TH03 - To Steal Her Love (7 page)

‘So this morning I finally did it.’

‘You did… Sorry, what did you do?’

‘Just like you said. And you should have seen him. He just clammed up and tried to shuffle his way further left, but he couldn’t move an inch because there was another man sitting there who looked like a pilot.’

‘Really?’ Harjunpää gasped, and now he really was interested. In a way he was always interested in Maija’s stories. She was a nice woman,
freckled
and energetic, and it seemed as if she was always holding back a smile because she knew something funny that nobody else did. She was the departmental secretary, and for years she and Harjunpää had walked together from Pasila to the police station each morning.

‘So when we stopped at Leppävaara he came up with something. He stood up and pretended to get off, but he only went into the next carriage, I saw him as I got off. I’d love to follow him into town one day and see where he works… He looks like such a gentleman, like a judge or something.’

‘So what did you do to him?’

‘Well, this time he was sitting opposite me. Whenever he sits next to me he starts touching his hand against my thigh, but when he sits opposite he slides down in the seat until his leg is between mine, then he rubs it up and down with the motion of the train. Well, bloody hell, I thought! I just kept on reading the paper, slipped my shoe off and stuck my toes up his trouser leg and started curling them up!’

‘Good for you!’

‘He went all red and grabbed his briefcase so hard I thought the handle might snap… What’s eating you?’

‘Grandpa,’ Harjunpää sighed and felt as though he’d been caught out and spoiled someone else’s happiness. It was embarrassing that Maija could read him so well.

‘Anything in particular?’

‘Just the whole situation,’ he lied. They walked along the wall of the police station and the building rose up above them like a castle full of misery. Grandpa had been in a lot of pain that morning, hacking into his pipe and popping nitrate tablets one after the other. It had only just come to light that he’d had two heart attacks previously and that his medication could have been anywhere. Elisa had promised to contact the doctor. Harjunpää had seen a lot of old people in his work, and though it was hard to think about it he somehow knew that Grandpa didn’t have much time left, that it could only be a matter of months, less even. And he’d seen in Grandpa’s eyes that he knew this too; they both knew it. And they knew he didn’t want to go into a home.

‘You’re pretty worried about him.’

‘You could say that,’ Harjunpää agreed and he felt as though
everything
was closing in on him, but he didn’t want to talk about it, he
couldn’t
talk about it. At times he felt an inexplicable resentment towards Grandpa, something approaching hatred, and yet it seemed unreasonable and wrong, especially given that the other person’s life was hanging so precariously; it felt shameful, as though people would have despised him if they’d known. Even the sense that behind it all was the same feeling of being stranded and lonely he had experienced as a child and throughout his youth didn’t put his mind at rest. He wondered why his father had never contacted him, not even when he’d got married. Then it finally occurred to him that, after all these years, the one person in the world whom his father had sought out had been him.

The entrance hall smelled of waiting and the misery of the previous night. He and Maija wished each other a good day; Harjunpää stepped into the lift and the unavoidable chores ahead began to suck him in. First up was the autopsy for the nameless torso he had found in the sea. He hadn’t been able to find anything on the body that might have given a clue to its identity or anything that might be considered a distinguishing feature. He thought of how he would have to make sure X-rays were
taken of the body before it went into the autopsy in case any bones had been broken in the past. With regard to missing persons files, it would be a great help if the coroner could establish how long the body had been in the sea. He estimated around three or four years.

A young woman with short, cropped hair was sitting in the waiting room on the fourth floor. She looked very frightened – Harjunpää thought of a butterfly fluttering against the window – but he didn’t take a closer look at her. Everybody they dealt with was unhappy, and he didn’t have any interviews scheduled for that day. On top of that, the door into the corridor was open and, further off he could hear the sound of an intense exchange.

‘…doesn’t matter, just so long as things get sorted out.’

‘There’s no way Haapanen can do it. The Näkinpuisto homicide is still open and his squad are already doing overtime because of it.’

‘But come on,’ said Lampinen. ‘Can’t the boys on day shift take care of that bird?’

