Cold Trail hh-4

by Jarkko Sipila

  The third one he knew, however. All too well. Lying there on the floor was Salmela. The men’s gazes met, but neither said anything.

  Turunen tapped Suhonen on the shoulder and gestured him over to the dining table. There were some maps and other papers on it. Jewelry shop addresses were written on one of them. Neither of the police officers touched the papers. Let Forensics studythem first.

  “Take them all to Pasila,” Suhonen announced, and the SWAT team roughly hauled the detainees up from the floor. As Salmela was led out, their gazes met again.

  Turunen was the only one who stayed behind in the room with Suhonen.

  “What is this place?”

  Suhonen shook his head.

  “Were they planning some robbery?” Turunen asked, gesturing at the papers.

  “That’s what it looks like. This is a job for the NBI,” Suhonen replied, bending down to look under the bed. There was an ice hockey bag there, and Suhonen carefully pulled it out. It held three pistols and two sawed-off shotguns. Suhonen would rather have found Repo crouching in fear.

  The undercover detective thought about Saarnikangas, and whether he had known who really was in the apartment.

  “Goddammit.” Suhonen exhaled heavily , whipping out his cell phone. He pulled up Nykänen’s number.

  CHAPTER 17

  WEDNESDAY, 10:10 P.M.

  HELSINKI POLICE HEADQUARTERS, PASILA

  “Well, well,” Nykänen grunted. He was in the Homicide conference room, along with Takamäki and Suhonen. Joutsamo entered and said that a call had been made to Emergency Response from Karppi’s landline that morning. The call had been logged as a wrong number, but Emergency Response had promised to pull up the recording. She didn’t have any information on Karppi’s cell phone yet.

  Nykänen returned to the raid that Suhonen and the SWAT team had made. It was clear that the case would be transferred over to the NBI for investigation.

  “I should’ve guessed this. We’ve been tapping their phones for a couple of months, but as soon as we tell you, it doesn’t take even 24 hours and our suspects are sitting in jail.”

  His tone of voice was such that Suhonen couldn’t tell if it was a reprimand or praise.

  “I had no idea they would be in there,” Suhonen explained. It was possible that they had moved too early on the potential perpetrators.

  “Suhonen said something about some papers,” Joutsamo said.

  “Forensics is going through the fingerprints, but the places where getaway cars would be swapped were marked on the map, and the other list was of the targets themselves.”

  “So attempted grand larceny,” Joutsamo said.

  “Actually several attempts,” Nykänen corrected.

  Takamäki looked thoughtful. “The Supreme Court has decided that when planning of a crime has begun, it can be considered an attempt. Finding the plans indicates, of course, that something was in the works. Especially if we can connect it to the Manner recording.”

  “There’s a felony weapons charge in there, in any case,” Joutsamo said. “Those shotguns were sawed off.”

  “There’s just one problem here,” Nykänen reflected. “If those guys don’t talk or if we don’t find a connection from the call data or anywhere else to Manner, then he won’t get his toes wet.”

  “I’m pretty sure these guys won’t talk,” Suhonen said. He made a mental note to swap out the SIM card of his off-the-record phone in the very near future, because if the number were found in Salmela’s mobile phone, the NBI might decide to tap it.

  “Well, at least we achieved our number-one goal. We prevented the crime from taking place,” Nykänen grunted.

  “For Manner we still have that hit-and-run, plus Espoo could also investigate the vehicular arson. We could also revoke his security company license,” Takamäki stated, and then held a brief pause. He shifted his gaze to Suhonen. “You or me?”

  Suhonen shrugged.

  Takamäki elected to continue. “There’s one more thing here that you need to know about, but it can’t be discussed outside of this room, or used in any way in the investigation. Do I have your word?”

  “How can I give you my word, if I need to know about it?” Nykänen asked.

  “Let’s just say it would be good for you to know,” Suhonen corrected. “And we’re only telling you this because you used to work in this unit.”

  “Okay,” Nykänen rumbled, stroking his moustache. He wasn’t sure what was going on.

