Snow Woman (3 page)

“I’m so sorry to impose on you, bu
t . . .
I was hoping tha
t . . .
that you could come here.” Aira sounded concerned and confused. “If I call the regular police, they’re sure to send a man here, and I know Elina wouldn’t approve of that.”

“There are plenty of women in that department these days, but I’ll see what I can do.” I put down the handset and quickly checked my schedule. My afternoon wasn’t booked solid, so I had time to swing by Nuuksio. “I’ll come around two. Call me back if you hear anything from Elina.”

Just then Taskinen opened the door and summoned me to the interrogation room. In addition to all the Christmas assaults, we were in the middle of a complicated money laundering investigation that fell jointly to us and the Finance Unit. One of the main perpetrators was an MBA type who’d started his career in bankruptcy fraud sometime back in the 1970s and had organized this new operation from prison. Today we were interviewing the suspect’s brother-in-law, who was one of the key stockholders in the front company.

Taskinen and I thought that if we bombarded him with quick cross-examination questions, we might be able to put him off balance, at least momentarily. We badgered him for close to three hours before we were satisfied. He had contradicted himself several times and made so many little slips that we decided we had enough to file charges. We’d been plugging away at the case since the summer, and it felt fantastic to finally have some movement on it.

“Do you have time for lunch?” Taskinen asked as we were leaving the interrogation room.

“Actually I have something to talk to you about.” On our way down to the cafeteria I explained Elina Rosberg’s strange disappearance and asked permission to go have a look—informally, of course—to see whether I could find any evidence of a crime. Truth be told, I’d already made up my mind to go whether I had permission or not.

“I have a feeling Aira Rosberg isn’t telling me the real reason why she’s concerned enough about Elina to turn to the police,” I said.

We started loading food on our trays. Taskinen chose skim milk and didn’t take any butter for his bread. I squirted ketchup all over my cheesy macaroni casserole and poured thick garlic dressing on my salad. Taskinen shook his head in amusement when he looked at my plate. He waited until we were settled at our table before saying anything about Elina’s disappearance.

“You can go. But tell Aira Rosberg to make an official missing persons report if it looks like anything fishy is going on. And check to see if her niece might have left the country. These are tough cases, adult disappearances. If I were you, I’d have a talk with the boyfriend too.”

“I was thinking the same.” I shoved a big forkful of macaroni in my mouth and watched Taskinen as he mashed slices of rye bread into little balls with his fingers before eating them.

Detective Lieutenant Jyrki Taskinen was a neat, meticulous man. He was a little over five feet ten and had straight blond hair that looked as if it had been parted with a ruler. There were never stray hairs or dandruff on the shoulders of his blue suit, and his fingernails were always trimmed short. Everything about Taskinen’s face was narrow and straight. Even his teeth lay in flawless white lines. His body was also slim, wiry like a marathoner’s. I’d heard that even at fifty Taskinen could run a 10K in under forty minutes. The only exception to his narrow lines was an almost half-inch-wide polished gold wedding band.

Based on his appearance, you could easily take Taskinen for a tight ass, but in fact he was easy to get along with. He handled his work extremely well and encouraged the same in others. He always knew how to express exactly what he wanted and was clear about what pleased him and what didn’t. On occasion he was irritated by my habit of bending police procedures a bit, but we’d never had any other problems. After my previous bosses—an alcoholic at the Helsinki PD and a shifty lawyer—working with Taskinen was a breeze.

I hardly knew anything about his personal life, but if I remembered right, his wife was a day-care administrator for the city of Espoo. He also had a teenage daughter who was one of the best figure skaters in the country in her age division. Except for Ström, I got along well with all of my coworkers—despite being the only woman in the unit. Fortunately our neighboring units and the Patrol Division had a few female officers with whom I’d become friends. We even played volleyball once a week. Nowadays, with those other women in the building, I didn’t feel like such a freak. During my police academy days and right after graduation it had seemed I was the only representative of any kind of minority on the force.

