The Hummingbird

by Kati Hiekkapelto

  Once she got home, Anna was unbearably tired. She smoked a cigarette beneath the kitchen extractor fan and tried to listen to some Pan Sonic, but the twang of guitar feedback left her restless. This isn’t even music, she thought and switched to classical. Five minutes of Handel, but even that couldn’t relax her. She switched off the CD player and crawled into bed; she huddled beneath the duvet and felt an enormous weight pressing her deeper into the mattress. Her own body felt estranged, distant. It’s a good thing there’s a storm raging outside, she thought. I don’t need to feel guilty for missing my run yet again. I don’t have the energy to run another step. All I want to do is sleep and sleep – so why can’t I get to sleep?

  She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of the wind rattling the balcony railings. She rolled on to her side. She was too warm. She stuck her feet out from beneath the duvet and felt the cool draught from the window against her skin. I’ll have to buy some insulation tape tomorrow, she thought, otherwise it’ll be too cold in the winter.

  At 3 a.m. Anna gave up and got out of bed. The linoleum floor in the bedroom felt like ice against her bare feet. She pulled on a pair of woollen socks and slippers and went out to the balcony for a cigarette. The weather front was already moving towards the north-east, and by now the rain was only spitting. The fatigue was like a dead weight in every muscle in her body. Her shoulders were tense and sore. She didn’t dare lean against the railing as she had a strange feeling that it might break, that someone was watching her through the shadows enveloping the apartment blocks, waiting for her to fall.

  My family started changing when I was about twelve. Well, I don’t know if they changed or whether it was all because I changed. It must have had something to do with me starting my periods, though I didn’t get it at the time. That and the fact that I had loads of friends. Suddenly I wasn’t allowed to walk to school by myself or walk home afterwards. They got fucking Mehvan to shadow me, the little runt. I wasn’t allowed to visit my Finnish friends’ places, not even for birthday parties. I tried to ask Mum why, but she wouldn’t say anything except that it was all for my own good, for the good of the family, that I’d understand when I was older. I was mad at her and threw a glass bowl at the wall. Naturally, it was a special memento from Kurdistan. She told me to pull my trousers down; I was always allowed to leave my panties on. She thrashed my backside with the belt, not with the buckle like Dad sometimes did to Mehvan. She whipped me and wept, as if it was hurting her more than it was hurting me. I never cried. I gritted my teeth and in my mind I shouted at her in Finnish, saying, you can leather me as much as you damn well please. Mehvan cried, but only much later, secretly, in his own room. Mum always came and apologised after a couple of hours. I always said I forgave her, though I didn’t really.

  You got used to all the rules quickly enough. I was allowed to spend time with a few other Kurdish girls and Dad’s cousin’s children – there were loads of them and some of them were really nice and they all lived in Rajapuro. In the eighth grade I spent all summer in Sweden with Mum’s relatives. I’ve got a cousin there who’s exactly the same age, and abbou what a summer it was! I had loads of friends and you didn’t really think about it when you were playing with them, though all the time, and I really mean all the freaking time, there was an adult relative watching over us. I was just so glad to get away from home for a while. What really irritated me was the way that annoying little shit Mehvan walked at my side to school every morning and how he took the job so damn seriously. He even followed me into the library. Back home I could see in his eyes how he craved Dad’s praise and acceptance like a puppy. I never saw him get any praise. Dad thought Mehvan was stupid and that he’d never come to anything, but he still wanted Mehvan to become a doctor. Why do parents always want their children to be doctors? What’s so great about spending all day listening to sick people complaining about things, lancing their boils and wiping their arses? You won’t see me becoming a doctor, though with my grades it wouldn’t be out of the question.

  It was only once I got to high school that I realised what a terrible dead-end I was living in: a rotting, amputated dream of Kurdistan preserved in a two-bedroom apartment. By some kind of miracle I’d managed to get Dad to agree to me applying to a high school downtown specialising in science. You needed a really high grade-average to get in. I think Dad thought it was great being able to brag to his friends and relatives about how smart his daughter was, especially as Mehvan gave him so little to brag about. He was lucky he made it from one grade to the next, and believe it or not, most of us are normal people who know the value of a decent education. And because I had a good leaving certificate I got in. Almost the best thing was being able to walk to school by myself; there was no way Mehvan could have taken me into town and picked me up again; he had to get to school himself, and with all the extra bus tickets it would have been too expensive. Of course, they expected me to come home on the first possible bus, and at first they were really strict about it. Dad would even come and wait at the bus stop, but when I only seemed interested in studying they eased off a bit. After a while I started hanging out in town after school, I told them I was going to the library to revise for an exam, and they believed me because even at home I always had my nose in a book and complained that I couldn’t concentrate with the TV blaring and Adan whining and asking me to play with her, when all the while I was going to cafés and shops with my new classmates and, later on, with Juse. Gradually I gained my freedom, because at home I was so good at playing the role of the well-behaved Kurdish girl who dreams solely of you know what – a free and idyllic Kurdistan, of course. I even covered our bedroom with maps and pictures to fool them, and they didn’t suspect a thing. Maybe they thought the worst was over, puberty had passed without too many problems so now there was nothing to worry about. Their non-existent sense of self-esteem was bolstered by the thought that their offspring, their own flesh and blood was attending an elite Finnish school, albeit that she was the wrong sex. They knew perfectly well that most of the other wog kids in Rajapuro had no hope of doing such a thing, and even if they had selected a husband for me, they probably thought: let her go to school seeing as she’s got a head for study and we can get benefits to cover the books and bus tickets. We can have the wedding once she’s graduated.

