Snow Woman (6 page)

“Did anything happen over Christmas that could explain Elina turning up dead in the forest?” I asked.

Now Kivimäki looked uncomfortable—clearly she didn’t like being the interviewee.

“There was a lot of tension in the air,” she answered slowly. “Originally it was supposed to be only Aira, Elina, and me. Then Johanna and Milla decided to just hang around after one of Elina’s seminars. Elina collected charity cases like other people take in stray cats. Niina’s a good example. There’s nothing wrong with her other than a massive case of selfishness. She had no reason not to go home after the seminar. Milla’s the same way. Why would she give up Rosberga Manor for a dismal apartment? The only one with a real problem who might be justified in staying is Johanna. And all she has to do is file for divorce and demand her children back. Simple as that.”

“How long have you known Elina Rosberg?” I asked.

“About six years. I used to report for
Studio A
and did a program about child sexual abuse. It was a hot topic at the time, and I interviewed Elina and we hit it off. We seemed to speak the same language. She gave a good interview.”

“I remember that program.” I’d been in law school, and our criminal law professor used one of the incest cases from the program as an example of how difficult family court cases could be: the adult daughters of an American couple had accused their father of rape, but their mother and their brother refused to testify against him. Remembering that case still made me angry.

“Elina was a very sensible person,” said Kivimäki. “She would never go out in the cold without a coat, especially with that terrible cough. She must have been in really serious distress. And besides, no outsider could even get into Rosberga. The gates were always locked.”

“Why were they locked?”

“Elina didn’t want interlopers, especially men. She wanted at least one place in Espoo where women could be safe from men’s harassment. Every once in a while a group of drunks would wander up from the sports institute down the road or teenagers out hiking in the national park would make noise at the gate. Men always get really irritated when they’re barred from any place.”

“OK, but let’s get back to that night,” I said. “When did you last see Elina?”

“Aira and I were in the library. Niina was probably there too. We were watching TV, an old Marilyn Monroe movie, I think, something sentimental and fun. Elina stuck her head in to say she was going out for some fresh air. We tried to stop her because she had such a bad cold, but she went anyway. Elina was like that. Once she decided something, trying to talk her out of it was useless.

“I had an early morning, so I went to bed as soon as the movie ended. Before I left around six, I stopped at her door thinking that if she was awake I’d say good-bye and thank her for Christmas, but I didn’t see a light on. I had the code to the gate, so I let myself out and headed for the TV station in Pasila.”

“Who else knows the gate code?” I asked.

“Aira, of course, and probably Johanna since she’s been there so long. Elina usually didn’t give it out. She wanted to avoid uninvited guests.”

My phone rang and Kivimäki stood up, taking advantage of the interruption to end our conversation. I asked the caller to wait a moment and stood up to shake Kivimäki’s hand. I promised to be in touch when we had more information. Hopefully I wouldn’t need to interview her again.

As she left, Kivimäki glanced in amusement at my beefcake poster. “Nice choices!” she said in a surprisingly girlish tone. “Although Hugh Grant has been slipping lately.”

I smiled in response and picked up the phone. It was the pathologist who was examining Elina’s body. He was already sure of one thing.

Elina’s back, buttocks, and thighs all had scratches and bruises caused when she was still alive but presumably unconscious. The pathologist and forensic technicians had concluded that someone had dragged her through the forest and left her under the tree. The pathologist couldn’t say yet why Elina was unconscious but promised lab results by morning.

When I hung up the phone, I tasted bile rising in my throat. Dragged through the forest. So it was at least manslaughter. Or worse. If this was a murder, it was going to be complicated. I already had a long list of suspects. Again.

4

“I’m sure it was her boyfriend she was walking with that night,” Milla Marttila said over the phone. A deep yawn followed. It was a little past nine on Saturday morning, the day before New Year’s Eve. My call had woken Milla, whose work shift had ended at four in the morning. Apparently she wasn’t alone in her apartment. I could hear muffled snoring in the background.

“Have you ever met Joona Kirstilä?” I asked.

“He’s been to the club a few times. I doubt he ever told Elina that. I’d know him anywhere, he’s so small and thin. He looked like a dwarf next to Elina. And he always has that stupid red scarf so everyone’ll know he’s a poet. Like Edith Södergran.”

“What? Oh, you mean he thinks poets are supposed to wear red capes or something. Do you like Södergran’s poems?”

“You think a stripper can’t know anything about poetry? Can we be done now? I just want to go back to sleep.”

“Come to the police station at one,” I said. “I need an official statement from you that you saw Elina with Kirstilä on the night sh
e . . .
disappeared.”

“The Espoo police station? Where the fuck is that even?” Milla asked.

I tried to give her directions, but she yelled that she wasn’t going to go searching for it in BFE, so finally I offered to send a car to pick her up.

With Milla coming at one, I thought it best to interview Kirstilä right after that. Aira would be meeting me in the lobby in an hour so that we could identify Elina together. The thought of going to the morgue made me feel sick again and my head ached. Exhaustion wavered behind my eyes like a thin shroud. I had slept in snatches the night before, dreaming first of Elina and then of trying to take a pregnancy test at work but not being able to get into the bathroom.