  Takamäki took back the floor. “One of the men apprehended in the apartment is Eero Salmela, whose son was killed a year ago. It was a witness protection case, if you remember.”

  “Hard to forget.”

  “Okay, but the thing is that this Salmela is a close friend of Suhonen’s.”

  “A close friend…” Nykänen repeated.

  Suhonen eyed Nykänen. “I’m sure you get the drift.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Nykänen nodded. “Would he be interested in talking to us?”

  “I can ask, but if it doesn’t work out, then Salmela can’t receive any special treatment during the investigation that would tip outside parties to… anything.”

  * * *

  Salmela was sitting in his green overalls in the interrogation room, with its light-brown table and gray walls. The guard let Suhonen in and closed the door behind him. Suhonen stroked his beard.

  “How’re you feeling?” he asked.

  “How do you think?” Salmela answered.

  Suhonen sat down on the wooden stool across from Salmela and tossed a pack of cigarettes onto the table. Salmela took one, and Suhonen scratched him a light.

  Salmela sucked in a long drag and slowly blew the smoke out. “Fuckin’ a,” he said.

  “Why?”

  Salmela laughed.

  “Is this some interrogation?”

  “No.”

  “Is there a recording device in this room?”

  “No,” Suhonen repeated.

  Salmela hung his head. The cigarette was in his right hand, and the smoke writhed up lazily toward the ventilation system.

  “How did you guys know to hit the apartment?” Salmela asked. “Who gave us out?”

  “Shitty luck. We were looking for Repo.”

  “Repo?” Salmela wondered, raising his head. “The escaped murderer?”

  Suhonen nodded. “We heard he might be there. We found that apartment in the customs office register. Some cigarette smuggler used it last winter.”

  “Fuckin’ a!” Salmela blurted out. “We rented it with cold hard cash from this old lady to make sure it wouldn’t be in some police database. You can’t trust anyone, goddammit.”

  “Got dealt a shitty hand.”

  “And it had to be a nobody like Repo. Fuck, if you would have told me he was such a big deal to you guys, I would have scraped him out of some dumpster till my fingernails bled.”

  “As I recall, I did tell you,” Suhonen retorted. “Let’s get back to the situation at hand. What do you want me to do for you?”

  Salmela thought for a moment. “I don’t know. How much do you guys know?”

  “We know about your plan to jack those jewelry shops and that Manner is running the whole show.”

  “Fuckin’ a!” Salmela blurted out again. “How? How the hell?”

  “I’m not even sure,” Suhonen said. “It’s NBI’s case. We’ve just been helping them out. But you do know where this will lead?”

  “Time in the pen,” Salmela said. “That’s obvious…”

  “So is there anything I can do for you?”

  Salmela shook his head. “Yeah well, maybe a cup of decent coffee, because this is starting to look a hell of a lot like I’ll be drinking freeze-dried from here on out.”

  Suhonen rose and returned a couple minutes later. He was carrying two cups of coffee.

  “Black, if I remember right,” Suhonen said, setting the cup down in front of Salmela.

  “Yeah.”

  Suhonen sat at th
e table and let Salmela drink his coffee. He had some himself.

  “Your son’s thing, is that it?” Suhonen asked. A year earlier, Salmela’s son had been shot during a drug deal gone bad. Salmela didn’t take his eyes off his coffee.

  “I guess. Everything felt pretty empty after that. Junkies sell me phones and computers and I front them. It seemed so stupid and empty. I thought, one big gig and that’d be it. Enough dough that I could take it easy, at least for a while. Okay, it’s stupid to even think that way, but it was a chance.”

  “What, that you guys would hit several targets at the same time?”

  “That, plus a few other jobs,” Salmela said. “You’re the only one I’m going tell this to. In the interrogations, it’s going to be no comment down the line.”

  “What other gigs do you mean?”

