My First Murder (26 page)

When I woke up, the sun was high in the sky. It was eight thirty in the morning, and I had slept almost ten hours. The guys hadn’t called. What the hell happened?

Then I realized why my phone had stayed silent. I had disconnected the cord the previous morning, fearing that my mother would call at 6:00 a.m. just to tell me she had left her toothbrush on the edge of the sink. I cursed, set the coffee on to percolate, and called the station.

“No sign of Koivu or Helminen,” the person at the main desk said coldly. The duty officer for my unit, however, had a message for me from Koivu: “We found Tiina and heard all sorts of charming stories. We had no reason to arrest her. Are you out hunting Sarkela? I’ll be in at eight.”

I gulped down my coffee and what little was left of the ham and onion quiche. My best jeans were still greasy, so I pulled
on my other pair, which were faded and patched at the crotch. I didn’t want to risk getting them dirty so I took the tram to work. Having overslept, I was now late, hungry, irritated—and curious.

When I arrived, Koivu was off with Kinnunen investigating some robbery, and Tapsa was busy executing yet another search warrant. I hoped it was for Mattinen’s apartment. Then, just as I was getting settled in, I got a call ordering me over to the Cholera Basin at the harbor to have a look at a drowning victim. I didn’t get back to Pasila until after noon. At that point, Koivu had come and gone, but I caught Tapsa and we arranged to meet for lunch in half an hour.

The lab worked fast. In addition to locating Mattinen’s fingerprints, they had now found traces of cocaine in the first aid kit in the trunk. Apparently some small amounts of it had been stored recently between the packages of gauze. Most of the fingerprints were on the license plate, which, judging from the scrape marks on the paint, had been screwed on and off repeatedly.

I realized I was starting to feel ill from lack of food and all the tension. The taste of onion rose in my mouth as I jogged down the stairs to the cafe. There was no sign of Tapsa yet, so I forced myself to choke down some salad and roasted vegetables. Then Tapsa showed up in the food line, freshly shaved and wearing a pressed shirt. He set a tray full of food down in front of me: five potatoes with hamburger gravy, two glasses of milk, and three pieces of bread. Apparently, this was going to be a long meeting.

“I just came from Mattinen’s apartment. Were you looking for these?” Tapsa took a small plastic baggie containing a set of keys out of his shirt pocket. I could see the familiar letters
through the plastic: Opel Vectra. I would have been willing to bet quite a bit that those were the missing keys to Tommi’s car.

“On the way to the lab, we found Mattinen’s own car in the parking lot. It’s a beat-up VW that wouldn’t have even fit the new-size plates we found in the apartment, the same ones that were in Makkonen’s pictures.”

“So Mattinen was using Peltonen’s car to move his merchandise in order to throw us off his trail.”

I had already told Tapsa my theory about the
Marlboro of Finland
being used for smuggling, and he had thought it plausible. We had to work back and trace Mattinen’s movements. He might have been in Tallinn at the same time as the
Marlboro
and delivered the cocaine to Tommi on the boat.

“What about last night? I gather you didn’t make any arrests.”

“We got what we needed without having to arrest anyone. I went over with your boy Koivu, since my old school buddy is a bouncer at the Little Parliament, and I thought he might recognize Tiina. I haven’t spent a whole lot of time hanging around bars lately.”

Tapsa had a wife and two small children, one of whom was only about six months old, if I remembered correctly. There were probably days when Tapsa left before they woke up and came home after they went to bed and he didn’t get to see his kids at all. I had occasionally wondered what it would be like to be a cop’s wife, and figured it must practically be like being a single mother.

“At around ten, Masa, the bouncer, came to say that Tiina had arrived. She was clearly looking for company.”

“How did you know that?” I asked, simply curious. Next time I was in a bar I would know to behave exactly the opposite.

