Only a few hours before, Suhonen had been spending his day off with the intention of going for pizza and a few beers with his wife candidate Raija when Takamäki called. Of course, he could have said no, but that wasn’t his style.
Besides, the situation seemed pretty juicy. Based on information gleaned from phone taps, they had reason to believe that Martin had called Jere Siikala three times on a prepaid card in recent days. The lawyer was the only one whose own phone had been within range of the same cell towers as the prepaid phone that was used to call Guerrilla. It couldn’t be a coincidence. And if it was, it called for a formal explanation in a police interrogation room. Martin had also gone to visit Korpi in Helsinki Prison on the Thursday prior to Korpi’s transfer to solitary.
Takamäki, Suhonen, Joutsamo and Karila had held a meeting at the VCU conference room to discuss the situation brought about by the Lehtonens’ desertion. Once Martin’s and Siikala’s phone records were added to the equation, it became clear that there was no reason to wait. Particularly with Siikala continuing to call anonymous numbers. The police had to be proactive. Anybody who could be linked to the case would be taken in and held for as long as legally possible, and potentially remanded into custody if the interviews and searches produced any evidence.
As for Guerrilla, his arrest was left up to Narcotics agents, who were overjoyed to be done with their mind-numbing surveillance detail. Suhonen, for his part, had tracked down Martin. Because the two men were connected, there was good reason to make their arrests at more or less the same time. A tentative time of six o’clock was agreed upon, just before the conclusion of the play at the Helsinki City Theater.
Suhonen considered the various ways that he could arrest Martin. If the house was packed with lawyers, sending in the SWAT team would likely be ill-advised, though quite educational. Karila and Takamäki had emphasized the importance of the lowest possible profile and minimal publicity. The goal was to turn the situation back in the Lehtonens’ favor.
In terms of a low profile, Martin’s party was clearly a terrible starting point. No matter how they got him out of the house, there would be an uproar amongst the guests. Suhonen couldn’t wait until the party was over, because timing was important. But the bosses had only urged the lowest possible profile. Needless to say, they would have to search the house, so the party had to end. But how to do that without revealing the reason for Martin’s arrest to his guests?
Suhonen had looked into Martin’s background. The man was married with two teenage children, but more interesting was what he found in the firearms registry: a shotgun and two handguns registered in his name.
His two-story red brick house was situated just across the street from the ocean front, not far from Mellsten’s beach.
Suhonen took out his phone and called the on-duty lieutenant at the Espoo police department. Takamäki had already arranged for back-up to be available. After that, Suhonen called Takamäki, who had no objections to his straightforward plan.
Within ten minutes, the cruisers from Espoo had pulled up to the agreed-upon meeting spot in the parking lot of the Toppelund school. Suhonen briefed the uniformed officers on his strategy and showed them a photo of Martin he’d gotten from a directory of lawyers.
The squad cars pulled up to the house in single file with their roof lights off. Suhonen parked his vehicle behind them and he, along with four other cops, weaved through the cars parked in the driveway. One of the uniformed officers rounded the house to cover the back door.
Suhonen reached the front door and was about to ring the bell when it opened. He recognized Martin immediately. The man had a glass of Cognac in his hand. He reeked of alcohol, and his pupils were dilated. Latin music and the smell of cigar smoke wafted outside.
“What’s this?” he said. “Are the neighbors complaining? We’ll turn it down.”
“No need. I’ll take care of it,” said Suhonen.
“What? You can’t just…”
“Shut up,” said Suhonen, and one of the Espoo cops twisted Martin’s arms behind his back. The glass of Cognac fell to the floor and shattered.
“What the hell…” Martin managed to say before the burly officer slapped on the cuffs, took hold of his suit coat and started hauling him toward the cruiser. Martin wasn’t wearing any shoes, but the cop didn’t care.
“What is this!” shouted Martin, struggling against the cuffs.
