Snow Woman

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “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 b
e 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.

  “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 she . . . 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.