Her Enemy (18 page)

“Speaking of the men here, do you know a guy named Sebastian? He got a little too enthusiastic outside, and I had to bring him back to earth.”

Angel shook her head. “I don’t; he must not be a regular. Ah, Joke escaped from the police!”

Joke danced over to us, and there was no sign of Ström or Sebastian anywhere, so I joined the general revelry, recording a comment about Kimmo every now and then. Everyone thought he was a nice, sweet guy, and no one believed he would actually hurt someone. Awash in a sea of black clothing, red lips, and gleaming chains, Joke and I danced wildly, oblivious to anything else. At some point, I got thirsty and had a beer.

I realized it was two thirty in the morning, and I was completely drunk.

The lousy warehouse even lacked a phone. No one knew where the nearest taxi stand was, so I decided to try to flag down a cab on the West Highway.

My steps clacking against the worn asphalt as I walked toward civilization, the old cop in me said bad things could happen to a drunk woman walking alone at night dressed this way. The old feminist in me said a drunk woman walking alone at night dressed this way had the same rights as anyone else. I tried desperately to walk without swaying my hips—or listing to one side.

“Mariaaa! Maaariiaaa!” A male voice echoed over the asphalt. The shout had something familiar about it, but the echo made it strange and frightening. Sebastian? I didn’t want to hang around to find out, so I ran toward the lights and people on the highway as fast as I could in my high heels. The shouts continued behind me for a while. When I reached the stop where I had gotten off the bus earlier, I stopped to wait for a taxi, but all of the cabs that whizzed by were occupied.

Then a dark blue Saab pulled over in front of me.

“Kallio. Why didn’t you stop and wait for me? I was yelling for you. C’mon, jump in!” A familiar voice, gruff and commanding.

“You couldn’t pay me to get in the same car with you right now, Ström.”

“Do I have to arrest you first?”

“On what grounds?”

“Public intoxication and general indecency. Where are you headed? You live in Tapiola, right?”

Ström’s unmarked police Saab did look inviting. Only ten minutes separated me from a shower and my bed. I swallowed my pride and climbed into the front seat, trying to tell myself
it was OK to take advantage of dickheads. Avoiding a taxi ride would save me a fair amount of cash anyway.

“Why did you leave the force?” Ström asked, sounding surprisingly docile as we crossed the first bridge on the way from Helsinki back to Espoo.

“It wasn’t a good fit for me.”

“And being a lawyer is a better fit? What you were doing tonight looked more like playing private detective.”

“What wouldn’t a self-sacrificing attorney do for her client? Ström, I heard you interrogated Kimmo without me. Let that be the last time, or I’m reporting you!”

“He didn’t ask for his lawyer to be present. And are you absolutely sure this little excursion isn’t a waste of your resources?”

“You mean tonight, or defending Kimmo Hänninen?”

“I mean the whole lawyer thing. Do you really want to sit in front of a desk for thirty years, shuffling paper, flipping through law books, and then going off to boring trials where you have to pretend to think exactly the opposite of what you really know? How is that a good fit for someone like you? You need action—that was obvious enough tonight. And besides, trying to make a murderer look innocent is immoral.”

“Immoral? If you ask me, it’s a hell of a lot more immoral that you’re trying to put an innocent person in jail because you’re obsessed with what kind of sex he likes, instead of trying to catch the real murderer. Jesus. You haven’t checked into half of the other possibilities!”

Despite my intoxication, I realized I was running at the mouth—I was supposed to be solving Kimmo’s case, not dropping hints to Ström.

“What other possibilities? Kallio, if you’re concealing information, you’re going to find yourself joining Hänninen in a cell.”

“I’m not hiding anything, and enough with the bullying already. Let me out right now!”

Ström slammed on the brakes without saying a word and illegally pulled off to the side of the highway. We were already back on the mainland at an intersection not far from my house—even walking I would be home in a matter of minutes, but I didn’t need to tell Ström that. Taking off my shoes, I ran the rest of the way in stocking feet. I knew that if I’d used different tactics and been drinking less, I could have gotten more out of my trip to Club Bizarre. I was irritated with myself, but maybe once I sobered up and listened to the tape I would find some useful information. And at least some of the night had been fun.

“I might be remembering some of the details wrong, but you can’t accuse me of any wrongdoing,” Mallu said angrily to me on the telephone. It was Thursday morning, and I had finally reached her again to ask about where she had been on the day of Armi’s murder.

“I’ve told the police every single thing I did that day, and, as far as I understand, you aren’t even a police officer anymore anyway.”

“Mallu, come on. Please, can we just sit down and talk?” I knew Mallu was right: I didn’t have any right to interrogate her.

My hangover had rendered Wednesday a complete loss. I barely managed to get a little routine work done and spent the evening in front of the TV with a carton of Double Crème & Meringues Mövenpick. Thursday morning began with the euphoria familiar to anyone who has ever suffered a hangover—waking up and realizing I was myself again felt amazing.

Eventually, I talked Mallu into coming to the office later that afternoon and then headed out to downtown Tapiola to get a little lunch before another client meeting.

“How’s your bike been working?” Makke asked, standing at the door of his store, having a cigarette.

I flinched. Was that irony in his tone—or a warning?

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. “Did you have something to do with this?” I showed him the broken brake wires Antti and I had managed to get back in working order, but only just.

“Were you in an accident?” Makke sounded genuinely surprised.

“Oh, my handlebars just came off when I was riding out to the breakwater, and I got dumped in the water. I think somebody fiddled with it.”

“Your handlebars, that’s weird. Usually thieves just take the back wheel. And I can’t believe anyone would want to steal that old rattletrap anyway. Some kids probably just thought they were being funny.”

