Snow Woman (2 page)

“But not filing a police report is accepting being a victim!” said a heavy woman sitting in the front row. She had been diligently taking notes throughout my talk. “Your behavior ensured that you and, through you, any woman can be raped because there aren’t any consequences. When did this happen? Maybe you can still file a report.”

“Not interested,” Milla said. “The creep hasn’t shown his face in the club since.”

“About the inces
t . . .
” Elina began with the calm, empathetic tone of a person accustomed to dealing with sensitive issues. “Is there anything you’d like to speak with a police officer about? I think it makes sense for us to stick to police issues since we have Sergeant Kallio here tonight.”

Milla snorted. “That’s all ancient history. Statute of limitations, you know. And there’s no point talking about my issues. Just talk about your car accidents and lost cats or whatever. I’m going for a smoke.” Milla turned on her heel and walked out the door, swaying her hips fetchingly.

Elina look confused, as though she was surprised the situation had momentarily slipped out of her control. She glanced at the class members and then at me, waiting for someone to say something. Stiffly I started going through the steps of filing a police report. I was off balance too, but not so much from Milla’s behavior as Elina’s. Elina Rosberg was a familiar figure to me. When I was in high school, my younger sister had subscribed to a teen magazine in which Elina wrote a column. While I’d considered myself too old for the magazine in general, I read her column on a regular basis. I liked that she didn’t moralize or belittle the problems teenagers faced. She just answered questions directly. I guess I considered her something of a role model. When I was trying to get into the police academy, I’d hoped I could discharge my duty, especially with female crime victims, by showing the same simple understanding Elina Rosberg did. While my illusions about police work were shattered pretty quickly, I’d always assumed Elina had continued her work with the same competence and enthusiasm she’d conveyed when she was thirty. And in a way, that was what the Rosberga Women’s Institute was all about, allowing her to focus on the cases that interested her most—psychiatric conditions common to women, such as eating disorders.

No one seemed to want to ask any more questions, and I was already gathering my papers into my backpack when the gaunt woman with the bun suddenly stood up. She opened her mouth, closed it, and then looked to Elina as if for help. When Elina nodded, she opened her mouth again.

“Can a person be prevented from seeing her children?” Her voice quivered and cracked like an instrument being played too loud, and her face flushed red. Saying those nine words seemed to have required tremendous effort.

“What kind of situation are we talking about? It’s hard for me to say anything specific without the details,” I replied.

Clearly frightened, the woman lowered her head.

Elina answered for her: “Johanna moved away from her husband and children and filed for divorce. They both want the children, but her ex-husband is preventing Johanna from seeing them.”

“He certainly doesn’t have any legal right to do that if there isn’t a court order barring you from your children.” I looked at the woman. She cringed at the words “court order.”

“Why won’t your husband let you see your children?” I asked.

This time she answered almost defiantly, but her voice broke near the end. “Because I killed our last baby.”

It was as if the whole audience instantly turned to snow women, cold and frozen. After a quick communal intake of breath, no one moved, but every eye was glued to Johanna. Her face had turned from red back to gray. I also stared at her, taking in her bowed head and the clothing that hung too loosely from her shriveled body. Had she been in prison? Was that why she looked so worn-out? Again Elina’s calm voice broke the silence.

“I think we’ve had a little misunderstanding. I doubt anyone here considers abortion murder, especially when the pregnancy and birth would have been life threatening for both Johanna and the baby. She already has nine children and nearly died giving birth to her previous one.”

“Well, couldn’t the doctors tie your tubes or give you an IUD?” yelled the same woman who had accused Milla of making herself a victim.

“Our church does not approve of birth control. It is contrary to God’s will.” Johanna’s voice repeated the rote phrases without expression.

“What are you, a Catholic or something?” the same woman barked.

“Johanna belongs to one of the stricter conservative Laestadian sects,” Elina replied.

“Does she have a lawyer?” I directed my question to Elina, even though talking around Johanna as if she were some sort of half-wit irritated me.

Instead of answering my question, Elina turned to the assembled women and said in an authoritative tone, “If no one else has any questions for Sergeant Kallio, let’s thank her for her visit and wrap things up. This was a very interesting lecture.”

