Page 7

2019

Charlie booked Alex a first-class flight to Helsinki on the company credit card.

It’s not first class as Alex knows it, but he is grateful for the curtain that separates the front two rows from economy class; less so for the overly attentive air hostess. He refuses the complimentary champagne, which she takes as an affront, and the battle lines are drawn over lunch when Alex says he doesn’t want the food. He wants a brandy. The air hostess consents to the brandy but only if he’ll take the food. It’s been paid for. It’s been heated. No, they can’t give it to another passenger. It might only be morning in Alex’s brain but on this flight they’re already operating two hours ahead and it’s lunchtime.

Alex gives in because it’s easier than fighting this little air-dictator. He remembers he hasn’t eaten since yesterday, when his father made him swallow a limp ham sandwich in the hospital canteen before they returned to their small family home in Apple Dale. Alex kissed his mother before he left the hospital, for all the good it did. She wasn’t the least bit aware of his presence. He’s absolutely terrified she’ll die while he’s on this trip, organising the repatriation of his sister’s body. How would he ever tell that story? How his family shrunk from four to two and he was with neither of his loved ones when it happened.

The dinner comes in a little tinfoil carton and the steam it emits when he opens it almost scalds his hand. Alex eats it all, with dessert, drinks the brandy, and then takes the glass of champagne and a coffee. He immediately feels sick as a dog. The air hostess looks smug in her pyrrhic victory.

They arrive in Helsinki and Alex is still oblivious to how woefully unprepared he is for this trip. The airport’s heating system is pumping away and he takes off his sweater as he walks through the concourse towards the Schengen area zone to make his flight connection. On the other side of security, he notices a distinct change in the clothing of the passengers boarding the tiny plane for Rovaniemi. He’s brought his Burberry cashmere coat, is wearing suit trousers and a shirt, and has a small overnight bag containing a pair of jeans, a spare shirt and a Ralph Lauren sweater. To be fair, he’d originally packed for an overnight in his parents’ house. Not that he has a whole lot of Arctic-ready gear at his disposal. When Alex holidays, he gravitates towards the heat, not climates colder than what he already endures.

Everyone around him is dressed for a ski trip.

He’s recovered from the sick feeling on the first plane and figures whiskey will keep him warm, so, once on board, he orders one and takes it with the complimentary glass of cloudberry juice.

It’s not like he’ll be here very long, he tells himself. Not that he knows how long it takes to bring a dead sister home from a foreign country. A couple of days, he supposes. Money is no obstacle and he guesses the Finns are good at this sort of stuff. Charlie spoke to the British Foreign Office and they were reassuring, apparently. They most likely wouldn’t be needed but, of course, would be on hand should the family require it.

The police liaison, Agatha Koskinen, is waiting for him in the tiny airport, holding a card with his name on it. She’s small, with dark frizzy hair; her face is round and kind, with the sort of eyes that make her look like a person who smiles a lot.

She’s better dressed for the climate than he is. She’s not wearing a uniform. Her attire consists of a padded knee-length jacket over a woolly jumper and jeans, and fur-lined ankle boots.

She takes one look at his thin coat and leather shoes and he can hear the fuck she utters under her breath.

‘Do you have to wait for a bag?’ she asks him, a hint of hope in her voice.

‘No, but I would like to use the gents.’

He leaves her busily texting, while he goes to rid his bladder of whiskey and cloudberry juice.

In the spotlessly clean toilets, a man is helping an overexcited five-year-old wash his hands. The kid is bouncing on the balls of his feet.

‘When do we see Santa? Will he come tonight and come again on Christmas Eve? Will he give me an Xbox? Are elves real?’

They’re English, like Alex, but Alex says nothing. No matter. He’s dressed like an Englishman.

The father smiles at Alex in the mirror.

‘Already worth the five grand,’ he tells Alex.

Alex nods, smiles wanly at the kid and leaves.

Outside, he can’t spot Agatha but he can see the mother and daughter half of the English family waiting by the facilities. The little girl, no more than two or three, is spinning with her arms out wide, repeating the word snow, over and over, while the mother laughs.

And a long-forgotten memory hits him like a punch to the stomach.

Vicky at a similar age standing in a light snow flurry and spinning. A snow angel. The surge of warmth he’d felt for his little sister, even as a kid himself, witnessing her unbridled joy.

