The Hummingbird

by Kati Hiekkapelto

  ‘I haven’t found anything on the Chelkin family. Nothing important anyway. There’s no record of any of them, except with Immigration. Their residence status checks out. Even GP records revealed nothing worse than flu. So if Bihar has been abused, she certainly hasn’t been treated at the health centre,’ said Sari.

  ‘What about school?’

  ‘She goes to a high school in the city centre, full of yuppie kids. The younger siblings are still in elementary school, in Rajapuro.’

  ‘The high school is a good sign. In very orthodox families, girls are often forced to learn about childcare or something similar, if they’re allowed to go to school at all.’

  ‘The head of year said Bihar is a top student, one of the best in the school. She hasn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary, except that Bihar can be quite reserved, not at all outgoing or overly sociable. She just put it down to cultural differences.’

  ‘That may be the case. In many cultures girls are brought up to be quiet and meek, closed off. What about friends?’

  ‘According to the teacher she has a few friends at school.’

  ‘A boyfriend?’

  ‘Don’t know. But she’s been absent quite a lot recently. Spent some time in Turkey last year.’

  ‘Was it a long trip?’

  ‘A couple of weeks.’

  ‘Hard to say anything based on that. They have the right to visit relatives.’

  ‘But what if she felt she had to run away?’

  ‘Still…’

  ‘And what if she was there for some sort of arranged marriage?’

  ‘That’s something we’ll have to ask them, though they won’t tell us. How long has the family lived in Finland?’

  ‘Ten years. Bihar was in first grade when they arrived. They are Turkish Kurds and came here as asylum seekers. Now they all have Finnish citizenship.’

  ‘What about the parents?’

  ‘The father, Payedar Chelkin, is a 44-year-old electrician but hasn’t worked a day in ten years.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Anna sniffed.

  ‘The mother is Zera. She’s only 34. Imagine – she must only have been 17 when Bihar was born. She doesn’t have a profession. The youngest child, Adan, was born soon after the family came to Finland. And the son Mehvan is in eighth grade.’

  ‘Have you asked around the Rajapuro school?’

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘Try and look up one of Bihar’s former teachers. Middle-school teachers know a surprising amount about their students’ family backgrounds.’

  The mobile phone in Anna’s handbag beeped. It was an SMS from Rauno. ‘Esko says to tell you Riikka’s friend Virve Sarlin is coming for interview tomorrow.’

  ‘What the hell’s the matter with that guy?’ Anna wondered.

  ‘He can be a bit grouchy sometimes.’

  ‘A bit? I think he’s grouchy quite a lot. All the time.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Can’t he send me a message directly?’

  ‘Pff. Seriously, don’t waste your energy on it,’ said Sari.

  ‘Does this mean that if I want to send him a message, I should send it via Rauno? We can’t make Rauno our go-between.’ ‘Yes, you can. At least for the moment. Esko will calm down soon enough.’

  ‘He hates me.’

  ‘No he doesn’t. He’s just downright old-fashioned and stuck in his ways. It’s going to take him a while to get used to the fact that his new partner is a young foreign woman. He’s never travelled further than Sweden. Believe me, he’s an okay bloke when you get to know him.’

  ‘It certainly seems so.’

  ‘I mean it. And though Virkkunen pampers him a bit, he also keeps him in order. Have a word with Virkkunen if something happens.’

  ‘What do you mean, pamper? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s an old story. We’ve all had our little run-ins with Esko. That’s just the way he is – there’s no point taking it personally.’

  Anna shrugged her shoulders and finished off her wine.

  ‘So, Virve Sarlin tomorrow. The parents told us she was Riikka’s closest friend,’ she said.

  ‘Well, you could learn all kinds of things.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. At least we’ll be able to shed a little light on the mystery of Riikka Rautio.’

  ‘Then on Friday we’ve got the Chelkin family.’

  ‘We’ve got our work cut out.’

