The Hummingbird (31 page)

‘I was with Jere at his place. I got there around midday and we were there all day. Jere’s already told you all this.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us that you’ve been having a relationship with Jere ever since he and Riikka split up?’

Virve looked like she had been preparing for this question and gave a confident smile.

‘Oh, it’s just sex. Jere and I haven’t been shouting about it from the rooftops because we don’t want our group of friends – that’s Riikka’s group of friends, too – to think we had something going on earlier, as if our thing was the reason they split up. It wasn’t.’

‘You told us that you never liked Jere. Jere, however, has told us a rather different story. According to him…’ Rauno leafed through his notes. ‘According to him, you two had an encounter with one another in high school and you’d been, er, “gagging for it” ever since.’

Virve scoffed.

‘He said that, did he? That’s a fantasy all of his own, something he uses to bolster his macho self-esteem. This probably sounds really bad,’ Virve said and turned to stare Anna intensely in the eyes. ‘But, you see, I’m never “gagging” for anyone, not so that I’d be after them for years. No way, not my style. I’m just looking for a good shag, you know what I mean? And for all his other faults, Jere happens to be
just that. Sorry if that really shocks you, but that’s just who I am,’ she said.

Anna was amused but managed to maintain her poker face. She noticed that Rauno’s ears had turned red. Which of them was supposed to be shocked by Virve’s revelation?

‘So, did you have some sort of encounter during high school?’ he asked.

Virve hesitated before admitting to it.

‘Yes. One night after a class party. That was it.’

‘How soon after that night did Riikka and Jere start dating?’

Again Virve seemed to stall her response, fidgeting with the sleeve of her pullover, her bracelets jangling.

‘The following week. But it didn’t bother me. I wasn’t in love with him or anything.’

‘Of course you weren’t,’ Rauno muttered and continued: ‘However, it is profoundly suspicious that after your close friend has just been brutally murdered, you both failed to mention this relationship in interviews with police officers. Withholding information from the police is rather more serious than withholding information from your friend. During police interrogation it is an offence. This casts you both in a very bad light.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Virve quipped.

‘Did you know that Jere had gone to Lapland at the end of August?’

‘Yes. I knew he’d gone off hiking, but I didn’t know where exactly.’

‘And why didn’t you tell us about that either?’

‘You asked me whether I knew where Jere was. I didn’t know. For all I knew he could have gone south to the Nuuksio national park.’

‘By hiding these things and with that attitude, you make your liaison with Jere seem extremely suspicious,’ Rauno said with a note of irritation. ‘Would you like to hear what I think?’

He continued without waiting for an answer.

‘I think you and Jere cooked up this whole plot together. The
firearm belonged to Jere and you used it to shoot Riikka. Perhaps Jere committed the second murder. Either that, or you did it. And I’m not the only officer who thinks this is a plausible scenario. In fact, this is one of our key lines of investigation, so I’d advise you to think carefully about lying to us in future.’

Rauno slapped the investigation photographs of Ville Pollari on the table. In the first a smiling man was standing with his arm around his wife in front of their newly built house. In the second he was lying on the running track, his chest blown to pieces. Virve stared at the photographs, expressionless, but Anna saw that behind the mask she was shaking with fear and holding back tears.

‘Does this look familiar?’ asked Rauno.

‘No.’

‘Did this man happen to run past when you shot Riikka? Did he see you? Is that why you had to shut him up?’

‘No,’ Virve shouted. ‘No, no, no! I haven’t done anything!’

‘I think you have, either alone or with Jere. Don’t you think it would be better to own up to it now?’

‘I’ve nothing to own up to,’ she said.

‘Think how relieved you’ll be. You won’t have to hide or lie about it any longer. It’ll all be over,’ said Rauno. ‘You can finally relax.’

‘I didn’t dare say anything about Jere or his hiking trip because I was scared that he might have done it,’ she shouted and burst into tears. ‘You don’t have to believe me. I haven’t done anything. I was really freaked out. I just kept thinking, what if Jere really loses it and kills me too? I was relieved when I heard he’d been in Sevettijärvi and there was no way he could have done it.’

‘Could Jere have done something like this? Could he have lost it and killed someone?’ Rauno asked. His voice had changed; now he sounded friendly.

‘I really can’t imagine … But he got really jealous sometimes. And he was pissed off big time when I let it slip that I thought Riikka might be seeing someone else.’

‘Really? He told us that their relationship was over for good.’

‘It was, as far as she was concerned. But Jere wanted her back. He never admitted it, but you notice things like that. I’m just a rebound for him. He loved Riikka.’

‘How jealous is he, on the whole?’

‘Quite a bit.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I mean, he starts imagining all sorts of things at the drop of a hat.’

Anna gave a start. She always reacted to words and phrases like this, no matter how exhausted she was. She had made up her mind. Never again would she not ask the questions that needed to be asked.

‘Does he ever hit you?’ she asked.

Virve was silent for a long moment before speaking.

‘Not really. Not, like, really hard.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Again the girl seemed hesitant, thinking what to say.

‘One time he grabbed hold of me and squeezed my arms and started shaking me. But it was nothing, just a bruise on my arm. Anyway, I’d been irritating him.’

‘So you were asking for it?’

‘Well, I didn’t really say that…’

‘Did he ever behave violently towards Riikka?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You were best friends. You do know.’