Alex closes his eyes. The memory felt like a leap through time. He can no more believe it was real than he can believe his sister is now dead. How can the memory be, if she is not?

‘Sorry,’ Agatha says. She’s beside him. ‘I brought the car closer to the door so you won’t have far to walk.’

‘Right. How cold is it, exactly?’

‘Not as cold as it gets in January.’

Alex digests that.

They leave the airport and Alex– who thought he’d seen snow, growing up with bitterly cold Yorkshire winters– realises he’s never seen snow as it should look. As they emerge through the doors, he can see mountains of the stuff in all directions.

The next thing he notices is that everybody around him is walking normally. He observes this right at the moment his shoes go from under him.

Everybody else is wearing snow boots, of course. Even the children have more balance.

Agatha reaches out and grabs his arm before he can fall.

And then the cold hits him. Alex has never felt anything like it. If he sticks his tongue out, it will freeze there. It’s so cold, it’s beyond crisp. It smells clean. Like burning-the-skin-off-his-face clean.

‘I’ve organised some gear for you at the hotel,’ Agatha says. ‘We just need to get you there in one piece.’

‘I. . . t-thank you,’ he stutters, through chattering teeth.

Alex is filled with gratitude for this thoughtful gesture. He’d sell a kidney right now for a proper coat.

Agatha walks him to the passenger door and waits until he gets in before crossing around to the driver’s side. Alex struggles with shaking fingers to pull on his seat belt. Once it’s clipped, he puts his hands under his legs and rocks backwards and forward, trying to get the feeling back in his limbs. He’d been outside for maybe a minute.

Agatha turns the heating on full and they set off.

Everywhere, there are signs for ‘Santa’s Village’. Alex can see flashes of the neon-lit, tourist North Pole through the snow-covered trees.

Agatha takes a right at a crossroads and he realises they’re driving in a different direction to the buses carrying families to their holiday destination.

‘The morgue is closed but you can see your sister first thing in the morning,’ Agatha says.

Alex swallows.

‘I thought you might like to join me for dinner in the hotel this evening. I’m staying in the same one. You can order room service if you prefer. Of course, if you would like to walk around the town– once we have you kitted out– we can do that. Rovaniemi is. . . it’s pretty, in its way. A lot more low-rise compared to what you’re used to, I would guess. Ninety per cent of it was levelled in the Second World War so almost everything you see is relatively, well, new, I guess. This time of year, it’s very Christmassy.’

‘I’ll stay in the hotel,’ Alex says. Then, after a pause: ‘It’s very generous of you. To take care of me. I’m sure you have family at home or. . .’ Alex trails off. There’s a keyring dangling from the rear-view mirror; a picture of children in a small glass frame. But he doesn’t have the energy for it, the small talk.

Agatha fills the gap.

‘I’m staying there because I live up in Koppe. It’s a long drive.’

‘Oh. You’re a police officer from where she was found? I thought you were a member of the Rovaniemi department.’

‘No.’

Alex looks sideways at Agatha.

‘So, you knew her?’

A pause.

‘I probably saw her around town, the odd time. I’m not in the Lodge much, not unless it’s to deal with a problem. I don’t tend to eat or drink there. Tourist prices. When her friend reported her missing, I saw plenty of photographs, so I feel like I know her better than I did.’

Alex bristles.

Six weeks. That’s how long Vicky had been missing, according to his dad.

‘Why weren’t we informed that she’d gone missing?’ he asks.

Agatha hasn’t taken her eyes off the road.

‘It wasn’t clear she was . Adults can come and go as they please. There was no indication of foul play. Her friend didn’t come into the station for two weeks. Even then, it was with reluctance. Nobody wants to go to the police for something that doesn’t feel essential. Guides in the resorts– it’s clichéd, but they’re often free spirits. Adventurous sorts. And of course– nobody came looking for her. Her family, I mean. We didn’t have details for you. She hadn’t listed a next-of-kin for the resort. That was unusual. And it would be more usual for you to come to us if she was actually missing.’

‘You found us quick enough to tell us she was dead,’ Alex says.

‘Different protocols,’ Agatha says.

‘Six weeks,’ Alex says. ‘She was missing six weeks and you don’t sound like you were particularly concerned.’

