The Hummingbird (23 page)

‘This is getting out of hand. We need more people on this case,’ sighed the chief inspector.

‘…Then she chucked her guts up when I called for the umpteenth time.’ Esko’s derisive laughter could be heard behind the open door of the staffroom.

‘And what did she look like? Jesus Christ, as if she’d had food poisoning and an electric shock all at once. Seems she’d been up boozing until the early hours. We managed to get her out to the scene for less than an hour – the boys from patrol had to drive her.’

So he’s an old gossip too, Anna thought as she walked into the room. An awkward silence descended. Sari greeted her with a faint nod of the head, without looking her in the eyes; Rauno seemed to be concentrating on stirring his coffee.

Anna felt a surge of rage rising up inside her.

‘Just so you know, I just passed up the opportunity to tell the governor about your racist opinions. And I didn’t tell him about the bullying in the workplace, the drinking on duty, though he seemed very keen to know all about it. I didn’t breathe a word about all the mornings I’ve seen you drag yourself in shaking and stinking of not-so-old liquor, and I especially didn’t tell him about what I saw yesterday. I just pretended I had no idea what he was talking about.’

The silence deepened. The pipes behind the sink gurgled and footsteps could be heard out in the corridor. The entire police station was waiting, holding its breath.

‘Well, at least I’m always on time,’ Esko responded with a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Anna poured herself some coffee without saying anything. She repressed the desire to throw the cup at the wall.

‘Come on, Esko, it was her day off,’ Sari tried to smooth things over, but fell silent as Anna glared at her. We don’t owe that old wanker an explanation, her eyes seemed to say.

The painful silence would not abate. Rauno twiddled a spoon in the sugar bowl; Sari seemed suddenly absorbed in yesterday’s headlines on the front page of the newspaper lying on the coffee table. Esko glowered at Anna arrogantly, almost challenging her to a fight. Anna counted to ten, then calmly sipped her coffee.

I refuse to let this jerk provoke me ever again, she resolved. I will not give him the satisfaction.

‘Perhaps we should all focus on this case,’ she finally said after a moment’s pause, eyeing everyone in the room. Sari and Rauno nodded, relieved; Esko looked impassive. Perhaps he was even a bit disappointed, Anna noted to her own satisfaction. He’d been expecting her to lose her temper, to slam the door behind her and disappear into her office in tears.

‘As of yesterday, our workload has increased quite substantially,’ she continued without waiting for comment. ‘And I’m ready to get stuck in. Having a day off can really give you a boost. So – we have two, almost identical murders. What does this tell us?’

The people in the room looked at one another – all except Esko, who had started reading yesterday’s paper.

‘Somebody with a grudge against joggers,’ Rauno suggested.

‘A hunter with a grudge against joggers,’ said Sari.

‘I don’t really buy this hunter hypothesis,’ said Rauno. ‘I’ve called everyone on the hunting association members list, and none of them seemed remotely suspicious. Of course, you never know…’

‘There are plenty of non-hunters with access to hunting rifles,’ said Anna. ‘Just think how many family members and close friends each of those hunters has. At last in theory, almost everyone in the country probably has contact with firearms, right?’

‘As for guns per capita, Finland is pretty near the top of the list,’ Rauno admitted. ‘But guns are kept behind lock and key, or at least they should be.’

‘I’m sure family members know where the keys are,’ said Anna.

‘Sure. But in my own experience, people involved in hunting teach their kids about gun safety from an early age. These people know what firearms are capable of. They respect guns, they’re careful. I think it’s unlikely that your average hunter would be running amok with a shotgun. It’s more likely to be some computer nerd, someone a bit detached from reality.’

‘Well, it’s a sick person we’re looking for, that much is clear,’ said Anna. ‘A hunter could suddenly snap and lose his mind.’

‘Yes, but I strongly doubt it,’ Rauno replied with a smirk.

‘It’s a wild woodsman,’ said Sari. ‘But hey, do these victims have anything in common apart from their interest in running?’

‘Nothing obvious. This time the victim was a man,’ said Esko, and on a whim Anna gave him a friendly smile.

He was taking part in the conversation, despite their altercation.

He pretended not to notice her smile.

‘And older than Riikka. This Ville is, was, twenty-eight, married with a steady job. Baby on the way, too,’ said Rauno.

‘Riikka was an occasional jogger trying to lose a few kilos. Ville regularly took part in local orienteering competitions, probably went running every day,’ said Esko.

How did he know that, Anna wondered.

‘Both were killed near the shore. One to the south of the city, one to the north,’ she said.

‘It must be the same killer,’ said Rauno. ‘The same round of ammunition and the same pendant in their pockets. It’s the same man.’

‘Or woman,’ said Sari.

‘The pendant is interesting,’ said Anna. ‘Can anyone tell us more about it?’

‘I examined it quite thoroughly yesterday, and it looks like junk, the kind of stuff made in China and sold to tourists halfway across the world. The black disc with the image of the old man is actually plastic and the strap is made of fake leather,’ said Rauno.

‘Why didn’t we take it seriously when we found one in Riikka’s pocket?’ Anna asked.

‘For crying out loud,’ Esko snapped. ‘It would have been odd if we had reacted to it. There’s nothing suspicious about an individual piece of jewellery. Now that there are two of them, things are different – it’s clear that they mean something. Either the shooter placed the pendant in their pockets or both victims belong to a … cult or something.’

‘We should show it to Riikka’s friends and parents,’ said Sari.

