Snow Angels

15

In the morning, I call the national chief of police to give him the update he asked for. He must have my name and number in his mobile phone and know it’s me when it rings. He wouldn’t be so rude if I were someone more important. He barks at me, “What?”

I bring him up to date on new developments, tell him about the three sets of DNA found on Sufia’s corpse.

“So she blew the Eklund boy before she got killed,” he says.

“And he has a BMW.”

“A tough situation,” he says. “His father could make our lives difficult.”

“Yeah.”

“Go question him, impound the vehicle and process it, but go easy, don’t arrest him unless you get hard evidence.” He hangs up before I can speak, a fucking annoying habit of his.

Kate still can’t get used to the idea that during her first year at her new job, she earned four weeks of vacation, not including a bunch of paid holidays. In this country, we work a lot less than most people in the world, an average of around two hundred days a year. Nature is close to the Finnish heart. Most of us like to spend a good portion of that free time in the countryside at a summer cottage. It may be a hut in the forest with no running water, it may be a palace, they all qualify as cottages.

In theory, time spent at a summer cottage is for picking wild mushrooms and berries, for going to sauna and swimming in lakes. In practice, a trip to a summer cottage is often an excuse for us to stay drunk for a week or two at a time.

Some of our more well-to-do also have winter cottages. Peter Eklund’s father has a winter cottage set atop a high mountain. It’s the most valuable piece of real estate in the area and resembles a small Teutonic castle, except that the entire front wall is made of glass. In the months that we have sunshine, the daylight flashing off it can be seen for miles.

I drive up the mountain along the winding road that approaches the Eklund winter cottage and park next to Peter’s BMW. It’s new, a black 3 Series sedan. I brace myself for the shock of arctic cold, get out of the car and check out his tires with a flashlight. They’re Dunlop Winter Sports mounted on seventeen-inch rims, just like Seppo’s. The only difference is that Seppo’s car has star-spoked wheels, and Peter’s are double-spoked.

I call for a tow truck to impound the car, then take in the view from the mountaintop. It’s cloudy, but no matter how dark it is, a little light always reflects off the snow. The world is cast in a charcoal silhouette. Thousands of lights from Levi and Kittila glitter in the valley below. It’s nine fifteen A.M., a good time to interview Peter. If true to form, he’ll be so hungover that he won’t be able to think straight enough to lie.

I ring the doorbell and wait. I ring it again. He doesn’t answer. Waiting in the cold pisses me off, so I push the button in and hold it down. The noise is annoying from outside. Inside the cottage, it must be making his head throb. After a few minutes, he opens the door.

Peter is tall and blond, with classic Nordic good looks. His clothes are rumpled and slept-in. “I-i-in-inspec-”

Peter stutters. When he’s nervous, he’s incomprehensible. When he’s drunk, the stutter disappears.

“I need to talk to you,” I say.

“Co-co-come… ” He gives up and nods.

I walk past him. The front room is vast, the ceiling looms three stories overhead. The other floors are constructed as balconies that look down into this space. The room is dominated by a central fireplace open on all four sides. A stone hood connects to a massive chimney that rises twenty yards before reaching the roof. The decor is late-twentieth-century bad taste: everything costs a lot of money, nothing matches. Peter’s father uses it as a fuck pad to get away from his wife in Helsinki. He lets Peter use it when he isn’t.

Three men are passed out on sofas, all in their early twenties. One opens an eye and looks at me. I tell him to go back to sleep. Peter looks queasy. “Bad hangover?” I ask.

“Y-y-es.”

A half-empty crate of Koskenkorva, Finnish vodka, sits in the middle of the floor. I pull out a bottle. “Got a place where we can talk?”

We go to the kitchen. It’s better equipped than some gourmet restaurants, although clearly unused. Empty bottles cover every surface and remind me of the bottles littering Sufia’s cottage. I open the Koskenkorva and hand it to him. “Drink it. I need to talk to you.”

He pours vodka and orange juice, fifty-fifty, in a glass and downs it, pours another. I make coffee while he gets drunk enough to communicate. He lights a cigarette, a Marlboro Light.

