Fatal Headwind (33 page)

Anne smiled faintly.

“I haven’t had much time to think. I’m lucky to get through one day at a time. Seija and I have talked about starting an educational center on Rödskär. Seija could teach crystal classes, one of my other friends could teach raw veganism, and so forth. Rödskär is an inspiring place. We could hold retreats there too. I don’t believe in the bad energy Seija complains about. All I feel is peace when I think of the island, even after Juha’s death.”

I took another piece of quiche and focused on eating it. A crow sped past the window, and the motion of its wings gave Anne a start. I felt in my pocket for the red granite from Rödskär and the amazonite Seija Saarela had given me, but handling them didn’t make asking the following question any easier.

“You were afraid that Juha killed Harri Immonen—or were you certain of it?”

“No!” Anne jumped so violently that the knee she had crossed over the other banged against the underside of the table and made the teacups jingle. “I was just afraid that if Harri could fall and die on those cliffs, then any of us could.”

I didn’t believe her, so I asked Anne to tell me how they had found Harri’s body. Anne said that I had read the case files and knew the chain of events as well as anyone. Reminiscing about them would be too hard for her. I didn’t want to lean on her too much and say outright that we could just as well talk about it at the police station with a witness and a voice recorder. Fortunately the slightest hint in that direction worked, and Anne started talking.

Juha had come in on the morning ferry from Tallinn. He said he was tired after difficult negotiations. Anne believed his red eyes and shaking hands were a result of drinking and suggested they not go to Rödskär and instead spend her birthday at home. But Juha wanted to go to the island because they hadn’t been spending enough time alone, just the two of them. Anne agreed on the condition that she steer the boat. Juha refused, and Anne was terrified as he sped toward Rödskär as if sea monsters had been on their heels.

At the dock they hadn’t noticed anything strange. It wasn’t until they found Harri’s things in the hut that they grew worried. Juha was angry: Harri should have known that they would want to be alone that weekend. First they called for Harri indoors and then went outside to search the rocks. Juha noticed the body and ordered Anne to keep away. Anne had no problem complying—the very thought of seeing a dead body filled her with dread. Juha tried in vain to revive Harri.

“I must have gone into some sort of shock. All I could do was sit on a rock and stare. Juha called the police and covered the body.”

“How did Juha react to finding the body?”

“I can’t really say, since I was so upset myself. At least he was able to act rationally. Once while we were engaged he told me he wasn’t afraid of the dead because he spent his whole childhood watching his mother die. When the end came, it was a relief to everyone. I’m not completely convinced that the experience was as easy for him as it appeared, though. He had his first heart attack just before Harri’s funeral.”

It would have been a clever trick to arrange to find the body himself with a witness present. And attempting CPR would be an easy way to explain the fibers, hairs, and so forth found on the body. Now no one even questioned that.

“Was Juha alone on his trip to Tallinn? Who was he meeting with?”

Anne didn’t know and told me to ask Paula Saarnio. I cursed to myself that more than a year had passed since the trip. Getting a passenger manifest from the ferry would be impossible now. Hopefully Saarnio had kept a record of travel reservations and business meetings. Anne called her in and asked her to look through their records from the previous year.

“Any meetings will be listed on the calendar, and Accounting will have the travel receipts. Just a moment and I’ll check. I’ll do it in Juha’s office so I don’t bother you,” Saarnio said.

“Do you really think Juha could have been mixed up in Harri’s death?” Anne hissed after Saarnio closed the door. When I didn’t respond, she continued. “Do you know why I was worried Harri killed himself? Because of what Katrina told me. I think you know Mikke dropped Harri off on the island and then continued on to Åland to visit his mother. Before Mikke arrived, Harri called Katrina and left a message for Mikke. Katrina didn’t remember it until Mikke was already in Denmark and Harri had been found dead. Katrina said that Harri had sounded anxious. Even though Katrina doesn’t talk much about her thoughts, this had clearly been bothering her. I guess she worries that Harri killed himself and wonders whether maybe he wouldn’t have if she had remembered to tell Mikke to call Harri back.”

