Cold Trail hh-4

by Jarkko Sipila

  “Well, well, look who’s here,” Otto Karppi said in a reedy voice, aiming a shotgun at Repo.

  CHAPTER 5

  MONDAY, 7:50 P.M.

  JORVI MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL, ESPOO

  Takamäki raced into the spartan lobby of Jorvi Hospital, out of breath. Near the main entrance was an information desk with a few windows, but only one was open. A fifty-year-old woman was explaining something to a bored-looking guy in a lab coat.

  Takamäki scanned the room, but didn’t see his wife. Plenty of images had gone through his head during the drive: his unconscious son being transported by ambulance, a breathing tube down his throat, the X-rays and MRI of his head at the hospital, the suspected brain damage.

  Takamäki’s sweaty shirt was glued to his back, and his hands were trembling.

  The conversation at the info desk seemed to be going nowhere fast, so Takamäki decided to take matters into his own hands. The floor was marked with stripes in various colors: black, red, orange, lavender. The lieutenant had spent plenty of time interrogating assault victims in hospitals, including Jorvi, and so he knew what the colors meant. Yellow led to Surgery, red to X-ray. Takamäki picked the yellow one.

  The line led Takamäki down the corridor to a nurse’s station. A few orderlies in white coats were leaning against the desk. One had ominous bloodstains on his lapels. The lieutenant momentarily considered pulling out his badge but decided against it.

  “Hello,” he said in a serious tone.

  “Hey,” was the expressionless response of one of the orderlies, a guy with a buzzed head.

  “Jonas Takamäki was brought here a little while ago,” he announced, his voice quivering.

  None of the orderlies responded immediately. Takamäki wondered whether that was a bad sign.

  “Sorry, we don’t know names. You might wanna try the info desk, back where you came from.”

  “Umm, 16-year-old kid. Bike accident.”

  Buzz-cut glanced at his buddy. “Oh, him. Yeah, what about him?”

  “I’m his father.”

  “All right. I can take you there.”

  Takamäki noticed a familiar-looking bicycle helmet that was split at the side. Ugly visions and some that were worse than ugly flooded into his head. “Is that his?”

  Buzz-cut nodded.

  “How bad is it?” Takamäki gulped, as the orderly stopped at a door.

  “He should be in here.”

  The orderly knocked, and a woman’s voice responded with an “Uh-huh?” Buzz-cut opened the door and let Takamäki in.

  It was a normal hospital room. A nurse in a white coat was at the treatment table, and Jonas was lying on it. Takamäki saw his bloody shirt.

  “This is the father,” the orderly announced and walked out.

  The nurse turned away from Jonas and gave Takamäki a friendly smile. “It’s nothing serious,” she immediately said. “Just a broken arm.”

  Takamäki sighed, and Jonas turned to look. Takamäki registered his son’s relatively bright eyes. The kid was grimacing a little from the pain, but managed a grin.

  Takamäki came over to the head of the bed and stroked his son’s hair extremely tenderly; his hand barely made contact. “Hey, buddy. I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “The helmet took the worst of the blow,” the nurse said. “But there’s still the potential for a mild concussion. The doctor will examine more closely in a bit. We’re definitely looking at X-rays and a cast, though.”

  The nurse continued cleaning the wounds on Jonas’s right arm.

  “It wasn’t my fault. I had a green light. He went through a red light.”

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” Takamäki said, still stroking his son’s hair. “What’s important is that it wasn’t anything more serious.”

  * * *

  In the dark house, Karppi kept his shotgun trained on Repo at a distance of maybe ten, twelve feet.

  “Were those your friends?”

  “Who?” Repo wondered. He was still holding the Luger, but the barrel was pointed at the floor.

  “Those two who just left.”

  “No,” Repo grunted. “They were cops. Looking for me.”

  Now it was Karppi’s turn to laugh. “You did hightail it out of that restaurant pretty fast. Is that what you came here to get?”

