Wolves and Angels (39 page)

Despite being taller, Sanni seemed to be afraid of her husband. It was obvious that she would never have the courage to answer Koskinen’s questions as long as he was listening.

“I want to speak with your wife alone,” Koskinen said, making the man even angrier.

“No way!”

“Then I’ll have to take her to the police station.”

“Is that so?” Sanni’s husband said, trying to load his voice with scorn. “For an honest-to-God official police interrogation? Is my wife a suspect?”

Koskinen didn’t have time to answer. Sanni extended her arms
toward
her husband, pleading. “Leave us alone! Please!”

His voice shook threateningly: “Very well.”

He turned on his heels and disappeared from the kitchen. After a few seconds the front door slammed. Sanni jumped like she had heard a gunshot, and the children ran over to have a look. They asked their mother what had happened and then glanced shyly at the strange man standing in their kitchen.

Sanni shooed them back to the TV, then closed the kitchen door and collapsed exhausted against the table. The shopping bag was still
there
waiting to be unpacked.
Koskinen sat down on the other side of the table, and let her collect her thoughts. The rapid heaving of her chest underneath her white sweater showed what strong feelings were churning inside her.

Little by little she started calming down. She pulled the headband off, shaking her frizzy hair, and then began
—w
ith a shaking voice, she told Koskinen about Hannu’s sudden paralysis and how it had derailed their life overnight.

She frequently paused to think, her red lacquered nails scratching at a dried yogurt stain on the vinyl tablecloth. She talked about how they had tried to continue their life together after Hannu had finished his initial rehabilitation. Sanni had done everything in her power to make it work, but with two small children and a disabled husband, it had eventually overwhelmed her.

“I tried,” she said, shaking her head despondently. “God only knows how hard I tried.”

Koskinen reached behind him for a roll of paper towels on the counter, and extended it across the table. S
anni
tore off a long piece. She used it to wipe under her eyes and then continued her story.

“Then one day I came back from the playground with the children, and Hannu was waiting for us at the door. I didn’t even have the stroller all the way out of the elevator before he announced that he wanted a divorce. Right then and there. Nothing helped, not my tears and not his parents pleading. Three weeks later he moved out. He had gotten an apartment at Wolf House and left me alone with the children. My life may have gotten easier physically, but that just made
the
emotional hole even bigger. Hannu never got in touch with me or the children, and he wouldn’t even let us come visit him.”

S
he
stood up to get a glass from the cupboard and then drew some water from the tap.

“Did you know Raimo
Timonen
?” Koskinen asked from behind her.

It was impossible not to notice the flinch. She spun around and water sloshed out of her glass.

“Yes…of course I knew Raimo,” she said, hesitating. “We ran in the same crowd when we were kids. We were all in the same sports club and played soccer together. Even us girls. Then when we were older we started going to dances together, passed our first bottles around, and all that.”

Koskinen sensed that she was hiding something. She bent down to wipe the water from the floor, working the rag vigorously to hide her sudden confusion.

But Koskinen was not going to let her off that easy. “There’s something you’re not telling me, right?”

“How so?”

“No reason to hide it anymore,” Koskinen said and pointed to the chair. “Please have a seat and tell me. It’s all going to come out sooner or later.”

S
he
tossed the rag into the sink and leaned forward with both hands on the sink. She sighed deeply. Without turning her head she said, “Okay, Raimo was my boyfriend first. Even after he dove off the dock and hit his head at the Ketteräs’ cabin.”
Suddenly she spun around and tears were running down her wan cheeks to her neck. “Just think! In my life I’ve had two men, two great loves, and I lost both of them to the same god-awful fate.”

Her crying turned to inconsolable blubbering. “What
am I, some sort of evil spirit? A witch whose lovers end up in accidents and get paralyzed for the rest of their lives. I’m constantly terrified wondering when the third one is going to come home crippled.”

Koskinen didn’t say anything. He pointed at the empty chair again and pushed the roll of paper towels closer. S
anni
sniffled and then sat down resigned in the chair and buried her face in her hands.

Koskinen let her work through her feelings for a while before asking, “How did it happen?”

From between the hands came a muffled sob. “What?”

“Why did you change boyfriends?”

She lowered her hands to the table and crumpled a wet wad of paper in each one. “Raimo’s accident was a terrible blow for me. I was as crazy in love with him as any
seventeen
-year-old girl can be. It was almost as bad for Hannu. He was Raimo’s best friend. What could we do but comfort each other? No one else was going to do it any better. And that’s how it happened.”

She looked at Koskinen with eyes red with tears. “You have to
understand
…”

“You fell in love?”

“Yes.” She nodded and tears dripped onto the vinyl. “That’s what happened.”

Of course Koskinen understood the situation. What was more natural than for two young people who were already supporting each other to fall in love suddenly, blindly. However, as a detective on an active investigation, he wasn’t going to waste his time analyzing the finer inner workings of human nature.

“Did Raimo get bitter?”

The straightforward question made
her
blanch again.

“We didn’t dare tell him right away. We hid our relationship for years. It was difficult. I went to see Raimo at the rehab center every now and then. Not even his hands worked back then. I still loved him in a way even then, and it was horrible living a lie like that.”

“But in the end you had to tell him the truth?”

“I never told him. And I never
figured out
how he found out or whether he just sensed it. But one Sunday when I was there, he suddenly asked out of the blue when Hannu and I were planning to get married.”

