Her Enemy (11 page)

My conversation with Mallu had depressed me and made my conflict with Antti seem petty in comparison. After dropping off the car at the office, I headed toward the police station on my bike. Riding like a bat out of hell, I nearly got run down twice—both times while I was in a crosswalk. Perhaps the urge for self-annihilation was catching. I hadn’t done anything but talk to miserable people for the past two days.

Ström wasn’t at the station yet, but Kimmo was finally awake. If I had been more on the ball, I would have brought a change of clothing with me. The jeans and shirt Kimmo was wearing looked grubby, and he could have used a shave and a shower. How could a blond man’s stubble be so dark?

“Hard night?” I asked cautiously.

“Yeah.” Kimmo shook his head groggily. “During the night it just sort of hit me all at once, knowing that Armi is really
gone. And that I’m in jail. And they think I killed her. I never thought these things really happened, at least not in Finland, and definitely not to me. But during the night, I suddenly realized this
was
happening to me, just like in the movies.” Such helpless terror filled Kimmo’s eyes that I had to look away.

“We can’t save Armi,” I said cruelly. We would all just have to live with her death. “But if you didn’t do it, we have to save you. We can get you free, probably as early as tomorrow.”

“Oh, so he’ll be a free man by tomorrow, will he?” Detective Sergeant Ström said in a nasty tone as he entered the room. “Don’t count on it; I have new evidence. Hänninen, you claimed that you and your fiancée didn’t have a fight. Well, I just talked to one of the neighbors, who says differently. You claim you left the house at noon, but this neighbor heard you fighting at one fifteen. How do you explain a witness placing you there more than an hour after you told me you left?”

I swallowed. This sounded bad. What reason did Kimmo have to lie? He looked utterly petrified.

“But I know I left then. I had already been home for a while before I heard the one o’clock news on the radio.”

“Do you have any witnesses? Was your mother home?” Ström asked dubiously.

“Mom left a note on the table about going into the city with Matti and Mikko.”

“Did you meet anyone you know along the way, a neighbor maybe?” I asked before Ström could continue his attack. I hoped to God that someone could verify Kimmo’s movements. Did Ström really have a reliable witness who could nail Kimmo to the wall like this, or was he just trying to bluff and make Kimmo contradict himself?

Kimmo thought for a moment. “I don’t remember seeing anyone,” he said, sounding depressed.

“You should probably send your boys around to interview the Hänninens’ neighbors in case any of them noticed Kimmo,” I suggested to Ström.

That was a mistake.

“Goddamn it, Maria, don’t you tell me how to do my job! I went to the same goddamn police academy you did. Keep your opinions to yourself, or I’ll have your ass thrown out of here!”

I had been kind and empathetic enough for one day already.

“No, you watch yourself, Detective Sergeant Pertti Ström, or you’re going to be up to your ears in shit. Is your closure rate down on your cases? Is that why you’re in such a hurry to pin this murder on Kimmo? Worried about hitting your numbers for that next promotion, are we?”

Both on our feet now and clenching our fists, Ström and I stared at each other like two fighting cocks. If Ström said one more irritating word, he was going to get the
Legal Code of Finland Volume III
across the forehead. Kimmo and the officer recording the interview gaped at us in surprise.

“Let’s get on with it,” Ström finally said.

I tried to calm down, even though what I really wanted was to challenge him to duel. I knew I couldn’t best him at pistols, but what about swords? Our bad dynamic had been the same at the academy; we were constantly getting on each other’s nerves.

Perhaps asking Eki to represent Kimmo would be a better idea after all.

“I want to know what grounds this witness has for saying I was still at Armi’s place at one fifteen,” Kimmo demanded, surprisingly clearheadedly.

“I don’t have to tell you that! And you keep quiet, Kallio! You know I’m right.”

The recording officer grimaced at me apologetically behind Ström’s back. I felt better. Maybe we were three against one here.

Ström went through Kimmo’s account repeatedly until we were all growing impatient. Finally, he changed the subject.