  Repo gathered the old man meant the pistol. “No, but it was there in its old spot in the hatbox.”

  “Erik told me the story.”

  Repo wondered which story his father had told his neighbor. “The war thing?”

  Karppi nodded.

  According to the story, Erik Repo had been given the gun right after World War II, as a young man of fifteen, by an old vet who wanted Erik to safeguard it for him. Apparently it had been used to shoot more than a few Russkies-the rumors were that several Soviet commissars had been executed at close range. The vet had been more than happy to give it away, so it couldn’t be traced back to him.

  “This gun is the real deal,” Repo said, activating the safety with his thumb and shoving the gun into his waistband. “But we don’t need any more bodies.”

  “We sure don’t,” Karppi agreed, lowering the barrel of his shotgun to the floor.

  The men stood across from each other in silence.

  “You didn’t get a chance to finish your coffee back at the restaurant. Would you care to now?”

  Repo shrugged. “Maybe. But not here.”

  “Of course not. Those cops might come back. I meant over at my house. Might be a better place for you, anyway.”

  * * *

  Karppi poured the coffee. The cups were delicate and old fashioned, not mugs.

  “Cream or milk?”

  “No thanks,” Repo answered. He was sitting at the dining table in his black suit. He had loosened his tie.

  “You take it bald, huh?”

  “What?”

  “Up north they used to say if you drank your coffee black, you liked it bald,” the old man explained.

  Karppi’s house was the same size as his neighbor’s, but the decor was a touch more genteel. The difference lay in the dark furniture and the massive bookshelf that took up a whole wall.

  Karppi sat down across from Repo. There were also sandwiches and mineral water on the table.

  “You and your dad have some of the same features. He’d always sit the same way, a little hunched over with his arms across his chest.”

  The remark prompted Repo to sit up straighter and uncross his arms. Karppi laughed and tasted his hot coffee.

  Repo glanced at Karppi’s old-fashioned cell phone on the kitchen table. “Why didn’t you call the cops?”

  “How do you know I’m not about to?”

  Repo didn’t respond.

  “Why did he hate you so much?”

  Repo turned his gaze to his black coffee. “Why do you think?”

  “Because of what happened back then.”

  “We never really talked about it, so it’s hard to say. You never asked him?”

  Karppi dodged the question. “Erik was a reticent man.” He took a sip of coffee before continuing. “Why did you kill your wife?”

  Repo didn’t answer, and Karppi backed off.

  “I was just asking. That photo on top of the TV always made me wonder.” Karppi stood. “Why the hell did your dad keep it out? If you want to forget something, you don’t keep a photo that reminds you of it in a prominent spot.”

  “He may have had his reasons.”

  “I suppose he did,” Karppi said. He walked over to the kitchen cabinets and pulled out a folder. “I wasn’t blessed with children, so maybe that’s why I found it so intriguing. I don’t think I would have been capable of that sort of hatred myself.” He set the green folder down in front of Repo. “Here.”

  “What’s that?” Repo asked, without touching it.

  “I gathered a few papers that looked important from your father’s home a few days after his death. Just in case burglars came to call.”
r />   Repo opened the folder. The documents that had once belonged to his father were neatly organized in plastic sleeves. The bank statements were on top. Repo skipped past them and browsed through documents regarding the house, paid bills, a passport, and other important-looking papers. There were about fifteen plastic sleeves. The second-to-last one contained cash, maybe three hundred euros, at an eyeball estimate.

  “Take it. You must need money.”

  Repo fished the bills out and placed them in his breast pocket.

  The final sleeve, clearly the fattest, contained letters. Repo pulled them all out and glanced at Karppi.

  “I haven’t read them.”

  Topmost were postcards printed in a child’s hand. Someone else had written Erik Repo’s address on them. One was from the Canary Islands. “Hi Grandpa! We’re in the Canary Islands. It’s nice and warm here. I’ve been swimming every day. Love, Joel.” The postmark was January 2003; Joel would have been eight years old.

