Her Enemy (22 page)

Sanna visited my dreams again. I hadn’t even realized I was asleep when I saw her sitting next to my bed.

“Hi, Maria. I’m not sure anyone has notified you. I’m your angel,” she said.

“Lucky me.”

“I handled that thing on Monday pretty well, though, didn’t I? You didn’t hit your head and you didn’t drown. Mind if I smoke?” She immediately rolled a cigarette and then blew bluish smoke straight into my eyes. I squinted a bit, but I wasn’t about to flinch.

“Why did they make you my guardian angel?”

“I have to have something to do,” she said, with a half smile. “Rub that skull any time, and I’ll come visit you.” Sanna turned horizontally and flew out the window. Her wings were brown at the tips, and as she rose, she nearly collided with an electric pole.

Some guardian angel.

I was lying on my back on a warm, smooth rock outcropping next to the water. The sun shone brightly, forcing me to keep my eyes shut as it caressed my naked body. As I stretched voluptuously, something cold and slimy landed on my bare stomach. Antti’s hand, fresh from swimming.

“Aren’t you going to say ‘eek’?” Antti asked as he lay down next to me.

“Eek,” I dutifully squeaked and then lazily kissed Antti on the shoulder. “You’re so cold. Before you went into the water, you were as warm as a potbellied stove.”

The entire morning we had been playing Adam and Eve on this uninhabited island a few miles southwest of Antti’s parents’ summer home. After rowing out in the evening, we set up our tent and sat up late around the fire with a bottle of wine, trying to solve all the world’s problems. Far enough removed from murders, math, and the “joy” of cohabitation, our little island allowed us to find each other again, and at least for now, life tasted only of salty skin warmed by the sun and sweet white wine.

“Looking at the time is a shame since you seem to be enjoying yourself so much, but I promised Mom yesterday that we would be back for lunch.”

“No way. We’ll just say the oars fell off and the boat floated away during the night.” Kissing him here and there, I nestled more closely into Antti’s side, letting him know I wanted a quick reprise of what we had done earlier in the morning.

After noon, we began packing up our gear. As I was wrapping the tent stakes in the plastic ground cloth, I asked Antti, “Have you ever thought that Risto might be beating Marita?”

“No! Jesus, how did you get an idea like that?” Gradually, though, Antti’s expression changed from one of stupefaction to one of concern. He said quietly, “I do know that Henrik hit Annamari, and sometimes even the children. Both Marita and Kimmo told me so.”

I told Antti about Marita’s bruises.

“I just know from my time on the force that these things have a nasty habit of getting passed down,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I’ve seen. And the more respectable the family, the more likely abuse is to stay secret. Hearing your neighbors’ fights is harder when you don’t share a wall.”

Antti looked distressed.

“Well, if that’s true, we can’t let it continue. I have to talk to Marita.”

Antti’s words reminded me of Armi’s elderly neighbor’s story: “I can’t look the other way anymore; it just isn’t right.” Could Armi have been talking to Risto?

“These are just suspicions,” I said, trying to reassure Antti. “Don’t talk to Marita yet—I’ll ask Kimmo first. But what do you know about his dad?”

“I don’t know much about him.” This conversation was clearly difficult for Antti. “Apparently he’s violent when he gets angry, and when Risto was a teenager they had some serious
run-ins. I also heard that Sanna got hurt pretty badly once trying to protect her mother.”

I didn’t bother being pissed at Antti for not telling me any of this sooner. At least he was telling me now.

When we finally glided up to the Sarkelas’ dock, it was 2:05. In the driveway sat another car beside Antti’s parents’ Saab, and the commotion coming from the yard revealed that at least Matti and Mikko were present. My weird exchange with Marita on Friday at our house both embarrassed and irritated me, and I was also afraid that Antti wouldn’t be able to act naturally around his sister after what I told him.

Around the lunch table, everyone was discussing Matti and Mikko’s final report cards and their summer plans. Happy, random chitchat, I thought, as if Kimmo and Armi had never existed, never sat around the same table. I looked at Risto, trying to see any resemblance in his face to Sanna’s. His eyes were the same shape as his half sister’s, large and round, lending his angular adult face a certain childlike appearance. Sanna had always looked like a child, because of her big eyes and pouty lower lip. I realized that I knew much less about Risto than Kimmo or Sanna, despite the fact that he was the one I would actually be related to if I ever married Antti. Under his smooth, amiable exterior, there was still something distant, polished—one could almost say icy—about him. Perhaps his father was the same way.

“Is Grandpa bringing us real Indian bows from Ecuador?” Matti asked, his mouth full of ice cream.

“Don’t be too disappointed if Grandpa doesn’t remember this time. He had to hurry to come so quickly,” Marita said. “Mikko, slow down. Don’t take such big spoonfuls. Half of that is dripping on your shirt!”

“How long does Henrik plan to spend in Finland?” Tauno Sarkela asked Risto.

“It depends. Dad still has a lot of work to do on his Ecuador project before he retires, and I kind of doubt he will make time for a vacation.”

“Yes, but doesn’t he turn sixty-five this year?” Marjatta Sarkela asked, as she scooped a second helping of ice cream into the boys’ bowls. “Take some more, Antti. You must be hungry from all that rowing. You too, Maria.” My prospective mother-in-law passed the bowl of ice cream down.

“I did get my exercise,” Antti said, kicking me under the table. We both giggled. I felt like a fifteen-year-old just back from a clandestine rendezvous in the woods to make love for the first time. The warmth running between us was still strong, and a furtive touch of our fingers on the edge of the ice-cream serving dish was full of tense anticipation.