‘I was. But not enough to contact the British embassy. In the absence of any contact from her family and without any evidence Vicky had come to any harm. . . Alex, I’m sure you’re aware of what it takes to officially pronounce somebody missing? Six weeks might seem like a long time to you, but in reality, it’s not. Not for an adult.’

‘But her friend was obviously concerned. Which friend was it?’

‘Niamh Doyle. Irish woman. Like I said, she was reluctant to even report it. At first, she assumed Vicky had left but would get in touch. After a while, Niamh tried to call her. I think what worried her most was the fact there were no updates on Vicky’s social media. That didn’t alarm me. When people choose to go off the radar, for whatever reason, they don’t tend to maintain their presence on -Instagram. I opened a file, just to be on the safe side, and we did talk to people in the Lodge and around the village. But, then we were moving into December and once it gets close to Christmas. . . It’s Koppe’s busiest time.’

Alex, already on edge, is annoyed now. He can feel it brewing inside him. That old yet familiar feeling he’s learned to suppress. He wants to snap at this woman, at her calm, measured tone. He wants to ask if Vicky was forgotten about because this town, Koppe, has to make a buck in December.

But he doesn’t. Because while he’s angry, he knows it’s a displaced, redundant anger. He’s furious that his sister is dead. Not that he hadn’t been informed she was missing.

He can’t be angry at that. He should have already known. As Agatha says, he should have been the one to report her missing.

So he swallows his rage, but he knows the policewoman can sense it because she sets her lips in a thin line and says, ‘I’m very sorry.’

Aren’t we all, Alex thinks.

‘She stopped leaving her next-of-kin details in workplaces,’ he says, after a few minutes have passed. ‘Several years ago, she got drunk and had an accident off the back of some bloke’s moped in Italy. The cops rang my folks; they nearly had nervous breakdowns. Vicky reckoned if anything like that happened again, she’d be the one telling us the story, in her own time, when it was less alarming. Stupid, but logical, in her head. She knew we were all concerned about her living like she did. She didn’t want to give us more cause to say “I told you so”.’

‘Ah,’ Agatha says.

Alex looks out the windscreen. All he can see in the beam of headlights is snow. Everywhere. There might be life up here, but there’s no sign of it on this lonely road. It’s so deserted that he’s surprised when they come upon the low-roofed town and its blocks of bars and restaurants.

Rovaniemi.

He glances sideways at the policewoman. She looks deep in thought.

One of Alex’s skills is reading people.

And he can tell, in this instant, that there’s something Agatha is holding back.

In the Nordic Hotel, he opens his room door to a ridiculously large suite. Charlie has gone all out. The partners might pull him on this one, but Charlie will quote the stats of the business Alex brought in this year. Somewhere down the line, they’ll deduct it from a bonus, but Alex will worry about that then.

Alex drops his overnight bag on the floor, removes the bizarre soft toy– a husky he can buy for twenty euro, apparently– from the bed, and falls on to it, staring up at the softly lit ceiling.

Euros. He has none. Never even thought to change any at the airport. He arrived in Finland in a pair of impractical leather shoes and a Burberry coat with sterling in his pocket. He’s less prepared than he’d be for a quick trip to Brighton beach on a wintry day.

He’d like to stay on the bed. Just getting here has taken every ounce of strength. But he sits up, undresses and stands under the rainfall showerhead in the modern, black-tiled bathroom, then pulls on a fresh shirt and jeans.

In the bathroom again, he pours a glass of ice-cold water from the sink and pops two aspirin. His reflection in the mirror shows bloodshot eyes and pale skin. He looks like shit.

He’s typing a text to his father to say he’s arrived safely when there’s a knock on the door. He opens it to find Agatha standing there, holding several bulky bags.

‘Thermals, snow boots, a proper coat, a hat and mittens and a wool sweater. I guessed your size for my friend; I think I got it right. The boots should be too big anyway. You need to wear two pairs of socks with them.’

‘Mittens?’ is all Alex can think to say.

‘Better,’ Agatha says. ‘Your fingers will keep warmer together than if they’re separate.’

‘Okay?’

‘Dinner?’

Alex nods.

He will go through the motions. Eat, drink, sleep. And tomorrow, he’ll arrange the coffin and flight to bring Vicky home.

