THE FOLLOWING MORNING Anna was at the station before seven. After returning home the day before, her head about to explode and her body feeling like she had been beaten up, she had resolved to quit smoking and get back into active training. In the last few weeks she’d drunk more beer than was good for her, and she decided to swap her daily can of beer for a cup of rooibos tea. Anna had snapped her remaining cigarettes and put them in the bin, taken another painkiller and gone straight to bed. She had slept almost thirteen hours straight.
In all its brutality the second murder was shocking, but it had brought a new sense of energy to the investigation, which had started to stagnate. Perhaps it would be wrong to say that Anna was excited, but she felt a certain agitated tension as she stepped through the door of the Violent Crimes Unit, the same kind of tingling she felt before a running competition.
As always, Chief Inspector Pentti Virkkunen had arrived well before anybody else and asked Anna into his office.
‘How do you explain what happened yesterday?’ he quipped from behind his desk.
Anna felt a wave of irritation rising within her. If there was one thing she disliked, it was a snooty boss – and she made it clear in her voice.
‘It was my day off. It’s been marked in the rota since August. Surely I don’t need to be ready to come in on my day off? Or do I?’
She remembered that she was supposed to buy herself some new work clothes, which she realised she’d totally forgotten about. She gave her trousers a quick glance: the same pair of jeans she’d worn two days ago. And the same hoodie. Maybe life would be easier if she stopped comparing herself to the endlessly stylish Sari. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for power dressing.
‘Of course, we can’t demand that you make yourself available, but it’s still rather disappointing,’ said Virkkunen, and for a moment Anna thought he was talking about her work clothes. ‘It would have made a great deal of difference if you’d joined us first thing in the morning. To be perfectly honest, I’m counting on you for the success of this investigation. Anyway, I wasn’t referring to your obvious hangover. I want to know what you think about the new case.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she laughed, embarrassed. ‘Well, I haven’t really had time to give it much thought yet. But it doesn’t look good. The cases are so similar that we must assume it’s the same killer. We didn’t pay much attention to the necklace we found on Riikka. Of course, anyone could have pieces of jewellery in their pockets. But now that we’ve found an identical piece on the second victim, it seems important. It’s as though it has some special significance. It’s like a message.’
‘That’s what I thought too. It can’t be coincidence that two victims, killed in the same manner, are carrying identical necklaces. That pendant means something – but what? We have to find out. Fast.’
‘We’ll do our best. But there are very few officers on this case, and especially given that our workload has just doubled.’
‘What about Esko?’
‘What about him?’ she started, taken by surprise.
‘How are you getting on? Together?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I was thinking of your first day here. The meeting you didn’t attend.’
‘Esko didn’t tell me about that meeting!’ Anna could feel herself losing her temper. She didn’t understand the point of continually talking about this. Let bygones be bygones.
‘So you’re accusing Esko?’
‘Accusing him? I’m not accusing anyone. But it wasn’t a very nice thing to do.’
‘I noticed the two of you don’t exactly love one another. But are there any problems between you that might hamper this investigation?’
Anna thought about her reply. She looked at Virkkunen’s stern face, a face that seemed so ageless. Now was the chance to tell him what Esko was really like when they were alone, let him know about Esko’s racist attitudes. She thought of the altercation when they were outside smoking: lack of confidence in her work, spying on her, indirect communication, direct snide insults. Now she had the opportunity to explain why she didn’t want to work with Esko a day longer.
‘Nothing in particular,’ she said.
Virkkunen stared at her, the beginnings of a smile on his face. Anna had the strange feeling that this was some kind of test.
‘Do you think Esko has a drinking problem?’ he asked suddenly.
Anna was taken aback. What was this all about?
‘I don’t know. We don’t see each other socially. He does his work well enough.’
‘Does he drink at work?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
Anna felt uncomfortable. If Virkkunen knew as much as he seemed to, why didn’t he confront Esko directly?
She thought of Esko’s breath, which always stank of old booze in the mornings. The sip from the hipflask in the bushes. Still, for all she knew, it could have been fruit juice.
‘So everything is okay?’
‘Nothing to worry about. Except for the bumpy start, things have been going fine.’
Virkkunen gave Anna a sceptical, inquisitive look.
‘We’re drawing up the new rota this morning. Can we give you the same shifts as before?’
