‘After all, this is your first job and your first position in the Crime Unit, so we’ll give you plenty of time to settle and learn how things work around here. We meet each morning at eight o’clock, assess ongoing cases and delegate work. The analysis team meets once a week. The secretary will be able to give you your rota and more specific timetables.’
Anna nodded and followed Virkkunen, trying to commit the location of various departments and corridors to memory, to construct some kind of mental floor map. The summer after finishing high school she’d done a stint as a seasonal worker in the documentation department on the ground floor of the daunting police station; she had helped in the processing of hundreds of urgent passport applications as people realised, just before going on holiday, that their passport had expired; she had stamped and filed documents, organised shelves and made coffee, and towards the end of her contract she’d even become acquainted with how passports were manufactured. The rest of the building was a mystery to her. It felt labyrinthine, the way large buildings always seem at first.
Virkkunen led Anna up to the Crime Unit and her new office on the fourth floor. The room was spacious and well lit and was situated halfway down the corridor opposite the staffroom. Folders and paperwork were neatly filed on shelves that covered the walls and the computer on the desk was switched off. Three flower baskets hung in the window and a yucca plant the size of a tree stood in the corner. On the wall was a picture of a blonde woman and three blonde children. They were smiling against the backdrop of an exotic sandy beach, sea and sunshine, the way any happy family would on holiday.
Coffee mugs and a Thermos flask were stacked in the room on a steel trolley. A batch of the mandatory office buns lay beneath a cloth. Anna wondered whether she dared decline. The room was so large that there was room for another table for meetings. Sitting around the table were three people, all plain-clothed police officers.
‘Morning all,’ said Virkkunen. ‘Allow me to introduce our new senior detective constable, Anna Fekete.’
Two of the officers stood up immediately and came over to greet her.
‘Good morning and a very warm welcome to our team. It’s so nice to get another woman on board – the guys here can really get on your nerves sometimes. I’m Sari, Sari Jokikokko-Pennanen – I know, what a mouthful.’
The tall, fair-haired woman, around Anna’s age, reached out a slender hand and took Anna’s in a firm, warm grip. It seemed as though her entire body was smiling.
‘Hello, everyone. I’m very excited to come and work here, though it’s all a bit nerve-wracking.’
‘No need for that. A little bird tells me you’re a damn good officer – we’re really pleased to have you. You speak really good Finnish; I can’t hear any accent,’ said Sari.
‘Thanks. I’ve lived here a long time.’
‘Oh, how long?’
‘Twenty years.’
‘You must have been just a child when you came here?’
‘I was nine, because we arrived in the spring. I turned ten that summer.’
‘You’ll have to tell me all about it sometime. This is Rauno Forsman.’
Also in his thirties, the funny-looking man extended his hand and greeted Anna with a look of curiosity in his blue eyes.
‘Morning. Welcome to the team.’
‘Good morning. Nice to meet you,’ said Anna as the thousands of butterflies in her stomach stopped beating their wings and the tension in her neck gradually began to relent. She liked these people, Sari in particular.
The third person at the table had remained seated. Virkkunen was just about to turn to him, a note of irritation in his eyes, when the man opened his mouth.
‘Hello,’ the man mumbled in Anna’s direction, then turned to Virkkunen. ‘Emergency Services took a call last night. Some refugee or whatever we’re supposed to call them these days, rang up and said someone was going to kill her. So, should we get to work?’
Virkkunen cleared his throat.
‘Esko Niemi,’ he said to Anna. ‘Your partner.’
A stifled snort came from behind Esko’s sagging cheeks, peppered with rosacea. Either that, or the man had a cold, thought Anna and greeted her new partner. He stood up and held out his hand. It was large and rough, the kind of hand that you could imagine hurling criminals into jail with a steely swipe of the wrist, but his grip felt unpleasantly limp. Anna hated handshakes like this; they gave a strangely suspicious impression of people. And still the man wouldn’t look her in the eye. Virkkunen invited everyone to have some coffee and the officers filed towards the trolley from which an enticing aroma was now wafting. The slightly strained atmosphere in the room seemed to relax, and Anna was enveloped in a buzz of friendly conversation. Still warm, the fresh buns tasted good.
