JESSICA IS BASICALLY a prisoner. She is not free. But first thing tomorrow morning, she will leave her home and continue living her life as if nothing has happened. Return to work, to her workstation at police HQ, go wherever she wants, and give zero fucks about all the horned creeps out there who are trying to frighten her.
Jessica looks at her studio’s white ceiling, where nascent cracks are forming, despite Fubu’s having painted it in January. The ski bum who boasts a cabinetmaker’s training spent an entire two days on the job. Although he’d demanded to do the work for “payment in pizza and pussy,” Jessica forced him when he finished to accept a hundred-euro Stockmann gift card she claimed to have won at a workplace raffle. Ultimately, Fubu’s exertions might have caused more harm than good, as the smattering of white paint sprinkles on her wood floor reminds her.
The phone rings; Erne has finally decided to call back.
“What the hell, Erne? I’ve called you at least four times—”
Erne’s voice is tired, almost flat. “I had to give a little press briefing on the von Bunsdorf development. Have you talked to Yusuf?”
“Yes. He’ll be here soon.”
“Did you have something new?”
“I’ve had some time to think, Erne,” Jessica says, rising from the sofa. “If the victim’s rigor mortis was at its peak at the moment he was found, that means he’d been dead for—”
“Nine to twenty-four hours. What about it?”
“Roger Koponen. Yusuf found the victim at six thirty. Koponen left the Kulosaari metro station at eight sixteen a.m.”
“Are you saying Koponen rang the doorbell and casually stoned von Bunsdorf to death?”
“Who knows? Maybe the conversation turned to politics.”
“That’s always risky.”
“Koponen is alive, goddamn it, and is up to his ears in this case. Who says it wasn’t Koponen himself who was playing Halloween out on the ice or terrorizing Laura Helminen down in that basement?”
“You’re right. Besides, Koponen might well have known von Bunsdorf. They’ve lived a few hundred meters from each other for a couple of years.”
“Maybe that’s why von Bunsdorf let him in.”
“Even though he and his wife were reported dead on the morning news?”
“According to our latest theory, our worthy psychiatrist believed in the goat god of fertility. I don’t know why he wouldn’t believe in ghosts or angels. Or the Dead Writers Society.”
“It’s Poets, but you have a point.” Even though Jessica can’t see Erne’s face, she knows he’s rubbing his forehead pensively. “How about you? Everything OK there?”
Jessica sighs and walks over to the window. She hears Erne step outside, the rush of wind in the phone’s microphone.
“There haven’t been any goat man sightings on Töölönkatu, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
“I could get back out in the field right now.”
“But you won’t,” Erne says. The sound of a cigarette lighting. The lighter’s lid clicks shut.
Jessica closes her eyes. “You don’t sound good, Erne.”
“I don’t sound good? Am I on the fucking Voice of Finland or something? Is Jessica Niemi’s chair going to turn around?”
“I’m just saying. I’ll talk to you soon.” Jessica hangs up.
She turns on her laptop and opens two news sites from the bookmarks. The clickbait is firing on all cylinders, competing for catchiness and cleverness.
Witch Will Be Next . . . Serial Killer Strikes Again . . . Exclusive! Coven in Kulosaari?
The amount of social pornography that has been mined from the cases is downright unbelievable. On the other hand, if you think about the crimes that have taken place over the last twenty-four hours, you could say there’s a lot that’s still hidden from the general public.
Jessica tears a page out of her notepad and sharpens her pencil. Even though iPads and other electronic note-taking devices have made massive inroads in investigative use, Jessica still trusts in the traditional tools of the trade. She has just printed out the dissertation Yusuf e-mailed her; she sets it down on the table and flips to the back to see the number of pages.
Two hundred thirty. Goddamn it.
The buzzer sounds, a dead ringer for the caw of a crow. Jessica wonders whether the men from the Security Police will recognize Yusuf, or if her phone is going to ring again in a second. Or is he already in handcuffs, cheek pressed to the icy asphalt?
Jessica walks across the room and over to the buzzer. “Hello?”
“Malleus Maleficarum, motherfucker.”
The whispering voice bursts out laughing before Jessica can even register what she’s heard.
“Loser,” Jessica says, and presses the button to open the door.
YUSUF SITS DOWN, places a green plastic folder on the table, and looks at his palms. He seems tired and distracted.
“Everything OK?” Jessica asks, carrying two cups over to the table: coffee for Yusuf, rose hip tea for herself.
“No. Have a look at these,” Yusuf says, opening the folder. Jessica reaches for the photographs and spreads them across the table. They show an armchair and a figure in it, covered in blood from head to toe. The face has been battered beyond recognition.
