Snow Woman (14 page)

My eighth pregnancy was hard. I was anemic and had some dangerous bleeding. My ninth pregnancy was risky from beginning to end. My womb was worn out from the strain of so many children back to back, and I was in constant danger of uterine ruptures. In 1994, I spent more than two months in the Helsinki Women’s Hospital. It was there that a whole new world opened up for me.

I had never been away from home for more than a week, and I missed my children terribly. Still, it was amazing to rest and have people wait on me. No one was monitoring everything I did. I could read whatever I wanted and even watch TV. During that time I broke a lot of our religion’s commandments, but I also learned the most amazing things about the world, like that the wonderful feeling that came after rubbing myself down there was called an orgasm.

Giving birth to Maria almost killed me, and the doctor at the Women’s Hospital told me my uterus couldn’t handle any more pregnancies. If I did get pregnant, the baby and I would probably both die. She was horrified when I refused to have my tubes tied and turned down an IUD and birth control pills. But she said she respected the religious convictions Leevi and I had. Leevi thought we had to submit to the will of God, but I had started to doubt that. My doubt aroused strong feelings of guilt and distress in me sometimes, but I didn’t know how to talk about it with anyone. I tried to refuse sexual intercourse with Leevi, appealing to the danger of a pregnancy, but he replied that a woman’s place was to obey her husband and that God was mindful of us.

Last October, I discovered I was pregnant again. It was like a death sentence. Of course Leevi wouldn’t hear of terminating it. He knocked me to the ground when I suggested it, and I remember hoping that the beating would cause a miscarriage. But that didn’t happen.

When my own doctor confirmed the extreme danger of the pregnancy, something snapped in me. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to leave my little children. I loved them too much. I found myself hating Leevi and my religion. When I was at the Women’s Hospital, I had heard about a women’s therapy center. I called their psychologist. She said I had every right to an abortion and promised to give me a place to say if I couldn’t return to the village after doing it.

I knew that Anne’s father had a private practice in Oulu. I left my children with my sister and didn’t tell anyone where I was going. That was a first too. To my relief, Anne’s father remembered me and understood my situation. He arranged a referral to the hospital immediately. He seemed to understand that I had to act fast while I still had the courage to go through with it. I would have wanted them to sterilize me too at the same time as the abortion, but that would have required my husband’s consent.

The abortion was an awful experience. I knew I was committing a horrible sin, murder. I was sinning against my religion and my husband. Maybe I was looking for punishment, because I went home and told Leevi, who beat me in front of the children and threw me out. I barely managed to grab a coat. Fortunately Anne’s father had promised to help, and he lent me the money to travel to the Rosberga Institute.

The weeks here have been hard. My husband won’t let me see my children, and I miss them. I have a hard time bearing the burden of my sin, but I go on living because I know my children need me. They are the reason I’m doing this. There has to be a way I can get them back.

After Johanna’s account ended, I sat for a while at my desk. I was so angry I felt physically ill. Although I already knew the broad outlines of Johanna’s life and was aware that there were people who still lived like this even in Finland, I was infuriated. Between the lines of Johanna’s narrative, it was so easy to read the humiliation, the emotional and physical violence, and her foreignness in her own skin. I abhorred religious fanaticism. My own relationship with God was courteous but cool. We left each other alone.

Someone knocked at my door. I knew it was Taskinen just from the precision of his knock: three raps of identical force, evenly spaced. I told him to come in.

“Hi, Maria. How’s your year starting out?” Taskinen said with false heartiness. I was sure this was going to be something bad.

“I’m OK,” I said. “The Elina Rosberg death is still my top case. I’ll probably have to head up to Karhumaa north of Oulu to interview a suspect. One of the Christmas guests at the house claims her husband was in the area at the time Rosberg disappeared. I’d like to check his alibi.”

“Couldn’t the local cops handle it? Or the National Bureau out of Oulu?”

“I’d like to handle it myself.” Only after saying this did I realize just how curious I was to see Johanna’s village and meet the Säntti family, especially the patriarch.

