Snow Woman (5 page)

Pulling on my boots, I was relieved I’d decided to wear my thigh-length down coat rather than my long Ulster. I tried to keep up with the skier, Ström, and Taskinen, but the competition was stacked against me. Ström was over six feet tall, Taskinen was a marathoner, and the skier had on skis. I wasn’t in bad shape, but I was much shorter and my legs were feeling unusually weak.

Only a couple inches of snow lay in the more thickly forested areas, but it was frozen and slick. And in the clearings, the snow was deeper than our boots. The wind made me grimace, and the fir needles slapped my cheeks, leaving tiny scratches.

Because of the ski tracks, our destination was easy to find. The body was lying on the top of a tiny knoll, under a dense spruce tree. Only bare, slender legs protruded. They must have been covered by snow before, but last night’s rain had melted it. Ström was the first one to carefully part the branches of the tree. I heard his deep intake of breath, and then I stepped up to take my turn.

The body was unquestionably Elina Rosberg. She wore a delicate pink satin robe, and the hem of her matching pink nightgown, no longer frozen solid with ice because of the runoff from the tree, moved when I recoiled instinctively. Frostbite covered her bare legs and feet, but her face with its high cheekbones was calm, almost smiling. But still dead.

Her eyes were closed, the eyelids bluish. There were no apparent external signs of violence. It was as if she had calmly lain down under the tree and fallen asleep like Sleeping Beauty. But the kind of prince who could wake her only existed in fairy tales.

“It’s Elina Rosberg,” I said, nodding to Taskinen as he moved in to look. My feet were icy cold, and a strange pain scratched in my throat. Ström talked with the skier in hushed tones. It was as if finding Elina’s body had tempered his crude bluster for once. The forest around us was silent until a clattering started from the road and Taskinen’s cell phone rang. Forensics was on their way.

The routine was comfortingly familiar. Photographs, measurements, the futile search for Elina’s footprints. It looked as though Elina had died from exposure, but we couldn’t confirm that until the autopsy.

“I think that’s about it,” Taskinen sighed after the forensics team informed him they had found no evidence of anyone else being under the tree with Elina. “Maria, do you know who the next of kin are?”

“Elina’s aunt lives at the estate. I don’t think she had a husband or children. I’m pretty sure her parents are dead.”

“Well then, on to Rosberga Manor,” he said grimly.

With that Taskinen trudged away toward the road. Forensics had tramped a wide path, and their sleds, loaded with heavy equipment, had compacted the snow. The walk back to the cruiser was almost too quick for me because I was trying to think of what I would say to Aira.

“Are we supposed to stay here in the car and wait since those broads won’t let us in?” Ström asked as our car spun out trying to make it up the hill to the manor. Ström seemed to have a good understanding of the rules of the house.

“I don’t see much sense in that,” I said.

When we reached the gate, I got out of the car and rang the bell. Aira must have seen us on the security camera because she opened the gate remotely instead of coming down herself. As our car glided up the drive, I wondered if Taskinen and Ström were the first men to enter Rosberga Manor this decade.

Aira opened the front door. Her face had aged since I last saw her, and her shoulders slumped when she looked at us. She knew why we were there.

“You found Elina. Where?”

Taskinen told her where the body was found, emphasizing that we didn’t have any idea yet how Elina had ended up under the tree or whether a crime was involved. Aira stared somewhere past Taskinen into the distance. Her eyes were free of tears.

“Can I see her?” Aira finally asked, and I told her that we did need an official identification.

“Would you like to come now, or would you prefer tomorrow?” I asked. “We’ll have to interview you again anyway, along with everyone else who was here that night.”

Aira was about to answer when a shriek came from upstairs. A door slammed and Niina Kuusinen charged down the stairs, screaming hysterically. She rushed at Ström, who stood nearest to her: “No men allowed!”

Niina tried to shove Ström toward the front door, but her attempt was useless. Although she was tall, Ström was much too big for her. I dragged Niina off Ström, mostly because I didn’t want him to hurt her.

“Niina!” Aira’s voice cut the air, as thin and sharp as a spear. “These are police officers. They found Elina.”

Niina froze in my arms. Aira didn’t leave room for questions, continuing in her new, pointed tone, “Elina is dead.”