“Didn’t he seem angry?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. Just the opposite. He bought us an expensive wedding gift when we did get married the next summer.”

“What?”

“A trip.”

“To where?”

S
he
looked at Koskinen with her brows arched, presumably marveling at his insatiable curiosity.

“Italy. They were hosting the World Cup.”

She suddenly lifted her head as if she were waking from a dream. “Where did Tuure run off to? I just hope…” Her voice trailed off.

Koskinen could read the fear in her unspoken words. It would have been too much for something to happen to the third man in her life.

She started talking in a rapid, gasping rhythm. And
Koskinen didn’t know whom she was trying to defend, her husband or herself.

“Tuure has such a quick temper, but otherwise he’s a good man. When Hannu had his accident, and I was left alone with the children, he took us in and cared for us. How many men would do that? Sign up to be a stepfather for two small children.”

Koskinen wondered how pure and altruistic Tuure Standerskjöld’s kindness really was. But he didn’t interrupt Sanni’s sudden torrent of words.

“Back then Tuure was my boss at the OP Bank in Tampere. Of course he
’
s twenty years older than
m
e, but he’s so attentive. Sometimes he’s a little jealous and short tempered, but his heart is still made of gold. A couple of years later he was transferred here to be the manager of the Toijala branch and everything started going better. I just hope that nothing…”

Again she didn’t finish her sentence and just stared apprehensively at the door.

Koskinen patted her hand. “He’ll be back soon. Don’t worry! Anyone would get worked up after news like this. He’ll calm down.”

But Koskinen didn’t really believe his own words. Tuure Standerskjöld
’s
behavior bothered him. Was he really so jealous of his wife that he couldn’t even stand her talking about her ex-husband? An invalid who had disappeared and was most likely in significant danger. Unless it was all over
a
lready.

That though
t
made him bound up out of his chair. “I have to go back to Tampere.”

He offered his hand. She took it timidly, at the same time spluttering, “Do you think you’ll find
Hannu…alive?”

“I
hope
so,”
Koskinen
said.
“I
promise
to
do
my best.”

“Thank you,” she whispered and then remained sitting alone in the kitchen. Walking from the kitchen, he noticed how the children were sitting side-by-side with their backs to the TV, looking at him with fear in their eyes. He felt like saying something encouraging, but he couldn’t come up with anything, and just waved. The children didn’t reply, and he could still feel their large frightened eyes in his back even after he was outside.

The sun was already going down as he turned onto the highway leading back to Tampere. His visit to Toijala had given him even more to ponder—the relationship between
Timonen
and Ketterä cast an entirely new light on the case. No matter how hard he thought, he just couldn’t come up with a motive for the murders.

If anyone,
Timonen
himself would have had a motive—he had a reason to hate Ketterä, who had stolen his girlfriend.

But
Timonen
had died four days before Ketterä’s disappearance. So much for that.

Koskinen had just passed the Pirkanhovi truck stop when his phone started ringing. The sound rewoke the fear that had been skulking in his subconscious the whole day. Not now! Anytime but right now, he repeated in his mind, seeing Sanni Standerskjöld’s pained face covered with tears and lined by so many losses.

Koskinen didn’t want to hear that they had found Hannu Ketterä’s body. But still he answered.

“It’s Pekki. I have bad news.”

“I guessed as much,” Koskinen said bitterly. “Let me have it. Where did you find the body?”

Pekki was silent for a moment and then answered without further hesitation. “No news on Ketterä, but Tapani Harjus is lying in Hatanpää Hospital with his head split open.”

“What?”

“You heard me right. Someone pushed him down the stairs to the weight room in his wheelchair.”

Koskinen was left completely numb by this news. A fourth victim! Just as defenseless as the previous ones. He’d never forgive himself or anyone else for that matter.

His initial shock rolled out in a wave of rage. “Jesus Christ!” he roared. “What about the guard?”

“He was there, he was there. But he was sitting in the kitchen having coffee when they heard Harjus’ scream and his wheelchair clattered down the concrete stairs.”

Koskinen rarely swore at his colleagues, but now he let loose with both barrels. “Who the fuck was the doughnut commando on duty over there?”

“I didn’t have time to ask his name. You know, we’ve been a little rushed and—”

“I’m sure,” Koskinen cut in. “Did you say that they took Harjus to Hatanpää?”

“I did.”

Koskinen still hadn’t calmed down. “Why the hell did they take him there? University was right there.”

Pekki laughed dryly. “You know the drill—it’s easier
to get past St. Peter than to get into the University Hospital ER. Unless you’re actually knocking at death’s door.”

Koskinen had to admit that Pekki was right. On the other hand, it gave him a spark of hope—maybe that meant that Tapani H
arjus wasn’t at death’s door.

24.

It was
still
early on Saturday night, but the first brawlers had already been brought to the Hatanpää Hospital emergency room. One of them had blood oozing from his eyebrow, and the other was spitting tooth
fragments
. Two officers in blue coveralls wer
e keeping the two drunks apart, who were
continuing their drunken blustering with death threats flying back and forth. Apparently Arska was going get it for stealing the other guy’s booze.

Koskinen greeted the policemen with a quick wave as he walked past the foursome. He stated his business to the first nurse he saw and received directions—the man who had been brought in from Wolf House an hour earlier was in room number three
,
at the end of the hallway on the left. Koskinen strode there full of suspense, and almost got the door knocked in his face—a female doctor, obviously in a rush, was just coming out.