Elina began to applaud, and the rest of the bewildered group joined in weakly. We watched the women trickle out, and then Elina turned to me. “We still need to address your honorarium. And if you have time, I’d like you to talk to Johanna a little more.”

I did have time, and I was curious to hear Johanna’s story. With the others gone, Johanna walked toward my table. As Elina turned to close the door, Johanna raised her eyes to me for the first time. In them was a contagious anxiety so powerful I had to fight not to avert my own gaze.

“How old are your children?” I asked lamely when I couldn’t come up with anything else. I wasn’t good at things like this. How was I supposed to understand a woman longing for her children when I’d only just begun to even consider having my own sometime in the distant future?

“Johannes, my oldest, is fourteen, and the youngest, Maria, is one and a half.” Johanna’s voice grew more confident when she talked about her children. This was clearly her territory.

“Mari
a . . .
just like me. And my husband’s middle name is Johannes,” I said with a smile, desperately trying to lighten the mood. “Why does your husband want to prevent you from seeing your children? Just because of the abortion? Or because you left him?”

“For us, a husband’s word is law and procreation is a gift from God.” Johanna’s voice contained not the slightest hint of irony. “If God wants me to die giving birth, that is his will.”

“But you have nine children you’d be leaving behind! How could any God want that?” I was too furious at her answer to maintain my professionalism. Johanna turned her face away, and Elina strode over as if to protect her.

I took a deep breath. Wasn’t I ever going to learn to control myself? “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t question your church doctrines. Let’s focus on practicalities. Is your husband physically preventing you from seeing your children?”

“Johanna lives in a small northern Ostrobothnian village where seventy percent of the people are Laestadians, including the doctor and all the police except for one,” Elina answered for Johanna. She explained that the children weren’t allowed to talk to their mother on the phone and that her husband had confiscated Johanna’s letters before ordering the post office not to deliver them anymore. When Johanna last tried to see the children in person, the father called the police, who escorted Johanna out of town.

I had to count to ten more than once, and even then I still felt like kicking something. The whole thing just sounded so incredible. How could something like this happen in modern-day Finland? There had been Laestadians and Jehovah’s Witnesses where I grew up too, but the most noticeable difference between them and the other kids was that they couldn’t participate in any music programs, not even marching along with a tambourine, and they couldn’t watch educational shows on the school TV. They did grow up to have their own huge packs of kids, but I’d never heard of any of them dying giving birth.

“Those police officers broke the law unless you were behaving violently. You should call the one who isn’t a member of the church and negotiate with him. I’d also contact the county police. What’s your husband’s name and occupation?”

“Leevi Säntti. He’s a minister,” Johanna replied, and I almost started laughing. It sounded so unbelievable.

“So he’s some sort of town bigwig?”

“Our church’s lay pastor.”

“He’s a pretty famous preacher, actually,” Elina added, and both of them looked at me expectantly.

I wasn’t quite sure what they wanted from me. I asked again whether Johanna had a lawyer, and the answer was also complicated. The town’s legal aid counsel was a Laestadian, and Johanna didn’t have the money to hire anyone else.

I kicked myself in the mental shins to prevent myself from promising her anything. In addition to my police qualifications, I had gone to law school and worked in a law firm for almost a year before it went belly up. Sometimes I got the itch to practice my other profession, but when was I going to find time for that? My desk was already piled high with unsolved cases. And even though Johanna did live far away from Espoo, I wasn’t completely sure of the ethical dimensions of this case. Maybe a policewoman shouldn’t do legal gigs on the side.

“I know someone who might be able to help,” I finally said. Leena was a friend from law school who sometimes volunteered on the Feminist Association’s legal hotline. “I’ll give you the number. You should call her. And I can check with the county police. I may know someone there. Have you officially filed for divorce?”

“Not yet,” Johanna whispered.

“As far as I can tell, you aren’t insane or an alcoholic. And you haven’t been with any other men yet, right?”

Johanna shook her head quickly, as if appalled by my question.

“It would be really strange if the court gave the children to your husband.” I tried to sound comforting, although I knew a lot depended on the judge. Just then my beeper went off.