Anna squirmed in her chair. Virkkunen’s voice sounded as though this wasn’t a question; it was an order. Anna had a hunch – no, she was certain that if she now asked for the rota to be changed, that she was no longer prepared to work with Esko, she would be taken off the investigation altogether. Two days ago she had been frustrated with the case, but this new turn of events had aroused her interest. She was forced to admit that, more than anything else, she was determined to catch the bastard running around with a shotgun. Regardless of Esko.
‘I don’t see why not,’ she replied and was unsure whether she might live to regret those words. She glanced at the smiling face of a fair-haired woman in a tin frame on the desk. The woman appeared to be warning her of something.
‘Excellent, that’s what I thought, too. Now we can get started on establishing whether there was any connection between Riikka and this Ville Pollari. Did they know one another?’
Relief at the change of subject wiped away Anna’s sense of unease.
‘There must be a connection somewhere.’
‘We need to warn the public, give a statement. Citizens out on a run need to know that a madman with a shotgun might be lurking in the woods.’
‘It’s not just citizens that might be out running.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘There could be asylum seekers, Nokia employees transferred from abroad, an international ice-hockey player. They’re not all necessarily Finnish citizens…’
‘That wasn’t exactly my point…’
‘I totally agree. We could ask the public for information, anything people might have seen. The killer has to move around somewhere. Someone might have seen a car, a bike or something.’
‘This is getting out of hand. We need more people on this case,’ sighed the chief inspector.
‘…Then she chucked her guts up when I called for the umpteenth time.’ Esko’s derisive laughter could be heard behind the open door of the staffroom.
‘And what did she look like? Jesus Christ, as if she’d had food poisoning and an electric shock all at once. Seems she’d been up boozing until the early hours. We managed to get her out to the scene for less than an hour – the boys from patrol had to drive her.’
So he’s an old gossip too, Anna thought as she walked into the room. An awkward silence descended. Sari greeted her with a faint nod of the head, without looking her in the eyes; Rauno seemed to be concentrating on stirring his coffee.
Anna felt a surge of rage rising up inside her.
‘Just so you know, I just passed up the opportunity to tell the governor about your racist opinions. And I didn’t tell him about the bullying in the workplace, the drinking on duty, though he seemed very keen to know all about it. I didn’t breathe a word about all the mornings I’ve seen you drag yourself in shaking and stinking of not-so-old liquor, and I especially didn’t tell him about what I saw yesterday. I just pretended I had no idea what he was talking about.’
The silence deepened. The pipes behind the sink gurgled and footsteps could be heard out in the corridor. The entire police station was waiting, holding its breath.
‘Well, at least I’m always on time,’ Esko responded with a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Anna poured herself some coffee without saying anything. She repressed the desire to throw the cup at the wall.
‘Come on, Esko, it was her day off,’ Sari tried to smooth things over, but fell silent as Anna glared at her. We don’t owe that old wanker an explanation, her eyes seemed to say.
The painful silence would not abate. Rauno twiddled a spoon in the sugar bowl; Sari seemed suddenly absorbed in yesterday’s headlines on the front page of the newspaper lying on the coffee table. Esko glowered at Anna arrogantly, almost challenging her to a fight. Anna counted to ten, then calmly sipped her coffee.
I refuse to let this jerk provoke me ever again, she resolved. I will not give him the satisfaction.
‘Perhaps we should all focus on this case,’ she finally said after a moment’s pause, eyeing everyone in the room. Sari and Rauno nodded, relieved; Esko looked impassive. Perhaps he was even a bit disappointed, Anna noted to her own satisfaction. He’d been expecting her to lose her temper, to slam the door behind her and disappear into her office in tears.
‘As of yesterday, our workload has increased quite substantially,’ she continued without waiting for comment. ‘And I’m ready to get stuck in. Having a day off can really give you a boost. So – we have two, almost identical murders. What does this tell us?’
The people in the room looked at one another – all except Esko, who had started reading yesterday’s paper.
‘Somebody with a grudge against joggers,’ Rauno suggested.
‘A hunter with a grudge against joggers,’ said Sari.
‘I don’t really buy this hunter hypothesis,’ said Rauno. ‘I’ve called everyone on the hunting association members list, and none of them seemed remotely suspicious. Of course, you never know…’
‘There are plenty of non-hunters with access to hunting rifles,’ said Anna. ‘Just think how many family members and close friends each of those hunters has. At last in theory, almost everyone in the country probably has contact with firearms, right?’
‘As for guns per capita, Finland is pretty near the top of the list,’ Rauno admitted. ‘But guns are kept behind lock and key, or at least they should be.’