  ‘Your career as a detective has got off with a bang. I spent the first three years investigating stolen bikes.’

  ‘Sounds like an attractive option,’ said Anna.

  I still remember the day we arrived in Finland. Dad, Mum, Mehvan and me. Adan was already in Mum’s belly but you couldn’t see it yet and nobody had told me about it. I could sense how nervous Mum and Dad were. Mum was squeezing my hand so tight that it hurt when they told the immigration staff at the airport that we were asylum seekers. I had no idea what it meant, but Mum and Dad knew words like that. Kurds have such a long history of moving and relocating that they just know. A lot of people who turn up here don’t know. They think someone will come along and drag you out of baggage reclaim and straight into a job. They’re in for a nice little surprise.

  I felt embarrassed. I wanted to be like everyone else, gently dragging my suitcase behind me, shopping for Moomin mugs and potholders with poppies on them and bars of chocolate, checking every now and then with the nonchalance of experience to see when it was time to go to the gate. I wanted to be on holiday. I tried to imagine what it must be like to be on holiday.

  We were taken into some kind of office and told to wait. We waited so long that I almost wet myself. Eventually two blonde women in police uniforms and a dark-haired man in normal clothes came into the room. Mum and Dad tensed when they saw them. I’d been taught from a young age to be afraid of the police, but these women didn’t look all that scary, though they were pretty big. They smiled and looked us in the eye. You could tell we were no longer at home.

  The man spoke our language. I thought it was weird that we’d travelled for so long, we were so far away from home, it was so cold outside, and what do you know: there’s one of our own waiting to meet us. Of course, I’ve known since the day I was born that those who have the chance always want to get away.

  The man told the police what Dad was saying and told Dad what the police were saying. Dad told him the story of our infernal trek to safety across the mountains. He spoke in that same lilting voice that he sometimes used to tell me and Mehvan ancient stories when we still lived back home. Translated in Finnish, Dad’s words sounded strange, as though the man wasn’t telling our story any more but some other story altogether. And it was weird too that, though only a short time had passed since all this happened, I’d already started to forget about it. Suddenly the whole thing started to sound like a foreign fairy tale that the man was telling those police officers: once upon a time, then they all lived happily ever after; small smudged pictures on brittle sheets of paper.

  Eventually I had to ask to go to the toilet. The worst of it was we first had to tell the interpreter, and he translated for the cops. It was like I had to repeat it a hundred times: I need to go to the bathroom, the toilet, I need a wee, a piss, I need to urinate, to micturate, to empty my bladder, powder my nose, and still they might have misunderstood and thought yuck, maybe she needs a poo – whatever, there’s some pressure down below that we’re never supposed to talk about. Mum gave me a murderous look.

  One of the officers took me to the bathroom. She tried to give me an encouraging smile, and she was really pretty with thick blonde hair in a plait. I didn’t dare smile back at her, though I was over the moon. There was a lot of pee; it came pouring into the bowl like Niagara Falls. I was embarrassed because the woman was waiting right outside the door and must have heard everything. I was so nervous I forgot to wash my hands on the way out, and I wondered what she was waving at, what she was trying to say, then I realised she was pointing
at the sinks, the taps, the liquid-soap dispensers and the paper towels, and I went bright red and walked back to wash my hands. She must have thought we don’t bother washing where we come from, probably thinks we eat off our shitty hands, stuff our faces with cassava from a shared bowl.

  Then the officers made a phone call. The interpreter told us we would have to wait a while longer – huh, we’d only been waiting for like ten hours already – then we’d be taken to a centre where we’d be given our own room and abbou everyone would have their own bed. And eventually they took us there in one of the border agency’s dark-green minibuses. It felt amazing, sitting in the bus looking out at the strange new city flashing past the window. It was evening already and it had started to rain, and all the street lights were reflected strangely in the raindrops on the window.

  I pretended we were in a taxi on our way to a luxurious hotel somewhere.

