Helsinki Noir

by James Thompson

  “It’s not going to work,” I struggled. “I’m too much of a man.”

  “You’re no man at all,” Yalda said.

  And laughed.

  I was thirsty, but no matter how hard I tried to think, I couldn’t figure out where I could get water. I saw flowers—pale, hanging, fruitful, contorted, devilish, hellish, lusty, deadly blooms that were like images of death. Everywhere I looked, I saw the sinuous fringes of the flowers’ petals, which seemed to invite me to thrust between them; they were smooth and shiny-slick like toilet porcelain or the insides of a cunt and smelled of shit and death. The fat, green, spherical, thorny heads split before my eyes, spilling out their disgusting black seeds.

  * * *

  I fumbled my way out into the corridor. The women tried to stop me, but somehow I made it to the shore of Sunny Bay. Then the hallucinations stopped. The sun had set. The sea was a wall rising up before me, into which birds collided. The angular apartment buildings jutted out from the landscape like an enormous row of teeth.

  I finally understood. Comprehension arrived hard and bright. Seeing everything that way—suddenly, clearly—was hell.

  I wasn’t a plant or a flower, or even a proper person. I was a degenerate human monkey, a seed from which nothing would ever grow. A seed that the world would crush between its teeth, because I had never really wanted anything else. I was someone else’s bad dream.

  Stinking brown sludge rose up from the gutters onto the pavement and splashed at my feet. I was this city. I was this country.

  I desperately kept trying to prove that I was someone, that I was still alive. I found myself standing in front of a familiar nightclub. I tried to get in, until I realized that I was the bouncer. I didn’t let myself in. I begged and prayed. Not a chance. I tried to talk my way in, explain who I was, but then I couldn’t explain myself after all, nor could I be bothered to listen, and besides, I couldn’t make out a single word. I couldn’t find a word to describe myself; it was as if I didn’t exist. As if I were listening to silence. I thrust myself forward into hell. I tried to resist and knocked myself over. I embraced the filthy sidewalk. I kneed myself in the ribs. The door was shut and would remain shut, I had shut it on myself. I had torn in two. I was that far gone; there was nothing left of me.

  I was less than zero. I was a little black dot far from the coordinate axis, an insignificant, empty point; I didn’t even have contours. I was impossible to focus on, impossible to zoom in on.

  I stumbled to my feet. Everything was the same, inside and out. There was no difference between internal and external, between me and the world. What I had done to the world I had done to myself. What I had seen in the world was me myself.

  I stumbled toward the beach. I didn’t have a shadow.

  My cares were not the cares of a ruler. They were the cares of a beggar who had disgraced himself. My life was shit, rotting refuse.

  That was the message that the cripple I had turned away had tried to communicate to me with his gaze.

  * * *

  The water was cold, it took my breath away, it seeped into my clothes and dragged me down. It felt as if the women were escorting me deeper, their shadows flickered at the edges of my field of vision. I knew I would die. It made no difference.

  The doors were closed.

  I had been dead for a long time.

  SILENT NIGHT

  BY JARKKO SIPILA

  East Pasila

  Translated by Lola Rogers

  Takamäki sat in his office in the quiet police station. He could hear the hum of the central heat, which was rather unusual. The homicide unit was usually bustling. There was always some new assault or rape to deal with.

  But not now. Just silence. If you listened very carefully you might be able to hear the sound of an old Finnish movie from the television in the break room. Outside was dark, had been dark for many hours although the time was only approaching ten p.m.

  Lieutenant Takamäki, who had just turned fifty, had his feet up on his desk, his eyes closed. His short dark hair was graying at the temples and his face had a few new furrows. His gray sweater was a little torn under the arms.

  This was a rare moment for Takamäki. He didn’t mind coming in on Christmas Eve, although it wasn’t required of him. His wife had died a few years earlier and his sons were grown up and had moved away. Let a younger detective spend the evening at home with his family.