  “Do you remember that armored truck robbery in Mariehamn a few years back? First they set up a diversion by burning a car and then executed the robbery. Something like that. On a normal day there’s max thirty to forty patrols in the greater Helsinki area. It wouldn’t take much for half of them to be tied up in bullshit cases. Certain areas could be emptied of cops pretty easily. The idea was specifically in the massive scale.”

  “Whose idea was this? Yours or Manner’s?” Suhonen asked.

  Salmela winked. “Hey, we were all just execution. They told us we had to keep our eye on a couple of spots. My job was to chop down this big birch, because it was blocking the view from this one house. And if it fell on a couple of cars and tied up the police and fire amp; rescue departments, then that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.”

  “Right,” Suhonen said, not believing a word of what Salmela said about the part he played. Someone who chopped down trees didn’t need to know about any other robberies. Suhonen knew that there were many more perpetrators involved than the three they had behind bars, but figuring that out was the NBI’s job. “I guess there’s not much I can do.”

  “A man has to take what he has coming. Goddammit, I should have known after that car thing that this is going to get screwed up.”

  “What car thing?”

  “It was no big deal. Just this one little thing, but I should have seen it coming.”

  “What happened?” Suhonen asked.

  “You know Skoda Sakke?”

  Suhonen nodded.

  “Well, he was supposed to be the driver for the Espoo vehicle, and he had headed over to scout out the area around Sello early this week. In Manner’s car. Well, he didn’t dare to say anything at first, but later he told Manner that he knocked over some cyclist out there. Sakke hadn’t hung around, of course. When Manner heard, he had a conniption. Kicked Sakke’s ass and then made him burn the car. Sakke’s debt grew by twenty grand, even though Manner’s going to claim the insurance money too, of course. So then the Espoo police got in touch with him.”

  “Sounds like a clusterfuck.”

  “That it was.”

  Suhonen snagged the cigarette pack from the table.

  “One more,” Salmela said, pulling a smoke from the pack in Suhonen’s hand. Suhonen lit it for him.

  Joutsamo rushed in. “Suhonen, I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.”

  “Take your time, enjoy your smoke,” Suhonen said to Salmela, before following Joutsamo out of the room.

  Joutsamo withdrew thirty feet down the corridor from the interrogation room door and kept her voice to a whisper, even though she was well aware that the interrogation rooms had solid soundproofing. “Saarnikangas called the phone that was in the jacket on your desk. I didn’t answer, but I listened to the message. Said he had something urgent. His voice sounded agitated, maybe even alarmed.”

  Suhonen didn’t particularly care for other people listening to his messages, but he accepted Joutsamo’s decision. “What was he alarmed about?”

  “He didn’t say, but he asked you to come to the Chaplin Bar on Mannerheim Street right away. Has some information on Repo, apparently.”

  Suhonen considered whether Saarnikangas was trying to finagle more pills, or if he really had something new. Either way, he’d have to check it out.

  “I’ll probably head over, then,” Suhonen said. He’d have plenty of time during the drive to call Takamäki to let him know what Salmela had said about the hit-and-run. The problem was, of course, that the information could never be used, because then the crew would find out that someone was talking to the cops.

  “How’s Salmela?” Joutsamo asked.

  “Pretty bummed,” Suhonen said, returning to the interrogation room.

  Salmela’s elbows were on the table, and his head was resting in his crossed hands. The cigarette was burning between the index and middle fingers of his right hand. A quarter-inch stub of ash curled down from the tip. Salmela raised his head, and the ash shivered onto the table.

  Suhonen sat.

  Salmela broke the silence. “You gonna send a Christmas card to me in the pen, or you think you’ll have time to drop by?”

  “I’ll be by. Outside normal visiting hours, of course,” Suhonen said, looking his childhood friend in the eye. He didn’t really know what else to say, and nothing else was needed.

  EARLY THURSDAY MORNING

  CHAPTER 18

  THURSDAY, 12:40 A.M.

  LAUTTASAARI, HELSINKI

  Repo pulled a suction cup and the glass-cutter he had bought from the sale bin at the Anttila department store from his coat pocket. He pressed the suction cup to the window and used the pencil-like tool to incise a circular hole around it. The glass didn’t come loose on the first try, and Repo was forced to make a second incision.

