Wolves and Angels (42 page)

Koskinen drove smoothly the whole way to Hervanta and tried to calm his passenger
with genial
chatt
er
. He said that he
also
lived in Hervanta,
had
for almost twenty years now, and listed off from memory the statistics showing how low the crime rate was in the area compared to the Tampere average
.

This tidbit didn’t seem to lighten her mood at all. She just stared forward, silent, holding on to her seatbelt with both hands. After the canyon bridge he turned right and under Kalenius’ direction drove up to a four-story, red brick apartment building.

Kalenius didn’t open the car door immediately. She turned to look at Koskinen and, in a shy voice, asked, “Could you come up with me? I’ll make us some tea and something to nibble on.”

The woman’s direct request caught Koskinen off
guard. “I
’
d normally be happy to, but in this situation it’s impossible.”

Disappointment flashed across Kalenius’ face, and Koskinen hurried to buoy her up: “You don’t have to be afraid of anything at home. I’ll wait here until you get into your apartment. What floor do you live on?”

“The third. The windows face this way too.”

She thanked him for the ride and then got out and quickly ran across the street. Koskinen waited until a light came on in one of the third-story windows and saw her wave between the curtains.

He swung the car around the way he had come and started driving back downtown. On the highway, the regrets started—he should have stayed. But he had piles of work waiting for him at the station, and he was supposed to have returned his vehicle ages ago.

It was the first time in a long time that Koskinen found himself wishing he had his own car.

25.

Kuparinen was waiting for him in the garage, charging out of his booth as soon as he saw the Vectra pull in. He circled the car looking it over intently and occasionally testing with a fingertip whether something was a scratch or just a harmless splash of mud. Finally he even
stretched in to look at the odometer.

“You drove more than a hundred and twenty miles!”

Koskinen could hardly believe his ears. “You can’t really remember the mileage on every car here?”

Kuparinen didn’t say anything.

He also looked under the hood and then, yawning, expressed his displeasure: “Now the rest of us can go home too. The wife
’
s been waiting with the sauna
hot
all night.” He looked at Koskinen accusingly and added, “Some of us have a life outside of work.”

Koskinen doubted that. Sometimes he got the feeling that Kuparinen lived in the
garage
.

He took the elevator straight up to the thi
rd floor. The station was quiet;
and
the hallways
were
completely deserted. He turned on the lights in his office and immediately noticed the chocolate bar. It had been left on his desk on a piece of paper about the size of his palm. Someone had drawn a slightly misshapen heart on the paper and
the letters MILLA
.

Koskinen snorted in amusement and sat down
at
computer. He opened a connection to the social security database. Only one Lea Kalenius lived in Tampere, and he
searched for anyone else
liv
ing
in the same apartment, but found none.
She
lived alone.

Koskinen stared at the screen for a moment wondering what he was looking for. Suddenly his daydreaming irritated him. He had been acting strangely all day. He closed the database and opened his email
program
. He had four messages, one each from Taru Eskola, Ursula Katajisto, Emilia Koskinen, and Ilari Tiikko.

He chose to open them in order of interest. Taru wrote, “Thank you, Sakari! I knew I could count on you. Antti is a completely different man. He’s so enthusiastic!”

Koskinen wondered what Taru might mean by “enthusiasm
.
” Her gratitude seemed genuine, but it didn’t warm his heart at all.
To
the contrary.

He quickly moved to the next email from his ex
-wife
. “I spoke to
Tomi
. He understands how busy you are. He’s worried about you working too much
without
any time for yourself. We still
care
about you.”

This message didn’t make him any happier either. He didn’t know quite what to think about it—he wasn’t sure whether she was rehashing
the old
accusations. If only he could have heard the tone of her voice. In the good old days, people at least called each other, but nowadays in the age of email and text messages human contact was just cold letters on a screen, separating people more than connecting. The
re
would never be a real replacement for speech. Someone’s tone could give up their mood, and at times a moment of silence revealed more than a hundred emails.

Ursula’s message was brief. “Thanks for the pleasant evening. When should we do it again?”

Koskin
en tried to recall exactly what
had been pleasant
about the evening
, and then moved straight on to the last message, from
Officer
Tiikko at the front desk: “My wife’s little sister dropped by last night. I hinted that I know a lieutenant who’s single. She seemed pretty interested. What would you think about us setting up a blind date for the two of you? She’s pretty
hot
if I do say so myself.”

Koskinen started laughing at Tiikko’s unrelenting
eagerness and didn’t notice that someone had stepped into his office.

“What are you chuckling about all by yourself? Did you win at solitaire?”

Ulla closed the door behind her, and Koskinen looked at her, confused. “You’re still here?”

“Us poor people have
to
…” Ulla noticed the chocolate bar on the table
,
and her sentence trailed off. “Is that from Taru’s replacement, the one with the antenna hat?”

“Milla.” Koskinen turned off the computer. “Yes.”

Ulla leaned on the corner of Koskinen’s desk with her left buttock, and her brow wrinkled in concern.
“Is it true what Pekki’s been saying?”

Now it was Koskinen’s turn to be concerned. “Pekki hasn’t been going around telling everyone, has he?”

“No one but me,” Ulla said and looked at Koskinen seriously. “Isn’t she a little bit young?”