“Well, she was alone, dressed to the nines, glancing around, smiling. You know. Koivu strolled over to chat her up. After only a few minutes, they had arranged to go to a hotel, but Koivu said he needed a little pick-me-up first. He’s a good boy,” Tapsa said with all the eminence afforded him by a difference in age of barely ten years.

“And Tiina knew where to get some?”

“Tiina said the market was in kind of bad shape right now. All she had on her was a little weed. At that point Koivu brought her over to our table. She was somewhat surprised to find that there were two men now. I showed her Mattinen’s picture and asked whether we could get something a little harder from him. At that point she guessed who we were. We agreed we wouldn’t haul her in for possession if she gave us what we needed.”

I admired the ease with which Tapsa had gotten used to cutting deals. In Narcotics, investigations were all about making trades with the smaller crooks to nab the bigger fish. Maybe I had been wrong about him; he didn’t get worked up over a few grams of weed anymore.

“After cursing out Koivu for a few minutes, she turned cooperative. Koivu is a pretty boy—maybe he would have been a nice customer.” Tapsa’s face suddenly turned neutral again. Maybe he still remembered that treatment I had given his elbow so long ago at the academy. I had never been on the same easy terms with Tapsa as with Koivu when it came to joking around, and he probably thought of me as some sort of scary feminist battle-ax.

“In any case, she recognized Mattinen and Peltonen. She was even the one who introduced them. Apparently, last fall, Mattinen had been looking for someone to bring cocaine in from Estonia to Finland, and Peltonen had agreed to do it. Over the winter, Peltonen brought in small amounts through customs
while he was on business trips. It would be interesting to know how he pulled that off,” Tapsa said darkly.

“As Tiina understood it, Mattinen had sold some, and Tommi got the rest. Tiina suspected that Tommi cheated Mattinen sometimes, because he once had some junk for sale that Mattinen didn’t know anything about. In May, Tommi brought a larger batch over. Mattinen had been in Tallinn at the same time, so he probably arranged the deal.”

Tapsa thought they had probably stored the stuff in Tommi’s apartment.

“We should take the dogs over there. You’d probably also be interested to know that Peltonen brought some goods over to Tiina’s place in his car once. Tiina threw the key out the window to him so he could let himself in and saw that there was someone else in the car with him. She was upset with Peltonen for being so careless, but Peltonen just said that whoever it was knew all about it. They had been along on the Tallinn gig too.”

“Did Tiina say what this person looked like? Male or female?”

“Tall and thin. A man, a friend.”

“Some women can pass for men, at least from a distance. Did she see a hair color?”

“No. Another thing that may interest you is that Peltonen had promised Tiina a gig for Friday night. The client came, and Tiina did the job, but she never got her money from Peltonen.”

“Was that why she called Tommi?”

“Evidently. Maybe she got so ticked off she went out to Vuossari and put an ax in Peltonen’s head?”

“I doubt it. I’m still sure the killer came from the house. It isn’t Tiina or Mattinen. No, it’s definitely one of the choir members. And one of my suspects is missing now. Our perp is either him or one of his friends.” I sighed, worn out. Though it was
frustrating that Mattinen had gotten away, I had still hoped he was Tommi’s murderer.

I carried a big cup of coffee up to my office and started to sift through all the documents and notes I had amassed over the course of the investigation.

Tommi had been selling alcohol, drugs, and women. He had sold Finnish moonshine as Russian vodka, swindling both his customers and Sirkku and Timo. Maybe he had gotten the labels on some trip to Russia. You could buy anything there these days. Tommi probably found them at some stall in an outdoor market, remembered the Muuriala moonshine, and easily combined them in his mind. He sold the bootlegging idea to Timo and Sirkku as an innocent little side business, even though it had been something else entirely.

