Her Enemy

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “No, no, of course not. This is your house.” I tried not to sound grumpy, even though these were precisely the sorts of situations that had made me think twice about moving to Espoo. And the Sarkelas had chosen the perfect time for their surprise visit: the whole house was a disaster, and the cupboards were bare. But, damn it, I’d spent the whole weekend running myself ragged trying to help their relatives, so when would I have had time for housekeeping? Besides, the state of the house was just as much Antti’s responsibility as mine.

  What irked me the most, though, was that I cared at all. Why did I consider the cleanliness of my house and the frequency with which I baked fresh pulla a measure of my value as a woman?

  “Sit down; pour yourself some tea,” Marjatta said. We were clearly in her kitchen, not mine. Einstein came to rub against my legs as I peered hopefully into the cupboard, looking for something to nibble with my tea. I was glad the cat was back; he could keep Antti company during the lonely nights to come.

  And, wait, the refrigerator looked surprisingly full. Wagging a wedge of cheese at him, I gave Antti an inquiring look.

  “I stopped at the store under the train station on my way in from the city.”

  I laughed in relief, although of course Antti knew how to take care of the shopping—he had lived alone just as long as I had. After making myself a heaping ham-and-cheese sandwich, I sat down at the table. The tea tasted of citrus and vodka. I should have guessed. The Sarkelas went in for hard tea, and Antti had inherited the habit from his parents.

  “What’s in this?” I asked politely.

  “Lemon vodka,” Antti’s mother replied. “Do you like it? Tauno and I needed a little restorative after taking care of the boys. The poor dears were frightened, of course, with Sanna’s death so fresh in their minds, and now Armi. Mikko insisted on calling Marita last night before going to bed to make sure his mother was still safe.”

  “Einstein needs a restorative too, now that he’s escaped the little dudes’ clutches,” Antti said. He fished around in the freezer, pulling out a frozen lump and putting it in the microwave to thaw. As the smell of the shrimp spread through the room, the cat went wild, purring like an electric generator, head-butting each of us in turn, and meowing insistently. The purring rose a few decibels when Antti put the food down.

  I remembered I was supposed to call Elina Kataja, Kimmo’s S&M witness. Since I didn’t really feel like talking to an S&M expert with my pseudo in-laws listening, I snuck away to the phone in Antti’s office.

  “Thus spake the angel from heaven: I’m partying now, and I don’t know for how long. Leave a message and I’ll call you when I recover,” said Elina Kataja’s answering machine. Apparently, everyone knew her by the name Angel.

  I remained sitting and rested my head on Antti’s desk for a moment. My shoulders hurt, and my calves were sore from the previous day’s walk. For a second I had an intense yearning for the solitude of my old apartment and its large bathtub. The Sarkelas’ row house had no tub, and it was already too late to heat the sauna.

  I returned to the kitchen to finish my tea and then let Marjatta pour me another cup as well. I suddenly remembered Risto Hänninen’s wife mentioning her mother’s dissatisfaction with Dr. Hellström.

  “Listen, Marjatta, when you left Dr. Hellström’s clinic, did your decision have anything to do with Armi?”

  Antti’s mother looked confused.

  “Armi had nothing to do with it. She was a pleasant, no-nonsense nurse. It was Erik I was upset with.” She snorted. “As you know, I had a hysterectomy the winter before last. I’m not ashamed of it by any means, but hearing that Erik had been blabbing to some of his other patients that I was ‘back in good working order’ now that my uterus was out was repulsive,” Marjatta explained indignantly.

  “Also, I prefer a more natural approach to healing,” she continued. “I felt Erik was always pushing the drugs and hormones a little too much. Some say he’s his own best patient in that regard…but those are just rumors. The last straw was when I saw Erik kissing one of his patients in his office. I know the Hellströms’ marriage is on the rocks, and we’re all grown-ups, but a doctor should have some discretion when it comes to his patients.”

  I was stunned. “So he’s quite the ladies’ man, is he?” I managed to mutter sympathetically.