“I’m sorry, I need to use my phone. I’m on call.”

“The kitchen is quiet, and Aira can handle the paperwork there too. I don’t imagine you could stay for dinner?”

“I don’t think so. But keep me up to date about this situation,” I said as I scribbled Leena’s phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Johanna.

Aira was busy cooking in the kitchen. Based on the smell, she was making some sort of vegetable casserole. I filled out my pay slip as I punched in the phone number for the station. When Ström picked up, he growled that a woman had stabbed her husband in Suvela. For some reason he thought that was right up my alley. I promised to head straight there.

I didn’t speak to Elina or Johanna again before leaving. Walking to my car, I saw the group of women through a window chattering happily around a long, candlelit table. Elina was just sitting down at the head, and Aira was carrying in baskets of bread. Johanna was nowhere to be seen.

Just as I was turning the key in the ignition, the front door of the house opened. Milla’s purple-striped head was briefly framed in the light from the hall, then the door closed, and after a few seconds I saw the glow of a cigarette. I drove toward the gate, which opened automatically and then closed silently behind me, leaving Rosberga trapped within its walls, far removed from the rest of the world.

2

I stared out my office window at the Turku Highway, where cars glided by at long intervals despite it being a weekday afternoon. An inexplicable fatigue had me in its grip. My head kept nodding and the sofa on the other side of the room seemed to mock me.

Maybe it was because of Christmas. It was December 27, the day after Boxing Day. Antti and I had spent the holidays mostly lounging around reading in our new home in Henttaa, a neighborhood near Espoo Central Park. Working between Christmas and New Year’s had seemed like a good idea. It gave us a good excuse not to travel to Antti’s parents’ place in Inkoo or to my parents’ in Northern Karelia. But now I wished I’d taken a few more days off so I could keep sitting in front of the fireplace, Einstein curled in my lap, reading Agatha Christie’s
A Holiday for Murder
and eating chocolate.

No, no chocolate. Yuck. Suddenly the thought of anything sweet made my stomach turn. I must have eaten too much over Christmas.

With a sigh, I opened a new document on my computer and started typing a report about the interview I’d just completed. Plenty of people in Espoo hadn’t enjoyed nearly as peaceful a Christmas as Antti and I had. As usual, the holidays had increased the incidence of domestic violence. Returning from my vacation, I found several assaults and one fatal stabbing waiting for me at the station. No wonder so many of my colleagues took a cynical view of family life and marriage. Half the cops in our unit were divorced; Palo was on marriage number three.

What the hell was making me so tired? I hadn’t been doing anything special. Due to the cold snap, our daily cross-country ski outings had been short and relaxed.

Antti and I were living in a run-down little house that had been owned by Antti’s coworker’s late brother. The family was having a hard time selling the house because it was located right along the future route of the Ring II beltway. The windows offered a view of fallow fields where rabbits jumped and moles rooted, but when the road was done, the landscape would be just asphalt and noise. Strangely, the impermanence of our abode didn’t bother me. Maybe I needed the possibility of change now that I had a permanent job and a husband. Before this I’d had a hard time staying happy in a job, so temporary gigs and substitute postings had fit me just fine. Even dating Antti for two and a half years had been quite an accomplishment for me. I wondered whether I’d only found the courage to get married because divorce was so easy nowadays.

Antti, on the other hand, had become attached to the bucolic scene outside our windows and mourned its impending loss. He’d even joined the No to Ring II opposition group, but the fight seemed hopeless; although no one else seemed to see any need for a new road, whatever the Public Roads Administration and Espoo bureaucrats got into their heads seemed inevitable. Antti was already despondent over the West Highway expansion destroying so many of the places he remembered from his childhood in Tapiola. He blamed the change in that landscape for his parents’ decision to finally sell their home and move permanently to their summer cabin in Inkoo.

In fact, Antti had become so anti-road and environmentally conscious that I half-seriously thought he’d run for local council on the Green ticket in the next elections.

“Actually, you should infiltrate the Social Democrats or National Coalition. They’re the most enthusiastic road builders,” I’d jokingly suggested.

