Free Fatal Headwind by Leena Lehtolainen Page A

visit his father and brother. My relationship with Martti was not so good.”
    Katrina lifted the coffee cup to her lips and took a couple of sips before continuing.
    “Martti died in ’82, the same year Mikke graduated from high school. He inherited half of his father’s fortune, so one quarter of the company. At that point I thought that my responsibility to look after him was done and went back to my home island, which I had been missing for a while.”
    During her account, I had been scratching names and dates on the notepad in front of me and now had most of a Sjöberg-Merivaara family tree. Still some of the family members and the ownership positions in the company were mixed up in my head. Hopefully the recording and Puupponen’s notes would clear them up.
    “Let’s move forward to last night. So you came from Föglö to celebrate Anne’s birthday?”
    “We weren’t that close. I came to see a couple of my friends on the mainland and my son, of course. Mikke suggested that we sail back to Åland together, and Rödskär was on the way. I never know about Mikke’s voyages. This one might end up lasting a year or more. That’s why I take whatever opportunities I have to see him.”
    Katrina’s voice was melancholy, and suddenly she looked old and tired.
    “Had you heard about how Anne Merivaara’s birthday celebration ended last year?”
    “Mikke told me. I met Harri Immonen a couple of times myself. Pleasant man. No inane chitchat.”
    “What was the mood like at the birthday dinner?” I asked, taking another sandwich.
    “The usual. Juha saying the banal things you always say on someone’s birthday, Jiri sulking, Riikka and Tapio concentrating on each other. The rest of us tried to keep up the mood.”
    I was trying to find a reason for Juha Merivaara’s drinking, even though I still didn’t have a blood-alcohol count from the autopsy. And if Juha turned out to have fallen because of a heart attack, that would close the case.
    But his head injuries had been strange. Koivu had thought so too.
    “What time did you go to sleep last night?”
    “It was 1:12. I remember, because when I lay down, I wondered when the last time was I had stayed up so late. The life I lead is very regular. I fall asleep at ten thirty and wake up at exactly five o’clock.”
    Katrina Sjöberg said she assumed that Juha had gone to sleep at the same time she had. She thought for a while before continuing.
    “I slept very restlessly, both because I’d had alcohol and because I’m not used to sleeping in the same room with complete strangers. Around three someone was up and about, probably on the way to the outhouse. And a little after that I woke up to the sound of a motor.”
    “A motor? Do you mean another boat came to the island?”
    “I couldn’t say. That wasn’t very likely with the weather and how dark it was. But the sound did seem to be coming from somewhere close.”
    The idea that someone else could have visited the island during the night opened up too many possibilities. For now I decided to concentrate on who I knew had been on the island. I asked Katrina Sjöberg what kind of relationship Juha had with his wife.
    “Well . . . I don’t know if I’m the right person to answer that. I imagine things were good enough, since they did stay married for more than twenty years. Although Anne has changed in the past few years. When she was younger I thought of her as an ordinary girl who was happy simply to have married well. Definitely not the trophy-wife type, though, since she’s always worked in the company except for short maternity leaves. But recently she developed more of an edge, more depth, like she’d started looking at things from a new perspective. The eco-paint idea really came from Anne, and the children’s passion for other environmental issues also seemed to rub off on her. I think that Anne and Juha had some disagreements about their worldviews. Nature and the sea were certainly important