‘I’m sure family members know where the keys are,’ said Anna.
‘Sure. But in my own experience, people involved in hunting teach their kids about gun safety from an early age. These people know what firearms are capable of. They respect guns, they’re careful. I think it’s unlikely that your average hunter would be running amok with a shotgun. It’s more likely to be some computer nerd, someone a bit detached from reality.’
‘Well, it’s a sick person we’re looking for, that much is clear,’ said Anna. ‘A hunter could suddenly snap and lose his mind.’
‘Yes, but I strongly doubt it,’ Rauno replied with a smirk.
‘It’s a wild woodsman,’ said Sari. ‘But hey, do these victims have anything in common apart from their interest in running?’
‘Nothing obvious. This time the victim was a man,’ said Esko, and on a whim Anna gave him a friendly smile.
He was taking part in the conversation, despite their altercation.
He pretended not to notice her smile.
‘And older than Riikka. This Ville is, was, twenty-eight, married with a steady job. Baby on the way, too,’ said Rauno.
‘Riikka was an occasional jogger trying to lose a few kilos. Ville regularly took part in local orienteering competitions, probably went running every day,’ said Esko.
How did he know that, Anna wondered.
‘Both were killed near the shore. One to the south of the city, one to the north,’ she said.
‘It must be the same killer,’ said Rauno. ‘The same round of ammunition and the same pendant in their pockets. It’s the same man.’
‘Or woman,’ said Sari.
‘The pendant is interesting,’ said Anna. ‘Can anyone tell us more about it?’
‘I examined it quite thoroughly yesterday, and it looks like junk, the kind of stuff made in China and sold to tourists halfway across the world. The black disc with the image of the old man is actually plastic and the strap is made of fake leather,’ said Rauno.
‘Why didn’t we take it seriously when we found one in Riikka’s pocket?’ Anna asked.
‘For crying out loud,’ Esko snapped. ‘It would have been odd if we had reacted to it. There’s nothing suspicious about an individual piece of jewellery. Now that there are two of them, things are different – it’s clear that they mean something. Either the shooter placed the pendant in their pockets or both victims belong to a … cult or something.’
‘We should show it to Riikka’s friends and parents,’ said Sari.
‘I think this is the kind of information we should keep to ourselves,’ Esko commented. ‘Rauno, try and find out everything you can about it: where it’s manufactured, where it’s sold and what the image means. Let’s think carefully about what information we give to the public. There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, a special offer for anyone buying a tracksuit, something like that.’
‘Quite a strange special offer – and coincidentally found on both victims? No way,’ said Rauno with a shake of the head. ‘But I’ll look into it.’
‘Do you think we have a serial killer on our hands?’ Sari finally put into words what nobody had dared to say.
Again, the staffroom fell silent.
‘There hasn’t been a third murder yet – to our knowledge, that is,’ said Anna. ‘According to the FBI, three is the magic number.’
‘A serial killer sounds like something from American trash fiction, but you’ve got to admit there’s something pretty sick about these cases. This isn’t just drunks beating each other to death,’ said Sari.
‘Definitely not,’ Rauno agreed.
‘We’ve got to find this nutcase,’ said Sari. ‘Before we do find a third body.’
‘We have to find a connection between them. There must be something linking these two people,’ said Esko firmly.
‘I agree,’ Anna conferred. ‘And when we find the connection, we’ll find who did this. We’ll have to interview everyone again. Riikka’s friends and parents. Jere. Ville’s wife, colleagues, neighbours, orienteering friends, hunters and anyone living near the two running tracks. Thankfully Virkkunen is assigning more officers to this case.’
‘Really?’ Rauno sounded relieved.
‘Well, he mentioned it at least. And we’re going to ask anyone who might have seen or noticed something to come forward. There’s going to be a press conference this afternoon.’
‘And who’s going to go through all the extra information?’ Esko muttered.
‘What if Ville was Riikka’s new mystery man?’ Sari suggested.
‘Yes,’ Anna cried. ‘That’s a thought. Of course, Linnea will take DNA samples from the body; we’ll be able to cross-reference them with the sperm found on Riikka. If it’s a match, that would explain a lot. It might even provide a motive.’
‘For Ville’s wife, sure,’ said Esko.
Virkkunen stepped into the room and poured himself a coffee.
‘Anna and Esko: I want you to go to Asemakylä. You’ll have to talk to the second victim’s wife.’