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- Herausgeber: Bitter Lemon Press
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Hella Mauzer was the first-ever woman Inspector in the Helsinki Homicide Unit. But she's been fired despite solving her first murder case. This is Helsinki, March 1953. An unusually long and cold winter, everywhere frozen sea, ice-covered lakes and rivers. In a port city flooded with refugees, who cares if a young woman goes missing? An up-and-coming inspector who views this as an opportunity to advance his career. A heartbroken PI with a score to settle. They have yet to discover one thing: the most dangerous lies are those we tell ourselves. It all begins when Nellie, a prostitute working in a high-end brothel is found floating upside down in Helsinki Harbor. Not exactly a high priority case for the Helsinki police, so homicide chief Jokela passes the job to his former colleague Hella. It's beginning to look like a serial killer is at work when Elena, another lady of the night, narrowly escapes being driven into the harbor by her 19-year-old john. Problem was he had handcuffed her in the car. And to add further excitement to Hella's life, the madam is soon found dead in the garden outside the brothel. What begins like a taut whodunit turns into something more tantalizing and psychological as Hella investigates different suspects, including Steve, the US DJ and love of her life, reluctant to leave his wife for Hella, and the fascinating Inspector Mustonen, charismatic, ambitious and trying desperately to live up to the standards of his high maintenance wife. There are dark powers at play, as well as lighter passages, particularly those involving Anita, voluptuous but savvy, freshly arrived from Lapland to join the Helsinki police force, a most unwanted roommate for Hella. Sadly she too ends up in deep trouble, in a satisfying denouement of twists and turns.
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praise for
EVIL THINGS
The first in the Hella Mauzer Series
“This is a remarkable debut—the best novel I’ve read this year. A historical thriller with a heart that keeps you enthralled to the final page.”
David Young, author of A Darker State and STASI Child
“Ivar’s stellar first novel revolves around two crucial struggles for emancipation—that of the nation of Finland after centuries of foreign rule, and that of Finnish women.”
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“In the strange, enclosed world of 1950s Lapland, when detective Mauzer arrives to investigate the case of a missing grandfather… it will take all her nascent feminist courage to right the wrongs she uncovers.”
Sunday Times, Crime Club pick
“A captivating first novel… ‘My dear girl,’ her patronizing boss instructs, ‘justice in a cold climate is not a natural phenomenon.’ But the stubborn and resourceful Sgt. Hella Mauzer seems just the police officer to deliver it.”
Wall Street Journal
“Welcome to the most stubborn of cops, righting wrongs in cold Lapland, a memorable character with just the right disdain for authority and its amoral attitudes to justice and women.”
Maxim Jakubowski, author of The Louisiana Republic
“One of the finest books to be released this season. The true joy is Ivar’s ability to blend Cold War politics, sexual politics, geopolitics, and personal tragedy in Hella’s pursuit for justice.”
Mystery Scene Magazine
“Cold-war Lapland is a glitteringly fresh setting and the protagonist is an unexpected character who I’d love to meet again.”
Morning Star2
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DEEP AS DEATH
Katja Ivar
BITTER LEMON PRESS LONDON
5
To my grandmother, Klaudia, born in 1929
A medic, a wife, a mother
Her stories illuminated my childhood.
And to my tiny angel Marguerite, as always.
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7
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow.
T. S. Eliot “The Hollow Men”8
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
1935
She didn’t know what scared her the most: the man, or the lake.
Both looked dull and familiar, but she knew dark shadows lurked underneath. She had known it all along, without ever admitting it to herself; she had just gone about her day, steering clear of both. She had thought that would be enough, but she was wrong. When the man threw open the door of the barn, where she sat huddled with the boy, she took a sharp breath as a cold wave of panic washed over her body.
“Temptress,” he called her, spitting out the word as if it tasted bitter. “Whore.” He said it like he meant it, and then he took a step towards her, a cattle whip in his hand, his eyes narrowed. She pushed the boy aside and lunged for a corner of the barn, squeezing her body through the opening she had used to get inside. Black windowless walls surrounded her; the only way out was over the lake. If the man stayed where he was, she could slip past the house, keeping close to the shore, and get away.
She stifled a sob. Maybe he wouldn’t come after her. Maybe he’d just whip the boy, who wouldn’t mind so 10much – he was used to it. Her mind was wiped blank by fear. Not even for a fleeting moment did she consider going back to explain herself; in her panic, she couldn’t think of a way to make him understand she had only meant well.
