Snow Woman

by Leena Lehtolainen

  After thinking for a few minutes, I called the front desk and asked them to keep a closer eye than usual on everyone entering the building. Then I went to see Palo, who was so nervous I wondered if I should take the threat more seriously too.

  “I’m keeping my service weapon with me until we catch him again,” Palo said. “That guy’s nuts.”

  I went back to my office pondering whether to do the same, but didn’t have much time to think about Madman Malmberg because Tarja Kivimäki finally returned my call just as I sat down at my desk.

  “I could meet at twelve o’clock,” she said coolly. “I’ll have to sacrifice my lunch hour since I’m booked solid.”

  Twelve o’clock didn’t work for me at all. I had a doctor’s appointment at twelve thirty. As I tried to think of a solution, it dawned on me that this was my new normal. Balancing work and family, and choosing which was most important at any given time, was going to be a constant source of stress. Maybe thinking about a homicidal fugitive wasn’t so bad after all . . .

  In the end I talked Kivimäki into meeting me near the Government Palace at eleven thirty so I would have time to make it uptown to the doctor’s office by twelve thirty.

  Next I tried to find Niina Kuusinen. She wasn’t answering her phone, so I left a message and concentrated on other tasks until Palo and Ström suddenly showed up in my office. Flopping down in the chair facing me, Ström tossed a series of pictures of the body from the Mankkaa dump on my desk.

  “Take a look at this, Kallio. The doc’s stumped about the murder weapon. What do you think?”

  Although the pictures lacked the smell, the images of the mangled face and frozen entrails pecked by birds against the pure-white snow were still nauseating.

  “You don’t make a hole like that with a knife. It had to be something bigger. I was thinking a saw,” Ström suggested.

  Ström’s aftershave had a cloying smell, a little like cherry wine left out too long in a hot room. My morning coffee suddenly decided to come back up, and sweat ran from my neck to the small of my back. I didn’t have time to say anything. I just ran for the nearest toilet, never mind that it was in the men’s restroom. The vomiting wracked my entire body, and I was instantly covered in sweat—under my breasts, on my thighs, even between my toes.

  After the nausea passed, I rinsed my mouth with water and pilfered some toothpaste from Taskinen’s tube—I skipped borrowing a toothbrush though.

  “Bad hangover?” Palo asked sympathetically when I dragged myself back to my office.

  “A couple of shots too many, I guess. I’ll be OK.” I tried to sound casual.

  “Want some motion sickness pills?” Palo was already reaching into his pocket, which contained his legendary miniature pharmacy. “Take this and a couple of B vitamins and you’ll be good as new.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t think my stomach can handle it,” I said.

  Ström was looking at me just a little too carefully, and I realized he suspected this wasn’t a hangover.

  “Have we identified the victim?” I asked before Ström could open his mouth.

  “Yep . . .” Palo leafed through the papers he was holding. “Pentti Olavi Lindström, born 1940, a ninety-niner. His drinking buddies ID’d him.”

  Around the department we called people without a permanent residence ninety-niners because they had to drag themselves to Election District 99 if they wanted to cast a ballot. Apparently Lindström had been crashing in a transient camp near the Mankkaa dump.

  “Record?” I asked.

  “Little things,” said Palo. “Moonshining and petty theft. One DUI when he was younger.”

  “Looks like a classic booze brawl.” I shrugged. “Why did you bring this to me? Ström, weren’t you going to handle this with Lähde?”

  “Lindström just happened to be Madman Malmberg’s dad. Maybe that’s why he jumped the fence. . .” Palo said.

  “What the hell?” I looked at Palo. “Are you telling me he heard about this in lockup before we did and busted out to get revenge?”

  Palo looked hesitant, but Ström nodded. “Let’s start looking for Lindström’s killer, and I bet we’ll nail Markku Malmberg too. I suggest the first thing we do is pull in this whole crew of winos just to keep them out of the crossfire.”

