The Hummingbird

by Kati Hiekkapelto

  The redness of Anna’s cheeks deepened.

  ‘Thirty-nine. And yes, he is single, I think. He can’t speak Finnish though.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, I’ve got a first in body language,’ said Linnea with almost a cackle.

  Anna tried to laugh with her, though all she wanted to do was run out of the room and make her way up into the daylight. Ákos and the doctor of pathology. The mere thought was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

  Anna had lunch in a good Thai restaurant in the city centre and swore she’d never again poison herself with food from the station canteen. With the harmony of coconut milk and lemongrass still lingering on her tongue, she retreated into her office, uploaded the autopsy photographs to her computer and wrote up her notes. After this, it was time to prepare for the interview with Riikka’s parents. Virkkunen had told her to oversee the interview with Esko, but Anna had no intention of reminding him. She noted down a few key questions that she mustn’t forget, and otherwise decided to let the interview progress at its own pace. At the outset it was hard to put down anything too concrete. Most important was to get a broad overview of Riikka’s life and her circle of friends. That should take the investigation a long way. At the very least it would sprawl out around her like a battlefield around a lonely soldier. We’re going to need reinforcements, Anna guessed. This is going to be big.

  Anna didn’t need to remind him or go to Saloinen by herself; Esko appeared at the door of her office at two o’clock sharp and informed her in typically abrupt fashion that it was time to go. Again, the drive was as quiet as the open-sea ice in the heart of winter.

  After a night of agony, Riikka’s parents sat in their living room, lost and anxious. Esko placed a Thermos flask and packet of biscuits on the coffee table in front of the couple, a look of empathy in his reddened eyes.

  ‘I thought I’d bring you some coffee,’ he said and the Rautios nodded, touched.

  He knows what he’s doing, thought Anna. Have I been too quick to judge him?

  ‘Tell us about the boyfriend with whom Riikka had been staying. How long had they been dating?’ Anna began the interview and immediately cursed her elementary mistake: only ask one question at a time.

  ‘His name is Jere Koski. He studies mathematics at the university. They’d been seeing each other for almost three years,’ Juhani answered. The man’s voice was hushed. Speech seemed difficult, as though forming each word caused him great pain.

  ‘Where did they first meet?’

  ‘There was a get-together for high-school students a few years ago. I think that’s where it started. But they’ve always known one another. Jere is a few years older than Riikka, but he’s from the same village.’

  ‘What did you think of their relationship?’ asked Anna.

  Juhani seemed at a loss for words. Irmeli stared at her feet as though wondering what on earth they were doing there.

  ‘Well … what do parents normally think of their only daughter’s boyfriends? At first we weren’t exactly thrilled, especially given his…’ Riikka’s father cleared his throat. ‘His background. But…’

  ‘But what of it?’ Irmeli interrupted her husband with a scowl. Anna was somewhat startled by the chill in her voice. ‘You can’t – and shouldn’t – try and get in the way of young love.’

  ‘Jere’s a good boy, he studies at the university and everything. Riikka seemed content, so we accepted the situation and were happy for her,’ said Juhani.

  ‘What was wrong with the boy’s background?’ asked Esko.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with it as such,’ Juhani Rautio seemed a little embarrassed. ‘Jere’s father, Veikko Koski, is long-term unemployed and he likes a pint. He’s off work on disability leave, for his back apparently, but everybody knows it’s because of the booze. His wife’s a cleaner at the local school. She’s nice.’

  Was that the problem, Anna wondered. Better folk didn’t think a boy from a poor family was right for their daughter?

  ‘Did Riikka have any boyfriends before Jere?’ asked Esko.

  ‘They’d been together for so long,’ said Irmeli. ‘She was too young to have any others.’

  ‘What kind of man is this Jere? Describe him for me,’ asked Esko.

  ‘Just an average young man, not a drunk like his father, not yet anyway. He’s an outdoor kind of person, always off camping or fishing,’ said Juhani.

  ‘Does he go hunting, too?’ asked Esko.

  The room fell silent. An expression of restlessness crept across Juhani’s face. The corner of Irmeli’s mouth twitched nervously. She looked at her husband in horror.