Anne sounded increasingly confused, as if she were desperately trying to transfer guilt for Harri’s death to anyone but Juha. Still, I would have to talk to Katrina Sjöberg. What time did the morning flight for Åland leave? If I couldn’t go to Corsica, at least I could visit a slightly closer island. Who would I take with me on my last-minute getaway? My thoughts bolted headlong like a pack of foxes released from their fur-farm cages. After a few moments Paula Saarnio appeared at the door, looking confused.

“I can’t find any record of a meeting in Tallinn last year on the third of October, and there aren’t any ferry tickets either. Anne, are you sure Juha had a meeting there?”

“Yes, of course! Juha took the overnight ferry and brought home champagne and caviar!” Anne said, but her voice was unsure. I looked at Anne’s hands, remembered their strong grip. Maybe Anne had known that Juha killed Harri, and maybe she had discovered why. Although Anne had endured Juha’s other women, she couldn’t endure that her spouse had been concealing something unsavory about the family business. Had Anne killed Juha when she learned that they were selling lead paint to Lithuania?

I still didn’t know enough about the paint can Jiri found, so I decided to quit grilling Anne and go book my flight for Åland. I cursed like a sailor when I learned that the morning flight left at seven twenty. That would mean waking up before six. I made sure Katrina Sjöberg would be home before confirming the reservation and then arranged for a rental car to be waiting at the airport. Just as I finished making the travel arrangements, a call came in from the crime lab.

“About this paint you sent us. Where is this from?”

I said I didn’t know but that I suspected the Soviet navy.

“We’re just on our first assay, but based on our results so far I can tell you it contains tributyltin,” the chemist, whose name was Niinimaa, said happily.

“Tributyltin? What’s that?”

“An organotin compound used in bottom paint for boats. It stops things from growing on the hull.”

“Holy shit!” I said with such gusto that Niinimaa seemed taken aback.

“Does that not fit your theory?” he asked.

“A little too well. Is it a prohibited substance?”

“The 1988 Helsinki Commission banned its use in paint, but there have been reports of continued use in former Soviet countries.”

“Effects, briefly?”

“It hasn’t been researched much, but there have been observations of male features developing in female snails. Rainbow trout have shown changes in blood and liver metabolism as well as eye deformations. Salmon spawn die if the concentrations are high enough. There have also been reports of blue-mussel deaths and breakdowns in the immune systems of birds that feed on the mussels. The half-life of the chemical in water is about three months.”

What were we facing? Jiri had talked about barrels of paint. Would a few barrels of tributyltin in the water system cause permanent damage?

I asked Niinimaa to fast-track his investigation as I thought of the dead eider duck and the files on Harri’s laptop. Approving the expense of sending divers to Rödskär would be premature before I knew where in the sea the toxins might be.

Mikke Sjöberg didn’t answer when I called him again. The IT specialist working on Harri’s computer did answer, though, and he sounded irritated.

“This is going to take a while. The current owner said he formatted the hard drive. I can’t promise I can save the files from before the format, but I’ll do my best. We’re just a little swamped right now, what with this big bank-hacking case.”

“I know,” I said without sympathy. Everyone in the department was working at their limit, and I had realized it was hopeless trying to take anyone to Åland with me because every single one of our detectives was up to his eyeballs in cases. If I needed a witness for an official interview, I could turn to the local police.

I delegated the morning meeting to Lähde and asked him to request volunteers to carry Ström’s casket. Our relationship had always been formal, since Lähde had been Ström’s confidant, and he had never made it a secret that he thought the wrong person had been appointed as unit commander. That was why I was surprised at what he said next.

“Oh, pallbearers. I know what Ström would have said.”

“Yeah?”

“‘Make that goddamn feminist carry me. She always wanted to take a man’s job anyway,’” Lähde said, and there was nothing in his voice but the pain we all shared.

“Sure, I’ll help carry, just so long as there’s someone on the other side who’s willing to walk with his knees bent,” I said and then fled toward my office. From the hall I heard the phone ringing and made it in just before the answering machine picked up.