“I’ll explain in a bit,” said Suhonen, and he went inside. The furnishings looked expensive. Suhonen took a quick glance into the two downstairs bedrooms, the bathroom and entertainment room. Empty. He continued on upstairs with two Espoo officers in tow.
“What’s going on down there?” shouted a woman’s voice from the top of the stairs. The music shut off.
Suhonen waited until he reached the top before answering. The two beat cops stayed just behind him.
Once on the second floor, he pulled out his badge, “Helsinki Police.”
Three women and four men were sitting around a large living room decorated entirely in white furnishings. Their posh clothing harmonized with the expensive decor.
“What’s this all about?” said one of the women as she rose. She was slender, with long blond hair and a black knee-length dress. “Where’s my husband?”
“Take it easy,” said Suhonen. “Mats Martin is under arrest.”
One of the men shot a quick glance toward a corner at the back of the room where a couple of chairs and a chess table were arranged. Suhonen caught the glance and walked over to the table.
Martin’s wife was babbling something, and as he neared the table, Suhonen heard one of the men cursing. A couple lines of white powder lay on the marble chess board with a straw to the side. “I see,” said Suhonen with a smile. The drugs would make a convenient excuse for the raid.
“You’re all under arrest on suspicion of drug possession.”
“I haven’t done anything!” one of the men protested as he got to his feet.
The Espoo cops took a step toward him and he fell silent again. Martin’s wife was in hysterics now.
“You can’t just barge into someone’s house like that!”
“But here we are in the middle of your coke party. Imagine that,” said Suhonen. He turned to the other cops. “Take down their names and bring them to the Espoo Station. I’ll call and let them know we gotta bunch of junkies on the way. I need one of you guys to come with me to Helsinki. And cuff ’em all,” he hollered after them. A ride in the back of a cop car with handcuffs on and a night in jail was a more fitting punishment for these types than whatever fine they’d get for possession. Of course, if Espoo Narcotics didn’t have any big cases going on, they’d search their homes and offices to find out where the drugs came from. But Suhonen was confident that that would come out in the interrogations anyway. Whatever the case, he wasn’t interested in the drugs.
While the uniformed officers began shepherding the shocked guests down the stairs, Suhonen opened the door to an adjacent room and glanced inside. One look at the desk, laptop, bookshelves and stacks of paper told him it was Martin’s office. A few cell phones were charging on the desk. Forensics would have fun with this place.
One of the Espoo cops came back upstairs. “We got a little problem. Couldn’t fit all of them in the cruisers, so I called for another. Martin’s waiting in your car, so I’ll ride with him in the back seat and make sure he doesn’t try anything.”
“That’s fine,” said Suhonen.
The beat officer smiled, “Quite the coke party. Two more lawyers, one communications director and a Supreme Court clerk in the bunch.”
“Ha! Looks like headline material,” said Suhonen, and he called Takamäki, who informed him that Jere Siikala had been taken into custody without event.
Suhonen took another look at the man’s lavish home and wondered if Espoo’s Narcotics unit would dare rifle through the office of a Supreme Court clerk. Takamäki, for one, would never miss such opportunity.
S
UNDAY,
DECEMBER 17
CHAPTER 25
SUNDAY, 8:55 A.M.
PORVOO STREET, HELSINKI
Suhonen was sitting in the front seat of his Peugeot, parked in front of Porvoo Street 17 with a clear view of the Lehtonens’ apartment building. Though it had been legally parked, a Volvo had been towed to another spot down the street so Suhonen could have the best vantage point.
Helsinki was awakening to a beautiful, sunny winter Sunday. The temperature was ten degrees below freezing and an inch of snow had fallen overnight. Suhonen occasionally had to run the engine so the windows wouldn’t frost over, and he’d cracked the window to minimize the problem.
