My First Murder (7 page)

Heikki Peltonen had called me late Sunday night. It struck me as ominous that the duty officer had given him my phone number instead of my boss’s. The officer on guard duty at the summerhouse and Antti, who had returned to Vuosaari to look for his cat, told Heikki Peltonen what had happened. Tommi’s mother, Maisa, went into shock, but Heikki Peltonen wanted
to meet me, the police officer investigating his son’s death—he was strictly avoiding the word “murder”—as soon as possible. He seemed irritated that we sealed off the boat dock and were looking for a possible murder weapon in the woods along the shoreline. I knew that his abrupt manner was probably a reaction to the traumatic news he’d just received. Grieving people often behaved irrationally, and Heikki Peltonen belonged to a generation of men who had been raised to get along without tears no matter what the situation.

The captain of the unit, the next person above me after Kinnunen, called right after I got off the phone with Peltonen. He explained briefly that Kinnunen would not be coming in to work for the next couple of days because of a “stomach flu,” and that I would be responsible for the investigation into Tommi’s death for the time being. He ended the conversation by saying he wanted to meet with me first thing in the morning.

I thought it might be necessary to have the divers take a look underwater. Though the seawater would have washed away any fingerprints, they might find the object that was used to strike Tommi.

How Tommi had died remained unclear. I wondered why I was automatically regarding this as a murder, when there was still no evidence that that was the case. Although it could just be manslaughter, I had a sense that the crime had been committed in anger, so there would probably be fingerprints on the weapon.

After speaking with the captain, I had called the pathologist, Salo, who had confirmed that the actual cause of death was drowning. The blow to the head had probably resulted in unconsciousness, but it would not have been enough to kill anyone outright. Tommi must either have fallen or been pushed into the water, and then gotten water in his lungs. Salo was still not sure
whether the other contusions on Tommi’s body were the result of a struggle or caused by the shore rocks, but he confirmed that at least one of the bruises on his cheek had been inflicted before he died. Tommi’s blood-alcohol level was very high, so we couldn’t rule out the possibility that he had somehow slipped, hit his head, and then fallen into the sea. But what would have tripped him on an empty dock when he was barefoot?

“The blow to the head occurred at three or four, assuming he ended up in the water immediately. There isn’t any outside material in the wound, so we can assume that whatever he was struck with was something strong and solid.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, for example, it couldn’t have been a crumbly rock. Given the nature of the edges of the wound, the object was blunt, but not perfectly smooth.”

“How much force was needed for the blow?”

“That depends mostly on the weapon. Even a child could make a dent like this with something big and heavy. If all of your suspects are adults, I wouldn’t rule anyone out.”

There was nothing surprising or particularly enlightening in Salo’s evaluation, and I had finally made it home a little after nine. I had had trouble falling asleep and felt like having a drink, but the only booze I had in the house was some mild, sickly sweet kiwi liqueur, a memento from a trip to Sweden six months before. I momentarily considered going out for a beer, but I was afraid I would backslide again, and that one would turn into two and two into three...I wasn’t feeling especially sociable and would probably have taken out my frustrations on anyone who tried to sit down at my table, a constant annoyance at the corner pub.

Luckily, one of my old school friends called, and I spent half an hour gossiping with her about mutual friends and
acquaintances. She was a regular newswire and always had some juicy story to tell. Some of her wilder tales even made murder seem run-of-the-mill. After that, I just gave up and went to sleep.

Now I tried to collect my thoughts as I stared out the tram window on my way to work. The tabloids hadn’t come out yet, but I was nervous that at least one or the other of them would already have reporters on the case. Summer was almost halfway over, Finland had closed for business, and the newshounds had to start digging deeper for their shock stories. I could just picture the headlines—
FEMALE DETECTIVE HEADS INVESTIGATION: MURDER STILL UNSOLVED
—and wanted no part of the potential media frenzy.

