Free The Hummingbird by Kati Hiekkapelto Page B

with looking for a better quality of living. Surely it was natural for everyone to search for such a thing? Why should it be restricted to people who already had everything they needed?
‘Here you are,’ Esko interrupted just as Anna drew a deep breath and was about to begin her story. He had appeared at the gym door. Though Sari had been assigned the Bihar case, Esko seemed to direct his words at her rather than Anna. Anna tried not to show her irritation. It was pointless letting arseholes make your blood boil.
‘Jere’s disappeared,’ he informed them.
‘What?’ Anna and Sari cried in unison.
‘Disappeared into thin air. Phone switched off. Parents, friends, landlord – nobody knows where he is.’
‘Great,’ sighed Sari.
‘Quite. Seems like an open-and-shut case to me.’
‘It does, doesn’t it,’ admitted Anna.
‘The boy shot Riikka, probably in a fit of jealousy – wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened in this country. Then took fright once he realised what he’d done and went into hiding.’
‘We’ll have to put out a warrant for him,’ said Sari.
‘Already done. And I’ve got a search warrant for his apartment too. I’ll have to get out there now – with her,’ Esko continued speaking to Sari and nodded towards Anna.
‘Right now?’ asked Anna. Annoying. The shift would go into overtime.
‘Be in the car park in fifteen minutes.’
‘Okay,’ said Anna and hurried towards the showers.
‘Anna, wait. Bihar and her family are coming in for an interview on Friday. Can we go through the details of the case tomorrow? I want to talk about it before they come in,’ said Sari.
‘How about lunch and a meeting at twelve?’
‘It’s a deal. See you.’

9
JERE ’ S APARTMENT WAS SITUATED near the city centre in a stale-smelling, 1970s block of flats on Torikatu. On this spot there had once been a beautiful old wooden house with good ventilation and free of mould. Anna had seen photographs of the city taken at the turn of the century; it had changed a great deal since then. In the name of progress, quaint wooden areas of the city had been torn down to make way for concrete boxes, and cobbled streets were covered with tarmac. The remaining art nouveau buildings in the downtown area still exuded a bygone, bourgeois elegance, but only a very few wooden houses had been spared the cull. There were still a few former working-class areas complete with small wooden cottages in and around the city centre. These properties were highly desirable for the rich and famous, who spent hundreds of thousands repairing and extending them.
The door to Jere’s apartment block stood anonymously between a local pub and a second-hand store. The caretaker was waiting for them with a set of keys. The lift creaked and rattled as they went up to the second floor. He opened the door and would have followed them into the apartment had Esko not raised a hand in front of him.
‘Hey, this is our territory now,’ he said and the caretaker retreated into the corridor, disappointed.
On the doormat were a pile of flyers, a bill and a couple of free newspapers; the lowest in the pile was dated 21 August. Anna’s letter box bore the words N O F LYERS . She couldn’t stand it that in a matter of days the hallway was filled with rubbish. In an investigation, however, rubbish often provided crucial evidence.
The spacious one-bedroom apartment was dim. All the curtainshad been pulled shut. The rooms were large, the ceilings high, and the scarcity of any furniture made the place seem almost deserted. A bachelor pad, par excellence, thought Anna.
They looked round the apartment, sizing it up. At first glance, everything seemed perfectly normal. Shoes were arranged in a tidy row on the hallway mat and coats hung on a rack. A T-shirt and a pair of socks lay on the floor next to the bed, but the bed itself had been made up neatly. There were no dust bunnies cowering beneath the sofa. On the coffee table was a pile of