Snow Woman

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “I thought Pihko was my number two on this case. Isn’t he on shift today?” I asked.

  “He flew up to Lapland to do some skiing. You’ll have to settle for spending the holiday with me.”

  “OK, but just remember who’s doing what. I’m asking the questions. You keep your mouth shut. You don’t even have to record the interview. You just have to be there.”

  Ström just smiled.

  “Oh, by the way, do you know anyone on the force up in Karhumaa or Ii?” I was still trying to track down a cop from Johanna’s hometown that someone in my department knew. But my goal was no longer just to help her out in her custody dispute.

  “Not that I can think of. Why?”

  “One of our witnesses is from there. If you could check, I’d appreciate it. Now get lost. I need to get this work done. Or maybe you want to come to the morgue?” I smiled unpleasantly.

  A disdainful expression flashed across his face. None of us liked looking at corpses, but Ström would never admit that. The rest of us agreed that you got used to it, but you never liked it. At least Elina Rosberg’s body was in one piece, with no blood.

  “I have a couple of things to do too,” he said quickly. “Call when you need me in the interrogation room.”

  Instead of picking up the phone after Ström left, I thought about my own situation again. Was it dangerous to get pregnant when the IUD was still in? If I was pregnant, I should probably contact my gynecologist right away. Damn. I’d have to squeeze in time for a pharmacy run between Aira’s and Milla’s interviews.

  The air in the room suddenly seemed stuffy, so I opened the postage-stamp-sized ventilation window. Immediately my nipples felt painfully cold.

  The phone rang. It was Dr. Kervinen, the pathologist doing Elina’s autopsy.

  “Do you know whether Rosberg was on a course of antibiotics when she disappeared?”

  “Yes, she was,” I said. Aira had said that Elina’s leaving her pill bottle behind was a clear indication that something was wrong.

  “Do you happen to remember the brand or what it was prescribed for?” he asked.

  “Something that started with e-r, and it was prescribed for a respiratory infection. She had a bad cough.”

  “That fits well. We found erythromycin in her system, which is often used to treat things like bronchitis. The bottle would be useful. I’d like to know who was treating her. Apparently her doctor forgot to warn her that erythromycin inhibits the metabolism of benzodiazepines.”

  “Metabolism of benzo . . . what?”

  “Rosberg had a high dose of benzodiazepines—sedatives—and a few servings of alcohol in her system. Erythromycin increases the effects of benzodiazepines on the body and causes them to remain in the system longer. Together these substances could have left her comatose long enough for her to freeze to death.”

  I thought feverishly. Antibiotics, sedatives, liquor. Was Elina’s death an accident? If so, why had she been walking around in the snow in just her nightgown?

  “Were there enough sedatives and booze in her system that she would have passed out without the antibiotic?” I asked.

  “Maybe for a little while, but probably not long enough for her to freeze to death. But it’s hard to say. The interaction of these drugs isn’t well known, and reported cases have involved comas, not death. The effects of alcohol on drugs are also very individual, and you have to take the cold into consideration. The temperatures around Christmas were quite low, and she disappeared at night, right?”

  “Yes . . .”

  The case was becoming stranger by the hour. Had Elina simply been trying to sleep and took the sedatives not knowing the danger posed by the antibiotics? Or had someone else given her the mixture?

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m coming down there in about half an hour for the ID. Rosberg’s aunt is coming with me. I’ll ask her about the medicine and the doctor. But don’t say anything to her about a specific cause of death.”

  “Is she a suspect?” Kervinen asked enthusiastically. Most of us in law enforcement did various things to distance ourselves from our cases. Kervinen did so not by telling horrible corpse jokes or trying to shock people with coarse language like some of our colleagues. Instead, he treated victims like curiosities that had never really been living people. And he seemed to genuinely enjoy playing the detective sidekick.

  “Yes, you could say that. Hey, can I ask you one more question? A personal one. Is it dangerous to get pregnant with an IUD in?”

