Snow Woman (19 page)

“No. Have you recovered from Elina’s death?” I replied.

“I guess you’re right. Do you mind if I tape our conversation?”

“What are you going to use the tape for? I didn’t agree to an interview.”

Tarja Kivimäki drew a deep breath but didn’t have time to reply before the waiter returned to ask if we were ready to order. I ordered a bland shrimp pasta. Maybe that would go down. Nothing with meat or tomatoes sounded good.

“Let me tell you about the program,” Kivimäki said after ordering jambalaya and a Mexican beer. “Our goal isn’t just to cover the Nuuksio hostage drama but to investigate the tendency of the police to use their weapons more generally, starting way back with the Mikkeli incident. Of course Hirsala and Vesala, and the Tampere Police Academy case.”

“Why do you want to interview me?”

“It’s well known Malmberg first tried to break into the car of another police officer but had to settle for Sergeant Palo. The identity of the other officer wasn’t hard to find out. I was hoping you’d participate in a little thought experiment: how would you have wanted the police to act if you’d been in that cabin?”

“Are you doing a documentary or something sensational? I don’t think I’m interested in that kind of speculation.”

“No? Then you think the situation was handled in the best possible way? You don’t have anything critical to say?”

Of course I had plenty to say. But I didn’t have the energy to go down the rabbit hole of that kind of postmortem. In a way, it sounded tempting to pour all my grief and anger and fear through the television screen into the living rooms of half of Finland. But Palo wouldn’t have wanted that. I guess I’d finally learned the code: cops don’t shit where they eat.

“Isn’t it unethical to stay silent if you see something wrong?” said Kivimäki.

“I think it would be unethical to interview me when you’re involved in a homicide investigation I’m working on.”

“Someone else could interview you.”

“Forget it. Why are you going back to
Studio A
? I doubt they’ll let you hide behind the camera.”

“A lot of reasons. One is that I can do longer, more in-depth investigative pieces than I can as a news reporter. And personal reasons too. I guess you could say they have to do with ethics too.”

The waiter brought our salads, and I filled my mouth so I wouldn’t have to say anything. Getting me to criticize the police command for Nuuksio certainly would make a good story: a female in a police force dominated by men seeing the mistakes more clearly than any of them. I was used to putting myself on the line in my investigations, but I wasn’t ready for that kind of attention. After I swallowed, I said as much to Kivimäki.

“Too bad. I thought we could help each other,” said Kivimäki.

“How?” I asked.

“I haven’t wanted to betray Elina’s trust because she only told me. But I’ve thought about it and realized it could possibly be the motive for Elina’s murder.”

As usual, I spoke before I thought it through. “So you’re saying you’ll tell me the motive for Elina’s murder if you get your interview? And you’re the one lecturing me about ethics!”

I stood up, pushing my salad plate out of the way and into Kivimäki’s beer bottle, which fell over.

“You’re welcome to come discuss the motive for Elina Rosberg’s murder at the Espoo Police Station. How about Thursday at ten? And be on time. If you aren’t, I’ll have a warrant issued for your arrest for concealing evidence and hindering a police investigation. Enjoy your jambalaya!”

11

When I burst out onto the street, I was pelted with sleet. Under normal circumstances, I would have headed for the nearest bar to throw back a couple of quick shots of whiskey. As a pregnant woman, I had to settle for venting my frustration on an empty Coke can lying on the sidewalk. Although it was perfectly possible Kivimäki was bluffing, I intended to follow through with the Thursday interrogation. Same difference whether she was or not. I hadn’t liked her from the beginning, and the idea of grilling her felt great.

I had more than half an hour until the next bus, so I headed over to the Ruffe Pub to get out of the weather. Deciding to paint the town red, I ordered a nonalcoholic beer. As I scanned the place for a seat, I found that my work day wasn’t quite over yet. There was Joona Kirstilä sitting at a window table with a pint of dark Kozel and a laptop in front of him. I considered whether I should bother him. The computer appeared to be turned off and Kirstilä was just staring into his glass.

I had unfinished business with Kirstilä. That morning a report had been waiting on my desk confirming that Kirstilä had been on a bar crawl in Hämeenlinna with his friends, but not on Boxing Day, on Wednesday the twenty-seventh.

If it had been a normal work week, I could have believed Kirstilä mixed up the days, but I doubted even he could confuse a holiday with another day. Kirstilä had claimed he last saw Elina before Christmas, but it was looking more probable that he was in Nuuksio on the twenty-sixth.

So I took my not-quite pilsner and marched over to Kirstilä’s table. He glanced up from his glass and nodded. It was easy to see he wasn’t exactly sober. His brown eyes looked young and bright, but even the relaxation of intoxication couldn’t smooth the lines around his mouth.

I sat down in the empty chair.

“How’s it going?” I asked when I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“It isn’t really. My words seem to have died with Elina.” He nodded toward the blank screen of his laptop. “Luckily there’s plenty of booze. Have you found out anything?”

“We have. You weren’t in Hämeenlinna on Boxing Day, Joona. You didn’t go until the next night. We have at least ten witnesses.”

