Her Enemy

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “So who gets the apartment now that the bride-to-be is dead?” Ström continued cruelly.

  Kimmo stared at him with glazed eyes, again as if he hadn’t understood the question.

  “Come off it, Ström,” I said, interrupting the questioning. “How could Kimmo have thought about something like that yet?”

  “Maybe the kid wanted to cut his mother’s apron strings but wasn’t quite ready to have a wife tie new ones on yet,” Ström taunted. “Or maybe he didn’t want to leave his mother yet after all.”

  Kimmo groaned and buried his face in his hands. I took a few deep breaths, suppressing my desire to rearrange Ström’s previously broken nose. What would it help? Ström had decided that Kimmo was guilty, and I would need more than hunches to convince him otherwise. How had Ström made it so far up the ladder so quickly when he had such obvious biases?

  Ström gave up sweating Kimmo at about nine thirty, and we arranged to continue at ten o’clock the next morning.

  “Unless you want to go to church, Kallio,” Ström tossed after me as I left.

  I didn’t want to think about what Kimmo’s night at the police station would be like. How many other men were bunking in his cell? They would all know each other’s crimes almost immediately, and if the police guard made even the slightest hint about Kimmo’s rubber costume, the other men in custody would be like wolves at his throat.

  Outside, the night air was just as warm as it had been the previous evening. I didn’t have a clue about the bus schedule, so I decided to walk home. Luckily, I had put on comfortable shoes that morning, though a backpack would have been an improvement over my heavy shoulder bag.

  Because I didn’t have a map, I played it safe and stuck to the main road leading south toward Tapiola. After crossing the pedestrian bridge over the freeway, the surrounding neighborhoods were amazingly quiet—I suppose on Saturdays in the summer, most of the nightlife focuses around summer cottages and downtown Helsinki. Anyone left over was probably sitting on the couch watching the never-ending stream of police procedurals on TV.

  As I walked, I mulled over my case. If Kimmo didn’t kill Armi, then who did? What was the call Armi wanted to be left alone to make? Did Armi have something she wanted to tell me that could have been a threat to someone?

  I hoped that Ström had the sense to check on all the usual suspects who had done time for rape or murder but were back on the street. Who knew? Maybe this was just some random recidivist. Or some neighbor who got sick of Kimmo and Armi’s hanky-panky in the backyard and snapped.

  Our law office was quiet at the moment. Eki had hired me at the beginning of the summer specifically so I could have time to acclimate, but I wasn’t yet a full member of the bar. If this case were to go to trial, Eki would have to act as Kimmo’s attorney. What was my title now? “Legal counsel,” I guess. That sounded sufficiently official to justify continuing my investigation. I didn’t know what Eki would say about it, but I wanted to do a little private detective work.

  Plenty of people needed interviewing: Armi’s parents, her sister, and her boss, whom I would try to get hold of the next day.

  And all the others: Risto, Annamari, Marita. They would all have something to tell me. One of Ström’s wiseass comments came back to me. What if Annamari really didn’t want Kimmo to marry Armi? What if she was afraid of being left all alone in that big house? It seemed far-fetched, but then again, Annamari had always been unbalanced. How was I to know how Sanna’s death might have affected her? Maybe she’d gone off the deep end.

  Risto and, up to this point, Kimmo had struck me as surprisingly sane products of an absent father and hysterical mother, as if all the mental anguish in the family had accumulated exclusively in Sanna. Although, what did I really know about Risto and Kimmo? Was Kimmo a sadist or a masochist? Did that matter? We had to talk about his sexuality—the evidence necessitated it—but how do you ask a friend questions like that?

  Upon reaching a large cross street, I turned left and walked until I reached a park where several groups of young people sat scattered around the grassy meadow drinking. From there, I proceeded past a school and church, following the path down to the bay. The lights of the occasional car shone from the West Highway bridges. A bustling hedgehog snuffled toward me on the shoreline path. I remembered that Einstein was in Inkoo and wouldn’t be there to rub against my legs when I arrived home.