  Except that Mum was sitting next to me weeping and Dad was angry with her for it.

  11

  VIRVE SARLIN was a short girl with a very fair complexion and long, light-blonde hair. She gave off the sweet smell of incense and was dressed in a pair of baggy, red velvet trousers and a dark-green tunic. A collection of chains and wooden beads hung round her neck, and around her wrist jangled a bracelet of small bells. When she wasn’t twiddling a strand of hair round her forefinger, she was chewing her nails or fiddling with her abundant jewellery. Dark shadows loomed beneath her grey, make-up-free eyes and the area round her nose was reddened. She looked exhausted.

  ‘Hi, Virve. I’m Detective Constable Fekete Anna.’

  Virve gave Anna an agitated glance.

  ‘So you’re Riikka’s best friend, is that right?’

  Virve’s chin and nostrils began to tremble and she let out a gravelly squeal as she tried to hold back the tears.

  ‘She’s been my best friend since first grade.’ Virve’s voice was brittle, like a child’s.

  Anna handed the girl a tissue. She felt like a therapist, the kind of person to whose office her own headmaster and head of year had sent her throughout middle school. There had always been a box of tissues on hand there too. Anna had never needed one. She had never told the therapist anything and had never burst into tears. After her third visit, she had informed the headmaster that she wouldn’t be attending any longer, that running was far more therapeutic. The headmaster said he was very concerned about her. She had laughed in his face.

  ‘Let it out,’ said Anna. ‘This has all been a big shock.’

  ‘It’s terrible. I can’t sleep properly – I’ve been wide awake from the moment Riikka’s mum called and told me what had happened. I keep seeing her going out on that run, pulling on that hideous tracksuit, again and again. It’s like a film stuck in my head, playing over and over.’

  Anna’s heart skipped a beat. Had Virve been there when Riikka had set off on her final run? She bided her time and pulled the contact information for a crisis helpline from her desk drawer. She handed Virve the leaflet. The girl scrutinised it for a moment, thanked her and stuffed it into her tasselled jute bag.

  ‘You should make use of this service, especially since the state provides it free of charge. But I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you all sorts of questions. Are you up to it?’

  Virve blew her nose on the tissue Anna had given her and nodded.

  ‘Right, let’s get started. Were you with Riikka on the day she died?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I mean, not all day, but almost. She lives … I mean, she used to live at my place.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘She lived at my place, has done since she split up with Jere.’

  ‘So Riikka and Jere were no longer together?’

  ‘That’s right. Split up at Midsummer. Riikka moved in with me straight afterwards.’

  ‘It seems Riikka’s parents didn’t know anything about this.’

  ‘You bet they didn’t. Riikka had decided to tell them once she’d moved to Jyväskylä. She was worried they’d try and force her to move back home, especially because they’d fretted so much about her moving in with Jere in the first place. She didn’t want to tell them anything about it, at least not for the moment.’

  ‘Why did they split up?’

  ‘Riikka felt like she needed to move on. She needed a bit of freedom, you know? She was still pretty young when they started dating. Relationships like that rarely last for ever.’

  ‘Did they argue a lot?’

  ‘Towards the end, yes. In the spring, they argued pretty badly.’

  ‘Do you know what they argued about?’

  ‘Riikka thought Jere was too possessive. It annoyed her.’

  ‘So it was Riikka who ended the relationship?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did Jere take it?’

  ‘He wanted to carry on dating, I think. You don’t think he had anything to do with this, do you?’

  ‘Our job is to find out, not just to think things.’

  ‘He couldn’t have done something like that, I’ll swear to it.’

  ‘Was he violent? Towards Riikka or in general?’

  ‘No. Not like his dad. If you ask me, I think Riikka was exaggerating things a bit. As if she was never at fault. It takes two to tango, you know.’

