The Hummingbird (45 page)

‘Why do you keep asking about the Aztecs?’

‘Because they’re linked to all three murders. That’s why. And you happen to have visited Mexico.’

‘I haven’t done anything!’ Virve raised her voice.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll be the judge of that,’ said Anna, keeping her composure.

‘But I haven’t. You’ve got to believe me.’

‘Let’s go down and get you registered, shall we?’ said Anna and gestured to Virve to follow her.

Anna and Virve walked through the police station and up to the top floor, where the holding cells were located. The whole floor stank of cigarette smoke. Anna realised that she hadn’t smoked a single cigarette since arriving at work that morning and felt the desire for nicotine like a sumptuous tingling in the tissues along the inside of her mouth. Why isn’t the yearning for nicotine enough? So often the mere thought feels better than the act itself.

The registration department was situated right in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the holding cells. It was grey and lit in pale fluorescent light, like all the other rooms in this building, though this one had no windows. The bleak room had a computer, photographic equipment and a fingerprinting machine that looked like a scanner. On a table in the corner stood an older, manual version of the same machine. Anna wondered whether it had been left there on purpose, in case of a power cut or some significant infrastructure catastrophe.

‘Let’s take your fingerprints first, then the DNA sample and the photos to finish off with,’ said Heikki, a young guy who had graduated as a media assistant and who doubtless had a very different idea
of his future career when he began his studies, but who had since realised he was lucky to have a job at all. In a twisted way he found working with criminals fascinating. Working here, he had plenty of juicy stories to tell his mates, far better than anyone in a regular, boring job. He had even registered the couple that had dismembered a woman and stuffed her in a suitcase last summer; he’d processed motorbike gangs, members of the Yugoslav mafia and other professional criminals whose scars and tattoos he had documented in detail.

Once they had taken her fingerprints, Heikki glanced over the warrant for the DNA sample and asked Virve to open her mouth. With a practised hand, he swiped the inside of her cheek with a cotton-wool bud and pushed it into a plastic tube.

‘There we go, that’s ready for analysis,’ he said.

‘This is horrible,’ Virve whispered. ‘It makes me feel like a real criminal.’

‘Really?’ Anna commented. ‘Guilty conscience?’

‘Will you listen to me for once? No. This room is terrifying. All these fingerprints and samples … it’s as if I’d really done something bad. This is awful. Why are you taking these?’ Virve started to cry and looked at the door as though she wanted to rush out. Anna could see that the girl was beside herself.

‘Take it easy, now,’ said Heikki as he gently took Virve by the shoulders and sat her down. ‘You sit there for a moment. Right, now listen to me. These procedures are routine parts of a police investigation and it’s perfectly normal that the subject of the procedures – that’s you – finds them stressful and intrusive. You’re not the first person to start panicking up here. If you’re found to be completely innocent, all of this information will be destroyed and there won’t be any trace of you in the police system. So let’s all take a deep breath, get these photographs done, then that’s us for today.’ Heikki chatted away to Virve and the girl visibly calmed down. He’s slick, thought Anna. I must remember to commend him later.

‘That’s the way. Good. There’s nothing to worry about. First we’ll
photograph your face, then if you’ve got any distinguishing features or tattoos, we’ll need to photograph them too. Do you have anything like that?’

Virve wiped her tears on her sleeve and didn’t say anything.

‘Do you have any tattoos or scars or large birthmarks or…’

Virve stared at the old manual fingerprinting machine, as though she was suddenly unable to understand what they were saying. Her eyes bore a look of resignation. Anna and Heikki waited. Eventually Virve rolled up the sleeve on her left arm.

On her forearm, just above the wrist, was a colourful, resplendent orchid and from inside the flower, with its long curved beak, a beautiful hummingbird was supping nectar.

‘Should we take her in?’ Esko asked Virkkunen, to whose office the whole team had been summoned. Virve had been left to wait with Heikki in the registration room.

‘She can prove that she was at the cinema when Veli-Matti was shot,’ said Anna. ‘I just called the cinema and the girl she claims to have been with. The film played until 11 p.m. Nobody left during the screening.’

‘What about before the screening?’ asked Sari. ‘Veli-Matti wasn’t shot very late in the evening. She could have done it before the film started.’

‘She was with this Emmi from 5 p.m. onwards. They went swimming before the film. It’s just not possible. Virve can’t have killed Veli-Matti.’

‘This whole thing was cooked up by Virve and Jere, I’ve said so all along. Christ, now we’ve finally got the one with the hummingbird in her left hand! All autumn we’ve been wondering what on earth this Hutsilo thing means. We can’t let her go now. It’s time to put a stop to these killings!’ Esko bellowed.

‘What did you get out of Jere?’ Virkkunen asked Esko.

‘Nothing much. Apparently he’s stopped shagging the hippie girl. He’s ready to confront the grief of losing Riikka and doesn’t want to
hide any more, nonsense like that – and from a grown man too. On Monday he was at a lecture, then he spent the evening and night with the university’s hiking society in Varpaneva. The story checks out; the hiking society confirmed it. They’re crazy folk, going off camping by a bog in the middle of the week at this time of year. But I’ll be damned, there they were. All evening and all night.’

‘So they can’t really be in it together if they were both somewhere else at the time. There would need to be a third person involved, and that sounds pretty far-fetched,’ said Anna.

‘Didn’t we speculate that they could belong to some kind of cult?’ asked Sari. ‘Rauno found a few on the internet. Then there are the online retailers. We need to get into Rauno’s email account; the Russian guy should have written back to him by now with information on whether there were any shipments of those necklaces to Finland.’

‘I’ll sort you out with the passwords,’ said Virkkunen.

‘Good. But what if this really is some sick cult where everybody takes turns at killing someone?’