“Hey, it’s Puustjärvi. I found that bird carcass.”

“Good! Where?”

“At the Veterinary and Food Research Institute. But it wasn’t murdered. It died a natural death.”

It was silly to be disappointed. If Juha Merivaara didn’t cause an environmental catastrophe, it was a good thing.

“But I did find another carcass Immonen brought in,” Puustjärvi continued. “A real nice-looking salmon. It had deformations in its liver, circulatory system, and eyes. Which can all be caused by a chemical named—”

“I know. Tributyltin.”

17

The world was dark when the plane from Helsinki to Turku lifted off. I had left Antti and Iida sleeping when the taxi arrived. The mercury had been at twenty degrees: winter was coming early.

I had spent the whole night on the phone handling work. Iida whined and tugged at me for attention as I tried to understand a Corsican colleague’s limited English. Peders and Ramanauskas had been extremely put out when they were taken to the Calvi police station for questioning. Yes, they owned shares in a company called Mare Nostrum, which in turn held shares in Merivaara Nautical, but that wasn’t any crime. They had been shocked to hear of Juha Merivaara’s death. According to them, the purpose of Mare Nostrum had been to import paint from Finland to the Baltics, but sales had never taken off as planned. For the past few years, the company had only really existed on paper, and Juha Merivaara had offered to buy back their shares. They had intended to complete the deal the next time the men happened to be in Finland.

The Corsican police had released Peders and Ramanauskas. On Saturday, the fourth of October, they had been dining with French and Monacan friends in a restaurant on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. There were numerous witnesses.

Iida had started to scream so loudly that the Corsican detective couldn’t understand me either. I shouted for Antti to come get Iida and then asked the detective for the registration number of the Lithuanians’ boat.

Antti had tromped in, and Iida wailed like a banshee when he dragged her away to help with the baking. After I got off the phone I joined them in the kitchen. Iida’s face was wet with tears, but she was happily patting cakes of dough.

“You should have known she’d be glued to you as soon as you came home from work,” Antti said irritably. There was flour on his face and in his stubble.

“I know, I know, but I had to handle this before tomorrow morning. Just one more quick call and then I can take her.”

I had tried Mikke Sjöberg again, and then asked a uniformed patrol to go by the marina to make sure the
Leanda
was still there. It was at the dock, and light shone from the cabin windows. The thought of Mikke sitting out there by himself shivering in the dark was sad, but I didn’t let myself dwell on him.

The lights of Turku appeared through the clouds. Aggravated by the early-morning flight, my stomach lurched as the plane descended. A cold sweat spread over my body, and the coffee-like substance the flight attendant had served nearly came back up.

Behind us, the sun began glowing in the eastern sky, but after a brief layover the plane took off again toward the darkness and Åland beyond. The sea was gray and frigidly still, with islands shining gold or lingonberry red, rising from the water as if the world were trying to adorn itself one last time with the gems of summer and fall before sinking through shades of brown and gray to purest white. Antti and Iida were probably cooking their morning porridge right now. I realized I enjoyed sitting in an airplane where no family members, colleagues, or clients could demand anything of me.

Had I gone to Åland to be alone? Was that what I needed, a chance to not speak to anyone at some time other than the commute to work and back home, a space in which I wasn’t always available for others? Had I overestimated my strength when I accepted this position, imagining I could command an entire police unit and raise Iida?

Occasionally we had considered whether Iida needed siblings. Right now leaving work again to have another child was impossible to think about. My sisters kept saying that only children grow up selfish, but they had been wrong before.

The plane banked to the south and the sunrise filled the sky like an enormous variegated dark-yellow and deep-violet fireworks display. The color leapt from the sky to the sea, turning the deathly gray to golden blue, deepening the ruddy granite of the islets to ruby. I could have gazed at it forever: the smooth transition of colors from one shade to another, the shadows chased by the sun on the restless surface of the water. But the main island of Åland was already glimmering before us, and the pilot announced that we would be descending to Mariehamn in five minutes.

