Her Enemy (7 page)

“Antti, could you help me clear up a few things?” I sat down next to him and touched him gingerly, afraid that he might shake off my hand.

“Yeah, like what?” he asked guardedly. I could feel his muscles tense.

“First, about Kimmo…Did you know about his S&M hobby?”

“It isn’t like people go around broadcasting things like that! Once, I ran into him at the door of a hard-core sex shop in the city, and he looked really self-conscious, but I didn’t think anything more about it.”

So what were
you
doing there, I thought, but I didn’t ask. I’d gone in the same shop too.

“Maybe that was Kimmo’s way of exploring pain and death,” Antti continued, a little more relaxed already. “Like Risto’s constant hypochondria, and Sanna’s cutting and drunk driving and drugs. Only finally Sanna succeeded in finding death.”

“You think that was suicide?”

“That day, she left a copy of a Sylvia Plath’s poem open on her desk. What more evidence do you need than that? She was always saying she wouldn’t live to grow old. But I always thought the Hänninens’ destructive tendencies focused only on themselves, not on outsiders. That’s why it’s hard for me to believe that Kimmo killed Armi.”

Antti was now completely calm. I carefully stroked his back and then asked, “Well, who then? The killing looks so much like someone she knew did it. Or maybe the two juice glasses were
meant for me and her, even though we would have been sewing inside.”

“Am I supposed to start making lists of suspects from my own relatives?” Antti tore himself away from me and jumped up. “Fuck it; I can’t stand going through all of this again! If you hadn’t been with me the whole time, you’d probably even suspect me. You may call yourself a lawyer, but inside you’re still a cop!”

Antti rushed down the stairs to his basement office. I stared after him silently for a moment, and then the tears I had been holding back all day began to flow. I cried for Armi and Kimmo, and for Sanna, but most of all for Antti and for me. We were going nowhere. I should just start looking for a new apartment and get it over with.

I drank a generous shot of whiskey, ate a banana, washed my swollen eyes, and tried to sleep. Antti hid out in his office, the faint sound of clicking computer keys telling me he was still awake. He wouldn’t be crawling into bed beside me tonight.

Despite the whiskey and the long walk home, I didn’t fall asleep until two.

My clock started beeping at eight thirty. When I looked out the window, I saw that the cherry blossoms had begun to fall. With a stop at the coffeemaker along the way, I dragged myself to the bathroom to look in horror at my swollen eyes. No time for an under-eye tea-bag treatment.

Makeup and coffee helped get me into tolerable shape, and after a moment’s consideration, I left Antti a short note: “I’ll be away most of the day. Could we try to have a talk tonight?”

Even pedaling at a relaxed pace, the journey to the police station took only twenty minutes. When I arrived, the place was dead, with no sign of Detective Sergeant Ström or my boss. I sat for a while and when nothing happened, I inquired with the duty officer at the front desk.

“Oh, yeah…Ström did call. He had to go to Kirkkonummi to check out a stabbing. He moved your interrogation to tonight.”

A sappy-looking guy with a pimply face, the duty officer was straight out of one of those police jokes where they ask which of the cops knows how to read and which one knows how to write. This guy’s partner would probably need to know how to do both.

Just as I had gotten the number to Ström’s car and permission to use the desk phone, Eki dashed in.

“Why’s it so quiet around here?” he brayed, startling the drunk man dozing on one of the benches in the waiting room. I called Ström, who said he doubted he would be back before seven. When I asked for permission to see Kimmo before then, he got difficult. For a good five minutes, we dickered over the intricacies of the Criminal Investigations Act before he finally acquiesced. However, he would allow only one of us to meet with Kimmo—either me or Eki, not both of us.

“Hmm, which of us should help Kimmo…” Eki wondered aloud when I explained the situation. “Perhaps it’s better if you do, Maria. As legal counsel. It’ll give you plenty of practice, and you probably know the routine of these police interrogations better than any of us. We’ll see what happens if this makes it all the way to court.”

