Fatal Headwind (10 page)

The next day Holma called to check in on Riikka. In the end they went together to report the crime and both were interviewed, Riikka as the complainant and Holma as a witness. The charge of attempted rape was added to Tuomo Haaranen’s already long rap sheet.

I looked up the trial information next. Haaranen had appeared before a judge in July. Neither Holma nor Riikka had appeared to testify. Haaranen received a pathetically small fine for the incident, but he was doing a six-month stretch now for drug dealing and an earlier assault.

That was how Tapio Holma became the hero in the drama of Riikka’s life. Too bad the case file couldn’t tell me how their relationship had developed since then. I was starting to understand why Riikka had fallen in love with Holma. In everyday life he was a normal, relatively short, broad-shouldered Finnish man, but on stage he changed. His Marquis de Posa had made an impression on me too. Holma had the tragic dissonance of a fanatic hero, and despite the ridiculous lace collar, he had managed to look handsome. Maybe Riikka had seen the Savonlinna Opera Festival version of
Don Carlos
too.

It was a few minutes to one. I quickly powdered my face and headed to my meeting, painfully aware that we had a serious homicide investigation ahead of us.

The division of labor in our department had been in constant upheaval in recent years. The centralization of police services for the entire western half of the county in our department had meant more work and yet another organizational chart. Organized Crime and Recidivism had been under us before, but since January 1, it had its own unit. I was sitting in the meeting with the commanders of Violent Crime Unit 2, Organized Crime and Recidivism, Narcotics, Robbery, and Traffic. At the head of the table sat my old unit commander, Jyrki Taskinen, who had been promoted a year earlier. I was the only woman in the meeting, but that was nothing new. Luckily our department did have one other woman in a high-profile position, a sergeant who worked as the department spokesperson.

Although the various units met each other every morning upstairs for coffee, I didn’t make it up there very often. These weekly meetings were essential, since Narcotics, Robbery, Violent Crime, and Organized Crime cases so frequently intertwined. The head of the national Security Intelligence Service had been particularly worried over the previous summer about racial conflicts and the rise of extremist groups, and we often mulled over the same issues in our meetings.

So it wasn’t a surprise when the commander of the Organized Crime and Recidivism unit, an eager lieutenant named Laine who was a few years younger than me and had come over from the SIS, piped up when I described Juha Merivaara’s death.

“Have you thought about Merivaara’s son? These eco-radicals have started getting pretty violent. What if Junior killed his dad?”

“That isn’t logical,” I argued. “I just visited the Merivaara Nautical website, and the company is as greenwashed as can be.”

“Anarchists aren’t logical. The worst enemies of the Animal Revolution are environmental liberals. They think anyone not as radical as them is just watering down the whole environmental movement by making rational concessions,” Laine said.

“A seventeen-year-old boy killing his father over an ideological disagreement? Hard to believe,” I said, but I then remembered the pathologist’s suspicion that Juha Merivaara’s death could have been the result of a struggle. Maybe Jiri had been fighting with his father. But why on the top of the cliff in the middle of the night?

Although the meeting moved on to other topics, I continued thinking about the Merivaaras. Things were busy in Narcotics too. A week earlier they had caught a gang of Moroccan drug runners, and the interrogations had generated leads all over the metro area. The tabloids had been full of stories about foreign drug traffickers, and the Espoo skinheads had taken it as a good reason to beat a group of Iranian boys on their way home from high school. Ström was handling that incident too, I remembered with irritation.

“Do you have time for lunch tomorrow?” Taskinen asked when the meeting finally ended.

“I’m not sure. Hopefully. I’ll call you in the morning.” Just as I arrived at the door to my office, my cell phone rang.

“We’re here at the Merivaaras’ place. Puustjärvi just came with Forensics to pick up the clothes. It almost caused a fistfight,” Koivu said, sounding anxious.

Jiri Merivaara, who hadn’t been at school, had refused to turn over his only decent clothes, a green flea-market army jacket, camo cargo pants, and tennis shoes. Riikka and Tapio had to spend several minutes convincing him to cooperate. To my surprise, Anne Merivaara had been at the office instead of at home, but Riikka had given Forensics the clothes she thought her mother had been wearing the night of Juha’s death.