The Pasila police station was already buzzing when I arrived. On my desk was an order from the captain to come report on the case. I put on my game face and marched into his office, which was hazy with cigar smoke. I couldn’t stand tobacco smoke when I was sober, and I wasn’t afraid to show as much to the captain. Let him smoke five cigars at once if he likes, just so long as he isn’t poisoning me. With his big cigars and massive desk, he may have imagined himself as the hero of some American cop show. Did he have a bottle of booze in his drawer too?

I optimistically tried to wriggle out of the case by mentioning that I had known the deceased. It wasn’t any use though, because there was no one else who could break away from what they were already doing and take it.

“Narcotics called asking for help the minute I walked in the door. Apparently, they’ve uncovered some big distribution ring and some of their boys made some premature arrests. So now they’ve got all these bit players who don’t really know anything. We don’t have anyone to send them either. Kinnunen is
out for the whole week now—I just got the sick leave approval. And all of the older detectives are already overworked as it is...So, if you could just handle this...” The captain puckered his mouth around his cigar, looking uneasy. Kinnunen’s alcoholism seemed to be a taboo subject with the more senior officers in the department.

“You’re starting to have the routine down well enough. And Saarinen’s sick leave will last at least through September, so there’ll be plenty of work for you here. And if you get through this successfully, we might be able to start thinking about a permanent position...especially since it isn’t like there’s an over-abundance of you women in this profession...” The captain drew these words out as though he didn’t really want to let them out of his mouth.

“Well, we can revisit that later,” I said noncommittally. I didn’t want to promise anything. Though I wanted out of the department as soon as possible, I didn’t want to irritate my boss any more than absolutely necessary at the moment.

“Your summerhouse victim’s dad—Peltonen was his name?—is coming in to see you today, right? Be careful with him. He isn’t just anybody—he’s on the board of Neste Oil. And since his other son is in that yacht race they’ve been making all the fuss about, we could end up with the wrong kind of publicity.” The captain’s face was three shades grayer than usual. Normally, when people got worked up, they turned red, but my boss just grew steadily grayer until all real color had drained from his face.

I wondered how he already knew the Peltonens’ resumes and took it as a sign that I was really in for it. It would have been easier for me to do my job if the captain didn’t have such a fear of authority. I once had the unfortunate experience of looking on as the captain’s concern for his own position interfered with the
investigation of a rape allegation against a rising politician. The victim dropped the charges. Though rapes were usually foisted on the female officers, I hadn’t been one of the main investigators in this case and felt lucky to have avoided it. I knew one of the officers who helped with the case, Detective Männikkö, relatively well, and his version of events made them sound like a soap opera. The victim was a middle-aged woman who, according to the tabloids, had several male friends. In the end someone had managed to sell the idea that the politician was the victim of a secret plot. The fledgling politician had played the part of the martyr, claiming that the woman had staged the whole thing to smear his reputation, and the tabloids wanted to believe him. Ever since, the captain’s phobia of fancy titles had grown even worse.

“Karppanen just left on vacation too. So we’ve got a pretty big manpower shortage, but take Koivu as an assistant if you need him, and you can share Miettinen with Savukoski. Savukoski has that murder-robbery, but let’s try to get this off the board fast. Virrankoski will be coming off vacation soon too.”

The captain’s phone rang just then, and I quickly slipped out of his office as he answered. I didn’t want to think about continuing my temporary commission. Of course it would be an easy way to solve my problem of choosing a career, since I’d be able to put off the need to make a decision for another six months, but I had more pressing things to worry about just then.

My phone was ringing angrily when I got back to my office.

“It’s Hiltunen, out in Vuosaari at the crime scene.” I remembered the eager young cop with the blond hair from the day before. He sounded excited. “Um, I think I found the murder weapon.”

“What!” Even I was surprised by the volume of my voice. “What did you find?”

“Well, it’s, um, an ax with blood on it. It was over by the sauna building in the bushes. Should I bring it in to the station?”

“No, I’ll send a photographer out. Do you have a partner with you? OK, once the pictures are done, leave him there and bring the ax in to the station. Leave the area where you found it as undisturbed as you can, and I’ll try to come out there this afternoon.”