Antti clearly needed something new to do other than work. I, on the other hand, was content jogging, hitting the gym, and visiting the department firing range. I’d been forced to use my weapon for the first time in my career the summer before and had found that my marksmanship needed a lot of work. Since then I’d been visiting the range regularly. My technique was getting better, but I truly hoped I’d never have to use that skill in the field again.

My phone rang. On the other end of the line was Dispatch, who notified me of an incoming call from Aira Rosberg. It took me a moment to remember her and my visit to the Rosberga Institute a few weeks ago. I’d heard nothing more about Johanna’s case, and with all the rush around the holidays, I’d forgotten my promise to see if I knew any police in the district where she lived.

Aira’s voice sounded strangely hesitant when Dispatch connected the call. “I don’t really know whether this is the sort of thing to bother the police about, Maria, bu
t . . .
Elina is missing.”

“Missing? What do you mean?”

“No one’s seen her since last night. It doesn’t look like she slept in her bed, and we can’t find her nightgown or bathrobe anywhere. And the clothes she laid out for today are still in her room. It’s as if she went somewhere in her nightgown.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Last night around ten o’clock. She’d just come in from an evening walk and was going to her room. We’ve had a small group of women here celebrating Christmas. Four in addition to me and Elina. No one remembers seeing her after that.”

“And she didn’t leave any kind of message?”

“No.”

Was that misgiving in Aira’s voice when she replied?

“Is there any place Elina could have gone? Who are her closest friends?”

“I called Joona right awa
y . . .
Joona Kirstilä. He’s Elina’s boyfriend. But Elina wasn’t there.”

“You mean the poet Joona Kirstilä?” I asked curiously. Elina was in the press relatively often, and Kirstilä was well known, but I’d never heard any rumors of a romantic relationship.

“Yes, that’s him. They’ve been seeing each other for a couple of years. Elina spends the night at Joona’s now and then, so I thought maybe she was there.”

“Is there any particular reason to be concerned about Elina’s disappearance? Did anything happen over Christmas, maybe an argument? Who else is there with you at the house?”

“You met Johanna Säntti and Milla Marttila when you came. They’ve basically lived here since that course at the beginning of December. Tarja Kivimäki is an old friend of Elina’s; she also spent Christmas here. And Niina Kuusinen arrived on Christmas Day. She’s a therapy patient who attended Elina’s courses too.”

I was shocked to hear Milla was still at the manor, remembering how much she had seemed to dislike being there. And Johann
a . . .
Wasn’t she able to see her children even at Christmas?

I didn’t want to think about Johanna, so I continued my questioning. “Was Elina in the habit of disappearing without prior warning?”

“No! This is very strange. If you could—”

“She hasn’t been missing for twenty-four hours,” I interrupted gently, “and since she’s an adult, the police won’t initiate a search yet. Does Elina have any friends or relatives she might have gone to see?”

Aira replied in the negative once again. She didn’t seem to want to end the call. People disappeared with no explanation all the time, and they usually turned up in one piece. But I didn’t think saying so would comfort Aira. Besides, Elina Rosberg’s sudden disappearance sounded strange to me too.

“Aira, if you haven’t heard anything from Elina by tomorrow morning, call me again,” I finally said. Addressing a woman I barely knew and who was forty years my senior by her first name felt strange, but she had called me by my first name too. I guess that’s how they did things at the Rosberga Institute. “And even if she does come back, please give me a call.” Although I knew I shouldn’t, I gave Aira my home number. I tried to rationalize that I was just curious, but I knew that was a lie. I was worried.

After hanging up, I went back to typing my report. Before leaving work, I called and asked Antti to wax my skis. It had been snowing heavily all day, and the fields near the house were covered with a thick layer of white. Now that the sky was clearing and everything was freezing up, the conditions were good for skiing. One of the benefits of our temporary living arrangement was that we could ski right from our yard. Breaking trail would be a pleasant change from jogging.

As I was leaving my office, I ran into Ström in the hallway. Ström had worked straight through Christmas. His ex-wife and her new husband had taken the children to the Canary Islands. Ström looked even more sullen than usual. The skin on his face with its large pores was drawn tight in a frown and his thinning brown hair was plastered to his head. He looked like he’d been sweating. Broken more than once, his nose glowed red on his pale face. I wondered if he was coming down with a cold.