  25

  ANNA SAT AT HER DESK staring at the flaking surface of the wall. The cold light from the fluorescent lamps stung her eyes, and an infuriating hum filled her ears. She let the sense of numbness spread throughout her body and leaned her head against her hands. Sleep was near. Finally. Small electric shocks rippled through her tense muscles. Each flinch pulled her back to life, keeping her awake, but once she relaxed she sunk into a deeper, soporific state. It felt wonderful. She wanted it to continue for ever.

  After Anna had been asleep for a princely twenty minutes, Rauno stepped into her office. Anna didn’t have the energy to raise her head.

  ‘Have you been out on the piss again?’ Rauno asked after staring for a moment at the woman slumped across the desk.

  ‘No…’ came the weak voice from between her arms.

  ‘Should I be worried about you?’

  Anna finally raised her head and stared at Rauno, her eyes red and bloodshot. Did he have to walk in just as she’d nodded off? Anna felt like crying. Either that or exploding into hysterical laughter.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ she replied. ‘I’m just tired. Nobody ever asks that racist drunk things like that. Or do they?’

  ‘Don’t get upset. I just came into tell you Virve’s ready for interview in room number two.’

  ‘Can you help me out here?’ she asked, suddenly agitated. ‘I’m exhausted. I couldn’t get to sleep last night. I can be the bad cop glowering in the background, intimidating and a bit crazy. But please, you do the talking.’

  Rauno gave her a quizzical look and nodded his head.

  *

  ‘Let’s go through this once again from the beginning,’ Rauno began. ‘
Where were you on the evening of 21 August after 8 p.m.?’

  Anna pulled up a chair towards the back of the room, sat down and leaned her head against the wall, hoping that she could remain an observer throughout the interview. Her brain felt so stiff from lack of sleep that she feared she would be unable to formulate a single sensible question, let alone react in any way to the girl’s responses.

  ‘If I remember right, I’ve already told you. I was at home all day, all evening and all night.’

  ‘But nobody can testify to that.’

  ‘That’s not my fault, is it?’ Virve quipped irritably.

  ‘Then where were you on 14 September?’

  ‘I was with Jere at his place. I got there around midday and we were there all day. Jere’s already told you all this.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us that you’ve been having a relationship with Jere ever since he and Riikka split up?’

  Virve looked like she had been preparing for this question and gave a confident smile.

  ‘Oh, it’s just sex. Jere and I haven’t been shouting about it from the rooftops because we don’t want our group of friends – that’s Riikka’s group of friends, too – to think we had something going on earlier, as if our thing was the reason they split up. It wasn’t.’

  ‘You told us that you never liked Jere. Jere, however, has told us a rather different story. According to him…’ Rauno leafed through his notes. ‘According to him, you two had an encounter with one another in high school and you’d been, er, “gagging for it” ever since.’

  Virve scoffed.

  ‘He said that, did he? That’s a fantasy all of his own, something he uses to bolster his macho self-esteem. This probably sounds really bad,’ Virve said and turned to stare Anna intensely in the eyes. ‘But, you see, I’m never “gagging” for anyone, not so that I’d be after them for years. No way, not my style. I’m just looking for a good shag, you know what I mean? And for all his other faults, Jere happens to be just that. Sorry if that really shocks you, but that’s just who I am,’ she said.

  Anna was amused but managed to maintain her poker face. She noticed that Rauno’s ears had turned red. Which of them was supposed to be shocked by Virve’s revelation?

  ‘So, did you have some sort of encounter during high school?’ he asked.

  Virve hesitated before admitting to it.

  ‘Yes. One night after a class party. That was it.’

  ‘How soon after that night did Riikka and Jere start dating?’

  Again Virve seemed to stall her response, fidgeting with the sleeve of her pullover, her bracelets jangling.

  ‘The following week. But it didn’t bother me. I wasn’t in love with him or anything.’

  ‘Of course you weren’t,’ Rauno muttered and continued: ‘However, it is profoundly suspicious that after your close friend has just been brutally murdered, you both failed to mention this relationship in interviews with police officers. Withholding information from the police is rather more serious than withholding information from your friend. During police interrogation it is an offence. This casts you both in a very bad light.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Virve quipped.

  ‘Did you know that Jere had gone to Lapland at the end of August?’

  ‘Yes. I knew he’d gone off hiking, but I didn’t know where exactly.’

  ‘And why didn’t you tell us about that either?’

  ‘You asked me whether I knew where Jere was. I didn’t know. For all I knew he could have gone south to the Nuuksio national park.’