While driving home from work last night, pregnancy had popped into my mind as a possible reason for my constant tiredness. At home I’d checked my calendar—six weeks had passed since my last period. Then I’d looked at the instructions that came with the IUD and saw that, no, it wasn’t a hundred percent reliable.

I needed to swing by the pharmacy to buy the test.

I’d tried not to think about it; it was just a suspicion. All the same, I’d skipped my beer the night before, despite really wanting one after dealing with Elina’s death all day. In some ways, thinking about murder was easier than thinking about the possibility of being pregnant. For me, murders were something to be solved. When the case was over, it would no longer affect my life. But a child was forever.

Ström pushed my office door open just as I was about to call Joona Kirstilä. Without asking, he collapsed on the sofa under my shrine to masculinity and put his feet on the table.

“So it looks like this death is turning out to be murder. That’s your favorite kind of job, right, Kallio? And you get to interview a whole bunch of feminazis too.”

“What makes you think murder investigations are my favorite jobs?” I asked.

“Well, you’re just so damn efficient. Once you get started on one, it’s all you think about—even if that means doing something stupid and almost getting yourself killed. Come to think of it, you’re already looking pale. Maybe you should cut back on the honeymooning every night.”

“Could you get lost?” I said. “I’m kind of busy. I have to get these interviews going, and I’ve got a trip to the morgue in a few minutes.”

“I know, hon. I’m your bad cop today.” Ström’s expression was nauseatingly self-satisfied.

About a year before, our unit had adopted a practice of rotating investigative duties rather than relying on seniority. Whoever Taskinen assigned to head up a case acted as independently as possible, and everyone took turns playing support roles as necessary. Even Taskinen had sat in as a witness for some of my interviews. The purpose was to break down the strict police hierarchy and prevent people from getting sick of always doing the same jobs.

“I thought Pihko was my number two on this case. Isn’t he on shift today?” I asked.

“He flew up to Lapland to do some skiing. You’ll have to settle for spending the holiday with me.”

“OK, but just remember who’s doing what. I’m asking the questions. You keep your mouth shut. You don’t even have to record the interview. You just have to be there.”

Ström just smiled.

“Oh, by the way, do you know anyone on the force up in Karhumaa or Ii?” I was still trying to track down a cop from Johanna’s hometown that someone in my department knew. But my goal was no longer just to help her out in her custody dispute.

“Not that I can think of. Why?”

“One of our witnesses is from there. If you could check, I’d appreciate it. Now get lost. I need to get this work done. Or maybe you want to come to the morgue?” I smiled unpleasantly.

A disdainful expression flashed across his face. None of us liked looking at corpses, but Ström would never admit that. The rest of us agreed that you got used to it, but you never liked it. At least Elina Rosberg’s body was in one piece, with no blood.

“I have a couple of things to do too,” he said quickly. “Call when you need me in the interrogation room.”

Instead of picking up the phone after Ström left, I thought about my own situation again. Was it dangerous to get pregnant when the IUD was still in? If I was pregnant, I should probably contact my gynecologist right away. Damn. I’d have to squeeze in time for a pharmacy run between Aira’s and Milla’s interviews.

The air in the room suddenly seemed stuffy, so I opened the postage-stamp-sized ventilation window. Immediately my nipples felt painfully cold.

The phone rang. It was Dr. Kervinen, the pathologist doing Elina’s autopsy.

“Do you know whether Rosberg was on a course of antibiotics when she disappeared?”

“Yes, she was,” I said. Aira had said that Elina’s leaving her pill bottle behind was a clear indication that something was wrong.

“Do you happen to remember the brand or what it was prescribed for?” he asked.

“Something that started with
e
-
r
, and it was prescribed for a respiratory infection. She had a bad cough.”

“That fits well. We found erythromycin in her system, which is often used to treat things like bronchitis. The bottle would be useful. I’d like to know who was treating her. Apparently her doctor forgot to warn her that erythromycin inhibits the metabolism of benzodiazepines.”

“Metabolism of benz
o . . .
what?”

“Rosberg had a high dose of benzodiazepines—sedatives—and a few servings of alcohol in her system. Erythromycin increases the effects of benzodiazepines on the body and causes them to remain in the system longer. Together these substances could have left her comatose long enough for her to freeze to death.”

I thought feverishly. Antibiotics, sedatives, liquor. Was Elina’s death an accident? If so, why had she been walking around in the snow in just her nightgown?

“Were there enough sedatives and booze in her system that she would have passed out without the antibiotic?” I asked.

“Maybe for a little while, but probably not long enough for her to freeze to death. But it’s hard to say. The interaction of these drugs isn’t well known, and reported cases have involved comas, not death. The effects of alcohol on drugs are also very individual, and you have to take the cold into consideration. The temperatures around Christmas were quite low, and she disappeared at night, right?”

