Lying on the bed beneath the covers, Suhonen slowly became aware of the ringing. As he awoke, he wasn’t sure whether he had been sleeping for a while, or had just dozed off. Then, realizing the noise was the ringer of his number-two phone, he groped for the lamp and snatched the phone off the nightstand. He glanced at the clock on the display: 1:37 A.M.
“What’s the matter?” he answered, having seen the caller already.
“Did I wake you up?” asked Eero Salmela.
Suhonen felt like cussing him out, but only managed to repeat, “What’s the matter?”
“Actually… It’s nothing, but…”
“But what?”
“I have a bad feeling about this gig.”
He sounded relatively sober. “How so? Something happen?”
Suhonen sat up in bed.
“Just nervous. I can’t sleep.”
Shit, watch a skin flick and fall asleep to that, thought Suhonen, but he bit his tongue.
“That’s normal. I’ve been nervous too.”
“I’m pretty much convinced they’re gonna see right through me tomorrow.”
“They won’t know a thing. You’ve already been there a couple of days-you’re like a piece of furniture.”
Salmela laughed. “Speaking of furniture. Did you know they brought a headstone in there?”
“A headstone?”
“A big slab of granite with a bunch of names on it.”
“Uuhh. What names?”
“Pretty sure they were dead gangsters, but I didn’t want to stare. Jyrkkä, Kahma and Korpela were on there. Tomorrow I can dust it and look closer.”
Suhonen remembered the names well. All three were Skulls who had been killed in firefights with the police.
“Those are gangsters. No need to worry about it,” said Suhonen, though he wondered why they had a headstone at the house.
“But what the hell is with the gravestone?”
“They want a memorial for their dead and it suits their sense of humor.”
“I’m not sure I wanna know what they come up with next.”
“Listen, your case is in good hands at the NBI. You’re in no danger. Tomorrow, just do the same thing you’ve been doing, and things will take care of themselves. This is routine stuff.”
“That so?”
“Yes, of course. I think I know what kind of info these agents want-you don’t need to rush.”
Salmela paused briefly. “I’d rather be working with you. That dry-ass suit with the NBI scares me. He doesn’t know a thing about this stuff.”
“Yes, he does,” said Suhonen, surprised at his own impulse to defend Aalto. But assuring Salmela was important for the success of the operation. “They’re professionals. Just do as they say.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“This is your chance to get out of your mess. Take care of your job and the NBI will take care of you. Everything will go just fine,” said Suhonen. “Catch a few hours of shuteye. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“Promise?”
Suhonen didn’t really know what he was promising, but answered nevertheless, “Of course.”
MONDAY, OCTOBER 26
CHAPTER 19
MONDAY, 9:15 A.M.
SKULLS’ COMPOUND, HELSINKI
Salmela dumped the contents of an ashtray into a plastic wastebasket. He considered whether he should sneak the butts out, as the NBI agents had instructed, but recalled Suhonen’s advice and decided against it.
Salmela’s gait was calm, much like it had been in prison. There, it had been best to blend in with the masses so as not to attract attention. The zipper on his sweater was pulled all the way up and he wore a pair of jeans. Standing in the middle of the bar room, he glanced around, but nobody seemed to pay him any attention.
The janitor went from one table to another, gathering ashes. There were less butts than yesterday, and no doobies, at least not yet.
In five minutes, the job was done. Next, he decided to wipe the tables. He grabbed a rag from the bar, rinsed it under the tap and began wiping the nearest table.
His eyes returned occasionally to the headstone behind the bar. The granite slab gave him goose bumps.
The bull-like Roge and the goateed Osku stepped out of the office and closed the door behind them. They didn’t even look at Salmela.
“Where’d he say the car was?” asked Roge as they walked toward the stairs.
“Weren’t you listening? The Käpylä ball fields. In the gravel parking lot on the north end.”
“And what time we gotta pick it up?”
“Three!” You better pay attention or Larsson is gonna whack you.”
Roge’s expression was serious. “I remember the dope is in a beige Opel.”
“Betcha it’ll have some fuzzy dice,” said Osku.
“You drive it outta there, then,” said Roge as they reached the stairs.
Osku shook his head and Salmela heard them settle the matter with a game of “key, file, and bars”. The file wins over bars, but loses to the key. And the key doesn’t work on bars.
Salmela moved on to the next table and wondered what car the men were referring to. He repeated it in his head: a beige Opel with dope on the north end of the Käpylä ball fields at three.
He looked at the clock: 9:30. Cleaning would take another couple of hours. After that he could call.
* * *
Suhonen was sitting at his workstation studying a spreadsheet of Vesa Karjalainen’s phone records. He didn’t know whether the junkie had had any other phones-he had found out about this one from the man’s common-law widow.
The date, time, cell tower, and of course, the callers’ and recipients’ phone numbers were in columns on the spreadsheet. On suspicion of drug-trafficking, the District Court had allowed Takamäki’s team access to all of Karjalainen’s phone records from October 15 until October 25. The data began a week before Karjalainen had left for Tallinn. The cut-off date, as requested, had been yesterday, but the last recorded call was on the day of his death.
Suhonen was no fan of fiddling with computers, but he couldn’t really ask the other detectives to help. They had plenty of their own cases. Had it been a homicide, he would have just gotten someone else to do it. Joutsamo was good with computers, but even Suhonen knew the basics of spreadsheets. If he needed to create a graph, though, he’d have to ask for help.
Suhonen quickly scanned the data. Initially, there had been about ten calls a day, many of them to his common-law wife’s phone.
Apparently, Karjalainen hadn’t brought his phone to Estonia, since the data had a one-day hole on the date that Suhonen had seen him at the harbor. After that, the calls resumed, as before, at a rate of about ten per day.
