My First Murder (5 page)

Riku had found the body, and Mira had mentioned that Riku had been wandering around downstairs during the night. I asked him about this, and he flushed like he was guilty of something.

“Yeah...I didn’t even remember that. I was still pretty drunk, I guess. It was sometime after midnight. I had gone to bed, but I couldn’t sleep, so I went to see what Tuulia was doing. She was lying on her back snoring, and Mira was sitting on the bed staring at me, but Pia...she wasn’t anywhere.”

“You didn’t see her upstairs either?”

“She must have been up there, with Tommi...Yeah, well, see, when I was lying there trying to sleep, they were talking on the landing upstairs and Tommi told Pia that she should come sleep in his room. Pia said she wouldn’t, that kissing and screwing were two different things. I guess you already know they were fooling around...”

Though everyone appeared eager to share information about Pia and Tommi’s relationship, Riku seemed to speak of it with a certain degree of admiration.

“And after that?”

“Nothing. I guess Pia went downstairs and then Antti came up to bed. When I still couldn’t sleep, I waited for a while and then went to see Tuulia, but, as I said, she was sound asleep on her back snoring. I had one more whiskey to drown my sorrows and then I really did pass out.”

“What time did you finally fall asleep?”

“Probably somewhere around three...”

“And Tommi was in his room then?”

“I don’t know. The door was closed. And I don’t know if Pia was in there or not.”

“When you found Tommi in the water, was there anything significant about it?”

“Significant? Well, he was dead. That’s significant. I can’t say that I noticed anything; I didn’t really want to look...And then my hangover hit, and I started puking.”

“You didn’t go back down to the water after that?”

“No. Mira and Antti went down there. Mira came back first, and then Antti, who said it was best not to go gawking and messing things up.”

After Riku’s torrent of words, Mira Rasinkangas’s phlegmatic gravity was even more irritating. Mira clearly wanted to convey that she had no faith in my abilities as a police officer. This reminded me even more vividly of Mira’s visits to our apartment and her way of treating me as a second-class citizen because I didn’t play “real music.” Punk bass didn’t count. Then, during one of the usual evening gatherings after their practices, just out of spite I started criticizing one of the songs that made
up the foundation of the EFSAS repertoire. It was a lament about wanting to return to Karelia, which the Russians took during the war, and I had been listening to it through the wall for the previous three hours. In reality my attitude toward classical music wasn’t nearly as negative as what I expressed at the time, and no one but Mira had actually taken me seriously.

More than anything I was annoyed by my own reserve toward Mira—a proper police officer should approach any potential witness with the same neutral frame of mind.

“We arrived sometime around six,” Mira began. “Riku and Tommi were being stupid and driving recklessly on the dirt roads—it was lucky we didn’t end up in a ditch—and I was feeling quite ill by the time we arrived, but of course we had to practice. That was why we were there, to practice, even though it seemed that some people had forgotten that. We did manage to work quite productively for a couple of hours, but then things started to slide and Riku started demanding beer and so on.”

“What else did you practice aside from the Toivo Kuula piece?”

“We spent most of our time on that, since the second soprano wasn’t up to snuff—yet again—and Riku learns his parts so appallingly slowly. Then we worked on some
Piae Cantiones
and some easy Finnish folk songs.”

“Who is the second soprano?”

“Well Pia, of course,” Mira said with a snort, as though it should be obvious. I remembered that Jaana had been a second soprano as well. She had described herself as a second-class soprano, who couldn’t sing high enough to be a real soprano or low enough to be an alto.

“And after the practice ended?”

“Tuulia and I made food—as always, some do the work and some lie about—and then I washed the dishes before we went off to the sauna. Everything was just like normal. Riku was trying to sweet-talk Tuulia, which was maybe a little odd, but otherwise everything was more or less the same as any other night together after practice: sauna, talking, drinking. I don’t usually drink more than two glasses, and I wasn’t in a very social mood, so I went out to the boat dock for a little while and tried a few casts with a fishing pole that was out there. I caught a four-pound pike...if you can believe it. No one else could.” Mira was clearly proud of her skill with a fishing pole. It was difficult for me to imagine her casting, but I could easily picture her killing what she caught. “After cleaning the pike, I was tired, so I was the first one to go to sleep, sometime around twelve.”