“It’s just about your securit
y . . .
” Taskinen pursed his lips and rubbed his nose, looking uncertain.

“Do you mean Madman Malmberg? He’s not going to follow me to Oulu.”

“We don’t have any solid intel on Malmberg’s location right now, but yesterday there were two bank robberies, one outside Hämeenlinna and another north of Tampere. Based on the camera footage, one of the perps might be Malmberg. The MO is similar to the Soukka Post Bank case. And I guess Ström told you and Palo that Malmberg killed his own father.”

“Has that been confirmed?”

“The eyewitness reports seem reliable, although we’re talking about winos here. Malmberg found his dad with two drinking buddies and then stabbed him ten or more times before using a saw. The other two drunks took off running. They didn’t report it to the police because they thought we’d blame them. In prison Malmberg talked about breaking out so he could settle old scores. Apparently he mostly talked about killing his father.”

“And Palo and me, right?”

“He did threaten you, along with the prosecutor and the judge. I think we should take this seriously. You know Malmberg. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you and Palo were in real danger.”

I opened the top drawer of my desk and pulled out my revolver in its shoulder holster. “I do have this. It won’t stop crossbow bolts or pipe bombs, but it’s good against knives. If there’s time.”

“Palo is wound really tightly. He suggested that the two of you should work apart for the time being.” Taskinen’s eyes told me that he understood the reasoning behind Palo’s suggestion. As a pathological misogynist, Malmberg would probably go after me first.

“What if I take the night train up to Oulu, assuming my witness is available?” I asked.

“We’ll see,” Taskinen replied and asked a few more questions about the Rosberg crime scene and the progress of a couple of my other cases, but I had the feeling he was less worried about the investigations than about evaluating my mental state. As a result, I played it cooler than I actually felt. Just me here, one of the guys, no need to worry.

Still, when I left to interview Niina Kuusinen, I took extra care adjusting my shoulder holster under my blazer and even thought briefly about grabbing a bulletproof vest. Luckily my car was safe in the garage downstairs. Even so, I kept imagining once I drove away from the station how Malmberg could have snuck a bomb under it during the night. Fortunately I made it to Tapiola to meet Niina Kuusinen in one piece.

The Espoo Music Institute, where Niina worked as a teacher, was located in the Cultural Center, in the heart of Tapiola. The institute was still on Christmas break, but Niina had said she would be practicing on the third floor, in the Grieg room. I frequently visited the library in the building and occasionally took in a concert or a play, but the classrooms upstairs were new to me. I had to wander around for a while before I found my way—mostly by sound—to the right place. Clarinet playing came from the Mozart room, and a piano trio was practicing in the Beethoven room, but from the Grieg room flowed a gloomy Chopin polonaise, which cut off midbeat when I knocked on the door.

A traditional upright and a full grand piano, the lid closed, had been squeezed into the tiny room.

“So you still want to ask me about Elina’s death?” Niina blurted before I could even open my mouth. “Haven’t you solved it yet?”

“So far all we know is that she died of exposure and that when she died she was in a state of confusion brought on by a mixture of alcohol, sleeping pills, and antibiotics. She was probably unconscious. Did you give her whiskey with Dormicum mixed in?”

Narrow fingers with large knuckles covered her mouth in a childlike gesture as her almond-shaped eyes widened. “Whiskey? What whiskey?” Niina’s voice was hoarse, like she had a cold.

She had stood up to let me in the door, but now she sank back onto the wide piano bench. Her dark hair fell over her shoulders onto the keyboard. For a moment her face was hidden behind the curtain of hair until she swept it back.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Did someone kill Elina with poisoned whiskey?” she said.

“Not quite.” I sat down on the other piano stool across from Niina. The room was so cramped that my knees almost touched her slender thighs in their black corduroy pants. “Why did you go to Rosberga for Christmas, Niina?”

“What does that have to do with Elina’s death?” Niina plunked a few discordant notes on the piano and then kept talking when I didn’t answer her. “Why did I go? I was lonely. My dad was in France. He spends all his winters there since Mom died of cancer three years ago. I hate Christmas, all the fake peace talk, the idyllic family crap. All it’s about is giving people stuff. That’s it. I hadn’t planned to do anything over the holiday, but the loneliness hit me. Elina once said I could always come to Rosberga. So I took a taxi over there.”