  An embarrassed cough came from the other end of the line. “Dammit, Kallio, I’m a pathologist, not a gynecologist. But yeah . . . You should probably see a doctor. I mean . . .” Kervinen laughed nervously, clearly tongue-tied.

  I suspected that he had no children himself and that everything he knew about pregnancy and childbirth was gleaned from chapters in a textbook long forgotten once he focused his medical education more on the dead than the living.

  “Yeah, I guess so. Well, I’ll see you in a little while. I have to go meet the aunt.”

  When I entered the police station lobby, I found both Aira Rosberg and Johanna Säntti waiting. Next to Johanna, who looked haggard and shrunken, Aira stood tall and broad-shouldered, but the sorrow on both of their faces was the same—immovable and desolate. Aira was wearing the black Persian lamb coat I had seen at the manor. A hat made of the same material was pulled over her forehead. Johanna wore a dark sack-like coat with a black-and-gray-patterned scarf tied around her head.

  “I brought Johanna along. She said she had a matter to discuss with the police,” Aira explained.

  “Would you like to wait for me here?” I asked. “We won’t be long. Or would you prefer to come and wait there?”

  It bothered me that everyone always spoke for Johanna, first Elina and now Aira. At least during her interview Johanna would have a chance to speak for herself.

  “I’ll come along.” Her voice was exasperatingly nervous and small, but at least she was talking. I led them to the car, which I’d parked in front of the building, and they both sat in back. We drove through the dusk toward the Turku Highway and from there to the Institute of Forensic Medicine.

  As I drove, I glanced into the backseat. “This is only a formality since we already know it’s Elina.” I kept my voice as calm and comforting as possible.

  It had started drizzling, and the radio was predicting a thaw in Southern Finland that would probably melt all of the snow that had fallen during December. A passing van threw the slush collected in the ruts in the road onto our windshield, leaving me blind for a couple of seconds before it occurred to me to turn on the wipers. The van was speeding, but I didn’t have the energy to care.

  “Don’t worry. I was at both of my parents’ deathbeds, and Elina’s parents’ too.” A dry amusement was audible in Aira Rosberg’s tone. “And I was a nurse. I retired just a few years before Elina founded the therapy center. I worked in nursing homes for years. But you haven’t told us the cause of death. Was it . . . messy? Is she hard to look at?”

  “No.” My cheeks burned with embarrassment and irritation. Aira seemed to deflect every attempt I made at showing empathy. OK, I wouldn’t try anymore.

  At the forensic medical center, we left Johanna in the waiting room. She sat at the end of a sofa, back straight, legs tightly pressed together like a little girl whose mommy had told her to behave while she went into the store. How could a person who seemed so weak and servile have nine children?

  I checked in at the information desk, and a nurse led us to the morgue door, where Kervinen met us. The nurse stood at the door, apparently poised to rush in to lend assistance if one of us fainted or had a hysterical fit.

  Identifying bodies was like a strange, ritualized dance around a wheeled bed draped in white. We walked to the gurney, and Kervinen lifted the sheet momentarily. I looked at Elina’s chilled face one more time
before I raised my eyes to Aira, who nodded.

  “Frozen to death,” she said softly. I nodded and asked Aira for her signature on the necessary forms, and then inquired about the medicine Elina had taken. She told me both the brand name and the doctor who prescribed it. I glanced at Kervinen, who nodded.

  “If you’ll go and wait with Johanna, I’ll be out in just a minute,” I said to Aira.

  When Aira reached the door, the nurse approached her to inquire whether she was all right. I didn’t hear the answer. They walked together into the bright fluorescent lights of the hallway while I turned back to Kervinen. I suddenly noticed the stench of disinfectant and the nauseating way Kervinen’s unusually feminine floral-smelling aftershave mixed with it.

  “Erasis, the drug she mentioned, fits perfectly with my erythromycin theory,” said Kervinen. “It would certainly increase the effect of the alcohol and benzodiazepines. If she’d been found in her bed, you’d think she just wanted to guarantee herself a good night’s sleep by taking a double dose of benzos and booze. You might also suspect suicide. But how did she get outside, and what would explain the scrapes on her back and buttocks? They were fresh and they bled, so they occurred before she died, presumably after she lost consciousness.”

