Her Enemy

by Leena Lehtolainen

  The words I was hearing were smoother than I expected to come out of my own mouth. Kind of like a self-help magazine. Still, I forged ahead.

  “I’d like to comfort you, but that would require you letting me get close to you. I’m sad too, even though I didn’t know Armi.”

  I stopped when I noticed how Antti was shaking, laughing and crying at the same time. Gradually, the mixture of the two emotions gave way to uncontrollable laughter.

  “Stop it!” When my shout had no effect, I poured the glass of water sitting next to Antti on his head. Fortunately, that worked, and I didn’t have to resort to slapping him across the face.

  “Oh man,” Antti said, still chuckling as he shook his head and pulled me down next to him. “I was so sure you were pissed at me that I had my own speech ready too, and it would have sounded just as fake. Luckily, you beat me to it. How is Kimmo holding up?”

  Relieved, I told him the latest news and mentioned that I was planning to do some private investigating.

  “Can we talk a little about the people involved in this mess? You know them all so much better than I do.”

  “So I get to be Watson?”

  “Watson is supposed to worship the ground Sherlock Holmes walks on, and that role doesn’t fit you, even if you are a big enough dope otherwise. And we aren’t Tommy and Tuppence either, just plain old Maria and Antti. Let’s just go make lunch, and you can tell me about Sanna’s death.”

  Antti had forgotten to go to the grocery store, but his parents’ pantry still contained a box of pasta and a can of tomato sauce, so I was able to whip up a marinara. Throwing together pasta sauces out of random ingredients hidden in the back corners of my apartment cupboards could actually be considered my culinary specialty. My all-time triumph was a green-pepper–processed-cheese-spread–peanut-butter sauce. Which, believe it or not, wasn’t disgusting. Now we settled for a more normal combination of crushed tomatoes, onions, cheese, black pepper, and dried basil.

  “Well, for starters, I think you’re right that you can’t understand the Hänninen family without knowing about Sanna’s suicide. What do you want me to tell you?” Antti asked as he grated three carrots for us to eat as a salad.

  “Just tell me the story again, like you would tell someone who had never heard it before.”

  And Antti did. He started with Sanna, for whom the best descriptive adjective was clearly “self-destructive.” Sanna, who theoretically had everything.

  She had a good family. Her father was a successful engineer, her mother worked as a teacher, her older stepbrother was happily married, and her younger brother was following in their father’s footsteps.

  She was beautiful. She had large eyes the color of dried oak leaves and long, nearly coal-black hair. Her skin was pale, maybe a little sallow from her destructive lifestyle, but flawless otherwise, except of course in the places she had slashed or burned herself. She had a small nose and a large, sensual mouth that would have made even Nicole Kidman jealous. With her slender frame and large breasts, she was an irresistible combination of girlish insecurity and womanly eroticism.

  She was gifted. Six perfect scores on her college entrance exams may not have meant all that much, even coming from a rural high school, but admission to the University of Helsinki in French and English did. She had planned to be a teacher; in the Hänninen family, girls followed the path of their mother. Just like in my family—if you didn’t count me.

  But Helsinki pulled Sanna away from her studying and dangerously toward darker pursuits. More and more alcohol, drugs, and violent men, some of them actual criminals. There were a couple of abortions, then a drunk-driving conviction that almost landed her in jail.

  “After a while, Annamari and Henrik started acting as if Sanna didn’t even exist,” said Antti. “Their daughter was no longer presentable to their circle of friends. They still gave her money but lost interest otherwise. Not that they were great parents to begin with: Henrik has always been away a lot, and Annamari has those obsessive episodes of hers.

  “Kimmo was doing his military service when Sanna attempted suicide the first time. It shook the Hänninens a bit, and that was probably what Sanna was looking for. After that, we all tried harder to include her, inviting her to parties and that sort of thing. But she always just got plastered and started making trouble as soon as you let her in the door. Once I had to climb up to pull her down from the Tapiola water tower. When she was sober, she would read and write a lot, and sometimes her grades were even good, but then she would always backslide again.”