  ‘You don’t think…?’

  ‘Of course not. You said that Jere is the outdoor type. Does he go hunting or not?’ Esko continued unflinchingly.

  ‘Yes, he does.’

  ‘Can you expand on that?’

  Juhani considered this for a moment before continuing.

  ‘He hunts a lot – ducks, hares, grouse. He travelled to Lapland to shoot ptarmigans; Riikka often went with him. He was a member of an elk-hunting club too.’

  ‘So he had access to firearms,’ Esko stated.

  ‘Yes, well, I imagine so, without them you wouldn’t really…’

  ‘We’re going to need Jere’s contact details. You do have his telephone number?’

  ‘Yes, of course. We tried to call him last night when … when Riikka … But he didn’t pick up.’

  Anna and Esko glanced at one another. Esko nodded. He tapped Jere’s address and telephone number into his mobile.

  ‘You carry on,’ he instructed Anna. ‘I’ll bring him in straight away.’

  That went smoothly, thought Anna, bewildered. Almost as though we were working together.

  It was hard to continue once Esko had gone. A sense of suspicion had descended on the room, and even thinking about it was uncomfortable. Juhani and Irmeli looked anxious and concerned.

  ‘We just can’t believe…’ Irmeli stuttered.

  ‘You appreciate that we have to check everything,’ Anna interjected. ‘We have to turn every stone, rule out all possibilities until there’s only one left. But tell me more about Riikka and Jere, their relationship.’

  That was at least three questions, Anna again berated herself. What a lousy interviewer.

  It was clear that Juhani and Irmeli were reluctant to go on. Irmeli’s whole body was trembling gently, and Juhani was holding back tears. They were exhausted and beside themselves. Anna poured them more coffee and waited. Juhani eventually pulled himself together and began speaking, his voice taut with agony.

  ‘Like I said, Jere is a good boy, he studies hard and enjoys being outdoors. Riikka had taken up hunting and rambling with him, and fishing. She was even thinking of applying for her own hunting licence, so she could take part in the annual hunt. We were a bit surprised; we’ve never done anything like that ourselves, though we enjoy eating game like anyone else.’

  ‘Even berries we’d rather get at the market,’ said Irmeli with a forced laugh.

  ‘Riikka took her high-school exams this spring. All As and Bs,’ said Juhani.

  ‘Smart girl,’ Anna commented. Juhani wiped his eyes.

  ‘Did she have lots of friends?’

  ‘Oh yes. The same group of girls had been friends since nursery school. Her closest friend was Virve Sarlin; they’d been in the same class from primary school right through to the end of high school. Two of a kind, they were.’

  Anna noted down the name.

  ‘And how long had she been living with Jere?’ she asked.

  ‘She moved in with him straight after the school exams.’

  ‘What did you think of the move?’

  ‘Well, it didn’t make any sense, especially as she’d applied to university in Jyväskylä and got a place there. We told her moving twice in a year would be too much, but she moved anyway. She didn’t have to ask our permission, she was eighteen, after all.’

  ‘Did they ever argue?’

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nbsp; ‘I don’t imagine so,’ said Irmeli and gave her husband a questioning look. Juhani shook his head. ‘We thought they were quite settled.’

  ‘And what about recently? Have you noticed anything out of the ordinary?’

  ‘About Riikka or the relationship?’

  ‘Both. What about Jere?’

  Again the couple looked at one another, as though searching for an answer in the other’s eyes. They seemed uncertain.

  ‘We don’t really know,’ Irmeli began. ‘Riikka only visited a few times this past summer, only to do her laundry, really. Perhaps she was a little quieter than usual, now that I think of it.’

  Juhani nodded his head.

  ‘But was that out of the ordinary?’ Irmeli continued. ‘It’s hard to say. Even as a child she was a quiet one. Come to think of it, I don’t think the two of them visited us at all this summer, did they, Juhani?’

  For a moment Juhani was silent.

  ‘They visited at Midsummer. And they turned up together at Riikka’s great-grandmother’s birthday. That was on the fifteenth of June.’

