Snow Woman

by Leena Lehtolainen

  No, no chocolate. Yuck. Suddenly the thought of anything sweet made my stomach turn. I must have eaten too much over Christmas.

  With a sigh, I opened a new document on my computer and started typing a report about the interview I’d just completed. Plenty of people in Espoo hadn’t enjoyed nearly as peaceful a Christmas as Antti and I had. As usual, the holidays had increased the incidence of domestic violence. Returning from my vacation, I found several assaults and one fatal stabbing waiting for me at the station. No wonder so many of my colleagues took a cynical view of family life and marriage. Half the cops in our unit were divorced; Palo was on marriage number three.

  What the hell was making me so tired? I hadn’t been doing anything special. Due to the cold snap, our daily cross-country ski outings had been short and relaxed.

  Antti and I were living in a run-down little house that had been owned by Antti’s coworker’s late brother. The family was having a hard time selling the house because it was located right along the future route of the Ring II beltway. The windows offered a view of fallow fields where rabbits jumped and moles rooted, but when the road was done, the landscape would be just asphalt and noise. Strangely, the impermanence of our abode didn’t bother me. Maybe I needed the possibility of change now that I had a permanent job and a husband. Before this I’d had a hard time staying happy in a job, so temporary gigs and substitute postings had fit me just fine. Even dating Antti for two and a half years had been quite an accomplishment for me. I wondered whether I’d only found the courage to get married because divorce was so easy nowadays.

  Antti, on the other hand, had become attached to the bucolic scene outside our windows and mourned its impending loss. He’d even joined the No to Ring II opposition group, but the fight seemed hopeless; although no one else seemed to see any need for a new road, whatever the Public Roads Administration and Espoo bureaucrats got into their heads seemed inevitable. Antti was already despondent over the West Highway expansion destroying so many of the places he remembered from his childhood in Tapiola. He blamed the change in that landscape for his parents’ decision to finally sell their home and move permanently to their summer cabin in Inkoo.

  In fact, Antti had become so anti-road and environmentally conscious that I half-seriously thought he’d run for local council on the Green ticket in the next elections.

  “Actually, you should infiltrate the Social Democrats or National Coalition. They’re the most enthusiastic road builders,” I’d jokingly suggested.

  Antti clearly needed something new to do other than work. I, on the other hand, was content jogging, hitting the gym, and visiting the department firing range. I’d been forced to use my weapon for the first time in my career the summer before and had found that my marksmanship needed a lot of work. Since then I’d been visiting the range regularly. My technique was getting better, but I truly hoped I’d never have to use that skill in the field again.

  My phone rang. On the other end of the line was Dispatch, who notified me of an incoming call from Aira Rosberg. It took me a moment to remember her and my visit to the Rosberga Institute a few weeks ago. I’d heard nothing more about Johanna’s case, and with all the rush around the holidays, I’d forgotten my promise to see if I knew any police in the district where she lived.

  Aira’s voice sounded strangely hesitant when Dispatch connected the call. “I don’t really know whether this is the sort of thing to bother the police about, Maria, but . . . Elina is missing.”

  “Missing? What do you mean?”

  “No one’s seen her since last night. It doesn’t look like she slept in her bed, and we can’t find her nightgown or bathrobe anywhere. And the clothes she laid out for today are still in her room. It’s as if she went somewhere in her nightgown.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “Last night around ten o’clock. She’d just come in from an evening walk and was going to her room. We’ve had a small group of women here celebrating Christmas. Four in addition to me and Elina. No one remembers seeing her after that.”

  “And she didn’t leave any kind of message?”

  “No.”

  Was that misgiving in Aira’s voice when she replied?

  “Is there any place Elina could have gone? Who are her closest friends?”

  “I called Joona right away . . . Joona Kirstilä. He’s Elina’s boyfriend. But Elina wasn’t there.”