“Should we get Mrs. Merivaara in for questioning today?” Koivu asked.

“Tomorrow is fine. Then I can be there too.”

“Holma and the girl can come with us now. Should be bring them in?”

“Sure,” I said. I was actually curious to hear how the romance between Tapio Holma and Riikka Merivaara had begun. I reserved the interrogation room and then grabbed a Diet Coke from the machine to perk me up before dialing Pertti Ström’s home number.

I was almost sure Ström wouldn’t answer. But after five rings, he picked up.

“This is Ström.”

“Hi, it’s Maria. Are you sick?”

A grunt came from the phone. In my mind I could see Ström’s expression: acne-scarred face red with anger, nostrils of broken nose flaring, light-brown eyes beginning to wander.

“Goddamn back went out yesterday when I was checking the air in my tires.”

“Lumbago? Have you been to the doctor?”

“Of course not, since I can’t get out of the goddamn bed!”

“Then we should send someone to check you out.”

“Don’t you fuss over me, Kallio. All I need is a couple of days of rest, and I’ll be fine. But you probably called about work, not to ask about my health. What’s wrong?”

Attempting to speak as calmly as I could about his open cases, I simultaneously tried to sense whether anything in Ström’s voice indicated that he was hungover.

“Sic Wang on those Arab devils,” Ström said when we arrived at the fight between the Iranians and the skinheads. “She was hired to handle trouble with other darkies, so let her.”

“Wang is as close to being Iranian as you are to being Somali.”

“Why didn’t they put her in Narcotics, since that’s where her kind have been making a name for themselves lately?” Ström continued, referring to a case earlier in the spring in which three Vietnamese men were caught running a drug ring, 70 percent of which was actually Finnish. Still the headlines talked about them as a Vietnamese drug gang. Apparently ethnic criminals sold more papers than your average kid from Espoo who got mixed up in selling amphetamines.

I ordered Ström to go to the doctor if his back wasn’t better by the next day. I wasn’t interested in making threats. The last thing I wanted was a power struggle with Ström. What he wanted, I didn’t know. Maybe he hoped I would get so difficult that he could switch jobs, claiming that I had driven him out of the Espoo Police Department.

Just then Wang came to say that Tapio Holma was waiting downstairs, ready for his interview. Riikka Merivaara hadn’t felt up to coming yet.

“Koivu decided to let her be,” Wang said, rolling her eyes. Koivu’s otherwise excellent police work was hampered occasionally by a soft spot for young women in need of protection, although he didn’t generally fall for obvious eyelash batting.

Once again I dabbed a little more powder on my shiny nose. It still had a few freckles on it, but my tan was almost completely gone. Winter and long days at work would soon turn my skin pale and darken my hair. Maybe I would need to find time to add some more red to it, because a few new gray strands had appeared on top. My father had gone gray at forty, and apparently I was in for the same fate. Maybe gray hair would finally give me a little gravitas.

At our previous meetings, Tapio Holma had worn cotton trousers, a sweater, and a field jacket. Today’s nicely cut dark-gray suit and black tie wouldn’t have been out of place on a concert stage.

“Hello, Lieutenant Kallio.” Holma extended his hand in greeting. “So you’re the one leading the investigation into Juha’s death.”

“Yes.” I motioned Holma into Interrogation Room 2, where coffee was already waiting. I poured myself a cup, even though the fifth of the day was certain to make my stomach complain, since I’d only been having one in the mornings during maternity leave. My system would probably adjust to police habits soon though: too much coffee, too little sleep, irregular meals of fast food, and exercise at odd hours. I dictated the routine details for the recorder but didn’t manage to start the questioning before Holma asked his own between sips of tea.

“So what’s this all about? The police still haven’t told us the cause of death, but we’ve been fingerprinted and our clothes were taken. Is that the right way to treat a grieving family?”

“As I understand it, you aren’t a member of the Merivaara family yet. Or do you live with Riikka?”

“Not officially. But in practice, yes, Riikka spends a lot of her time at my place.”

“What did Juha Merivaara think of your relationship with his daughter?”

“Do we really need to talk about that?” Holma loosened his tie.

