Wolves and Angels (34 page)

Nothing in the room recalled Honkanen’s short career with the police. Koskinen didn’t even see the Police Cross of Merit he had been awarded after the shooting. He suddenly turned his head and looked at Honkanen searchingly.

“But how did you get over the bitterness?”

“I had better than average luck. Five years ago I met Katariina at a rehab
center. She got ran over by a
drunk driver on a bike path, and she had just as much reason to be bitter as I did.”

Honkanen stared at the floor with an absent expression.

“I whined to Katariina about everything just like I was doing to everyone else around me. But Katariina wasn’t fazed by it. On the contrary, she was just as nasty back, but with a smile on her face the whole time. Then
we just sort of clicked. We went and fell in love like in some French tearjerker. And now we’ve been married for almost four years. And we have a baby, almost a year old.”

“A baby?” Koskinen said in surprise. “I had understood that you were paralyzed from the ribs down.”

“As indeed I am,” Honkanen grinned happily. “They know how to do all sorts of things these days.”

Koskinen sat and thought. The Fallen Angels hadn’t had any similar strokes of luck. Maybe Pirkko-Liisa Rinne could have turned into that for one of them, but
Timonen
, Ketterä, and Harjus hadn’t been able to agree who deserved the good fortune.

He swept his eyes around the room again. The building materials and interior design all looked high quality and obviously cost a pretty penny. Even the fireplace was built out of patterned soapstone.

“What are you doing these days?”

Obviously Honkanen had guessed from his guest’s wandering gaze what had prompted this question.

“I get full retirement benefits from the state,” he said with a laugh. “But no, that wouldn’t have been enough to build this even if I spent thirty years filling my mattress.”

He raised his forefinger in a number one. “I have a one-man IT company. I do consulting for various businesses all over the world. I make pretty good money at it, and it’s a good setup in that I can work right here from home.”

Honkanen looked around as well and smiled with satisfaction. “All in all I have to say that things are going
pretty damn well for me these days.”

He glanced at his watch.
“Have I been any help?”

“Hard to say,” Koskinen said, drawing out his words.
“As I’m sure you know, little pieces like this sometimes don’t fall into place until later in some other context. Then they can turn out to be worth their weight in…”

Koskinen’s sentence trailed off. One of the doors on the far end of the large room opened and a blond woman with a beautiful face appeared. She looked in confusion at the strange man sitting in her living room. Honkanen waved at her reassuringly, and a shy smile appeared on her round face. The bright ceiling light revealed the soft shapes of her body through her nightshirt, and Koskinen only got his eyes under control once she had disappeared with her wheelchair through the bathroom door.

Koskinen stood up and knocked Honkanen on the shoulders lightly with his fist. “My friend, things really are going well for you.”

Honkanen rolled after him into the entryway.

“Should I call you a taxi?”

“No need. I can walk.”

“Where to?”

“Hervanta. Doesn’t take more than half an hour from here.”

“With those legs hardly even that long.”

Koskinen was already out the door when Honkanen yelled after him. “Stop by again sometime!”

“I just might do that.”

The most direct route from Hallila to Hervanta went through a dense, pitch-black stretch of spruce forest.
Koskinen couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead. He had to walk feeling his way with his feet to stay on the narrow, winding dirt road.

Suddenly he felt like he had been wandering in the same darkness the whole day. He was lost in a dreary forest. Someone was calling out to tell him the right way, but he was still walking in exactly the opposite direction.

The same insistent feeling kept going around in his head. During the day something had slipped past his ears that he should have grabbed hold of immediately. Maybe he had heard it as part of some other, insignificant, off-hand remark. But still it would have solved so much. If he had only been more alert and understood its significance.

The feeling was unbearable. As if someone had been knocking him on the head constantly, repeating, “Hello in there? Don’t you understand what’s going on?”

20.

On Saturday morning Koskinen felt tired. He had slept lightly, tossing and turning all night. His subconscious had been waiting for the phone to ring and the report that a male corpse had just been found.

He put some water on to boil for tea, took a quick shower, and then called Riipinen, who was still on duty.
Riipinen’s voice was raspy from being up all night, and occasionally Koskinen heard the hiss of his inhaler. Nothing significant had happened last night, and there had been no sign of Ketterä.

Koskinen glanced out the window. The sky was gray, and there was a thick layer of fog hanging over Lake Ahvenisjärvi. Still he decided to bike to work. The weather was cold and a strong wind nipped at his cheeks and tried to force its way through every opening in his windbreaker. He sped up, and little by little his muscles warmed up.

His conditioning was exactly at the level he had been aiming at. Nevertheless, he had decided to skip tomorrow’s race. They were tracking an extremely dangerous criminal—it would not look good if the head of the investigation was wasting his morning prancing around the woods.

It was just twenty past seven when he pedaled up the steep slope of Sorin
Street
and turned into the police station parking lot. Two patrol officers in blue field coveralls were standing outside the doors having a smoke. Koskinen hadn’t even managed to say hello before they were talking about the Pirkka Trail Run and making bets about what his time would be. One of them called him the Haile Gebrselassie of Hervanta and asked if he’d started carbing up yet.

Standing there, Koskinen
reversed
the decision he had just made—it was too late to back out. And there wasn’t a murderer alive heinous enough that could justify him pulling out.

He loped up the stairs to the third floor, wondering to himself whether there was anyone in the building who didn’t know about the race and his bet. Luckily, he
didn’t see anyone and made it into his office to change clothes. The morning had been chilly enough that the ride hadn’t even left his forehead sweaty.