  I couldn’t count the number of times I’d listened to Ström bellyaching about drunks living on the dole, drinking away the tax money he earned by the sweat of his brow. So this was probably less about wanting to be a Good Samaritan and more about wanting to use his nightstick on certain people when they resisted. Personally I didn’t have much interest in protecting anyone who sawed a person open, although I figured it probably happened while the killer was having some sort of drunken hallucination. On the other hand, it was probably better that society meted out the punishment and not Madman Malmberg.

  “I guess we should be glad someone besides us is first on the hit list,” I said to Palo with a grin. “Let’s get Patrol to start rounding up winos. I’m available this afternoon too.”

  “Taskinen asked me to tell you to watch your back,” Ström tossed out as they left, and then he added, “For two reasons I guess.”

  Goddamn Ström. Of course he’d be the first to figure out I was pregnant. I stuck my tongue out at his back and then returned to the rape report I’d been working on. But concentrating wasn’t easy. My mind kept wandering back to Madman Malmberg, Elina Rosberg’s frozen corpse, and the tiny creature swimming around inside of me. I remembered how Malmberg’s eyes had looked when we arrested him, strangely pale and unmoving, as big and round as a child’s. When eyes like that filled with unbridled fury, the effect was downright terrifying. As if a monster from an old science fiction movie was looking out of his eyes. And yet his psychiatric tests showed he was perfectly competent. Malmberg even had a therapist, some kind of “astropsychologist,” who, with a straight face, had explained to the judge that Malmberg’s violent tendencies were a result of crossed stars and a domineering mother.

  Shaking my head to snap myself back to the task at hand, I continued reading.

  “In his statement, the accused reported dancing with the victim, Raija Kolehmainen, several times during the evening. According to him, the victim appeared amenable to ‘getting to know him better’ and agreed to the accused’s offer to take her home. However, in the car Kolehmainen rebuffed the accused’s advances. At this, the accused lost his temper and attacked Kolehmainen.”

  I remembered how angry Taskinen had been when Ström asked the victim what she had been wearing. I was already worried that Kolehmainen wouldn’t press charges so the case could go to trial. She was a forty-year-old single mother who now had to explain to her teenage son exactly why a stranger had attacked her. Ström’s insensitivity had no doubt increased her reluctance to pursue the matter.

  Before leaving for downtown Helsinki, I ate a cup of instant soup and then, after thinking about it for a few seconds, walked over to our gun safe. But even as I tucked the revolver under my arm, I wondered what help a sidearm would be if Malmberg ambushed me coming around a corner. His style was more knives and fists. Still, the revolver was a decent choice of weapon and I was a good shot again, but I didn’t feel comfortable carrying a gun. Few of us carried all the time, and although the arming of police was becoming more common, we rarely had guns hanging on our hips.

  Down in the garage, I met my partner for the day, Officer Pihko, who took the passenger seat while I drove. It occurred to me that I’d need to send him back to Espoo after we interviewed Kivimäki. Pihko just nodded when I mentioned it. He didn’t talk much in general, and as soon as we turned onto the Turku Highway, he pulled out his criminal law textbook. Lately we’d been calling him “the Brain” because he was always studying. A double major in law and political science while trying to hold down a full-time job opened a person up to that. No one was surprised when he was the first i
n line to sign up when the Ministry of the Interior announced plans to create a doctoral training program for police officers.

  Personally I liked working with Pihko. He never acted out of turn. Sometimes I wondered what his school grind was about. Maybe he’d slacked off in high school and only realized after the academy that he could set his sights a little higher than spending the rest of his life as a beat cop. I’d thought about the doctoral program too, but now I’d have to put off any plans like that for a few years.