“You were awake later that night though, because you saw Riku sneaking downstairs, right?”

“Tuulia was snoring to wake the dead, so Pia and I were up. Pia went to the bathroom, and then Riku appeared downstairs. I went to the bathroom as well and then tried to get Tuulia to turn onto her stomach so she would stop snoring, but I failed. Then I finally fell asleep.”

“Where was Pia at that point? Had she come back?” I felt as though Mira was waiting for me to ask some truly stupid question. It was like I was sitting in front of a strict school teacher, one who knows that the upstanding-looking student before her is actually the class’s worst lavatory smoker.

“I don’t really know. I guess I thought she had gone somewhere with Riku. It would be best to ask her yourself.

“In the morning I was the first one to wake up, sometime after eight. I made coffee and went out to enjoy the beautiful summer morning. Around ten I put on some music to get the
others up—we were supposed to be singing after all. Actually, I was a little surprised not to see Tommi anywhere, since it was his house. But you know how men are, always waiting for the women to make the coffee.”

For once, Mira and I agreed.

“When Riku came yelling that Tommi was lying in the water, you and Antti rushed to the scene. Why?”

“What do you mean why? If somebody comes up to you yelling that somebody else is dead, then of course you go look. I guess the others were just sort of frozen in place, but in big groups, there are always a few people who know what to do.”

“According to Antti, the two of you looked for a pulse and concluded from not finding one that Tommi was dead. Then you called the police before calling for an ambulance. Were you sure that Tommi was dead?”

“I didn’t actually go very close to Tommi, and Antti acted almost like he didn’t...like he wanted to shield me from seeing him. So I didn’t see Tommi all that well, but I trusted what Antti said. As for who I called first, the number for the police happened to be listed before the one for the ambulance on the Peltonens’ emergency list by the phone.”

“Did you go back down to the water after you called the police?”

“No. Antti came back up, and then we just waited.”

So Antti Sarkela would have had an opportunity to be alone with the body and destroy any evidence if necessary. Maybe it had been a traditional Finnish crime after all: two men in a drunken brawl. Over a bottle of vodka? Over a woman?

“Do you have any idea who would have wanted to kill Tommi Peltonen or why?”

“You’d be better off asking who wouldn’t have had a reason to kill Tommi.”

“Well, who wouldn’t have, then?”

“I didn’t have any reason to want him dead. I never had anything to do with him in that way. And I doubt Antti did either, since they were best friends. But the others...Sirkku had had a fling with Tommi in Germany, which ruined her relationship with her old boyfriend. Maybe Sirkku thought Tommi was serious about her—she’s childish enough for that...and Timo has always been jealous of Tommi.”

This seemed to be a topic Mira could get excited about.

“Pia may have gone further with Tommi than she wanted, and it was possible Tommi was threatening to tell Peter and break them up. And then we have Tuulia and Tommi. Now there’s a strange relationship. Sometimes they’re friends, sometimes they’re dating. No one knows what Tuulia really thinks about Tommi. As for Riku, he just admired Tommi a little more than was good for him. He was dependent on Tommi in a strange way. And besides, Riku is completely infatuated with Tuulia at the moment, and Tommi had been teasing Riku about it. Tuulia was blatantly flirting with the poor boy, even though she could never take him seriously. I think Tuulia is definitely the best candidate for a murderer—no one else’s nerves would have held out this long,” Mira concluded.

No one else’s but yours, I thought, and then curtly asked Mira to send Tuulia in as she left. I wished that my own brain would classify data as systematically as Mira’s seemed to, but I just seemed to be getting more tangled up.

It was going to be more difficult to interview Tuulia than Mira because I had always liked Tuulia. We ran into each other occasionally in the university café and chatted whenever we
crossed paths. Tuulia was unsure about the direction of her life in the same way that I was. She studied communications and sociology with limited success and then switched to theater at one point. Her latest thing was studying cultural history in Turku. She’d had all sorts of odd jobs over the years, and never seemed to feel any need to graduate or settle down.

“Hey, could Pia go next, after me? A bunch of us want to go back to our place to eat the leftovers from the villa and have a sort of memorial. Antti doesn’t want to join us, so could he go last? You’re going in alphabetical order, right?” Tuulia was obviously forcing herself to sound cheerful.

