Wolves and Angels (26 page)

Tanse directed his next words at the whole group again. “It probably goes without saying that this takes precedence over every other case we have at the moment.”

He straightened his tie and buttoned his blue-gray patterned jacket. “Take it from here and divvy up the work yourselves. It would probably be a good idea to shadow that taxi driver.”

Tanse hardly ever gave his subordinates advice
on how to handle routine field
work. It told everyone in the room how seriously he was treating the case and how important he considered this surveillance assignment.

Pekki didn’t conceal his enthusiasm. “That’s probably the most important job at this point and should be handled by someone experie—”

Koskinen interrupted him. “Eskola can take it.”

Heads turned and their surprised expressions told what everyone thought of his suggestion. Koskinen didn’t
let
it
bother
him,
“Antti
is
the
right
guy
for
the job.”

Tanse supported Koskinen. “If Sakari thinks that Eskola can handle it, then the conversation is over. There’s going to be enough work for everyone.”

Tanse left, and Pekki began making assignments, obviously fuming. “
Her
relatives still haven’t been notified. Who wants to do it?”

Not one single hand rose, so Pekki pointed at Kaija Palonen. “You go. You can get their addresses fr
o
m a nurse named Lea Kalenius at Wolf House.”

Koskinen thought whether bearing the news of bereavement should have been his responsibility. However, he didn
’
t feel up to the task, or for anything else at that moment. He stood up and slipped out of the room. The door remained open, and he heard Pekki’s hoarse voice as he walked away.

“Most of you will be going to Wolf House right after this meeting to interview the staff and residents. We need to find out everything they heard, saw, or smelled during the night. If someone says they heard their neighbor’s bed springs squeak, you write it down. Even a sound quieter than a mosquito fart might be valuable.”

Koskinen couldn’t get Rauha
Salmi
’s haggard face out of his mind. It had told of a long life full of suffering. If Pekki’s theory was correct, someone had seen that same suffering and wanted to end it.

Koskinen
thought that he could have prevented it,
had
he been smarter.
He knew that self-accusation was a
stupid waste of energy, but he couldn’t seem to channel his thoughts anywhere else. Soon it morphed into an internal fury, a head of steam in a pressure cooker searching for an outlet.

He went into his office, but didn’t sit down. He walked around flustered for a moment and then stopped in front of the window. The wall of the building across the street only made his nausea grow.

He spun around again and stared at his bulletin board. Something strange about it caught his eye. “Millaaa!”

His yell probably even woke up the customers sleeping in the lockup in the basement. The sound of running footsteps came from the hallway, and his startled secretarial intern appeared at the door. She didn’t dare come in, just holding onto the door jamb, ready to push off it if she needed to make a run for it.

“What now?” she asked, trying to catch her breath.

Koskinen took an angry step closer. “What did you
d
o now?”

“Me? I haven’t—”

Koskinen raised his hand stretched his arm out like a dog trainer and leveled it the bulletin board.

“You haven’t done anything, eh?”

Helpless, Milla pursed her lips. “Oh, yeah, that. I was just organizing things a bit.”

“Organizing?”

“Yeah.” Milla rocked from side to side nervously. “It was full of all this totally ancient stuff and the newer ones were sitting on your desk. Like that zero tolerance fact sheet. I put it on top and threw the old ones in the
trash and—”

Koskinen interrupted her outpouring. “Where’s the sailing picture? You didn’t put that in the trash, did you?”

“The sailboat?”

“Exactly!”

“Of course not.”

Milla quickly slipped past Koskinen. On the side of the desk was a tray with a jumbled stack of paper headed for the shredder. She dug in the pile, and soon her expression brightened.

“Here it is. What should I do with it?”

“Put it right back where you found it.”

Milla obeyed, attaching the picture with a thumb
-
tack on top of everything else on the board. It was a color enlargement of a sailboat with an elegant hull. The boat was anchored in a barren bay, and a man baked red by the sun leaned against the steering wheel.

Milla bent in to look more closely at the picture. “Hey! That’s you.
Ain
’t it?”

Koskinen’s fury still had not abated. “It doesn’t matter who it is! From now on you keep your mitts off my papers. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

“And now get back to work so you don’t have to be sitting here all night working overtime again.”

Milla left the room without saying anything, her head bowed in humility. Koskinen flopped down behind his desk feeling like a pile of garbage. He had done it again! Unloaded his own failure on an innocent bystander.
Could he really not control himself? When anger and irritation took the upper hand, they took off with such nerve-wracking speed that his so-called willpower had no control of them.

A knock came and Milla’s round head peeked through the door. For half a second Koskinen was sure she was going to quit. And it would not have been any wonder. People had quit over less.

But Milla had other business.

“There’s some woman here,” she whispered. “She’s asking for Detective Koskinen.”

“Show her in,” Koskinen grunted, wondering who on earth it could be.

Milla stepped out of the door and a woman dressed in a black jacket and pleated skirt walked in. Koskinen waved Milla away, and then indicated the guest chair.

Koskinen guessed what had happened; she would not have left her son’s bedside for any other reason.

“Mika died last night.”

The words came out as a feeble gasp, and Riitta Makkonen fell into the chair as if she didn’t have the energy to stand for another single second.

Koskinen nodded and thought absent-mindedly about how she had gotten straight to the point. She talked about death, not using any of the tired euphemisms: passed away, left us, returned home.