He finishes the second drink, makes a third. I pour myself coffee. We sit at an oak kitchen table. It has traces of white powder on it. I doubt Peter is much of a baker. It’s probably not flour.

“Feeling better?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about you and Sufia Elmi.”

“I saw the paper yesterday.”

“Then you should have called me.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“The autopsy turned up your semen in her mouth.”

I expect this to shock and frighten him. He shrugs. “She blew me that morning.”

“You’re pretty casual about it.”

“It’s no big deal. I met Sufia about a week ago, in Hullu Poro. I fucked her that night.”

“Where?”

He laughs. “Everywhere. In the women’s bathroom of the bar, in my car, in her cottage.”

“You don’t seem too sad that she’s dead.”

“Well, it’s not like I really knew her. I like to drink and fuck. Sufia doesn’t drink, but she likes-liked-to fuck. After the second time, she asked me if she could borrow some money. I knew what was up. Every time after that, I gave her one or two hundred. We always called them loans. I guess I met her to fuck like five times, stayed over at her place two or three times. It’s hard to remember.”

“You’re stating that you paid her for sex.”

He looks pleased with himself. “Inspector, she was worth every penny. She had this weird pussy, and Jesus, she loved to give head.”

“I take it you’re referring to her missing labia minora.”

“Her what?”

“Her vaginal lips. They’d been removed.”

“No shit?” He laughs again. “Whatever.”

Peter has to be the most worthless piece of garbage I’ve ever met. “Where were you at two P.M. on the day of her murder?”

He gestures toward the front room. “My buddies came in from Helsinki and their plane arrived about noon. I picked them up at the airport and we’ve been hanging out ever since. We were in Hullu Poro all afternoon.”

“How did you get to the bar?”

“In my car.”

“Do you know Seppo Niemi?”

“A little. I’ve met him in nightclubs in Helsinki and talked to him in Hullu Poro a couple times. Sufia was with Seppo when I met her. He got too drunk and left. Sufia told me she’d been seeing him. It didn’t bother me any, he’s a fucking dumbass.”

“Her room had a lot of empty liquor bottles in it. Were they all yours?”

He puts on a grin like a five-year-old. “Most of them anyway.”

“I have to take your car.”

The alcohol makes him overanimated. He stands up and raises his voice. “Hey, come on, I told you what you want to know!”

“Shut up and sit down.”

He does it.

“Since you had sex with Sufia in it, the car is a potential crime scene. I’ll give it back in a day or two.”

He gives me the keys. “It’s not fucking fair.”

“I might be saving your goddamned life by keeping you from driving, you drunk fucking bastard. Go back to sleep, I’m done with you.”

In the front room, I shake his friends awake. They won’t move, so I yell at them. They sit up and look at me like I’m insane. I point at one of them. “What time did your plane get in on Tuesday?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m a pissed-off cop who’s going to arrest all of you for the cocaine dust on the kitchen table if you don’t answer my goddamned question.”

The kid grimaces. Peter registers fear. I would take them all in, but the chief said no arrest without probable cause for murder. I figure I should trust his judgment on this.

“Yeah dumbfuck,” I say. “I saw it. You’re lucky I’ve got other things to do right now.”

“We got in at eleven fifty-eight,” the kid says.

“How did you get here from the airport?”

“Peter picked us up.”

“Were you with him all afternoon?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“In Hullu Poro.”

I check all their IDs and write down their contact information.

Their boots are in the foyer. “Which of these are yours?” I ask Peter.

He points.

I pick them up. They’re size tens, the same as the prints at the crime scene and the same size Seppo wears. He and Seppo also both smoke Marlboro Lights. “I’m taking the boots.”

He starts to say something, thinks better of it.

I open the front door. “By the way, you’re a registered sex offender. Who did you rape?”

“Nobody. She wanted it.”

“How old was she?”

He doesn’t even flinch. “Fifteen.”

I stare at him for a minute.

“I did my community service,” he says.