The hotel restaurant’s interior is dark. Black leather couches, teak walls, tables lit with single candles perched in pine cone settings. Alex can’t even read the menu. Agatha orders for them both, a burger for herself, local fish for Alex. He thinks she said perch but he was busy forming questions in his head.

She asks if he wants any alcohol. He declines. He’s had plenty in the last forty-eight hours and he’s conscious he doesn’t want to drink his way through this trauma. He works with several people who can only be described as high-functioning alcoholics. He won’t be one of them.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Agatha says, sipping from the glass of red the waiter brings her. ‘I’ve three kids at home; it’s very rare that I’m away from them for a night.’ She blinks, then adds quickly: ‘Not that this is a special occasion.’

Alex shrugs.

‘You don’t look old enough to have three kids,’ he says.

It’s her turn to shrug.

He’d place her at his age.

Early thirties, three kids and a police officer. She either has a very supportive partner or she’s some kind of superwoman.

The food arrives. Alex hasn’t timed it so, but Agatha has just taken the first bite of her burger when he realises he can’t just go through the motions.

‘How did it happen?’ he asks.

Agatha puts the burger down and he can see her chewing and swallowing as fast as possible. He’s worried she might choke. He keeps talking, to give her time.

‘Vicky likes to live on the edge. Scuba-diving. Abseiling. Mountain-climbing. But she’s never so much as broken a bone. Not even when she went off the back of Romeo’s moped in Italy. But I assume she got unlucky, that the ice was too thin. . .’

He stops, reads Agatha’s frown.

‘It was an accident, wasn’t it?’ he says, even while he thinks, well, of course it was. She was on a frozen lake on her own in the middle of nowhere and she drowned.

Agatha hangs her head, then lifts it and meets his eyes.

‘I don’t think it was,’ she says.

Alex feels the blood drain from his face.

Agatha pushes her barely touched plate aside.

‘I’m sorry. I should have told you this earlier. You seemed tired and. . . shaken. I wanted to make sure you had some food inside you and you got some sleep. That was stupid of me. Of course you want to know what happened. We. . . we believe she sustained an injury to her head before she went in the water. That she was hit with something.’

‘Are you saying my sister’s death was intentional? That she was murdered?’

Agatha nods. Alex’s throat constricts.

‘By who?’

Agatha shakes her head.

‘We don’t know. Yet.’

‘Has she been in the lake the whole time?’ Alex asks, thinking fast. He still can’t absorb what he’s just learned. ‘Was she killed immediately, I mean? When she went missing? Or was she. . . was she put there after?’

Agatha opens and closes her mouth. The smell of Alex’s food rises from his plate. Perch. A lake fish, he remembers. He feels bile rise in his throat and he swipes the plate away with force.

Agatha jumps. A handful of diners look over.

‘Sorry,’ Alex mumbles. ‘It’s just, my mother had a heart attack when she heard the news. That’s how I found out. I went up to see her and they told me Vicky had drowned. I don’t. . . I don’t understand what’s going on.’

‘That’s a lot to deal with.’ Agatha tilts her head, sympathetically.

‘I need facts,’ he says. ‘What happened to my sister? Who would have hurt her? Do you at least have a suspect?’

Agatha hesitates, then leans closer, before speaking quietly.

‘When we contacted your family, the only information we had for certain was that your sister had drowned,’ she says. ‘And I’m told by the medical team that is, in fact, the official cause of death. Her body was found in Lake Inari by a local ice fisherman. Elon. He’s a good man and he held on to her arm until we got to her and broke through the rest of the ice. It took hours. He never let go.

‘I noticed she had a head wound when we got her out of the water but it was entirely possible that had happened by accident; that she’d hit her head going in, or on something under the water, which would have caused her to become disoriented and not aware of what was happening. All these guides are trained to manage ice-breaks and submersion. The pathologist confirmed for me this morning that the angle and depth of the wound indicates it was inflicted. Vicky might have fled from her attacker and gone through the ice or her attacker might have put her in the water. There was no indication she’d been. . . interfered with, before she died. It’s difficult to establish the exact time of death because of the circumstances, but the medical examiner indicates she did most likely die around the time she went missing.’

Agatha pauses, takes a breath.