  According to Antti, Makke’s arrival on the scene that fall before she died cheered Sanna up for a while, as new boyfriends always did. Makke was practically a respectable gentleman compared to the types she usually went out with. I guess he was just starting his drinking career. But because Sanna believed she had found the love of her life, she started to treat every night as if it had to be a party.

  On her thirtieth birthday, Sanna had wanted to go out to the Westend breakwater. The winter had been mild, and the seawater was free of ice. Makke and Sanna emptied a bottle of vodka. At some point, Makke passed out on the sand at the swimming beach, and Sanna went out wading. The shore was quiet even for a Wednesday night in March. Somebody taking his dog out for a pee found Makke on the sand and called the police. Makke later said he didn’t even think about Sanna or what had happened to her until he started sobering up in the drunk tank; he was half-frozen to death himself.

  Sanna’s body washed up on shore the next day. On her writing desk at home, between a skull and a black candle, a book lay open to one of her favorite poems: “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath, underlined in several places. Antti and Kimmo considered two lines to be evidence of her intention to take her own life: “I am only thirty. And like a cat I have nine times to die.” According to the autopsy, Sanna was intoxicated with alcohol and sedatives, so the police handled the case as an accidental drowning.

  “There was nothing suspicious about it?” I asked.

  “Annamari wanted Makke charged with criminal negligence, but Eki Henttonen and her husband brought her to her senses. How would that have helped anyone? Nobody, not Makke or anyone else, pushed her into the water. She went in herself. Of her own free will,” Antti said, sopping up the last of his spaghetti sauce with a piece of bread.

  “But somehow it feels like too much bad luck for one family,” he went on. “First Sanna. Then Mallu’s miscarriage after years of trying, and her separation from her husband. Now Armi and Kimmo…”

  “Miscarriage and separation? What else can you tell me about Mallu?”

  “I don’t really know that much. She’s Armi’s sister. An unemployed architectural drafter. Married to a guy named Teemu Laaksonen, who’s some sort of technician. According to Armi, they had infertility problems, but last November they finally managed to get pregnant. Then they lost the baby in March. Her husband moved out pretty soon afterward.” Antti grimaced. “Sounds pretty bad, even if it is a pretty typical story. Life just goes wrong.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “But I think you’re right—it does seem like an awful lot of bad luck for one family.”

  Checking the clock, I decided I still had enough time to pay a visit to Armi’s parents, if I picked up the Honda from the office. I called ahead, and after a moment’s resistance, Armi’s father agreed to see me. I would have preferred not to interrupt their grieving, but I had no choice. No one knew more about Armi than they did.

  5

  I parked our small black company car in the driveway of the weathered one-and-a-half-story house. The squealing of small children playing came from somewhere farther off. However, at this door, I was met with only silence. Fair-haired and sturdily built, the man who opened the door was obviously Armi’s father. Instead of saying hello, he simply motioned for me to enter.

  After all of the homes in Tapiola I had visited where the decorating was obviously the work of a fancy interior designer, the Mäenpääs’ living room felt ho
mey. Exactly the same busy wallpaper and faded plush sofa set as in innumerable other post–World War II–era one-and-a-half-story houses in Finland. On the bookcases, glass knickknacks, trophies, and souvenirs from long-ago trips were more prevalent than books, most of which were Reader’s Digest Favorites. These were precisely the sort of people who could give their daughter a beautiful old Finnish name without realizing what a problem it would become once the schoolyard bullies started learning English.

  Her face so swollen from crying that her eyes were barely visible, the woman perched on the corner of the sofa shattered the impression of normality. Her shabby black skirt and blouse, which was shiny at the seams, looked as though she had slept in them. She didn’t seem to notice me at all; she simply stared past me.

  “More police?” A young woman dressed in black and wearing an apron appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. It was Mallu, Armi’s sister. We had chatted briefly at the Hänninens’ party on Friday night, but she didn’t seem to recognize me.

