Helsinki Noir

by James Thompson

  “Shall I also brake when we reach the church?”

  “Yes. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  Suokko shook his head and was about to add some personal barb, but he controlled himself, albeit with difficulty, because there was no point wasting his powder on Mähönen, who could be a real ass at times. But this wasn’t the time to niggle. Here they were. Mähönen engaged the parking brake and turned off the engine. The sound of flapping sails could be heard, but the sea was at least two kilometers away. The sound came from the wind crashing against the police tape that roped off the site of the crime to prevent outsiders from disturbing possible tracks and evidence. As he climbed laboriously out of the car, Suokko watched carefully where he set his feet so as not to slip. Just then his cell phone beeped. He was so busy concentrating on staying erect that he dropped the phone into the snow as he pulled it out. Shouldn’t have put on the goddamn leather-soled shoes after all, he fumed as he glanced at the screen, wet with snow.

  The message from Europol revealed that the Nigerian women had come to Madrid six years ago from Ikeja, outside of Lagos. According to the border officials they were cousins, one twenty-two years old, the other, two years older. Suokko humphed. It might be that the women were only cousins on the officials’ papers, but it was absolutely certain that they were political refugees—the religious, political, and ethnic situation in Nigeria was that chaotic. Suokko was sure they’d already started whoring in Spain, though probably not completely voluntarily. And no doubt continued in Finland. This meant that either a pimp or competitor was behind the murders, or else a customer. But he could not imagine why they had been buried in the churchyard.

  Was there some hidden message in that? Or had the murderer been forced to hurry? It was also possible that the murderer simply wanted to lead the police astray. Suokko did not believe it was a ritual murder, though the tabloid chatter was painting it that way. Maybe that was the best way to frighten the readers.

  Right away came a second message. This was from the Institute of Forensic Medicine on Kytösuontie. The district forensic pathologist reported that preliminary examination showed that the women—or girls, as he referred to the corpses—had suffocated to death. Bits of plastic had been found in one girl’s mouth and throat, while the other’s neck had obvious signs of strangling that were strangely asymmetrical, as if the murderer had only partially used his right hand. The force had nonetheless been strong enough to crush her larynx.

  He texted back asking the forensic pathologist to send the photographs of the wounds to him at his office. Nothing to do with any rituals or occult ceremonies, Suokko thought again, as he almost slipped on the slight incline. Luckily, Mähönen had stayed in the car and was not here to sneer. Damn. No question. This was clearly a sex murder. His socks were getting waterlogged. His shoes were wet from the snow. He raised his collar against the icy wind; he didn’t think people were at their best deep-frozen.

  Once inside he began to perspire immediately. The body was not cold-blooded either. The church had been completely renovated ten years earlier. The minister received him in the congregation’s church hall with the Paavo Tynell light fixtures that called to mind Christ’s crown of thorns. The lanky minister shook Suokko’s hand and welcomed him. His voice was low, his eyes blue, his gaze somehow both feverish and penetrating. Suokko felt contrition at once. He wondered why the minister was wearing black gloves even though it was so warm inside. For a moment he imagined the deaconess in the room in just a bikini, but this image produced by his errant soul only heightened his burden of guilt. Damn, he thought to himself, and pulled himself erect. He cleared his throat and looked the minister right in the eyes. The minister returned his gaze. There was a strange feeling in Suokko’s hand. The minister’s grasp had been surprisingly limp, even timid, for such a tall man.

