Page 51 of First Snow
Arttu shakes himself as he sits up and tries to clear his thoughts. Outside, the world is darkened by heavy snowfall. Behind the car windows, Arttu can only make out the gray-white swirl of snow and the dark shadow of a building.
Jareth presses a tender kiss against Arttu’s temple. “You slept through the drive,” he says softly.
“Oh.”
Arttu’s anger ignites again. What kind of an idiot does Jareth think he is? A quick glance at his cell shows Arttu that it’s still mid-morning. It would’ve taken them a whole day’s drive from Kuusamo to get anywhere near Helsinki. If the mansion they are currently parking in front of is, indeed, Jareth’s summer house, it isn’t situated where Jareth said it is. But he shows Jareth neither his anger nor his hurt. Instead, he smiles pleasantly and lets Jareth help him out of the car. Shuddering in the biting wind, Arttu takes a step closer to Jareth on instinct. Fuck his body’s reaction to Jareth! The bastard has effectively conditioned him to feel safe and relaxed in his presence. Arttu hates it, but a minor incident like Jareth being a serial killer hasn’t changed that. Arttu runs his hand through his hair and sighs. He’s so damn tired.
Jareth nudges his shoulder and smiles at him. “Let’s get inside.”
Arttu follows him through the snow flurry to the large doors of the mansion. Due to the weather, visibility is limited, but Arttu thinks he can make out the outline of a lakeshore and a deep forest surrounding the estate. The snow lends the whole property an enchanted beauty. For a moment, Arttu has the impression that he’s smelling roses. He blinks in surprise, but the sweet scent must have come from inside the house, because the large oaken doors are half open. To his surprise, Annikki slips outside. She must’ve already carried in their luggage.
“I’ll be back as soon as possible, boss,” Annikki says. She winks at Arttu, but her cheerfulness seems put on. He has never seen her so tense.
Arttu watches her walk to the parked SUV with detached horror. He wishes he knew where Jareth has brought him. What the hell is going on?
“Come inside before you catch a cold,” Jareth says.
Arttu has no choice but to follow.
The mansion is beautiful. Cozy. Jareth shows him around the first floor, clearly pleased to be able to show off his wealth a bit. It shouldn’t be endearing. Arttu hates rich assholes, but the way Jareth talks about the summers he spent out here with his parents and grandmother sounds like he’s sharing memories he honestly holds dear.
Arttu tries to memorize the masion’s ground plan instead of focussing on the animated way Jareth’s hands gesticulate and his eyes twinkle. There’s a hallway with an open staircase, a kitchen, a dining room, a large living room with an adjacent fireplace room, and several utility rooms. But Arttu is most interested in getting a glimpse of the study. It’s stuffed with ceiling-high bookshelves, and a huge desk is littered with what Arttu can only describe as obscure artifacts. If there’s a chance of Arttu getting his hands on the spellbook Jareth and Briar were talking about, it has to be here.
Arttu marvels aloud at the spacious rooms, the high windows, and the hardwood flooring— mostly for Jareth’s sake. But as is often the case when it comes to Jareth, he doesn’t have to pretend to be enjoying it. He could feel at home here, if every piece of antique furniture didn’t remind him that Jareth is a cold-blooded murderer.
They decide to make themselves comfortable in a pretty fireside room looking out over the lake. The heavy snowfall outside cloaks everything in an eerie white. Arttu is still wearing the pajama bottoms from last night and a slightly oversized shirt that must belong to Jareth. He has no memory of putting it on, and he doesn’t bother to change. Instead, he stokes the fire while Jareth fetches them some snacks from the kitchen.
The next few hours they spend snuggled up in front of the fireplace. They don’t talk much, but Jareth is constantly humming, touching, and caressing Arttu. It would’ve been heavenly if it wasn’t a lie. But as it is, Arttu only waits until Jareth gets sleepy. He stays cuddled up at Jareth’s side long after his breath has evened out. Only then does he disentangle himself from Jareth’s sleeping form and gets up.
Arttu slips into Jareth’s study, heart beating frantically. To his relief, Jareth has left Arttu’s cell phone in his overnight bag, but there’s no reception out here. There’s no Wi-Fi connection either, only the password-protected connection to the house’s network. Arttu wishes he’d had the nerve to ask Jareth for the password but that can’t be helped now. Arttu hasn’t seen a landline either. Shit. That means if he needs reinforcements, he’ll have to leave the house and look for reception.