Once everyone had drunk their coffee and eaten their buns, Virkkunen asked Esko to brief the team on the events of the previous night.
‘The girl gave her home address, somewhere in Rajapuro. A couple of officers went round there, but the girl wasn’t at home after all. There was the father, mother and two younger siblings, but not the girl who made the call. Kurdish family, kicked up a right hullabaloo, woke the whole house, I’m sure.’
‘A girl? The person who received the death threat was a girl?’
‘That’s what I just said,’ Esko replied without looking at Anna, then continued. ‘The girl’s father said she was visiting relatives in Vantaa. The father did all the talking, by the way. The fourteen-year-old son … I’ll be damned if I can remember their names,’ he muttered and fidgeted with a bunch of papers looking for the boy’s name. ‘Mehvan. Fourteen-year-old Mehvan interpreted.’
‘Nobody called an official interpreter?’ asked Anna. ‘You can’t use a child as an interpreter, especially in such a serious matter.’
‘Of course we asked for one, but the interpreter on duty was at the hospital on another call. There wasn’t time to get another interpreter with all the fuss going on – it would have been a waste of public money, paying overtime and what have you for two interpreters. The officers on site were told to sort things out as best they could, there and then. And that’s what they did. You can’t shilly-shally around with important matters. Our boys were simply following orders.’
‘Like in Bosnia, I suppose?’ Anna muttered.
‘What?’ Esko retorted.
Finally he turned and looked at Anna with his swollen, reddened eyes. Anna tried to stare back without blinking. The man already disgusted her, though she’d only known him a matter of minutes.
‘Nothing. I didn’t say a word.’
Anna eventually lowered her glare.
Esko poured himself more coffee, a satisfied smirk on his face.
‘Well, everything in the apartment seemed to be as it should,’ Rauno continued in an attempt to calm things down. ‘Nobody in the house knew anything of what the girl had done or why. A couple of officers in Vantaa checked the girl’s supposed whereabouts. The girl – her name was … just a minute – Bihar was found to be in good health and was precisely where her parents said she was. She told the Vantaa police that perhaps someone had made a prank call and given her name. Either that or she’d had a nightmare and must have made the call herself while half asleep. Apparently she sometimes walks – and talks – in her sleep and can’t remember anything about it the next morning.’
‘Sounds suspicious,’ said Anna.
‘Very,’ said Sari.
‘What’s suspicious about that? The girl admitted she made the call by mistake,’ said Esko.
‘Who calls the emergency services by mistake?’ asked Sari.
‘Christ, people call 112 when they lock themselves out of the house or when their pet poodle gets something stuck in its eye,’ said Esko.
‘That’s different. This call was placed by mistake,’ said Sari.
‘How old is Bihar?’ asked Anna.
‘Seventeen,’ Rauno replied.
‘A seventeen-year-old girl calls 112 and says someon
e’s threatening to kill her. Sounds like a real-life nightmare to me,’ said Anna.
‘And why was she was allowed to travel all the way to Vantaa by herself?’ asked Sari.
Esko said nothing.
‘I want to hear that call,’ said Virkkunen. ‘Esko, let’s hear it.’
A few seconds of background noise. The operator’s matter-of-fact voice. Then, very hushed, the girl’s whispers: ‘They’re gonna kill me. Help me. My dad’s gonna kill me.’
The operator asks her to repeat.
The girl says nothing.
The operator asks where the girl is. The girl gives her address and hangs up.
‘She was petrified,’ said Anna.
‘I agree,’ said Sari. ‘Scared to death that someone might hear.’
‘Why didn’t she say where she was?’ asked Rauno.
‘Maybe she didn’t know,’ Sari suggested.
‘Or maybe she wanted to bring the police straight into the hornets’ nest,’ said Rauno.
