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circumstances surrounding my son’s death quickly. This kind of accident is sufficiently unpleasant even without being interviewed by the police. It is entirely too much to ask that my devastated wife answer questions of any sort. I also heard that Tommi’s friends were all dragged down here and interrogated by the police last night.”
    “I’m sorry, but we have to explore every possibility. One of his friends may have been present when Tommi died.”
    “Are you saying that my son was murdered?”
    “I’m not saying anything yet. But we have to take that possibility into account.”
    “Tommi’s friends are upstanding, highly cultured young people. What reason would they have to kill anyone? If this is a case of murder, which I don’t believe for a second, then it must have been someone from outside. There were a number of vacation home break-ins during the spring, and all sorts of bums have been camping out in the area.”
    It struck me as unlikely that even an amateur would have set out to rob summer cottages in the middle of a prime summer weekend, but I let Peltonen talk.
    “And it may simply be that Tommi tripped. I’m sure they’d all been drinking too much, and sometimes the dock can be slippery.”
    “Yes...What did he hit his head on, then? The edge of the dock is so high above the surface of the water that it doesn’t getwet, so if Tommi hit his head on it, we would still be able to see evidence of it. And the worn, rounded wooden edge of the dock wouldn’t have left such a nasty mark. There aren’t even any rocks next to the dock for him to have hit his head on; the nearest rocks are the ones he was floating against when he was found. We’ve even tested that scenario and established that it’s impossible to hit those rocks falling off the dock.”
    The boys from Forensics had had a good laugh about that test, which had mainly consisted of floundering around in the water, but they had done it anyway.
    Peltonen clearly wanted facts. Theories weren’t going to sway him in the slightest. I was all too familiar with the fact that I was often the one who ended up sitting in the witness chair when I interviewed older, powerful men. I didn’t even bother getting upset about their inquiries into my marital status or correcting their use of “Miss” with “Detective.” Whatever. I was tired of trying to change every little thing about the world. I even used plastic grocery bags every once in a while and occasionally resorted to buying my morning yogurt in single-serving packages instead of the usual liter carton.
    “My wife was also extremely upset that her fingerprints were taken, as though she were some sort of common criminal. You could at least have saved that indignity for a later time.”
    “Did they take your fingerprints yesterday? I’m sorry. That was an error.”
    Someone in Forensics had been rushing things. I had asked them to take the choir members’ prints for safety’s sake, but I hadn’t said anything about the Peltonens. Now I tried to cover my embarrassment.
    “You have another son, Henri Peltonen? And did I understand correctly that he is out of the country for a yachting competition in the United States?”
    “Yes. Henri is the second trimmer on a maxi-class yacht named
Marlboro of Finland
. We don’t know yet whether we want to notify him of this unhappy news on the boat or wait until the competition is over. This race is very important to him. Another of Tommi’s acquaintances is also on the boat, Peter Wahlroos, whose wife, Pia, was also at Villa Maisetta, if I understand correctly. Hopefully this won’t completely ruin the boys’ race.”
    Again that reaction of focusing on trivialities, I thought.
    I didn’t get much information out of Peltonen, who seemed to have kept up with his oldest son’s life at only the most superficial level. Tommi had visited his parents’ home in Westend for dinner from time to time, and they had met up quite often at the villa, but