Her Enemy (28 page)

I closed my eyes, and images flashed through. Seeing Armi splayed on the grass, her face that blotchy purple. Seeing Sanna emptying her bottle of vodka and slipping into the water. Seeing the car that hit Mallu speeding along the glistening black street driven by a blonde girl with a red shawl.

Start at the beginning, Maria, I said to myself. Start from Armi. Your first assumption was that Armi died because she knew something someone didn’t want her to tell you. What did Armi know? What did she want to ask for advice about?

The magic of the weight room worked again. An hour after my self-inflicted flogging, my body felt wobbly, but my mind was clear. Back in the office now, I was slurping nonfat cherry yogurt straight from the paper carton and preparing for a court session the next day when a knock came at my door.

“Maria! Why are you here? Kimmo’s hearing is about to start.” Marita’s voice sounded confused, and I saw Risto peeking curiously around her.

“Eki went. He doesn’t need me there,” I said bitterly.

Risto smiled. “I hear they’re going to let Kimmo go. All thanks to you, Maria.”

For some reason, Risto’s thanks irked me. And forget about me, what were they doing in our law office instead of rushing over to the courthouse to roll out the red carpet for Kimmo and Eki?

“If Kimmo is innocent, then who did this? Who strangled Armi?” Marita finally asked.

“Don’t you know? Ask Risto,” I said angrily.

Suddenly Marita looked scared and confused. Under her ear, the yellow hint of a bruise was still visible, but thankfully, I didn’t see any new ones. Or were they hidden under her clothing?

“What am I supposed to know about it?”

I had never heard so much menace in Risto’s voice as at that moment. I stood up, waved them into the room and closed the door. Martti had a client in his office who didn’t need to overhear this conversation.

“Armi was murdered because she had information. She knew that someone killed Sanna. And she may have known even more. Maybe Armi and Sanna’s killer had a habit of beating his wife—like you do, Risto. Was it your father who pushed Sanna off the breakwater that night? Was it an accident? They argued over something, and Sanna was drunk? And then, maybe he just watched her sink, and thought, ‘Good riddance.’”

Marita’s face flushed, and Risto’s face filled with anguish and confusion.

“Stop bringing Sanna into this! If you think you can wildly accuse people of horrible things without losing your job here, you’re out of your mind!”

“You aren’t going to hit me though, are you, Risto? Or strangle me, like you strangled Armi?”

I heard a horrified intake of breath from Marita, who took a step toward me as if seeking protection from Risto. Risto stared at his wife for a second and then realized that she must believe me.

“Marita! Don’t believe a word she says! What have you been telling Maria?” Risto’s voice was so threatening that I would have been afraid too, if I were Marita.

“Marita hasn’t said anything to me. I drew my own conclusions from her bruises. Why do you hit her? Does it make you feel better about yourself?”

“Hit? Everyone has fights sometimes. And our marriage is none of your business, Maria. Not as an attorney or as my brother-in-law’s girlfriend. You aren’t even a part of this family.”

I looked at Risto’s hands—the hands of a man who worked at a desk. Sparse black hairs grew on their backs, and his wedding band was nearly a quarter of an inch thick. Were those the hands that strangled Armi?

“Risto, if there is any truth to what Maria is saying, you have to tell me now,” Marita whispered, as if forcing the words out of her mouth only with supreme difficulty. Risto stared at her as Marita withdrew from him and stepped closer to me.

“I don’t know anything about anything, and I’m not going to stand here listening to either of you. I’m going to go get my brother out of jail!” Risto bellowed before slamming the door open and storming out. Marita collapsed into a chair and didn’t start talking until she heard the screeching of car tires pulling out of the driveway.

“It isn’t what you think, Maria. Risto doesn’t hit me very often. He’s just been under so much stress lately. Things are going poorly at his company and he’s been on a hair-trigger.
He doesn’t mean it, he didn’t mean to hurt me, and I bruise so easily.”

