The Hummingbird

by Kati Hiekkapelto

  Bassza meg, what a pig.

  ‘I’m going to examine the scene and take a look at the body,’ Esko informed her.

  ‘Yes, let’s go,’ said Anna.

  ‘No, you wait in the car. Show Forensics where to go when they turn up. Can you manage that in Finnish?’

  ‘Esko, I’m certainly not going to…’

  ‘Are we on first-name terms? That was an order, by the way. Meanwhile, find out who that car belongs to, and careful you don’t contaminate any evidence.’

  With that said Esko threw her a set of car keys, dropped his cigarette butt into the globule of phlegm and crushed it beneath his shoe. Anna felt sick.

  ‘The boys from patrol checked the body for any paperwork – that’s ID to you and me. They didn’t find any, but they did find this set of car keys. Make sure you don’t mess the place up,’ he repeated as though he was talking to a child. Then he lifted the yellow ribbon, puffed as he crouched beneath it and slowly walked off down the dirt track. Anna stood on the spot. She looked at Esko as he disappeared into the thicket, and she knew that she hated him. She clasped her hand into a tight fist and resisted the urge to scream. The sharp edge of the car keys dug a red mark into the palm of her hand.

  Anna turned her attention to the lonely Fiat. Just calm down and do your job thoroughly, she commanded herself. The cold, abandoned car was like a premonition of the horrors that awaited them at the end of the track. Anna pulled on a pair of latex gloves and gently tried the Fiat’s door. The metal lent her a sense of self-assurance. This was familiar; she could do this. Back in patrol she had had plenty of opportunities to carry out forensic examinations of cars written off at the side of the road, their engines still warm, to look for fleeing drink-drivers and junkies, to confiscate stolen goods stashed in the boot. A car was the most mundane of crime scenes.

  But this time Anna wasn’t going to carry out a forensic investigation. The forensics team would go over the car with a fine-tooth comb. If there was anything to find, they would find it. Anna was looking for something else.

  The door was locked. Anna pressed a raised button on the key ring with the smudged picture of a padlock. The Fiat gave a click. She opened the passenger door. The first impression of the car was its cleanliness. The dark-grey seat covers were spotless and there was no rubbish or grit on the floor beneath the seat. There have been no children in this car – or drunks, for that matter. Anna resisted the temptation to sit in the car, to listen to what it wanted to tell her. Instead she carefully opened the glove compartment and took out the registration form.

  The car was registered to one Juhani Rautio of 17 Vaahterapolku, Saloinen.

  The address was nearby. Very near indeed. Anna felt a rush of excitement in her chest.

  Reluctantly she returned to her own car and sat down. She wanted to see what had happened on the running track.

  Her daydream was broken by a tap at the window. Esko had returned. Again he was puffing on a cigarette and gestured Anna out of the car. Anna felt a chill. Damp from the rain, her clothes now intensified the bite of the wind.

  ‘Forensics are going to be a while. I called the pathologist too. You can go and look now.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go and have a look at what’s there – and no funny business, mind.’

  For a moment Anna felt like refusing, like obstinately saying she had no desire to examine the scene, and behaving like the child Esko considered her to be. But what would it matter to him if she refused? She would only shoot herself in the foot with that sort of behaviour. She had to see the victim with her own eyes so that she could fully take part in the investigation. Anna felt livid, but managed to control herself as she saw a satisfied smirk creep across Esko’s face. This is one game we’re not going to play by your rules, she decided.

  The yellow police ribbons fluttered in the wind, as though they were marking the route for a marathon.

  Anna began walking down the path. Her hands were tacky with sweat and her heart was beating hard. The first hundred metres gently curved deeper into the woods, and as the path straightened out Anna saw something resembling the shape of a human being lying on the ground. You didn’t make it to the finish line, thought Anna, and felt the power momentarily drain from her limbs. She felt faint. The rain and wind chilled her.

