Snow Woman (31 page)

Ström answered and handed it to me. Opening the door to the balcony, where a couple of people were smoking, I stepped outside to talk.

The gynecology specialist sounded agitated. “Elina Rosberg definitely gave birth at least once, but it was a long time ago.”

“How long?”

Sleet pelted my face like a cold rag. My nipples felt frozen the instant I stepped out onto the balcony.

“Hard to say with any accuracy, but I’d guess about twenty years ago. There wasn’t any mention of it in her records, which was why I wanted a second opinion before I called you.”

“And the scarring?”

“There is record of an operation conducted under less than ideal circumstances sometime in the mid-seventies. The scarring is probably from that. That would have allowed her to claim she had never given birth, but a good doctor should have notice
d . . .
”

“She may have had some sort of tacit understanding with her doctor,” I said. “Thank you. We may need your statement in court.”

Turning off the phone, I stared through the sleet at the building block shapes of the Cultural Center across the water. Elina had given birth to a child. And what had Ström just said about Palo’s son? Something Antti said in the sauna in Inkoo also came back to me.

Suddenly the picture started to come into focus, although I wished I could have another look at the snapshots in those photo albums at Rosberga Manor. But when I really concentrated, I could recreate them on the screen in my head. A high-school-aged Elina, looking wan and tired, standing with Aira against a backdrop of palm trees. A flock of admiring young men staring at Elina at a company party.

Of course. That was it! And Aira must have known all these years. That’s why she had protected Elina’s killer!

Maybe Aira was in danger after al
l . . .

Returning to the banquet hall, I forced myself not to break into a run. I found Taskinen and Ström at the buffet. Both turned, expecting a few words of praise for my boss’s speech. Instead, I blurted that I had to go to the hospital.

“I know who killed Elina Rosberg and why,” I explained. “First I just have to make a few calls and talk to her aunt. Then I think I’ll have enough evidence for an arrest.”

“When is this going to happen?” Taskinen’s voice contained little enthusiasm. For him, the Rosberg case had been buried long ago under the loss of Palo.

“Preferably today,” I said. “I’ll need someone with me.”

“OK,” Ström and Taskinen said at the same time. Instead of choosing one of them, I arranged for both to meet me at four thirty at the station. Then I grabbed a ground beef turnover and a pastry filled with rice and egg for the road and rushed off to the taxi stand outside. I realized I still had Ström’s cell phone, so while I was in the taxi I called the head offices of SF Lumber. After a few seconds of confusion, the receptionist was able to confirm a fact I’d been wondering about. After that, I still had time to call the international phone directory service before the driver dropped me off at the front doors of the hospital.

I ended up racing around half the hospital before I found Aira. She was sitting in her bed flipping absently through a women’s magazine. Most of her fragility had disappeared, and the fat gauze bandage wrapped around her head had been replaced by a thinner one.

She even smiled when I walked in. “Sergeant Kalli
o . . .
Maria. Hello.”

“Hi, Aira. How are you doing?”

“Better all the time, although thinking about Elina hurts. But my head isn’t splitting the way it was.”

“Do you remember everything yet?”

Fear flashed in Aira’s eyes, but she drove it away. She didn’t answer.

“It doesn’t actually matter as long as you remember the past,” I said. “Elina died because of her past, isn’t that right?”

Aira was silent for a moment. “How much do you know?” she finally asked.

“A lot. But a few things I still don’t understand. For example, why have you been dropping hints about Joona Kirstilä the whole time? What do you have against him?”

Aira didn’t reply, just shook her head as if she didn’t know the answer herself. Maybe the reason for her accusations was simply that she knew Kirstilä was innocent and thought that meant he’d get off if he was arrested.

“Why did Elina’s killer try to kill you? Did you threaten to tell the police? You knew what was going on from the beginning, didn’t you?”

“I never would have told. But she didn’t believe me. She’
s . . .
she’s unbalanced. I don’t think she meant to kill me. Hitting me was just a reaction.”

“So you remember what happened?” I asked again.

Aira didn’t look at me as she nodded.

“So why don’t I tell you what I know about the events, and you fill in the holes,” I suggested. I wanted to make this as easy as possible. I felt sorry for Aira. She’d lived her whole life through and for other people and had almost died for it.