An ax...That sounded simultaneously so revolting and so routine. Hiltunen seemed proud of himself. Hardly twenty years old, he was still just a baby. I hoped that he hadn’t ruined all the fingerprints. If the blood was Tommi’s, then we could start talking about murder. But what in heaven’s name had an ax been doing down by the shore?

I tried to put in a quick call to Jaana in Kassel before Heikki Peltonen arrived, but the phone lines to Germany were jammed for some reason. I was lucky to find the number on the back of an old Christmas card, which I had saved only because the Santa Claus featured on it was extremely attractive and clad only in a beard and an elf hat. In years past I had assembled a rather comprehensive collection of pictures of handsome men on my wall, but in the end I grew tired of how formulaic they were. Most pictures of men that were meant to be erotic were quite boring once you’d looked at them for a while.

Heikki Peltonen was punctual. Based on our phone conversation, I had pictured him as a graying retired gentleman with a large midsection who went out for only the occasional leisurely Sunday yacht outing. In reality, Peltonen looked young to be Tommi’s father. Though he had to be well past fifty, he still looked like he was in his forties, and his body looked graceful and flexible. His face shone with the tan common to those who spent their weekends sailing, and I saw that Tommi inherited his blond
Viking looks from his father. The fabric of his dark gray suit looked suspiciously like silk. Though I wasn’t the type to go for older men, his handshake and the look in his eyes that followed it might have made me blush under different circumstances. I didn’t have to worry about how to start the conversation because he took care of that for me.

“Miss—or is it Mrs.—Kallio, I very much hope that we can clear up the circumstances surrounding my son’s death quickly. This kind of accident is sufficiently unpleasant even without being interviewed by the police. It is entirely too much to ask that my devastated wife answer questions of any sort. I also heard that Tommi’s friends were all dragged down here and interrogated by the police last night.”

“I’m sorry, but we have to explore every possibility. One of his friends may have been present when Tommi died.”

“Are you saying that my son was murdered?”

“I’m not saying anything yet. But we have to take that possibility into account.”

“Tommi’s friends are upstanding, highly cultured young people. What reason would they have to kill anyone? If this is a case of murder, which I don’t believe for a second, then it must have been someone from outside. There were a number of vacation home break-ins during the spring, and all sorts of bums have been camping out in the area.”

It struck me as unlikely that even an amateur would have set out to rob summer cottages in the middle of a prime summer weekend, but I let Peltonen talk.

“And it may simply be that Tommi tripped. I’m sure they’d all been drinking too much, and sometimes the dock can be slippery.”

“Yes...What did he hit his head on, then? The edge of the dock is so high above the surface of the water that it doesn’t get
wet, so if Tommi hit his head on it, we would still be able to see evidence of it. And the worn, rounded wooden edge of the dock wouldn’t have left such a nasty mark. There aren’t even any rocks next to the dock for him to have hit his head on; the nearest rocks are the ones he was floating against when he was found. We’ve even tested that scenario and established that it’s impossible to hit those rocks falling off the dock.”

The boys from Forensics had had a good laugh about that test, which had mainly consisted of floundering around in the water, but they had done it anyway.

Peltonen clearly wanted facts. Theories weren’t going to sway him in the slightest. I was all too familiar with the fact that I was often the one who ended up sitting in the witness chair when I interviewed older, powerful men. I didn’t even bother getting upset about their inquiries into my marital status or correcting their use of “Miss” with “Detective.” Whatever. I was tired of trying to change every little thing about the world. I even used plastic grocery bags every once in a while and occasionally resorted to buying my morning yogurt in single-serving packages instead of the usual liter carton.

“My wife was also extremely upset that her fingerprints were taken, as though she were some sort of common criminal. You could at least have saved that indignity for a later time.”

“Did they take your fingerprints yesterday? I’m sorry. That was an error.”

Someone in Forensics had been rushing things. I had asked them to take the choir members’ prints for safety’s sake, but I hadn’t said anything about the Peltonens. Now I tried to cover my embarrassment.