  The coffee was cooling. Karppi watched closely as Repo scanned through the mail.

  There were several vacation and Christmas cards. There was also a letter from Joel. Timo read it quickly. In it, the boy thanked his grandpa for the Christmas money. He had used it to buy a computer game. It also contained a photograph of a boy, about ten, smiling broadly in front of a Christmas tree.

  Karppi caught Repo wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.

  Timo stared at the photo for a long time. He hadn’t seen his son in eight years because the child had been taken into custody and placed with a foster family, and Repo wasn’t allowed any information about them.

  “You can sleep on the sofa.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Where else are you going to go? It’s comfortable enough.”

  Repo took a sandwich and reflected. In a lot of ways, running into Karppi was a stroke of luck-and would definitely make things easier.

  TUESDAY MORNING

  CHAPTER 6

  TUESDAY, 8:30 A.M.

  HELSINKI POLICE HEADQUARTERS, PASILA

  Joutsamo yawned. They had searched for Repo until after eleven the previous night, after which she had biked home to Töölö. She hadn’t slept properly, and a few hours later she had cycled back to Pasila.

  “Good morning,” Takamäki called from the doorway.

  Joutsamo turned around. “Good morning. How’s Jonas?”

  “Broken arm and mild concussion. Kaarina’s staying at home with him.”

  “Thank God it wasn’t worse. Who was the driver?”

  “Don’t know. Took off.”

  “Hit-and-run, huh?” Joutsamo said.

  “The Espoo Police Department is investigating.”

  “In that case, you’ll never know,” laughed the sergeant. She had worked in the Espoo PD Narcotics division before transferring to Helsinki Homicide.

  “I don’t know. It’s not such a tough case. Happened near Sello. There are a ton of surveillance cameras around there.”

  “The Sello shopping mall, huh?” Joutsamo turned back to her computer. Takamäki walked over behind her to follow along as she looked up data from Homicide’s list of surveillance cameras.

  “There,” Joutsamo said. “They’ve got two kinds of recordings. Some are stored for a week, but others just for twenty-four hours. Hopefully they’ve got the sense to go look at the images today.”

  “Could be that some eyewitness caught the license plate and they wouldn’t even need photos,” Takamäki said, before changing the subject. “Where are we with the escaped convict?”

  “Suhonen and I were out looking for him all evening. Went to the father’s house, but got nothing. Well, we did find out that relations between father and son probably weren’t the warmest. The brother indicated the same about their relationship, too. After murdering his wife, Timo Repo was shut out by his family.”

  “Well, he can’t make it on his own out there. He’s going to need help. He probably doesn’t have any money,” Takamäki said.

  “Suhonen and I were thinking the same thing. We agreed I’d go visit the Riihimäki police and check out those old preliminary investigation reports, see if maybe we can find some names there. Suhonen will work the prison angle.”

  “Good,” said Takamäki. “Any new cases last night?”

  “Nothing serious. A couple of assaults out east at Itäkeskus, but the precinct will handle them. Couple of cars disappeared, a few B amp;Es, nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “You need some extra hands to help you with the Repo investigation? I could free up Kohonen and Kulta. They’ve almost got the railway station homeless case wrapped up.”

  “I don’t think so. Let’s see how things start rolling here. If we find any names in the old documents or the prison, then maybe.”

  Takamäki walked to the door. “Okay. Let’s have a status check at two.”

  “If the rat stays in his hole and doesn’t move, it’s going to be pretty hard to find him. Should we use the media to smoke him out?”

  “We’ll take a look at two.” Takamäki thought for a moment. “What do you think, should I make sure the Espoo police picked up those images from Sello?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’ve got it under control.”

  * * *

  Takamäki deleted an email from the National Police Board reminding staff of the communication guidelines, thanks to some hapless sergeant who had given a lecture at some school. According to the new, stringent regulations, no officer was to make a public appearance without a written request detailing the purpose and message of the visit delivered in advance to the National Police Board.