“I’m here to get drunk, damn it, not interrogated!” Kirstilä’s shout was even louder than the Green Day blaring. The customers at the nearby tables glanced at us curiously.

“Calm down,” I said, standing up. “I can leave if you want. I’ll call tomorrow and tell you when to come to the police station.”

I was still in a bad mood from my meeting with Kivimäki. Tormenting Kirstilä felt like kicking a puppy, but I couldn’t just leave things there.

“Do I have to? I hate that place. I’d guess I’d rather talk now.”

I sat back down, although I knew our conversation wouldn’t carry any official weight. Kirstilä was drunk, and I was alone. But I still had time until the bus, and the sleet outside was only getting worse. Few places were as desperately ugly as the Helsinki Bus Depot in a storm. The Ruffe’s blue and green and violet stained glass distorted the scene outside, turning the windows of the six-story redbrick Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners building across the bus plaza into ornate polygons and painting the muddy buses beautiful pastels.

Kirstilä emptied his Kozel and waved to the bartender for another. Obviously he was a regular, because the waitress brought his glass to the table and said she’d put it on his tab. The poet downed a quarter of the pint before speaking.

“I guess I got the days wrong. It must have been Wednesday when we went out drinking,” he said hesitantly.

“So how did your Christmas actually go?” I asked. “You came back from Hämeenlinna to say hi to Elina or something?”

“Yeah. I missed her.”

Kirstilä brushed his thick hair away from his face and pulled a crumpled cigarette pack out of his pocket. The last cigarette was almost broken in half. He had a hard time getting the match lit, and finally I grabbed the box and did it for him. The cigarette smoke nauseated me even more than usual, and I turned away quickly. A little incidental second-hand smoke wasn’t going to hurt my baby, and I couldn’t exactly wrap myself in plastic for nine months.

“Christmas always makes me maudlin,” Kirstilä said. “All the family nonsense and peace on earth and goodwill toward men. It felt kind of stupid to spend Christmas with my parents and my sister when I don’t even like them, and the only person I really cared about was seventy miles away. I called Elina that night and asked her to come over to my place. She said she couldn’t because she had something to do, so I suggested I come to Rosberga. I had to take a taxi, but Elina promised to pay.”

Elina met Kirstilä at the gate. Her head cold was horrible, but she’d told him she wanted to get out of the house for a while, to “air out her brain.” Kirstilä got the impression that Elina’s Christmas had turned out to be unexpectedly exhausting.

“I started talking crazy. It was probably all the sentimental Christmas nonsense that made me say it. I asked Elina to move in with me, but she said no. She said she was at a place in her life where she couldn’t even think about making any big changes.”

That fit with Milla’s story. But how did Aira get it into her head that Joona Kirstilä was going to leave Elina? It sounded like the opposite.

“So Elina wanted to continue your relationship the way it was?” I emptied my glass and immediately wanted another. Well, not really. I wanted a real beer. But my superego wouldn’t hear of it.

“Yeah. We ended up fighting about it. I thought Elina would be pleased that I couldn’t stand being away from her on Christmas. Childish. It’s jus
t . . .
I mean it was so damn hard with Elina living so far away and always having a house full of women. What if I just wanted to see her some night when we didn’t have plans? What was I supposed to do then?” Kirstilä pursed his lips, and his expression reminded me of my two-year-old nephew, Saku, when his mother told him he couldn’t have something he wanted. “I shouldn’t’ve complained. Now I don’t have Elina at al
l . . .
” Kirstilä started crying, tears dripping into his beer.

“How did you get back to Helsinki if the buses weren’t running? By taxi?”

“No, I stayed the night in the little house. I didn’t leave until morning,” Kirstilä said tiredly, wiping his eyes.

“What? You were at Rosberga all night?”

“Yes. That’s the horrible thing about it all.” Kirstilä’s eyes teared up again. “Elina didn’t want me to stay. She wanted me to take a taxi back to the city. Finally she gave in, but she said she wanted a night to herself because she was so sick. I waited until one o’clock in case she came back anyway.”

“Did you hear anything that night?”

“No. I fell asleep after emptying a bottle of wine I found in the cupboard.”

My bus would be arriving shortly, and the next one wasn’t for an hour. I felt bad leaving Kirstilä alone, but I had to go. Standing up, I saw that a pretty young woman at the next table appeared to have recognized him and kept glancing over. Maybe he would find comfort sooner than he thought.

But apparently Kirstilä wasn’t finished yet. “We parted on slightly cool terms,” he whispered, wiping his face with his red scarf. “I called her at one o’clock, just before I finished the wine and fell asleep, but she said she couldn’t talk to me because she was in the middle of a conversation with someone. And in the morning”—Kirstilä swallowed—“in the morning I was so pissed off that Elina hadn’t come back that I took the first bus into town. Now all I do is wonder. If I’d pushed and demanded to be with her, she would still be alive.” Kirstilä’s last sentence dissolved into sobbing.

I’d been pulling on my coat as he spoke but now I stood frozen. “With who?” I almost shouted. “Who was Elina talking to?” All of the women in the house had denied seeing Elina again after she came back from her evening walk.