  The window was triple-paned, so Repo had to cut through the internal windows as well before he was able to push his hand through the hole and open the back door.

  He stopped to listen. The house was quiet. Repo noticed his pulse quickening, and yet he felt calm. He had planned this for a long time.

  The house was a large one by Finnish standards; Repo estimated at least 2000 square feet. It was a single-story brick home with a flat roof. The location was secluded, too-on the northern shore of Lauttasaari Island, right next to the Lauttasaari soccer fields. The marina was a hundred yards away. A long line of townhouses stood on the marina side of the house; on the other, a couple of ramshackle wooden homes.

  Inside was dim, but the living room looked to be completely decorated in black and white. The couch and the table in front of it were white, the armchair was black. Black-and-white paintings hung from the walls. The flat-screen TV had been picked to match the decor.

  There seemed to be an aquarium over to the side, but it was dark.

  Everything looked tidy and well-kept but stark. Repo eyed the furnishings and shut the back door behind him. He walked across the carpet without taking off his shoes. He removed his gray coat and tossed it across the sofa, but kept the shoulder bag with him.

  The living room was set lower than the rest of the house, and Repo had to climb a couple of steps to get to the main level. The black-and-white decor continued in the dining room. The largish dining table was black, and the ten chairs white. The dining room was separated from the living room by a low railing. Behind the dining space was the kitchen.

  Repo silently continued into the front entryway. Several coats and a woman’s black fur hung from the coat rack. A door to a room led off from the entryway. Repo opened it quietly and peeked inside. The streetlamp illuminated it enough for him to make out an office. It looked more normal than the black and white of the other rooms. In front of the window, there was an oak desk and a computer. The walls were lined in bookshelves. The room also accommodated a big, brown leather armchair with a small table at its side. Repo caught a faint whiff of cigar.

  Repo turned back toward the living room. On the left was a door bearing a small plaque-“Toilet.” Next to it was another door, which Repo guessed was a combined shower and sauna space.

  One final door stood before him.

  He carefully
placed the shoulder bag on the floor and quietly opened the zipper. He found everything he needed except the Luger and Karppi’s cell phone. Goddamn Saarnikangas must have snagged them, which meant he now knew what else was in the bag. Repo pulled a red-handled, all-purpose Mora knife from the bag. He had found it in one of the Anttila sale bins, too, for four euros.

  Repo slowly thrust the door inwards and hoped it wouldn’t creak. It didn’t. The house was well tended. The owner probably paid someone good money for that.

  It was the bedroom, as Repo had guessed. First he saw the red numbers on the digital alarm clock-00:45 a.m.-and heard the breathing of two people. The man was wearing black pajamas and sleeping on the far side of the bed, near the window. The woman slept closer to the door.

  The knife was in Repo’s hand, and he moved closer. His advance was cut short-the man turned over under the blue blanket and cleared his throat, but didn’t wake up.

  Repo held the knife in his right hand. The woman’s mouth was slightly open. She was a blonde, about fifty years old. I could do it this way, too, Repo thought, twirling the hollow-handled blade in his hand: slit her throat just like that. The thought horrified him.

  He bent down next to the woman’s head just as her eyes flashed open. Surprise and disbelief morphed into fear when she saw a man in a black suit standing over her. “What…?”

  “Death comes to call,” Repo said in a low voice, clicking on the nightstand lamp. The woman shrieked, and the man sat up in bed.

  “What the hell?”

  “Judge Fredberg,” Repo said with feigned politeness, yanking the woman over in front of him so the knife was at her throat. “Nice to see you again.”

  “What is this? Who are you?” Fredberg managed to spit out. “Put that knife away immediately.”

  Repo simply smiled. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

  The insanity of the situation began to dawn on Aarno Fredberg, chief justice of the Supreme Court. “What do you want?”

  “What do I want?” Repo said, pressing the blade more tightly against the woman’s throat. “What do you think? If I slit your wife’s throat…”