The image I had of Elina Rosberg while she was alive was not that of a mother hen gathering the whole world into her bosom, but I could still imagine Elina sincerely inviting Niina to stay and asking Aira to set a sixth plate at the table and put clean sheets on the bed. But welcoming as she was, Elina wouldn’t have made a fuss over Niina.

“So you knew Elina well enough to go to her house for Christmas without an invitation?”

“Well enoug
h . . .
I’ve been to a few of her courses. A body image seminar last fall was the first one. The classes at Rosberga are ver
y . . .
very intense. You always get to know other people really fast. I was at the emotional self-defense course too, the one you came to talk at in December.”

“Oh.” Usually I remembered faces, but apparently Niina had succeeded in hiding in the crowd well enough that she hadn’t caught my attention. “What drew you to Elina’s courses?”

“Elina. She was an amazing therapist. I started individual sessions in December too, bu
t . . .
” Niina shrugged. The casual gesture made her mass of hair tremble.

I wondered what Niina was seeing a therapist for, so I took the liberty of asking.

“Depression. Abandonment complex. Lack of a healthy self-image. It started when Mom died. Everything happened so fast: when they diagnosed her with cancer, it had already spread to her liver, pancreas, spleen, and lungs. Three months later it was all over. My world just fell apart. How did Kari, my old therapist, say i
t
? The stars spiraled out of their orbits and the whole world looked different.”

A therapist who talked about stars spiraling out of their orbit
s.
It made me think of Madman Malmberg. Then I remembered that Niina had tried to discover Elina’s whereabouts by looking at her horoscope. Maybe the expression was just a figure of speech from an enthusiastic astrology buff. I asked Niina about her previous therapists. Maybe one of them could tell me whether Niina was potentially aggressive.

“First I saw the psychologist at the health center here in Tapiola, but he was kind of dull. He just listened and nodded but never gave me any answers. Then I went to the Student Health Service: same thing. After that I got mixed up with Scientology for a while. That was the summer after Mom’s death. I didn’t have any money and wanted to sell some of the stock I inherited from her to pay for my first course with them, but Dad stepped in. Thankfully. Those guys are a bunch of crazies.”

I nodded, thinking of the many insincere do-gooders who preyed on the sick and lonely by promising beauty, health, and money. How people found their bliss was all the same to me. Let them believe in benevolent beings in UFOs or healing rocks, just so long as they didn’t try to manipulate and scam other people too. About ten years before, I’d made the mistake of taking a Scientology personality test. Based on their test they said I was in urgent need of “auditing.” Fortunately I had the sense to decline that honor.

“Then I found astrology at the Spirit and Knowledge Fair,” Niina continued. “I’ve always been interested in horoscopes. I think they make a lot of sense. They aren’t bogus like some people think. They’re a way to take control of your life and help other people. I have my own call-in number now and do readings for people. That’s a kind of therapy too. But I’m not nearly as good as Kari. He has a degree in psychology too.”

“Kari who?”

“My last therapist before Elina. Kari Hanninen. He’s an astrotherapist. He combines astrology and brief therapy.” That sounded suspiciously like Malmberg’s therapist. I had seen the man in court, and he seemed seriously full of shit, a first-class manipulator. In fairness, his analysis of Malmberg’s mental state had lined up pretty well with the statement from the psychiatrists who conducted the official examination. Hanninen, however, gussied up his own diagnosis with all kinds of astrology BS. Because Malmberg was a Scorpio, by nature he harbored destructive energy. This, combined with a difficult childhood, had ensured his development into a psychopath. I had been a little surprised that the defense had called on Hanninen to testify, both because of his diagnosis and how crazy he sounded.

“Why did you leave Kari Hanninen for Elina?” I asked.

“Well, because Kari only does brief therapy, and our ten sessions were already done. He did offer to be available for me and to help me interpret star charts if I needed.”