All was quiet on Porvoo Street. The Lehtonens’ building was at the old terminal stop of the number 3 streetcar, once called the “five-minute stop” because of how long the streetcar waited before turning around. The stop formed a sort of plaza, decorated by about ten trees, an electrical substation building, a couple of recycling barrels and a cab stand. Seven- and eight-story buildings surrounded the plaza. The Weeruska restaurant lay on Suhonen’s right behind a yellow fence.
The blue-gray building where Tomi Salmela was killed was located directly across from the Lehtonens’ apartment. On the ground floor was a convenience store with barred windows.
Aside from a few early risers out walking their dogs, nobody else was around. Three dogs went huffing past with a man in tow. Either he was deeply in love or under his wife’s thumb—nobody else would spend their Sunday morning out in the cold juggling three unruly dogs.
The towing operation had been carried out at about six in the morning, and Suhonen had since downed a few cups of coffee. He’d been forced to relieve himself behind a nearby building, but it had still been dark out then.
Now that the Kaarela surveillance operation was over, Narcotics had taken the overnight shift here, which had ended at six. In Kaarela, the police had had to remain out of sight, but here it didn’t matter. To the contrary, they wanted to be seen. The cruiser that had been waiting outside the building the previous day had been removed so as not to irritate Mari Lehtonen.
The Lehtonens were inside—that much they knew. Or at least the police hadn’t seen them leave. After the show, Joutsamo had escorted them home. They had wanted to walk, so the sergeant had followed them in the car at a distance of no closer than thirty feet. Mari hadn’t wanted to talk.
A man with a black knit hat pulled low over his eyes and his hands in his jacket pockets walked past the parked cars in front of the building. Suhonen followed him idly with his eyes. The man’s step was somehow plodding, perhaps from a hangover. A couple of cars drove past. Someone scraped the windows of a Saab, then pulled out of the parking space in front of the building.
Suhonen had time to ponder again. With as much time as he spent alone with his thoughts, he could have been a famed philosopher by now. He shook off thoughts of his personal life—he didn’t care to think about those now. Things were muddled enough without them. The inside of the windshield began to fog up again and Suhonen started the engine. The fan breathed cold air at first, but soon enough it began to warm up.
An old rusty Ford Escort was approaching from the oncoming lane, and Suhonen snapped to attention. That same car had driven past the building only a few minutes earlier. It was an early eighties model, with a boxy-looking body, maybe an ’82, he thought. At the most—at the very most—it was worth five hundred euros.
Suhonen couldn’t make out the driver, but the car slowed up and parked in the same spot the Saab had vacated a few minutes earlier. Despite the abundant space near the crosswalk, the driver had to crank the wheel a few times to get in.
A man in an army jacket got out of the car. From some fifty yards off, Suhonen put the man’s age at about twenty. He wore black jeans and his hair hung down from beneath his knit hat. The man closed the car door, and with quick strides, headed back in the same direction he had come from. Clearly a speedier fellow than the hung-over bum from earlier. Something was bothering Suhonen and he lost twenty seconds figuring it out: the man hadn’t locked his door. An Escort that old certainly wouldn’t have remote locks. Nobody left their door unlocked in this neighborhood.
The guy was already twenty yards from the Ford and about seventy from the Peugeot when Suhonen swung swiftly out of his car. He took his key ring and reflexively locked the doors with the remote as he hurried off toward the Escort. As he drew nearer, he memorized the plate number. The car looked rough—five hundred would be asking a lot. Nearly every seam was engulfed in rust. A long crack stretched across the passenger side of the windshield.
Suhonen peered in the window. The seats looked filthy and worn. The floor was littered with garbage. He worked his way around the car and noticed a bag in the footwell of the back seat. Too many things were adding up.
Suhonen’s first impulse had been to run after the driver, but the car was clearly a higher priority. He took a couple of steps back and called dispatch. Thirty seconds later, another unsettling fact was added to the list: according to the plate number, the car should have been a black BMW. Suhonen backed away from the car and ducked behind the corner of a building. He notified dispatch of a possible bomb and gave a description of the driver to be forwarded to patrol cars in the area.