‘It’s possible,’ said Anna. ‘But do you really think some of them could go crazy and start sacrificing people together? I mean, in real life?’

‘There are examples of mass suicides. People do all kinds of crazy things in the name of religion.’

‘Suicide is a bit different, though.’

‘I don’t know. But if that’s the case, who is their leader? Jere doesn’t have any hummingbird tattoos.’

‘It’s Virve, obviously,’ Esko spluttered. ‘She’s the one with the tattoo. She’s Hutsilo. The boss, the highest bloody deity.’

‘I don’t buy that,’ said Anna. ‘I’ve interviewed her three times.’

‘We need to grill these two about the Aztec connection. But we certainly can’t arrest Virve, not on evidence this flimsy,’ said Virkkunen.

‘But it can’t just be coincidence that the killer leaves images of a bloodthirsty Aztec god on each victim, then we find a tattoo directly
linked to the necklaces on the wrist of a girl who was one of our first suspects. It cannot be coincidence!’ Esko shouted.

‘No, it can’t,’ Virkkunen conceded. ‘And I’m sure it isn’t. But that aside, one tattoo doesn’t prove that Virve is the killer or some kind of cult leader, especially as she has a watertight alibi. It’s circumstantial evidence. Continue with the interviews. If these kids have some connection to that god or any cult, find it. Now!’

‘Seems like you’re in the habit of roughing up your girlfriends, doesn’t it?’ Esko commented to Jere Koski, who was still sitting staring at his hands in Interview Room 2. ‘Virve Sarlin has described you as jealous and violent. Is that true?’

Jere looked up.

‘I don’t wanna be like that,’ he said in despair.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sometimes it just bursts out. It’s like I can’t control it.’

‘What bursts out?’ asked Sari.

‘The aggression. It’s like my head goes blank. I totally lose it.’

‘Does this happen often?’

Jere looked at them, puzzled, as though suddenly he had no idea where he was or who he was with. Then he gave a cautious smile.

‘No, thank God. I’ve tried to train myself out of it. I don’t want to be like…’

He stopped all of a sudden.

‘Like who?’ Sari prompted him.

‘Like my dad,’ Jere all but whispered.

‘But you are, after all. Yes?’ Sari asked.

‘Yes, I suppose so. Fuck it.’ Jere clenched his fists so hard that his knuckles turned white.

‘We found old bruises on Riikka’s body. They were quite large and in strange places, so they couldn’t have been caused by bumping into the table. The forensics officer suggested she might have fallen from her bike, a few weeks before her death. Were you somehow involved?’ Sari asked.

Jere seemed to swallow the word yes, so quietly that it was barely audible.

‘Speak up,’ Esko commanded.

‘Riikka came round to my place to pick up the last of her things. There was a dress and a pair of trousers, and she needed them. I asked her if we could give it another shot. That’s how it started.’

‘Tell us more. Tell us everything.’

‘She was wearing some sort of summer dress. She looked so nice. It was a really hot day. I must have tried to hug her or something, but she shoved me away and said it was too late. I told her I’d found a group online called MANagement, that they had a branch in town and that I’d start attending their sessions. If only she’d take me back. I even showed her their brochure. I’d printed it off.’

Jere took a breath, plucking up the courage to continue.

‘I had such a wonderful girlfriend, and yet I was such an idiot I managed to ruin everything. I turned into just the kind of man I swore I never would. But I never laid into her the way my dad used to beat Mum.’

‘So how did you lay into her?’ asked Esko.

‘I’ve only done it once before, and even then it was more like squeezing and shaking than anything; I never hit her. Then I hurled her to the floor and ran outside. I was shit scared of myself. It was after that that Riikka started thinking about splitting up. And that’s why she eventually left, though I didn’t behave like that any more. I walked away if I could feel myself losing control. Except that one time last summer.’

‘We’ll talk about that in a minute,’ said Esko. ‘So, you’d printed off the brochure for this MANagement support group? Then what?’

‘She just kept saying it was too late, what was done was done. Then I asked if there was someone else. She didn’t answer, but I could see it in her face. That’s when I really lost it. I hit her and shoved her against the wall but she fell backwards and hit the coffee table. I’m surprised it didn’t break. That’s where the bruises came from. It was then that I realised I’d never get her back. There went my last
chance. I was at rock bottom. That’s why I took off to Lapland, to calm down and think things through.’

‘But in the meantime, you’d started fooling around with Virve,’ said Sari.

Jere looked embarrassed.

‘Yeah. She turned up, started throwing herself at me and I thought, what the hell.’

‘And you hit her.’

‘I lost my temper, once, when she said Riikka was seeing someone else. I didn’t hit her; I shook her. I managed to control it. And unlike Riikka, Virve forgave me. She believes that I want to change.’

‘You realise that a tendency for jealousy and violence doesn’t look very good in the eyes of the police,’ said Esko.

‘I know. I’m not exactly thrilled with it myself. But you know I was in Lapland when Riikka died. And anyway, I wouldn’t have killed her. I loved her. And I’ve never had anything against Veli-Matti; he was a cool teacher. And I didn’t even know that other guy!’

‘What about Virve?’

‘What about her?’

‘She doesn’t have a decent alibi for the first two murders.’

‘She was at my place on one of those evenings.’

‘I said a decent alibi. You could be protecting her and lying to us,’ said Esko.

‘Why would I do that?’

‘I don’t know. Fear?’ Esko suggested.

Jere began moving restlessly.

‘This whole thing is really frightening. I mean it. Listen, Virve, me and loads of our friends – we’ve all been shit scared since this all kicked off. Nobody so much as goes out for an evening walk any more. But Virve was with me in my flat when that guy was killed. I guarantee you.’