“Should we meet to talk strategy once I’ve met with Kimmo? I’ll come to the office as soon as I’m done here.”

Eki stayed in the waiting room talking on his expensive new brick-sized cell phone while I asked the duty officer to let me in to see Kimmo. The young man scratched the pimples on his jaw for a little while before warily answering, “Well, I kind of think Hänninen is still sleeping. We had to call the doctor this morning around five, because he just kept screaming. The doctor sedated him pretty well. Wait a sec, and I’ll call the jail.”

The guard confirmed that Kimmo was sleeping, and I thought it best not to wake him. The duty officer’s story was worrying, but there would be time to sort it all out later in the day.

Catching up with Eki in the parking lot, we loaded my bike into the back of his Volvo station wagon and started toward North Tapiola.

Our office adjoined Eki’s home in a quiet residential area. When I had come here to interview for the job with the firm, I wondered how many clients would ever end up so far from downtown Helsinki, unless they were lost, but my misgivings were unfounded. With three practicing attorneys, Henttonen & Associates had its own established clientele for whom Eki and his staff drafted wills and estate inventories, handled divorces, and filed bankruptcies. Most of the clients were from Tapiola and other nearby areas of Espoo. They were used to Eki’s personal way of handling their business and trusted him.

Henttonen & Associates had no time cards. In the few weeks I’d been on board, I’d already realized that most work occurred in spurts when it was available, and when things were quieter, most people stayed away from the office. When we were busy, government regulations on overtime had little meaning to the firm, but that was fine with me. As a police officer, I had become used to working without a set shift, and because Antti’s research also went in fits and starts, slogging my guts out around the clock and then checking out for a few days meshed just fine with my personal life.

Eki Henttonen, Martti Jaatinen, and Albert Gripenberg were a team. The latter two each held five percent stakes in the company, while Eki held controlling ownership. During my interviews they told me straight out that they were specifically looking for a woman to join their team.

“Don’t count on me being your barista or entertaining clients,” I stated firmly, a comment that made the men snort with laughter.

“For coffee we have our secretary, Annikki, and we all take turns entertaining clients. We’ve just been thinking that since everybody keeps going on and on about the female perspective, maybe it’s time we got some too.”

This rationale was so amusing that I found myself genuinely interested in working for them. I also got the impression that they were excited about me as well, so I wasn’t terribly surprised when the phone rang the next day and Eki asked when could I start.

Despite my grand speeches, I turned on the coffeemaker as soon as we walked into the conference room. Eki said he would pop over to his house to fetch some
pulla
—the ubiquitous Finnish coffee bread. I checked the answering machine and then started to hunt for the gynecologist’s number in the phone book.

Eki came back with the
pulla
, and the smell of cardamom spread through the room. He had the biggest sweet tooth I had ever seen in a man and was constantly wolfing down pastries or chocolate. Despite this apparent weakness, the size of his belly remained within reasonable limits, and his bald spot rarely showed due to a skillful comb-over. However, Eki’s appearance retained a fundamentally shabbiness: there was always a little dandruff dusting the shoulders of his suits; his face was always a little too flushed; his voice was always a little too loud and abrasive. Perhaps the fact that Eki lacked the usual slickness of most lawyers made people trust him more.

After the coffee was ready, we recapped the situation. Eki shoved his fourth sweet roll into his mouth and, through it, said, “At this point it’s mostly up to the judge whether the evidence is sufficient to hold Kimmo. You don’t think it is, I take it?”

“No, but that is influenced by my previous relationship with Kimmo. He isn’t the murderer type.”