Suhonen looked around. Nobody in sight. He speculated about the potential bomb’s detonating device: probably on a timer, and unlikely a matter of minutes, since the driver hadn’t run from the car, thought Suhonen. From further off came the wail of the first siren, and then another. For chrissakes, he thought and dialed Takamäki’s number.
* * *
Within twenty minutes, several blocks surrounding the plaza on Porvoo Street were cordoned off. More than a dozen police cars were on site with roof lights flashing. An ambulance and a few fire trucks were parked on the side streets. A crowd had gathered, but the police weren’t answering questions.
A bomb-sniffing dog approached the car and began barking—it had detected the scent of explosives. The fact that the temperature had dipped to twenty degrees Fahrenheit made the situation especially problematic. Most explosives became very unstable below twenty-five degrees.
Police began evacuating residents living in the cordoned area. The first to be evacuated was the nearest building: the Lehtonens’. Needless to say, the tenants were alarmed as police filed through the apartments one by one, ordering people to exit through the back door as soon as possible. They were allowed only enough time to put on warm clothes.
The evacuation was unusually extensive: there were nearly ten large apartment buildings in the area. The streetcar line had been brought to a standstill.
Mari and Laura were ushered out with the others with no special treatment, since the patrol officer didn’t know who they were. Mari pressed him for a reason, but all he could say was that a police operation in front of the building required that all residents leave the area.
Now Mari and Laura were sitting in a small coffee shop on Western Brahe Street, each nursing a cup of tea and a roll. From the window, she could see the police barricade at the corner of Sture and Porvoo Streets, about a hundred and fifty feet off. All four tables at the coffee shop were full.
Mari brooded as she gazed out the window. A number of police officers were about and she noticed a TV reporter. Despite the turmoil, Mari had had the good sense to take her wallet and phone along. Her purse was on the floor, along with the “Christmas present” Anton had given her.
“What’s this all about, Mom?” asked Laura.
Mari shrugged.
“Is this about us?”
“Sweetie, I don’t know.”
“But what if it is?”
“Just eat your roll,” she snapped. She, too, felt unsettled.
The door to the coffee shop opened, and in came Sanna Römpötti. The owner of the coffee shop was an older woman with her hair in a bun, and she recognized the reporter. “Hello,” she said from behind the counter.
“Hi,
” said Römpötti as she scanned the patrons at the tables. She recognized Mari Lehtonen.
“So what’s going on out there?” asked the shop owner. A hush came over the room.
Römpötti turned back to the counter and answered loudly enough that everyone could hear. “We’re still not sure, but apparently some kind of bomb threat. For now that’s all we know.” She turned back toward the tables. “Are there any evacuees in here? I’m looking for somebody to interview.”
Römpötti’s gaze fell on Mari, who gave a nod of consent and Römpötti came over to the table.
“Have a seat,” said Mari, and the reporter sat down and unzipped her coat.
“We’ve met before,” said Römpötti. “Not formally, but I was there in court when you testified. I’m Sanna Römpötti, crime reporter for Channel 3 news.”
“Yes, I know,” said Mari. She was sizing up the situation.
“So were you two evacuated?” asked Römpötti, glancing occasionally at Laura as she ate her roll. The reporter’s approach was simple. Her job was to get potential interview subjects to talk, and that was all. An ordinary person’s account would make the bomb threat seem real to viewers. The facts she could get from the police.
“Yes, we were.”
“At what time?”
“Let’s see…it would’ve been about a quarter after nine. We were just having breakfast when a policeman rang the bell.”
“And what did he say?” This was good material, thought Römpötti. Maybe she could even talk Lehtonen into going on camera.
“He just mentioned some kind of police operation in front of the building. Did you say there was
Helsinki Homicide: Nothing but the Truth Page 19
