Sari returned to the table. “I got vanilla and rum raisin,” she announced. “Armi liked rum raisin with strawberry. Strange combination, don’t you think? The last time I saw Armi was a week ago when she was over at my place. I live just north of the sports park in those new buildings. But I called her on Saturday. I’ve wondered whether I should tell the police.”
“You called on Saturday? What time?” I didn’t bother to conceal my enthusiasm, although the reaction of pleasure I saw in Sari’s face nauseated me.
“Around twelve thirty. I was going to invite her to go into the city, but she said she had visitors coming and—”
“Did she say what visitors?” I said, interrupting unapologetically.
“Some Maria. Did she mean you? And then she had to call her sister.”
I made a mental note to ask Mallu about that call. Did it ever take place?
“How did Armi sound? Angry? Frightened?”
“Perfectly normal. I guess she and Kimmo had been fighting, but it wasn’t anything serious. Kimmo had just gone home.”
I guess my expression gave away how important that last sentence was.
“I wondered about that too,” Sari continued. “Did Kimmo come back?”
“You need to tell the police about this call. It could mean a lot for Kimmo.” I couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief. At least for Kimmo.
“Minna, when did you last see Armi?”
Minna looked uncertain. “A couple of weeks ago, I guess. I worked the night shift last week, and I don’t think we even talked on the phone the whole week. When I had seen her, we went to the movies and then had a glass of wine. Armi was obviously worried about something. She was quizzing me about pharmacology, asking me about different benzodiazepines.”
“What are those?”
“Sedatives, pretty mild. She said someone she knew was popping them like they were candy.”
Perhaps I needed to make the rounds of everyone’s medicine cabinets. Although drug abuse didn’t make anyone a murderer. Armi had worked in a private physician’s office, though. Was it possible she had been dealing prescription drugs?
“She talked to me about Sanna recently,” Sari said, butting in. “Kimmo’s sister, the one who drowned last spring. She was totally nuts, and she used drugs too. A couple of weeks ago, Armi came over for coffee and said she had had a fight with Kimmo about Sanna. Armi didn’t believe Sanna committed suicide.”
Sari was speaking so loudly that the people at the neighboring tables turned to look at us. Great—a confidential conversation about sex, murder, and drugs, with only half of one of the busiest cafés in the city listening in.
“Armi thought Sanna was murdered!” Sari yelled, even more emphatically. Minna looked scared.
“So who killed her?” I asked, more aggressively than necessary.
“Her boyfriend. That’s what Armi said. That Sanna’s lover murdered her.”
“Makke? Why? Did Armi say that to Kimmo?”
“She just said she and Kimmo had a fight because Kimmo thought Sanna committed suicide, but Armi was convinced she was murdered.”
I emptied my teacup, wishing something stronger had been in there. Armi believed that Makke killed Sanna. Why? Makke told me himself he talked with Armi a lot about Sanna. Did he let something slip? Did he just feel responsible, or was he confessing to killing her? I thought back to the bits of conversation Armi’s elderly neighbor had heard coming through the garden gate. What if Armi had been talking to Makke? I remembered the harried eyes juxtaposed with his boyish face, the bulging, veined muscles of his arms. Strangling Armi would have been easy for him.
Or did Armi mean she was going to call the police on someone else? Forensic analysis had shown liquor and drugs in Sanna’s bloodstream. What if Armi meant that Makke gave Sanna an overdose? Or could Armi have been talking about her own boyfriend, Kimmo?
“Armi was talking about Sanna’s boyfriend, not her own, right?”
Sari looked confused and then her brow wrinkled. “I don’t think she was talking about Kimmo. Why would she have been fighting with him?”
Oh, you have no idea, I felt like saying, but I left it alone. Sari’s story certainly opened up new possibilities—I would have to give Makke a closer look and ask Kimmo about this fight.
As a tram trundled by, the wind picked up, blowing a yellow plastic bag under the wheels. Women’s skirts tried to make for
the sky, where blue-black clouds were gathering in promise of rain. Soon nothing would be left of the cherry blossoms in the yard.
“You were Armi’s best friends. I only met her once. Can you help me understand: What kind of person was she, really?”