“I spent the whole day with those goddamn shooters from Perkkaa, and supposedly nobody remembers anything,” Ström snapped in response to my greeting. “I bet they went and got stoned after they shot that guy just so they could claim they didn’t remember anything and no one could be charged.”

He looked at me and changed gears: “So how did the blushing bride’s Christmas go? Plenty of binge eating and screwing?”

I’d gotten used to Ström’s rough manner when we were in the same class at the police academy, so I just nodded and smiled. Besides, Ström was right—although I might have expressed our activities a little differently.

“So do you have a bun in the oven yet?” Ström continued, looking me up and down.

“That’s none of your business,” I hissed, “but since you’re so interested, it isn’t in the plans. I have an IUD.” I pushed open the door before Ström could whip out any more smart-ass remarks. I wasn’t in the mood for a verbal jousting match, and our conversations almost always turned into arguments. We just didn’t get along.

Although I’d heard he was the one who recommended I be asked to join the unit, I had worried about coming to work in Espoo with him here. A few years before, when I was working for a law firm in Tapiola, Ström and I had had a serious confrontation over a murder investigation. I was legal counsel for an innocent man whom Ström had arrested. In the end, I solved the case by basically going over the heads of the police. Ström had had a hard time swallowing this. Later I heard that he’d been right in the middle of his divorce at the time and that this had affected his work. Of course, he never talked about his breakup, but Palo’s third wife knew Ström’s ex, and Palo had no qualms about gossiping about Ström’s personal life.

When I finally left the station, I was met with falling snow. The snow and the Christmas lights burning on the houses along Lower Henttaa Road created a postcard scene. Even our own run-down red cottage looked homey. Antti had lit the candle lantern to welcome me home and was shoveling when I pulled up.

He waited while I went in to throw on my ski gear and quickly eat a banana. The fresh air washed away my tiredness, and once we were on the trail, I began to enjoy the sound of the snow under my skis, simultaneously familiar yet new to me every winter.

But my mind kept wandering back to Elina Rosberg. Where on earth could she be? Although I knew Elina Rosberg only from her media image, she didn’t seem the kind of person who did anything on a whim. She was a regular guest on talk shows where issues related to sexuality and gender roles were discussed, and while the other participants tended to lose their cool and shout at each other, Elina always remained maddeningly calm. Usually it was her voice that made the others eventually settle down and listen. No, Elina was not the kind of person to jump on a train for a last-minute visit to a girlfriend in another city. Not without telling anyone and especially not when she had Christmas guests.

After a couple miles of skiing, my strange exhaustion returned. My legs felt lethargic and weak, as if they no longer wanted to propel the skis forward. Antti was moving along at a steady clip ahead of me, and I had to ask him to slow down.

“What’s up, snow woman?” Antti asked, laughing.

I shook the powder out of my hair before answering.

“My legs are tired. They feel really weird. I think I might be coming down with something. Or maybe my period is starting. That could be it.”

“Maybe we should turn back,” Antti suggested.

I managed to turn around on my Jell-O legs. Trying not to think about how weak I felt, I concentrated on Antti’s back gliding along ahead of me. His green anorak glowed against the snow, his shadow looking impossibly tall and thin. His large, aquiline nose looked even more prominent than usual when he turned back to ask whether the speed was OK. I was relieved when I finally saw the house lights and glad to know a hot sauna was waiting. The thought of getting warm and crawling into bed with Einstein curled up on my feet after his evening meal was heavenly.

But even when I was finally lying in bed listening to him purr, my thoughts kept turning to Elina. She wouldn’t leave me alone in my dreams either. I saw her walking along a lake of ice, wearing a flowing white nightgown. Suddenly the wind took hold of the nightgown and lifted Elina into the air, twirling her highe
r . . .
highe
r . . .
highe
r . . .
until finally she was nothing but a speck disappearing in a swirl of snowflakes.

In the morning, I’d barely made it into my office before Aira Rosberg phoned. Still no sign of Elina. I explained that I’d have to connect her with Patrol. Without any evidence of a crime, a disappearance didn’t fall under our unit’s responsibilities.