  Takamäki couldn’t get the Sello surveillance images out of his head; he had to call. The mall switchboard connected him to the head of security currently on duty.

  A male voice grumbled into the phone, “Aho.”

  “Lieutenant Takamäki here,” Takamäki said, intentionally omitting Helsinki Police.

  Aho suddenly sounded like a security guard whose sights were set on the police academy: “What can I do for you, sir?”

  Takamäki held a brief pause. “Something pretty simple, actually. There was an accident yesterday evening over on the side of the mall facing the railroad. A cyclist was hit by a car.”

  “Really? There wasn’t anything in the papers.”

  “Well, the injuries weren’t very serious, but now we’re tracking down the driver, who fled the scene.”

  “So you’re looking for surveillance footage.”

  “Right,” Takamäki said. “There’s a little uncertainty here as to whether someone has asked for it yet.”

  “Not today, at least,” Aho said. “I’ve been here all morning, and of course I can check yesterday’s log, too.”

  Takamäki could hear Aho tapping at his computer.

  “Nope, the images haven’t been picked up. I mean, no one has even requested them.”

  “So you have the footage?”

  Aho backtracked. “I’m not sure about that. I’m just saying it hasn’t been turned over.”

  Takamäki began to see why the guy hadn’t made it into the police academy and probably never would. Nevertheless, he kept his voice as steady and relaxed as possible.

  “You think you might have a minute, buddy, to check and see if you guys have the footage there? It happened around 7 p.m. yesterday on the railroad side of the mall. Of course I’d be particularly interested in any shots of the car.”

  “Of course. It’ll take me a second, though. I can call you back.”

  Takamäki gave Aho his cell phone number, thanked him, and ended the call.

  “What footage are you looking for?” Suhonen asked from the doorway. Takamäki hadn’t noticed him. Suhonen stepped in.

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with this Repo case.”

  “With what, then?” Suhonen continued. His curiosity was piqued, because it wasn’t every day that a lieutenant called and asked for surveillance camera footage himself. Th
at was a job for subordinates.

  “Jonas got hit by a car over at Sello yesterday. I’m just making sure they hold on to the shopping center’s surveillance cam images.”

  “Hurt bad?”

  “Nah,” Takamäki answered. “Not too bad. Broke his arm. But the driver fled the scene.”

  Suhonen thought for a second. “Isn’t that an Espoo police case? Or I mean, at least not yours?”

  “Yeah, it’s Espoo’s,” Takamäki admitted, before deciding to change to a less-awkward subject. “Why isn’t Repo back behind bars yet?”

  Suhonen smiled at his lieutenant’s clumsy attempt to change the subject. “’Cause we haven’t found him.”

  “You think you might want to do that?”

  “Do you remember when you ordered me to attend that class given by the Security Police last summer?” Suhonen asked, sitting down in his favorite spot on the windowsill across from Takamäki’s desk.

  “What does that have to do with this?”

  “There was this one army intelligence officer lecturing about military intelligence, and he had a PowerPoint slide that he flashed up on the screen. It was this matrix that said that the most important task of military intelligence is to determine the other nation’s capability and intentions. That’s what helps you assess threats.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I’ve been trying to apply that matrix to Repo. Does this Repo have the capacity for wrong-doing? Okay, he killed his wife years ago, so theoretically the potential exists. Still, I’d estimate his capability as being pretty minimal.”

  Takamäki tried interjecting, “I wouldn’t.”

  “Let me finish. What about his intentions? That’s a trickier thing, because we don’t know why he fled. It’s still pretty hard to see it as a particularly planned escape. It seems to have been more of a momentary impulse. Repo doesn’t belong to a criminal gang, so we can’t conclude, for example, that he’s off on some vendetta he was ordered to handle. That being the case, I would also assess his intent to commit wrong-doing as pretty minimal. And since both factors are low, the threat assessment is also pretty low. The guy’s a sheep .”

  Takamäki looked at Suhonen. He tried to keep his face serious, but a smile crept into his eyes.