Tommi had also been pimping women. Maybe not actually pimping, but he had been skimming money for himself. Regardless, it certainly hadn’t been a charity operation. Tiina had probably needed money for drugs, and the other girls had almost certainly required cash for other things. Tommi’s own sexual and emotional life had always been confused. He had wanted to own his women. Pia had presented a challenge to Tommi because she was married. If Pia had agreed to a relationship with him, he would almost certainly have lost interest in her. Had the same thing happened to Tuulia? Had they just been “friends with benefits” at first and then she fell in love with him and became a drag?

Finally, Tommi had been running drugs. Those pirate games they’d played when they were kids had turned strangely real. The ME hadn’t found any traces of hard drugs in Tommi’s own system, so he’d probably just smoked the odd joint now and then. It was unlikely Tommi had been playing honestly with
his business partners in this matter either. He had probably been skimming, or even outright cheating Mattinen.

On his last day alive, Tommi had needed money badly. He had been afraid. The news about the drug ring getting nailed and the arrest of the Estonian prostitute had spooked him. He had obviously been planning to flee the country. He couldn’t have been in a total panic yet because he didn’t just make a run for it. No, he had stayed on and tried to scrape together as much money as he could before he left.

Maybe I would never know all of Tommi’s dealings. Or understand why he had done what he did. What did he want to accomplish with all of this? Was he looking for adventure, or power? From all appearances, he was the epitome of a successful, handsome, and wealthy young man. Tommi had an advanced degree and an interesting job, and he had found “good” hobbies in music and sailing. None of that had been enough for him though, and in the process of going after what he wanted, he had pulled someone else down with him into his twisted world.

Riku and Mira hadn’t been along on the Tallinn trip, so I could count Mira out of the drug running. Riku could have been the friend in Tommi’s car though. He wasn’t tall, but who could accurately judge the height of a person who was seated?

Timo and Sirkku had been on the trip. But you couldn’t call Timo thin, and there was no way anyone would mistake Sirkku for a man, even in the dark. How much weight could I give Tiina’s testimony, given that we could haul her in for solicitation the second we didn’t like what she was telling us? Tommi’s companion could also have been Peter Wahlroos, in which case Pia would have had an obvious motive for killing Tommi—he could have been blackmailing them over the drugs. Or Tuulia,
who could pass for a man in the dark, or Antti, the tallest and thinnest of them all.

I read through all of the papers several times, and gradually the pieces started to fall into place. However, I didn’t like the picture that was coming into focus. I had seriously misjudged one of my suspects.

Or have they lied?

By four o’clock that afternoon, I was sure. I made a few calls and checked my papers one last time to verify my facts. At six o’clock, I went into motion. I still hadn’t heard from Antti, and the thought of what might have happened to him was weighing on me. If Antti was dead, it would be my fault. I hadn’t figured out the truth soon enough.

I parked my car a couple of buildings down from my target’s home. I hadn’t called to see if she was home, but I was ready to wait all night if I had to. I climbed the stairs to the second floor of the old wooden building and rang the doorbell. The steps that came to the door were not the least bit hesitant. If the woman who answered was surprised to see me, she didn’t show it.

“Hi, Maria! I hoped you’d return the visit. I just put some tea on. The water’s probably already boiling. Do you want some? Come in, come in.” There may have been a bit too much bustling energy in her voice.

“Thanks. I’d love some.” I walked into the kitchen, which had a round red dining table that made it feel cramped. The aqua blue of the drapes matched the chairs and the tablecloth, and the indigo-colored tea setting was a handsome contrast. I sat down at the table and put my shoulder bag on the windowsill.

“Have you heard anything from Antti?” Tuulia asked as she set some thin slices of cake on the table.

“I could ask you the same thing. Tell me right now if you know where he is. It will save us all a lot of time and effort.”

“I don’t have the foggiest idea. Do you think he’s the murderer?”

“No. I think he knows who is though.”

Tuulia poured my tea. Her hands didn’t shake, and not a single drop of the jasmine-scented liquid splashed on the saucer. There we sat with our teacups between us like two old ladies having a social visit. Outside, the evening sun was shining, and I could hear the eager shouts of children in the distance.