“Do I have to testify against her?” Aira asked.

“I’m hoping for a confession,” I said.

“Tell her I forgive her. I was partially to blame for what happened. I was the one who came up with the plan all those years ago. Apparently I was wrong. My decision had such destructive consequences.”

Then we started telling each other why Elina died. I had guessed the facts, but Aira was better able to describe what led to the events, so I let her talk.

When we finally finished, Aira’s face was as gray as stone, but her eyes had regained the natural serenity I had seen in them the first time I met her at Rosberga.

“I’m making things easy for you,” Aira said. “They’re all going to be at the house tonight preparing for Elina’s funeral: Johanna, Tarja, Niina, Milla, and even Joona, I believe. Go tonight and you’ll find the rest of your answers.

18

“So you’ve got a whole room of suspects waiting for us?” Ström said with a snort as he turned off the highway toward Nuuksio. “Sounds very whodunit.”

“Exactly. I’ll go through the suspects one by one, starting with the least guilty. Whoever’s left is Elina Rosberg’s murderer.”

“Is that Kirstilä shit going to be there?” Ström asked. “I thought men weren’t allowed.”

“I guess enough cops have traipsed through the house that the whole idea has gone to pot.” Actually I wasn’t very happy about having a big revelation scene at Rosberga, but I wanted to wind the case up. And it might be good for everyone to be there. Elina’s death had changed all of them, and maybe they’d now be able to go on with their lives.

The gates of the mansion were locked. Apparently the opener wasn’t working, because Tarja Kivimäki came to let us in.

“Three police officers? Nothing’s happened to Aira?” she demanded before I was even out of the car. In addition to Elina’s car, Kivimäki’s red Volkswagen and Niina Kuusinen’s father’s Volvo were in the courtyard. Although Niina claimed to hate winter driving, she had driven to Rosberga in a sleet storm.

“Aira’s fine,” I said. “We have something to talk about with the rest of you.”

Inside, the kitchen was warm and inviting. Niina, Milla, and Joona Kirstilä sat around the table. Johanna busied herself making more tea when she saw us, although I said we wouldn’t be staying long. Ström and Taskinen were quiet. They knew who we were here to get, but they let me do the talking.

“Aira sends her greetings,” I finally began, but I didn’t look at anyone. “I spent a long time with her today talking, and she confirmed something I already knew. The identity of Elina Rosberg’s killer.”

“Killer? So it wasn’t an accident?” Kirstilä said hoarsely.

“In a way I think it was an accident. I don’t think the purpose was to kill Elina, at least not at first. The whiskey and Dormicum were just meant to put her to sleep. The killer didn’t know about the antibiotics Elina was taking and didn’t have a clue erythromycin enhances the effects of sleeping pills and keeps them from being flushed out of your system. But the object wasn’t for Elina to freeze to death, right?”

Now I looked at them all, pale-faced Kirstilä, Niina fiddling with her hair, Milla who stared back brazenly, and Johanna measuring out the tea.

Tarja Kivimäki was the first one to speak. “Bad luck. No one jumped up and screamed no.”

“I guess I’ll have to be more direct then. How did Elina end up in the forest, Niina?”

When Niina heard her name, she flinched as if I’d hit her. Milla, who was sitting next to her, breathed in sharply and whirled, aghast.

“Why the hell did you kill Elina?” Milla’s tone was harsh, and she raised her hands aggressively but stopped when Niina spoke.

“I didn’t mean to kill anyone! I just wanted her to suffer. I wanted to leave her out in the cold the way she left me.”

“What are you talking about?” Tarja Kivimäki’s voice was incredulous. I decided it was better to let the others handle the conversation. Niina would open up to her friends much more easily than to me.

“Elina was my mother,” Niina hissed. “My mother, who abandoned me right after I was born and pretended not to know me when I showed up here even though she knew exactly who I was!”

“Your mother? But you’re at least twenty-five! Elina must have been a baby when you were born!” Milla said.

“Elina was sixteen.” I took the floor and explained what Aira had told me about Niina’s birth.