“Believing in your client’s innocence is a good thing. I’m not as sure, though. At this point, the Hänninens are almost your relatives, even if the priest hasn’t yet said amen. But how well do you know them? Back before she died, I had to intervene in Sanna
Hänninen’s life on several occasions. She had a couple of DUIs, I had to pick her up from the drunk tank a few times, and there was that charge for possession of marijuana. Keeping that girl out of prison was almost a full-time job. Then, when she died, the police almost charged that Ruosteenoja kid for her death. With Annamari Hänninen making hysterical accusations that Sanna’s boyfriend murdered her, and him out of his mind with guilt because he was so drunk he didn’t even realize she had gone into the water, it was a tough spot for everyone involved. Kimmo was one of the hardest hit by his sister’s death, and without Armi, I doubt he would have come through it at all. Annamari had to take a medical leave for the whole rest of the spring semester.”

“What does all that have to do with whether or not Kimmo did it?” I asked pointedly.

“I just mean to say that the Hänninens aren’t the most balanced people you ever met. Who knows what someone like Kimmo might do in a…” Eki paused, clearly searching for the most roundabout expression he could find. “In a…state of sexual arousal. Maybe he didn’t even realize he was strangling Armi until she collapsed.”

“So you’re suggesting that Kimmo denies killing her because he can’t remember killing her?”

“Or doesn’t want to remember. Should we request a psychiatric examination? What do you recommend?”

“If we want Kimmo to avoid prosecution, first we have to demonstrate that the evidence the police have fails
prima facie
, and then we have to find some evidence that suggests someone other than Kimmo could be the murderer,” I answered like the model law school student.

We agreed that by the following day I would try to speak with as many people in Armi’s close circle of acquaintances as
possible. During that time, Eki would attempt to find any holes in the evidence against Kimmo.

“Let’s call Erik and let him know you’re coming,” Eki said, dialing Dr. Hellström’s number from memory. Someone answered on the other end, and Eki stated his business. I really liked his way of getting to the point and not dithering about things.

“Erik will be at home if you leave right now,” Eki said after hanging up. “Do you want to take the Honda or ride your bike?”

I let the company car rest in the garage. The bike ride would give me time to think about what it was I wanted to ask Dr. Hellström.

When I arrived fifteen minutes later, Erik Hellström was waiting for me on the street-side balcony of his row house.

“The door is open,” he announced in a trembling voice, seeming to expect that I would find my own way through the house to him. Hellström looked frightened. I had been mistaken in imagining that I would find him calm. I guess the uninitiated always expect calm, collected reactions to death from doctors, priests, and police officers, but from my own experience, I should have known how wrong that is.

I came through the dark entryway up the stairs, arriving at an enormous second-floor living room.

Lately I had seen a good number of handsomely decorated homes owned by the Espoo elite, but Hellström’s living room put them all to shame. I don’t know anything about antique furniture, but my instincts told me that the Gustavian-era relics I was seeing were extremely valuable. I glanced apprehensively at my pants, hoping they didn’t have chain grease on them. I was relieved when Hellström invited me out onto the balcony.

“Perhaps we could chat out here. This lane has so little traffic that it shouldn’t bother us. So, Maria—you don’t mind me using your first name, do you?—what do you want to know?”

Dr. Hellström lit a cigarette. Nicotine stained the skin on the inner surfaces of the joints of the first and second fingers of his right hand. Perhaps the same yellow had once colored his teeth, but since that would have clashed with his image as a successful physician, he had apparently recently had them whitened. Overall, he had a rather elegant look about him. Moderately tall, his body retained some of the athleticism of his younger years. In different circumstances, his brown eyes might be quite alluring, but now anxiety predominated. Remembering where his gaze had traveled on me two nights before, I couldn’t feel much sympathy toward him.

“First, give me your impression of Armi. What was she like as a person and as an employee?” I felt somehow stiff addressing Hellström. That he was my father’s age wasn’t what made it difficult. Nor was it the prestige he radiated or the dashing Don Juan silver at his temples. No, something else in him put me on edge. I knew that a large part of my antipathy derived from our run-in at the party, and I was irritated with myself for taking offense at something so trivial.