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about Elina’s disappearance.
    “You can go. But tell Aira Rosberg to make an official missing persons report if it looks like anything fishy is going on. And check to see if her niece might have left the country. These are tough cases, adult disappearances. If I were you, I’d have a talk with the boyfriend too.”
    “I was thinking the same.” I shoved a big forkful of macaroni in my mouth and watched Taskinen as he mashed slices of rye bread into little balls with his fingers before eating them.
    Detective Lieutenant Jyrki Taskinen was a neat, meticulous man. He was a little over five feet ten and had straight blond hair that looked as if it had been parted with a ruler. There were never stray hairs or dandruff on the shoulders of his blue suit, and his fingernails were always trimmed short. Everything about Taskinen’s face was narrow and straight. Even his teeth lay in flawless white lines. His body was also slim, wiry like a marathoner’s. I’d heard that even at fifty Taskinen could run a 10K in under forty minutes. The only exception to his narrow lines was an almost half-inch-wide polished gold wedding band.
    Based on his appearance, you could easily take Taskinen for a tight ass, but in fact he was easy to get along with. He handled his work extremely well and encouraged the same in others. He always knew how to express exactly what he wanted and was clear about what pleased him and what didn’t. On occasion he was irritated by my habit of bending police procedures a bit, but we’d never had any other problems. After my previous bosses—an alcoholic at the Helsinki PD and a shifty lawyer—working with Taskinen was a breeze.
    I hardly knew anything about his personal life, but if I remembered right, his wife was a day-care administrator for the city of Espoo. He also had a teenage daughter who was one of the best figure skaters in the country in her age division. Except for Ström, I got along well with all of my coworkers—despite being the only woman in the unit. Fortunately our neighboring units and the Patrol Division had a few female officers with whom I’d become friends. We even played volleyball once a week. Nowadays, with those other women in the building, I didn’t feel like such a freak. During my police academy days and right after graduation it had seemed I was the only representative of any kind of minority on the force.
    After lunch Taskinen and I worked on putting together the paperwork on the money laundering investigation. The sun was already setting by the time I turned my Fiat toward Nuuksio. After Antti and I had moved to the cottage, we’d given in and bought a used car. During the summer my commute was a breeze by bike, or even walking if I wasn’t in a hurry, and Antti didn’t mind walking half a mile to the bus stop or even having to transfer once to get to the math department at the university. But trips to the store and things like that were difficult enough that we’d decided to drop a few thousand on the ancient black Italian job. It clearly wasn’t made for slick roads. The back swung nastily as I slid down the curving hills of Nuuksio on my way to Rosberga.
    The gate was shut tight again, and this time it didn’t open on its own. Aira had to walk down and unlock it. The last rays of the sun struck Rosberga Manor at an angle, painting the delicate pink walls the color of a blazing-red rose garden. Milla was outside smoking. In her black clothes and heavy makeup, she looked significantly more like Maleficent than Sleeping Beauty.
    “The sergeant returns. Did you come to look for Elina’s body?” she asked derisively.
    Aira recoiled at Milla’s words, as did I, but when I looked closely at Milla, I thought I detected genuine concern.
    “Hopefully not,” I said, stepping past Milla into the entryway. Muffled piano music was coming from somewhere. It was the same Satie piece Antti sometimes practiced for fun.
    “Let’s go have a look at Elina’s room. Then maybe