The Hummingbird (37 page)

‘We all do. I’m sure we’ll find him in perfectly good condition. Perhaps he’s already on his way home. Maybe he bumped into an old friend while he was out running and they decided to go for a drink somewhere. Something like that. This happens all the time, you know.’

‘Yes, you’ve already said that.’

There was a chill in Kaarina’s voice that sent a shiver down Anna’s spine. She decided to wait and hear what the patrols found out. Going directly to Kaarina Helmerson’s house would be futile. Everything was probably just as she had explained.

Why was murder the first option that occurred to her? Why was it that she believed her own explanations least of all?

Esko went into the staffroom. Anna followed him.

They drank their coffee in silence. Anna’s eyes kept trying to press themselves shut and her head was buzzing. Again, she hadn’t got to sleep until the early hours. How many times had she dragged herself into work on only a few hours’ sleep? How long could she carry on like this? She glanced at Esko; he too looked tired.

‘Sleep well?’ she asked on the spur of the moment.

‘What? Are you taking the piss?’

‘No, not at all. Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

‘You say sorry a lot.’

‘Well, sorry for that too.’

Her phone rang.

Anna pressed the green receiver icon, raised the phone to her ear and listened without saying anything. Then she nodded and ended the call.

‘Well, say something, for Christ’s sake. Have they found him?’ Esko demanded impatiently.

‘Yes.’

‘Jesus. Where?’

‘The same place we found Riikka. Shot to pieces. Huitzilopochtli in his pocket. The third victim.’

‘Fuck me.’

There was something different about the area around the Selkämaa running track. It wasn’t to do with the autumn, now well on its way, or the bright scattering of dried leaves on the ground, the bare branches or the overcast sky, which the sun would no longer grace with warmth this year.

Anna noticed it immediately.

It was to do with the victim.

Though the previous victims had looked shocking, they both seemed relatively tidy compared to this. At least they had only been shot.

Now something more had happened.

The deceased man was lying on his stomach. Anna cautiously approached the body, trying to keep breathing steadily, though all she wanted to do was run away – fast.

The man had been shot in the head from behind as he lay on the ground. This was clear from the bloody hole in the ground beneath his head, carved out by the force of the shot. The brain and most of the head had dripped into the hole and soaked into the soft sawdust covering the ground. There was virtually no nauseating brain spatter. The scene would have been almost bearable had there not been blood everywhere, as though it had been thrown around with a bucket. The back of the victim’s tracksuit top was ripped and slashed and entirely blackened with blood. These marks had not been caused by the blast.

Once the victim had been examined in the position in which he was found, they turned him over. The reason for the large amounts of blood became apparent immediately. The man’s chest and stomach had been struck multiple times with a sharp object, most probably
a knife with a long blade. The upper abdomen was riddled with puncture wounds. It was as though Huitzilopochtli had sought to tear out his victim’s organs. The position of the body and the abundance of blood spatter indicated that the mutilation had taken place first, then the man had been executed with a single shot to the back of the head. What’s more, the killer had tried to set the man’s tracksuit bottoms on fire, but the rain seemed to have stopped the fire catching.

The killer was not satiated. Quite the opposite.

Anna felt sick.

You damn scrubland, you boring and tedious landscape. Now’s the time to speak up, she whispered, leaving the forensics team and the coroner to get on with their work and walking off down the running track to examine the terrain along the edges of the path. The thicket leaves had dried and fallen to the ground. The willows jutted upwards like clumps of jagged wicker, the pine forest behind them was silent. The presence of the sea could be felt, nothing but a distant sense if you listened carefully. Dark-red lingonberries waited here and there to be plucked. Anna tasted one. They were good; the overnight frost had done its job.

When Anna had walked just over a kilometre, the path swung very close to the shoreline. The rush of iron-grey waves across the autumnal sea could be heard clearly. Anna looked out towards the sea. The wind whipped water into her eyes. If there had been flocks of sheep to clear the shrubs, as there had been centuries ago, she would have been able to see the shore, she thought. A white seagull braved the chilled air. Anna wondered how long it was planning on staying so far north. She gathered a handful of lingonberries and tasted the sweetness brought to them by the hoar frosts. I still haven’t managed to get out berry picking, though I’d planned to, she thought and turned her back to the sea and the wind. From that angle she saw in the distance a strange bulge in the terrain at the point where it formed a small hillock, almost hidden with twigs and thicket. As Anna clambered closer, she saw that the hillock was formed by two
large boulders, now covered with moss and undergrowth that had sprung up from the build-up of soil and earth on top of them. Anna tensed as she stepped around the boulders. On the northern face of the boulders, the covering of moss had been torn as though someone had climbed up the rock. Anna followed the marks. Above the boulders the willows formed an impenetrable wall. When the trees were in leaf, the shelter from the wall would be perfect. Anna sat down on the damp moss, not caring about the moisture seeping through her trousers. The tangle of twigs in front of her face was thinner at this angle. At this height there was a gap in the willow, from which you looked down diagonally on to the running track a few hundred metres away. Of course, now it was easier to see through the bare branches, but the leaves had only just fallen. Though Anna was no expert, she could see clearly that the branches here hadn’t snapped by themselves. The breaks were too clean, too smooth, clearly pruned with a set of cutters. A shiver ran down her back.