“Yes
. . .
”

The case was becoming stranger by the hour. Had Elina simply been trying to sleep and took the sedatives not knowing the danger posed by the antibiotics? Or had someone else given her the mixture?

“Listen,” I said. “I’m coming down there in about half an hour for the ID. Rosberg’s aunt is coming with me. I’ll ask her about the medicine and the doctor. But don’t say anything to her about a specific cause of death.”

“Is she a suspect?” Kervinen asked enthusiastically. Most of us in law enforcement did various things to distance ourselves from our cases. Kervinen did so not by telling horrible corpse jokes or trying to shock people with coarse language like some of our colleagues. Instead, he treated victims like curiosities that had never really been living people. And he seemed to genuinely enjoy playing the detective sidekick.

“Yes, you could say that. Hey, can I ask you one more question? A personal one. Is it dangerous to get pregnant with an IUD in?”

An embarrassed cough came from the other end of the line. “Dammit, Kallio, I’m a pathologist, not a gynecologist. But yea
h . . .
You should probably see a doctor. I mea
n . . .
” Kervinen laughed nervously, clearly tongue-tied.

I suspected that he had no children himself and that everything he knew about pregnancy and childbirth was gleaned from chapters in a textbook long forgotten once he focused his medical education more on the dead than the living.

“Yeah, I guess so. Well, I’ll see you in a little while. I have to go meet the aunt.”

When I entered the police station lobby, I found both Aira Rosberg and Johanna Säntti waiting. Next to Johanna, who looked haggard and shrunken, Aira stood tall and broad-shouldered, but the sorrow on both of their faces was the same—immovable and desolate. Aira was wearing the black Persian lamb coat I had seen at the manor. A hat made of the same material was pulled over her forehead. Johanna wore a dark sack-like coat with a black-and-gray-patterned scarf tied around her head.

“I brought Johanna along. She said she had a matter to discuss with the police,” Aira explained.

“Would you like to wait for me here?” I asked. “We won’t be long. Or would you prefer to come and wait there?”

It bothered me that everyone always spoke for Johanna, first Elina and now Aira. At least during her interview Johanna would have a chance to speak for herself.

“I’ll come along.” Her voice was exasperatingly nervous and small, but at least she was talking. I led them to the car, which I’d parked in front of the building, and they both sat in back. We drove through the dusk toward the Turku Highway and from there to the Institute of Forensic Medicine.

As I drove, I glanced into the backseat. “This is only a formality since we already know it’s Elina.” I kept my voice as calm and comforting as possible.

It had started drizzling, and the radio was predicting a thaw in Southern Finland that would probably melt all of the snow that had fallen during December. A passing van threw the slush collected in the ruts in the road onto our windshield, leaving me blind for a couple of seconds before it occurred to me to turn on the wipers. The van was speeding, but I didn’t have the energy to care.

“Don’t worry. I was at both of my parents’ deathbeds, and Elina’s parents’ too.” A dry amusement was audible in Aira Rosberg’s tone. “And I was a nurse. I retired just a few years before Elina founded the therapy center. I worked in nursing homes for years. But you haven’t told us the cause of death. Was i
t . . .
messy? Is she hard to look at?”

“No.” My cheeks burned with embarrassment and irritation. Aira seemed to deflect every attempt I made at showing empathy. OK, I wouldn’t try anymore.

At the forensic medical center, we left Johanna in the waiting room. She sat at the end of a sofa, back straight, legs tightly pressed together like a little girl whose mommy had told her to behave while she went into the store. How could a person who seemed so weak and servile have nine children?

I checked in at the information desk, and a nurse led us to the morgue door, where Kervinen met us. The nurse stood at the door, apparently poised to rush in to lend assistance if one of us fainted or had a hysterical fit.

Identifying bodies was like a strange, ritualized dance around a wheeled bed draped in white. We walked to the gurney, and Kervinen lifted the sheet momentarily. I looked at Elina’s chilled face one more time before I raised my eyes to Aira, who nodded.

“Frozen to death,” she said softly. I nodded and asked Aira for her signature on the necessary forms, and then inquired about the medicine Elina had taken. She told me both the brand name and the doctor who prescribed it. I glanced at Kervinen, who nodded.

“If you’ll go and wait with Johanna, I’ll be out in just a minute,” I said to Aira.

When Aira reached the door, the nurse approached her to inquire whether she was all right. I didn’t hear the answer. They walked together into the bright fluorescent lights of the hallway while I turned back to Kervinen. I suddenly noticed the stench of disinfectant and the nauseating way Kervinen’s unusually feminine floral-smelling aftershave mixed with it.

“Erasis, the drug she mentioned, fits perfectly with my erythromycin theory,” said Kervinen. “It would certainly increase the effect of the alcohol and benzodiazepines. If she’d been found in her bed, you’d think she just wanted to guarantee herself a good night’s sleep by taking a double dose of benzos and booze. You might also suspect suicide. But how did she get outside, and what would explain the scrapes on her back and buttocks? They were fresh and they bled, so they occurred before she died, presumably after she lost consciousness.”