  ‘Wasn’t that odd?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That they didn’t visit you together.’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve only thought of it now. Jere never visited us anyway. I’d always felt that he would find any excuse not to come whenever possible. Perhaps he was shy. It was disappointing, of course. Juhani had always wanted a golfing partner, but Jere wasn’t interested in things like that. So it’s hard to say whether it was out of the ordinary or not. I doubt it. Surely we would have noticed if something had really been off kilter. Wouldn’t we, Juhani?’

  ‘I would say so. They were doing just fine. Now we’ll never know what would have happened when Riikka moved to Jyväskylä. I’d assumed the relationship would have gradually fizzled out.’

  Juhani’s voice broke.

  Irmeli stood up and went into the bedroom. When she returned she handed Anna a photograph, her hands trembling. Smiling back at her in the photograph was a chubby-cheeked girl, a high-school graduation hat upon her shoulder-length, chestnut hair, a bunch of roses in her hands. She was looking straight at the camera. Her eyes were greyish blue, lightly made up, and there was a sense of determination in her somewhat introverted expression. Her lips were full and beautiful. This was the face that had been destroyed. Like all young girls’ faces, it was pretty and attractive. Anna could feel her throat tightening.

  ‘She was going to move next week. We’d booked the van and everything,’ said Irmeli quietly, her voice frozen and impassive.

  When the dam finally breaks, there will be no shoring it up again, thought Anna. Suddenly she felt how much she missed her own mother.

  When she arrived back in town, Sari asked Anna to join her at the gym in the police station. Because she only had two hours of her shift left, Anna was happy to go. One of the advantages of being a police officer was the opportunity to dedicate exactly that amount of working time to sports activities every week. Today was a day off from her running schedule, so a good weight-training session would do her a world of good. She wanted to get to know Sari, a woman who seemed the complete opposite of Esko: funny, relaxed, sporty and tolerant.

  In the changing rooms Anna stole a few glances at her colleague’s athletic body. She was tall and muscular without being too sculpted. In a word, she was handsome. It was hard to believe that two children had stretched her stomach and dangled from her breasts. Women generally started to sag. Sari had the fair complexion and toned body of a Viking goddess.

  ‘How old are your children?’ asked Anna.

  It was always safe to start talking about someone’s children. People loved talking about their own children, as long as they were smart and well behaved and lived up to their parents’ expectations without making a fuss.

  Sari’s eyes lit up. ‘Two, and three and a half.’

  ‘Still so young. Did you adopt them? You don’t look like you were pregnant only a couple of years ago.’

  Sari laughed, clearly flattered.

  ‘I didn’t put on weight with either or them, though I ate like a horse all the time. I must have a phenomenal metabolism or something. And I’ve always done a lot of sport, and Pilates three times a week while I was pregnant.’

  ‘Wow. Are they girls or boys?’

  ‘One of each. Siiri and Tobias.’

  ‘How do you do it? Such young kids and a job like this to boot?’

  ‘I get along just fine, actually. It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but we have a nanny at home – it’s an absolute must. Though the kids are still young enough that sometimes I don’t sleep all that much. Still, I don’t really spend time wondering whether I’ll manage or not. I sleep whenever I get the opportunity. I can fall asleep anywhere and everywhere.’

  ‘Now I’m envious! If only I could do that. What does your husband do?’

  ‘Teemu is an engineer; he’s always away on business. Thank God I don’t do nights, and I’m almost always free on weekends; Virkkunen and I have come to an agreement about that.’

  ‘You didn’t want to stay at home for a while?’

  ‘I was on maternity leave for almost a year with the youngest one. But you know what it’s like – when you’ve got an enormous mortgage you’ve just got to keep working. We built our house a few years ago. To be honest with you, I’d simply had enough of being at home. It can be lonely and fairly boring; I’m not really cut out to be a nursery teacher. For me this job’s a way of letting off steam, it means the kids don’t get on my nerves as much. You’re not supposed to say things like that out loud, are you?’

  ‘Nowadays we can, thankfully. Where did you build your house?’

