Snow Angels

“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 Kittilä? 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.

The phone is a new Nokia N82, which does just about everything and costs as much as a month’s rent for an average apartment. It has a Global Positioning System, an MP3 music player, a digital camera and Internet-access capability. I check the downloaded files, mostly a bunch of useless crap from diet and exercise websites, and then finally I find the co

Maybe I should be surprised, but I’m not. Ever since I found Heikki’s suicide note, my instincts told me that Heli put him up to murder. Not because I wanted to vilify her, but because I thought that she, more than anyone else involved, possessed the requisite tools-her sexuality and knowledge of Heikki’s religious beliefs-to turn him into a killer. It makes me sad, because now I’m convinced someone I once loved committed an act so evil.

The question remains, if Heli and Heikki killed Sufia, who killed Heli? The field is narrowing and the chief was right. If I arrest everybody, someone will talk. I send the chief a text message, ask him to have Heli’s and Seppo’s residence in Helsinki searched with an eye for true-crime material. I don’t tell him I’m investigating Heli and not Seppo, so he won’t think I’m off on a wild, grief-stricken tangent. The evidence is provocative but not damning. I decide to keep my suspicion of her guilt to myself for the time being, to keep from being accused of chasing ghosts.

My case notes are in a pile in front of me. I browse through them, look for something I’ve forgotten that could explain why Seppo or Peter, or both of them together, might want to kill Heli. I run across my note to check out Abdi Barre. I never did it.

Things Abdi said come back to me. He claimed he can’t pass the Fi

I remember reading that in Somalia and Rwanda, filling a tire with gasoline and burning the victim alive has sometimes been used as a form of execution. The method was popularized in South Africa by the African National Congress during the eighties. They called it a tire necklace, the verb is necklacing. It was also used in the Mogadishu area during the early years of the Somali civil war. Abdi has a potential source of knowledge about how to commit the crime. I know nothing about his activities during the conflict. He could have seen it done or even necklaced others in the past. Abdi has motive: an eye for an eye. He could have taken from Seppo as he believed Seppo had taken from him.