  ‘By hiding these things and with that attitude, you make your liaison with Jere seem extremely suspicious,’ Rauno said with a note of irritation. ‘Would you like to hear what I think?’

  He continued without waiting for an answer.

  ‘I think you and Jere cooked up this whole plot together. The firearm belonged to Jere and you used it to shoot Riikka. Perhaps Jere committed the second murder. Either that, or you did it. And I’m not the only officer who thinks this is a plausible scenario. In fact, this is one of our key lines of investigation, so I’d advise you to think carefully about lying to us in future.’

  Rauno slapped the investigation photographs of Ville Pollari on the table. In the first a smiling man was standing with his arm around his wife in front of their newly built house. In the second he was lying on the running track, his chest blown to pieces. Virve stared at the photographs, expressionless, but Anna saw that behind the mask she was shaking with fear and holding back tears.

  ‘Does this look familiar?’ asked Rauno.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did this man happen to run past when you shot Riikka? Did he see you? Is that why you had to shut him up?’

  ‘No,’ Virve shouted. ‘No, no, no! I haven’t done anything!’

  ‘I think you have, either alone or with Jere. Don’t you think it would be better to own up to it now?’

  ‘I’ve nothing to own up to,’ she said.

  ‘Think how relieved you’ll be. You won’t have to hide or lie about it any longer. It’ll all be over,’ said Rauno. ‘You can finally relax.’

  ‘I didn’t dare say anything about Jere or his hiking trip because I was scared that he might have done it,’ she shouted and burst into tears. ‘You don’t have to believe me. I haven’t done anything. I was really freaked out. I just kept thinking, what if Jere really loses it and kills me too? I was relieved when I heard he’d been in Sevettijärvi and there was no way he could have done it.’

  ‘Could Jere have done something like this? Could he have lost it and killed someone?’ Rauno asked. His voice had changed; now he sounded friendly.

  ‘I really can’t imagine … But he got really jealous sometimes. And he was pissed off big time when I let it slip that I thought Riikka might be seeing someone else.’

  ‘Really? He told us that their relationship was over for good.’

  ‘It was, as far as she was concerned. But Jere wanted her back. He never admitted it, but you notice things like that. I’m just a rebound for him. He loved Riikka.’

  ‘How jealous is he, on the whole?’

  ‘Quite a bit.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I mean, he starts imagining all sorts of things at the drop of a hat.’

  Anna gave a start. She always reacted to words and phrases like this, no matter how exhausted she was. She had made up her mind. Never again would she not ask the questions that needed to be asked.

  ‘Does he ever hit you?’ she asked.

  Virve was silent for a long moment before speaking.

  ‘Not really. Not, like, really hard.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Again the girl seemed hesitant, thinking what to say.

  ‘One time he grabbed hold of me and squeezed my arms and started shaking me. But it was nothing, just a bruise on my arm. Anyway, I’d been irritating him.’

  ‘So you were asking for it?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t really say that…’

  ‘Did he ever behave violently towards Riikka?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You were best friends. You do know.’

  ‘Sometimes he did.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s time to forget all about him?’

  ‘But I love him,’ she shrieked. ‘I always have. Since high school. I haven’t done anything bad, not to Riikka and not to anyone else. I haven’t. You’ve got to believe me. Riikka was my best friend, despite everything else.’

  Again she started to weep.

  ‘Does the word Huitzilopochtli ring any bells?’ Anna asked, still leaning against the back wall.

  Virve turned to look at her. She looked aghast and seemed to shrink back as she nervously tugged her sleeves further down her forearms.

  ‘What’s that?’ she said in almost a whisper.

  ‘Indeed, what is it?’ Anna replied and watched Virve. The girl was visibly rattled and was unable to hide it. But there was something else abo
ut her. Anna could see that Virve was utterly petrified with fear.

  Bihar, standing on the asphalted playground, alone, a dark scarf tightly wrapped round her head, a black trench coat and jeans. She was leaning against the ochre-yellow wall of the school for yuppie kids and didn’t notice Anna, who was sitting in a civilian car parked across the street. The car radio belched a babble of chatter into the ether. Anna switched it off.

  Bihar’s high school was different from the one Anna had once attended. This one was much better. Year upon year, only students with a grade average of around nine would even consider applying. Anna’s high school had been in Koivuharju. Her own grade average would have merited a place at a more reputable school, but Anna didn’t want to have to get the bus to school, as she already spent so much time doing sports. Koivuharju School had nice teachers and decent results despite the students’ diverse backgrounds, and it offered students the opportunity to take extra sports classes. Back then that had been enough, and she hadn’t regretted the decision since.

  Bihar moved. A tall, lanky boy was walking towards her across the playground. Bihar took out her mobile phone and started fiddling with it.

  The boy stood right next to her, but Bihar didn’t raise her eyes from her phone. The boy seemed not to notice her either, though he was standing so close. A second, two, three. Then Bihar nodded. The boy walked off.

  Got you, thought Anna, her pulse quickening. Then: poor kids, not a chance of making a go of things.