The Hummingbird (3 page)

‘Who calls the emergency services by mistake?’ asked Sari.

‘Christ, people call 112 when they lock themselves out of the house or when their pet poodle gets something stuck in its eye,’ said Esko.

‘That’s different. This call was placed by mistake,’ said Sari.

‘How old is Bihar?’ asked Anna.

‘Seventeen,’ Rauno replied.

‘A seventeen-year-old girl calls 112 and says someone’s threatening to kill her. Sounds like a real-life nightmare to me,’ said Anna.

‘And why was she was allowed to travel all the way to Vantaa by herself?’ asked Sari.

Esko said nothing.

‘I want to hear that call,’ said Virkkunen. ‘Esko, let’s hear it.’

A few seconds of background noise. The operator’s matter-of-fact voice. Then, very hushed, the girl’s whispers: ‘They’re gonna kill me. Help me. My dad’s gonna kill me.’

The operator asks her to repeat.

The girl says nothing.

The operator asks where the girl is. The girl gives her address and hangs up.

‘She was petrified,’ said Anna.

‘I agree,’ said Sari. ‘Scared to death that someone might hear.’

‘Why didn’t she say where she was?’ asked Rauno.

‘Maybe she didn’t know,’ Sari suggested.

‘Or maybe she wanted to bring the police straight into the hornets’ nest,’ said Rauno.

‘She probably didn’t know the exact address, and her home address was the only one she could remember. And she was in a hurry; this was a matter of life and death,’ said Anna.

‘Maybe she just wanted to give Daddy a few grey hairs,’ scoffed Esko.

‘Did anyone speak to the mother?’ asked Anna.

‘They tried. The report says in bold that the husband did all the talking. Through Mehvan,’ said Rauno.

‘But of course.’

‘So what are we going to do about this?’

‘Let’s get this investigation underway. Finnish law doesn’t recognise honour violence as a crime, but we might be able to bring a charge of unlawful threat or even false imprisonment. It’s Monday morning and the girl is in Vantaa. Shouldn’t a girl that age be in school?’ asked Virkkunen.

Esko yawned noisily in his chair and started playing with his mobile, a look of boredom on his face.

‘I believe compulsory education ends at seventeen,’ he commented.

‘Esko, I want you to call these people in for an interview by the end of the day,’ Virkkunen ordered.

Esko gave a snort and wiped the crumbs from the edge of his mouth with an air of indifference.

‘Yes. Bihar, father, mother, brother and little sister. I want them all here as quickly as possible. And book an interpreter – two if necessary. Rauno and Sari, find out about the relatives in Vantaa, ask the local unit for assistance. Anna, establish what has happened in previous cases.’

‘Okay,’ Anna responded.

‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ said Sari. ‘It’s as though a premonition has come knocking.’

At that very moment, there came a knock at the door. A woman poked her head around and nodded by way of a greeting.

‘They’ve found a body. On the running track near Selkämaa in Saloinen,’ she informed the group.

Everyone fell silent and froze on the spot. Sari and Rauno looked at one another in confusion and disbelief. Esko’s coffee cup stopped in mid-air on its journey to his lips. Virkkunen’s voice broke the silence.

‘So much for a quiet start, Anna,’ he sighed.

3

ANNA
FEKETE
sniffed at the air. The rain had strengthened the natural scents of the forest. The detritus decomposing beneath the boughs of trees was mixed with the smell of sawdust. Mould had begun its annual autumnal feast, but still the air was fresh. Wind rustled in the branches of dwarf birches and in the tangle of thicket, the remaining green leaves flittering in the rain.

The twenty-kilometre journey to Saloinen had taken them south through heavy traffic heading out of the city. Before reaching the rapidly expanding village, Anna turned on to a dirt track leading towards the shore. For about three kilometres the track wound its way through the woods and ploughed fields and came to an end at a rectangular, overgrown parking area. A slimy cluster of slippery Jack mushrooms had popped up along the edge of the car park. Parked in front of the mushrooms were a blue-and-white police Saab, a yellow Fiat Uno and the civilian vehicle used by Esko Niemi. Beside the cars stood a row of uniformed patrol officers.

I’ve got interval training tonight, Anna found herself thinking as she saw the running track that started behind the yellow police tape. It disappeared into the woods, just like the strands of yellow tape cordoning off the area. The body lay only two hundred metres away, said the policemen, but she couldn’t see that far through the woods.

The body had been discovered just before nine o’clock that morning by local resident Aune Toivola, an 86-year-old widow out on her morning walk. She was in the habit of getting up at seven o’clock every morning, making a pot of coffee and drinking half before and half after her daily walk. And as usual, her walk had taken her to the running track winding its way along the shoreline. Aune
always kept her mobile phone, given to her by concerned relatives, in her pocket, and this she had used to raise the alarm.

Esko had driven by himself, in his own car. This had irritated Anna, though she had no inclination to spend time alone with the man. Still…

Anna got out of the car, greeted the police officers and approached the patrol car. Aune Toivola was sitting there with Esko. The patrol officers were chatting amongst themselves, waiting for permission to leave the scene. Anna noted the gaze of the younger, more handsome of the two officers; he had stared her as she’d arrived and now scanned down towards her bottom as she leant over to talk to the elderly lady.

Aune’s wrinkled face was tinged with a look of frustration. Anna didn’t even have a chance to introduce herself.

‘I’ve already told these nice young men everything,’ she said pointedly. ‘I want to go home now. My coffee will be getting cold, and I can feel a headache coming on. My home help will be arriving soon – she’ll start to worry if I’m not there.’

The lady was clearly tired and distressed at the disruption to her morning routine.

Esko smiled in the front seat. ‘Aune and I have already gone through everything. It’s all in here,’ he said, tapping the blue-covered jotter in his hand.