Niina went suddenly limp and collapsed on the floor, bursting into inconsolable sobs. I was surprised by the speed of her reaction: usually people took a while to realize what had happened.

Wrapping her arms around Niina, Aira murmured something comforting. It struck me that Aira was the one who most needed consoling words, but she came across as the kind of woman who always put the needs of others before her own. She would no doubt cry her own tears later in the privacy of her bedroom.

I almost started crying myself, but managed to fend off the tears by focusing on my job. “Is anyone else still here who was at the house on the night of the twenty-sixth?” My own voice sounded cold and sharp, like the screech of the rails under a braking train.

Aira momentarily cut her eyes from Niina to me. “Johanna is upstairs, Sergeant,” she said. “Would you like to take her the news yourself?”

It was a spiteful question, its bite made worse by the shift back to my formal title. I didn’t have any idea how to handle Johanna under normal circumstances. I always felt uncomfortable around religious believers. Maybe I feared some type of fanaticism I recognized in myself. And I was afraid of the broken look in Johanna’s eyes, that gaze that led somewhere I never wanted to go.

“I can do that,” I said briskly. “What about identifying the body?”

“If I can have a couple of hours first.” Aira’s voice was combative. “Niina and Johanna need me right now.”

Niina’s outburst had subsided to pathetic whimpering, and she raised her face from Aira’s shoulder. “Where did you find Elina?”

I told her, answering as many questions as I could and promising to share more information as soon as we received the results of the autopsy. Then a bang from the top of the stairs made us all look up.

Pale and expressionless, Johanna stared down at us. I wondered if she’d been napping; she wore a carelessly belted blue-gray bathrobe. A lock of drab blond hair had escaped its tight bun and curled down to frame her face. I hadn’t noticed before that her hair was naturally curly.

Her words came from above like a proclamation from a pulpit. “Suicide is a sin! Those who take their own lives will be barred from heaven’s gate! I asked Leevi if it wouldn’t be a sin if I continued the tenth pregnancy knowing full well we would both probably die? Wouldn’t that be suicide and murder too? But Leevi said it was God’s will.”

I saw the growing panic in Ström’s eyes. He clearly wanted to get away from these crazy women. I tried to catch Taskinen’s attention, to shift the decision to continue the interviews to him. Slowly Johanna descended the stairs and wrapped her arms around Aira and Niina with the sudden self-assurance of a mother accustomed to tending a brood of children. When Johanna closed her eyes and allowed her face to relax, she almost looked like a young girl. With surprise I realized that she probably wasn’t more than a few years older than me. She must have started having babies in her teens.

“We’d really like to speak with all of you. What time can you come to the police station?” Taskinen phrased this as a question, but it was clear the women were expected to comply.

We arranged a meeting for the following morning. It would mean working on Saturday again, but there was no avoiding it. With any luck, I could skip Antti’s coworker’s family’s New Year’s party too.

On the way back to the station, I related what I already knew about Elina’s disappearance to Ström and Taskinen. As I suspected he would, Taskinen asked me to handle the preliminary interrogations if the autopsy justified them.

“The only question may end up being why she went out in the middle of the night in the freezing cold and walked half a mile in her nightgown.” Taskinen shrugged. “Maybe we’ll find a natural explanation for that too. I should have asked if she was a sleepwalker. Will you also look up any other next of kin in the population registry?”

“Rosberg was rich,” said Ström. “That house is worth millions, and she had to sell part of her forest to the state when they set up the Nuuksio National Park. Who gets the money? The aunt? Or some club for man-haters?”

“Yeah, probably the Castration Army,” I snapped, although Ström had actually made an interesting point. Elina Rosberg had been rich. In what industry had the Rosberg family made their fortune? Wasn’t it timber? My first order of business would be putting together a better biography of Elina Rosberg.

Back in my office, I logged in to the Population Register Center database and waited a few seconds while the server executed the search for Elina Rosberg. From the wall, my friends’ bachelorette party present smiled down at me: “THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY!” the poster screamed, with photographs of Geir Moen, Hugh Grant, Mick Jagger, Valentin Kononen. The collage frequently elicited crabby comments from my male coworkers, but of course that was the best reason for keeping it on the wall. No one had accused me of sexual harassment yet, not even Ström. Because I rarely handled official interviews in my office, I also never worried that the silly poster would undermine my image.