  “Could she have dragged herself there? Maybe the medicine paralyzed her or—”

  “No. I’ll look at the ankles again carefully though. That might give us an answer,” said Kervinen.

  “Like what?”

  “Depressions or broken tissue could show someone dragged her under the tree or wherever it was you found her. Were there any marks on the ground?”

  I shook my head. “The rain softened the snow so much it was hard to tell anything. Show me her back.”

  Kervinen handled the dead flesh with nonchalant professionalism. I tried not to look at the long cuts the autopsy tools had made in Elina’s skin—or the minimal stitching that patched them up. Next to the autopsy incisions, the scratches on her back looked insignificant.

  “Based on my examination, she was a healthy, fit woman. She doesn’t appear to have smoked or drunk more than usual, and she had good muscle tone,” Kervinen said while I made a mental note to ask who had undressed Elina’s body and what her robe and nightgown had revealed. They would be ripped in the back if she’d been dragged through the forest. “There was one strange thing though. I didn’t find any explanation in her records for the cervix.”

  I stared at Kervinen. “Cervix? What do you mean?”

  “According to her records, Rosberg never had children or any uterine surgeries. The orifice of a woman’s uterus who hasn’t given birth is sort of round and tight, but Rosberg’s was stretched like a woman who’d had at least one child.”

  “Are you saying she gave birth?” I asked.

  Kervinen’s embarrassed gaze wandered the room, avoiding mine. “As I said before, I’m not a gynecologist. The stretching could have come from something else, such as surgery. If you think it’s important, I can call in a specialist to have a look.”

  “Yes, do that,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going to be important. Maybe it was a miscarriage.”

  “That should show in her medical records too,” Kervinen pointed out.

  I would have liked to continue speculating with Kervinen, but Aira and Johanna were waiting, and I had other things to do. As I stepped into the corridor, the cold, artificial light of the institute enveloped me and dispelled the thought that had momentarily popped into my mind. Elina couldn’t have had a child. That would have shown up in the population registry too. And why did Kervinen act so embarrassed when he talked about pregnancy? He was a doctor! Most doctors I knew were either emphatically businesslike or flippant when the subject came up. Kervinen was the only one I knew who got nervous.

  Aira was sitting in the lobby staring into space, and Johanna was nowhere to be seen. I sat down next to Aira, searching her face for any signs of shock. She was obviously upset, but I didn’t detect anything abnormal.

  “Did Johanna go to the restroom?” I asked.

  “Johanna.” Aira said the name as if it meant nothing to her. “Oh yes, Johanna. She wasn’t here when I came back.”

  So Aira wasn’t as strong as she seemed outwardly. She was upset. But where on earth was Johanna? I wanted to get back to the police station and start my interviews. This was going to be a busy day even without delays. But we couldn’t just leave Johanna. She had no way of getting back to the Espoo Police Station, and I wanted to interview her too.

  “Wait here. I’ll find her.”

  I looked for Johanna in the nearest women’s restroom and then the other one, with no success. Crap. I knew there was a café. Maybe Johanna had gone there. I wandered in what I thought was the right direction, but after five minutes I became hopelessly lost. I finally asked directions from an amused orderly. I was grateful violent crime detectives didn’t have to wear uniforms; there was something tragically comic about a police officer lost in a forensic medical center. I hated revealing my ignorance by asking for directions.

  When I finally made the turn into the hallway leading to the café, I saw Johanna standing near the entrance staring at a painting hung on the wall. I walked up to her, but she didn’t seem to notice me. I turned to the painting. The stylized näivist image depicted a happy brood of children frolicking in a flowery meadow. Tears streamed from Johanna’s eyes, and the collar of her gray coat was completely wet with them. When I placed my hand on her shoulder, she didn’t react. My voice finally snapped her out of her obvious misery.