‘She probably didn’t know the exact address, and her home address was the only one she could remember. And she was in a hurry; this was a matter of life and death,’ said Anna.
‘Maybe she just wanted to give Daddy a few grey hairs,’ scoffed Esko.
‘Did anyone speak to the mother?’ asked Anna.
‘They tried. The report says in bold that the husband did all the talking. Through Mehvan,’ said Rauno.
‘But of course.’
‘So what are we going to do about this?’
‘Let’s get this investigation underway. Finnish law doesn’t recognise honour violence as a crime, but we might be able to bring a charge of unlawful threat or even false imprisonment. It’s Monday morning and the girl is in Vantaa. Shouldn’t a girl that age be in school?’ asked Virkkunen.
Esko yawned noisily in his chair and started playing with his mobile, a look of boredom on his face.
‘I believe compulsory education ends at seventeen,’ he commented.
‘Esko, I want you to call these people in for an interview by the end of the day,’ Virkkunen ordered.
Esko gave a snort and wiped the crumbs from the edge of his mouth with an air of indifference.
‘Yes. Bihar, father, mother, brother and little sister. I want them all here as quickly as possible. And book an interpreter – two if necessary. Rauno and Sari, find out about the relatives in Vantaa, ask the local unit for assistance. Anna, establish what has happened in previous cases.’
‘Okay,’ Anna responded.
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ said Sari. ‘It’s as though a premonition has come knocking.’
At that very moment, there came a knock at the door. A woman poked her head around and nodded by way of a greeting.
‘They’ve found a body. On the running track near Selkämaa in Saloinen,’ she informed the group.
Everyone fell silent and froze on the spot. Sari and Rauno looked at one another in confusion and disbelief. Esko’s coffee cup stopped in mid-air on its journey to his lips. Virkkunen’s voice broke the silence.
‘So much for a quiet start, Anna,’ he sighed.
3
ANNA FEKETE sniffed at the air. The rain had strengthened the natural scents of the forest. The detritus decomposing beneath the boughs of trees was mixed with the smell of sawdust. Mould had begun its annual autumnal feast, but still the air was fresh. Wind rustled in the branches of dwarf birches and in the tangle of thicket, the remaining green leaves flittering in the rain.
The twenty-kilometre journey to Saloinen had taken them south through heavy traffic heading out of the city. Before reaching the rapidly expanding village, Anna turned on to a dirt track leading towards the shore. For about three kilometres the track wound its way through the woods and ploughed fields and came to an end at a rectangular, overgrown parking area. A slimy cluster of slippery Jack mushrooms had popped up along the edge of the car park. Parked in front of the mushrooms were a blue-and-white police Saab, a yellow Fiat Uno and the civilian vehicle used by Esko Niemi. Beside the cars stood a row of uniformed patrol officers.
I’ve got interval training tonight, Anna found herself thinking as she saw the running track that started behind the yellow police tape. It disappeared into the woods, just like the strands of yellow tape cordoning off the area. The body lay only two hundred metres away, said the policemen, but she couldn’t see that far through the woods.
The body had been discovered just before nine o’clock that morning by local resident Aune Toivola, an 86-year-old widow out on her morning walk. She was in the habit of getting up at seven o’clock every morning, making a pot of coffee and drinking half before and half after her daily walk. And as usual, her walk had taken her to the running track winding its way along the shoreline. Aune always kept her mobile phone, given to her by concerned relatives, in her pocket, and this she had used to raise the alarm.
Esko had driven by himself, in his own car. This had irritated Anna, though she had no inclination to spend time alone with the man. Still…
Anna got out of the car, greeted the police officers and approached the patrol car. Aune Toivola was sitting there with Esko. The patrol officers were chatting amongst themselves, waiting for permission to leave the scene. Anna noted the gaze of the younger, more handsome of the two officers; he had stared her as she’d arrived and now scanned down towards her bottom as she leant over to talk to the elderly lady.
