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would have expected to meet Seija Saarela at an occult convention rather than on an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea. Her talk of the bad energy on the island had me prepared for a bunch of mystical mumbo jumbo, but Saarela seemed sensible and calm given the circumstances.
    “Yes, Juha was a little drunk, but so were we all,” she said. “It was at least one when I went to sleep, and Katrina went to bed at the same time. Mikke said he was going to go grab a book from the boat. My impression was that Juha was going to bed too, but I wasn’t keeping track of him. To tell the truth, I never liked him much.”
    “Why?”
    “There was a lot of good in him. He was genuinely interested in protecting the sea, but at the same time he was always thinking about money. Of course you can understand that when you remember that he was raised his whole life to inherit the family business. Given that, the radical changes he made so the company could go green are something to admire. But he could never hide that deep down, he was always a bully.”
    I nodded. I had more or less the same impression of Juha Merivaara. Then I asked Seija what her relationship was to the Merivaara family.
    “I’m just here with Mikke.” Seija blushed a little. “I met him a few years ago, just after the construction company I worked for went bankrupt. Instead of complaining, I decided to learn new things. I took a coastal sailing class at the community college, even though I didn’t know anything about boats. Mikke was teaching it, and somehow we just hit it off . . .”
    “Do you mean that you’re dating Mikke Sjöberg?”
    Seija let out an embarrassed laugh. “No, no, of course not. We became good friends, and Mikke has let me come sailing with him a few times. The last time was in Estonia last month. I came here to spend one last weekend with him before he goes away for the winter.”
    Something told me Seija Saarela wouldn’t have objected to a more intimate relationship with Mikke Sjöberg, but my intuition had been wrong before when it came to men I was attracted to.
    Just then Hakkarainen from Forensics came in to say he needed me outside. I let Saarela go, grabbed a raincoat, and followed Hakkarainen back to the shore.
    “We tried to find evidence of a fall from the cliff,” Hakkarainen said. “There was one set of the right kind of tracks, but they don’t quite line up.”
    “They might be Mikke Sjöberg’s. The one who found the body. He said he slipped on his way down to see what had happened to Merivaara. We should maybe ask him exactly where he slipped,” I said.
    Hakkarainen motioned to Juha Merivaara’s body.
    “His head is in pretty bad shape, and the water has rinsed the wound so thoroughly that most of the bone fragments and brain matter are probably gone.” Turning his back to the wind, Hakkarainen started lighting a cigarette. The lighter wouldn’t cooperate, and he had to keep striking it for a while before a flame appeared. His first drags were long and luxurious, and then Hakkarainen pulled a plastic container out of his pocket to collect the ashes and filter. He never left any extra traces of his presence anywhere near a crime scene.
    “No theories yet?”
    Hakkarainen shook his head. He wasn’t in the habit of mincing words—he would give me the facts once he was 110 percent sure.
    “But you can’t rule out the possibility of homicide?”
    “No. I don’t like that there isn’t any obvious evidence of a fall. Let’s wait and see what the autopsy says. I have a strong suspicion that he was hit with something other than these rocks.”
    I heard someone fumbling down the steep slope and looked up to see an agitated Puustjärvi.
    “We need you, Maria. The Sjöbergs are trying to leave.”
    “What? They can’t just take off whenever they want.” I started climbing back up toward the fortress.
    Katrina Sjöberg stood in the kitchen with her hands on her hips.
    “Can the police please do their job?