After lunch Taskinen and I worked on putting together the paperwork on the money laundering investigation. The sun was already setting by the time I turned my Fiat toward Nuuksio. After Antti and I had moved to the cottage, we’d given in and bought a used car. During the summer my commute was a breeze by bike, or even walking if I wasn’t in a hurry, and Antti didn’t mind walking half a mile to the bus stop or even having to transfer once to get to the math department at the university. But trips to the store and things like that were difficult enough that we’d decided to drop a few thousand on the ancient black Italian job. It clearly wasn’t made for slick roads. The back swung nastily as I slid down the curving hills of Nuuksio on my way to Rosberga.

The gate was shut tight again, and this time it didn’t open on its own. Aira had to walk down and unlock it. The last rays of the sun struck Rosberga Manor at an angle, painting the delicate pink walls the color of a blazing-red rose garden. Milla was outside smoking. In her black clothes and heavy makeup, she looked significantly more like Maleficent than Sleeping Beauty.

“The sergeant returns. Did you come to look for Elina’s body?” she asked derisively.

Aira recoiled at Milla’s words, as did I, but when I looked closely at Milla, I thought I detected genuine concern.

“Hopefully not,” I said, stepping past Milla into the entryway. Muffled piano music was coming from somewhere. It was the same Satie piece Antti sometimes practiced for fun.

“Let’s go have a look at Elina’s room. Then maybe you’ll understand my concern.” Aira gestured toward the door leading to the kitchen.

“The estate’s rooms are divided so the right side of the downstairs is public space, the dining room, lecture hall, and library. The kitchen is here in the middle, next to the stairs. Upstairs are the guest rooms where we house course participants. Our rooms are on the other side of the kitchen.”

“How many can stay here at one time?”

“Around twenty women. We have eight bedrooms upstairs. Our rooms are here,” Aira said, opening a narrow blue door to the left of the kitchen. “This is my room.”

The room gave the impression of old-fashioned servants’ quarters. The furnishings were spare and plain: a bed, a desk, and a loveseat with a small television facing it on a bookshelf. A second door led directly into the kitchen. Above the bed hung a print of a guardian angel helping a little girl and boy over a bridge. Aira closed the door.

“And these are Elina’s rooms. Although we both use the parlor.” Aira motioned me into the next room, and I swallowed a gasp of surprise. Appointed with romantic flower motifs, lace curtains, and little tables with doilies, the room fit with the pink manor, but I had a hard time connecting it to my picture of Elina Rosberg. I had imagined her room decorated cleanly, full of Artek or Kukkapuro design pieces. Aira must have noticed my confused expression.

“This was my mother’s room—Elina’s grandmother. Mother lived out her last decades here because she couldn’t climb the stairs anymore. And she also liked the view.”

I glanced out the large window, but all I could make out were silhouettes in the darkness. On this side of the house, the ground fell away and the walls surrounding the manor were low enough not to block the view down into the valley. I imagined that the white open space dimly visible in the distance was Lake Pitkäjärvi.

“Elina wanted to preserve this room the way it was. The bedroom is more her own style though.”

Aira opened the room’s other door. I stepped into the bedroom, which also didn’t match my expectations. Although the furniture was modern and simple, the color palette was too bright: red, yellow, and light blue. A double bed dominated the room. The bedspread had been turned down, but no one had slept in the bed since it was last made. Next to the window was an uncomfortable-looking armchair with a triangular ottoman. On the desk was a computer, and on the bookshelf next to it was a collection of psychiatry books. Carefully laid out on the chair in front of the desk were violet corduroy pants, a white blouse, and a sweater in a smoky shade of gray.

“She wore those clothes the day before yesterday, but she usually wears the same ones several days in a row unless they’re dirty. And if she left those clothes on the chair instead of putting them in the dirty hamper, the
n . . .
” Aira went silent. “She kept her nightgown on her pillow, but there’s nothing here. Her robe is usually in the bathroom, but I can’t find it,” Aira said finally.

“Are her winter coat and boots here?”

“She keeps them in the side entry so they won’t get mixed up with course participants’. Follow me.”

Aira went back into the entry and from there to a side entrance that led from the kitchen to the backyard. A collection of women’s coats hung on a row of hooks.