  A barricade of television cameras was piled in front of the Government Palace, with reporters and photographers shoving each other to get to the front. The Minister of the interior, Martti Sahala, was making some sort of statement in the center of the swarm. I had glanced at the morning paper long enough to know that the scandal of the day had to do with a dustup at a border station on New Year’s Day when a bunch of Bosnian Croats carrying guns had tried to cross the border and apply for asylum. That only one border guard was injured was a miracle. The government had called an emergency meeting, and now I picked out Tarja Kivimäki’s bright-yellow trench coat in the middle of the gaggle of reporters; she was practically shoving her microphone in Sahala’s mouth. I couldn’t see her expression, but I was sure she wasn’t letting him off easy.

  Martti Sahala seldom experienced this sort of media siege even though rumor had it he was something of an éminence grise of the current government, with more power than the voting public understood. Sahala was only in his forties, and many considered him a serious contender for the 2006 presidential election. From a policing perspective, Sahala had been a fairly active Minister of the interior. For example, he’d drawn up new police district lines during his term. On the other hand, he was one of those “never leave a man behind” types who always interfered with investigations of his cronies if there was the slightest justification. Sahala’s intervention had extricated more than one CEO from hot water.

  The reporters dispersed as Sahala pushed his way to his car. Tarja Kivimäki exchanged a few words with her cameraman and then turned to look for me. I suddenly realized I hadn’t thought at all about where to conduct the interview. In our cold police car?

  “What exactly is it you want?” Kivimäki asked after shaking hands.

  “I’d like to get what you told me a couple of days ago on the record,” I said. “The car is a little uncomfortable for this sort of thing, so maybe we can find a café somewhere close.”

  “How about the university library,” Pihko suggested. “There’s no one there this time of day.”

  “That’s fine, since I need to be at Parliament by twelve thirty,” Kivimäki said. “Can I eat during official police questioning?”

  “Yes, but I have to admit it’s a bit out of the ordinary for us to conduct this kind of interview in a student café,” I said. Talking with Kivimäki made me feel a little like a fencer, one not quite in control of her weapon. Like me, Kivimäki was a professional talker, actually an interrogator, and being a respondent wasn’t a particularly natural role for her. As she had the first time we met, she wanted to ask the questions and immediately began pressing us about Elina’s cause of death.

  “The investigation is ongoing,” I parried.

  “You already know something,” persisted Kivimäki. “Aira used the phrase “freezing to death” and said Elina had been out wandering through the forest in her nightgown. Is that accurate?”

  I just nodded as I opened the heavy door of the university library. During my years as a student, I’d spent a lot of time in its café. I’d never felt at home in the Porthania Building, where most students tended to hang out, and there were always too many people I knew in the main building. At the library café I could count on being left alone.

  The back room was empty. Pihko grabbed us coffee while I set up the tape recorder. Kivimäki set a cup of tea and a bowl of vegetable stew down with a clatter. Maybe eating would distract her enough for me to fling a few of my own questions at her. To begin, I asked for her basic information. Hearing that she was originally from Tuusniemi, twenty miles from my own hometown, was a surprise. Any hint of the regional accent was gone. She had doubtless erased it intentionally. At thirty-three, she had probably lived in the capital for over ten years now. I wanted to know more about Kivimäki’s background, to get past her polished, aggressive outer shell, but standard interview protocol only allowed for the usual birth date and address type of stuff. Then we went over what we’d discussed previously. Kivimäki still thought suicide was out of the question.

  “I can’t image any explanation for Elina wandering around in the forest in nothing but her nightgown and robe either. Or maybe . . .” Kivimäki stopped and seemed to think. Then she put another forkful of stew in her mouth to buy more time to ponder. My coffee tasted like the bottom of a pot. Of course Pihko hadn’t put milk in it. “Maybe one of Elina’s stray cats lured her out into the woods. Maybe she thought she was just stepping out for a second. Otherwise she would have taken a coat.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that Elina could have been wearing a coat and shoes when she went out, even though Aira had said they were all accounted for. Maybe someone had taken them off her and brought them back to the house. That opened up any number of new scenarios . . .

  “Last time you talked about strays too. Why was she looking out for all of you?” I asked a little too brusquely, trying to break down Kivimäki’s authoritative wall.

