THE ELEVATOR DOORS open onto the sixth-floor corridor. Jessica can sense someone’s gaze: Teo must still be standing outside Laura Helminen’s room. She walks over to the nurses’ station, where the glass hatch slides back before she can knock on it.
“Yes?”
“Jessica Niemi, Helsinki police.”
A broad-faced woman looks at her suspiciously from behind a pair of thick glasses. Jessica reaches under her sweater and pulls out the badge hanging around her neck. She slips it through the hatch, and the nurse studies it carefully. Which she should, of course.
“Laura Helminen, room fourteen. She was brought here by ambulance a couple of hours ago,” Jessica says, looping the lanyard around her neck again.
“Yes . . . she came to us directly from the ER.”
“I’d like to know where her belongings are. Her clothes and so on . . .”
“Her clothes?”
“I lent her my coat to keep her warm. . . .”
“Just a moment.” The woman draws the hatch shut, as if she doesn’t trust Jessica not to steal her stapler and markers. Then she rises slowly from her chair and ambles lazily into the back room.
Jessica looks around, on a whim pumps a few squirts of hand sanitizer into her palms and furiously rubs them together. She doesn’t really have a phobia when it comes to germs; after all, she has spent plenty of time in hospitals and morgues due to the nature of her work. But right now she has a dread of inaction, of standing around twiddling her thumbs. Since yesterday, she has felt naked and vulnerable, a target: that’s why she doesn’t want to stop, wants to keep moving. A moving target is harder to hit. All the victims have resembled her in a number of ways: the women have been relatively young, dark haired, slim. Furthermore, she knows she has enemies. Last October, she received some measure of publicity after being the principal investigator in a case in which two members of a motorcycle gang were arrested on suspicion of murder. But the more Jessica thinks about it, the surer she is that whoever is behind these witch hunters, it’s not gang members with a grudge or anyone else Jessica might have ticked off by sending them to prison. Seeing the horned figure on the ice has revived an incident she has been trying to forget for nearly fifteen years.
“My colleague says the coat was already picked up.”
The words sink gradually into Jessica’s consciousness, and it takes a few seconds before she can formulate her thoughts into words.
“What? Who?”
“A man—”
“Why the hell would you give it to someone else?” Jessica feels herself losing her voice.
“Wait a second. I’ll ask—”
“Tell your colleague to come out here. This instant!” Jessica snaps, leaning against the counter. “And leave that hatch open!”
Alarmed, the nurse rises from her chair more speedily this time and disappears into the back room again. Jessica’s nose picks up the industrial odor of the antibacterial gel; it reminds her of regular visits to the doctor, X-rays, MRIs, cortisone shots, screws, braces, neurological tests, osteopathy, acupuncture.
“Where the hell is my coat?” Jessica demands, now almost at a shout, and bangs her fist down on the counter.
“Here, Jessie! I . . . picked it up for you.”
Jessica turns and sees Yusuf, stares at his fearful face for a moment. She sees the coat under his arm, the phone in his hand. Down at the end of the corridor, Teo has turned around to look at them.