Again, Sari took the initiative.
“We were in the same classes all through school. Back then, she was always nice and a little quiet. No offense, Minna, but she was exactly the type who grows up to be a nurse. Always did her homework and came to school with her clothes neatly pressed. I’ve always been a chatterbox, as you can tell.” Sari smiled with apparent self-satisfaction. “And I guess Armi needed someone to stick up for her at school.”
“She didn’t seem at all shy to me,” I interjected. “Quite the opposite.”
“I was just getting to that. In junior high, she started to change. Yes, she was still meticulous, but she started to have a little more spirit. We ended up fighting a lot then and spent less time together—typical preteen girl stuff. We didn’t really become friends again until our senior year in high school. She still would get on my nerves sometimes; she could be really stubborn. And although I don’t like speaking ill of the dead, she was nosy too.”
“Was Armi a gossip?”
“She wasn’t a busybody at all,” Minna said quickly, as if fearing that Sari would interrupt. “She did always want to know about people and what made them tick, but she never talked behind their backs.”
“Armi definitely knew how to get people to talk. She knew everything there was to know about me,” Sari said.
I didn’t doubt that one bit. Sari struck me as the sort of person whose favorite hobby was talking about herself.
“Armi may have been a little tactless to be a nurse. She was a little too direct. She didn’t dress things up,” Minna explained. “That was why she did better working in an outpatient clinic like she did, where you only ever deal with one patient for a little while. She could never understand how I worked in a hospice surrounded by people who were all going to die. Armi wanted to heal people. That was why she had such a hard time with Mallu’s situation, that she couldn’t have children no matter how much she and her husband tried. Armi spent a lot of time studying medical journals and talking with Dr. Hellström about how to help her sister.”
“Did she talk to you about Mallu’s accident?”
“Several times,” Minna replied. “Armi blamed the driver of that car that almost hit Mallu for causing her miscarriage. In fact, she even mentioned it to me the last time we met. She said something strange like, ‘If only I could make it up to Mallu.’” Minna’s brow wrinkled. “She really did say ‘make it up.’ But the accident wasn’t her fault.”
A chill went through me as I recalled Mallu’s husband’s thinking that he saw Armi behind the wheel of the car that nearly ran them down. What if one of them really believed Armi was responsible for the loss of their baby?
“There is no way Kimmo killed Armi. Armi liked helping people, but she knew how to set her feelings aside when she needed to. If she had known something dangerous about someone, she would have gone straight to the police,” Sari said, still speaking too loudly.
More chills. Was Armi’s death my fault? Armi wanted to tell me something that someone else didn’t want me to know. Was it about the hit-and-run driver or Sanna’s murderer? Had that person been among us at the Hänninens’ party? I thought back
to that pleasant late-spring evening, trying to figure out which of the partygoers could be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“Well, if we’re going to think about other possible suspects for the murder, then I guess I should ask about your alibis too,” I said, trying to sound playful. “Where were each of you between one and two last Saturday afternoon?”
“At work,” Minna said quietly.
“Between one and two? I guess I was in Tapiola shopping,” Sari said angrily. “Is that a good enough alibi for you? I saw at least a dozen people I know, including Mallu. I guess I could have slipped away to strangle Armi at some point, but why would I have?”
“Was Mallu in Tapiola?” I remembered her claiming she was home the whole morning.
“Yeah, I saw her at the outdoor market looking at wild mushrooms. I remember because she said she couldn’t afford them living on unemployment.”
“What time did this happen?”
“I couldn’t say exactly. Maybe around one thirty.”
Mallu in Tapiola at one thirty looking at mushrooms? Would a person who had just murdered her little sister then calmly go off to do her grocery shopping? Who knew? I was starting to feel as though I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.
When we parted, I made Sari promise to contact the police with her side of the story. It was already nine o’clock at night—too late to go see Mallu again. The thought of returning home terrified me, though; I knew I had treated Antti unfairly, but I wasn’t in the mood to apologize quite yet.
The house was quiet, with no sign of Antti even in his office. Two flashes drew me to the answering machine. The first message was a direct recording from Antti, not a phone call: “Hi. I’m going for a walk.”
