Free The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto

across the high walls of the surrounding buildings. Someone was being led out of the stairwell in handcuffs. Sammy didn’t hang around to watch; he turned as soon as he saw what was happening and walked quickly in the opposite direction. There was always one officer whose job it was to watch people gathering at the scene, an officer who would notice even the smallest detail. Sammy knew his photograph was in the police records and that there was a warrant for his arrest. One of the cops was bound to recognise him. But what could he do now? It was almost evening. Maalik would be home soon. They would sort out his appeal. As long as his appeal was pending, he wouldn’t be a sitting duck.
    He had to find some gear, fast. Even a small amount, enough to help him act normally and sit calmly at the kitchen table with Maalik. Again his thoughts turned to Macke. Macke wouldn’t rip him off. Macke lived close to Farzad and Maalik. Sammy didn’t like the decision to go to Leppioja, but headed there all the same.
     
    ‘Two teenage girls found the knife in the woods behind Ketoniemi the day before yesterday,’ Virkkunen began. He had called Anna, Sari and Nils into work, though it was a Saturday and everyone wanted to enjoy some time off.
    ‘Shit,’ said Nils with a satisfying stretch; he looked as though he hadn’t had much sleep.
    ‘Initial tests show that the blood is human, and that’s why we have to look into it.’
    Virkkunen paused and looked at each of the officers present from behind his spectacles. They were sipping coffee, each of them looking exhausted. The lack of enthusiasm hung in the air.
    ‘’Do we have to investigate it right now?’ asked Nils.
    ‘Yes,’ Virkkunen replied drily. ‘For some reason the girls didn’t tell us about what they’d found straight away, but thankfully we haven’t lost too much time.’
    ‘What were they doing out in the woods?’ Anna wondered.
    ‘Nothing in particular, they said. Forensics are already processing the scene in greater detail, and so far they’ve found a great deal of blood, footprints, tyre tracks and a couple of cigarette ends. I believe the cigarettes belonged to the girls; both had pink lip gloss on the filters.’
    ‘So what do we do now?’ Nils mumbled.
    ‘Anna and Sari, I want you to examine the scene immediately. It’s been a few days, but at least it hasn’t snowed again. Best to give the place a thorough investigation. Nils, get in touch with these girls. Let’s try and sort this out so that we don’t have to come in tomorrow too.’
    Anna and Sari pulled on their police overalls; they came in handy when you had to crawl around in snow-covered woodland. They took the lift down to the car depot beneath the station. The air was heavy with exhaust fumes and another smell associated with cars that Anna couldn’t put her finger on, oil perhaps, dirty old rags or something metallic. Two stocky officers were giving the back of their squad car a good clean. Someone must have thrown up in there, thought Anna. She felt no nostalgia for the time when she had to do the same thing after almost every shift. Still, working with the traffic police had been much easier; the days just came and went without the burden of prolonged investigations and the sense of stagnation. In criminal cases it often felt as though the investigation wasn’t going anywhere, that everything was up in the air. Her shifts consisted of looking for tiny fragments of evidence, trying to stitch them together, discarding false leads, placing good leads in their rightful place in a pattern that was still to be worked out. Her brain was constantly at work, trying to find a light at the end of the tunnel, though sometimes no lamps appeared to light up. At times it was downright frustrating, and yet extraordinarily fascinating. Because a lamp always came on eventually. Always. This Anna needed to believe.
    Anna typed the location of the bloody knife into her navigator, or rather she gave