  A few weeks ago, he had bought a two-bedroom apartment in Kruununhaka, partly on credit, partly with the insurance money from his row house, which had burned down. It was on Rauhankatu—Peace Street—a name that appealed to him after such thorough experience with violence. He still hadn’t unpacked any boxes. He may have been using work just to put off that task.

  He could watch the news, he thought, then remembered that they didn’t air the ten o’clock news on Christmas Eve. At least if there was no news it meant that there was no bad news, which was good news.

  Anna Joutsamo, a dark-haired woman about forty years old, appeared in the doorway. “I can’t concentrate anymore,” she said.

  “Getting old, are you?” Takamäki said with a smile. “You used to type for forty-eight hours in one sitting.”

  Joutsamo dodged the jab. “Is it really this quiet? We usually have somebody roll an old lady or something . . .”

  Takamäki lowered his feet from the desk and knocked on the wooden top. “Don’t jinx us. Usually the third time somebody complains about the quiet, all hell breaks loose.”

  “Superstition.”

  “But true. Once, I think it was 1987, I was . . .” Takamäki paused.

  Detective Suhonen appeared in the doorway in his black leather jacket and stubbled chin, interrupting him: “Hi.” He had a package of gingerbread cookies in his hand. “I bought these from a Girl Scout last week. I thought I’d offer some to you two, with Christmas wishes. I’m sick of playing Xbox.”

  Suhonen didn’t have any family either. In the old days, he used to spend Christmas with Takamäki’s family, in the house that had burned down.

  “It’s awfully quiet,” he said, handing them the box of cookies.

  Takamäki looked at him and rapped on the table. “That’s twice.”

  Suhonen laughed. “You’re remembering that time in ’87, aren’t you?”

  Takamäki glanced at the clock. Almost ten. It would be nice to listen to the radio news. Unlike the commercial channels, YLE Radio didn’t go off the air. He clicked on the radio, and there it was. Soprano Karita Mattila belting out in a stately voice: “Silent night . . . holy night . . .”

  Before Takamäki could knock a third time, his phone rang.

  * * *

  Takamäki drove the Volkswagen Golf south on Pasila Street, which was completely deserted. It was five below zero and there was a layer of snow a few centimeters deep on the ground. But the car was warm because they’d signed it out of the police department’s basement parking garage.

  The ten-story office buildings of West Pasila rose up on their right. There were electric candles in a few of the windows but most of the businesses were saving on decorations during this storm of financial upheaval. Opening out on their left was the Pasila rail yard with its dozens of tracks, the large, pale-blue station building standing among them. Ten years from now Helsinki’s first skyscrapers might stand here, and in twenty years it might look like a real city.

  The station would be buried in the shadows of buildings then, but for now it was still a nondescript oasis between the office hell of West Pasila and the mecca of East German architecture in East Pasila, no doubt soon to be designated a historic district. Only a hundred years earlier, this area just three kilometers north of Helsinki had been farmland, although the first railway had crossed it as early as the mid-1800s. In the 1970s, East Pasila was full of romantic but rundown wooden houses. They were replaced by a wide swath of concrete suburb where the cars drove along covered ramps among the nearly identical fifteen-story buildings.

  Lieuten
ant Takamäki turned onto the bridge. Joutsamo was sitting in the front seat and Suhonen had stuffed himself into the back, even though it wasn’t his shift. Takamäki had guessed he was lonely as soon as he came poking through the door with his gingerbread cookies.

  It was only a few minutes’ drive to East Pasila. There was no need to use the siren or the light hidden under the hood. Patrol officers were already on the scene.

  * * *

  The apartment was the typical East Pasila type: two cramped rooms and a kitchenette, on the seventh floor. There was no wreath on the half-opened door, and the mailbox read, Virtanen. Some uniformed men stood in the hallway.

  “The ambulance already left. There was nothing for them to do,” Constable Partio said sternly, his fiftyish face worn.

  “Merry Christmas,” Takamäki said.

  “It’s not very merry,” a younger officer said. “At least not for this guy.”

