“Evidently. That’s why they saw each other a lot.”
“Eli has always had a big mouth. Did your dad say how the company was doing?”
“He mentioned that there was a recession in Finland and things weren’t looking too good. But he had made it through the last recession and he intended to make it through this one, too…”
“Which reminds me. How did Roni react when your dad wanted to stay on as CEO?”
“Roni, Roni, Roni. I don’t know; we haven’t talked about it. It would have only been a year or two at most.”
“Your father didn’t seem concerned about anything?”
“Not to me. When we ended the call, he said to say hello to everyone and reminded me that we’d see each other for his birthday.”
“We found the car that the killer used. It turned up right near your folks’ house.”
“Roni told me about that. A pretty unusual place… Audacious.”
“The car was stolen. From Estonia.”
“Is the killer Estonian?”
“We don’t know. It’s possible. The car is owned by an investment firm based in Estonia, the same company that financed the construction of the new building for your dad’s company.”
Lea stopped and stared at me with her chocolate-brown eyes. It reminded me how beautiful they seemed to me when I was young… and still seemed to me now. “So what? You don’t believe it’s a coincidence?” she asked.
“It could be, but it’s a pretty strange coincidence. The company is owned by an Israeli businessman named Benjamin Hararin. You’ve probably heard of him…” Now it was my turn to stare at Lea.
“I have. Every Israeli has.”
“But Hararin is considered a straw man. The real owner of the company is the Israeli billionaire Amos Jakov. I suppose you’ve heard of him, too. He’s suspected of having contacts in the Russian mafia. It’s easier to list what he doesn’t own than to list what he does.”
Lea’s face went rigid. “Are you trying to offend me? If you are, you’ve succeeded,” she said, a cold gleam in her eye.
“What do you mean? I don’t understand…” I stammered, genuinely mystified.
“Are you trying to tell me you’re not aware that my husband is a director at the finance company owned by Jakov? Your brother and Max Oxbaum can thank him that they acquired representation rights in Finland. That’s why Dad took the loan through them. Roni, too.”
“I had no idea. Eli didn’t say a word. I didn’t even know that your brother had taken out his loan through them.”
Lea’s tone was barbed. “He did. It’s been almost two years now. My husband arranged him a loan with favourable terms. That might explain why he was able to manage it.”
I considered what Lea had just revealed to me. I had been telling the truth when I told her I had no idea that her husband was a director at Baltic Invest. All I knew was that he worked for Hararin. If Jacobson had basically got the loan from his son-in-law and for a good price, why would he have wanted to switch to a different one? Had his son-in-law warned him about the investigation by the Israeli police after all? Or had Jacobson heard unfavourable things about Baltic Invest via some other route and made the call to pull up stakes himself? I decided to get straight to the point.
“If the loan your husband arranged is so inexpensive, why would your father want to take out a new loan from a Finnish bank and get out of the old one?”
“Who said so?” Lea asked, vertical lines running between her dark brows.
“He had mentioned it to both your mother and his CFO, Pekka Hulkko. Roni was aware of it as well.”
“I hadn’t heard… Dad never talked to me about things like that. Are you sure?”
I nodded. I didn’t dare to tell her about her father’s email message to Roni at this point. It didn’t leave any room for doubt. “Can you guess what the reason might be?”
“I can certainly ask my husband if —”
“Don’t bother, at least for the meantime. Were your father and your husband on good terms?”
“I think so. They’d butt heads now and again and disagree about some things…”
I had made Lea worried. I could see it in her every gesture.
“Could your husband have mentioned something to your father that would have scared him… warned him about something, for instance?”
“You talk as if my husband were a gangster. I don’t know about anything like that… I’d better get back to Mom…”
My phone rang. I glanced at the screen and didn’t recognize the number. I went ahead and answered anyway. It was Max.
“Hi. Can I call you back later?”
“You said you wanted to see me. I’m free now…”
“Where are you?”
“At the office. But we could meet at my boat. It’s at the Lauttasaari marina.”
Max sounded like he really wanted to meet me. Just a few hours earlier it had been just the opposite. His tone was almost pleading. “I’d like to talk in confidence. I might be able to help you with your investigation, but unofficially. No one can ever find out, and I’ll never agree to testify… And you’re coming alone, right?”
“Fine. Is 8:30 all right?”
“I’ll be waiting on my boat. It’s at the C Dock. I’ll leave the door open. Slip forty-five.”
“See you there,” I said, and hung up.
I escorted Lea to her gate. She stopped and stood there eyeing me coolly, with her arms crossed.
“If you have any evidence against my husband, I’d like to hear about it.”
“Let’s talk again later. Say hello to your mother.”
I watched Lea walk away. I had forced her to think about things from a new perspective, but I wasn’t sure whether it would help or hinder the investigation.
12
What could Max want to tell me? I wondered the whole brief trip from one edge of town to the other. Max was one of the last people I could imagine revealing sensitive information about himself. He was an indulgent hedonist who denied himself nothing, annoyingly self-aware and completely blind to his own faults. As far as I could tell, Max’s bar for guilt was set extremely high.
He owned a thirty-foot fibreglass yacht, and had for years. However, he preferred spending time at the yacht club’s restaurant hobnobbing with its elite members to being at sea. This was also apparent on his boat, which looked like it had been decorated for society functions. I knew, because I had been invited to Max’s parties a couple of times.
Like the other big boats, the boat was moored crosswise at the end of the dock. The marina had security, but there was no one in sight. The area was so large that the guard hut was almost a hundred yards away.
The steel-mesh door to C Dock was open, so I didn’t need to call Max to come and open it.
I marched down the rocking pier, checking out the boats. Eli wasn’t the only one who dreamt of buying one. I’d thought about it myself. I wanted a speedy little number that would take me out to an island in minutes to drop a line. Not to fish; to angle with a hook and worm. That was enough for me. I didn’t live far from the marina, and could conceivably get a slip within walking distance.
You couldn’t help but notice Max’s boat; it was hands-down the handsomest on the dock. It must have cost a couple of hundred thousand euros. It was Norwegian-made and had all the amenities to make life on board comfortable, including an ice machine and a well-stocked bar whose mahogany walls were lined with humorous brass placards, like Bar Open: Midnight — 11 p.m.
It was getting dark, and I could see there was a light on in the cabin. A school of small fish sent the surface of the water skittering; the sea smelt heavy but intoxicating. Once when I was at the marina with Dad when I was little, he told me that if I listened very closely, the sea would tell me its secrets. It would tell me of sunken ships, of golden treasure, of pirates and Indians living on the other side of the world, of kings and princesses. The stories had travelled with the waves for hundreds of years, and now they were here. Then he lifted his hand to his ear and asked me to listen too. He described everything so vividly that I really imagined I could hear the sea telling those stories to me.