  “Time to go, Johanna. Nice picture.” Nice picture. That sounded so stupid! When would I learn how to deal with people who were hurting? Why couldn’t I just say how sorry I was for her loss? I could handle hard-bitten repeat offenders and slick white-collar criminals, but comforting someone in pain was beyond me. Grief left me mute and shy, irrationally fumbling for words and running away instead of moving closer.

  Fortunately Johanna obediently accompanied me down the hall. She was clearly accustomed to following orders. Aira was waiting where I’d left her, and we silently marched out to the car in the rain and drove back to the station.

  When we arrived, I asked Johanna whether she wanted to be interviewed first as she’d waited so long at the morgue.

  “Waiting doesn’t bother me,” she said quietly. Then a little more loudly, “It’s nice having time to just sit and be.”

  Although the Espoo Police Station was new, the interrogation rooms were bleak, sterile white boxes. At least the chairs were comfortable. I was setting up the interview recorder’s microphones when Ström walked in, shoving the last piece of a meat turnover into his mouth. My stomach growled. I asked Aira whether she wanted coffee. She asked for a glass of water instead.

  To begin, I recited the date and time of the interview for the recorder and asked Aira to provide her basic information.

  “Aira Elina Rosberg, born February second, 1925. Profession: nurse, retired. Unmarried.” Reeling off her official information for the recorder almost seemed to amuse Aira.

  “Elina was named after you?” I asked.

  “It’s a common name in my mother’s family, and I am . . . I was Elina’s godmother.” Aira’s steady voice cracked. “Talking about her in the past tense is going to take some getting used to.”

  “Do you know who will inherit Elina’s property? Did she leave a will?”

  “I believe so, yes. You should ask the family lawyer, Juha Saario. The firm’s name is Saario and Ståhlberg. You can find them in the phone book.” Aira barely seemed aware of what she was saying; her mind was so far away.

  I wrote down the name of the law office and started running through the events of Boxing Day again. Aira didn’t have anything new to add. But after half an hour of questioning, she awoke suddenly from her daze. Opening her handbag, she interrupted me.

  “There’s s
omething I need to show you, Maria. When Elina disappeared, we didn’t find any kind of note from her. But I found this in my purse this morning.” She pulled out a white envelope with “Aira” printed on it in blue ballpoint pen. I reached to take it, but Aira squeezed it tight.

  “I only carry a purse when I go out, and I haven’t left home since Christmas. I didn’t open it until I got in the car this morning. That’s when I found this. Look!”

  Aira handed the envelope to me. Inside was a handwritten note that read: “Dear Aira, after everything I’ve heard, I can’t go on with this. I’m sorry for all the trouble I caused. Elina.” It looked like a suicide note.

  I read it again. “After everything I’ve heard, I can’t go on with this.” What had Elina heard that was so damaging it made her commit suicide? My thoughts returned to Joona Kirstilä, whom both Aira and Milla claimed Elina met that night. Could Elina have committed suicide because Kirstilä said he was leaving her? That was hard to imagine.

  “What do you think this letter means? Do you think it’s a suicide note?” I asked. “What did Elina hear? It sounds like she expects you to know what she’s referring to.”

  Aira shook her head impatiently. “Joona . . .”

  “Did Kirstilä intend to leave her?” I realized I was putting words in Aira’s mouth when Ström made a warning sound next to me. I had forgotten he was even there. Aira nodded, looking uncomfortable.

  “Did you see Elina again after she came in from that walk?” I asked.

  “I already told you I didn’t! But before Christmas she’d talked about the relationship ending.”

  “But that’s a classic cause of depression!” I said. “Why didn’t you mention this from the beginning?”

  “I didn’t want to blame Joona.” Aira’s voice was both sad and hollow. She began crying, the tears bursting out as though from a faucet that was suddenly twisted on. I just sat in my chair and watched while Ström sat next to me staring at the floor. Only when Aira had cried for a couple of minutes did I have the sense to ask whether she wanted anything, a tissue or another glass of water. She shook her head and pulled a handkerchief out of her purse.