The car I had reserved was waiting at the airport. The drive to Svinö Harbor was twelve miles, and the ferry left at ten. I had time to swing through downtown Mariehamn, but I decided to take the scenic route instead. The road meandered through autumn-brown fields and yellow forests with the sea, now a blue-green, making occasional appearances. The fields were neatly plowed, though in the shadows they were still covered in frost.

The cafe near the ferry was deserted; perhaps it was only open during summer. An abandoned barge floated at the dock, and a clump of defiant groundsel still bloomed. The wind was picking up, and I pulled my jacket tighter around myself. I got my fill of the bleak shoreline view because the
Knipan
was twenty minutes late. I drove the car on and then climbed to the upper-deck cabin. There were a few other people aboard, and based on their accents, they were local residents returning from shopping in Mariehamn.

The ferry began chugging east past the little red-rock islands. Seeing a lighthouse island to the north, I could imagine the fall storms sweeping over its rocks and short alder trees. The south wind rocked the ferry unpleasantly, but the ferry wasn’t bothered and continued weaving through the wall of islands. Suddenly beyond them the village of Degerby appeared, and the ferry turned between the spar buoys toward the northeast. The lane was well marked. The water off the village seemed full of shoals. On one islet I picked out a pair of swans hugging the rocks, their wings gleaming in the sun.

The village wound along the shore. Red ocher and pale-yellow houses, a light-gray shoreside restaurant. A few sailboats floated in the harbor, but otherwise the village seemed to have gone into hibernation. The ferry crew had to struggle before the south wind allowed the ferry to dock.

Driving through Degerby took about a minute. The village had a local museum, a store, a post office, a library, and a minigolf course emptied by the fall weather. I also saw a sign for a restaurant. The church was farther on. Katrina Sjöberg had given precise driving directions, so I continued straight along the road leading east.

“My house is difficult to find, but on Tuesday morning I’ll be at the Föglö church practicing the hymns for Sunday. The signs will take you there,” Katrina Sjöberg had said. A mile past the village I turned right, then went over a narrow bridge, past some terns floating on the sea.

The church tower stood high above the sea, and it was a good landmark visible from miles around. I left the car in the parking lot and climbed the hill to the church. The fresh paint of the doors seemed strange against the ancient grayish-red stone of the building. I entered the churchyard through the gate. The first gravestone I saw said “Sjöberg.” Were Johan Erik Emanuel and Hilda Erika relatives of Katrina and Mikke?

The graveyard was a small open area full of mossy stones and rusted crosses. Some of the stones were decorated with a picture of an anchor or a ship, each with a pilot or sea captain lying beneath. I walked to the yellow main door, but it was locked. I circled around to the wing on the same side as the parking lot, past a ten-foot-tall monument.
Till minne av på havet omkomna
—In memory of those who lost their lives at sea. The red granite was the same as the cliffs of Rödskär, and the sun cast streaks of blood on part of the rock.

I opened the side door. The Church of Saint Mary Magdalene—it was almost like my namesake church. There was something peaceful and inviting about old stone churches. I was always happy to visit them, even though I didn’t even know what my own religious convictions were. I opened the inner door and entered the clean, arched whiteness.

The first thing I saw was the votive ship hanging from the church ceiling. The organ thundered a tune I didn’t recognize. I didn’t want to interrupt Katrina’s playing, so I just kept looking. Above the altar a board had been hung with the text:
Hjälp mig Gud och Maria att allt jag börjar får ett gott slut
—Help me God and Mary that all I undertake will meet a good end. The oldest parts of the church were from the fourteenth century, the time before the Reformation, which was maybe why the prayer called so fervently upon the Virgin Mary. As a child I had disliked my name because it had seemed that only grandmothers and religious kids were named Maria. In middle school Virgin Maria became a taunt, even though my rough, tomboyish behavior was anything but maidenly. Often I had wondered why my agnostic parents had chosen such a staunchly Christian name. They said it was because both of their grandmothers had been named Maria.