  “A woman this time, is it?” Mallu continued testily. “Hopefully you’re more respectful than the clods who came before. You’re the third officer to show up here within the past twenty-four hours. I’ll tell you exactly what I told the others: my parents were on an outing with their seniors’ group all yesterday morning. If you want witnesses, at least twenty other people were on the same bus.”

  “I’m not with the police. We met the night before last at Risto and Marita Hänninens’ house.”

  Mallu looked confused for a moment and then the lightbulb switched on.

  “Oh, yeah, you’re Antti’s girlfriend! You just look so different now than you did that night. Why are you—what was your name—here?”

  “Maria Kallio. I’m here from Henttonen & Associates. I’m Kimmo Hänninen’s legal counsel,” I said, sounding about as sympathetic as a gravestone peddler.

  The mention of Kimmo’s name seemed to smack into the woman hunched on the sofa. Tears began streaming down her frostbitten-apple-colored cheeks again, at which Mallu crossed the room to wrap her arms protectively around her mother.

  “I’m very sorry about Armi’s death,” I said in the general direction of the couch. I couldn’t handle looking at her frostbitten-apple cheeks and watering eyes.

  “Is this the same Ms. Kallio who found our girl?” Paavo Mäenpää, Armi’s father, asked in his loud, nasty-sounding smoker’s croak.

  “How can you be Kimmo’s legal counsel, when you found Armi? Aren’t you almost like a suspect yourself?” Mallu asked with surprising perspicacity.

  The question was a good one. No one had questioned my position so far, and no law prohibited me from acting as Kimmo’s legal advisor. However, morally speaking, my situation was definitely awkward. I had wondered a bit why Ström let me off so easily, but perhaps he was just so sure of Kimmo’s guilt that he didn’t feel like wasting his energy on me.

  “The police told us so little. Armi was strangled…Was she…Had anything else been done to her?” Armi’s father asked. No doubt he meant to ask if she’d been sexually assaulted, which is what fathers always ask about when their daughters turn up dead.

  “Armi was strangled, but nothing else was done to her.”

  Nothing else. As though strangulation weren’t enough.

  “Um…Did she…Did she suffer much?” he asked, his voice faltering. I thought of Armi’s blue-black face, her tongue lolling out. I thought of the patch of lawn gouged by her pink toenails as she fought for her life.

  “It was over quickly. She probably went unconscious within less than a minute.” That sounded like a short amount of time, one minute, although for Armi and her murderer it likely felt like an eternity.

  Following these words, a thick fog of silence enveloped us. The sounds of the outside world were muffled, unreal. A clock on the bookcase ticked, as if in a reminder that time at least meant to soldier on.

  “Armi was never any trouble to anyone,” her mother suddenly said. “Why did she have to die? She was supposed to be getting married. I always thought Kimmo was such a nice boy…”

  Mallu patted her mother comfortingly.

  “And you still intend to defend him? You must have come here to ask whether Armi had any other boyfriends, just like the police yesterday. Our Armi was a decent girl—one boyfriend was enough for her. What on earth got into Kimmo?” Armi’s father said in obvious anguish.

  The questions I had planned to ask felt unnecessary, even cruel. And presenting them to Armi’s parents made no sense. At least not yet.

  “I imagine we could revisit this a little later, at the end of next week, perhaps. I’m sorry,” I said. I meant sorry for everything: Armi’s death, my own intrusion, representing Kimmo. I started my retreat toward the front door, but Mallu stopped me and asked for a ride home.

  “Listen, Dad, I need to stop by my place to switch the laundry I started yesterday, so the clothes don’t mildew. I’ll be back as soon as I can. You and Mom will be alright without me for that long.”

  Mallu’s departure resembled a getaway. As we turned onto the old Turku Highway, she began making excuses for herself.

  “I really did have laundry in the machine when my father called me over to their house. Thanks for the ride; I don’t have a car. Teemu got it.”

  “Teemu who?”