‘I think this is the kind of information we should keep to ourselves,’ Esko commented. ‘Rauno, try and find out everything you
can about it: where it’s manufactured, where it’s sold and what the image means. Let’s think carefully about what information we give to the public. There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, a special offer for anyone buying a tracksuit, something like that.’

‘Quite a strange special offer – and coincidentally found on both victims? No way,’ said Rauno with a shake of the head. ‘But I’ll look into it.’

‘Do you think we have a serial killer on our hands?’ Sari finally put into words what nobody had dared to say.

Again, the staffroom fell silent.

‘There hasn’t been a third murder yet – to our knowledge, that is,’ said Anna. ‘According to the FBI, three is the magic number.’

‘A serial killer sounds like something from American trash fiction, but you’ve got to admit there’s something pretty sick about these cases. This isn’t just drunks beating each other to death,’ said Sari.

‘Definitely not,’ Rauno agreed.

‘We’ve got to find this nutcase,’ said Sari. ‘Before we
do
find a third body.’

‘We have to find a connection between them. There must be something linking these two people,’ said Esko firmly.

‘I agree,’ Anna conferred. ‘And when we find the connection, we’ll find who did this. We’ll have to interview everyone again. Riikka’s friends and parents. Jere. Ville’s wife, colleagues, neighbours, orienteering friends, hunters and anyone living near the two running tracks. Thankfully Virkkunen is assigning more officers to this case.’

‘Really?’ Rauno sounded relieved.

‘Well, he mentioned it at least. And we’re going to ask anyone who might have seen or noticed something to come forward. There’s going to be a press conference this afternoon.’

‘And who’s going to go through all the extra information?’ Esko muttered.

‘What if Ville was Riikka’s new mystery man?’ Sari suggested.

‘Yes,’ Anna cried. ‘That’s a thought. Of course, Linnea will take DNA samples from the body; we’ll be able to cross-reference them
with the sperm found on Riikka. If it’s a match, that would explain a lot. It might even provide a motive.’

‘For Ville’s wife, sure,’ said Esko.

Virkkunen stepped into the room and poured himself a coffee.

‘Anna and Esko: I want you to go to Asemakylä. You’ll have to talk to the second victim’s wife.’

20

OUTSIDE
IT
WAS
GREY
AGAIN
.
Where had the bright skies of the day before gone? Anna stared at the landscape flashing past, her forehead pressed against the passenger window as Esko drove them north. She noticed that the leaves had turned yellow. When had that happened? Why did time go so quickly?

Taking someone bad news yet again, like an officious vulture, she thought. And again I have to take care of things with that nasty man who isn’t going to speak to me throughout the entire journey. At least he deigned to take me in his car this time; I suppose this is progress. Maybe she should tell Virkkunen that things were going well, far better than expected – Esko even allowed her in his car.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Esko was looking at her.

She needed a cigarette.

The victim’s wife, Maria Jääskö-Pollari, had only been a wife for about a year. She had married a successful man – the man of her dreams, she said. And now she was expecting their first child. A dead man’s child, a child that would never know its father.

Anna looked at the woman’s face, swollen and expressionless with weeping, and the bulging stomach beneath her black tunic. The two things didn’t belong together; they shouldn’t be in the same body.

The child would never see its father, yet it would carry a gnawing sense of grief at the back of its mind for the rest of its life, every bit as much as the genes it inherited from its father. We inherit so much, Anna thought, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

A familiar sense of melancholy hung around her shoulders, whispering dark prose into her ears. The enthusiasm she’d felt that morning had been erased in a single swipe.

Maria was an economist and had worked as a local councillor in Simonkoski. She had become pregnant just as the transitional period before the merging of two local constituencies was coming to an end, after which Simonkoski would no longer exist as an entity in its own right. Now she was on sick leave with back pain caused by loose joints. She found it all but impossible to sit in the same position for extended periods. She could still walk short journeys as long as she was able to lie down afterwards. She was due to start maternity leave in a month’s time, and then she would probably be off work for a year. By the time the child turned three, she would no longer have a job to go back to. It seemed that the only people to survive the cull as the city swallowed up the neighbouring constituencies would be the council bosses.

‘But none of that matters any more,’ said Maria with a note of bitterness.

Ville Pollari had driven to work at seven in the morning, as he did every day. He was a software engineer at Nokia. Maria had been at home all day, except for a quick trip to the local shop at around ten o’clock. During the day she had done the laundry but hadn’t been able to hang it out to dry; bending down to lift the wet laundry from the machine hurt her back too much. She had planned to ask Ville to help her when he came home from work. He helped a lot around the house: emptied the dishwasher, wiped the cupboard doors – all without her having to ask.

That afternoon Maria had cooked some food. She always tried to do this, so that there was food ready when Ville got back from work, though standing in the kitchen was almost as painful as sitting down.

Ville had returned home after five o’clock. They had eaten, Ville had hung out the washing and promised to buy a tumble dryer after pay day. Then he had slumped on the sofa and slept for half an hour. From six till seven he had watched the sports channel and Maria had slouched on the sofa with him, while her husband had massaged the sore areas at the base of her spine. Just before seven o’clock,
Ville’s training partner Jussi Järvinen had called him to say that their daughter had a fever and his wife was working that evening.

Ville went running alone.

‘Did he often go running with a friend?’ asked Anna.

‘Ville always did his orienteering training with a friend, usually Jussi, who was a member of the same club. Ville normally went jogging by himself, though Jussi sometimes joined him on his runs, too,’ Maria explained.

In her notebook Anna wrote: Jussi Järvinen, daughter with fever.