Niina’s father, Martti Kuusinen, had worked for Elina Rosberg’s father in the late 1960s at SF Lumber, one of the largest wood processing firms in the country. At the time Kuusinen was twenty-five, already married to his college sweetheart, Heidi. Kuusinen soon became a favorite of Elina’s father, Kurt Rosberg, who had always been disappointed not to have a son of his own. Kuusinen visited the mansion frequently, and fifteen-year-old Elina fell head over heels in love with him. Elina was an early bloomer, tall and beautiful. Aira, who had returned to Rosberga around that time to care for her sick sister-in-law, was the first to discover Martti and Elina’s relationship. She immediately told her brother, but the damage was already done. Elina was expecting Martti Kuusinen’s child.

At first Elina probably didn’t even realize she was pregnant. And by the time Aira found out, it was too late for an abortion. To top it off, Martti Kuusinen’s wife was also expecting. Kurt Rosberg was furious and fired Martti from his company. I remembered Aira’s exhausted face and faltering voice as she told me about Niina’s birth and the horrible spring preceding it.

Elina’s mother was very sick, and the girl was in a deep depression. Aira wasn’t sure what Elina expected to happen. Maybe she thought the father of her baby would leave his wife and marry her. She wouldn’t even speak to her own father because he had fired Kuusinen. Aira was the only person Elina would listen to, and finally Aira came up with the plan. The baby was due in October. Instead of going to school in the fall, Elina would go abroad for the birth and then give the child up for adoption.

Then Martti Kuusinen found a job in the south of France, the same position he still held. Heidi, his wife, didn’t want to move away from Finland to a country where she didn’t even know the language, but her husband convinced her to go. The irony of fate was that both of Martti Kuusinen’s children were due to be born within two weeks of each other.

Aira wasn’t exactly sure about the details of what happened next, but one night Kuusinen returned home from work and found his wife lying unconscious in a pool of blood. She’d gone into labor two months early, and there was no way to save the child. It would have been a little girl.

Kuusinen wrote to Aira and suggested that he and Heidi raise the baby Elina was carrying as their own. In a way it was a good solution, and Aira was able to talk Elina into it. In early August, Aira accompanied Elina to France. Elina went willingly—her pregnancy was already becoming too obvious, and her father had barred her from leaving the house.

The months in France were torture, Aira recalled. It was terribly hot, and Elina spent half her time acting crazy over Martti Kuusinen and half the time hating him. And Heidi Kuusinen could have used professional counseling after the death of her baby and learning that a schoolgirl was expecting her husband’s.

Martti Kuusinen never reported the death of his wife’s child to the Finnish authorities. Of course the French doctor who treated her knew, but Aira assumed Kuusinen handled that with money. The Finnish authorities also never knew that Elina was pregnant. She hadn’t visited a maternity clinic here, so her condition was never recorded.

Martti Kuusinen was the one who came up with the idea of presenting Elina as his wife at the hospital when she went into labor. Although Heidi was eight years older than Elina, the pregnancy had been difficult and had aged Elina enough that no one suspected anything.

Elina gave birth half drugged. In the end they had to drag Niina out with forceps. Elina refused to see her baby at all, and two days after the delivery she left the hospital. Aira and Elina traveled to Paris, where Elina spent a week recovering, and then they both returned to Finland. After Christmas Elina went back to school. The Kuusinens stayed in France. There was no further contact between Elina and Martti Kuusinen. No one ever asked whether Elina missed her daughter, and Elina never mentioned her again.

That was where Aira had ended her story. In hindsight, she added, it would have been easier if they’d given the baby to strangers, but on the other hand, Martti Kuusinen was Niina’s father.

Niina hadn’t moved or made a sound during my story. It was time for us to leave, but before I could say as much to her, Tarja Kivimäki spoke up.

“Niina, when did you learn Elina was your mother?”

Slowly Niina turned to face Kivimäki, her eyes full of tears. Now that I knew to look, I saw the similarity between Niina, Aira, and Elina—their high cheekbones.

“My mothe
r . . .
Heidi left me a letter I was supposed to open only after she died. In it she said she’d been struggling for years over whether to tell me and decided in the end I needed to know my real mother’s identity. What good was that supposed to do me! I wish she’d never told me! Maybe Mom thought I wouldn’t miss her as much when she died, but she was wrong. I never had any mother but her, and it never even occurred to me that she might not be my real mo
m . . .
”

Niina’s sobs made it hard for her to speak, but she couldn’t seem to stop talking. “Dad told me the rest of what Mom didn’t say in her letter. I couldn’t understand how he could’ve done what he did, and our relationship basically ended that day. Elina never contacted him again after leaving France. But I was her child. How could she abandon me like that?”