You can’t have, thought Anna; you were here at most ten minutes before me.

‘Nonetheless, there are still a few questions I’d like to ask,’ said Anna, addressing her question to Aune directly. ‘Then you can go home. It won’t take long.’

The old lady scoffed, but didn’t say anything. Esko stopped smiling.

‘Do you live nearby?’

‘About a kilometre away. 55 Selkämaantie, the same dirt track that runs from the main road out here,’ Aune replied crisply and waved her hand in the direction of the path leading away from the car park.

‘Have you seen any traffic around here? People coming and going along the running track?’

‘I haven’t seen a thing. My house isn’t quite on the path. Besides, I don’t sit around spying on people, never have done,’ said the old woman.

‘And did you hear anything?’

‘Pardon?’ she replied, raising her voice so that it thinned almost to a whinny.

‘Did you hear anything out of the ordinary this morning? Yesterday evening? Or during the night? The sound of a car, perhaps, or a shot?’

Anna noticed the woman’s bony fingers fidgeting with her right ear, behind which she saw the bulge of a hearing aid.

‘I didn’t hear anything. I was watching television last night – the volume was up quite loud.’

‘And have you ever seen the woman you found this morning around here before?’

‘There’s never anybody around here in the mornings. There might be the odd person in the evenings, but I wouldn’t know about that – I don’t come out here in the evening. Can I go now, please? The carer will be worried and she’ll call my son.’

‘Just a few more questions. Does anybody else live in the vicinity?’

‘There’s old Yki Raappana, but this man here has already asked all about him.’

‘What about that car over there? Have you seen it before?’

‘I’m not sure. Cars do drive up here from time to time. There must be other people here apart from me, what with the road being lit and all that,’ said Aune.

‘Thank you. You can go home now, but we’ll come and visit you in the next few days and have another chat. If you feel worried about any of this and need to talk to someone, there are people at the church who are trained to help. Here’s their telephone number.’

‘As long as I can get home to my coffee, I’ll be fine,’ she muttered. ‘This was nothing compared to what I saw in Karelia during the
war. That was genuine pain and suffering, men coming in on trucks, howling and wailing, some with legs missing, some with shrapnel in their heads.’

‘Maybe you could talk about that with them too. It might do you good,’ said Anna politely and asked the patrol officers to take the old lady home.

‘Let the vicar know too, okay?’ she added and winked at the younger and more handsome of the officers. He was visibly taken aback.

Should I have stayed in patrol after all, thought Anna as she watched Esko Niemi getting out of the car.

The figure was of a man well past the cusp of middle age. The greasy hair on his brow was thinning and lank. His wrinkled shirt was stuffed inside a pair of un-ironed trousers. The buttons of his shirt had stretched into a grimace around his belly, revealing a strip of hairy stomach. Presumably he was unable to button up his threadbare jacket. Esko Niemi hadn’t grown old with dignity, as men are purported to. Women were past their prime by the age of forty, but men simply turned more handsome until the end of their lives. So Anna had often heard; she couldn’t believe the rubbish that people – women – held to be true.

After stepping out of the car, Esko straightened his stiff back and was overcome by a rasping coughing fit. Having composed himself again, he lit a cigarette.

How can anyone communicate with a man like that, Anna thought and felt herself gripped by a wave of uncertainty.

With one hand Esko shielded his cigarette from the rain, then loudly cleared his throat and spat a lump of green phlegm on the ground in front of his feet.

Bassza meg,
what a pig.

‘I’m going to examine the scene and take a look at the body,’ Esko informed her.

‘Yes, let’s go,’ said Anna.

‘No, you wait in the car. Show Forensics where to go when they turn up. Can you manage that in Finnish?’

‘Esko, I’m certainly not going to…’

‘Are we on first-name terms? That was an order, by the way. Meanwhile, find out who that car belongs to, and careful you don’t contaminate any evidence.’

With that said Esko threw her a set of car keys, dropped his cigarette butt into the globule of phlegm and crushed it beneath his shoe. Anna felt sick.

‘The boys from patrol checked the body for any paperwork – that’s ID to you and me. They didn’t find any, but they did find this set of car keys. Make sure you don’t mess the place up,’ he repeated as though he was talking to a child. Then he lifted the yellow ribbon, puffed as he crouched beneath it and slowly walked off down the dirt track. Anna stood on the spot. She looked at Esko as he disappeared into the thicket, and she knew that she hated him. She clasped her hand into a tight fist and resisted the urge to scream. The sharp edge of the car keys dug a red mark into the palm of her hand.

Anna turned her attention to the lonely Fiat. Just calm down and do your job thoroughly, she commanded herself. The cold, abandoned car was like a premonition of the horrors that awaited them at the end of the track. Anna pulled on a pair of latex gloves and gently tried the Fiat’s door. The metal lent her a sense of self-assurance. This was familiar; she could do this. Back in patrol she had had plenty of opportunities to carry out forensic examinations of cars written off at the side of the road, their engines still warm, to look for fleeing drink-drivers and junkies, to confiscate stolen goods stashed in the boot. A car was the most mundane of crime scenes.

But this time Anna wasn’t going to carry out a forensic investigation. The forensics team would go over the car with a fine-tooth comb. If there was anything to find, they would find it. Anna was looking for something else.

The door was locked. Anna pressed a raised button on the key ring with the smudged picture of a padlock. The Fiat gave a click.
She opened the passenger door. The first impression of the car was its cleanliness. The dark-grey seat covers were spotless and there was no rubbish or grit on the floor beneath the seat. There have been no children in this car – or drunks, for that matter. Anna resisted the temptation to sit in the car, to listen to what it wanted to tell her. Instead she carefully opened the glove compartment and took out the registration form.