Matti and Mikko shoveled their dessert down and asked for permission to go outside. After they left, the tenor of the conversation around the table changed, turning into more of an interrogation. Was Kimmo still claiming to be innocent? Why was I digging into Sanna’s past? How soon would the trial be? Do the police make mistakes in things as big as arresting a murderer? By the end of the grilling, I was ready to take a vow never to marry into the Sarkela family.

“Of course, we all want to defend Kimmo,” Risto said. “But we have to face the facts. Kimmo had these…deviant…sexual tendencies, and he was under the control of those feelings when he—no doubt unintentionally—killed Armi. At first I didn’t want to believe that Sanna was an alcoholic or that she was mixed up in dealing drugs either, but I had to accept what was actually happening, not just what I wanted to be happening.”

Matti and Mikko were playing cowboys and Indians in the front yard, with one energetically tying the other to a pine tree. I wondered whether any of the others were experiencing the same associations.

“Luckily, Annamari still has our boys.” Marita sighed. “They can distract her and give her something positive to think about.”

“What do you mean ‘still’? Why are you all talking about Kimmo as if he’s dead? Do you want to sweep Kimmo under the rug now just like everyone did with Sanna? I guess it would be a big relief for you if Kimmo would just hang himself in prison. Then the matter would be settled, and you could forget all about him!”

At this, I stormed away from the table like a teenager arguing about her curfew. I couldn’t believe these people! Their own family seemed like nothing to them, like toys to be discarded. Oh me, oh my, this one broke—luckily, we have eleven more just like it. I could imagine what my parents would have said about me when I was born. Nurse, this child has a manufacturing defect; it doesn’t have any testicles. Can we return this? I hoped my sister would produce the long-awaited boy child so we could all be done with it.

“Maria, wait!” Antti was coming after me, bounding over the roots and stumps in the forest as fast as he could.

“Who the hell do they think they are? It would be better if people didn’t even have relatives! They’re just as bad as my parents—I went to law school because they didn’t think working as a police officer was ‘smart’ enough, or ‘respectable’ enough. No, our daughter has to get a fancy degree. How does anyone who’s seen this shit ever work up the courage to have their own children?”

“Hey now, put on the brakes. Let’s calm down and think things through,” Antti said seriously.

“I can’t stand their indifference. Could they take any less responsibility? You seem to be the only one really worried about Kimmo.”

“That isn’t true. They’re just trying to prepare for the worst. Has it occurred to you they might be in self-preservation mode?”

“You mean they’re bracing themselves for Kimmo languishing in prison for years? Or just the social stigma of having a convict in the family?”

“Maria, don’t. I’m angry too. But it doesn’t help. Finding some sort of certainty is the only thing that helps.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It just kills me that I didn’t help either, that I didn’t try to do anything for Sanna. Why couldn’t I tell Armi needed something more serious than a girlfriend to gossip with?” I asked myself aloud, angrily kicking a moss-covered rock. It flipped over, and a couple of quick creeping things frantically swarmed away to conceal themselves under the next rock. I felt sorry for the little creatures. Who was I to go around exposing and frightening innocent things?

We spent a couple of hours walking in the woods before I had to leave for the bus. As I packed my things, I muttered a reluctant apology to Antti’s family. In any event, Risto’s attitude made me suspect that he was trying to protect someone other than Kimmo, but who? Himself?

I was set to see my old partner, Pekka Koivu, at eight o’clock that evening at the Corona Bar in the city. Since the bus deposited me a few blocks from my destination, I had a few minutes’ walk through the stately old buildings of Helsinki and along a small, quiet park. For a moment, I longed for my old apartment, which was a short walk in the opposite direction. I heard the clinking
of dishes in the university café and thought about all the happy times I’d had people-watching on the Esplanade.

In Tapiola, everything was different. With everyone so tight-knit and homogeneous, it was a completely different world from Helsinki, an international city constantly becoming more colorful and diverse with every passing year. Tapiola might as well have been a walled-off village, because everyone there had gone to the same school or played basketball or hockey on the same team. Even Antti always specified he was from Tapiola, rather than the larger Espoo municipality. After a couple of months there, even I felt settled in, like I’d lived there much longer, perhaps because my home and work were so close to each other. Now I was seeing how oppressive that coziness could be.

When I arrived at the bar, my friend was already sitting at a table next to the window, sipping a pint. Seeing Koivu made a warmth spread through me that only increased when he noticed me and a broad smile spread across his blond bear-cub’s face. If I had ever had a brother, I would have wanted him to be Pekka Koivu.

We started out by trading news. Koivu was still working in the same unit where we were partners the previous year. The problems in the department sounded even worse than usual. Good. I felt less bad about leaving.

“I’ve thought about transferring out into the country somewhere to arrest drunk farmers,” Koivu said. He was from a small country town just like I was, a little farther north but still in the economically depressed eastern region of the country.

“Big city lights losing their shine?”

“Yeah, I miss the woods. Besides, I met this nice girl who’s graduating from nursing school next spring. She’s from Kuopio and says she wants to work somewhere up that way.”

“And you’re planning to go with her? Whoa, Koivu, that sounds serious.”

“Well, yeah. I guess it’s about time to starting thinking about getting married, having a family,” said this man four years my junior. Then he changed the subject back to work.

“So why did you want this Hakala guy’s rap sheet?”

“Nothing anymore, since there’s no way he can be my murderer. I guess I was just hoping for an easy solution to this mess. But I have a new theory.” I began explaining the conclusions I’d come to so far about Armi’s murder. Koivu and I used to be a good team, and talking with someone on the outside was nice, someone who didn’t have any emotional connection to the events or people I was dealing with.

“Last winter I had to work with this Ström character a few times, and you’re right about how difficult he can be,” Koivu said. “I don’t think he’s necessarily a bad cop, but he’s certainly not much of one for cooperation. And I would have loved to see you in all that leather,” Koivu added, shaking his head sadly at my outfit of jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers.