The Hummingbird (7 page)

After her shower, she listened to AGF’s song ‘Lonely Warriors’. A strange and fascinating soundscape of machines and human voices washed over the sofa where she lay wrapped in a towel, her wet hair a tangled mess on the cushions, like a solitary soldier in her barrack
at night after all her comrades had died around her. She was alone on the front line, she thought, alone in the universe.

She thought back to her time in the army. It had been a time of awakening, of finding direction. Of opening a door, and of closing one, because it was then that she’d finally realised she would stay in Finland. It hadn’t been a conscious decision but something that was inevitable.

She vaguely recalled what Áron had looked like in his khaki uniform as he had left home for the last time.

A lonely warrior.

Best to forget about it altogether.

She switched off the CD player and tried to go through the day’s events – without success. There was too much to focus on. She wouldn’t wish a first day at work like this on her worst enemy.

And just then something flashed inside her.

Fuck you. That’s what she should have said to him, perfectly amiably and without any hesitation, collegially, bloke to bloke. And then: Chief Inspector Virkkunen seems to have been reading too many swivel-eyed nationalist blogs before bed. Then she should have given a faint, nonchalant chuckle, just enough to give the impression that she might be joking, having a laugh, saying something apparently frivolous and insignificant. Though, of course, this was not the case.

That’s how she should have dealt with the day’s events.

But what with all her nervousness that morning it hadn’t occurred to her. Of course it hadn’t. And besides, would she have had the guts? To say such a thing to her boss? On her first day at work? Doubtful.

Anna couldn’t decide which was more infuriating: the fact that an appropriately snide comment always popped into your head too late or that she probably wouldn’t have said it anyway. After agonising over this for a while she fell into a restless sleep on the sofa, her hair still wet.

8

SUMMER
HAD
DECIDED
TO
LINGER
on after all. The chill of the previous few days had disappeared when Anna awoke on the sofa, naked, as the sunshine pushed its way between the slats of the blinds and crept across her eyelids. It was half past five. The towel, which had served as a blanket, had fallen to the floor, but, thanks to the morning sunshine, Anna hadn’t felt cold. She stretched her stiff limbs. A beam of light bisecting the room revealed specks of dust dancing in the air. Anna wanted to feel enthusiasm for the day ahead, the way she always did with new challenges; she wanted to jump up from the sofa and get straight to work. But instead she was worried.

There was something disturbing about the cases of both Riikka and Bihar. They had torn open wounds over which she had grown a thick, supposedly impenetrable layer of scar tissue. She was afraid that being a detective might yet prove too challenging for her. Practice was different from theory, and investigating cases was different from rounding up drunks on the street. What had she been thinking? That the way to move forward in life was to move back to this city, this damned suburb? In the morning light it seemed all the more clearly a regressive step, and the thought of Esko did nothing to ease her sense of malaise.

What’s more, she still hadn’t tried to contact Ákos.

With a sigh, she went to the bathroom and tried to comb the tangles out of her hair. Her thick, full head of hair, so coveted by Finnish women, was a curse when it dried on a cushion, uncombed. But this, too, she would simply have to survive.

*

Esko didn’t even bother greeting Anna over coffee, though the others happily wished her good morning; he simply sat po-faced drinking his black coffee and muttered something to Rauno that elicited an awkward chuckle. Again he looked dishevelled, and Anna thought she could smell the stench of old liquor on his breath when he was gripped by another coughing fit.

You’re nothing but a pathetic drunk, thought Anna, and a small glimmer of hope flickered within her. Bitter old alcoholics were nothing to be afraid of, and they were no match for Anna. The thought cheered her up.

Together they went through the previous day’s events, considered who the shooter might be. Rauno suggested it could be a hunter with mental-health problems. This sounded far-fetched, though they all agreed it was entirely plausible. Virkkunen told Anna to observe the autopsy by herself. Esko tried to object, claiming that this was technically his job. Virkkunen explained his decision in a tone of voice that left no one in any doubt as to who was the boss. He wanted to give Anna a variety of opportunities to acquaint herself with the day-to-day work of a criminal investigator, otherwise there was no way she could develop professionally. Esko could get on with other things. Anna almost felt the urge to decline, to say she would be happy for Esko to go, that she would have plenty of opportunities to observe an autopsy later on, that there were already so many new and fascinating things for her to learn, but she was unable to open her mouth. Virkkunen had that effect on people. Esko did nothing to hide his annoyance, but at least he managed to keep his mouth shut.

‘The victim had engaged in sexual intercourse on the day of her death,’ declared Linnea Markkula, the forty-something coroner who gave off an aura of musk, Anna’s favourite perfume.

Anna had hurried straight from their morning meeting to the coroner’s office, situated in the basement of the university hospital a few kilometres from the city centre. Linnea had already set to work in the tiled autopsy room, bathed in blue light and filled with the
smell of death, where the body of Riikka Rautio lay on a steel examination table.

Anna had packed her camera. She was wearing white protective scrubs with a paper mask over her mouth. Breathing through the mask felt difficult.

‘That would explain her legs,’ said Anna. She felt like pulling the mask away from her lips and taking a deep breath.

‘The what?’ asked Linnea.

‘Her legs. I noticed that her legs were very smooth, recently shaved. It stuck in my mind, because I always shave my legs in the shower
after
my run. And by the following afternoon the new stubble is already showing – on my legs, at least. Of course, Finnish women’s leg hair is different. It’s tamer.’

Linnea gave a smile and gently stroked Riikka’s shin.

‘I still can’t feel anything here. It’s a common misconception that hair continues to grow after death; it only seems that way because the skin retracts, so you would expect there to be some amount of stubble here by now. I imagine they were pulled out by the roots on the day of her death, with wax strips perhaps.’

