He shakes his head back and forth like a wet dog. “I don’t get it.”
“Heli is dead. The spare tire from your BMW was filled with gasoline, hung around her chest and arms and set ablaze. She looked like a little blackened doll, her face and hair scorched off, sitting on the ice in a puddle of filth.”
He blinks, looks around, blinks again, looks around some more, then a quavering noise comes out of his throat and he launches himself at me. I’m so surprised that he gets his manacled hands around my neck and knocks me to the floor. If I weren’t so much bigger and stronger than him, I’d be a dead man. I manage to roll him over and pin his shoulders to the concrete with my knees. He bucks and writhes, tries to shake me off him. He can’t and gives up, just lays there with tears streaming, saying “Fuck you, fuck you,” over and over again.
I wait awhile. “Think you can control yourself now?”
He doesn’t say anything. I let him up anyway.
He wipes snot on his sleeve. “How could you hate her enough to kill her?”
It takes me a second to get it. “Why would you think I killed her?”
“It’s been thirteen years. I hurt you, but why would you wait all this time, then take everything away from me? First Sufia, now Heli. You want to send me to jail for life for something I didn’t do. It’s just not fair.”
He believes, or wants me to think he believes, that I committed two homicides to get back at him. I’m dumbstruck. “You can’t be serious.”
He sits on the edge of the metal cot, buries his face in his hands, bursts into tears again. “Don’t do this to me, it’s not fucking fair.”
Could anybody be this good an actor? I sit beside him, give him a cigarette. “I don’t hate you, and I didn’t hurt Heli. And if you didn’t do it, I’ll prove you innocent.”
He sniffs, looks up. “You promise?”
It’s like dealing with a three-year-old. “Yeah, I promise.”
“Tell me what happened to her,” he says.
I don’t know if he’s conning me, but watching him listen while I re-create the crime in graphic detail will give me an opportunity to gauge the effect it has on him. I tell him everything. He cries the whole time I talk.
“I don’t know why you think I would kill Heli,” he says. “Or Sufia. I’m not a violent person. Until I jumped on you, I’d never even been in a fight, even when I was a kid. I wouldn’t know how to hurt someone if I wanted to, like you just saw.”
I think about interrogating him and accusing him of sex cabals and homosexual love affairs, of murdering Heli to get out from under blackmail and cover up his murder of Sufia. He’ll only start crying again. I decide to investigate further before I press him harder. “Why did you marry Heli after all this time?” I ask.
“She had wanted to get married for a long time. She said if I married her, it would make me look better if I had to go to trial for Sufia’s murder. She said I owed it to her for having an affair and humiliating her. Mostly, I did it to make her happy. I loved her. I didn’t realize how much until this thing with Sufia happened and she stuck by me. Most women would have left.”
It crosses my mind that, if he was going to murder Heli, it would have simplified matters to do it before getting married, rather than burning to death his bride of two days. “Do you have any idea why someone would kill Heli?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t think she had an enemy in the world. Heli could be a bitch sometimes, but she wasn’t the kind of person that made people hate her. Except for you. Do you swear you didn’t kill her?”
“Yeah, I swear.”
He goes silent and thoughtful. “Do I have to stay in here?”
“For the time being.”
“How am I supposed to take care of her?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m her husband, I have to see to her funeral.”
“I’ll bring your cell phone.”
He starts crying again in big sobs, puts his head on my shoulder. In my years as a police officer, I think this is the most ridiculous moment I’ve thus far experienced.
“You used to love her, didn’t you Kari?”
I don’t like him using my name. “A long time ago.”
“Would you do this for me? I’m not strong enough. If not for me, for her, for the way you used to love her?”
Again, I don’t know what he’s talking about. “Do what?”
“Make her funeral arrangements.”
“You serious?”
“Please, I’m begging you. Get her the best of everything, it doesn’t matter what it costs.”
My sense of the ridiculous multiplies itself. He took my wife away from me in life, wants to give her back in death. “Sure, no problem.”
He lifts his head off my shoulder, gives me a soulful look, like we’re brothers sharing the loss of a family member. “Thank you,” he says.
I leave him alone to his grief.
I go to my office and call Esko the coroner. “Tell me about the autopsy.”
He hesitates, maybe trying to think how to spare my feelings. Having people try to spare my feelings is getting tiresome. “How much do you want to know?”
“As much as I need to.”
“As far as forensics go, I didn’t find anything that will help you.”
“Was she too badly damaged to gather evidence?”
“No. Given her external appearance, the body was in good condition. Her internal organs, in relative terms, were unscathed.”
“She looked burned to a cinder. How could that be?”
He clears his throat. “The intense heat from the gasoline melted her subcutaneous layers of fat. The fat leached out of her body and soaked out into her clothes, which acted as a wick. That’s why the fire smoldered for so long after Antti put it out. Rubber fires are hard to extinguish as well. In any case, her organs were well-preserved.”
“So you’re certain the fire killed her, it wasn’t an attempt to cover up another murder method.”
“She had soot from the burning tire inside her trachea. She was alive when the killer lit it.”
I had hoped she was already dead, had suffered less torment. I’m tempted to thank Esko for his efforts but don’t feel like it. “Her husband asked me to check into funeral arrangements. When will you release her body?”
“There’s nothing more to learn from it, he can take possession at any time.”
I ring off and call Jorma the undertaker. I don’t mention I’m calling about burying my ex-wife, so he doesn’t offer condolences, for which I’m grateful.
“Funeral arrangements are difficult this time of year,” he says, “even grave diggers want to stay home over the holidays. If her family wishes to put this behind them, if it would help with their grief, I could make funeral arrangements for tomorrow. Otherwise, I suggest waiting a few days.”
I tell him I’ll check with her husband.
“Did you know that Sufia Elmi’s funeral is tomorrow?” Jorma asks.
“Here in Kittila? I would have thought her parents would want to take her home to Helsinki. Why did they wait so long?”
“Her father insisted that her funeral be here and in accordance with Islamic tradition. I had difficulty seeing to all the preparations. There was a ceremonial washing of the body to be performed by the family, certain burial shrouds I had to order, things I’d never dealt with before. Mr. Barre was insistent that everything be done in a most precise way, and it took me a few days.”
I say thanks and hang up.
Antti bagged and tagged the contents of Heli’s purse. I retrieve them from the evidence locker and sort through them. Just the usual stuff. Makeup, wallet, dirty Kleenex, a hairbrush and her cell phone. I take the phone out of the plastic bag and scroll through the menu. Received calls and dialed numbers, received and sent messages. I find nothing noteworthy.