  “Teemu Laaksonen. My future ex-husband,” Mallu said darkly. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Yes. This isn’t my car.” Whereas my prospective sister-in-law, Marita, was naturally slender, in comparison, Mallu Laaksonen looked diminished by worry and care. Now two sizes too large, her dark clothing hung off her, the lines on her face were too deep for a thirtysomething, and her hair already contained strands of gray. The expression of her face was more bitter than sad. I wondered how a person could survive a miscarriage, a divorce, and a sister’s death all within six months.

  “What do you want to know about Armi?” Mallu asked and then shoved a piece of nicotine gum in her mouth. She was probably in full-on withdrawal, since she seemed to be one of those women who even as adults still don’t dare smoke in front of their parents.

  “Anything. Biographical information, friends, other previous love interests. You don’t have any other siblings, right?”

  “Right. That’s the great tragedy of our family, if you ask my father. Two girls, no boys. Dad had a little delivery company with a couple of trucks and a van. His greatest dream was that someday the sign on the side of each would read ‘P. Mäenpää and Sons.’ When I was five and Armi was one, Dad came down with meningitis as a complication of the mumps, and that apparently damaged him, making it impossible to have any more children. After that, he sold his company and started driving a taxi.

  “Then they started dreaming about grandchildren. Teemu and I tried for five years. Then came the miscarriage, and my uterus ended up so scarred that there’s a ninety percent chance no egg will ever be able to implant in it. They still had Armi, though. But now she’s gone too.”

  Mallu spoke in an even, expressionless tone, but every word still sounded like a shout.

  My hands trembled on the steering wheel. “We only have us three girls too,” I said. “I’m the oldest. My middle sister is pregnant now, and the whole family is hoping for a boy.”

  “I don’t know if I ever even wanted kids,” Mallu continued, as though she hadn’t heard me. “I was so tired of trying, and all the tests. Teemu has a low sperm count, and I had endometriosis, which I got surgery for. We tried and tried, and in the end, we didn’t have anything left but trying to have a baby.”

  “So you’re divorcing?”

  “It’s for the best. Let him test out his weak sperm on some other woman,” Mallu said bitterly and then continued giving driving directions. As I brought the car to a stop in front of a shabby apartment building, she burst out, “All I’ve done is talk about myself. If you have time to come inside, I can try to tell you about Armi too. I’m in no hurry to get back to my parents’ place. I might go crazy if I d
on’t get a little breathing room.” Mallu was lighting a cigarette before she even got both feet out of the car.

  I still had a while until Kimmo’s interrogation, so I followed her through the building entrance to a rather dark firstfloor apartment. Besides the lack of natural light, the other first impression the place gave was that it had been strangely ripped in half. There was barely any furniture or decoration. Only two chairs stood next to the kitchen table, which should have been able to seat four, and the sofa set in the living room was missing a coffee table and a second armchair. At least the stereo still had two speakers. Mallu watched my eyes as they surveyed the scene.

  “Teemu got the car and VCR, and I got the rest of the appliances. Damn it, the laundry!” she said, rushing into the bathroom.

  A cigarette still dangling from her lip, Mallu bent down to empty the washing machine, which smelled like my uncle’s root cellar. Mallu sniffed the clothing for a moment and then decided washing them again would be best. She added detergent, started the machine, and then said she was calling her parents to tell them she would be a little longer than expected.

  We ended up sitting on the two lonely chairs in the kitchen, sipping cups of coffee.

  “OK, so about Armi. You heard what my mom said, that Armi was never any trouble to anyone. In a way that was true. She was a nice little sister. You know, the smiling girl with a bow in her hair. When she was little, she walked the neighbors’ dogs, and when she was a teenager, she babysat their children. She always wanted to take care of people, and I guess that’s what led her to nursing school. But even as a little kid, she also had an amazing knack for finding things out about other people’s lives. ‘Mom, why do the Kervinens have so many empty liquor bottles?’ she asked once after she had been babysitting at the neighbors’ house.”