  ‘In Savela, on a plot of land that used to belong to my parents-in-law. You should come and visit some time. Where do you live?’

  ‘Koivuharju.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  Anna laughed. There was something very attractive about Sari’s directness.

  They walked through to the weights room. The bare concrete walls were bleak and the place stank of testosterone. There weren’t many weight machines, mostly dumbbells and free weights. It’s a male world, thought Anna as she picked twenty kilos from the rack, slid them on the ends of a bar and lay down on the bench. Sari started off on the exercise bike.

  Three sets of twelve repetitions. Her chest muscles were in agony. Anna was out of breath; her arms were trembling under the strain. A pair of hands helped her with the final push; a familiar-looking man in a tight sleeveless T-shirt, his arms solid as a rock.

  ‘Hi, I’m Sami,’ the man greeted her. ‘We saw each other yesterday at the car park.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Anna as she got up from the bench. She walked towards the rack of free weights. The man followed her.

  ‘Do you fancy meeting up some evening? Friday maybe? We could grab a bite to eat somewhere,’ he said without beating around the bush. He came up so close to her that they were almost touching. Anna felt awkward. She didn’t need a date at the moment. Particularly not with another police officer.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she stumbled. ‘I’ve just moved and everything’s a bit up in the air. I’m not sure I’ll have the time.’

  ‘I got the impression you might have been interested,’ said Sami.

  Menj a picsába, thought Anna. One wink, and men imagine all kinds of things.

  ‘Well, that was, you know … I didn’t mean anything by it,’ she awkwardly tried to explain.

  ‘What about your friend, then? Good-looking lass. Better looking than you.’ Sami seemed hurt and fixed his gaze on Sari.

  ‘We’re both spoken for,’ Sari shouted from the exercise bike.

  ‘I doubt it,’ quipped Sami, his expression impassive.

  ‘Why don’t you go and have a wank in the changing room,’ said Sari. At the other side of the gym, two officers chuckled.

  Anna too gave a smirk. Sari was great. How did she have the balls? Sami slung his heavy free weights back on the
rack with an indignant clatter and left the room.

  ‘What a jerk,’ Sari puffed. ‘This is the downside of working in a male-dominated profession: hormonal dickheads everywhere you look. Hey, now it’s your turn to spill the beans. Have you got family here? Where are you from? I want to hear everything. I think it’s just great that we’ve got a foreigner on the team, though you don’t seem much like an immigrant.’

  Anna had no desire to talk about herself, though she knew there were some questions she’d have to answer sooner or later, over and over again. Why did you come to Finland was the most common, and it irritated her no end. Though people generally asked out of sheer, benevolent curiosity, Anna always felt there was another dimension to the question: did you have a good reason for coming, one that we real Finns can find acceptable, or did you simply come here in search of a better life?

  The question always aroused a sense of guilt, making her feel like an unwanted guest whose secret had been revealed. Anna saw nothing wrong with looking for a better quality of living. Surely it was natural for everyone to search for such a thing? Why should it be restricted to people who already had everything they needed?

  ‘Here you are,’ Esko interrupted just as Anna drew a deep breath and was about to begin her story. He had appeared at the gym door. Though Sari had been assigned the Bihar case, Esko seemed to direct his words at her rather than Anna. Anna tried not to show her irritation. It was pointless letting arseholes make your blood boil.

  ‘Jere’s disappeared,’ he informed them.

  ‘What?’ Anna and Sari cried in unison.

  ‘Disappeared into thin air. Phone switched off. Parents, friends, landlord – nobody knows where he is.’

  ‘Great,’ sighed Sari.

  ‘Quite. Seems like an open-and-shut case to me.’

  ‘It does, doesn’t it,’ admitted Anna.

  ‘The boy shot Riikka, probably in a fit of jealousy – wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened in this country. Then took fright once he realised what he’d done and went into hiding.’

  ‘We’ll have to put out a warrant for him,’ said Sari.

  ‘Already done. And I’ve got a search warrant for his apartment too. I’ll have to get out there now – with her,’ Esko continued speaking to Sari and nodded towards Anna.