The sharp crack behind her meant the man wasn’t going to stay inside. He was hacking at the wood with an axe, widening the opening.
She decided she stood a better chance with the lake.
It was late spring, but only the calendar knew this. It was snowing heavily, fat, damp snowflakes clinging to her hair and dress, muffling every sound. No one would be out in this weather. No one would help her. The frozen lake stretched white and peaceful as far as her eye could see, but she knew better. Towards the north shore, where a stream fed into the lake, patches of white gave way to heavy grey slush. That was where the man drove her.
She looked over her shoulder as she ran, slipping on the ice. The boy on the shore would not help; he was paralysed with fear. All he could do was stand there, his eyes wild and pleading, and watch the man chase her.
“You’re dead, Lara,” the man said, not even out of breath. His voice was quiet, not menacing. He was stating a fact. She headed straight towards the north shore, where the ice wouldn’t hold his tall frame. He realized that and stopped. She stopped as well, panting, facing the man across five yards of thin, treacherous ice. Her crimson dress was like a drop of blood, trickling onto a white shroud. She was lighter than the man, but not light enough. The ice would give way at some point. Viewed from up close, it seemed illuminated from within, by some mythical creature, by a sea monster coiled below. The man sat down slowly, stretching his legs out in front of him, thrusting his hands into his pockets. He’d wait her out. He had all the time in the world.11
She sat on the ice, too, and looked at the shore, its ragged skyline of tall dark trees and windowless walls, black on black. She refused to look at the man. She still hoped that if she waited long enough, he’d get tired and leave. Then she had an idea. A prayer! A prayer to her guardian angel. The words came easily to her, but she only got to the end of the first sentence when, with a gentle shush, the ice beneath her started to cave in. She gasped. She had stayed still for too long. The water was so cold it stopped time. It bit at her ankles, worked its way into her boots. Her heart jammed somewhere in her throat, but her mind was miraculously clear. She could still escape. This was bad, but not as bad as the man waiting for her. And she knew what to do – everyone who grew up in this country did. No brisk movements. She spreadeagled her body on the ice and started to glide forward, making herself light. Like a bird. She inched her way forward until she managed to drag her lower body out of the water. Now she could crawl. Her feet were frozen, but she couldn’t afford to stop.
Then she remembered: the man. He was still waiting for her, and he was smiling. For an instant, his clear blue eyes locked on hers. There was nothing in them at all.
It doesn’t matter if I lose some toes, she thought. Doesn’t matter at all. I’ll just stay here like this until morning comes. There will be people then. Ice fishermen. Children sent to replenish water reserves. The man will have to leave. Until then, I can’t move.
Her veins were full of ice, and her thoughts slowed. Would her mother come looking for her? Would the boy on the shore call for help? The snow before her eyes was the colour of dead fish.
“You look like a fallen angel, Lara,” the man said. “And that snow on your hair – like a tiara. Do you remember those 12garlands you made, last summer? Do you remember?” The last question was for the boy, who was approaching them with small cautious steps, his eyes shiny with tears.
The man shook his head in disgust and thrust a hand into his coat pocket.
“Goodbye, Lara,” he said again, and opened his hand. He was holding a rock the size of her fist. He aimed carefully.
As the stone left his hand and flew towards her, she realized what he was doing.
The boy screamed. One piercing note, mouth wide open, eyes screwed shut.
The rock shattered the ice right in front of her face, and she could just glimpse the inky water beneath before it swallowed her whole.
PART I
Beware
1
Hella
26 February 1953, Helsinki
The judge was old and irritated. He peered at me over the wire-rimmed glasses that sat on the tip of his nose.
“Anything to add, Miss?”
My lawyer fluttered nervously by my side. He was fresh out of law school, and much too impressed by the grand mahogany-panelled hall we were in to add anything of value. Still, he cleared his throat, pulling at his too-short jacket sleeves. His wrists were as thin as a boy’s. “Your Honour, in my closing argument —”
The judge waved an impatient hand. “I have already heard your closing argument. What I want to know is what the defendant has to say.” He pointed at me. “You! Why did you attack that man?”
There was whispering from the bench to my right where my victim was sitting, his one remaining eye glaring at me.
“Your Honour,” I said. “I am afraid you misunderstood —” My lawyer drew a sharp breath. That was about the only thing he had told me before the proceedings started: never contradict the judge. Never. And that was exactly what I was 16doing now. “The accuser was the one who attacked me. I was merely defending myself.”
“With a rusty nail?” The judge’s voice was carefully neutral, sympathetic even.