“Jesus Christ, Marita! You can’t really believe that! You have to get help. You can’t let him get away with hitting you. Does he abuse the boys too?”

“No! I wouldn’t let him.” The way Marita shook her head reminded me of the same movements Antti made when he was distressed. “You don’t know what it’s like, Maria. Risto is so wonderful most of the time. And then sometimes I get worked up and start nagging him about something, and then he hits me.”

“Don’t you dare blame yourself! Have you talked to anyone about this?”

“Well, I tried to get us into family therapy when Sanna died, because Risto was so depressed. He wouldn’t go, though, because he was afraid of having it come out somehow and hurt his reputation. Antti doesn’t know about this, does he?” Marita looked more afraid of that than the prospect that her husband was a murderer.

“Yes, he knows. And he wants to talk to you about it.”

“Do Mom and Dad know?” Marita sniffed.

“No. Did Armi?”

“Yes.” Marita shook her head, looking like Antti again. “Armi was the one who encouraged me to go to therapy. She said that Risto could…get better…that hitting in a family was like an infectious disease that Risto caught from Henrik. She said that therapy could heal it before it spread to the boys, and that Sanna and Kimmo had their own symptoms. What did Armi mean by that?”

“Sanna always looked for men like her father, men who would hit her. And Kimmo…Well, we all know about Kimmo now. That was probably what Armi meant. Is Henrik’s abuse the
reason he and Annamari live apart? Is that why Annamari is so skittish?”

Marita nodded. Tears filled her eyes, and dark rivulets of mascara began snaking their way down her pale cheeks. I dug a tissue box out of my desk drawer for her before continuing.

“I think that Sanna died because she wanted to get better. She wanted to get away from all the anger and humiliation she had been living with. She had finally fallen in love with a man who didn’t want to rule over her or smack her around. But that didn’t fit with someone else’s plans.”

“Do you mean Risto?”

“I’m not sure yet, to be honest. In the meantime, Marita, we have to put a stop to this abuse.”

I thought of Antti and all the pressure he was under because of his dissertation, wondering whether I dared put this load on his shoulders as well. But she was his sister. “Talk to Antti. He’ll help you. Go to our house right now. Usually he takes a break from work around this time.”

“Maybe I will.” Marita wiped her eyes and stood up, her upright posture determined. “Antti is nice,” she said, sounding like a child. “You be nice to him too.”

“Tell him I’ll be home by seven at the latest,” I said as she left.

Still hungry after my workout and needing to get out the door, I sucked the last of the yogurt out of the carton and grabbed the last hunk of chocolate jellyroll from the conference room. Cramming it into my mouth, I hoped I would be able to get some coffee from Mallu.

At exactly five o’clock, I was at the door of Mallu’s apartment pressing the bell. The yard outside was completely deserted,
making the afternoon feel as though time had stopped. The doorbell trilled, echoing hollowly in the apartment. I remembered the bare walls, the unmatched furniture.

No answer. I pressed the bell again, recalling with a sick feeling how I had rung Armi’s doorbell and no one had answered then either. A wave of fear washed over me as I walked over the lawn. Nothing. I peered in through the kitchen window. No one. I walked around to the backyard to look through the large living-room windows. All I saw was the partial sofa set and the lonely television set. No movement. I rushed to the bedroom window. It was higher than the kitchen window, and I had to half climb onto the sill to see in.

Lying supine on the bed, her eyes closed and body limp, I saw Mallu surrounded by the classic signs of suicide: pill bottle lying on the floor, half-empty bottle of wine, scrap of paper.