  Anna pulled on another pair of gloves and carefully began to inspect the body. White female, around 165 centimetres tall, weight approximately 70 kilos. Shot with a rifle at close range. Dead instantly. Her head had been quite literally blasted off, and much of her neck too. She’d been here for some time. The body was cold and damp after a night outdoors, and was now stiff and hard with rigor mortis. It looked almost like a gritty, realistic installation, lying motionless on the dirt track, otherwise intact except for the head, which was now an unidentifiable tangle of flesh. It made Anna feel ill to look at the bloody mess that only yesterday had been a face.

  The lime-green tracksuit bottoms had darkened from the rain, the legs inside them were still intact but had twisted grotesquely as death had knocked her to the ground. The hands were like those of any young woman out for a run, clean and well looked after. Her fingernails, painted in a plum varnish, were bitten.

  Above the waist was where things looked different. The boundary wasn’t clear. Dark spots and red strips were splattered across the tracksuit; by now their edges had soaked into the wet fabric. Around the chest and shoulders the tracksuit was no longer green but decorated in various shades of rust and red. Here too, thankfully, the rain had softened the most shocking contrasts. Finally there was the head. In reality it barely existed any more, nothing but spatter that extended some way along the path. On closer inspection the spatter contained grey strands of brain matter. Mush. The unpleasant word reminded her of porridge or baby food, but it was an effective simile. The brain had literally turned to mush as it had come gushing out of the skull.

  The woman was young; there was no doubt about that. Thirty at most. Probably much younger. Anna could tell from the childish smoothness of the skin on the back of her hands, the innocent fragility of her chubby fingers, and an inexplicable gut feeling that she couldn’t quite put into words. The body exuded youth and vitality, something not even death had been able to snuff out. Anna examined the jagged edges of the victim’s nails. Were you worried about something, she asked herself. Or were you still so young that you hadn’t yet put such bad habits behind you? How old are you?

  Her tracksuit was trendy and smart, but clearly supermarket quality. Perhaps you’d only just got into running, Anna thought. The trainers revealed that the girl had been out running when she was killed. They weren’t the most expensive ones available, but they were a quality brand with shock absorbers specially designed for running. Someone out for a light Sunday jog wouldn’t buy these. The soles of the shoes were dirty and slightly worn. You weren’t an absolute beginner, then? Some level of addiction had probably already set in. That, if anything, was something Anna knew all about.

  But what did any of this matter now? Running or walking, beginner or marathon runner? There you lie now, and you’ll never take another step again, Anna whispered and struggled against the anxiety welling up inside her.

  Anna gently touched the dead woman’s skin at the point where a patch of flesh was revealed between her pulled-up trouser leg and her reinforced tennis sock. The skin was tanned, smooth and cold, in perfect condition. Not even the first signs of stubble scraped against Anna’s hand as she cautiously stroked the woman’s leg. Did you shave your legs just before going running? Why? I always do it in the shower afterwards. Anna wrote down the observation in her notebook.

  She knew that the patrol officers would have gone through the victim’s tracksuit pocket, and presumably Esko would have done so too. Forensics would do the same. But Anna wanted to see what the dead woman was carrying with her. She carefully opened the zips. Front-door keys, wet handkerchiefs. Tied at the end of a thin leather strap was a brooch of some sort, a bead t
hat looked like a stone and featuring a strange figure decorated with feathers. A mobile phone with a couple of bars of battery power left.

  Anna glanced behind her to make sure nobody was coming, and quickly flicked through the messages and calls. The last outgoing call was made on 21 August at 11.15 a.m. to Mum. The last incoming call was on the same day at 6.27 p.m., an unknown number. Anna felt a chill in her heart. Message inbox: empty. Sent messages: empty. Who called you last night? And why have all your messages been deleted?

  Anna examined the ground around the body. The blood spatter had extended over a wide area. On the ground close to the body the detail of the spatter was clearly visible, while further off it merged with the brown of the sawdust and undergrowth and gradually dissolved into the rain. Forensics would have their work cut out. Amid all this mess, would they be able to identify anything from the killer? A hair? A drop of saliva? A fibre? With the naked eye it was impossible to make out any individual footprints in the sawdust. Anna lifted her head and gazed at the sky. She licked a few raindrops from her lips. Go ahead, rinse all our evidence away, she whispered to the rain. Erase all the prints. She let her eyes scan the woods extending out around the scene, unperturbed. Silent landscape. You witnessed everything and now you’re holding your tongue.

  ‘What kind of madman kills someone with a rifle?’ Anna commented to Esko once she returned to the car park. She’d decided to try her best. To talk, communicate. To carry on as if nothing had happened.

  Esko’s cheeks dimpled as he drew smoke through his cigarette, and he stared past Anna into the forest.

  ‘It would have made an almighty bang,’ she continued, trying to sound amiable.

  ‘What day is it today?’ asked Esko.

  Anna was almost startled. He’s talking to me.

  ‘The twenty-second,’ she replied.

  ‘What month?’

  ‘What, have you got Alzheimer’s all of a sudden?’

  ‘Just tell me what month it is and don’t take the piss.’

  ‘It’s August, of course.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Right. And…?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Esko, exasperated, and flicked his cigarette butt to the ground. Anna noticed at least five butts by his feet.

  ‘The shooting season started on the twentieth, the day before yesterday. And do you know what people use to shoot ducks, lass?’

  Anna was silent for a moment, then responded: ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Now think where this godforsaken track is exactly.’

  ‘True,’ said Anna and turned to look west. The faint breeze didn’t carry the sound through the trees, but you could sense the proximity of the sea in the salty odour of the damp air, in the low-lying juniper bushes growing here and there and in the impenetrable green wall of dense thicket.

  ‘So yeah, if I wanted to bump someone off near the shore, at night and at the height of the duck-shooting season, I’d consider using a rifle. Nobody living round here would pay the slightest attention, no matter how many shots they heard,’ said Esko, and as if to confirm the veracity of his words a series of three shots echoed from the direction of the shore.

  ‘Missed. If you don’t get it with the first or second shot, you won’t hit it at all. Pointless contraptions if you ask me, these semi-automatics.’

  ‘Do you hunt?’ asked Anna. ‘It’s considered quite an elitist sport back home – I mean, where I come from.’

  Esko said nothing, just stared at the yellow car in the car park, a mosaic of yellowing leaves glued to its windscreen.

  ‘Last night it was raining harder than it is now,’ he eventually stated.

  ‘It was raining quite hard all day yesterday. And in the evening a fair wind whipped up.’

  ‘What kind of idiot goes out jogging in weather like that?’ asked Esko and lit another cigarette.

  ‘Not you, that’s for sure,’ Anna whispered so quietly that Esko couldn’t have heard.

  4

  THE LATE SUMMER LANDSCAPE, betraying the onset of autumn, seemed a blur through the car windows as they drove back towards the city, Esko in front, Anna following behind. As the forensics team arrived at the scene, the rainclouds had suddenly dispersed, proving that the blue sky was still there after all. The cloud had split into long threads and drifted into the distance, much to the satisfaction of the team whose job it was to examine the scene and photograph the body. The sun shone down in all its splendour and the forest began to dry out. Although the leaves hadn’t yet yellowed, they already carried a hint of their approaching demise. Only a few weeks now, and summer would finally cede to autumn. Anna had long since given up hope of an Indian summer. At this latitude, even thinking of such a thing was futile. Soon the woods and the patches of garden around the isolated houses would curl up in the long embrace of the winter darkness. The city would try to fight against it with neon lights and fluorescent strips. Everyone would be eagerly awaiting the return of light from the first snow. But nowadays the snow fell late in the year. The boundary between autumn and winter was imperceptible amid the surrounding grey slush.

  Don’t think about that now, Anna irritably chided herself and jerkily pulled the car straight after noticing it had drifted out towards the right. An approaching lorry sounded its horn at her.

  The sun is shining; it’s still summer – for now. Concentrate on driving and don’t fret about the future.

  The coroner gave the approximate time of death as around ten o’clock the previous evening. She too was puzzled by the relatively late hour of the victim’s jog and in such poor weather. Anna didn’t say anything, though for her it seemed utterly unremarkable. She always jogged in the evenings. And the weather was never a reason to miss a run. The forensics officers had promised to submit their reports as quickly as possible, and the coroner invited Esko and Anna to the autopsy, which was to take place the following day. Anna flinched. This was new. She worried about maintaining her professional poise, though the mere thought of the morgue made her feel sick. No, not the morgue itself, but the thought that the girl lying on the running track would be chopped up there tomorrow like an animal in an abattoir. As if there were no end to her denigration, the authorities would continue to mutilate her where the killer had stopped.

  One after the other Anna and Esko parked their cars outside the police station, slammed the doors shut, walked inside and made their way up to the fourth floor, Anna by the stairs, Esko in the lift. Each withdrew to their own office, as though the other didn’t exist, as though the tragic scene they had just witnessed was but an illusion.

  This is ridiculous, Anna sighed. We need to talk about this, analyse the situation, plan what steps to take next, find Juhani Rautio, examine the girl’s phone records and her final movements before going on that run. Where had she been yesterday, and in whose company? Who was she? What had Aune Toivola told Esko and the patrol officers? And what about the Kurdish girl? Who was looking into that? What should they do next? I should at least try to get to know Esko, have lunch with him or something. This is no way to work. And for a sinking moment, the thought occurred to Anna that she had already failed.

  Anna spent her lunch break alone in the station cafeteria, where she ate a depressing meal of overcooked spaghetti with bland mincemeat sauce and a salad of mandarin slices and grated red cabbage. This was winter food, though the harvest season was at its peak. Bitter home-brewed beer and stale bread buns. The cafeteria food had gone downhill since her high-school internship; here, too, the object was simply to save money. In future she would go into town for lunch, she decided.

  Just as she was taking her tray and dirty dishes to the kitchen trolley, a group of people appeared in animated conversation. Esko, Sari, Rauno and Chief Inspector Virkkunen. Blood rushed to Anna’s cheeks.

  ‘Anna, there you are! Have you already eaten?’ exclaimed Sari in disappointment.

  ‘We have to talk about the case,’ said Anna, pointedly delivering her words to Esko.

  ‘W
e just did, shame you couldn’t join us. Everything’s in order. You just take care of your own duties, okay,’ he replied, noisily placing cutlery on his tray.

  ‘How should I know what my duties are if nobody tells me?’ Anna replied, struggling to control the tone of her voice.

  ‘Anna, we were expecting you at the meeting just now,’ Virkkunen explained.

  ‘I don’t have telepathic skills, and I don’t remember ever claiming such a thing on my CV either.’

  Virkkunen gave Esko a puzzled look.

  ‘Esko said he’d told you that there would be a meeting in my office as soon as you got back to the station,’ he said.

  ‘He said nothing of the kind.’

  ‘I told you when we got back from Saloinen,’ said Esko.

  ‘We didn’t exchange a single word. And I do have a phone – why didn’t anyone call me?’

  The group was silent. Virkkunen seemed at a loss. Rauno and Sari took a few polite steps to one side. Esko was scrutinising the lunch menu on the board with a look of nonchalant satisfaction. He looks like a drunk, thought Anna.

  ‘I’m sure this is just an unfortunate misunderstanding,’ said Virkkunen. ‘I’m very sorry things seem to have got off to a bad start.’

  ‘So am I,’ was Anna’s clipped response.

  She wasn’t far from tears.

  ‘I’ll have the spaghetti – it’s the only grub with meat today,’ said Esko.

  That afternoon was almost as warm as summer. The thermometer outside Anna’s office window said 22°c. Moisture shimmered from the streets and slate roofs. The weather had taken a U-turn, its brakes wailing; suddenly it was summer again. Such rapid, dramatic shifts had increased in recent years.

  Anna opened the window. A faint breeze carried in the stench of exhaust fumes. Anna let the sunshine warm her face. She closed her eyes for a moment and listened to the noise of the traffic from below.