back day because I’d already tortured my legs and abs the previous Friday. As always on Sunday afternoons, the gym was almost empty.

As I did my lat pull-downs, I thought about Tommi: charming, talented, and generous, but also selfish, power hungry, and narcissistic. Criminal? Bootlegger? Pimp? Drug dealer? Had he suggested that Riku turn a couple of tricks with some aging gay men to pay his debts, and made Riku so angry that he killed him? Or had Pia done it out of fear of unpleasant revelations? And which of Tommi’s businesses had Tuulia gotten mixed up in? Certainly something. It was hard for me to imagine her being taken advantage of in any way or selling her beautiful body. There was no way she would have agreed to become a prostitute. What about Sirkku? And could Antti have gotten so angry over being taken advantage of that he struck Tommi in a blind rage? Yes. Even though he looked like the stereotypical pacifist: he’d skipped the military for civilian service, had a ponytail and everything. Could Antti have connections to the drug trade? And I couldn’t rule Mira out either.

I moved on to the arm curl bench. Hitting Tommi had obviously required some strength. That seemed to rule out Pia and Sirkku, and possibly Riku too. I could definitely have taken Riku in a fight, since he weighed considerably less than I did. Timo had the requisite strength, but could he have snuck out of his room without Sirkku’s knowledge?

My biceps were burning, so I shifted to the bench press. “Who wants to live forever,” asked Freddie Mercury’s ghost from the speakers in the ceiling. Tommi hadn’t been given a chance to choose. “And we can love forever.” Had Tuulia been in love with Tommi? Didn’t she trust me enough to have told me if that were the case? That thought made me feel lousy. The bar I
was lifting was heavy—I had put on ten pounds too much. I did this frequently—overestimating my own strength.

I jogged back home, showered, and started to clean my apartment. The workday was behind me, and I was done with my weight training, but the hardest part of my day still lay ahead. I was supposed to go to the train station to meet my parents and then put them up for a night at my place before they left for their annual two-week summer vacation in the Greek Islands. They almost never visited me otherwise. Though they had both studied in Helsinki years before, the city felt big and frightening to them these days, and they didn’t know how to make their way from the station to my place without help.

“I like having a police escort,” Dad said with a grin as we climbed onto the tram.

“Have you been able to study at all?” Mom asked, clearly concerned. I had bluffed them into approving of my temporary gig at the VCU by claiming that I would be able to take some of my exams on the side.

“I’ve been getting ready for one of my tests.”

That wasn’t actually a lie. I had picked up the books for my criminal justice final from the library, and my parents believed what they wanted to hear. Uncle Pena wasn’t an alcoholic—he just drank too much sometimes. The students weren’t intentionally mean—they just had hard home lives. I would go back to law school, get a good job, and find a nice husband. My parents weren’t actually interested in me so much as in the façade of my life.

My freshly cleaned apartment felt hot, cramped, and dusty. I had made ham and onion quiche and salad for dinner, and now I steeped some tea. The last time I had seen my parents was at Christmas, which I had dutifully spent at their house. Over
the last six months, several more wrinkles had appeared on my mother’s forehead, and my father’s shoulders had slumped significantly. Fall semester was becoming more unpleasant for them each time it came around, but they still had a couple of years to go before they could retire.

My parents gave me an update on everything that was happening back home, none of which I particularly cared to know. Ten years had already passed since I left home, and I didn’t even run into people I knew from there anymore. Then they asked politely about my work, and I replied just as politely—and vaguely—appealing to professional discretion. They told me about their plans for Greece and showed me a picture of their hotel from a travel office brochure. Then we watched the news and sports report on TV. We drank the rest of the kiwi liqueur, but even that didn’t do anything to relax the tension in the air. We were all relieved when Dad observed after the ten o’clock news that it was probably time to head to bed. Their flight was at seven the next morning, so we would have to be up before five.

Though I hadn’t gotten much rest the night before, I couldn’t sleep. As I lay there listening to Mom’s snuffling and Dad’s occasional snoring from my creaking sofa bed, I realized how strange it felt to be sleeping in the same room with someone. It made me sad. On every form I filled out, I put my mother’s name as my next of kin, but were we really anything more than strangers to each other anymore? What did I know about my parents, and what did they know about me? If I died suddenly, as Tommi had, would they recognize the person whose things they would have to sort through?

It was my fault. I visited only a couple of times a year, and while I was there, I always adopted a distant, self-assured stance. We hadn’t revealed any of our thoughts or feelings to one another
for years, and I only ever heard about their reactions to the twists and turns in my life from my sisters.

I had never really forgiven them for not wanting me. They wanted a boy and had even picked out a name for him. Mom had been sure that the person in her womb was a Markku, since he kicked so enthusiastically. I had tried to be their boy because all I had were little sisters, and had even gone so far as to choose every little boy’s dream job.

It was only a couple of years ago that I started to grasp that my parents weren’t responsible for the messes in my life. I had even made a few attempts at drawing closer to them, but it was too late. The polite status quo between us was unlikely to change. Occasionally, when I listened to my mother and little sisters gossiping gaily together, I felt like a child who had been shut out of a fun game for no reason.

That spring will come again and a new dawn yet will break

I put my parents on a bus to the airport at five fifteen and then returned home and crawled back into bed to sleep for a couple more hours. In my restless dreams, I saw myself with a fishing pole, reeling in a body that had been beaten beyond recognition out of the sea. It was my mother. But when I finally got her out of the water, my mother had turned into Tuulia, whom I tried hopelessly to revive by kissing her.

I rode my bicycle up to Pasila. The fog had started to lift, and the Ferris wheel came slowly into view as I pedaled past Linnanmäki Amusement Park. I hoped there would be something symbolic about this dawn. I braked at a stoplight just as my chain derailed. As I fiddled with it, I managed to get grease on my best jeans. The chain fell off once more after that, so I didn’t make it to the station until ten after eight. As I passed by Kinnunen’s office, I glanced inside, but it was empty. Was he still out on drinking leave? A message from Heikki Peltonen and an order to see the captain had already appeared on my desk.

I called Peltonen first, who was looking for Tommi’s car keys and thought we still had the spares.

“I’ve never seen any except the one set—the ones that were in the ignition. We didn’t find any others, at the villa or in Tommi’s apartment.”

“Strange. I’m quite certain that there are at least two other sets of keys somewhere. We’d been meaning to sell the car as soon as the estate inventory was complete, but now we’ll have to have the locks changed.”

I remembered the phone message from this M person asking to borrow the car. Did M have the missing keys? What had M done with the car? Transported drugs? Why would he have used Tommi’s car? I tried to assure Peltonen that the investigation was progressing, but avoided telling him how unpleasant the truth about his son’s life was turning out to be.

Tapsa still hadn’t received his tapes back, so I grudgingly went to see the captain to report on my current cases. He blew cigar smoke in my eyes and listened to me theorize about Tommi’s involvement in various trafficking businesses with an incredulous expression on his face.

“Aha. How much of this information do you have actual evidence for and how much is made up—or should I be calling it women’s intuition?”

I told him about Koivu’s outings, about the rapist, and about the bottles of moonshine, which we would be getting analysis on that afternoon.

“So it’s possible that the murderer was someone from the outside, then?”

“Not necessarily. I think some of my current suspects were at least mixed up in the bootlegging.”