  “I see.” Takamäki looked around the stairwell. There were scratches on the walls, like there always are in buildings where people move a lot, but no blood or anything else unusual. The door seemed to be intact, so no one had broken in.

  “We got the call about half an hour ago,” Partio explained. “The neighbor wondered why the door was open, looked inside, was horrified, and called the police. The ambulance got here a couple of minutes before we did. They tried not to disturb the footprints, but there were a lot of people in there. There was nothing in the apartment but the body.”

  “Who is it?”

  The officer shrugged. “It says Virtanen on the door. The neighbor couldn’t tell us anything.”

  Takamäki knew very well that the name on the door didn’t mean anything. The tenant might or might not be Virtanen. The chances were fifty-fifty. People with unpaid debts or warrants for their arrest prefer not to advertise their addresses.

  The one technical team on duty was at the scene of a computer store break-in, which would take them at least an hour, judging by the report. There had been a couple of other similar cases earlier that evening. Takamäki stepped into the room and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. Joutsamo and Suhonen followed with the investigation kit.

  The first thing Takamäki smelled was stale cigarettes. There were several jumbled pairs of shoes and a bag of garbage in the entryway. A leather jacket and a dark overcoat hung from the coat rack. Suhonen examined the leather jacket while the others continued into the apartment.

  The open door made Takamäki wonder—why would the killer leave the door open? If it had been closed, the crime wouldn’t have been discovered until the smell of burnt Christmas ham faded from the hallways and the body started to smell. And if the window had been left open, the freezing weather might have left the body undetected for weeks.

  There were no carpets on the gray vinyl floor, no pictures on the battered walls. On the left was the bedroom door and on the right the living room/kitchen. The bathroom was straight ahead. There was a large crack in the entryway mirror.

  Takamäki glanced into the bedroom, which was empty except for a mattress on the floor and a pile of clothes in the corner. The living room was directly across from it. The pale green curtains were faded by the sun.

  The man’s body was on the bloody floor, but Takamäki’s eye stopped short at the two meter–high Christmas tree. He wondered for a moment at seeing a Christmas tree at all in such a dumpy apartment, but that thought disappeared fairly quickly when he saw the human head among the topmost branches.

  The long-haired, bearded head looked like a wax doll, but there was no doubting that it was real. The tree wasn’t real, it was made of plastic. The blood on the green plastic branches was already congealed.

  For some reason “Oh Christmas Tree,” with its tedious repetitions, rose up in Takamäki’s mind.

  “Dope shit,” Joutsamo said in a mystified voice.

  “What?” Takamäki said, but she didn’t answer.

  Neither of them could take their eyes off the head. Takamäki had to shut his eyes for a moment; after that he could look around the rest of the room. First he turned to peer at the body, which was headless. The last thing they needed was to have to search for a body missing its head.

  The man was stocky—big-bellied, in fact. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. There were tattoos on his arms.

  Takamäki smelled the sweetish stench of blood. The smallest drops of blood had already congealed, but the larger puddles looked like they were still wet. The body was an hour old at most.

  It wasn’t a large room. A sofa, coffee table, and television, all set low. Not the usual bookshelf. Next to the sofa was a worn leather armchair. The tree was on the other side of the room, next to the window, in front of the kitchenette.

  “What dope shit?” Suhonen asked from the entryway.

  “Come and look,” Joutsamo said.

  Suhonen did, and stood there staring at the head at the top of the tree.

  “Hang a shining star upon the highest bow . . .” one of the uniforms sang.

  Joutsamo took the camera out of the investigation kit. An examination of a crime scene should start with photographs. But this phase was clearly just going to be preliminary. They needed professionals at the scene, people who could search the place properly. They shouldn’t disturb the evidence.

  Takamäki noticed two glasses of mulled wine on the table. Had someone drunk wine with the victim before the crime? At a glance it looked like the victim had been stabbed in the chest before his head was cut off. Under the table, he discovered a saw that would have done the trick.