  Home. Espoo wasn’t my home. Hardly any of my belongings were here, since my beloved flea-market furniture was still in Antti’s apartment in the city. Most of my books were in the city. Summer would be over soon, and where would I live then? Not in Antti’s apartment—we wouldn’t fit.

  Antti was staring at music videos on TV when I entered the living room. In his hand was an empty whiskey glass; an empty bottle stood on the table. Antti rarely drank two nights in a row, but now he seemed to have taken my advice seriously. As he turned his head my way, I saw that the alcohol hadn’t completely deadened his feelings. He had been crying.

  “That took a long time,” he said with apparent calm.

  “I walked here from the police station, since it didn’t look like any buses were coming.”

  “You walked? That’s so you.”

  I didn’t know whether that was meant to be positive or negative.

  “How is Kimmo?” Antti took a sip of whiskey, as if to brace against my reply.

  “Pretty messed up, but he’s sticking to his original story even though he knows it looks pretty bad.”

  “Henttonen called half an hour ago. They’d made it all the way out to the tip of the Porkkala Peninsula before his hangover caught up with him. They docked on Stora Träskö and are heading back early tomorrow morning,” Antti explained calmly with his eyes locked on the television screen, staring at a female singer gyrating in red leather shorts.

  Immediately I dialed the number for Eki’s boat. When my boss answered, the echo made his voice sound as though it were coming from much farther off than Porkkala.

  “That Hänninen kid got himself in some goddamned hot water! It’s a good thing you’re there to look out for him. What the hell did he have to go and kill Armi for?”

  A cold shiver went down my spine.

  “Why do you think Kimmo killed Armi? Did Risto say so?”

  “Those Hänninens are a weird bunch—I’m sorry, I know they’re almost your relatives. If I were you, I wouldn’t assume Kimmo is innocent, although of course, the client is always innocent and we never say any differently to the police,” Eki said. “But we’ll meet on this tomorrow. What time does the interrogation start?”

  “Ten. Do you think you’ll make it in time?”

  Eki then explained something about the wind and how many knots they’d need to make, but I didn’t have the patience to listen. After hanging up the phone, I didn’t know what to think. Was I a naive idiot for believing Kimmo? Damn it, was Ström right after all? Maybe I was letting my relationship with Antti cloud my judgment about his friend.

  I realized I didn’t actually know Kimmo. I had seen him at the Hänninens’ a few times over the winter, and we had been out for beers together once. Armi was supposed to come with us that night, but something got in the way—yes, that was it: her sister was sick. Had that been when Mallu had her miscarriage?

  “Antti, could you help me clear up a few things?” I sat down next to him and touched him gingerly, afraid that he might shake off my hand.

  “Yeah, like what?” he asked guardedly. I could feel his muscles tense.

  “First, about Kimmo…Did you know about his S&M hobby?”

  “It isn’t like people go around broadcasting things like that! Once, I ran into him at the door of a hard-core sex shop in the city, and he looked really self-conscious, but I didn’t think anything more about it.”

  So what were you doing there, I thought, but I didn’t ask. I’d gone in the same shop too.

  “Maybe that was Kimmo’s way of exploring pain and death,” Antti continued, a little mo
re relaxed already. “Like Risto’s constant hypochondria, and Sanna’s cutting and drunk driving and drugs. Only finally Sanna succeeded in finding death.”

  “You think that was suicide?”

  “That day, she left a copy of a Sylvia Plath’s poem open on her desk. What more evidence do you need than that? She was always saying she wouldn’t live to grow old. But I always thought the Hänninens’ destructive tendencies focused only on themselves, not on outsiders. That’s why it’s hard for me to believe that Kimmo killed Armi.”

  Antti was now completely calm. I carefully stroked his back and then asked, “Well, who then? The killing looks so much like someone she knew did it. Or maybe the two juice glasses were meant for me and her, even though we would have been sewing inside.”

  “Am I supposed to start making lists of suspects from my own relatives?” Antti tore himself away from me and jumped up. “Fuck it; I can’t stand going through all of this again! If you hadn’t been with me the whole time, you’d probably even suspect me. You may call yourself a lawyer, but inside you’re still a cop!”