“It was the only thing I had on hand.”
“Is that right?” the judge said, his beady eyes never leaving mine. “You were in a logging camp in Lapland, which is to say in the middle of nowhere. You ventured into a place inhabited by men, where no respectable woman would ever expect to set foot. Worse, you were in that gentleman’s bedroom. Did he drag you there?”
“No.”
“Then you came to his sleeping quarters of your own accord?”
“I did, Your Honour. That is not an invitation to be raped.”
Next to me, my lawyer buried his face in his hands. Even in his limited experience, I was a crackpot.
“Hmm,” the judge said. “Let me get this straight. You expect that you can walk into a man’s bedroom, flirt with him, then get away unscathed?”
“That’s what I said, Your Honour. As a police officer, I had reasons to go to that logging camp, and into that room, and those reasons had nothing to do with romance or seduction.”
The judge stared at me for a long time, wondering perhaps if I’d explain my reasons further, but I kept quiet. What had happened to me was nobody’s business, and I was ready to suffer the consequences. To the judge, I was a former police officer from Ivalo, Lapland, discharged from the force for disobeying my supervisors’ direct orders and now being sued by a man who claimed I had damaged his leg when I attacked him. 17
“Well,” the judge said at last. “Perhaps that is the truth. Still, the accuser has provided a medical certificate which states that the wound you inflicted prevents him from exercising his profession. You are a truck driver, are you not?” he asked my self-proclaimed victim, who almost jumped from the bench, nodding.
“Yes, Your Honour.”
“A very valuable profession. Especially at a time when our country, having finished paying war reparations to the Soviet Union, is undergoing a massive reconstruction. We need working men. We need truck drivers.” The judge turned back to me. “You are not married, are you? So what do you do for a living?”
He knew already, of course. He just wanted to hear me say it.
“I am a private investigator, Your Honour.”
The judge chuckled. “What do you investigate? Missing cats?”
“I specialize in murder cases, Your Honour.”
Now the spectators in the courtroom were laughing too. Even my lawyer leaned forward to hide a smile.
“Murder?” the judge said. “Murder investigations pay well, last I heard. The court finds you guilty of assault on the person of Seppo Kukoyakka and sentences you to pay damages to the amount of…” He paused, his eyes assessing the value of my cheap wool jacket and tired leather pumps, noting the absence of jewellery. “One hundred thousand markka.”
Six months of police sergeant’s wages. Not that I was employed any more.
My lawyer gasped. He sprang to his feet as the judge’s gavel hit the desk in front of him. “Your Honour, a hundred thousand markka is an extraordinary sum and the defendant —” 18
“Case closed,” the judge said, not looking at him. “People like Miss Mauzer are a danger to society. You will have the chance to appeal, if you so wish. Next!”
The lawyer threw me a dejected look. “You shouldn’t have been so provocative,” he said. “It would have been better to say you got scared, changed your mind. The judge would have been easier on you. Now, what are you going to —”
I got to my feet. They were already bringing the next defendant into the courtroom, a vagabond who smelled of urine. The show was over, the public shuffling towards the exit, grinning.
“Don’t you worry,” I said to the lawyer. “How much time do I have to pay the sum?”
“Two months.”
“Then I’ll find a way to pay it.”
He stared at me, his Adam’s apple working up and down his thin neck. “I’m sorry, Miss Mauzer,” he said at last. “I should have prepared you better.” He leaned over to pick up his briefcase. “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”
Five minutes later, I stood on the steps of the courthouse, the frozen expanse of the Baltic Sea stretching ahead of me. The guidebooks called Helsinki the White City of the North, except that there was nothing white about it. To me, this was a city of softened greys and sunless mornings, of blurry shadows and damp drizzle. Its sky was ancient and low, its air charged with salt. A city of seafarers, merchants and soldiers. This was a place I was determined to once again call home. Luck or no luck.
2
Hella
The snow globe sat on my desk, on top of a sheet of wrapping paper. There was a figurine of a child inside it. It looked like Eva: painfully thin, almost translucent, with a great mane of red-gold hair that reached down to her waist. The hair didn’t move as I turned the globe upside down – only the synthetic snow did. It swirled inside the glass sphere, the plastic child caught in a snowstorm. With the tips of my fingers, I caressed the smooth cool surface, thinking of all the little phrases I had stashed away in preparation for the big day: We don’t have to be friends – I just want us to get to know each other a little. I’m not trying to replace anyone, Eva. Your dad and I never meant for it to happen, but sometimes life is like this. It sweeps you off your feet.
“No no no no no,” Steve said, restlessly pacing in my tiny, cluttered office. Three steps to the left took him to the window and the view of the patched-up roofs that stretched all the way to the green-and-gold dome of Uspenski Cathedral. One step to the right, and he was in front of the door that opened on what the landlord insisted on calling a reception area – in reality, a room little larger than a cupboard, furnished with two mismatched chairs and an umbrella stand 20 crammed between them. “You’re kind, and generous, and selfless. And tough,” Steve added, once he shot a glance at the reception area and confirmed that it was empty. “You’re not asking this of me. You’re not that kind of person.”
Rising up from my chair, I turned to face him. “I am, trust me.”
Steve rubbed his face with both hands. He looked tired, his tall frame slumping forward a little, his blue eyes bloodshot. “You’re the kind of person who blackmails the father of a fragile child?”
“Yes,” I said, after a glance at the snow globe. I hadn’t got round to wrapping my gift, and now I probably never would. “That’s me exactly. So is it a yes or a no?”
I’d never meant to have this conversation in the first place. The day had already been awful enough as it was; first the courthouse, then a food stamp office where I’d had to queue for an hour before being told by a bored employee that they’d just run out of coupons and I had better come back the following day. And now this.
It had started innocently enough, with Steve dropping by to tell me he was awfully sorry but he wouldn’t be able to see me tonight after all. He had forgotten that Eva was performing in a school play. Playing Ophelia, can you imagine? He had to go to the play. Of course he did.
“Lovely,” I replied. I had been planning on spending my evening at home with Steve, but the theatre was even better. Even when played by fourteen-year-olds, Shakespeare has the power to make one realize how insignificant our problems are in the grand scheme of things.
Steve paused. He had been wearing his coat when he came in, but when we had started talking he had taken it off and slung it over the back of the visitors’ chair, the only comfortable one in the room. 21
“Hella,” he said. “I know it’s not a good time…”
I should have stopped him there. I should have shrugged it off, told him it didn’t matter. But some angry force inside me, looking for a fight and more reasons to cry, decided that it was time to finally clarify the terms of our relationship.
“Didn’t you say that Elsbeth and Eva both know we’re living together? Didn’t you” – here I paused because I found it difficult to control my voice – “didn’t you tell me that Eva was looking forward to meeting me?” I looked at the globe; I wanted to smash it against the wall. How happy I had been when I found it in a little store on Kirkkokatu. I had been looking for the perfect gift, and that was the one: not too personal, but thoughtful nonetheless.
Steve threw his hands up in the air. “True,” he said. “All true. But now’s not a good time. Eva is worried about the performance. She’s afraid she’ll forget her lines, afraid she’ll look ridiculous in front of her classmates. You know how it is with teenage girls.”
“But she doesn’t have to see me,” I said. “I’ll stay put in my seat, you don’t even have to tell her I’m there. I don’t know much about teenage girls, but from what I hear they’re pretty self-obsessed. She probably won’t even notice the woman sitting next to her father.”
“Probably not,” said Steve. “But Elsbeth will.”
“And is she nervous because her daughter’s acting in a school play?”
“She,” Steve said, frowning at me, “will be nervous because her own parents are coming and she hasn’t told them about our separation yet.”
“Oh. So you’ll all go like a happy little family, and you’ll see me tomorrow when you can?” My voice took on a sarcastic undertone, but Steve pretended not to notice. 22
“Not like a happy little family. Like a family. Why’s that a problem? You’re an adult, Hella. You should understand. A big girl like you.”
He shouldn’t have started on the big girl thing. I’d heard that one more than enough; no wonder I snapped. “I’ve been very understanding for the last four years. Maybe now it’s time I start thinking about myself a little.”
“Don’t you always?” Steve was getting as angry as I was, his jaw set and unyielding, his eyes narrow. “No one forced you to embark on an affair with a married man.”
The realization hit me like a slap in the face. “It’s you,” I said. “All this time I thought it was about Elsbeth, but it’s you. You’re still not ready to introduce your daughter to me. You’re still not sure that you and I are a couple.”
All those evenings I had spent waiting for him, all his claims that his marriage was over, that he was only staying for the sake of his child, that his sickly wife couldn’t manage on her own – it all came back and crushed me like a tidal wave. When I emerged, there was only one thing that mattered. I needed to know where I stood.
I took a deep breath. Then, in a voice as loud and clear as I could muster, I asked him to choose. Either it was me, in which case I was going to see the damned play, or it was them. And if it was them, I wanted him out of my life.
“Is that what you really want?” Steve said. He was standing in front of me, one hand on top of the filing cabinet, the other balled into a fist.
“Yes,” I said, forcing the tremor out of my voice. “It’s simple really.”
At this, Steve looked out of the window with a puzzled expression on his face. It was snowing again, another dreadful winter’s day, the sun hovering just above the line of the horizon, almost erased by blurry white streaks of snow. In 23 an hour, the sun would set. So this is it, I thought. The last straw. Could it really be that simple? A child’s school play, for Christ’s sake, we’d been through worse. He loved me. I knew he did. He would do the right thing.
His glance left the window and stopped on me.
“Then,” he said, “we’re over.” He picked up his coat from the chair, started to pull it on as he turned for the door. “You can put my things in a suitcase and leave it on the landing. I doubt anyone would want to steal my stuff.”
With his hand on the doorknob, Steve paused as if he wanted to say something, then thought better of it. He shrugged and walked out, leaving me behind. Like a fish just out of water, my mouth gaping open, my mind blank. 24
3
Hella
The realization of what had just happened dawned on me after the sound of Steve’s footsteps died away on the stairs. I had put too many expectations on that first meeting with Eva. I couldn’t be light-hearted about it any longer; I couldn’t put things into perspective. And of course, with the weight of my pathetic hope crushing all rational thought, I had blown it.
Uninvited images flooded my mind: the cold nights to come, the empty apartment above the language school, dinners for one eaten straight out of a pan because what did it matter now?
My first instinct was to go home, open a bottle of vodka and drink myself into oblivion. Erase all coherent thought, erase the longing.
Wallow in self-pity.
Sob my heart out.
It seemed like a good idea; the only thing that stopped me was the woman waiting across the street. I saw her as I was leaving the building. She had been looking up at my windows, but when she spotted me on the doorstep she 25 turned away quickly and pretended to busy herself with her watch. This made me pause. Even though the woman’s face was partly hidden by a sable hat, it was not Elsbeth, of that I was certain. Elsbeth was tall, blonde and pretty as a picture. Most people I knew looked surprised when they saw her, and I knew why: they wondered why Steve, Helsinki’s most popular – and only – American DJ and radio presenter, had left her for me. This woman was short, buxom and blonde. A peroxide blonde, not a natural one. There was something jarring about her, but I only realized what it was when I retraced my steps and dived back into the building. The woman’s face looked cheap, there was too much makeup – the lips were too red, the eyebrows non-existent. But her clothes were expensive: a sable coat, soft leather gloves and the sort of shoes you only saw on the feet of people who never had to walk anywhere.
The woman was here to see me, but she was hesitating. I considered my options. The vodka binge was still tempting, but could I afford it? What I had told the judge that very morning had been wishful thinking: I did advertise my murder-solving capabilities, but no murder investigations had come my way yet, and they probably never would. The only people who came to see me were, ironically enough, wives who suspected their husbands of cheating. And money was always tight. In all the cases I’d had, the husband had been the only breadwinner in the family. The wives paid me with whatever they could put aside from their grocery shopping budget, and that wasn’t much. So that woman on the street, with her fancy clothes… Even if it was the usual philandering spouse story, I had to take it. Unless I wanted to be penalized further for not paying the court.
I climbed the stairs back to my third-floor office and waited, forcing myself to recite the Kalevala to avoid thinking 26 about Steve. I was on Beauteous Daughter of the Ether, her existence sad and hopeless / Thus alone to live for ages when I heard a tentative knock on the door.
“Miss Mauzer?”
Up close, the woman looked older than I’d first thought, closer to fifty than forty. Her name, Klara Nylund, told me nothing.
I pointed at the visitors’ chair. “How can I help you, Mrs Nylund?”
“It’s Miss,” the woman corrected, pulling off her gloves. Her nails were painted the exact same shade as her lipstick: ruby red. “It’s about one of my girls.”
It was only then that I understood. My potential client was nobody’s wife. She ran a brothel. There were a number of them around – Helsinki was a port city, after all, and with all the refugees flooding the streets, lots of girls were on the market. Although, given the woman’s clothing, this brothel was probably at the upper end of the market. I flipped my notepad open. “What happened to the girl?”
“She drowned,” the woman said matter-of-factly. “Last month. Nellie went down on the ice in West Harbour. The ice gave way.”
“And?”
“And the police seem to think it was an accident.”