  “He thinks he’s quite the catch. I guess some women might go for a handsome doctor like that. Erik’s wife has had enough, though. She’s an artist who lives half the year somewhere on the French Riviera near Nice. I imagine it was a hard thing for Erik to hear that Doris has some pretty young sculptor on the side…” Marjatta smiled maliciously, and I grinned back, liking both her and Doris Hellström a little bit more, even though the latter was a complete stranger.

  Erik Hellström kissing a patient…and writing himself prescriptions? Could Armi have had dirt on Hellström himself, not one of his patients?

  I was still thinking about what Armi might have known as I rode to work the next morning. With the familiar wobble of my old green bicycle under me and the warmth of the morning sun making the mist rise from the vegetation, I had no particular interest in going indoors. I knew full well that Hellström was the person I most wanted to be guilty—I didn’t like him, and he wasn’t related to Antti. I chided myself: Was my own attitude any better than Detective Sergeant Ström’s?

  After our normal Monday morning meeting, Eki and I sat down to discuss the Kimmo Affair. Eki seemed even more concerned than before.

  “Are you sure of the Hänninen boy’s innocence?”

  “Ninety-five percent.”

  “But if the police have a witness who heard Kimmo and Armi fighting after one o’clock, then…”

  “I have a date with that witness in half an hour. Want to come along?”

  “No, you go ahead. I’ll go to court with Kimmo if I can just get a summary from you beforehand.”

  I didn’t know whether I should be relieved or disappointed. I had already imagined the arraignment, with me as the heroic defense attorney striking Ström’s pathetic theories to the ground with a few trenchant rejoinders. But that was only in my mind. In reality I would lose my cool, as would Ström, and the ensuing display would help Kimmo not one whit.

  So, instead of trying to convince Eki I could handle the hearing, I set off to meet Armi’s neighbor, the widow Kerttu Mannila, Ström’s key witness. She lived at the other end of Armi’s row of houses and had stopped by to visit Armi on the morning of the murder.

  At least six inches shorter than me, stooped, and wrinkled, the old woman nevertheless still had plenty of pep. “I popped by that morning because I’d just made rice pudding and dough for my Karelian pies. Armi had asked me to teach her how we made them properly back in my village in the old days. I tried to tell her the night before that I would be making them, but she wasn’t home. So I went to ring her doorbell around nine o’clock, but she said she didn’t have time for baking. ‘Is that boy of yours visiting?’ I asked, to which she said she had all sorts of things going on. I promised to bring her some to taste later, and we agreed she would bake with me next time.”

  “And at one o’clock you took her some of the pies?” I asked. If Kimmo was lying, I was going to hang him from a tree by his balls.

  “My sister called just as I was taking the last batch out of the oven, and I forgot all about Armi. Then at around five minutes to one, I set out with the pies to go through Armi’s backyard, but when I came to the gate, I heard Armi speaking crossly to someone. I’d never even heard her raise her voice before. She was always such a sweet girl.” The old woman’s eyes twinkled amusingly—she was clearly conscious of her significance as a witness.

  “Are you sure the person Armi was fighting with was Kimmo Hänninen? What were they saying?”

  “Well, I only really heard Armi’s voice. When I came to the gate, Armi was saying something like, ‘I can’t look the other way anymore; it just isn’t right.’”

  “And what did the o
ther person say?”

  “Well, you see, my hearing is not as good as it was when I was younger. Low voices are harder to make out. Armi’s was loud and shrill. But the other one, he just mumbled. I couldn’t make anything out. Then Armi said that she was going to call the police. At that point, I realized this conversation was none of my business, and I went home. I thought I would call first next time, before taking the pies over, but when I called at one thirty, no one answered.”

  “Luckily, you didn’t go back and have to find the body,” I said comfortingly.

  “Oh, I’m not afraid of the dead, girlie. I was a nurse on the front lines during the war and saw more dead bodies than you ever will. They aren’t any stranger than the living,” Mannila said pointedly. “I just wish I’d had more pluck and just gone on in with my pies. Then maybe Armi would still be alive.”

  Responding to that was difficult, because in a way it was true. She was the only one so far with any direct knowledge of the moments preceding Armi’s death. If the murderer were to hear about her testimony, Kerttu Mannila might herself be in danger. Had Ström’s boys realized that?

