Jarkko Sipila - Darling

Joutsamo stepped into the room where a dozen officers in civilian clothes were already seated. Takamäki had asked his group to come in, so Kulta, Kohonen, and Suhonen were there, too. Nyberg was comfortably soaking in a spa somewhere and would be back tomorrow.

Pekka Mӓkelӓ, a fifty-year-old detective with glasses and a mustache had driven over from Turku, along with one of his investigators, Hanna Vuori. Joutsamo had never met Mӓkelӓ or the austere-looking Vuori.

Jaakko Nykänen represented the National Bureau of Investigation. Nykänen, sporting a walrus mustache, used to be in Takamӓki’s unit before being promoted to detective lieutenant in the Espoo PD and then moving on to the National Bureau of Investigation. Joutsamo knew Nykänen well from her time in Espoo, where she was one of his investigators.

Other somber-looking men were in the room. The forty-year-old Risto Miettinen in a gray cardigan was from the Violent Crimes Unit of Eastern Uusimaa, east of Helsinki. He was present because the body was found in his precinct. Joutsamo had seen him in the course of a few investigations and respected him.

Takamäki glanced at his watch. It was three minutes before two, but since everyone was there, they could start. Joutsamo had printed a photo of Maiju Rahkola and attached it on the whiteboard with a magnet. Next to the picture were the words that Joutsamo obtained from the missing persons report: “Disappeared June 17, 2010 in Turku. Seen at a party in the evening; no sign of her since.”

“Okay,” Takamäki began. “Based on the preliminary information, the body found in the woods is that of Maiju Rahkola. Of course we can’t be one hundred percent certain, but this is our starting point.”

The investigation was multidimensional; the body that disappeared in Turku was found in the city of Vantaa by the Helsinki Police. With Turku being a hundred miles west of Helsinki, and Vantaa twelve miles northeast, the three cities formed a slanted triangle. The case appeared complicated, so the NBI was also interested. And the distance from the crime scene to NBI headquarters was less than five miles.

Technically, the Turku PD was in charge, since the missing persons report was filed there. The officers agreed that Takamäki would chair the meeting, and they would later decide who would head the investigation.

“Forensics is on the scene,” Takamäki began. “We have units from Helsinki, Eastern Uusimaa, and the NBI, and a physician from the Medical Examiner’s Office. We don’t have a lot of information yet, which is understandable since the body was found only three hours ago. At this point we don’t even have an educated guess as to whether Maiju Rahkola was killed in the woods or if her body was hidden there afterward. The cause of death is also unknown… And yes, we strongly suspect that the body is Maiju Rahkola’s, but we don’t know for sure.”

“What do we know about the disappearance?” Takamäki asked, looking at the guys from Turku.

“We don’t know much,” Mӓkelӓ said apologetically. “On June 17 she went bar-hopping in downtown Turku with a couple of her friends. She was only seventeen, but she looked older and had no problem getting in, which is usually the case with attractive girls. Her friends saw her last in Restaurant Galax sometime after midnight. That’s the last sign of her.”

“No phone calls or anything?” asked Nykänen from the NBI.

“No. We heard about the disappearance two days later when her parents got worried. At first it wasn’t considered a homicide, but a typical runaway teenager. She was expected to return in the next few days. We got her cell phone info, but her phone was turned off somewhere downtown about the time of the disappearance. After she’d been missing for two weeks, we published that photo,” Mӓkelӓ said, pointing to the picture on the board. “We checked the security videos downtown and stopped by a few known drug nests, but she had disappeared into thin air.”

Joutsamo’s cell phone beeped and she checked the text: “Korpivaara is not the killer. Positively. -Lind.”

Yeah, sure, Joutsamo thought and didn’t reply.

Mӓkelӓ from Turku pulled a file out of his bulging briefcase and set it on the table. The name Rahkola was written on it in red marker.

“This is all the material we’ve accumulated in the case. It was put on the back burner that summer because of a couple other cases, but we’ve revisited it a few times with no progress.”

So, basically, insubstantial investigating, Joutsamo thought. They weren’t taking the disappearance seriously. No body, no homicide.

“Actually, we thought the girl had drowned in the river and her body would show up at some point,” Mӓkelӓ continued. “The problem is that the Aura River runs into the Gulf of Finland and the body could end up there.”

“Yeah sure,” Nykänen said. “The Vantaa River is only a mile from where the body was found, so it could’ve gotten there by first floating in the Gulf of Finland, and then up the Vantaa River…”

Kulta scoffed at the comment but didn’t say anything. When the big guns talk, lowly detectives should keep quiet.

“That’s not good,” Takamäki said. “Let’s try to keep the jokes funny at least… So, we don’t have much information on the disappearance. We’ll have to revisit that. What about the discovery of the body?”

“Yeah. I went into the woods based on the tip and found the body after a bit of shoveling,” Suhonen said.

“Can you be more specific?” Takamäki asked.

“Sure. An ex-inmate I know had a heart attack, and I went to visit him in the hospital. He told me his former cell mate had told him about a dead body hidden in the woods. According to him, the cell mate had heard it from someone else.”

“Give us names-otherwise we can’t keep up,” Nykänen inserted.

“I won’t disclose the name of my informant, but Takamäki knows it. My buddy had heard the story from Lauri Korhonen who got run over by a train a couple of weeks ago.”

“That’s a familiar name,” Nykänen said. “Korhonen ran some meth deals in Espoo in his day.”

“Yeah, but he’s dead now,” Suhonen said. “I checked his record. So Korhonen wasn’t the killer; it was his cell mate. My informant only knew his nickname, Nortti. And he couldn’t remember exactly when they were in prison together.”

“Nortti,” Nykänen said, mulling over the name. “Now we just need to know if it was red or green,” he joked, referring to the cigarette brands that had been one of Finland’s most popular for many decades. “I know a few guys by that nickname, but I don’t think any of them served time in the last year. Korhonen had to have heard about it after June 2010.”

Mӓkelӓ spoke up. “Are you sure your informant hasn’t made up the prison story to get you off his scent?”

“I’m sure,” Suhonen said. “If he had killed her, he would’ve said so. And if he wanted to conceal it, he wouldn’t have told me anything about it in the first place.”

“That makes sense,” Mӓkelӓ said. “But it shouldn’t be hard to find out. Let’s go over the list of guys who served a sentence with Lauri Korhonen.”

“I’ve got that list,” Joutsamo said and showed him the document. “Korhonen was in Helsinki prison from September to December 2010 and another stretch from February to March this year. The prison gave me his cell mates’ names.”

Joutsamo passed out copies. The list had more than ten names: Malmberg, Pesonen, Mölsӓ, Saarinen, Aarnio, Kinnunen, Lyytinen, Sandström, Pentikӓinen, Cuchna, Leikas, Talja, and Holopainen.

While the others were looking at the list, Joutsamo continued, “I checked everyone’s information and nobody listed had the nickname Nortti. Not even close. There was Tanka, Mocha, Rask, Mics, Ronda, and Hole…but none that would remotely sound like Nortti, a smoke, or even North.”