I ran back to the living room window, grabbed a large stone that was being used as an edge for a flowerbed, and yanked. It pulled out easily and I hurled it straight through the lower pane. Most of the window was gone now, and I pushed the remaining large shards in with the tip of my shoe and crawled inside. Grabbing the phone, which fortunately was cordless, I dialed the emergency number, 112. Before the operator picked up and I ordered an ambulance, I had time to glance at the label on the medicine bottle and feel Mallu’s pulse. Her heart was still beating, but slowly, and her breathing was halting. Trying in vain to wake her, I noticed the piece of paper still lying on the floor. Picking it up using the tail of my shirt, I read Mallu’s tiny, sharply slanted handwriting:
I can’t take it anymore. Armi’s death was my fault. Mallu.
I considered whether I could rip the second sentence off while leaving the first and the signature but realized it was impossible. So I
shoved the note in my pocket. When the paramedics arrived, I immediately gave them Mallu’s parents’ phone number and handed them the pill bottle. Neighbors were beginning to congregate now, curious about the flashing emergency vehicle in the street. Someone promised to call the janitor about the broken window.

When the men began lifting Mallu carefully onto the stretcher, I rushed out the door. Mallu’s suicide note was still in my pocket. I should take it to Ström. But no—I still couldn’t believe that Mallu was the murderer I was looking for.

I jumped on my bike and rode off without any specific destination in mind. Something red and sticky fell onto my pale-brown sandal. I glanced at my hands. A gash on my left wrist was dripping blood. I must have hurt myself climbing through Mallu’s window, though the cut didn’t hurt much. I would need to find a towel, I thought to myself.

Surely Mallu knew that one little bottle of mild sedatives and some white wine wasn’t going to kill anyone. What was she doing? And what did her note mean?

I had to have time to think. Instinctively I rode toward the sea, first through a bicycle and pedestrian tunnel under the West Highway, then along residential streets past a clam-shaped community center, and finally along park paths overgrown with grass to the breakwater.

Antti once had told me that as a child he had a habit of sitting at the end of the jetty and imagining he was on the bow of a pirate ship, bound for new adventures. But Sanna’s adventures had ended here. How cold and dark that night must have been without any snow or ice illuminating the dreary March landscape. She must have gone numb almost immediately in the frigid water, especially drunk.

Walking halfway out on the breakwater, I found a small, sheltered recess where I could curl up to think. The ruddy granite was cool under my fingers, and the green moss protruding from the cracks between the roughly quarried boulders was as soft as Einstein’s fur. Out to sea, two or three sailboats were visible along with a lone windsurfer.

Was Mallu’s suicide note a confession or a hint about Teemu? I dug the paper out of my pocket, but no matter how many times I read the words, it never told me anything more.
I can’t take it anymore. Armi’s death was my fault. Mallu.
Had someone tried to stage Mallu’s suicide in hopes of covering his tracks? But who?

I pressed my cheek against the bronze-colored stone with its blooms of lichen, and I thought. Facts streamed through my mind like the patterns of a kaleidoscope. The person with Sanna on the breakwater was tall and wore a black coat. Sanna’s lover. Valium. Herr Enemy from Sanna’s graduate thesis. A blond driver wearing Armi’s scarf. A strangler Armi must have known, or she wouldn’t have offered him a glass of juice. The group of men standing around talking about me at Risto’s birthday party. The warning voice on my telephone.

Men’s faces danced in my mind as Sylvia Plath’s poem hammered on the inside of my skull. As I brushed my windblown hair out of my eyes, I began to see the kaleidoscope slowly come into a focus, now a crisp, clear, beautiful picture.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer, Beware, Beware.
Now I knew what had happened. I stood up and headed off to meet Armi’s murderer.

I arrived at the murderer’s door out of breath. Pressing the doorbell insistently, I forced a smile when he appeared.

“I’m glad you’re home. May I come in?”

The house was quiet in a way that suggested no one else was present.

That was fine with me. I didn’t want any spectators for this portion of the show. The man led me into the kitchen. Sitting down on a hard chair next to the door, I switched on the tape recorder in my bag.

Keeping my composure was difficult. When I first realized what was going on, I was thrilled to have finally figured things out. Then came the rage. This man denied life to Armi and Sanna. What right did he have to turn upside down the lives of so many? I had vowed to catch him, but I knew that wouldn’t save the rest of us. Murder always left its mark on everyone involved.