“But you don’t believe that,” I said. Immediately, my inner voice screamed: Bravo, Sherlock! If you go on like this, your visitor will get up and leave.
The woman must have been thinking along the same lines because she squinted at me. “How long have you been doing this job, Miss Mauzer?”
“I was a police officer,” I told her, with more confidence than I really felt. “In Helsinki, I was the first woman ever to be part of the homicide squad. After that, I worked in Ivalo.” 27
“And now you’re here,” the woman added, scanning the room. She didn’t need to add anything. The threadbare rug on the floor, the chipped desk, the icy chill of my office, they all screamed failure. “He assured me you were OK,” the woman said doubtfully to her folded hands. “How much do you charge?”
“It’s five hundred markka a day, or we can agree on a flat fee. Did someone recommend me?” I tried to keep the hopeful note out of my voice. No one ever did. Aside from the cuckolded wives, of course, but I doubted very much that any of them would be speaking to a madam.
The woman nodded, fumbling in her bag. “Him.”
She pulled out a business card. Cream vellum, elegantly formed letters. Chief Inspector Jokela, Head, Helsinki Homicide Squad.
“You know him, right?” the woman asked. She was having second thoughts.
“Jokela and I go back a long way,” I said. What I didn’t say was that there was no love lost between us, and never had been. And that I couldn’t imagine any reason for him to recommend me, except if he was convinced that the girl’s death had indeed been an accident and police time would be wasted on it.
There was a silence. I kept my eyes on the card, wondering whether the woman would get up and leave, and if that was the case, whether I was still going for the vodka bottle. Just as I was about to suggest to Miss Nylund that she come back once she had made up her mind, she pulled an envelope out of her bag and slapped it on my desk.
“Good,” she said. “I hope you’re good. Because Nellie – she was one of the better ones. I want you to find who did this to her, and I want that person to pay for what he did.”
4
Chief Inspector Mustonen
“My dear boy,” boomed Jokela’s voice, “come over here.” Those who were still at the office at that hour watched as I shot a desperate glance at the wall clock – it was a quarter past five already and I had promised Sofia I’d be home early. I picked up a folder at random and trudged towards Jokela’s office. I knew why my boss was asking to see me: it was time for one of our increasingly frequent drinking sessions. Just the two of us and a bottle of expensive whisky, the provenance of which I preferred to ignore.
Work sessions, Jokela called them. Some days, he gave the impression of actually believing in that excuse. He would make me open a file and ask me irrelevant questions while he poured the whisky. The work part of the sessions usually lasted for the first glass or two. After that, we would invariably slip into a discussion that had nothing to do with the case and everything to do with the way the world at large was treating Jon Jokela.
“Here,” my boss said, pushing a chair towards me. “Have a seat.” Jokela was wearing the new open-collared uniform that had been created in preparation for the Olympic Games 29 the previous year. The uniform was supposed to give the police a modern, less military appearance. I rarely wore it: for what I had to do, plain clothes were better.
“So, my boy, what have you been working on?”
“Roof signs for police cars. This way, the public will be aware of our presence. I’m certain it will reduce traffic offences.”
Jokela pulled a face. “Haven’t heard of such a thing. More likely than not folks will get scared and drive into ditches. Do they put roof signs on police cars in America?”
“No. We’d be the first. And here’s another idea. Why don’t we establish a dedicated traffic police? All those farmers we hired in the run-up to the Olympics would be perfect for the job.”
My boss pulled an immaculate handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and wiped his forehead. His office was stiflingly hot. The windows, sealed for the winter, were steamed up with fog; a gas fire hissed in a corner. There was talk of the homicide squad moving into another, more modern building, but dinosaurs like Jokela were resisting. He loved being there, loved the moose antlers fixed to the walls, the bulbous office furniture, the view across the square to the neoclassical facade of Helsinki Cathedral. To him, that office represented some sort of gentlemen’s club. But Jokela didn’t have a family, he didn’t have a life outside of the office. I did.
“Well, I don’t know,” Jokela said. “Maybe there’s something in your idea. I’ll think about it. And what about the rest of the boys? What are they doing?”
“The Goldberg assault file is ready to go.”
“Good job.”
“Not mine,” I smiled. “Pinchus was the one working on it, and he’s been very diligent as usual. A valuable member 30 of the team.” I paused. There was a pink business card on Jokela’s desk.
Jokela glanced up at me. “What is it?”
“I saw you talking to a woman, earlier this afternoon. I was wondering if it was the drowned girl’s madam?”
“That was her.”
