YUSUF IS ROUSED by Jessica’s muttering and shifts his attention from his sweet roll to her. “What did you say?”
Jessica raises her eyes from her phone and shoots Yusuf an inquisitive glance. The ballpoint pen in her hand clacks against the tabletop, the way it does whenever she’s lost in thought.
“Are you speaking in Latin now too? Domande . . . Risposta . . .”
“No . . . ,” Jessica whispers. She clears her throat. Did she really say the words out loud? “It wasn’t Latin; it was Italian. It means: So many questions, but not a single answer.”
“Nicely put. A great aphorism,” Yusuf says with a nod. Then he turns back to the treat waiting in front of him.
Despite the morning’s chaos, Nina has managed to pick up some sweet rolls from the local grocery store. Coffee break has turned into a regular ritual at the homicide unit, ever since they realized it serves as fertile ground for conversation. Considering the nature of the crimes the unit investigates, outside eyes might see the tradition as gratuitously casual and unhurried. But that’s the whole point.
Jessica rubs the sugar from her palms and collects it carefully on a paper plate. The detectives sitting around the table are munching on their sweet rolls; no one is talking. Mikael has pasted four photographs to a board, one of each of the people found dead the previous night: Roger and Maria Koponen, Chief Inspector Sanna Porkka, and the beautiful brunette fished from the ice, whose identity remains a mystery.
The door opens, and Erne walks in with a tablet under his arm. The room was just aired out, and now a pungent tobacco reek wafts in. Rasmus quickly pops the rest of his sweet roll in his mouth, as if he is afraid of being punished if he is caught eating it.
“Sit down,” Erne says, walking around to the head of the table. He leans his palms against it, drums its wooden surface with his splitting fingernails. Jessica looks at him. The two of them have known each other for a long time, been in plenty of tight spots together, but she doesn’t remember ever seeing Erne this stressed before. Could the publicity the case has garnered and the pressure from the brass actually be eating at him this badly, or is he suffering from an extraordinarily aggressive man flu?
“Jessica is going to take the lead on this,” Erne says. Everyone nods. As the detective on duty, Jessica was the first to be called in to the scene, so there hasn’t been any ambiguity about this. Any other decision would be a clear statement of no confidence in Jessica.
Erne’s phone vibrates in his jeans pocket, but he pays it no mind.
“The tabloids have already published the first clickbait. They have christened the crimes ritual murders, and my guess is speculation about potential new victims is under way.” Erne puts his hands in his pockets and walks over to the middle of the table, where he reaches over to retrieve the last sweet roll. “I want you all to forget about the media. I’ll handle that. We have every chance of making a rapid breakthrough. We have Eastern Finland PD helping out, and because one of the victims is a police officer, the National Bureau of Investigation is also involved.”
“But we’re in charge, right?”
“Yup. The crimes are presumed to be related. The NBI and Eastern Finland are on the Juva case, but they answer to us and will keep us informed about the progress of their investigation.”
“OK,” Jessica says. She feels her fingers start to tingle. It’s a huge case, and as principal investigator, she’s responsible for solving it.
“Do we have anything new, Jessie?” Erne munches on his roll and wipes sugar from the corner of his mouth as he speaks.
Jessica sits up straighter and tries to project as much decisiveness as possible. “We have to find out what device was used to log in to Roger Koponen’s YouTube account this morning. Because no mobile phone was found in the vicinity of the burned male body, it’s possible, maybe even probable, that the video was uploaded from Koponen’s own phone.”
“Call data?”
“The phone was last traced to a base station located near the site of the murder. Within the next thirty minutes, we’ll find out if the phone was powered on again this morning.”
“If it turns out the video was uploaded from Koponen’s phone, we have even more reason to suspect that the murderers from Kulosaari and Juva are working together,” Erne says.
Everyone nods. Erne reaches for his wool blazer, which is hanging from the back of his chair. His movements are somehow stiff and slow and have been for quite some time.
“The good news is, we don’t have to come up with a communications strategy. The perpetrators have handled it for us,” Erne says as he steps toward the door. “The media and the public will draw their own conclusions about the case. We ought to prepare ourselves for some measure of panic.”
Jessica stands too. “We need suspects. And fast.”
“Start with the publisher,” Erne says.
“Why?”
For the first time in ages, a cautious smile creeps onto Erne’s face. “As far as I’m aware, they’re the only party benefiting from this mess. I overheard at the press briefing that Koponen’s Witch Hunt books sold out online in all Nordic countries in a couple of hours.”