Alex takes a sip of sparkling water. His mouth is so dry, he can barely feel his tongue.

‘We’re looking for suspects,’ Agatha says. ‘But, so far, there’s no obvious motive for murder. We started interviews at the Lodge yesterday. They’re ongoing.’

‘Did you check her phone? Her emails? You said there was nothing on her social media, but have you got into her accounts?’

‘Her phone is missing and the signal is dead. It might have gone into the water with her. We haven’t been able to access admin of her social media yet to check direct messages or deleted posts. Permission for that takes longer than it should. We did get into her email account. We were able to guess the password. It was her name and birthday. Common enough. There was nothing of concern. Do you happen to know what password she might have used for her social media accounts? When we tried to use her email to reset her social media passwords, it wouldn’t respond so she may have set them up from an older email account.’

Alex shakes his head. He wonders why Vicky wouldn’t have just left her passwords saved on her laptop. That niggling feeling is back, like there’s something more he should be asking, or something Agatha is not telling him.

And he’s suddenly, acutely aware that he has a piece of information that, by the sound of things, Agatha doesn’t.

He’s not sure why exactly, but he doesn’t say anything.

Not yet. He wants to know what he’s dealing with first.

‘So, there’s an investigation,’ Alex says, instead. ‘Who’s leading it? Can British detectives come over?’

‘We can liaise with the English authorities, of course,’ Agatha says. ‘This is an area with a lot of tourism and we have had deaths in the past where foreign affairs departments and police forces have been consulted and kept abreast of case developments. But I will lead the investigation. Unfortunately, this all means we can’t release her body as quickly as we would have liked—’

‘ You’re leading the investigation?’ Alex says, incredulously. ‘But you’re. . .’

Agatha waits.

‘You’re too young.’

‘I’m thirty-five,’ she says, ‘and I am the chief of police in Koppe and the surrounding area. I have two officers serving directly under me—’

‘Two officers?’ Alex feels the anger he swallowed earlier resurfacing. ‘How are you going to undertake a murder investigation with a team of three?’

‘– And officers in surrounding areas, plus we will have the full support of headquarters here in Rovaniemi.’

‘I’m sorry, but that’s ridiculous,’ Alex says. ‘I thought you were a liaison officer. We’re sitting here, having dinner, and my sister’s killer is. . .’

He can’t even finish. The kindly woman in front of him looks like she’s been slapped but he feels no remorse. Everything he’s buried for the last day and a half has finally erupted. He doesn’t care any more if Agatha is not the correct target or if he’s out of order. Alex can feel the familiar anger he usually keeps checked coursing through his blood in hot bubbles. He just wants somebody to tell him this is all a bad dream and Vicky is fine, she’s alive, they got it wrong. He wants to see Vicky, and when he does, he’s going to yell at her but then he’ll tell her he loves her, he never stopped, that no matter what was said or done, she’s his sister.

He’ll apologise for not having called her, for making sure she couldn’t call him. For his great sin of assuming he had the luxury of time and that those months he chose to freeze her out didn’t matter.

‘You can’t solve her murder,’ he snaps at Agatha. ‘She was missing six weeks and you didn’t even know anything was wrong.’

‘Nor did you,’ she says and even though her face immediately fills with regret, the damage is done.

Alex stands and walks away from the table.

And when he’s in the lift, he thinks again about what Agatha said. How the police had examined Vicky’s email account .

Vicky had two email accounts.

The one she used for the world and the one she used when she contacted him.

Is there something in the second one that might tell Alex what happened?

Alex wakes abruptly from sleep, gasping for air. He thinks he may have dreamt about Vicky, that he might even have imagined her drowning.

He rubs his chest until his heart slows down and the tightness there subsides.

He sits up in the comfortable bed and reaches for his phone.

His father picks up after two rings, sounding tired. Immediately, Alex remembers that Finland is two hours ahead of England.

‘Were you asleep?’ he says.

‘It’s 4.30 a.m.,’ his dad replies.

‘I’m an idiot. I’ll phone later.’

‘I wasn’t sleeping, really. And I’ve the alarm set for five. I’m going in to your mother. Have you—’ His dad falters. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘Dad—’ Now it’s Alex’s turn. How can he phrase it?

‘What is it?’