  “You mean the poet Joona Kirstilä?” I asked curiously. Elina was in the press relatively often, and Kirstilä was well known, but I’d never heard any rumors of a romantic relationship.

  “Yes, that’s him. They’ve been seeing each other for a couple of years. Elina spends the night at Joona’s now and then, so I thought maybe she was there.”

  “Is there any particular reason to be concerned about Elina’s disappearance? Did anything happen over Christmas, maybe an argument? Who else is there with you at the house?”

  “You met Johanna Säntti and Milla Marttila when you came. They’ve basically lived here since that course at the beginning of December. Tarja Kivimäki is an old friend of Elina’s; she also spent Christmas here. And Niina Kuusinen arrived on Christmas Day. She’s a therapy patient who attended Elina’s courses too.”

  I was shocked to hear Milla was still at the manor, remembering how much she had seemed to dislike being there. And Johanna . . . Wasn’t she able to see her children even at Christmas?

  I didn’t want to think about Johanna, so I continued my questioning. “Was Elina in the habit of disappearing without prior warning?”

  “No! This is very strange. If you could—”

  “She hasn’t been missing for twenty-four hours,” I interrupted gently, “and since she’s an adult, the police won’t initiate a search yet. Does Elina have any friends or relatives she might have gone to see?”

  Aira replied in the negative once again. She didn’t seem to want to end the call. People disappeared with no explanation all the time, and they usually turned up in one piece. But I didn’t think saying so would comfort Aira. Besides, Elina Rosberg’s sudden disappearance sounded strange to me too.

  “Aira, if you haven’t heard anything from Elina by tomorrow morning, call me again,” I finally said. Addressing a woman I barely knew and who was forty years my senior by her first name felt strange, but she had called me by my first name too. I guess that’s how they did things at the Rosberga Institute. “And even if she does come back, please give me a call.” Although I knew I shouldn’t, I gave Aira my home number. I tried to rationalize that I was just curious, but I knew that was a lie. I was worried.

  After hanging up, I went back to typing my report. Before leaving work, I called and asked Antti to wax my skis. It had been snowing heavily all day, and the fields near the house were covered with a thick layer of white. Now that the sky was clearing and everything was freezing up, the conditions were good for skiing. One of the benefits of our temporary living arrangement was that we could ski right from our yard. Breaking trail would be a pleasant change from jogging.

  As I was leaving my office, I ran into Ström in the hallway. Ström had worked straight through Christmas. His ex-wife and her new husband had taken the children to the Canary Islands. Ström looked even more sullen than usual. The skin on his face with its large pores was drawn tight in a frown and his thinning brown hair was plastered to his head. He looked like he’d been sweating. Broken more than once, his nose glowed red on his pale face. I wondered if he was coming down with a cold.

  “I spent the whole day with those goddamn shooters from Perkkaa, and supposedly nobody remembers anything,” Ström snapped in response to my greeting. “I bet they went and got stoned after they shot that guy just so they could claim they didn’t remember anything and no one could be charged.”

  He looked at me and changed gears: “So how did the blushing bride’s Christmas go? Plenty of binge eating and
screwing?”

  I’d gotten used to Ström’s rough manner when we were in the same class at the police academy, so I just nodded and smiled. Besides, Ström was right—although I might have expressed our activities a little differently.

  “So do you have a bun in the oven yet?” Ström continued, looking me up and down.

  “That’s none of your business,” I hissed, “but since you’re so interested, it isn’t in the plans. I have an IUD.” I pushed open the door before Ström could whip out any more smart-ass remarks. I wasn’t in the mood for a verbal jousting match, and our conversations almost always turned into arguments. We just didn’t get along.

  Although I’d heard he was the one who recommended I be asked to join the unit, I had worried about coming to work in Espoo with him here. A few years before, when I was working for a law firm in Tapiola, Ström and I had had a serious confrontation over a murder investigation. I was legal counsel for an innocent man whom Ström had arrested. In the end, I solved the case by basically going over the heads of the police. Ström had had a hard time swallowing this. Later I heard that he’d been right in the middle of his divorce at the time and that this had affected his work. Of course, he never talked about his breakup, but Palo’s third wife knew Ström’s ex, and Palo had no qualms about gossiping about Ström’s personal life.