‘She had a date with someone before her run,’ said Anna. Or maybe during her run, she thought.

‘Well, that sperm got inside her one way or another – and I doubt she’d just visited a fertility clinic. We should check that though, just to be sure,’ Linnea joked.

‘She could have been raped.’

‘There’s no evidence of that. You saw for yourself that none of her clothes had been removed by force. Her jogging bottoms and everything else were positioned perfectly normally on the body.’

‘Could the killer have pulled her trousers back on afterwards?’

‘In theory, yes, but I would have noticed. Re-dressing a body lying on the ground isn’t the same as pulling trousers on yourself. The underpants are always awkwardly crumpled up, for instance. And there are no signs of violence around the vagina either.’

‘What about elsewhere?’

‘Nothing except the blown-off head.’

‘Well, it’s not entirely blown off,’ Anna pointed out.

‘Right.’

For a moment the women looked in silence at the body of the young woman on the autopsy table. Anna photographed the full body. Bluish livor mortis had begun to develop around the chest and stomach.

‘What are those?’ asked Anna pointing to some faintly visible blotchy patches on the lower left shank, just above the hip.

‘Old bruises. They’re healing now, but they must have been pretty big. A few weeks old, I’d say. The position seems to indicate that she fell. When people fall on their side – if they slip on ice or fall off a bike – the resulting injuries typically affect the area around the hip.’

‘Shouldn’t there be something on her palms too, then? Don’t your hands hit the ground first when you fall over?’

‘Usually, yes. But she could have been wearing gloves. Or she might not have had time to put her hands out; that happens, too. But in that case there should be some marks on her left shoulder as well, and there’s nothing here.’

Anna tried to think back a couple of weeks. All she could remember was the relentless sunshine and record temperatures. Two weeks ago nobody was wearing gloves, not even at night. She zoomed in on the marks at close range, snapped three shots, examined the images, then photographed the hands.

‘Are you ready?’ asked Linnea. ‘Let’s take a look inside.’

Linnea opened up the body with a sense of confidence and routine. It looked so clean and easy, as though this wasn’t a real human being at all, someone who had been alive only a moment ago. As Riikka’s stomach and internal organs came into view, Linnea explained that people were always shocked to hear what she does for a living, and that in bars she generally said she was a doctor – or preferably a nurse. Telling someone you’re a pathologist or a coroner was likely to scare off even the most self-assured flirts, while calling yourself a doctor meant that half the bar expected you to be holding open
surgery over your pint glass. Being a nurse was a safe option. For lots of people it sounded just stupid and subversive enough to be attractive. The only problem was that Linnea wasn’t the least interested in the kind of men that would be interested in that kind of woman.

‘Five years as a single parent is starting to get me down. I need a man,’ Linnea chortled as she weighed the liver. ‘Even a quick bit of fun would do.’

That shouldn’t be too difficult, thought Anna as she watched the good-looking blonde at work. She was beautiful and well educated, and probably fairly affluent too. Not from Koivuharju, that’s for sure.

‘Nothing out of the ordinary here,’ Linnea concluded. ‘A healthy young woman, no pregnancies. She’d eaten a small portion of something a few hours before her death. Judging by the colour she’d washed it down with a glass of orange juice. I’ll take a closer look at the stomach contents later on. Internal organs all fine, intestines fine, no signs of drug or alcohol abuse. We’ll send of blood samples for testing, but I’m pretty sure nothing will show up. Lungs are clean – this girl didn’t even smoke. Well behaved, I’d imagine. Except for the sperm. I’ll extract the DNA, see if we can identify Mr X.’

Linnea continued somewhat more quietly.

‘The shower of bullets destroyed the head entirely. She died instantaneously. The shot came from right in front of her, and the shooter was so close that the barrel of the gun could almost have been touching her. Terrifyingly brazen, don’t you think?’

‘It certainly is. What about time of death?’ asked Anna.

‘The victim was discovered at nine in the morning. I arrived at the scene around midday. My initial estimate put time of death around ten o’clock the previous evening, and that still stands. Ten p.m., give or take an hour or so, because last night was so cold and wet. Funny time to go out jogging, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose,’ Anna sighed. It was late.

‘Join me for a drink on Saturday?’ asked Linnea as they pulled off their scrubs and masks in the coroner’s changing room.

Anna was almost taken aback. She drew a deep breath.

‘I can’t. My brother’s coming round,’ she lied and could feel herself blushing.

‘My kids are with their dad this weekend, and I’m not planning on lounging around the house. Bring your brother along, too. Is he as good-looking as you? Single? How old is he?’

The redness of Anna’s cheeks deepened.

‘Thirty-nine. And yes, he is single, I think. He can’t speak Finnish though.’

‘Doesn’t matter, I’ve got a first in body language,’ said Linnea with almost a cackle.

Anna tried to laugh with her, though all she wanted to do was run out of the room and make her way up into the daylight. Ákos and the doctor of pathology. The mere thought was a catastrophe waiting to happen.

Anna had lunch in a good Thai restaurant in the city centre and swore she’d never again poison herself with food from the station canteen. With the harmony of coconut milk and lemongrass still lingering on her tongue, she retreated into her office, uploaded the autopsy photographs to her computer and wrote up her notes. After this, it was time to prepare for the interview with Riikka’s parents. Virkkunen had told her to oversee the interview with Esko, but Anna had no intention of reminding him. She noted down a few key questions that she mustn’t forget, and otherwise decided to let the interview progress at its own pace. At the outset it was hard to put down anything too concrete. Most important was to get a broad overview of Riikka’s life and her circle of friends. That should take the investigation a long way. At the very least it would sprawl out around her like a battlefield around a lonely soldier. We’re going to need reinforcements, Anna guessed. This is going to be big.