  Suhonen was still looking at the head in the tree. “I know who that is.”

  Takamäki and Joutsamo turned to him. “Well?”

  “Maximillian Karstu. He got out of jail about a month ago. Sat in there for four years for aggravated drug offenses and was recently named weapons officer of the Skull Brigade. Also some military background. He was in Afghanistan about ten years ago.”

  Joutsamo glanced at Suhonen. “Impressive.”

  “Yeah, well, there was a gang vest in the entryway closet and a wallet in the jacket pocket with a release notice in it. He’s as ugly in his driver’s license picture as he is there in the . . .”

  Takamäki shook his head. “Christmas Eve, a gang murder, and a guy’s head hanging from the tree. Just what we ordered.”

  * * *

  The yellow splashes of light from the streetlamps ended and the asphalt was filled with large wet holes as Suhonen turned the car into the yard of an old concrete industrial building along the ring road. The road, which was eight lanes wide in places, arched around the city from west to east.

  Konala was an old, somewhat rundown industrial area just north of the ring road. The largest building was the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant. The gang headquarters were situated a kilometer farther from the plant.

  Suhonen had wondered if he ought to bring the bears from Special Operations with him, but he would have had to take them away from their Christmas celebrations. He thought he could handle the situation by himself. In fact, going alone was probably the best way to handle it. He’d had time to make a couple of calls on the way too.

  Takamäki had stayed in his office at the station to type up an electronic records request. The judge on duty would process it quickly on Christmas Eve and get the paperwork to the phone company right away. They might have information on Max Karstu’s phone records before the night was over.

  Joutsamo had handled the neighbors in the East Pasila apartment house, but she hadn’t found anything, at least not judging by her early reports. A rotten business, ringing people’s doorbells on Christmas Eve to ask them if they’d seen or heard anything. Having something like this happen in their own building must have ruined their Christmas spirit, though Joutsamo didn’t tell them anything about how the man was killed, of course.

  Suhonen parked the car in front of the two-story building. The yard had once been surrounded by a chain-link fence, but the police had broken it down a year ago
and no one had repaired it. There were some other cars parked in the yard.

  The front door of the building had a sign that said, Skull Brigade. At one time it had been one of the toughest criminal gangs in Helsinki, but it had steadily lost its power in the past few years, thanks to the efforts of the police. According to their most recent information on the group, the once professional-level gang was descending to the status of second-rate hustlers as larger motorcycle gangs lured away their best (in other words, most violent) men. The Brigade was still a player in the drug and stolen goods trade, however.

  There was a dim light mounted above the door and next to it a surveillance camera. Suhonen rang the doorbell.

  “What the fuck do you want?” a thin, freckled, twentyish fellow said when he’d opened the door. The fortyish Suhonen looked the youth in the eye. The boy’s black leather vest indicated to Suhonen that he was one of the gang’s hangers-on. In the old days someone like him wouldn’t have gotten any further than cleaning the bathrooms.

  “Merry Christmas,” Suhonen grinned. “Is Jake here?”

  The young man tried to look tough, but Suhonen was almost amused by him. Looking closer, he wondered if the kid was even old enough to drive. He ought to have been stealing beer from a kiosk with his buddies, not wearing a Skulls vest.

  A tone of uncertainty crept into the vested fellow’s voice. “What business do you have with Jake?”

  “Ask him to come down here,” Suhonen said. The young man thought for a moment and decided to do as he was told.

  They’d found Jake’s fingerprints on the wine glass in Max’s apartment. He was their prime suspect, but Suhonen didn’t think he was the perpetrator. The Brigade couldn’t afford to kill their own in the condition they were in.

  Suhonen considered the possibilities. One strong possibility, of course, was that Jake would come down the stairs with a sawed-off shotgun.

  Suhonen had been to the clubhouse many times. The building was a former auto inspection site, with car and motorcycle parking spaces on the ground floor. The club space, with its bar and stage, was on the second floor.