  When I finally left the station, I was met with falling snow. The snow and the Christmas lights burning on the houses along Lower Henttaa Road created a postcard scene. Even our own run-down red cottage looked homey. Antti had lit the candle lantern to welcome me home and was shoveling when I pulled up.

  He waited while I went in to throw on my ski gear and quickly eat a banana. The fresh air washed away my tiredness, and once we were on the trail, I began to enjoy the sound of the snow under my skis, simultaneously familiar yet new to me every winter.

  But my mind kept wandering back to Elina Rosberg. Where on earth could she be? Although I knew Elina Rosberg only from her media image, she didn’t seem the kind of person who did anything on a whim. She was a regular guest on talk shows where issues related to sexuality and gender roles were discussed, and while the other participants tended to lose their cool and shout at each other, Elina always remained maddeningly calm. Usually it was her voice that made the others eventually settle down and listen. No, Elina was not the kind of person to jump on a train for a last-minute visit to a girlfriend in another city. Not without telling anyone and especially not when she had Christmas guests.

  After a couple miles of skiing, my strange exhaustion returned. My legs felt lethargic and weak, as if they no longer wanted to propel the skis forward. Antti was moving along at a steady clip ahead of me, and I had to ask him to slow down.

  “What’s up, snow woman?” Antti asked, laughing.

  I shook the powder out of my hair before answering.

  “My legs are tired. They feel really weird. I think I might be coming down with something. Or maybe my period is starting. That could be it.”

  “Maybe we should turn back,” Antti suggested.

  I managed to turn around on my Jell-O legs. Trying not to think about how weak I felt, I concentrated on Antti’s back gliding along ahead of me. His green anorak glowed against the snow, his shadow looking impossibly tall and thin. His large, aquiline nose looked even more prominent than usual when he turned back to ask whether the speed was OK. I was relieved when I finally saw the house lights and glad to know a hot sauna was waiting. The thought of getting warm and crawling into bed with Einstein curled up on my feet after his evening meal was heavenly.

  But even when I was finally lying in bed listening to him purr, my thoughts kept turning to Elina. She wouldn’t leave me alone in my dreams either. I saw her walking along a lake of ice, wearing a flowing white nightgown. Suddenly the wind took hold of the nightgown and lifted Elina into the air, twirling her higher . . . higher . . . higher . . . until finally she was nothing but a speck disappearing in a swirl of snowflakes.

  In the morning, I’d barely made it into my office before Aira Rosberg phoned. Still no sign of Elina. I explained that I’d have to connect her with Patrol. Without any evidence of a crime, a disappearance didn’t fall under our unit’s responsibilities.

  “I’m so sorry to impose on you, but . . . I was hoping that . . . that you could come here.” Aira sounded concerned and confused. “If I call the regular police, they’re sure to send a man here, and I know Elina wouldn’t approve of that.”

  “There are plenty of women in that department these days, but I’ll see what I can do.” I put down the handset and quickly checked my schedule. My afternoon wasn’t booked solid, so I had time to swing by Nuuksio. “I’ll come around two. Call me back if you hear anything from Elina.”

  Just then Taskinen opened the door and summoned me to the interrogation room. In addition to all the Christmas assaults, we were in the middle of a complicated money laundering investigation that fell jointly to us and the Finance Unit. One of the main perpetrators was an MBA type who’d started his career in bankruptcy fraud sometime back in the 1970s and had organized this new operation from prison. Today we were interviewing the suspect’s brother-in-law, who was one of the key stockholders in the front company.