  When I brought up the issue, the old woman laughed.

  “But what do I know? I didn’t hear the murderer at all. I can’t even say for certain whether it was a man or a woman. Whoever it was spoke quietly, as if they were afraid someone would hear. Of course I thought it was Kimmo at first, that they were having a lovers’ quarrel, but now I don’t know…”

  If Ström was going to hold Kimmo and file charges based on Mannila’s testimony, he was on shaky ground. If only I could find someone who could confirm that Kimmo had been back at his house by one o’clock. I guess I’d have to go drum up the witnesses myself, since the police seemed to be sitting on their hands.

  After arriving back at the office, the first thing I had to do was rush to reach the phone ringing in my office.

  “Hello, this is Elina Kataja. You left a message for me to call you.”

  “Yes. Thanks for returning my call. I wanted to chat a bit about Club Bizarre and Kimmo Hänninen. You do know Kimmo?”

  “Kimmo? Of course. Why? What’s it to you? Are you Kimmo’s girlfriend he’s always going on and on about?” Elina’s low voice was irritated and suspicious.

  I explained what had happened and that I needed to come up with some basis for my argument that sadomasochistic sexuality didn’t automatically make Kimmo a murderer.

  “Kimmo told you to talk to me?” Elina asked. “Dear Jesus. Will I have to go to court?”

  “No. Not yet, at least. If the prosecutor’s office decides to go to trial, that might be a different matter. Are you willing to confirm that Kimmo is a…masochist?”

  “No doubt about it,” Elina said with a laugh. “That was his problem. He wanted to do S&M with a dominant woman, but he didn’t want to cheat on his girlfriend because he loved her so much. When you called, I freaked out. I thought Kimmo’s girlfriend was calling to tell me to keep my hands off him.”

  “Why would she have done that? Was there something between you two?” I asked.

  “No! We did this one performance at a club party where I tortured Kimmo, but it was just foreplay. Letting people watch us have sex would have been against the law—and Kimmo’s morals. We’d have the cops down on us the second we started screwing in public…And like I said, Kimmo didn’t want to cheat on his girlfriend. He keeps this side of his life strictly walled off from everything else. He’s a prisoner of his sexuality and of Armi’s love at the same time. I doubt he talks about this stuff with anyone in his normal life, at least not since Sanna died. Kimmo’s sister, I mean.”

  “I knew Sanna. Was she a member of your club too?”

  “Kimmo got into the club through her. Sanna knew this guy, Otso. I think he’s still in jail. Anyway, Sanna was dating him for a while, and Otso brought Sanna to the club, and Sanna told Kimmo. But Sanna was different. For her this was all real. It was exciting but frightening at the same time.”

  “What do you mean by real?” I asked, remembering the slash marks on Sanna’s arms.

  “She wanted someone to hit her. I mean really hit, not just a little slapping for show. Not like…Ugh, I hate talking about this on the phone! Listen, we have a club party tomorrow night in this old warehouse downtown. Maybe if Kimmo gets out, you could come see firsthand what we do.”

  I am rarely at a loss for words, but that did it. My memories of the magazine images Ström had waved in front of my face were simultaneously intriguing and alarming.

  “You don’t have to dress up in leather or bring a whip,” she said, a bit tauntingly. “Come in jeans if you want. I’ll be easy to find—just look for the longest hair,” Elina said. I was puzzled that she was telling me about the club’s party so openly. I would have assumed outsiders weren’t exactly welcome. We agreed that I would call Elina back once I knew whether the court would decide to hold Kimmo and file charges, or release him.

  I hung up the receiver and did a mental inventory of my wardrobe. I did have that black leather skirt. Surely Antti’s sister had a sewing machine. The leather jacket from my punk days was still hanging in my closet. I could do up my hair and maybe put on some real makeup. The thought of attending an S&M party was sounding more stimulating by the minute.

  Eki interrupted my ruminations. Telling him about my last phone conversation without getting flustered was difficult. Taking notes, Eki kept his composure like the long-time divorce lawyer he was. I suppose life held few surprises for him anymore.