“OK. Are all the others still sitting out there waiting?”

“Yeah, no one really wants to go anywhere by themselves—or even with just one other person. Who knows who could be dangerous? Argh, it feels so strange. I’ve known Tommi for almost twenty years and now...We were in the same class with Antti all the way through high school.”

“What are you up to these days?”

“I’m studying cultural history in Turku and taking a summer course that meets once a week. And I work as a playground monitor at a park a couple of days a week. The rest of the time I drink. So no, I still haven’t turned respectable, even though I’m almost thirty.” Tuulia smirked.

“What happened yesterday?” Though I wanted to, I couldn’t acknowledge her smirk.

Tuulia’s version was the same as the others—relaxed socializing, singing, a beautiful summer night. Mira had gone to bed first, followed shortly by Riku. Tuulia had been happy when he headed upstairs and passed out, since she had not been in the mood for flirting. Then Timo and Sirkku and the others had all gone to bed around the same time.

“I said good night to Tommi sometime after one, and that was it. In the morning I pounded on his door and told him coffee was ready, but he didn’t answer. I opened the door, but he was gone. I guess I thought he’d gone for a swim—or maybe I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Why didn’t you go down to the water to see what had happened to Tommi?”

“I don’t have any interest in dead bodies. And for some reason I let myself think Riku was exaggerating. The little pest was still drunk even in the morning. Of course Mira ran down there because she couldn’t contain her curiosity. She’s always sticking her nose into everything. As for Antti...I wish he hadn’t had to see it; he really liked Tommi.” Tuulia buried her face in her hands for a moment, her blonde, bobbed hair falling over her forehead. I didn’t have time to indulge her tears and continued my questioning.

“You’ve known Tommi for a pretty long time. Do you have any guesses about who might have hated him enough to kill him?”

“How should I know? Of course I keep trying to figure it out, but it’s no use. There has to be a logical explanation though. The only person I can imagine doing anything that cold-blooded would be Mira, but I have no idea why she would do such a thing.”

“Maybe she was secretly in love with Tommi?” I found it amusing that the women were blaming each other.

“It wasn’t Tommi she was in love with! She’s been stalking Antti ever since he and Sarianna broke up a couple of years ago. As you can imagine, she never confided anything to me, but everyone knows anyway. If I’m remembering this right, she basically threw herself in Tommi’s lap at some party just to
get Antti’s attention, but of course it didn’t work. Yesterday she waltzed in showing off that fish of hers—an interesting way to try to make an impression on a man, don’t you think? It was a real bummer. For Mira, I mean. Antti definitely needs someone with a little more fire than that iceberg.”

“What was your own relationship with Tommi like?”

“Oh, we had a great relationship. We were close and had a lot of fun together. We had a sort of mutually beneficial arrangement. We screwed when we felt like screwing and played each other’s dates at cocktail parties when we needed to, and loaned each other money and stuff. It all worked great until yesterday. I’m sorry this had to happen to such a good friendship...” Tuulia was about to dissolve into tears again, but then clearly decided that a police interview was not the appropriate place for that sort of thing and made a desperate effort to shift back to her state of false cheerfulness.

“I really hope you can come up with some sort of motive for that bitch Mira. I wouldn’t want any of the rest of us to turn out to be the one who did it.” Tuulia tried to screw her face up into a smile, but didn’t quite succeed.

“Why were you and Tommi still in EFSAS? Isn’t it more of a student choir?”

“Well, I haven’t exactly graduated yet,” Tuulia said with a snort. “Maybe it’s kids’ stuff, but I like it, and besides, there’s always someone to drink with after practice. Last fall I tried joining Cantiamo, but everybody was middle-aged, and they all had kids. Totally boring. I admit that EFSAS is probably just a way of drawing out my youth, an excuse to keep hanging around with twenty-somethings. Tommi just wanted to be the big man. In EFSAS he got all the solos, but in a better choir he wouldn’t have stood out from the crowd so much. Antti is always trying
to leave, but so far we’ve been able to lure him back every time.” Tuulia stood up. “Do you have anything more for me or should I ask Pia to come in?” Just as she was about to walk out, she turned and added, “We should go out for drinks sometime when this is all over.”