The second message was from Annamari Hänninen, her hysterical voice asking me to call back no matter what the hour. She wanted to talk about Kimmo. After considering for a moment whether I was really still up to calling her back today, I realized this would give me an opportunity to ask some questions I had about Sanna.
At first, Annamari seemed as though she wasn’t going to answer. Seven rings later, however, she picked up and whispered a frightened hello.
“Maria! Could you come over here right now? We have to talk. I know it’s late, but this is important.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” Throwing on my denim jacket, I jumped on my bike and set off pedaling.
The beauty of the evening seemed to demand a slower pace. Seagulls and ducks swam along the shore of Otsolahti Bay, and the dog walkers were out in force, their pets sniffing each other, tails of various sizes and lengths wagging excitedly. As I rode over Westend Bridge to the road that hugged the far shore, I admired the pillar of light made by the setting sun. A blackbird trilled, competing with the song of a finch, with doves and nightingales providing accompaniment in the background. The tiny yellow blossoms of the cloverlike bird’s-foot trefoil had already burst into flower along the shore.
For a moment, I thought about biking by the breakwater to see whether Antti was sitting in his favorite spot, but in order to save time I kept focused and stayed on the larger streets.
I had only once visited the house where Annamari and Kimmo lived, and then only downstairs in the sauna facilities. The location where the house stood was beautiful, opposite the water with a wide street separating it from the seashore. If this family had nothing else, they had plenty of money. I had always
appreciated how unspoiled and down-to-earth Antti was, and now I realized I could probably say the same for Kimmo. Neither of them had that self-assuredness that often accompanies growing up with lots of money, and in fact, just a pinch more of that might actually have done them both good. Insecurity and whining seem particularly unattractive in men, and this case I was working on seemed to have an overabundance of that type, especially if I counted Makke’s constant self-pity.
Coming to answer the door, which was arched by climbing roses, Annamari didn’t seem particularly self-confident either. Her usually perfect makeup now ran in smeared little streams into the wrinkles around her eyes. Her hands were in constant motion, flitting up to her hair, touching her shoulders and forearms, and then moving back to her hair as the tone of her voice oscillated almost as erratically.
“So lovely you could come! Tell me everything about Kimmo! Are they treating him properly? Why do they insist on keeping him in jail? My little Kimmo is no murderer.”
“Didn’t Eki Henttonen call you?”
“Yes, he did, but he wouldn’t really tell me anything. Men are like that. They don’t understand a mother’s feelings. Would you like a little cognac? I know I need some at least.”
Based on her breath, I could tell she had a good head start on me. No wonder. I hoped it would make her feel better.
“He was talking as if Kimmo is guilty,” Annamari said as she handed me a snifter nearly filled to the brim with cognac. At first, the contents burned the roof of my mouth and throat, but then they moved pleasantly down to my stomach in a warm stream. The finish was heavenly—I guess there really were differences in cognacs. Up to this point, I had never had the wherewithal to sample anything much above cheap one-star cut brandy.
“The police have found a lot of evidence against Kimmo. None of it will necessarily hold up in court though.”
“The police came today and rummaged through Kimmo’s things. They took a lot with them when they left.”
“What did the officers look like? Did they have a search warrant?” Apparently, Ström had beat me here. Irritating.
“One was big and rude, and the other one was smaller with red hair. They waved some piece of paper at me, and asked me all sorts of questions about Kimmo. Had I noticed anything out of the ordinary in his personality? Was he violent as a child? Did he have many girlfriends? Did I beat him?” Annamari shook her head, with good reason. That kind of questioning sounded just about right for Ström’s primitive grasp of psychology. Ström had decided that Kimmo was a deviant sex murderer, and now he was grasping for ways to support that hypothesis wherever he could.
“They also wanted to know where I was on Saturday. Was I able to prove when Kimmo came home? But I left for Stockmann in Tapiola at eleven and then went for my massage. I went to get the twins after their lunch so we could go into the city. I wasn’t home at all. If only I had known.”
“Exactly what time did you go to Risto and Marita’s house to get the boys?” I asked.