As I switched on my printer, I read through the search results on the screen. Rosberg, Elina Katrina, b. Espoo, Finland, November 26, 1954. Parents Kurt Johannes Rosberg, b. 1914, occupation: estate owner, and Sylva Katrina Rosberg, née Kajanus, b. 1920. No spouse, no children. No other entries.

I looked her up in the criminal database as well, although I was fairly certain her record would be clean. Surprisingly, there was one arrest, from a demonstration against the shah of Iran in 1970. And then twenty-five years of nothing. What else? Where would I find her medical degree? Did the database include psychotherapists? I clicked around some more and then found what I was looking for. Elina Rosberg, high school graduation, 1973, Lycée Franco-Finlandais d’Helsinki, master in psychology, 1979, Helsinki University, psychotherapy certification, 1981. Founded Rosberga Women’s Education Institute, 1990, previously worked for Helsinki University Central Hospital youth psychiatric clinic and Lapinlahti Hospital. Hobbies: hiking and reading.

Nothing out of the ordinary there either. Elina had an unusually small extended family. She was an only child, her mother hadn’t had any siblings, and Kurt and Aira’s two other brothers had both died during the Continuation War with Russia. Other than Aira, the closest people to Elina had been Joona Kirstilä and Tarja Kivimäki. Maybe they could tell me who murdered Elina, leaving her this melted snow woman.

Murder? Why was I even thinking that? So far, nothing about Elina’s death indicated a crime. It could just as easily have been an accident or suicide.

A strange, heavy feeling sat in my gut. My period was probably about to start. When had it started last month? For years I’d tracked it by the rhythm of the monthly package of pills, but now, with the IUD, I’d stopped counting. My breasts were starting to feel tender too. I was just looking for backup tampons in my desk drawer when someone knocked at the door.

“Come in!” I assumed it was one of my coworkers, probably Taskinen, because few others would have bothered knocking.

Instead, a strange woman stood in the doorway. Maybe a couple of years older than me, though it was difficult to tell her precise age. She was about my height and had a pale, unremarkable face. Her careful makeup—a women’s magazine would call it natural—did little to counter her lack of personality. Her brown hair curled at the ends and fell just below her ears. The curls were pulled back from her forehead with a black suede headband. Her unripe-blueberry-colored eyes stared at me through stylish glasses. The brown pantsuit she wore was straight out of the Successful Female Professional catalog.

“You must be Sergeant Kallio. I came to speak with you about Elina Rosberg,” the woman said. Her voice was immediately familiar. She had to be Tarja Kivimäki.

She confirmed this and shook my hand firmly but briefly. Her nails were carefully painted an inconspicuous beige.

“Aira Rosberg called me and said Elina was dead. She said suicide was a possibility.” Kivimäki sat down on the sofa of my cramped office and crossed her legs. Her calves were very attractive, clearly those of an athlete. I wondered what her sport was. My guess was boxing or fencing.

“I came here to tell you that Elina would never do that. If she was so depressed that she was planning suicide, she would have sought professional help.” Kivimäki’s voice was calm, but I detected the same sharpness and indignation familiar from her political reporting. That was her MO: maintaining a placid exterior while an unpleasant question lurked under the surface, ready to explode and confound any politician within its blast radius.

“Until the results of the autopsy come back, we’re really just speculating.” I found myself taking up a battle position—mostly because I didn’t want to say anything that would make Tarja Kivimäki see me as a stupid cop. She might tongue-tie the prime minister, but Maria Kallio was made of sterner stuff.

“Where are you in the investigation?” she asked.

“There really isn’t an investigation unless something in the autopsy points to a crime. But while you’re here, I’d like to ask when you last saw Elina. You were at her house on Boxing Day. Is that correct?”

“I spent all of Christmas there. I left for work the morning after Boxing Day, on the twenty-seventh. I had a shift.”

It seemed odd that Kivimäki wasn’t more upset. According to Aira, Kivimäki and Elina had been close friends for years. You’d think she’d be devastated by the news of Elina’s death. But the woman sitting across from me was as cool as she would be reporting on the friendly conclusion of a government-mediated union contract negotiation.