As Red as Blood (The Snow White Trilogy) by Salla Simukka Page A

dumbed themselves down so the best-looking boys in class could feel smarter and stronger. Lumikki had always wondered why the boys couldn’t see through the act. Didn’t they find it humiliating that the girls thought they had to pretend so the boys could feel superior? Of course, some boys did see through it, but the show wasn’t for their benefit anyway. They were too smart to be sexy.
    For some reason, intelligence wasn’t sexy in middle school. If you wanted to be sexy, you had to avoid intelligence like the plague. Smart meant the same thing as boring, annoying, irritating, and, if not actually ugly, at least nothing much to look at.
    Lumikki had thought things would change after middle school. Partly they did, but partly not. Now she could seethat even some really accomplished adult women still dumbed themselves down in male company. It was embarrassing to watch. She hoped Elisa just had one foot still stuck in junior high, and that the behavior was a result of that, rather than some deeper issue or ingrained pattern.
    “Let me take a look at the computer for a sec too,” Lumikki said to Kasper.
    The boy looked at her dubiously.
    “There isn’t anything there,” Kasper said.
    “Just let me look anyway,” Lumikki insisted calmly. “Sometimes there’s a lot more on a machine than it looks like on the surface.”
    “Ooo, so our super detective is also some kind of fucking computer genius,” Tuukka said mockingly.
    “Yeah. I’m the secret love child of Hercule Poirot and Lisbeth Salander,” Lumikki replied without the slightest wavering in her expression, and sat down in the rolling chair Kasper had just vacated dramatically.
    The trio stood behind her, watching. Lumikki hated that.
    “So you’re Lumikki Poisander then?” Kasper asked, trying to keep up the joke.
    No one laughed.
    “Lumikki . . . Lumikki.”
    Kasper seemed to be savoring the name, drawing out each syllable.
    “You must have a nickname,” he said finally.
    “No, I don’t,” Lumikki replied without turning around.
    “Lumi?”
    “No.”
    “Mikki?”
    “You think?”
    “Okay, maybe not. What about Snow White then? That is your—”
    Lumikki pushed the chair back so suddenly that it banged into Kasper, and then she spun around.
    “Ouch! Watch it.”
    Kasper massaged his knee irritably.
    “Chill. Out. This could take a while,” Lumikki said, throwing Elisa a meaningful look.
    Fortunately, the girl still knew how to use her brain sometimes.
    “Let’s go finish our Cokes in the living room,” Elisa said. “Shout if you find anything.”
    Lumikki nodded and turned back to the monitor. After a moment, she heard the door close behind her. Blessed quiet.
    She had to act quickly. No way would the quiet last.

Terho Väisänen turned up his collar and pulled the green scarf his daughter had knitted him over his mouth. The cold sank its sharp claws into any bare patch of skin as soon as he stepped outside. He considered running home from the police station to Pyynikki in his car, but he decided to walk after all. Maybe the cold would stimulate his brain, which had been unacceptably sluggish.
    Two questions were bothering Terho.
    Where was his money?
    Where was Natalia?
    And was that the order of importance of those questions? Of course not, but sometimes Natalia went quiet for several days on end, sometimes even weeks. She didn’t always have time to answer Terho’s calls and texts and e-mails. He was used to that. So Natalia’s disappearance didn’t really meananything yet. In contrast, it definitely did mean something that Boris Sokolov had practically reached through the cell phone to throttle Terho when he called to ask about the money. Sokolov said the money had already been delivered.
    But it hadn’t.
    Either Sokolov was lying or the Estonians were lying to Sokolov. The latter was more likely. Terho had actually been surprised that they had gone so long without one of them trying to stick his hand in the cookie jar and