  Antti rushed down the stairs to his basement office. I stared after him silently for a moment, and then the tears I had been holding back all day began to flow. I cried for Armi and Kimmo, and for Sanna, but most of all for Antti and for me. We were going nowhere. I should just start looking for a new apartment and get it over with.

  I drank a generous shot of whiskey, ate a banana, washed my swollen eyes, and tried to sleep. Antti hid out in his office, the faint sound of clicking computer keys telling me he was still awake. He wouldn’t be crawling into bed beside me tonight.

  Despite the whiskey and the long walk home, I didn’t fall asleep until two.

  4

  My clock started beeping at eight thirty. When I looked out the window, I saw that the cherry blossoms had begun to fall. With a stop at the coffeemaker along the way, I dragged myself to the bathroom to look in horror at my swollen eyes. No time for an under-eye tea-bag treatment.

  Makeup and coffee helped get me into tolerable shape, and after a moment’s consideration, I left Antti a short note: “I’ll be away most of the day. Could we try to have a talk tonight?”

  Even pedaling at a relaxed pace, the journey to the police station took only twenty minutes. When I arrived, the place was dead, with no sign of Detective Sergeant Ström or my boss. I sat for a while and when nothing happened, I inquired with the duty officer at the front desk.

  “Oh, yeah…Ström did call. He had to go to Kirkkonummi to check out a stabbing. He moved your interrogation to tonight.”

  A sappy-looking guy with a pimply face, the duty officer was straight out of one of those police jokes where they ask which of the cops knows how to read and which one knows how to write. This guy’s partner would probably need to know how to do both.

  Just as I had gotten the number to Ström’s car and permission to use the desk phone, Eki dashed in.

  “Why’s it so quiet around here?” he brayed, startling the drunk man dozing on one of the benches in the waiting room. I called Ström, who said he doubted he would be back before seven. When I asked for permission to see Kimmo before then, he got difficult. For a good five minutes, we dickered over the intricacies of the Criminal Investigations Act before he finally acquiesced. However, he would allow only one of us to meet with Kimmo—either me or Eki, not both of us.

  “Hmm, which of us should help Kimmo…” Eki wondered aloud when I explained the situation. “Perhaps it’s better if you do, Maria. As legal counsel. It’ll give you plenty of practice, and you probably know the routine of these police interrogations better than any of us. We’ll see what happens if this makes it all the way to court.”

  “Should we meet to talk strategy once I’ve met with Kimmo? I’ll come to the office as soon as I’m done here.”

  Eki stayed in the waiting room talking on his expensive new brick-sized cell phone while I asked the duty officer to let me in to see Kimmo. The young man scratched the pimples on his jaw for a little while before warily answering, “Well, I kind of think Hänninen is still sleeping. We had to call the doctor this morning around five, because he just kept screaming. The doctor sedated him pretty well. Wait a sec, and I’ll call the jail.”

  The guard confirmed that Kimmo was sleeping, and I thought it best not to wake him. The duty officer’s story was worrying, but there would be time to sort it all out later in the day.

  Catching up with Eki in the parking lot, we loaded my bike into the back of his Volvo station wagon and started toward North Tapiola.

  Our office adjoined Eki’s home in a quiet residential area. When I had come here to interview for the job with the firm, I wondered how many clients would ever end up so far from downtown Helsinki, unless they were lost, but my misgivings were unfounded. With three practicing attorneys, Henttonen & Associates had its own established clientele for whom Eki and his staff drafted wills and estate inventories, handled divorces, and filed bankruptcies. Most of the clients were from Tapiola and other nearby areas of Espoo. They were used to Eki’s personal way of handling their business and trusted him.

  Henttonen & Associates had no time cards. In the few weeks I’d been on board, I’d already realized that most work occurred in spurts when it was available, and when things were quieter, most people stayed away from the office. When we were busy, government regulations on overtime had little meaning to the firm, but that was fine with me. As a police officer, I had become used to working without a set shift, and because Antti’s research also went in fits and starts, slogging my guts out around the clock and then checking out for a few days meshed just fine with my personal life.