“Yes. Fathers can be jealous of their daughters’ male companions, especially if they happen to be twenty years older than said daughters.”

From his personal information sheet, I had seen that Tapio Holma was born in 1955, so he was only four years younger than Juha Merivaara.

“Can we please get to the point?” Holma ran his hand through his smoothly combed hair, which instantly stood up. “I saw Juha’s body. He obviously fell off the cliff. So why all these questions?”

“Did Merivaara like the idea of you as his son-in-law? Your relationship with Riikka started so dramatically when you saved her from that rape. How did things progress after that?”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with Juha’s death, but fine. Part of the story is already in the police record.” Sitting up straighter, Holma began to talk about his performance as real-life hero.

In mid-April he had learned that his voice probably wouldn’t recover without an operation. He tried to fill the emptiness in his life with birdsong, and he was especially enthusiastic about the spring migration. That was why he set out so early that morning on the last Saturday in April.

Meeting Riikka had thrown Holma’s plans into confusion. He considered it his duty to escort the girl safely home. When Riikka recognized Holma, he was genuinely flattered. Riikka didn’t hesitate to get in Holma’s car, but she refused to call the police, even though Holma offered her his phone.

On the way to her house, Riikka calmed down, and once there she delayed getting out of the car. Holma gave her his business card and urged her again to call the police. Riikka was afraid that both the police and her father would say she had practically asked for it by taking a ride from the boys.

Holma continued on his way to watch the birds, but instead all he could think about was the girl he had met. He had happened along just at the right moment and that seemed to mean something. Holma returned home shortly after noon and fell asleep, waking up around three to the doorbell ringing. There was a flower-delivery person and twelve white roses. Accompanying them was a card in which Riikka thanked her savior.

Holma called Riikka to thank her for the flowers and ask whether she had contacted the police. She hadn’t, and at that point Holma offered to handle it. Next he had gotten in touch with our unit, at which point he learned that other charges were pending against Tuomo Haaranen. Then he called Riikka again and said he would come with her to the police station.

Riikka only hesitated momentarily. All she had done since waking up was listen to Holma’s recordings. Filing a police report would be a good excuse to see him again. But first she wanted to talk to him, so they arranged to meet the next day at the coffee shop in the cultural center in downtown Tapiola.

Holma was surprised how nervous he was. He spent half an hour just choosing a shirt and then despaired of getting his hair under control. Riikka was ten minutes late, and Holma had already started thinking she wasn’t coming. When Riikka finally arrived, Holma didn’t know how to greet her. He chose a central European kiss to the cheek, which embarrassed Riikka.

“The whole thing was full of awkward fumbling like that. I was amazed and kept trying to talk sense to myself. Riikka could have been my daughter. Men my age aren’t supposed to fall for girls that young. But she was so sweet and seemed so mature.”

The trip to the police station hadn’t happened that day, since Riikka was still unsure, but the next morning Holma talked her into it. Koivu was matter-of-fact as he filled out the report—he had already questioned Tuomo Haaranen more than once and knew he was a real bastard.

After filing the police report, Holma took Riikka out for coffee again. They talked for a long time about Holma losing his voice and Riikka’s dream of studying singing. Holma felt as though he couldn’t let Riikka go, that he had to hold on to her, even though at the same time it felt so hopeless. Finally he asked Riikka if she would go to the opera with him some night. Riikka was delighted at the offer and Holma began to hope that the interest might not only be one-sided. As he said good-bye, he kissed her again on the cheek. This time Riikka reciprocated.

“At first it was a little hard. Riikka still lived with her parents. But in the beginning Anne and Juha were very friendly. Maybe they thought they were beholden to me somehow.”

“But later, did Juha Merivaara object to you dating?”

Tapio Holma frowned and ran his hand through his hair again. The gesture was boyish, completely lacking the straight-backed self-confidence of the Marquis de Posa. Was an embarrassed forty-year-old marching off to his first date with a teenager just one of Holma’s roles?

“Well, yes . . . Juha didn’t hide that he thought our age difference was too big, and he opposed Riikka moving in with me. We didn’t want to turn it into a drama, since I’ve had entirely too much of that in my life lately. But Riikka was basically living with me.”