‘What’s one bird here or there? There’s much more at stake in this case,’ someone snapped; Harjunpää thought it must have been Järvi. ‘But let’s get to the point: these incidents should be concentrated with one officer. It’s tactical madness to have them spread through the department, one case in one officer’s file and another in someone else’s…’

‘What we should be doing is setting up a separate task force. Three officers from your team, two from ours.’

Harjunpää approached the office; he could make out the voices more clearly and he harboured an awkward hope that the bird Lampinen had referred to wasn’t the butterfly woman sitting in the foyer. Onerva was far away at the other end of the corridor where the Robbery Division began. She was waiting for the lift, holding her key card – perhaps she was going down for breakfast – and when she saw Harjunpää she started waving both her hands at him. He realised this wasn’t a normal greeting, that there was more to it than that, but he couldn’t work out what, waved back and stepped into the office.

The room was full of people in grey suits. Tupala, who ran the office, was sitting at his desk, a pained look on his face, and speaking on the telephone, his free hand plugging his other ear. The Fraud Division’s phone was ringing incessantly. Tupala was supposed to answer that one too, and nobody had thought to answer it for him.

‘Morning,’ said Harjunpää and made for his pigeonhole. Only then did he notice that the discussion had suddenly stopped. Then he realised what Onerva’s waves had meant, clear as day:
Whatever you do, don’t stick your nose in there!

‘Morning,’ everyone in the room replied almost in unison; at least that’s what the mutter that filled the room sounded like. He turned slowly and suddenly felt very self-conscious: everyone in the room was staring at him with a look of revelation. In addition to Järvi there was Lampinen and his almost inseparable partner Juslin, and standing opposite them was Ahomäki, head of the Violent Crimes unit, DCI Hyttynen from the Arson Squad, and Nuutinen, the head of the Investigations Division. Only Järvi was staring at the floor; he was almost entirely bald, the light shone on the top of his head and his taut face was almost the shape of a wrench.

‘What’s your current situation, Harjunpää?’ asked Ahomäki. He said it almost as if asking for help. He was a quiet, thoughtful man with a firm sense of justice. Harjunpää understood quite how deeply Ahomäki had been affected by the shouting match in the office, and if anyone else had asked him this question he might have said anything at all, but now all he could do was shrug his shoulders. The previous night’s homicide had gone to Suominen’s team – Harjunpää had taken care of the paperwork – and an autopsy and one unidentified drowning victim were all part of his everyday routine. Replying that he needed some time in peace to take care of his father would have been out of the question.

‘In fact,’ Järvi cleared his throat. ‘DS Harjunpää is already acquainted with the matter, and perhaps it would be for the best that certain
classified
information remains within as small a group as possible.’

‘And I know who was behind it too,’ said Lampinen matter-of-factly, Juslin added something and Nuutinen started explaining what all this was about, then Hyttinen tried to better him, and soon everyone was talking at once, the whole office hummed and people started flicking through papers and Tupala, who for years had mastered the art of keeping cool, stood up sharply and shouted:

‘Quiet!’ He looked around, somewhat bewildered, and when he realised who was standing in the room he became even more embarrassed and rubbed his nose. ‘I mean… sorry. I can’t hear what the person on the phone is trying to tell me…’

‘Why don’t we go into your office?’ said Ahomäki and looked first at Harjunpää then up at the ceiling, at a spot high up where someone must have been handing out mercy. They began to shuffle out into the
corridor
. Onerva was there; she had come back once she’d realised what had happened, but there was no disparagement in her eyes, just something approaching sympathy. She brushed against Harjunpää’s hand as she walked past, and her fingers were warm and good.

Lampinen stopped momentarily by the waiting room, reached out his hand and curled his little finger.

‘Right, girlie. Let’s see what we can do about all those bad old men.’

The woman stood up, or rather she jumped to her feet, and for a moment it looked as though she wanted to apologise and make for the lift, but she gripped her handbag against her chest as if to protect herself and began walking down the corridor.

It was only now that Harjunpää noticed the full oddity of the woman’s appearance: her hair resembled a hedgehog’s bristles, its shortness highlighting her thin neck and the shape of her head. Her eyes were large and blue, and her hands small like a little girl’s, and there was something strangely austere about her, perhaps because she wasn’t wearing any jewellery or make-up, or because her clothes were so simple, almost masculine. Harjunpää liked her instinctively; perhaps it was because she was so afraid, and this awakened a desire to protect and help her.