“Elina was sixteen when you were born. She couldn’t have been a mother to you,” Tarja Kivimäki said gently.

“Why not? Her family had money. They could have hired a nanny so Elina could still go to school. Elina didn’t want me, so she got rid of me!” sobbed Niina.

“Did she say that to you?” Joona Kirstilä had been frozen all this time. “She told me the exact opposite. She said no one would let her keep her baby and she didn’t have any say.”

“You knew?” Niina and I asked at the same time.

“Not that it was you. Actually, I suspected Milla was her daughte
r . . .
” Kirstilä glanced at Milla, and a faint smile flitted across his lips. “Elina just said that she had a baby when she was really young and her family made her give it away.”

“That’s right! Of course Elina didn’t talk about me,” Niina said angrily. “I spent years wondering whether I wanted to meet a woman who hadn’t shown the slightest interest in me. She must have heard about my mom’s death—there were big obituaries in the papers. Wouldn’t that have been a good reason to come meet me? But she didn’t.”

The anger in Niina’s voice was disturbing. I was sure Elina’s version would have been very different. She probably hadn’t wanted to interfere with Niina’s life.

“In the end I decided to meet my real mother,” said Niina. “In the fall I signed up for her emotional self-defense course. When I met her I told her my name, but she didn’t react. I was just like anybody else coming for a class.”

“Kuusinen is a pretty common name,” Tarja said. “And Elina might not have even known your first name.”

“Yeah, she probably wasn’t interested enough in me to find out.” Niina paused for a moment. “At the course I wasn’t able to talk to her much, so I decided to become her patient. We met once a week, and our first therapy session was three weeks before Christmas. In the first one I told her so much about my parents that she had to guess who I was. But she didn’t say a word. She just sat and listened. Can you believe that?”

“Use your head, girl! Elina was a professional. She could see you were bat-shit crazy and you’d only get worse if she dropped a bomb like that on you. ‘Oh really, well actually I’m your real mother.’ Seriously? And
you
were the one who started the charade.” Milla was furious. “Why didn’t you just tell her you knew? Was it Christmas when you finally told her? Is that why you came here?”

Niina’s face was blank. All expression had gone with the tears. “It was that night. On Boxing Day. I met her in the hall and told her I had something I needed to talk to her about. She gave me a funny look but told me she didn’t have time right then. She wanted to walk with Joona first! That’s when I started getting angry. Elina must have guessed what I was going to tell her, but she didn’t want to hear it! I’d brought her a bottle of whiskey because I overheard her at that course telling someone, probably you, Milla, that Laphroaig was her favorite. I crushed up a package of Dormicum and dissolved it in water. That’s all the plan I had. I meant to show Elina that I could kill he
r . . .
if I wanted to. But such a small amount wouldn’t actually kill her.”

Niina’s tears had dried, and her voice was steady as she told us how she went to Elina’s room after the movie ended that night. Elina was already in her nightgown. They’d barely started speaking when a call from Joona Kirstilä interrupted them. While Elina was talking to Joona, Niina mixed Elina a drink.

“Elina tossed the whole glass down in one gulp after she got off the phone. I guess she needed a pick-me-up and that’s why she only tasted the whiskey. Then I kind of got mixed up. I knew the medication worked fast. I—I told Elina I knew she was my mother and ran outside and through the back gate. I couldn’t stand being inside the house.”

Elina followed, without shoes or a coat. Niina ran headlong across the field, losing Elina when she reached the forest. For half an hour she ran in the cold, and when she recovered her senses and returned through the main gate, she assumed Elina was already back. She went to her own room and waited for Elina to come to her, but that never happened.

Milla swore. “Why didn’t you wake us up, you idiot!”

Niina didn’t answer. There weren’t any answers.

We would probably never know what really happened, how Elina ended up where the skier found her body. The drug interaction must have hit her suddenly and she fell and slid down the icy bank on her back. I didn’t want to think about the cold or what she was feeling as she ran after Niina in the snow.