“She just said she’d tell me later because it had to do with me too. She sounded sort of lik
e . . .
like she was drunk. But I guess by then I was too.”

I had to rush to my bus, so I told Kirstilä I’d interview him again later in the week. So Elina hadn’t been alone that night! Which meant that one of the Rosberga women was lying.

There was no way I could break away and get to Rosberga Manor the next day. I had inherited a couple of cases from Palo, and although I was trying to concentrate on them, I still found my mind wandering. Suddenly I was in Nuuksio again, near the cabin surrounded by trees, listening to the noise of helicopters and gunshots, all ending in dead silence. At lunch I sat with Pihko, and when we returned to our department, I asked to see Palo’s office.

The desk was exactly as before except Palo’s messy case notes had been taken away and redistributed to the rest of us. A thick, dark-blue cardigan hung from the back of Palo’s chair. When I touched it, I smelled the scent of his cough drops and deodorant.

“Every morning when I come to work I’m surprised he isn’t here,” Pihko said softly. “His wife is supposed to pick up that stuff tomorrow. I just hope Lähde doesn’t move Ström in here next.”

“We have to get a replacement,” I said. “When are they opening up the position? One of my friends is taking the NCO course right now. You don’t know Pekka Koivu, do you? He’d fit in great. I worked with him in Helsinki.”

My friend and former partner Pekka Koivu had left Joensuu and its race brawls behind and was currently sitting in a classroom just a few miles away taking a course for noncommissioned officer candidates. We’d been talking about going out for a beer after Christmas, but of course there wasn’t time for that now. When Koivu called after hearing about the Malmberg incident, I got the feeling he had a new girl up to bat.

Pihko’s phone rang. To our mutual surprise, it was Taskinen, who apparently needed me in his office ASAP. In his office I discovered the Espoo chief of police, with whom I’d never had the honor of speaking. I was sure they wanted to talk about the schedule for the preliminary investigation into the hostage drama. Taskinen motioned for me to sit but avoided my eyes, instead staring past me as if some new, fascinating painting had appeared on the wall above my left ear.

“Sergeant Kallio, I just received an extremely testy phone call from someone high up in the Ministry of the Interior,” the chief of police began. He was nearly at retirement age, and I’d heard that he rose through the ranks like a meteor during the Kekkonen years. Back in those days, when the Soviet Union still cast a long shadow, plenty of cops were willing to look the other way if the price was right. The strain of lunch meetings spent greasing palms and sauna nights at exclusive seaside villas boozing it up with corrupt politicians was visible in the chief’s stout frame and the broken blood vessels of his face. His expensive-looking dark-blue suit only served to accentuate the impression of banality. You didn’t buy suits like that on a policeman’s salary. Internal Affairs investigations had come close to him several times, but the police chief’s reputation was still miraculously intact. Some thought that might have something to do with the current minister of the interior also having been one of President Kekkonen’s young protégés and an old friend of the chief. I imagined that the big shot at the ministry who’d called was none other than Interior Minister Martti Sahala.

“I’m assuming it has to do with the Nuuksio hostage incident,” I said crossly. Was the minister of the interior now going to tell us what to say in our interviews?

“No, it had nothing to do with the Nuuksio incident, although there will certainly be plenty to say about that when the time comes. This was in regard to the unexplained death that also happened in Nuuksio a couple of weeks ago. As I remember, the name of the victim was Elina Rosberg.”

I was taken aback. “Why was the Interior Ministry calling about that?”

“The minister demanded that you stop groundlessly threatening witnesses with arrest,” the chief said.

“What?” I suddenly realized that it had to be about Tarja Kivimäki and our altercation the previous evening. But what did that have to do with the minister of the interior?

“I assume you remember your conversation with the reporter Tarja Kivimäki last night at a restaurant called Raffaello? You threatened to arrest her unless she came in for an interview at a time you dictated unilaterally.”

“Sergeant Kallio has been through a lot lately. It’s completely understandable if she got upset,” Taskinen said. He still wasn’t looking at me. I had never seen such intense embarrassment on anyone’s face. Taskinen and the chief of police had clashed over several white-collar crime investigations during the past year, and from what I’d heard, their relationship had gone from cold to frigid.

“If Miss—excuse me—Mrs. Kallio is incapable of discharging her duties properly, she should take some sick leave,” said the chief.

“Tarja Kivimäki tried to bribe me. She promised to reveal a motive for Elina Rosberg’s murder if I gave her an interview for her TV program. She admitted to concealing crucial evidence in a homicide investigation. What was I was supposed to do?” I asked.

As I stared at the police chief’s multiple chins, I remembered what Tarja Kivimäki had said about her change of employment: ethical considerations had made working as a political reporter difficult. Was the name of one of those “ethical considerations” Minister Martti Sahala? What the hell did Tarja Kivimäki see in him? The man was a five-and-a-half-foot sound-bite machine who’d grown up surrounded by potato fields. Was it the power that turned her on? Sahala had been called the shadow prime minister more than once. He wasn’t much over forty, but he had already been on the national political scene for almost two decades and had held three ministerial portfolios.