“If your bride-to-be didn’t like this pervert stuff you were into, then why did you have the rubber suit with you at her house?”

I had wondered the same thing. This one detail didn’t line up with Kimmo’s otherwise sensible story.

“When I picked up Armi on Friday to take her to Risto’s house, I was coming from the city. I had the suit with me because I was looking for the right kind of product for it. You have to condition rubber, and I didn’t want to use silicone because it makes the surface so sticky. I was looking for something more like a furniture wax. When we left to go to Risto’s, I left my stuff at Armi’s because I was supposed to stay the night.”

“Ah, so. Rubber suit polish…” I stalled. Christ, this guy was not helping me out. “Where did you buy it?”

“Stockmann, in the home furnishings department.”

“You went in there, asking for rubber-sex-suit polish?”

“I didn’t ask anyone anything. I just discreetly tried a few on the suit and then paid for it at the register.”

“Do you still have the bottle and receipt?” I asked quickly.

“The bottle is probably in a bag in my room, and the receipt should be there too.”

Ström mumbled something like, “We’ll check on that,” and changed the subject.

“OK, so since you’re one of these perverts who gets off on wearing rubber, tell me: Are you a sadist or a masochist? What is it you want to do to women?”

The recording officer grimaced at me again, and Kimmo blushed.

“Ström, really? Kimmo, you can answer the first question and ignore the second,” I said.

“Masochist,” Kimmo said quietly. “And I don’t want to do anything to anyone,” he continued, ignoring me. “I want things to be done…”

“Such as…?” The curiosity in Ström’s voice was poorly concealed. Sexually repressed as he was, of course the tawdry aspects of the case would interest him. A lot of people consider police officers sadists; perhaps in Ström’s case, they were right.

“Is this really relevant? We’ve already established that he’s a masochist,” I grumbled.

Ström gave in surprisingly easily.

“Can anyone confirm that you’re specifically a masochist? Some old girlfriend, a whore, whatever?”

“Ström!” I yelled.

“Well, I’ve talked a lot with people at my club, my S&M club,” Kimmo continued. “They could probably tell you.”

“They who? We need specifics.”

Kimmo was silent for a moment, then said, “I don’t want to get them mixed up with the police, especially if you’d treat them with as little respect as you have me.”

Kimmo wouldn’t give names or say anything else about the club. I tried to express to him that gallantry was pointless, but Kimmo kept his mouth stubbornly shut.

“If you don’t give me any names, I’m not going to believe a word you say about this masochism thing. I’m going to work
from the assumption that whipping and strangling women is your thing, and that’s exactly what you did to your girlfriend,” Ström said.

Here I broke in again. “Markku Ruosteenoja. Makke. There’s your witness. Address Hakarinne 6, stairwell B. He can tell you that Kimmo is a masochist.”

“And who is this Ruosteenoja? Hänninen’s boyfriend or something?”

“No—his dead sister’s boyfriend.”

“So was your sister the sadist then?” Ström asked Kimmo, and had the door not opened at that moment, Ström definitely would have gotten that book in the face. The person at the door was the duty officer, coming to tell Ström about a call he needed to take. After being gone for less than thirty seconds, Ström returned and declared the interview over, ordered Kimmo taken back to his cell, and left the room. I stuck my tongue out at Ström’s back, which made the other officer smirk. He looked like a grown-up Dennis the Menace.

“Kimmo, tell me the name of at least one person from the club. I promise to treat them right.”

“Elina Kataja, but she goes by ‘Angel.’ She’s one of the club’s organizers. I don’t remember her number, but it’s in the phone book.”

“Let’s go, Hänninen,” Dennis the Menace said gently, throwing me a farewell smile. He nodded toward the table, where, for some reason, he had left his interview notes. As soon as the two men left, I flipped back a few pages, to a page from the day before, and there it was: the name and address of Ström’s key witness, which I quickly wrote down. Apparently, Ström’s methods had begun to aggravate more than just me.