  The questioning produced nothing, as Suokko had feared. The minister did not recognize the Nigerian women when Suokko showed him the now wrinkled pictures of the victims. He had never seen them at church events, where in fact he had only seen black visitors a few times. Twice, he had noticed a few black men on the second Sunday of Advent, when Christmas carols were sung at church. Otherwise it was only the congregation’s regular members who came to church, familiar people who lived in Meilahti. Nor had he noticed anything unusual in the church’s front yard at the time the deaconess had first noticed the snowmen. He himself had only heard about them the next day from her, because he had left the church through the low wing of the building instead of the main door. He recalled trying to dig out the ceramic relief by Armas Tirronen of the Good Samaritan from the snow plastered against the wall, but he had abandoned that effort after a few minutes of useless scraping. The snow had been packed hard against the wall. He also advised Suokko to take the deaconess’s stories with a grain of salt because she was slightly unbalanced mentally and her relationship with reality was at times very thin, although she was an extremely conscientious worker. The minister suspected some sort of sexual repression. Then he apologized that he had a lot of work, excused himself, and hastened off to prepare for a baptism. Suokko remained standing a moment in the aisle leading to the altar. Lord the Father! Not a single eyewitness. Nothing. Even the church’s own surveillance cameras were no help. The tapes just showed falling snow. White. As if the film were overexposed.

  Suokko asked Mähönen to drive from Pihlajatie Street to Kuusitie Street. The names meant rowan and spruce; nearly all the streets around here were named for some stupid tree. He wanted to ring doorbells and question the people who lived in the apartment buildings in the area, though he didn’t think much would come of it. But experience had taught him that sometimes a trivial or seemingly unimportant remark, doubt, feeling, or phrase could be exactly what triggered a breakthrough in a murder investigation. This was why no stone could be left unturned, no matter how tedious it was.

  Mähönen was silent, he would have liked to return to the Pasila police station and was tired of sitting in the car waiting. Suokko thought to himself that it would do the old chap good to sit a few more hours in the car. He asked Mähönen to contact Lyly, who worked in Internet-monitoring and might be able to do a quick search for horny men in Meilahti.

  The end result was four liters of weak coffee and a stomachache. Pictures still flickered past his eyes from the family albums some of the elderly women had been determined to show him. No one had seen anything, but quite a few of them knew for sure who was guilty. He’d been advised to investigate the activity of some Indians and Japanese who had moved to Kuusitie Street, because the daily routine of that whole group was very strange, not to mention their customs. He would find the guilty party in that crowd, he was assured. No one else in Meilahti would fool around with black women. Suokko knew very well that nearly 80 percent of all murders in Finland occurred within the family or former family or group of friends. Police very rarely found any clear motives for these acts. They were often committed by someone drunk, in the grip of jealousy or rage. But he kept his mouth shut. One retired labor union activist suggested that Suokko should leave the Meilahti residents alone and head instead for Pikku Huopalahti to take it up with the folks there, where there were buildings full of Somalis.

  It was cold in the car, even with the heater going full force. Mähönen was eating a greasy meat pie he’d picked up from a store around the corner. Suokko knew they had to find a client of the Nigerian women. He’d have to run through online sex ads and porn forums. Maybe he’d get some ground under his feet there, something solid. The windshield wipers cleared the snow from the car’s front window. Only sparkling streaks of water remained on the windshield from the snowflakes and then they, too, vanished beneath the wipers. No trace. Effect without cause.

  * * *

  His wet shoes were drying on top of the reports on the desk. Suokko had stuffed them with crumpled newspaper to dry the soles. He curled his toes, frozen from tramping around in the snow. His wife had just phoned from Madeira. Her voice sounded h
appy, which did not improve Suokko’s mood. The air in the room smelled like a wet dog was lurking in the corner. Even the window was fogged with moisture. Nor did it lighten his mood that he had bumped into Chief Raatikainen in the hallway just as he’d been opening the door to his office. On his way to meet with some trendy interest group, Raatikainen had expressed his hope that the case would be solved as quickly as possible so the evening tabloids and social media wouldn’t get the chance to mock police incompetence and spread unnecessary terror. Suokko had told a number of reporters that day that the police could not release any information about the investigation at this point. It would be interesting to see how many lines they could construct from that information-free statement.