He wondered why Makkonen had come to tell him about it. Didn’t this woman who had lost her only child have anyone else? As he thought about it, Koskinen felt increasingly uncomfortable, not having any idea how to approach the situation.

Makkonen crossed her slender legs, which were covered by black stockings, and lowered her hands to her knees left bare by the skirt.

She suddenly raised her head and explained why she had come. “I lied to you yesterday.”

“You lied?”

“Yes.” She nodded with finality. “I was lying when I claimed I didn’t know why Mika ran away from the police.”

An embarrassed flush rose on her face under all of the pallor. Koskinen wanted to say that nine out of ten mothers would have done the same thing, protecting their child to the very end at his death bed. However, he didn’t have time to open his mouth before Makkonen continued quietly.

“Yes, I know why Mika ran away.”

Deep in thought, Koskinen picked up a pen and pulled a notepad closer. Apparently, Makkonen took it as an invitation to share her story.

“Mika had two really good friends: Petri and Nina. Mika had known Petri since they were little, and Nina was Petri’s girlfriend. He lives in Hervanta. Neither has had a job for almost three years, so they kept getting involved in all sorts of petty crimes.”

Makkonen raised her head, brushing a strand of hair away from her face and looking at Koskinen through a veil of tears. “Mika just got involved for gas money.”

Koskinen wrinkled his brow inquisitively.

“You said in the hospital that Mika worked construction last winter.”

“For two months,” she said, her face falling in embarrassment. “I gave Mika the money for the motorcycle. But then my finances started going into the red too, and I wasn’t able to give him anything. And that
’
s why Mika got mixed
up in Petri and Nina’s burglaries
.”

Koskinen guessed that now they were getting to the heart of the matter. He nodded to Makkonen to continue.

“Nina and Petri had robbed at least three houses when the owners were away on vacation. Mika wasn’t involved in any of them, but he promised to hide the stolen goods until they found a buyer.”

It was hard for Koskinen to stay silent. However, he didn’t want to interrupt her, so he waited impatiently to see which way her leisurely narrative would turn.

“I’m sure that’s why Mika ran away Monday night. Because he was in Hervanta, he probably thought the police had caught
on to the thefts. But afterward
they told me that it would have just been a routine traffic stop.”

She lifted her chin defiantly and looked at Koskinen accusingly. “Is it normal for the police to go on such aggressive chases on routine traffic stops?”

Koskinen wondered what to say to that. Mika Makkonen had caused the situation himself when he disobeyed the officers’ instructions to pull over.

“I guess there was some sort of misunderstanding,” he muttered.

The answer he received was bitter: “And that misunderstanding cost my son’s life.”

Riitta Makkonen lowered her head and burst into
silent sobbing.

Koskinen looked on helplessly from behind his desk as her slender frame trembled as if shaken by some invisible power. All he could do was let her cry in peace.

In the end she dug a paper tissue out of her handbag and started to dry her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she spluttered. “It wasn’t the police’s fault. Mika shouldn’t have run. But he was so skittish.”

One thing in her story surprised Koskinen more than
anything
else.
“Did
Mika
really
tell
you
all
of that?”

“Yes. On Monday night after I found some strange things under his bed and then more in our attic storage. Mika cried and asked me to forgive him. Like he had stolen it all from me. Then he also let it slip that Nina and Petri were doing their next job at some half-dead old man’s house. I talked sense into Mika, and he promised to talk his friends out of going through with it. He went on his motorcycle to see them, and then I didn’t see him again until that morning in the hospital.”

Koskinen’s eyes went from her face, wet with tears and without any makeup, to the strand of hair that had fallen out of its pin again, and her mouth with its thin lips. Did she really not know what Petri and Nina’s last gig had led to on Tuesday night? How would she? She wouldn’t have had any interest in keeping up with the newspapers or local radio after her son’s accident.

“Would you tell me Nina and Petri’s last names?”

Makkonen wasn’t at all surprised by the question. She told him the names without a second’s hesitation, and Koskinen wrote them in his notebook. Her next words made him raise his head in astonishment.

“Are you going to arrest me now?”

“What?”

“Am I going to jail now?”

Makkonen looked at Koskinen with serious eyes. It was obvious from them that her question had been completely earnest.

“Why would you go to jail?”

“I concealed the reason Mika ran away and didn’t tell you about the stolen property. Isn’t that a crime?”

“No,” Koskinen said, shaking his head. “You wouldn’t find any judge in this town who would convict a mother for a white lie at her son’s death bed. And Mika’s crime wasn’t even that serious anyway. Hiding stolen goods won’t even land a first-timer in prison. He would have gotten a fine or at most a suspended sentence.”

Riitta Makkonen sighed in relief. She stood up and smoothed the creases of her skirt flat. There was something fundamentally feminine about the motion, something no male could ever learn, no matter how much practice he had. Suddenly Koskinen felt an impossibly profound pity for this woman and tried to offer some faltering words of comfort.

“Are you going to be...okay… I mean, do you have anyone at home to help and…”

He almost slipped and said “organize the funeral,” but managed to close his mouth just before he did. Makkonen didn’t notice his discomfiture and just walked to
ward
the door. She shook her head sadly.

“No, I don’t. I guess I’ll have to sell the diner too.”

“Diner?”

“I have this little cafe in the Myllypuro industrial area where workers and truckers stop for lunch. But I won’t make it through the winter alone.”