  “I wasn’t her pet.” Kivimäki’s voice was icy, but its volume and pitch remained steady. “I was her friend, not some hanger-on. What does our relationship have to do with any of this?”

  I didn’t answer, which clearly irritated Kivimäki, because she went on without prompting.

  “I know you’re going to repeat the old cliché that because this is a murder investigation, everything you ask is critical. But I didn’t murder Elina. Maybe you think I’m cold because my best friend just died and I’m not blubbering. But what do you know about me? You don’t know how I mourn when I’m alone, and this isn’t going to screw up my life.”

  “So you were Elina Rosberg’s best friend?” I said. “Do you know whether she was ever pregnant? Did she ever have an abortion or a miscarriage? Had she ever had major gynecological surgery?”

  “You should ask her doctor for her medical history.”

  “I need this information from you,” I said.

  “Why? I never heard of Elina being pregnant. I always got the idea she didn’t want children. We were the same that way.”

  “Who was her doctor?” I asked.

  “Eira Lehtovaara had been her gynecologist forever, but she retired a couple of years ago. Elina saw someone else at the same clinic after that. Aira would know more.” Kivimäki sipped the last of her tea and looked at me expectantly, as if hoping I’d ask a brilliant question this time instead of more trivialities.

  This woman was really starting to get on my nerves. I doubted she went into interviews hoping for surly retorts either. And as she had said herself, her best friend was dead. I’d have thought she’d want to know the truth about that as much as she wanted to know about the government’s latest budget cuts.

  “I can’t tell you anything more about what happened,” said Kivimäki as she began to collect her things. “I’ve tried to think of an explanation for Elina’s disappearance, and the only reason I can come up with is that someone asked her to help them. Or pretended to.”

  I muttered something about a possible follow-up interview, and then I turned to Pihko and told him I was staying in the city.

  “You go ahead and take the car,” Pihko said, his boyish face flushing with embarrassment as he added that he had something to take care of at the university. It was almost as if he were talking about something illicit. I didn’t quiz him about where he was going. Instead, I offered to drop Tarja Kivimäki off at the parliament building.

  “Umm, it’ll seem
strange if I arrive in a police car.” Kivimäki’s voice contained a new note of irony when she continued. “Although I suppose I wouldn’t be the first person to get a ride to that building from the police.”

  Pulling out of the parking spot, we almost immediately got stuck at a red light on the Esplanade. Seeing the time, I realized I was going to be late for my doctor’s appointment. To cover my anxiety, I asked Kivimäki another question.

  “You must not have any close family, since you spent Christmas at Rosberga?”

  Kivimäki glanced at me quickly, and I expected another snippy comment about inappropriate questions, but to my surprise she answered. “I have plenty of relatives. They’re all still up on the family farm in Tuusniemi and thereabouts, my parents and three brothers and their families. I imagine they all gathered around the Christmas table like always, eight adults and ten children. I think it was Juha’s turn to play Santa Claus this time. Only the black sheep of the family was missing from the circus.”

  The light turned green. This time I made it to the City Center Building with its sausage-shaped belt of a parking level before we got stuck again.

  “What do you mean, ‘black sheep’?” I asked. I was curious. I’d often felt like the family outcast myself due to my unusual profession and general aversion to traditional femininity. “You’re such an accomplished woman.”

  “Well, at first my parents were thrilled because I work on television and meet government ministers and celebrities,” she said. “I guess they’re a little disappointed I’m not more visible, that they can’t actually see my face on screen or in the tabloids. The job itself doesn’t matter to them. Who cares that I’m the only one of their kids with a college degree? All that matters is whether a woman has a husband and children.”

  Kivimäki’s tone could have punctured a car tire, but her face was still impassive. I was so surprised I didn’t notice the green light until someone behind me screwed up the courage to honk at a police car. Tarja Kivimäki was the last person I would’ve pegged as being scarred by her childhood.