  Pulling his chair closer to the desk, Suokko dug out from under his shoes the photos of the victims that the forensic pathologist had sent him and began to study the strangulation marks. The women’s expressionless death masks made them look somehow inhuman, as if they were not flesh and blood but rather some sort of artifacts. Both had bloodshot eyes which brought to mind a coronal cloud on the sun. But nevertheless, there was no more life in them. Suokko imagined someone—if he only knew who—beginning rough sex games with the women, placing one woman’s head in a plastic bag and forcing the other to watch. Perhaps the first woman was suffocated by mistake? The shithead would have murdered the other on purpose because he wanted no witnesses alive.

  Suokko felt like he was beginning to piece together the chain of events. A pimp would not up and kill two prostitutes who brought him money. Nor did Suokko believe in turf battles between pimps from different countries—that simply did not happen in Finland. Maybe in Germany or Denmark, okay. The problem was that he still had no evidence to support his theory. He picked up a magnifying glass and studied the strangulation marks on the neck of Temitope Oyelami—this was evidently the name of the younger prostitute. These marks bothered him, but he could not come up with a reasonable explanation for why they were lopsided. Bruises made by the thumb and index finger of the right hand were clearly visible. Then there was a sort of clean area that ended in what was presumably the pressure mark from a little finger. For some reason the force had not been distributed evenly. Haste? Alarm? Just then the phone, the landline, rang. Suokko grabbed the receiver with one eye still on the magnifying glass.

  “Suokko.”

  “Forgive me. Virtanen here.”

  “Evening.”

  “I really don’t know if I should even have called.”

  “Well, tell me what’s on your mind, since you did call,” Suokko said, trying to hide his impatience.

  It took a little while before Suokko realized it was the deaconess who was calling. Her slurred voice suggested she had uncorked a bottle of red wine some time ago. The deaconess, breathing heavily into the phone, was even more upset about the murders than she had been during the questioning. She could not comprehend how anyone could descend to such brutality. She lamented that she had been unable to help. She would have liked to help, with all her heart. After a few pointed comments from Suokko, the woman gradually caught on that he was in a hurry, and she let him continue his work. Suokko expressed his gratitude. The gesture was Jacob’s, the motive, Esau’s.

  The snow had paused, the temperature dropped, and the pipes of the police station banged. Overhead, the sky spread out like a black shroud.

  The motive? What was it? Bad question. Why had the bodies been left in the churchyard?

  Suokko could not come up with any explanation for the murders other than self-defense and fear of being caught buying sex. That did not make the murders any less brutal. The right hand. He could not get that out of his mind. It wouldn’t leave him in peace. His shoes smelled of sweat. There they sat right under his nose. The summary from Lyly of local online sex purchasers before and after the murders listed only three men, two of whom Suokko knew by name. They couldn’t be murderers. Suokko signed into the police register to do further research. The third man also seemed very unlikely to be guilty, although someone had suggested chemical castration for him. Another dead end.

  Suokko heaved a sigh and thought in frustration that the guilty party might not be caught for months or even years. That sometimes happened when no evidence was found right at the beginning of a criminal investigation. He kept turning it over in his mind. He was sure he had overlooked something important, something that could lead to a breakthrough, if he could only figure out what it was. He lifted his shoes from the desk, walked over to the radiator in his socks, and placed the shoes on it. They could dry there as long as necessary. He thought about Meilahti. It was a cocoon where murder had no place, because murder demanded feelings, anger at the very least, that clouded reason. He could not associate passion with Meilahti. In the northwest the big gray complex with the maternity hospital and children’s clinic, along with the university’s general hospital, cancer clinic, and medical research institutes, spread all the way to churning Humallahti Bay. In the middle of Meilahti was the church. The graveyard was cleverly situated the next neighborhood over. Meilahti was a closed, self-sufficient entity where people were born, lived, died, and were sent off on the final journey. He sought some metaphor but could not quite catch hold of it. But slowly it came to him. He thought of the sun. People who lived in Meilahti were like tourists clustered on a sunny beach. The sun did not burn them because they were careful to sit under beach umbrellas. No mark appeared on them, not even of life.