  Anna nodded, as if to indicate that she couldn’t agree more. Her mind was going over the books she’d read on interview technique: use gesture, expression and tone of voice to show that you are with the interviewee, that you’re listening. Empathise with the interviewee’s opinions when appropriate to gain trust.

  ‘Was Jere’s father violent?’

  ‘He was a drunk. Round the village rumour has it he used to beat their mother when he’d had a few. I remember Liisa would often turn up for work with a black eye. She’s a cleaner at the primary school we all went to.’

  ‘Think carefully back to the day Riikka died. Last Sunday. Starting right from the morning, tell me as much as you can remember,’ Anna asked.

  Virve again blew her nose and took a sip of water, then began twirling another strand of hair round her finger. Her eyes wandered restlessly across the walls, and every now and then she would sneak a glance at Anna. It appeared that her eyes found it hard to focus on one thing, even for a second. This girl’s in a pretty bad way, thought Anna.

  Virve closed her eyes, took a few agitated breaths in and out.

  ‘So, we woke up around ten. Riikka was sleeping in the living room. We had breakfast and just hung out. We couldn’t be bothered going out because the weather was so awful. I was in my room for the most part, I rent a one-bedroom flat downtown: bedroom, living room and a small kitchen. Then some time in the afternoon she took a shower, started getting herself all dressed up and said she was going into town. She came back around five o’clock, then at around seven she suddenly had another shower and said she was going out for a jog all the way to Selkämaa, and from there to her parents’ place for the night.’

  ‘Didn’t you wonder what she was up to?’

  ‘What? Going out for a run?’

  ‘That too. And what she was doing in the afternoon.’

  ‘Not really. I wondered why on earth she wanted to go out in the pouring rain. I wouldn’t have bothered. I prefer yoga. I suppose I didn’t think anything of it because she’s been like that all summer. Of course, I knew she had a new bloke on the go, and it pissed me off that she wouldn’t tell me anything about him.’

  ‘So Riikka had a new boyfriend?’

  ‘She never said as much, but you could tell.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She was so excited, secretive even. She’d disappear all of a sudden, dressed up to the nines. That’s when she got into all that bloody running – she was trying to lose weight. Often she’d be out all night.’

  ‘When did this start?’

  ‘I can’t remember exactly. Maybe around Midsummer or at the very beginning of July. Anyway, it was almost as soon as she’d finished with Jere. If you ask me, I think they star
ted seeing each other before the break-up.’

  ‘Did you ask her about it?’

  ‘I never stopped! But she kept saying there was no one new. She didn’t breathe a word of it to me. It was weird. I’ve always … I mean, we always used to share things like that.’

  ‘Have you any idea why she wouldn’t let on?’

  Virve was silent for a moment, concentrated on sucking a strand of hair she’d rolled into a ball.

  ‘I kept thinking, what if it’s not a man?’

  Anna thought she saw something flash through Virve’s mind, but the girl continued her account almost immediately. It was as though she couldn’t pin down the thought and it escaped.

  ‘Though, I mean, I can’t think why she’d be worried about something like that, especially with me. She knows I don’t care about gender – it’s love that counts. On the other hand, Riikka’s about as straight as they come. We’re actually quite different. I mean, we were. Talking in the past tense feels just awful.’

  Virve began to cry. She pressed her face into her hands and sobbed gently. Anna handed her another tissue and waited for the girl to calm down before she continued.

  ‘Let’s go back to what happened before Riikka went out for her run. So, she came home from town at around five o’clock. Try to tell me as carefully as you can what she said, what she did and how she appeared.’

  ‘Now that I think of it, she didn’t eat anything. I’d just roasted some aubergines, they were really good, and when I asked if she wanted to join me she said she’d eaten in town.’

  ‘Did you ask where she’d eaten?’

  ‘No. I gave up talking to her because she just lay down on the sofa and said she was tired.’

  Anna noted this down on her computer. In addition she had a notepad that she used to make unofficial observations. She took a pen and wrote: Where did Riikka eat 21.8?