She remained sitting there, watching the running track, and ran her hand across the boulder’s ancient covering of moss. Its soft, moist surface had a calming effect. After a moment she saw Esko approaching from the left. Anna sat there, motionless, and stared at Esko who was walking briskly, glancing around, seemingly wondering where she was. Absent-mindedly Anna’s finger found a small hole in the moss. She stuck her fingertip into the cool of the hole. Something rustled. Anna took a pair of latex gloves from her pocket and carefully tugged a piece of paper out of the hole. A sweet wrapper. And another. Mariannes. Someone had sat here before her, looking through the gap in the willows at people jogging along the track, eating Mariannes. Another shiver, more violent than the first, made Anna’s body quiver.

Anna cautiously took out her phone and called Esko. She heard his phone ringing somewhere beneath her.

‘Look up,’ she said. Esko turned his head but didn’t notice Anna until she stood up and started waving her arms.

‘Get Forensics up here,’ she spoke into the telephone.

*

Kaarina Helmerson lived about a kilometre from Riikka’s home. She didn’t look surprised as she opened the door of the white-brick detached house to Anna and Esko. Though she was probably approaching fifty, Kaarina was still an impressive sight. A pair of slimfit jeans accentuated her long legs and the beige wrap-round cardigan revealed her slender waist, a white top showing off her ample breasts. Anna noticed Esko standing up straighter and running his hand through his hair, checking himself in the hall mirror. Anna went to shake the woman’s hand. Kaarina’s face was now blotchy from tears and worry. Her hand was cold and the handshake weak and limp.

‘You don’t need to say anything. I don’t want pleasantries or condolences. I know. My husband is dead. I can feel it inside; I’ve felt it ever since I came home this morning. After 27 years of marriage, you just know these sorts of things,’ said Kaarina Helmerson, expressionless.

Anna nodded. She took out her camera.

‘I have a few photographs here. I must warn you, they are quite shocking, but obviously we have to be sure this is your husband.’

Kaarina Helmerson took the camera. She flicked through the photographs, her face impassive, and handed the camera back to Anna. Tears were running down her cheeks.

‘Good God,’ was all she could muster.

Anna and Esko waited. Kaarina had closed her eyes and her body had begun to tremble. Her breathing was shallow and agitated. Anna was getting ready to fetch the first-aid kit from the car, in case the woman started hyperventilating, but then Kaarina took a few deep breaths in and out, opened her eyes and spoke calmly.

‘It’s Veli-Matti. Please, come in. I know you have to interview me, interrogate me. I’ve made some coffee. Or would you prefer tea?’

Kaarina gestured them into the stylishly fitted white kitchen, where the aroma of freshly brewed coffee lingered in the air. The room was bare and clinical, like something straight out of the pages of an interior-design magazine. An enormous espresso machine stood on the counter.

‘Do you have any children?’ Anna asked.

Kaarina seemed startled. It took a moment before she answered. She hadn’t expected this question.

‘No. We wanted some, but that was all a long time ago.’

‘How did that affect your marriage?’ Anna was surprised by her own line of questioning.

‘What’s it got to do with anything?’ Kaarina snapped.

‘I don’t know. Our job is to ask … all sorts of things,’ Anna explained, trying to find a friendly tone.

‘Very well. It brought us to something of a marital crisis, but as I said, this all happened about twenty years ago. We almost divorced over it, actually, but as time passed we came to accept the situation and realised that through our work we were able to share the love that we thought we should have given our own children. It was a very liberating realisation, and it’s motivated both of us in our careers. Watching our friends’ exhaustion, the stress, the rushing around, we eventually felt a sense of gratitude for having no children. We haven’t had to cut back on any hobbies, holidays, anything. Of course, you can’t really say these things out loud, at least not to their faces.’

Kaarina gave a dry laugh and sighed deeply. Anna was perplexed at how calm she seemed.

‘Did you know Riikka Rautio?’ asked Esko.

Kaarina looked at him sternly and answered instantly.

‘Terrible, isn’t it? We were absolutely shocked when we heard – what a nice girl. Riikka graduated from our school last spring. I know her parents, though not particularly well. Round here everybody knows everybody else, at least by name, and as teachers we obviously know all the families with children.’

‘Did your husband ever teach Riikka?’

‘I can’t remember. I’m sure he would have mentioned it when Riikka died.’

‘So he didn’t say anything?’

‘No, though we talked about it a lot.’

‘Did you ever teach her?’

‘Yes. I was her Finnish teacher.’

‘Throughout high school?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about Virve Sarlin and Jere Koski?’

‘Virve was in the same class. I’ve never taught Jere, though I know who he is.’

At last, some kind of connection, thought Anna. Two murders have happened in the same location, and two of the victims at least knew one another, lived in the same village, the place where everybody knew everybody else.

‘Do you also know a Ville Pollari from the village of Asemakylä near Simonkoski?’

‘Who is he?’

‘Victim number two.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘Take a look at this photograph of him. Perhaps you have met one another somewhere?’

Kaarina held the photograph in her hand and stared at it for a long while. Ville, smiling and alive.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen him. What was his name again?’

‘Ville Pollari.’

‘What did he do for a living?’

‘He was a software engineer at Nokia, worked down town.’

Kaarina thought hard for a moment, then answered unequivocally.

‘I haven’t heard that name and I’ve never seen that man before.’

‘What about your husband?’

‘I don’t know. In addition to our common friends, we have friends of our own, though of course we each know most of them by name. I don’t recall my husband ever mentioning that name. Was he a jogger too?’

‘Yes. He was an orienteering enthusiast.’

‘Veli-Matti always went running by himself. It was his way of emptying his thoughts, of forgetting work. I don’t think Veli-Matti knew this man, though I can’t be sure.’