“Oh my God,” Jessica whispers, because that’s what you’re supposed to say when you’re presented with something so horrific. The truth of the matter is, the pictures of the man who was stoned to death don’t stir up emotional turmoil in her. At most, the ugly images are part of a natural continuum that includes not only the crime spree that began the day before, but all the homicides Jessica has investigated over the years.
The man with the crushed, shapeless face is dressed in a dark blue bathrobe. A few rocks are caught between the shoulder and the backrest; the kinetic energy of the recoil from von Bunsdorf’s skull wasn’t powerful enough to propel them to the floor.
“Where are the rocks from? The yard?”
“Hard to say, with the snow covering the ground. But I know a place where you could collect rocks like that by the bucketful.”
“The Koponens’ shore. If it weren’t covered in ice.”
“Exactly,” Yusuf says, leaning back in his chair.
“What’s your hunch? Did Roger Koponen stone this guy to death himself?”
“That was my immediate reaction. Koponen was seen in Kulosaari that morning, which makes him a potential suspect.”
“The thing I still don’t get is why.” Jessica takes a long, deep sip of her tea. “What’s Roger Koponen’s ultimate goal here? He knows he’ll be caught at some point. He can’t just stage his death, play hide-and-seek with us, then go underground. He’s a public figure who’s going to be recognized. Even abroad.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a choice. Maybe the witch hunters are blackmailing him with something.”
“With what? They started by killing his wife. I’d say that’s a pretty shit strategy if you’re planning on blackmailing someone. Eliminate your best leverage at the get-go.”
“What about money? Koponen is a multimillionaire.”
“Like how? ‘If you don’t stone the old guy down the street, you’ll have to pay us a million euros’?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’d think that even a prick like Koponen places a higher premium on his wife’s life than a million euros,” Jessica says, then pauses to reflect on what she’s just said. She’s just talked about money as if having it makes one less human. She does this a lot. It’s integral to her disguise but inevitably makes her feel like a hypocrite.
“I think we still have two possibilities here. Either Koponen is one of the witch hunters, or someone else is calling the shots—”
“In other words, he’s involved. Voluntarily or not.”
“Otherwise he would have contacted the police.”
“No doubt.” Jessica sinks into her thoughts. “Unless he was avenging his wife’s death?”
“So von Bunsdorf killed Maria Koponen?”
“Yes. And Roger knew somehow. And he marched into the guy’s house and . . .”
Jessica shuts her eyes, and Yusuf seems to do the same. The minutes pass as they sit in silence, collecting their thoughts and sipping their drinks. Jessica writes down the names of the victims, the locations of the crimes, and other random details that occur to her. Her hands sketch out a map of remarkably straight lines, symmetrical circles, and rectangles.
Eventually Yusuf speaks. “I’m starting to lean toward Micke’s argument.”
Jessica lowers her pencil to the table. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe we should bring in Karlstedt and Lehtinen.”
“There’s no point in us worrying about that. That’s Erne’s decision to make.”
“Or, in this case, not make.”
“Erne isn’t incapable of making decisions, Yusuf. Just the opposite. He made the decision that we’re going to wait. Maybe we’ll find out something from the phone monitoring.”
Yusuf shakes his head almost imperceptibly; he plainly disagrees. Another period of silence follows as they browse through the photographs and drum their fingers against the varnished wood tabletop. Yusuf pulls a sheaf of documents from the bottom of his folder: the reports and transcriptions of the questionings of the victims’ loved ones.
“You get anything from that?” Yusuf asks, nodding toward Blomqvist’s dissertation.
“Oddly enough, yes . . . I think so.” Jessica turns back one of the pages she has marked. “Everything in this dissertation culminates in cats.”
Yusuf chuckles. “Cats? Why didn’t I think of that?”
“According to this study, there’s a remarkable correlation between families who have children diagnosed with serious mental health issues and having a cat as a pet.”
“I mean, I’m more of a dog person myself, but cats don’t drive people crazy, do they?”
“It’s a simple equation. The toxoplasma parasite spreads from cat feces to humans, and those infected are twice as likely to suffer from, for instance, schizophrenia.”
“Schizophrenia?”
“Which is an illness treated with antipsychotics manufactured by none other than Neurofarm.”
“The link grows stronger. But it’s still shaky. Did Albert von Bunsdorf treat schizophrenia patients?”
“We don’t know yet. But we’re going to have to look into it.”
“I was thinking, based on what Rasse told us, that this Albert von Bunsdorf is a pretty clear case, with his goat statues . . . that the motive would have been heresy. But Maria Koponen and Lea Blomqvist don’t seem to have any unusual interests or beliefs. Not to mention our police chief from Savonlinna, Sanna Porkka, who just seems to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Based on appearance alone, Porkka doesn’t fit in with the other victims.” Yusuf digs into the pocket of the folder and pulls out more photographs, this time of a charred figure tied to a tree. “What about him?”