  After Eki left, I tried to do a little work on some of my other cases. Forcing my brain to focus on a libel suit was difficult, though, when I had sex and murder running around in my head. Especially when this particular defamation case was a farce starring two home appliance salesmen. The recession was getting the better of their businesses, and their solution was to try to sink each other in a ruthless war of words and imagined affronts. The roles of plaintiff and defendant were just a matter of who had happened to file the paperwork fastest.

  I forced myself to wade through the long list of complaints and then walked over to the grocery store to buy lunch. I dropped in at Makke’s sporting goods store to see if he had recovered from his weekend of bingeing yet. At our first meeting, Makke had claimed he drank only a couple of pints in the evening, but that standard seemed to have gone out the window.

  The store was summer boredom incarnate: the only customers were two little boys comparing baseball bats, while the radio softly burbled “Love Me Tender.” Leaning against the counter and looking in serious need of a beer, Makke responded to my greeting with only a dip of his head.

  “How do you feel?” I asked, though I could smell the answer from ten feet away.

  “Terrible. After you left, I went to Hemingway’s and sat on the patio until they closed, and then after that I don’t remember much. Have they let Kimmo out yet?” Makke turned the King up as if to prevent the boys from overhearing our conversation, although they were clearly interested only in the baseball equipment.

  “The court is considering that as we speak. What was the name of that friend of yours who came and told you about Armi’s death?”

  “Stögö. I mean Steffan Brandt. Why? Oh, I bet you want to hear how I reacted to the news, right? Is a defense lawyer’s job to find someone else to blame?” Makke’s cheek muscles tensed, his expression taking on a strange hardness. “What time was Armi killed? I don’t have much of an alibi. I came here to the shop at about one thirty, and I rode my bike right by Armi’s neighborhood. I stopped at the pizzeria around the corner to pick up a calzone to go. You can go ask the pizza dude whether I looked like I was out for blood.”

  “Your answers seem pretty well thought out,” I replied just as aggressively.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just worried some genius cop is going to decide I killed Sanna and now Armi. You never know what pigs will dream up.”

  Makke almost jumped into the air when the radio suddenly started blaring a heavy-meta
l song. He twisted the volume down because two middle-aged men were just entering the store.

  “I’m not accusing you of anything,” I hissed and then left, back to the office. However, what he had said bothered me: “I killed Sanna and now Armi.” After all, it could be true.

  I was just finishing an avocado when the phone rang again.

  “Hi, it’s Eki. Bad news. They’re going to keep Kimmo in custody. He’s asking for you. Take the Honda and get down here.”

  “What the hell?” I was so surprised I could have swallowed the avocado pit out of sheer consternation.

  “Some new evidence came to light. We’ll talk when you get here.”

  My hands were shaking as I started the car. I tried to keep my speed in check on the empty residential connector street that led downtown from our office. Where was the notorious cross-city traffic that meant we had to throw millions into building the Ring II beltway?

  The familiar duty officer led me to the interview room where Eki and Kimmo sat. Eki looked irritated. When he saw me, Kimmo jumped out of his seat as though he wanted to throw himself into my arms. I was wrong—when I hugged him, his body was stiff and he didn’t move to put his arms around me.

  “Why didn’t those damned idiots let Kimmo go?” I asked Eki as I sat down at the table and dug through my bag.

  His shoulders hunched and his feet dragging as if he were obviously guilty, Kimmo walked to the window. Had he succeeded in pulling the wool over my eyes after all?

  “The prosecutor wanted to continue conducting interviews and said they would likely file charges against Kimmo for Armi’s murder. The motive they’re proposing is an argument over sex, and they’re basing that on the conversation the neighbor overheard, Kimmo’s quote-unquote sexual perversion, and the forensic findings that Armi was likely strangled with gloves similar to the ones that go with Kimmo’s suit. The rubber suit also had fibers from Armi’s clothing and dirt from the lawn on it.”

  “But we have perfectly good explanations for the fibers and the dirt! And what the neighbor heard didn’t have anything directly to do with Kimmo. Why would Armi have said she was going to the police over a disagreement with her fiancé about their sex life? And Kimmo said he didn’t have the gloves with him. What if they were Armi’s own dishwashing gloves? Have they even checked the house for a pair of those?”