The interior of the church was dim. Near the altar was a candelabrum with a few thin, unlit candles. On the bench that ran along the wall sat a carton of candles and a box for donations. I pulled a coin from my pocket, took a candle, and struck a match. I wondered what Ström would think if he knew I was lighting a candle in his memory. He probably wouldn’t have liked it, but according to his own belief he was past knowing now. That thought came as a nearly physical pain, and for a moment I felt like putting my hand over the flame of the candle just to replace the first anguish with a different one.

Then the organ stopped. I heard a bang in the loft and then Katrina Sjöberg’s voice.

“Hi. So you made it.”

After a few seconds she walked into the chapel and came to shake my hand. The grip of her veined hand was strong, and her skin still had some of the tan of summer. She was wearing a thick wool sweater, faded black corduroys, gray wool socks, and heavy boots. Over her arm she was carrying an oilcloth jacket.

“Welcome to Föglö. Have you ever visited Åland before?”

“On the main island, yes, but never out here. So are you the parish cantor in addition to your other jobs?”

“The usual cantor is on sick leave, so I’m filling in. Shall we go? Unfortunately you’ll have to put out the candle. Fire safety regulations, you know.”

Carefully I blew out the candle, leaving only a persistent curl of smoke. The church door banged shut behind us. I wondered what kind of god Katrina believed in. Did he give forgiveness for mortal sins like taking another person’s life?

When I couldn’t think of anything else to say, I asked about the gravestones I had seen.

“Yes, they’re some distant cousins, but our branch of the family is over on the other side of the cemetery. Would you like to see?”

“Why not. Will Juha be buried here too?”

“No, he’s being cremated. But Mikke and I have plots ready here.”

Katrina led me to a shaded part of the graveyard near the stone wall. The largest Sjöberg marker was four by six feet, with a few smaller ones clustered around. One of these bore the names of the founder of Merivaara Nautical, Mikael Johan, and Martti Merivaara. The large stone was engraved with a sailboat and anchor, and beneath it were buried the sea captain Johan Sjöberg and the pilot Daniel Sjöberg.

“Daniel was my grandfather, and Johan was Martti’s. Erland and Ida are my parents, and I’ll be laid to rest next to them. There’s still space on the stone,” Katrina said calmly. Fall roses bloomed in front of the largest gravestone, but soon the frost would blacken their leaves.

“This is generations of stubborn men who never followed laws made by other people. I think we Sjöbergs stayed too long here in our own little island kingdom. Johan, the sea captain, smuggled weapons to Finland during the Russian oppression, and Daniel looked the other way when alcohol shipments came in during Prohibition. Where are your graves?”

It had never even crossed my mind to think where I would be buried. The Kallios didn’t have a family plot, and the Sarkelas had fallen to the Soviets during World War II.

“I don’t imagine young people like you get that question much,” Katrina said. “For me it feels comforting to know where my bones will end up, especially since I’m not sure of the destination of my soul.” Katrina bent down and picked up a couple of maple leaves from the grass. “My home is a kilometer and a half from here. Will a bicycle fit in your car?”

We managed to jam Katrina’s mountain bike into the trunk of my rented Volkswagen. First the road veered toward the center of the island, and then after two hundred yards, a narrow, rocky lane led off to the northwest. At the end of it stood a red, two-story wooden house built in the shelter of exposed bedrock and forest about a hundred yards from the shore. Winds from the sea wouldn’t be able to trouble it, even though the water glittered between the trees.

“Mattsboda, my mother’s home. She was a Sjöberg too. Our family intermarried too much.” Katrina pulled her bike out of the car. The angularity of her movements was the same as Mikke’s.

We went inside to the living room, which was dominated by a hand loom, a baking oven, and a table that could have seated nearly twenty people. Nets and other fishing implements decorated the walls, as well as an anchor, five feet tall. A grandfather clock ticked as if its seconds were slower than normal. Although the room was large, Katrina seemed to fill it, even though her slender frame only stood at five foot two.