“Mr. X.”
“According to Sarvilinna’s report, male, about forty.”
“Who no one has missed yet.”
“A day isn’t very much time. Especially if the person in question lives alone.”
“I doubt Mr. X was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The location of the murders is so remote that in order to end up there at exact clock strike you’d have to be the unluckiest berry picker in the world.”
“And dumbest. Wild strawberries are few and far between this time of year.”
“Exactly.”
“He must have been in Karlstedt’s Cayenne the whole time,” Yusuf says.
“Or in Roger Koponen’s trunk,” Jessica shoots back, and the thought seems to disturb Yusuf.
“Mr. X’s probable cause of death,” Jessica continues, scanning Sarvilinna’s report, “is cardiac arrest, in these cases often caused by a pain-induced surge of adrenaline. In addition, there’s burning in the lungs. So he was still alive when he arrived at the scene and was burned alive. Apparently the teeth were removed after he was burned.”
“Maybe the whole thing came to him as a surprise. Maybe he’d been sitting in the Cayenne with Karlstedt and Lehtinen the whole time and thought they were going to eliminate Koponen together. But then the conductor decided to have the musicians switch seats. Who knows? Maybe it came as a surprise to Koponen as well.”
Jessica stretches her neck. “That’s not such a far-fetched idea. Maybe Koponen was forced to watch while Porkka and Mr. X were tied to the trees and burned. Maybe he was convinced to join in the game by being assured that the same fate awaited him if he didn’t play along.”
“They turned Koponen into a marionette who does what he’s told. That would explain why he didn’t know to avoid the CCTV cameras at the metro station. Maybe he’s terrified, and the notion that the police could track his phone’s location simply doesn’t occur to him.”
“That makes sense otherwise, but Koponen looks calm on the camera. Hands steady, a face like the Mona Lisa.” Jessica opens the video clip from the metro tunnel with a few clicks.
“You’re right, Jessie. The asshole is as cool as a cucumber even though his wife just died. And even though he presumably witnessed the double murder at Juva at close proximity.”
“On the other hand, that’s exactly how someone in a state of shock might act,” Jessica grumbles in frustration. She leans back and stretches her arms straight up over her head.
“Are you heading back to Pasila?” she asks a moment later.
Yusuf yawns. “I don’t know. Am I?”
“Yes. Talk to Rasse; he’s the one listening to those calls. I want to get a clearer picture of both Torsten Karlstedt and Kai Lehtinen.” Jessica shoves her chair away from the table.
Yusuf slowly drags himself to his feet. He looks at the belongings strewn on the couch. “Hey. My card.”
Jessica gulps. “What?” She knows what Yusuf’s talking about, but her wallet, which is where the card is, isn’t in her studio. It’s on the kitchen counter of her apartment next door. Goddamn it.
“I forgot to ask for it back.”
“Argh . . . Sorry, Yusuf . . . ,” Jessica says, sensing the lie she came up with on the fly is already sounding lame.
Yusuf chuckles. “You have it, don’t you?”
“I left it at the station. Sorry. It’s probably on your desk.”
“Shit. I need to get gas and . . . I was thinking I’d grab something to eat.”
Jessica draws her mouth into a taut line. If she could get Yusuf to step out for a second, she could pop over and get the card, then call him and claim that she found it in her coat pocket.
“If you’re not going anywhere, you could let me borrow yours—”
A cold wave washes through Jessica. “No.”
“What?”
“This sounds crazy, but . . . my card doesn’t work. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”
“It doesn’t work?”
“No. I ordered a new one.”
“You have any cash?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
Yusuf frowns, then shrugs and grabs his coat from the back of his chair. Jessica isn’t sure her fib sounds believable, but she can’t come up with any reason why Yusuf might think she’s lying. No one would ever guess in a million years that she has another apartment on the other side of the wall. Yusuf walks slowly to the door and pulls on his shoes.
“Was there something in it that didn’t belong there?” he finally asks.
“In what?”
“Your wallet,” Yusuf says. The question is logical, reasonable, and could mean trouble.
She takes a deep breath and stands. “I would have said something if there had been anything in it that didn’t belong there, goddamn it.”
“Did you take a good look? Because if someone was able to write in your notepad—”
“Yes,” Jessica snaps, and her tone of voice accomplishes what it hasn’t had to in a long time, especially with Yusuf: remind him of the chain of command.
“All right. Talk soon.” Yusuf opens the door and disappears into the stairwell.