Aune’s wrinkled face was tinged with a look of frustration. Anna didn’t even have a chance to introduce herself.
‘I’ve already told these nice young men everything,’ she said pointedly. ‘I want to go home now. My coffee will be getting cold, and I can feel a headache coming on. My home help will be arriving soon – she’ll start to worry if I’m not there.’
The lady was clearly tired and distressed at the disruption to her morning routine.
Esko smiled in the front seat. ‘Aune and I have already gone through everything. It’s all in here,’ he said, tapping the blue-covered jotter in his hand.
You can’t have, thought Anna; you were here at most ten minutes before me.
‘Nonetheless, there are still a few questions I’d like to ask,’ said Anna, addressing her question to Aune directly. ‘Then you can go home. It won’t take long.’
The old lady scoffed, but didn’t say anything. Esko stopped smiling.
‘Do you live nearby?’
‘About a kilometre away. 55 Selkämaantie, the same dirt track that runs from the main road out here,’ Aune replied crisply and waved her hand in the direction of the path leading away from the car park.
‘Have you seen any traffic around here? People coming and going along the running track?’
‘I haven’t seen a thing. My house isn’t quite on the path. Besides, I don’t sit around spying on people, never have done,’ said the old woman.
‘And did you hear anything?’
‘Pardon?’ she replied, raising her voice so that it thinned almost to a whinny.
‘Did you hear anything out of the ordinary this morning? Yesterday evening? Or during the night? The sound of a car, perhaps, or a shot?’
Anna noticed the woman’s bony fingers fidgeting with her right ear, behind which she saw the bulge of a hearing aid.
‘I didn’t hear anything. I was watching television last night – the volume was up quite loud.’
‘And have you ever seen the woman you found this morning around here before?’
‘There’s never anybody around here in the mornings. There might be the odd person in the evenings, but I wouldn’t know about that – I don’t come out here in the evening. Can I go now, please? The carer will be worried and she’ll call my son.’
‘Just a few more questions. Does anybody else live in the vicinity?’
‘There’s old Yki Raappana, but this man here has already asked all about him.’
‘What about that car over there? Have you seen it before?’
‘
I’m not sure. Cars do drive up here from time to time. There must be other people here apart from me, what with the road being lit and all that,’ said Aune.
‘Thank you. You can go home now, but we’ll come and visit you in the next few days and have another chat. If you feel worried about any of this and need to talk to someone, there are people at the church who are trained to help. Here’s their telephone number.’
‘As long as I can get home to my coffee, I’ll be fine,’ she muttered. ‘This was nothing compared to what I saw in Karelia during the war. That was genuine pain and suffering, men coming in on trucks, howling and wailing, some with legs missing, some with shrapnel in their heads.’
‘Maybe you could talk about that with them too. It might do you good,’ said Anna politely and asked the patrol officers to take the old lady home.
‘Let the vicar know too, okay?’ she added and winked at the younger and more handsome of the officers. He was visibly taken aback.
Should I have stayed in patrol after all, thought Anna as she watched Esko Niemi getting out of the car.
The figure was of a man well past the cusp of middle age. The greasy hair on his brow was thinning and lank. His wrinkled shirt was stuffed inside a pair of un-ironed trousers. The buttons of his shirt had stretched into a grimace around his belly, revealing a strip of hairy stomach. Presumably he was unable to button up his threadbare jacket. Esko Niemi hadn’t grown old with dignity, as men are purported to. Women were past their prime by the age of forty, but men simply turned more handsome until the end of their lives. So Anna had often heard; she couldn’t believe the rubbish that people – women – held to be true.
After stepping out of the car, Esko straightened his stiff back and was overcome by a rasping coughing fit. Having composed himself again, he lit a cigarette.
How can anyone communicate with a man like that, Anna thought and felt herself gripped by a wave of uncertainty.
With one hand Esko shielded his cigarette from the rain, then loudly cleared his throat and spat a lump of green phlegm on the ground in front of his feet.
The Hummingbird Page 2