“Maybe. Listen, how long did you and Sanna date before…you know?”

The sudden change of topic elicited a confused glance.

“You mean, before she died? Well, not very long, really…Sanna…Sanna died in March, and we met just before Christmas at the bar around the corner there.”

Despite Makke’s attempt to maintain his relaxed front, this was no longer a casual conversation.

“Four months of dating. That doesn’t sound like a very long time. But you still seem to be in mourning more than a year later.”

Makke ground the butt of his cigarette under the ball of his foot as he replied.

“You can’t understand what it feels like, when you love someone, and your love just isn’t enough. When the person you care about most in all the world kills herself, despite how much you love her. And you’re even there when it happens but you were too fucked up to stop it.”

“But Makke, no one can really redeem anyone else. Everyone has to save themselves,” I said, sounding like a preacher and hoping I would be able to remember these wise words the next time Antti slid into one of his dissertation-writing funks.

“Sanna was so amazing. She was a lot smarter than me, always talking about books and poetry and philosophy. Maybe she was a little too smart for this world,” Makke said pathetically.

“What did you know about Sanna’s previous boyfriends? Who was she dating before you?”

“She was with this shithead who beat her. He got sent to prison for dealing drugs just before we met. His name was Hakanen or Hakala or something like that.”

“Otso Hakala,” I said.

“Yeah, that was him. Sanna showed me some pictures—black hair, really nasty-looking guy. Sanna went to see him a couple of times in jail, and I remember being a little jealous. Why do you keep asking me about Sanna?”

“I’m curious. And I’m sorry I didn’t keep in better touch with her. Maybe I’m carrying a little guilt around too.”

Makke’s face brightened.

“Ah, now I get it…You were the one Sanna was talking about—she said that back in that mining town she used to live in, there was only one girl who understood her. You two are a lot alike. Maybe that’s why…” He trailed off.

“Maybe that’s why what?” I asked, although I could guess the answer.

“Well, when we met, I hoped you were single,” Makke said, blushing slightly and then walking back into the store.

Downtown Tapiola was bustling with people. Schoolchildren roaming in raucous or sullen packs, families shopping for supplies for the upcoming vacation season, book-buyers searching
for graduation gifts and surveying the summer crop of mystery novels. I was so used to having no vacation during the summer that the whole commotion felt foreign. Of course my parents—both teachers—were always champing at the bit for school year to end. Some weekend soon, I would have to drag myself back to my hometown for a visit, at the very latest when my sister had her baby. Crazy—me, an aunt. What was carrying another person inside you like? How did that feel, those kicks and wiggles of that other being, pressing against your own body? And giving birth?

I passed a woman pushing a stroller. Her toddler was forcefully repeating the words “mommy” and “poop” as he banged on the frame of the stroller with a toy shovel for effect. I thought of Mallu’s dead baby. Did I want a child? The idea almost frightened me. A child? Me? With Antti? Just imagine what an egotistical curmudgeon it would be, even from birth.

Although, having a baby didn’t feel completely impossible either. I imagine it was perfectly natural: I was coming up on thirty—that clock was ticking—and I had a mostly functional relationship with a decent man for the first time in ages. “Functional relationship”—how was that for nauseating. Like a piece of furniture, a new couch.

Even though I knew I shouldn’t, I went for a hamburger and fries, and, after returning to the office, I still had time before my client meeting to make a call to my very own spy in the police archives. As luck would have it, my old partner, Pekka Koivu, happened to be in his office.

“Hi, it’s Maria. There’s a beer in it for you if you’ll check a couple of rap sheets for me. Hakala, Otso—I don’t know the birth date, but he can’t be much older than thirty—with at least one strike for distributing. And Hänninen, Sanna, born March 2,
1962. If Hakala is still inside, please check to see whether he might have been out of jail for some reason last year on the second of March or Saturday last week. That’s it.”

“I think I can manage that.”

“How are things at the old Helsinki PD?”

“Same old, same old. Kinnunen showed up to work drunk yesterday, and the captain is still just as pompous as ever. Sometimes I think about just giving up and leaving since you aren’t even here anymore,” Koivu said.

I snorted. I had no desire to return to my old job in the Helsinki Violent Crime Unit. Ström was wrong—I did better as a lawyer than as a police officer.

I had a whole slew of questions planned out to ask Mallu. However, once she was standing at the door of my office, looking so thin and dressed in black, I didn’t even know where to start. As I offered her coffee, I remembered the Agatha Christie novel in which the sculptor Henrietta Savernake is planning to create a female figure representing Sorrow. With her too-large black dress and face marked by lines that drew downward at the corners of her eyes and mouth, Mallu would have been the perfect model. Just since Sunday, she seemed to have lost several pounds.

“Have you had any contact with Teemu since we talked? I’ve been trying to get in touch with him, but no one answers.”

“I haven’t heard anything about him,” Mallu said, growing angry.

“Haven’t you tried to inform him of your sister’s death? It’s been in the papers too—hasn’t Teemu tried to contact you about this, to offer any condolences at least?”

Mallu’s expression was withdrawn, almost dreamy when she answered.

“What does it matter to Teemu? We don’t have anything to say to each other anymore.”

Not even three months had passed since the accident and miscarriage in March. How could those months have cankered their relationship so thoroughly? How could years of shared life now mean absolutely nothing? Had other issues besides their childlessness come between them?

“Why did you lie to me about last Saturday? You weren’t home all day. You went shopping in Tapiola.”

“Maria! Someone murdered my sister. I must have been in shock or something, and I took a couple of tranquilizers on Sunday morning to keep myself together. I didn’t lie; I just remembered wrong. When the police asked, I told them about it. I bought frozen fish, even though what I wanted was wild mushrooms.”