  Something kept nagging at him. He went back to the police register and began skimming through it. He could not get comfortable on the chair, and after lifting and resettling his backside a few times, he realized what was wrong: he was sitting on the magnifying glass. On top of everything else. As if his ass weren’t big enough already.

  The night progressed but he stayed where he was. No need to hurry home to toss and turn in bed and jealously imagine what his wife and her lover were doing in Madeira. All of a sudden a familiar name caught his eye and he stopped aimlessly perusing the register. Just for the hell of it he decided to see what the register had about the minister of the Meilahti church. He had realized, when the minister left to prepare for the baptism, that he did not like the man. Though friendly enough, the minister seemed somehow artificial, as if he were playing a role and was not even present. On the other hand, wasn’t being a minister purely a role anyway, Suokko thought, as he began checking the man’s record, which was irritatingly unblemished. Damn. The man had his doctorate and had even done ecumenical work in Africa. A good man, even for a minister. He’d also done well in the army and attended reserve officers’ training. Suokko swore. The minister had never wallowed in ditches, wasn’t even an alcoholic like Suokko.

  Rubbing his eyes, Suokko was about to stop reading when his gaze, growing heavier and heavier, was suddenly arrested. Fatigue vanished. He had it at last. He couldn’t believe his eyes. An accident during shooting practice in the army had taken two fingers from the future church minister’s right hand. Suokko recalled the man’s limp and awkward handshake. Goddamn bastard.

  He quickly ordered a patrol car for himself. It wasn’t more than a ten-minute drive from Pasila to Meilahti, with no traffic on the road at this hour. The minister lived next to the church, on Jalavatie. Suokko almost forgot his shoes on the radiator as he rushed into the hall. The moon had risen. It illuminated the snow, now an ugly gray from sand, dirt, and traffic exhaust. Suokko thought of the alb, a minister’s basic liturgical vestment, which no longer gleamed so white.

  DEAD CINCH

  BY TUOMAS LIUS

  Central Train Station

  Translated by Douglas Robinson

  I

  I hate Helsinki. I hate the piss-drenched cobblestone streets, and those fucking tweens that hawk their yellow gobs of spit on every disgusting inch of space around stores, bus stops, and train stations. I hate that shit-for-brains look-how-important-I-am rushing from place to place on buses, trams, and metro trains, and god how I hate those swaggering self-center
ed pricks who are always putting some fucking bar in Sörnäinen up on a pedestal, or going on and on about how only an asshole would ever say Hesa for Helsinki instead of stadi. These jerkoffs think they live in some kinda fucking metropolis even though you could throw a rock from here and hit one of the five million people who live in St. Petersburg, which is really what this half-chewed cough drop some truck driver spat on the map would so dearly love to be . . . Yeah, okay, fine,” he added after a pause, “not everybody who lives here’s a prick. The worst loudmouths are the ones who moved here from somewhere else and became born-again Helsinkians. Those dumbasses have the gall to shoot their mouths off about somebody else’s dialect or whatever even though they were scraping cowshit off the soles of their rubber boots like a month ago.”

  His rant was followed by silence. Probably some of those who had been listening to it had dissenting opinions, but the speaker’s views were not open for discussion or comment. None of those present were there to challenge other folks’ opinions or views anyway. Each of them had his or her own pain, about which he or she was waiting to speak without challenge from others—with only the warmest support and open-minded acceptance.

  Jari-Pekka Laukia took a deep breath and let his eyes rove over the faces in the group. “I have never felt so miserable. My wife claims that we live in a nice neighborhood, but the neighbors all treat each other like lepers. I’m not saying we should be hugging everybody we meet on the street, but wouldn’t it be nice if every now and then a guy could feel welcomed by the assholes up in the VIP stands?”

  Laukia stared off into the distance for a moment. “I know I shouldn’t point fingers at others,” he whispered, in a voice that broke with every word. “I know that I should just talk about my drinking, and not harangue you with the same problem every fucking week . . .”

  The ponytailed guy sitting on Laukia’s right touched him on the shoulder and nodded. “Let ’er rip,” he said. “Whatever you need to say, man.”