Arttu closes the door carefully behind himself, and takes in the organized chaos of the room. Stacks of books and journals not only fill the bookshelves, but have also migrated to the floor and cover every surface. He can make out a whole shelf crammed with medical books, surely from Jareth’s studies. Arttu shudders. He keeps forgetting that Jareth was a pathologist before he started to runThe Worship.
Something that looks like a battered doctor’s bag catches Arttu’s eye. He pushes the bag open and peers inside; a box of disposable gloves together with a smaller black bag. It reminds him of something chefs usually use to carry their knives.
Arttu snatches a pair of gloves and puts them on before he opens the bag. He almost drops it again. Scalpels. Knives. Fuck. He pulls out his mobile to take some photos. Then he hastily places the items back where he found them. It will make an interesting find when Arttu has the house raided. Then he can have the blades properly analyzed.
Next, Arttu browses through the desk, running his fingertips over colorful gemstones, esoteric trinkets, and leather bound tomes. His heart sinks as he looks at the covers of the books. There are dozens of mystical pamphlets and arcane codices. Even if the spell book is here, Arttu has no chance of guessing which one it is, and he’s running out of time. Cursing under his breath, he opens the desk drawers. Nothing. If he could find something that links Jareth to Mikael…
Arttu freezes. The knives!
He scrambles around the desk and rips open the bag holding the knives again. There they are, meticulously placed. It’s suddenly hard to breathe. He pulls out apuukkoknife with a wooden hilt with trembling hands. Oh fuck, Arttuknewit. He recognizes it from the files Sofia provided him with. It’s the item she thought had disappeared with Mikael. This should finally be enough to obtain a search warrant.
Arttu finds a path at the back of the property with the help of the offline map on his mobile. Jareth was still asleep when Arttu hurriedly put on his winter clothes and slipped out of the house. He needs to find a spot where he has reception, so he can call Viljanen.
Thankfully the blizzard has stopped, but the forest behind the mansion is quiet and covered in freshly fallen snow. Arttu absentmindedly touches the place where his shoulder holster would sit underneath his parka, if he were carrying his service weapon. The familiar weight would’ve been a welcome reassurance now, and the combat knife he took from Jareth’s collection feels like a poor substitute. Yet Arttu feels a little safer carrying it.
Checking the cardinal directions using the compass on his phone, Arttu sets off uphill into the woods. Dawn comes early this time of the year, making the sky light up in bright shades of orange and pink. He finds the small stream he saw on the map that flows into the lake near the border of Jareth’s property. He’s on the right track. The air is cold and clear, and the forest is near silent. If Arttu weren’t here to call in the police to convict the man he’s falling in love with of murder, it would be breathtaking in its tranquility. As it is, it makes a deep sadness settle in Arttu’s bones. But he can’t withhold justice from the victims and their families for his personal gain. So he presses on.
He finds a small game trail and follows it down the creek because it makes it easier to walk in the snow. For a while Arttu loses himself in the movement and the wilderness. The trees stand a little further apart near the water, but the forest is growing thicker as he walks uphill and further away from Jareth’s estate. The fresh smell of snow mixes with a warm tinge of resin. Arttu’s hands ball into fists as he feels the weight of Mikael’s hunting knife he hurriedly wrapped in a plastic bag and stuffed into the pocket of his parka. If only Jareth were a different person. In a different life they could’ve been—
A flock of birds flies up from somewhere to Arttu’s left, startling him. Has Jareth already noticed that he has vanished? Did he follow Arttu into the forest? Arttu stares into the direction the birds came from, but he can’t make out anything in the gathering darkness. He cautiously continues on his way, listening to every sound he can catch over the deafening silence of the forest. It’s too quiet. Shit.
Arttu quickens his steps. He knows there’s someone there, but he doesn’t look back. Pushing his hands deep in his pockets, he clutches the hilt of the combat knife. He jogs up a steep slope and hides under dense spruce trees. He takes a few steps into the undergrowth before he changes direction. The snow hasn’t covered the whole ground under the trees yet, so he isn’t leaving tracks. Stopping behind a particularly large spruce, he squats down between its low hanging branches. Arttu breathes through his nose and tries to listen over the hammering of his heart. Silence envelops him.
Minutes pass, but nothing happens. For a second, it seems as if something is lurking at the edge of his perception, a white specter against the equally white background of the surrounding snow. But it must’ve been just a dusting of snow falling from the branches, because in the next moment it has already disappeared. He waits until he starts to feel foolish, like a child hiding from shadows. He slowly counts to one hundred and rises again, stepping gingerly out of his hiding place and resuming his way up the hill. There will hopefully be reception up there.
“What are you doing out here all alone, Detective Inspector Palosaari?”