  Eki Henttonen, Martti Jaatinen, and Albert Gripenberg were a team. The latter two each held five percent stakes in the company, while Eki held controlling ownership. During my interviews they told me straight out that they were specifically looking for a woman to join their team.

  “Don’t count on me being your barista or entertaining clients,” I stated firmly, a comment that made the men snort with laughter.

  “For coffee we have our secretary, Annikki, and we all take turns entertaining clients. We’ve just been thinking that since everybody keeps going on and on about the female perspective, maybe it’s time we got some too.”

  This rationale was so amusing that I found myself genuinely interested in working for them. I also got the impression that they were excited about me as well, so I wasn’t terribly surprised when the phone rang the next day and Eki asked when could I start.

  Despite my grand speeches, I turned on the coffeemaker as soon as we walked into the conference room. Eki said he would pop over to his house to fetch some pulla—the ubiquitous Finnish coffee bread. I checked the answering machine and then started to hunt for the gynecologist’s number in the phone book.

  Eki came back with the pulla, and the smell of cardamom spread through the room. He had the biggest sweet tooth I had ever seen in a man and was constantly wolfing down pastries or chocolate. Despite this apparent weakness, the size of his belly remained within reasonable limits, and his bald spot rarely showed due to a skillful comb-over. However, Eki’s appearance retained a fundamentally shabbiness: there was always a little dandruff dusting the shoulders of his suits; his face was always a little too flushed; his voice was always a little too loud and abrasive. Perhaps the fact that Eki lacked the usual slickness of most lawyers made people trust him more.

  After the coffee was ready, we recapped the situation. Eki shoved his fourth sweet roll into his mouth and, through it, said, “At this point it’s mostly up to the judge whether the evidence is sufficient to hold Kimmo. You don’t think it is, I take it?”

  “No, but that is influenced by my previous relationship with Kimmo. He isn’t the murderer type.”

  “Believing in your client’s innocence is a good thing. I’m not as sure, though. At this point, the Hänninens are almost your relatives, even if the priest hasn’t yet said amen. But how well do you kn
ow them? Back before she died, I had to intervene in Sanna Hänninen’s life on several occasions. She had a couple of DUIs, I had to pick her up from the drunk tank a few times, and there was that charge for possession of marijuana. Keeping that girl out of prison was almost a full-time job. Then, when she died, the police almost charged that Ruosteenoja kid for her death. With Annamari Hänninen making hysterical accusations that Sanna’s boyfriend murdered her, and him out of his mind with guilt because he was so drunk he didn’t even realize she had gone into the water, it was a tough spot for everyone involved. Kimmo was one of the hardest hit by his sister’s death, and without Armi, I doubt he would have come through it at all. Annamari had to take a medical leave for the whole rest of the spring semester.”

  “What does all that have to do with whether or not Kimmo did it?” I asked pointedly.

  “I just mean to say that the Hänninens aren’t the most balanced people you ever met. Who knows what someone like Kimmo might do in a…” Eki paused, clearly searching for the most roundabout expression he could find. “In a…state of sexual arousal. Maybe he didn’t even realize he was strangling Armi until she collapsed.”

  “So you’re suggesting that Kimmo denies killing her because he can’t remember killing her?”

  “Or doesn’t want to remember. Should we request a psychiatric examination? What do you recommend?”

  “If we want Kimmo to avoid prosecution, first we have to demonstrate that the evidence the police have fails prima facie, and then we have to find some evidence that suggests someone other than Kimmo could be the murderer,” I answered like the model law school student.

  We agreed that by the following day I would try to speak with as many people in Armi’s close circle of acquaintances as possible. During that time, Eki would attempt to find any holes in the evidence against Kimmo.

  “Let’s call Erik and let him know you’re coming,” Eki said, dialing Dr. Hellström’s number from memory. Someone answered on the other end, and Eki stated his business. I really liked his way of getting to the point and not dithering about things.