Snow Angels by James Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

to talk to me about Sufia.”
    “What has happened to her?”
    Still at a loss for words, I restate what he already knows. “Sufia is dead sir. She’s been murdered.”
    Seconds tick by in silence. “Who killed her?” he asks.
    “I don’t know yet. I’m doing everything in my power to find out.”
    “You are responsible for finding out?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you do it. Give me your phone number.”
    I give him my work and cell phone numbers.
    “My wife and I will drive from Helsinki and be there tomorrow, to see our daughter. And you.”
    I call Jaakko Pahkala. I’ve known him since I was a cop in Helsinki. He’s a freelance writer for the Helsinki daily newspaper,
Ilta-sanomat
, and also for the gossip magazine Seitsemän Päivää and the true-crime rag Alibi. There’s little about the goings-on of our celebrities that Jaakko doesn’t know.
    “This is Kari Vaara. Sufia Elmi is vacationing in Kittilä. Do you know where she’s staying?”
    “Yes, and I’ll tell you if you tell me why you’re asking.”
    “Because she’s dead.” I didn’t mean to be so gruff. This day isn’t going the way I had hoped.
    “Jesus,” he says, “I’m sorry. How?”
    He doesn’t sound sorry, he sounds itchy for details. Jaakko loves his work. “She was murdered yesterday. I’ll give you the scoop and fax you the police report before I enter it into the crime database if you help me out.”
    “Sure. She’s at-she was at-Pine Woods Cottages.”
    I know the place. It’s walking distance from the main ski slopes. I thank him and get his fax number.
    “I’ll come up on the evening flight,” Jaakko says.
    “You don’t need to, I can keep you informed.”
    “See you soon.” He hangs up.
    I have the feeling Jaakko is going to be a pain in my ass, but at least now I know where Sufia was staying. I make some phone calls, get a search warrant for her hotel room and subpoenas for her bank and phone records, then head off to see what I can learn from Sufia’s cabin.
     
    I’M TIRED, so I stop at a gas station and get a big takeaway coffee to sharpen up. The gas station is in the middle of a snowfield with a two-lane road running through it. In the dark, big neon signs reflect off the snow like crayon marks on a sheet of dirty white paper. I lean against the car, smoke, sip at the scalding coffee, and through the steam rising off it, watch the signs flash, flicker on and off.
    My next stop is Pine Woods Cottages. It may be that Sufia was abducted from her room, and good investigative work could solve her murder here and now. I go to the manager’s office and get the keys, tell him Sufia’s place is a crime scene and no one else can enter until I say otherwise. He tells me the maid hasn’t cleaned it for five days, Sufia didn’t want anybody in her room.
    I take the crime kit fishing-tackle boxes from the trunk of my car, stop and look around. It’s not a cottage, more like a motel. Twelve units are housed under one roof with a log facade. It’s a nice-looking place. A ski vacation in Levi is expensive. Even a place like this runs a few hundred euros a week. The lift pass and ski rental is about a hundred euros, a beer is five. If you want to do something like go on a dogsled run around a reindeer farm with lunch included-exotic if you don’t live here-it’s a hundred and fifty for three hours. At those prices, tourists expect things to be done right.
    It’s warmed up to minus fourteen now, and the ski runs are open again. Blazing lights cut through the dark and illuminate them, and from Sufia’s door, I have a good view of the slopes. Hundreds of black dots rush down the mountain. Still, there’s a degree of privacy here. An abduction could have been carried out if she was subdued, not kicking and screaming. A knife and the noose around her neck could have sufficed.
    There aren’t any footprints in the snow leading up to her door. The last snowfall ended yesterday around noon, so she was away from here for