He had just managed to pull his pants up when a short knock came from the door, and Ulla walked in. Koskinen was delighted to see her.

“Morning. You’re up early.”

Ulla didn’t respond and sat down in one of the chairs. Her face showed that she still hadn’t gotten over her foul mood, although she did acquiesce to explaining why she had come in so early: “Pekki asked me to come in early. He wanted me to join in on the interrogation of Adolf Kantola’s attackers.”

“And you’re already done?”

“Why not?” Ulla asked haughtily. “They came down on the overnight train from up north. It got here before six, and Pekki wanted to do preliminary interview
s
right away. I was here at six thirty, and we talked to each of them separately for ten minutes.”

Koskinen closed his closet and sat down behind his desk across from Ulla. “And the kids?”

“The kids? What kids?”

“Yours of course.”

“What about them?”

“Who’s watching them since you had to leave so early?”

“Kristian
,
” Ulla looked at Koskinen, perplexed. “He got back from his show at five thirty, so he got the pleasure of cooking his little darlings their morning porridge.”

Koskinen wondered what was wrong with him
self
—the night before he had found his thoughts wandering in strange paths. Ulla’s private life wasn’t any of his business, not even a little bit. He quickly returned to the previous topic. “Did you get anything out of the two of them?”

“The boy denied everything, but the girl broke in three minutes flat. Pekki is an animal. He scares the shit out of people with that rasp of his. I’m sure the boy will talk too once he hears his girlfriend already spilled everything.”

“So what did the girl say?”

“She admitted to four separate burglaries, all houses on the west side”

“What did they do with their loot?”

“Traded for drugs.”

Koskinen sighed. “I should
’
ve guessed. Riitta Makkonen’s picture of her son was too rosy.”

“Apparently Mika wasn’t using. That was why Nina and Petri chose him as their runner in the first place.”

“So they were taking advantage of their shy, skittish friend,” Koskinen said bitterly. “They’re never going to be tried for Mika’s death, but they’re still indirectly to blame.”

He noticed Ulla’s surprised expression and realized what an overstatement that accusation had been. He quickly moved on to another topic.

“What did the girl say about the Kantola job?”

“It was supposed to be a cakewalk. They knew how sick the old man was and didn’t think he’d wake up even
if they started rummaging around right under his bed.” Ulla leaned back in her chair, pausing as she thought. Then she shook her head. “But they were wrong. Kantola was in so much pain that he couldn’t sleep at all. He showed up in the yard in the middle of everything. Apparently Petri was so startled that he whacked him over the head with the first thing he grabbed. It happened to be
a
raven sculpture, which ended up being the only thing they got that night.”

“No wonder we didn’t find the weapon.”

“She also said that Mika had no part in what happened that night in Kantola’s yard.”

“Of course he
didn’t
. He was lying in the ICU.”

“Stop interrupting!” Ulla snapped. “What Nina meant
was
that
Mika
had
talked
them out
of
doing
the job.”

Riitta Makkonen needs to hear that, Koskinen thought. This news would surely warm the grieving mother’s heart and bring some light into her life, if only for a moment.

“But Nina and Petri
still
went ahead with it,” Ulla continued. “Apparently they were so traumatized by Mika’s accident that they needed a
quick
fix to calm their troubled souls.”

Then, in true Ulla fashion, she jumped to a completely different topic: “How did last night go?”

“Last night?” Koskinen said, surprised. “Haven’t you heard that one of the Fallen Angels is missing?”

“Of course! Pekki already told me. I was asking about how your evening went.”

Koskinen realized that Ulla meant his dinner with Ursula Katajisto. Uneasy, he shifted some things around
on his desk before answering, “That’s going nowhere.”

Ulla’s eyebrows went up inquiringly.

“She started psychoanalyzing me. Is that supposed to be romantic? First date and you get to hear what a jerk you are.”

Ulla burst out laughing. Koskinen had always liked her gentle laugh, and now it was even more bubbly than normal. Still, he was surprised by it. Just a second before she had obviously been fuming, and now she was chortling cheerfully. And the laugh didn’t even sound malicious.

Ulla stood up and then perched on the corner of Koskinen’s desk, wiping her eyes.

“And so you arranged a second date, right?”

Koskinen pursed his lips. “No, it’s just not going to work out.”

“You never know.”

“I do.”

Ulla was wearing a hooded pullover and black jeans. She had tied her thick, blond hair in a quick braid, and her bright blue eyes were shining with tears from having just been laughing. She picked up a pen from the desk and started drawing in Koskinen’s notebook. A small, square house appeared on it.

“Luckily my mother-in-law is coming to visit today,” she said as she drew. “She’s promised to watch the kids while her dear golden boy goes off to earn his bread on stages all over the country. I can work overtime both nights if I need to.”

“That’s good,” Koskinen said. “Looks like we have
plenty to do.”

He was still confused by her sudden change of mood. He had never understood the workings of the feminine mind. Now less than ever.

However, he didn’t have time to stop and think about that now. It was five minutes to eight, and they had a meeting to attend.

It turned out to be a short one. Pekki stalked around the flip chart, smearing more of the marker on his hands than the paper. He made a quick summary of the
Timonen
and
Salmi
murder investigations. They were still spinning their wheels, so he didn’t have much to say. He moved to Ketterä’s disappearance and reported the detention of the taxi driver, Ilmari Laine.