Koskinen shook his head in amusement and then explained where the roses had come from. He told her how he had originally bought them for Ursula Katajisto
,
but had changed his mind and given them to Milla.
She
had been overjoyed a
bout
the flowers and Koskinen had decided that they could be an apology for
losing his temper that morning when
Milla had taken the initiative to reorganize his bulletin board, and had thrown his sailing picture into the recycling bin by accident.

Koskinen started opening the chocolate bar. “Apparently this is Milla’s consent to a permanent ceasefire.”

Koskinen’s story made Ulla burst into bright laughter.
“So Ursula didn’t get any flowers.” Suddenly she swallowed her laughter and shook her head with feigned seriousness. “That may have been a mistake. The flowers might have saved the whole evening and who knows, maybe you woul
d’
ve gotten—”

Koskinen silenced Ulla by pushing half of the bar into her mouth. He ate the other half himself. It
already had been
half a day since Riitta Makkonen’s meatballs, and the chocolate tasted delicious. For a moment he thought about rifling through Milla’s desk drawers to look for more.

The chocolate had gone over well with Ulla too. She licked her lips in satisfaction and said, “I did have something I wanted to talk about.”

“Yeah?”

“We located that Wolf House nurse who got fired last summer.”

“Pirkko-Liisa Rinne?”

“Yeah. It was a real chore. Even her parents didn’t know anything. I did get a long list of names and numbers from them, but it looks like she’d lost touch with most of her friends, not to mention neighbors and acquaintances. I finally caught a break with her old roommate. She knew that Pirkko-Liisa was supposed to be a bridesmaid tonight in the wedding of one of her high school friends.”

Koskinen made a quick decision. “Let’s go have a talk with her.”

“Right now?”

“Got anything better to do?”

“Not much.”

“The
killer
had to have access to the building. That’s the inescapable starting point for everything. Lea Kalenius told me this morning that Pike lost her key over the summer. They looked for it long and hard, but it never turned up.”

“There could be something hidden in that, of course,” Ulla said and then slid off the corner of the desk. “Let’s get moving then.”

“Where is the wedding?”

“Kangasala.”

Koskinen didn’t have the temerity to bother Kuparinen anymore and instead called Dispatch and asked for the nearest patrol car to give them a ride.

Ten minutes later they were sitting in the back of a
Saab
. Koskinen gave an account of the day’s events to Ulla as they drove—the interview with Hannu Ketterä’s parents, the visit to Sanni Standerskjöld’s house in Toijala, and finally Tapani Harjus’ fumbled suicide attempt. He omitted a few things, like Riitta Makkonen’s diner and giving Lea Kalenius a ride to Hervanta.

The officer who was acting as their chauffeur turned the car into the parking lot of a hundred-year-old, two-story brick colossus. It was the former Kangasala organ factory. Not many churches or chapels had been built in the last few decades, and the factory shut down. The empty space had been turned into a restaurant and hotel.

Downstairs was a pub and the
hotel reception desk. The large
rooms on the u
pper floor were rented out for
events. Approaching the building, they heard music coming from above, and Koskinen recognized the piece as the “Pyynikki Waltz.”

Ulla started up the stairs, crooning, “Do you
remember when we were young, on bright and white nights by the light of the moon…”

Suddenly she turned and said to Koskinen. “Now it’s time to dance, Sakari.”

“Not gonna happen!”

The old factory floor had been transformed into a reception hall, spruced up with colorful floral arrangements and translucent silvery fabric draped all around. The massive wooden support pillars had been decorated with pink cardboard hearts and silk rosettes.

Koskinen and Ulla stood in the doorway. They immediately aroused the attention of the wedding guests. And Koskinen didn’t have to wonder why. He was dressed in a checkered button-up shirt and gray corduroy sports coat. Ulla was wearing a hooded pullover and black jeans.

A gentleman with silver at his temples approached them. He had on a dark suit with a white rose in the button hole. Koskinen made a mental guess about whether he was the father of the bride or the groom.

“I’m sorry, but this is a private event.”

“We don’t intend to interrupt your party,” Koskinen said. “We just need a word with Pirkko-Liisa Rinne.”

The man sized them up and then asked suspiciously, “Why?”

“It’s private.”

“Wait here and I’ll
get
her.”

The man disappeared into the crowd of partygoers.
Clearly
the festivities had been in full s
wing for several hours already—many
of the
guests appeared to have had
a particular affinity to
whatever the hosts were serving
as their waltzing looked more like bastardized polka. The bridal couple were dancing grandly, however, with long steps and arcs of fluttering veils. Koskinen heard a deep sigh beside him. Ulla was watching the couple enraptured, her head cocked dreamily to one side.

One of the dancers suddenly broke away from the rest of the group, and it wasn’t until she was only a few yards away that Koskinen recognized her—Pirkko-Liisa Rinne had undergone a complete makeover since Thursday when Koskinen had last seen her. Her shabby clothes had been replaced by a black, tightly form
-
fitting silk gown. Her neck was covered with a dark blue scarf and her jet black hair was combed back in a boyish part. However, she hadn’t given up the gold studs that pierced her earlobes and nostril.
She looked at Koskinen and Ulla demandingly. “What do you want from me?”

“Just a couple of questions,” Koskinen said. “This is Detective Lundelin.”