“I don’t know. But I’ll send you an invite if it comes to that.”
Kulta slowed the car down at the first seven-story brick building. Behind it towered two more buildings, and beyond them spread a thicket of woods. Two or three smaller structures were on the other side of the street.
“It’s the middle one,” Joutsamo said.
Kulta drove slowly past the first building and turned right down the driveway.
A few cars sat in the parking lot. One of them, a rusty old Opel Kadett without a license plate, looked like it would fall apart at the turn of the ignition. Behind the parking lot was a covered dumpster, into which a teenage girl was tossing a trash bag.
Kulta spotted a blue-and-white police Ford Mondeo by the front door and pulled into a parking space. He looked around, but couldn’t see a Forensics van. In a routine cause-of-death investigation, Kulta and Joutsamo would’ve handled it on their own; but since this was an obvious homicide, Kulta had called in the Forensics team. Kannas, head of Forensics, had told him that his investigators would be there shortly.
Grabbing their kits, the pair got out of the car and half ran through the slush to the door. A rolled-up newspaper was wedged between the door and the jamb to keep the door from locking, so they didn’t need a code or a key. Kulta closed the door carefully, leaving the newspaper in place.
“Did you know that it’s a myth that men engage in more domestic violence than women?” Kulta asked Joutsamo in the stairwell.
“Is that right?”
“In the 1980s men still owned the majority, but these days almost half of the perpetrators are women,” Kulta continued.
“And where did you get this information?” Joutsamo asked.
“From Takamäki.”
“Well, then it must be true.”
The stairwell smelled of cleansers, but looked dirty and shabby. The walls were all scratched up and dented from furniture being carried in and out during the frequent moves. Two baby strollers were corralled at the bottom of the stairs. From the tenant directory on the wall Joutsamo saw that Vatanen’s apartment was on the third floor. She proceeded slowly, looking for things that didn’t belong in the stairwelclass="underline" blood, paper, trash, clothing, or anything that the killer might have tossed or dropped while leaving the building.
“Take the elevator,” Joutsamo said to Kulta, continuing to the stairs. She climbed up at a deliberate pace, and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, like a trail of blood leading to one of the other apartments.
Kulta waited for her upstairs, talking with a uniformed officer. Joutsamo recognized the veteran, Tero Partio.
“That’s the apartment,” Kulta said, though Joutsamo figured as much since another officer was guarding the door.
“You guys got here fast,” Partio said.
“Short drive,” Joutsamo replied.
She saw a fourth man, in overalls, standing on the landing. He was taller than she was, but much shorter than Kulta. It was hard to tell exactly under the blue-and-yellow overalls, but Joutsamo estimated the man to be five foot nine and stocky. His face was stern and angular, and something about him made her take a second look.
“This is the building custodian,” Partio said. “He unlocked the door for us.”
“Sergeant Joutsamo from Helsinki PD Violent Crimes,” Joutsamo said. “And you are?”
“Jorma Korpivaara,” the man said, extending his hand.
Joutsamo noticed a bandage wrapped around the man’s left index finger. Korpivaara had short hair, a stubbly beard, and a couple of scars on his face. The man’s soft handshake didn’t match his gruff exterior. Joutsamo also sensed something vulnerable about him.
“So you’re the custodian?”
“Sort of. The city takes care of most things here, but I’ve agreed to be on call in case a drunk forgets their keys…or if the police need help.”
The next question would’ve been better addressed to the guy’s wife, but since there wasn’t one, he had to do.
“Do you know this Laura Vatanen?”
“Laura… Yeah, I know her. A nice girl, though she didn’t always play with a full deck of cards.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m no doctor, but I think she was handicapped somehow. Not like the ones in a wheelchair, but sometimes she sounded weird when she talked, and she had some involuntary movements. Just a bit off. I don’t understand much about those things, though.”
“How did you know?”
“She told me once. But I could see it for myself.”
“Did you see anyone going into the apartment today? Anyone other than the police,” Joutsamo asked.
“No, I didn’t. Today’s my day off, so I had a beer in the morning and was watching a movie when the phone rang.”
“So you have no idea who could’ve killed Laura?” Joutsamo asked, fixing her eye on the man. She didn’t detect any signs of nervousness.
“No,” he replied, shaking his head.
“Where’d you hurt your hand, by the way?”
Korpivaara glanced at his hand, embarrassed.
“I was drunk, tried to cut a loaf of stale bread, and missed. It’s not too bad.”
“Okay. We’ll talk more later,” Joutsamo said and turned to Partio.
“Can I go now?” the custodian asked.
“Go ahead,” Joutsamo replied.
He stepped into the waiting elevator.
“Strange creep. Doesn’t seem to have all the Indians in the canoe,” Kulta remarked.
Joutsamo glanced at her colleague.
“Funny, that’s what they say about you. And probably about me too,” she smirked.
Partio pulled out his notepad and went over his notes: the times of day, his observations of the body’s position in the middle of the living room floor, and how the victim’s throat was slashed from ear to ear. Joutsamo asked him to write up a report.
“Who called the police?”
Partio pointed to the apartment across the hall.
“A woman in her seventies lives there. Name’s Iina Ridanpӓӓ. When I talked with her she told me she heard noise from the neighbor’s apartment around ten o’clock this morning, but didn’t think much of it. She said all sorts of people came and went there.”
“All sorts? At ten in the morning?”
“That’s what I thought, too. She called them creeps and hooligans, who don’t own a watch.”
“But this Ridanpӓӓ didn’t call the police at that time?”
“No. She’s physically handicapped, and can’t really get around, and I’d say it’s probably due to alcoholism. Anyway, Laura Vatanen did the shopping for Ridanpӓӓ at the Kannelmӓki Prisma, half a mile away. Today at eleven o’clock, Laura was supposed to run to the grocery store and the liquor store, and I got the idea that liquor was the higher priority.”
Joutsamo let Partio continue after he glanced at his notes.
“The woman said Laura never skipped the errands. Ridanpӓӓ paid her well and Laura was allowed to get a few things for herself, too. When Laura didn’t show up, Ridanpӓӓ went over and rang the doorbell. As there was no answer, she called the police.”
Kulta interrupted, “And they claim that folks in Helsinki don’t care about their neighbors.”
“Go on,” Joutsamo urged Partio, ignoring Kulta’s comment.
“Well, we got the call from Dispatch for a wellness check. We called the custodian, and Korpivaara was waiting at the door when we arrived. We went inside.”
“Just you two, not him?”
“Just us two. What caught my attention was that nothing implied a struggle.”
“No overturned chairs, magazines on the floor, or broken bottles?”
“Nothing. Oddly, the coffeemaker was on.”
“Did the cups have coffee in them?” Joutsamo asked.
Partio shook his head. “No. I checked; they were empty. But we only did a preliminary investigation. We saw the body and looked around to see if the perpetrator was still in the apartment.”
“Did Vatanen live alone?”
“I think so,” Partio said and looked at Nieminen for confirmation.