  Taskinen and I thought that if we bombarded him with quick cross-examination questions, we might be able to put him off balance, at least momentarily. We badgered him for close to three hours before we were satisfied. He had contradicted himself several times and made so many little slips that we decided we had enough to file charges. We’d been plugging away at the case since the summer, and it felt fantastic to finally have some movement on it.

  “Do you have time for lunch?” Taskinen asked as we were leaving the interrogation room.

  “Actually I have something to talk to you about.” On our way down to the cafeteria I explained Elina Rosberg’s strange disappearance and asked permission to go have a look—informally, of course—to see whether I could find any evidence of a crime. Truth be told, I’d already made up my mind to go whether I had permission or not.

  “I have a feeling Aira Rosberg isn’t telling me the real reason why she’s concerned enough about Elina to turn to the police,” I said.

  We started loading food on our trays. Taskinen chose skim milk and didn’t take any butter for his bread. I squirted ketchup all over my cheesy macaroni casserole and poured thick garlic dressing on my salad. Taskinen shook his head in amusement when he looked at my plate. He waited until we were settled at our table before saying anything about Elina’s disappearance.

  “You can go. But tell Aira Rosberg to make an official missing persons report if it looks like anything fishy is going on. And check to see if her niece might have left the country. These are tough cases, adult disappearances. If I were you, I’d have a talk with the boyfriend too.”

  “I was thinking the same.” I shoved a big forkful of macaroni in my mouth and watched Taskinen as he mashed slices of rye bread into little balls with his fingers before eating them.

  Detective Lieutenant Jyrki Taskinen was a neat, meticulous man. He was a little over five feet ten and had straight blond hair that looked as if it had been parted with a ruler. There were never stray hairs or dandruff on the shoulders of his blue suit, and his fingernails were always trimmed short. Everything about Taskinen’s face was narrow and straight. Even his teeth lay in flawless white lines. His body was also slim, wiry like a marathoner’s. I’d heard that even at fifty Taskinen could run a 10K in under forty minutes. The only exception to his narrow lines was an almost half-inch-wide polished gold wedding band.

  Based on his appearance, you could easily take Taskinen for a tight ass, but in fact he was easy to get along with. He handled his work extremely well and encouraged the same in others. He always knew how to express exactly what he wanted and was clear about what pleased him and what didn’t. On occasion he was irritated by my habit of bending p
olice procedures a bit, but we’d never had any other problems. After my previous bosses—an alcoholic at the Helsinki PD and a shifty lawyer—working with Taskinen was a breeze.

  I hardly knew anything about his personal life, but if I remembered right, his wife was a day-care administrator for the city of Espoo. He also had a teenage daughter who was one of the best figure skaters in the country in her age division. Except for Ström, I got along well with all of my coworkers—despite being the only woman in the unit. Fortunately our neighboring units and the Patrol Division had a few female officers with whom I’d become friends. We even played volleyball once a week. Nowadays, with those other women in the building, I didn’t feel like such a freak. During my police academy days and right after graduation it had seemed I was the only representative of any kind of minority on the force.

  After lunch Taskinen and I worked on putting together the paperwork on the money laundering investigation. The sun was already setting by the time I turned my Fiat toward Nuuksio. After Antti and I had moved to the cottage, we’d given in and bought a used car. During the summer my commute was a breeze by bike, or even walking if I wasn’t in a hurry, and Antti didn’t mind walking half a mile to the bus stop or even having to transfer once to get to the math department at the university. But trips to the store and things like that were difficult enough that we’d decided to drop a few thousand on the ancient black Italian job. It clearly wasn’t made for slick roads. The back swung nastily as I slid down the curving hills of Nuuksio on my way to Rosberga.

  The gate was shut tight again, and this time it didn’t open on its own. Aira had to walk down and unlock it. The last rays of the sun struck Rosberga Manor at an angle, painting the delicate pink walls the color of a blazing-red rose garden. Milla was outside smoking. In her black clothes and heavy makeup, she looked significantly more like Maleficent than Sleeping Beauty.