Free The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto Page A

the address of the house nearest to the woodlands where the knife and the blood had been found. The neighbourhood was situated to the north of Rajapuro, far away from the city centre. There were a few recently built apartment blocks, but on the whole this was an area of detached houses and families with kids, lots of surrounding nature, good opportunities for outdoor activities, a school and a shop. It occurred to Anna that she’d probably never visited the place before. The temperature had once again dropped overnight, the sky gleamed in a surreal turquoise, not a cloud in sight, the sun burned against it like a giant orange. The car thermometer showed -12°C. Spring had come to Finland.
    They parked the car outside an apartment block at the edge of the woods. Nils had already arrived in his own car. The block was home to one of the girls who had found the knife. Behind the building a path led into the woods. Anna and Sari walked off along the path. The place was nothing but thicket. After only a short distance the birches and willows were so tangled that the path came to an end, though the girls’ footsteps continued deeper into the woods. They had pushed their way through the thicket.
    Anna and Sari followed the footsteps; the frozen snow crunched beneath their feet. The woods spread out over a large area. Anna thought of the city map. Beyond this there were no more residential areas until you reached Asemakylä, she thought, which until only a few years ago hadn’t belonged to the city. If someone had been murdered out here, then it was done in peace and quiet.
    Anna and Sari followed the girls’ steps for a few hundred metres. They were beginning to think they had come to the wrong place when they saw the yellow police tape through the tangle of branches. Just as Virkkunen had told them, forensics were already at work. Kirsti Sarkkinen waved to them with an enthusiastic smile.
    ‘Come and have a look, but be careful of that corner; there are some really interesting prints over there,’ Kirsti shouted, pointing to the left-hand side of the cordoned area.
    Anna and Sari cautiously stepped closer.
    ‘Jesus Christ,’ Sari gasped.
    ‘What on earth happened here?’ Anna asked and looked around with a feeling of nausea. The snow was churned up and soaked in blood. There was so much blood that it looked as though someone had slaughtered an animal at least the size of an elk. But this wasn’t elk-hunting territory; this was still within the city limits, and besides, it wasn’t hunting season.
    Sarkkinen lifted up the curved weapon, now tagged in a transparent plastic bag, for everyone to see. The blood on the blade had dried and darkened.
    ‘Any fingerprints?’ asked Sari.
    ‘We’ll soon find out. But this blood is relatively fresh, a few days old at most. Those girls must have been here fairly soon after the event. Thank God they didn’t turn up while the blood was flying. There are some strange prints over there,’ said Kirsti and pointed to the west.
    ‘What kind of prints?’ asked Anna.
    ‘Very likely two sets of footprints: one belongs to a man, the other to a woman or a small man. But the only prints leading away from the site are the larger ones. I guess the owner of the smaller prints was either beaten up or killed here. The knife was found right there in the middle. It’s a very strange model; we should try and trace it.’
    ‘Christ,’ Sari repeated.
    Anna watched for a moment as the forensics officers photographed and sketched the scene and a technician measured the position of the blood spatter. Section by section, scene by scene, they pieced together the events of this tragedy without seeing its protagonists. It was quite a task, but they were good at it.
    Anna wandered off in the direction Kirsti had indicated. She was right; there were sets of footprints, numerous indentations pressed into the deep covering of snow, large ones and smaller ones.
    ‘What’s that?’ Anna shouted back to