When I arrived home, Antti’s parents’ car was in the driveway. Completely exhausted, I didn’t feel the slightest bit like socializing, but I had to go inside.

“Hi, Maria,” Marjatta Sarkela yelled from the kitchen. “Is Kimmo out yet?”

“No, unfortunately not. We’ll see tomorrow what the judge decides. I think he’ll get out,” I said as I entered the kitchen, where Antti sat with his parents over tea.

“We brought Matti and Mikko home and thought we’d stay over tonight so we can run some errands tomorrow morning,” Tauno Sarkela explained. “Hopefully we won’t be in the way.”

“No, no, of course not. This is your house.” I tried not to sound grumpy, even though these were precisely the sorts of situations that had made me think twice about moving to Espoo. And the Sarkelas had chosen the perfect time for their surprise visit: the whole house was a disaster, and the cupboards were bare. But, damn it, I’d spent the whole weekend running myself ragged trying to help
their
relatives, so when would I have had time for housekeeping? Besides, the state of the house was just as much Antti’s responsibility as mine.

What irked me the most, though, was that I cared at all. Why did I consider the cleanliness of my house and the frequency with which I baked fresh
pulla
a measure of my value as a woman?

“Sit down; pour yourself some tea,” Marjatta said. We were clearly in
her
kitchen, not mine. Einstein came to rub against my legs as I peered hopefully into the cupboard, looking for something to nibble with my tea. I was glad the cat was back; he could keep Antti company during the lonely nights to come.

And, wait, the refrigerator looked surprisingly full. Wagging a wedge of cheese at him, I gave Antti an inquiring look.

“I stopped at the store under the train station on my way in from the city.”

I laughed in relief, although of course Antti knew how to take care of the shopping—he had lived alone just as long as I had. After making myself a heaping ham-and-cheese sandwich, I sat down at the table. The tea tasted of citrus and vodka. I should have guessed. The Sarkelas went in for hard tea, and Antti had inherited the habit from his parents.

“What’s in this?” I asked politely.

“Lemon vodka,” Antti’s mother replied. “Do you like it? Tauno and I needed a little restorative after taking care of the boys. The poor dears were frightened, of course, with Sanna’s death so fresh in their minds, and now Armi. Mikko insisted on calling Marita last night before going to bed to make sure his mother was still safe.”

“Einstein needs a restorative too, now that he’s escaped the little dudes’ clutches,” Antti said. He fished around in the freezer, pulling out a frozen lump and putting it in the microwave to thaw. As the smell of the shrimp spread through the room, the cat went wild, purring like an electric generator, head-butting
each of us in turn, and meowing insistently. The purring rose a few decibels when Antti put the food down.

I remembered I was supposed to call Elina Kataja, Kimmo’s S&M witness. Since I didn’t really feel like talking to an S&M expert with my pseudo in-laws listening, I snuck away to the phone in Antti’s office.

“Thus spake the angel from heaven: I’m partying now, and I don’t know for how long. Leave a message and I’ll call you when I recover,” said Elina Kataja’s answering machine. Apparently, everyone knew her by the name Angel.

I remained sitting and rested my head on Antti’s desk for a moment. My shoulders hurt, and my calves were sore from the previous day’s walk. For a second I had an intense yearning for the solitude of my old apartment and its large bathtub. The Sarkelas’ row house had no tub, and it was already too late to heat the sauna.

I returned to the kitchen to finish my tea and then let Marjatta pour me another cup as well. I suddenly remembered Risto Hänninen’s wife mentioning her mother’s dissatisfaction with Dr. Hellström.

“Listen, Marjatta, when you left Dr. Hellström’s clinic, did your decision have anything to do with Armi?”

Antti’s mother looked confused.

“Armi had nothing to do with it. She was a pleasant, no-nonsense nurse. It was Erik I was upset with.” She snorted. “As you know, I had a hysterectomy the winter before last. I’m not ashamed of it by any means, but hearing that Erik had been blabbing to some of his other patients that I was ‘back in good working order’ now that my uterus was out was repulsive,” Marjatta explained indignantly.