‘You interview her,’ he whispered to Onerva. ‘Sit her down in the consultation room with a cup of coffee.’

He felt suddenly annoyed at Lampinen’s behaviour, though he knew the man wasn’t being tactless out of mere spite. There was a puzzling
contradiction
about Lampinen. On the one hand he felt a burning desire to be the boss – he served as some sort of aide to Järvi and was often seen sitting with the supers in the cafeteria. His own path to becoming a detective inspector had run aground time and again at the entrance exams for the leading officers’ course. On the other, he wanted to be a clown, or at least funny, and to that end he had started quoting and copying the gestures and
catchphrases
of countless TV comedians. Only a few of the sergeants actually knew what he was talking about, and thus most people considered him a jovial jack-the-lad; maybe even the supers needed a court jester.

Eventually Harjunpää realised what was bugging him and he strode off after Lampinen.

‘Listen, Lempi…’

But Lampinen didn’t hear, didn’t want to hear, and only then did Harjunpää understand why: it was probably not a good idea to use Lampinen’s age-old nickname. Originally he’d been Lempinen, so Lempi – sweetheart – had come from that, but after getting married he’d taken his wife’s surname, and thus Lempinen had become Lampinen. Despite this, the spectre of ‘Lempi, darling’ hadn’t gone away, and those who knew him better claimed it bothered him more than anything.

‘Hey, Lampinen.’

‘Is someone addressing me or is that just the creak of shoes I can hear?’

‘What did you say to Valpuri yesterday afternoon?’

‘What did
I
say? I don’t think I know anyone by that name.’

‘I came all the way out here for nothing. Valpuri said I’d been ordered to come back immediately.’

‘For goodness’ sake… I said you were to come here presently – at the start of office hours. As far as I know, office hours in all state departments start on a Monday morning, not Sunday.’

‘Well, that’s very funny.’

Lampinen didn’t respond; Harjunpää, too, held his silence. And although the two of them had never exactly been friends, what there had been was now gone. The others spoke for them as they filled the
corridor
, a herd of clattering shoes, and made their way towards Harjunpää’s office. Imppola came towards him, a charred rubber boot in his hand, pressed himself against the wall and remarked: ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not the least unhappy about it.’

At half past nine Onerva came back into Harjunpää’s office and the newly formed task force was assembled once again. Lampinen and Juslin were already there and the air was thick with cigar smoke: Lampinen chain-smoked Café Crèmes, and Harjunpää was sick of the sight of the cigars bobbing up and down at the edge of his mouth whenever he spoke. To head the force was an inspector from the Third Division called Valkama. He was relatively new to the force and was widely considered competent, if rather indecisive, when it came to making big decisions. He was also a member of countless other task forces and spent the majority of his time somewhere other than the station in Pasila.

‘Poor woman,’ said Onerva; her voice was mute and the spark so often in her eyes had disappeared. ‘She’s spent two weeks wondering whether to come in or not. And though she didn’t say as much, she’s even
contemplated
…’

‘You don’t think she’s a dyke, do you?’ Juslin said reflectively, and his eyes lit up with interest. ‘She seemed a bit odd.’

Onerva said nothing but stared at Juslin, her head to one side. He remained unperturbed and tapped his thighs.

‘Come on, darling.’

Juslin was a big burly man who undeniably looked more like a guerrilla or a burglar than a policeman. He had short, spiky hair and a few days’ worth of stubble on his cheeks, and he wore a pair of hunting trousers, tightly laced commando boots and, despite the heat, a thick woollen jumper. At a fair distance his clothes smelled as though they hadn’t been washed for a long time, and if ever anyone commented on this he proudly replied: ‘Real men smell of shit and petrol, that’s the way it is.’ He didn’t smell of petrol, but he enjoyed teasing women, placing his hand on their hips, looking them in the eyes and asking imploringly: ‘How about it, sweetheart?’ He took care of his work well enough, obtaining clues and tip-offs from the underworld; many a case had been solved with information he had provided.