‘Sometimes he did.’

‘Don’t you think it’s time to forget all about him?’

‘But I love him,’ she shrieked. ‘I always have. Since high school. I haven’t done anything bad, not to Riikka and not to anyone else. I haven’t. You’ve got to believe me. Riikka was my best friend, despite everything else.’

Again she started to weep.

‘Does the word Huitzilopochtli ring any bells?’ Anna asked, still leaning against the back wall.

Virve turned to look at her. She looked aghast and seemed to
shrink back as she nervously tugged her sleeves further down her forearms.

‘What’s that?’ she said in almost a whisper.

‘Indeed, what is it?’ Anna replied and watched Virve. The girl was visibly rattled and was unable to hide it. But there was something else about her. Anna could see that Virve was utterly petrified with fear.

Bihar, standing on the asphalted playground, alone, a dark scarf tightly wrapped round her head, a black trench coat and jeans. She was leaning against the ochre-yellow wall of the school for yuppie kids and didn’t notice Anna, who was sitting in a civilian car parked across the street. The car radio belched a babble of chatter into the ether. Anna switched it off.

Bihar’s high school was different from the one Anna had once attended. This one was much better. Year upon year, only students with a grade average of around nine would even consider applying. Anna’s high school had been in Koivuharju. Her own grade average would have merited a place at a more reputable school, but Anna didn’t want to have to get the bus to school, as she already spent so much time doing sports. Koivuharju School had nice teachers and decent results despite the students’ diverse backgrounds, and it offered students the opportunity to take extra sports classes. Back then that had been enough, and she hadn’t regretted the decision since.

Bihar moved. A tall, lanky boy was walking towards her across the playground. Bihar took out her mobile phone and started fiddling with it.

The boy stood right next to her, but Bihar didn’t raise her eyes from her phone. The boy seemed not to notice her either, though he was standing so close. A second, two, three. Then Bihar nodded. The boy walked off.

Got you, thought Anna, her pulse quickening. Then: poor kids, not a chance of making a go of things.

Anna stepped out of the car and walked across the playground. Bihar noticed her and almost ran away, but decided to stay put. Out of the corner of her eye, Anna noticed the boy standing further off, watching the situation unfold, safely surrounded by a group of about a dozen students.

‘Don’t they want to hang out with you?’ Anna asked.

‘My friends are all on a double lesson with no break,’ the girl responded.

‘Who was that boy that was here a minute ago?’

‘Don’t know. He asked me the time.’

‘Does he have bad eyesight? There’s an enormous clock over there on the wall.’

‘Must have. That’s what I thought too.’

‘Who was it? Your boyfriend?’

‘I can’t remember his name. Honest.’

‘Of course you can’t. How are things at home?’

‘Fine.’

‘What do you get up to in the evenings? Are you allowed out at all?’

‘I don’t want to go out. I have to study in the evenings.’

‘Is the only reason your parents let you carry on going to school because they know I’m keeping an eye on you?’

Bihar shrugged her shoulders and blew a chewing-gum bubble. The school bell rang abruptly.

‘You don’t get it, do you?’ Bihar hissed and walked off towards the main building.

The boy had disappeared.

Anna would have liked to talk to him too. She should have marched into the school, found a teacher and tried to find out who he was. But she couldn’t. Not now.

Now she had to get away.

The anxiety was coming back.

The two-headed eagle was back.

By the time she parked the car in the lock-up beneath the police
station, Anna felt as though she couldn’t breathe. She undid her seat belt and opened the window, but the cramp in her chest wouldn’t relent. Her heart was pounding and sweat tingled on her skin. It’s starting again, she thought.

Deep breaths! Calm down!

Anna closed her eyes, tried to think of something different, but the image of a brutalised young girl hung in her mind, lying on the banks of a strange river, with more bodies behind her as far as the eye could see.

For Christ’s sake, woman, think of something else!

Bihar was in no danger.

I’m becoming obsessed with this.

It’s not normal that I spend my spare time following a girl who, all the evidence would suggest, is completely safe.

I’m losing my mind from lack of sleep. I can’t tell what is rational and what isn’t any longer, what is true and what false.

Should I just wash my hands of this case altogether, try to spend that time getting some sleep or running?

Anna forced the terrible images from her mind by imaging herself running. Gradually she managed to calm herself down enough that she was able to step out of the car and get on with her work.

Rauno sat at his computer almost night and day. His desk was overflowing with papers containing any information he could find that had even the most tenuous link to the Aztecs. He had uncovered two small cults in the United States that believed in the Aztec gods. One of them was based on an old farm on the outskirts of San Francisco and had around 15 active members. The other group survived with only a few members somewhere in the Deep South and complained of active discrimination from other people in their community. The two groups appeared to keep some minimal contact. The second group had probably been founded when a few families had left the first and decided to make a start on their own. Both groups were on the US internal intelligence radar, but neither was
deemed a significant threat to the general population. Neither group had ever been involved in violent activities of any kind or charged with incitement. A hippie event called the Rainbow Gathering had been held on the San Francisco farm some five years ago. This was the most publicity the group had ever received and the event passed without incident. Rauno got the impression that this was a peaceful group of potheads who got high and posted articles online about their own religion, which incorporated elements of Native American mythology and Aztec gods with communal living, peace, love, vegetarianism and so-called ‘soft’ drugs.