Free Her Enemy by Leena Lehtolainen Page A

damn about what was going on in Sanna’s life.”
    “You weren’t in love with Armi?”
    Makke snorted. “Armi…Am I ever going to be able to love anyone but Sanna? And why are you asking all these questions anyway? Are you trying to be some kind of cop again?”
    “Kimmo asked me to defend him. I’m collecting evidence to prove his innocence.”
    “I don’t know anything about any evidence. I guess Kimmo could have been jealous of me. We weren’t exactly best friends. By the way, how did Armi die? If somebody smothered her with a rubber hood, then Kimmo is your man. His biggest sex fantasy was to have someone do that to him.”
    Cold shivers again. One more point for the other side.
    “You seem to be pretty well-informed about Kimmo’s sexual preferences. Why would that be?”
    “Sanna told me about it,” Makke replied without looking at me. “Both of them were masochists. Sanna was just into more hard-core stuff. I was probably her first boyfriend who didn’t hit her. I didn’t, not even when she wanted me to…” Makke emptied his bottle. “And Kimmo was the same. He and Sanna even went to some sort of S&M club together. Sanna said Kimmowould end up peeling potatoes if ‘the Army’ ever found out. She was always making cheap digs like that.”
    Makke retrieved a third beer from the kitchen. I was growing tired of listening to him wallow in self-pity. Let him booze away his sorrows by himself—I needed to go talk to Mallu.
    “Hey, don’t go,” Makke begged, as I climbed off the rowing machine.
    “I have to work. And you should go to a bar to drink instead of moping around here alone. No, wait, that’s not what I’m supposed to say. How about this: Haven’t you had enough already?”
    Another snort. “I’ll be OK,” Makke said with a wave of his bottle, his face distorting into something approaching a smile.
    For some reason, I had a hard time believing him.
    As I biked through the sports park toward Mallu’s neighborhood, a pair of pheasants waddled across the bike path, and I suddenly had an urge to take off after them like Einstein, who two weeks before had chased a male pheasant right up a tree. The bird screeched in indignation from the branches for at least an hour, with Einstein circling down below. I could have sworn he was smiling.
    Dandelions were blooming along the path of the underground heating pipes running back toward Makke’s apartment complex. I wished I could forget work, ditch my bike, and go off wandering through the meadows looking for unusual plants in the vacant lots surrounding the park. That flower at least was stitchwort. Suddenly an image of my ex-boyfriend Harri flashed through my mind. He’d tried to teach me all the common birds and plants. These days, I could hardly remember that I had once dated people other than Antti.
    I guess nine months is long enough together that you get used to having another person around. Imagining being alonefelt difficult. Even though I liked being alone. Talking to anyone before my morning coffee was still a chore, and I despised having anyone tell me I needed to turn down my music. Antti usually understood, though, and he needed his space too.
    The jungle of overgrown grasses ended at the indoor tennis center and a parking lot. If the hockey fans got their way, soon the meadow wouldn’t exist anymore, and a new ice stadium, surrounded by a sea of asphalt, would rise in its place. I had heard that the city council hadn’t had time to deal with anything other than this tug-of-war over the ice rink lately. Looming cuts to social services seemed incidental in comparison.
    Mallu wasn’t home. She was probably at her parents’ place. I couldn’t see a telephone booth anywhere close, and hunger gnawed at my stomach, despite Eki’s
pulla
, so I pedaled back to the other side of the bay and home. Perhaps Antti would be in more of a talking mood now.
    On the way, I rehearsed what I would say. Fortunately, I didn’t have to interrupt