“These are mine,” Aira said, pointing to an old-fashioned Persian lamb coat and a dark-blue, hip-length blazer. The shearling coat I’d seen Elina wearing hung next to them, as did a shorter purple quilted jacket that was more appropriate for taking a walk. A smart dark-gray Ulster coat was carefully hung on a wooden hanger.

“Elina doesn’t have any winter coats besides these. And all her shoes are here too. Winter boots, rubber boots, and hiking shoes.”

“Could she have borrowed something from one of the other women?”

“You’d have to ask them. No one has mentioned anything missing. But let’s go back to Elina’s room. The most important sign that things aren’t right is in her bathroom.”

The bathroom attached to Elina’s bedroom had been carefully restored. There was a claw-foot bathtub and a toilet with a wooden lid. A small dressing table full of bottles and tins also fit into the room. On the wall hung an electric toothbrush.

“Elina takes very good care of her face, but all of her cleansing gels and creams are here.”

I carefully examined the expensive skin care products.

“Couldn’t she have used travel sizes? A lot of brands offer those. And it’s easy enough to buy new bottles of whatever you forget.”

“But she wouldn’t have left her antibiotics! Elina had an upper respiratory infection, and she only started her course of medicine the day before yesterday. She had a bad cough and almost lost her voice. The bottle is right here, look!”

On the edge of the dressing table was a small white plastic bottle that said “Erasis 400 Mg.” The label instructed Elina Rosberg to take one pill three times a day for ten days. I opened the bottle, which still contained a few dozen tablets.

“Strange. But she could get more of these too. Elina must know a lot of doctors.”

Although Aira seemed very sure that there was something suspicious about Elina’s disappearance and clearly wanted us to open an official investigation, I had the feeling she wasn’t telling me everything she knew.

“When did you last see Elina?”

“On Boxing Day, around ten o’clock that night. She was just coming in from a walk. I thought she was foolish to go out in the cold when she was sick, but she said she wanted some time alone. I made her a cup of tea afterward, and she took it to her room. She seemed perfectly normal other than being tired because her cough had been keeping her up at night. There was no sign that she was going out again.”

“Was she alone on her walk?”

Aira seemed to consider this. “I think she was with Joona, but I can’t be sure. She never asks him in when they meet. We don’t allow men here at Rosberga, as you know.”

“Where do they meet then?”

Although Elina’s ban on allowing even her own boyfriend onto the grounds seemed logical, I was certain it caused them a number of practical difficulties.

“Usually at Joona’s apartment.” Aira’s voice betrayed her disapproval of Elina’s relationship with Joona Kirstilä. “And in the little house.”

“Little house? What’s that?”

“The old sauna building on the west side of the estate,” Aira said a little uneasily. “Elina had a power line run out to it a few years ago. I think she meets Joona there sometimes, even though theoretically no men are allowed inside the walls at all.”

“I’d like to see that. But let’s continue here. You’re sure you didn’t hear Elina go out again?”

Aira looked embarrassed, even guilty. “I’d been sleeping poorly too because of Elina’s coughing. I took a sleeping pill and put in earplugs. I didn’t wake up until nine o’clock when Niina started clattering around in the kitchen making breakfast.”

I asked to interview the other women on the premises. Hopefully someone would be able to tell me more. Aira said that Tarja Kivimäki, Elina’s friend, had already left the estate for Tapiola because this was a workday for her.

Tarja Kivimäk
i . . .
Where did I know that name from?

“I hear Niina playing piano in the library,” Aira said. “Would you like to speak with her?”

Aira led me through the dining room, and I asked her whether Johanna had contacted the lawyer I’d mentioned on my first visit. I’d remembered to call the police in Johanna’s home county that morning too, but unfortunately nothing had come of it: I didn’t know anyone in the department there.

“Johanna has been terribly depressed,” Aira said. “Spending Christmas away from her childre
n . . .
I know Elina spoke with a lawyer, but I think she’s mostly been focused on helping Johanna cope with her guilt.”

“Guilt? Over the abortion?”

“And leaving the children.”

We went into the library, where a Chopin etude was being played furiously. The pianist was obviously good. Antti wasn’t a beginner by any means, yet he never made it through the piece’s tricky middle passages that well.