Suhonen had checked a few of the numbers in the police database, but they were all pre-paid cards, which were inherently anonymous.
The last call on the list had been placed three days ago, on the day of Karjalainen’s death. The time was 9:20 A.M. and the call was fielded by a cell tower in northern Helsinki. The recipient had been downtown, which didn’t help him identify the owner of the phone.
Suhonen suspected that this just might be one of Juha Saarnikangas’ numbers, though it wasn’t one that he knew about. Maybe Karjalainen had called the ex-junkie to say he was running late for the meeting. Saarnikangas had called about the death a little after ten.
Suhonen found four more calls between the same two phones. Of those, one was dated before the trip to Estonia, and three after. All of them, with the exception of the last, were initiated by the phone that Suhonen suspected was Saarnikangas’.
This call data in itself didn’t connect Saarnikangas to the drug case. Had Karjalainen called him from Tallinn, or from the ship on the return trip, it would be a different matter.
On the other hand, now Suhonen had a number, which could very well belong to Saarnikangas, and which his informant had wanted to keep secret. Using that, he could reconstruct Saarnikangas’ web of
connections.
Right, but connections to what, Suhonen thought. To other anonymous numbers, of course. Suhonen knew Takamäki had worked out an arrangement with Narcotics for Homicide to obtain all phone records in these types of drug-related deaths. They had also agreed that if any of these grew into larger drug investigations, Narcotics would take the lead.
So in order to obtain additional phone records, Suhonen would need permission from Narcotics. A mere cause-of-death investigation did not grant the right to obtain phone records, but drug cases did.
Suhonen scanned the numbers prior to Karjalainen’s trip across the gulf, and one captured his attention. It seemed familiar. He took out his phone, scrolled through the directory, and found what he was looking for: Vesa Karjalainen had called Narcotics Detective Toukola two days before his trip to Tallinn.
* * *
Toukola let out a tense laugh. “Uuh. Well, yes, he was my informant.”
Suhonen was sitting on the end of Toukola’s desk. “Tell me more.”
“Or maybe that’s too strong a word. He certainly wasn’t able to give me any real intel, but he kept us up to date with word on the street.”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Suhonen demanded.
“I told you back at the harbor that I knew him and had busted him for a few pounds of weed. Didn’t you read between the lines?”
Suhonen shook his head. It hadn’t occurred to him. “What about the mule? Mägi?”
“Hasn’t said a word. We finally had to let her take a shower today. I’ve completed the interview transcripts so now we’re just waiting for the lab analysis on the drugs and we’ll send the files to the prosecutor. What about the other three pounds? You find them yet?”
“No. Probably never will.”
Toukola stared at Suhonen for a long time. “Have you told me everything? What’s this all about?”
Suhonen skipped the first question. “As I said earlier, the chance to bust the Skulls.”
“But that’s in the NBI’s court now.”
“Not the drug case.”
“That’s mine,” Toukola replied. “Why can’t you let it go? I’d think you’d have plenty of assaults, rapes and the like. You know these cases well enough to know what can and can’t be achieved. Mägi is locked up, Karjalainen’s dead, and the NBI is taking care of the rest of it. Had we found forty or fifty pounds, we could lean on her a lot harder, but we’re only dealing with four.”
“Karjalainen’s stash was obviously strong, and it’s probably already been cut to fifteen, sixteen pounds.”
Toukola ignored the comment. “If later it becomes evident that this shipment was part of some larger operation, which I wouldn’t doubt at all, then we’ll combine Mägi’s share with it. As is, this case isn’t going anywhere further.”
“So the drug case is closed.”
“Yup,” said Toukola. “I already spoke with my boss. We’re not pursuing it anymore with the NBI on the case.”
Really, thought Suhonen.
* * *
Salmela put the cleaning supplies in the closet and took out his lambswool leather jacket. He shrugged it on and glanced around one last time. He was alone on the second floor.
He grabbed the garbage bags and headed downstairs. All the while he had the feeling that, at any moment, someone would press the barrel of a pistol against the back of his head and stop him. Reaching the first floor, he stepped outside. The dumpster was on the side of the building and he carried the bags there. He realized that gathering the butts would actually be rather easy. He had only to dump them into a separate plastic bag hidden inside the larger garbage bag, and at this point, he could slip the smaller bag into his backpack. The same method would work for glasses with fingerprints. If he needed to, he could “accidentally” break some first.
Maybe Suhonen had been right after all. He could get used to this, but under no circumstances could he get careless.
Salmela noticed that there were fewer cars in the yard. He wondered if business was slow at the downstairs garage. Had the recession caught up to them as well? It certainly shouldn’t have. The shop was connected to the Skulls, and criminals didn’t feel the pain of economic woes. The downstairs also had a storage room for many of the gangsters’ bikes. He’d have to clean it one of these days.
Salmela walked casually out of the gate, not yet daring to take out his phone. It had been off all morning in his jacket pocket.
The walk to the bus stop was a good three hundred yards. He should call soon. He repeated once more in his head: Roge and Osku will pick up a beige Opel with drugs on the north end of the Käpylä ball fields at three o’clock.
Four facts. Roge and Osku. Beige Opel. At the Käpylä ball fields. At three. Sure, he’d remember.
* * *
Sami Aronen had pulled aside a corner of the cardboard covering the window and watched Salmela hurry down the sidewalk. “Well, there he goes,” he said.
Tapani Larsson and Rolf Steiner stood a few yards further back by the pool table.
“Nobody was waiting?” asked Steiner.
“No,” Aronen replied. “I doubt even they’d be that stupid.”
“The only thing dumber would be for them to pick him up at the front door.”
Aronen left the window and joined the others. “I guess now we’ll see if Gonzales’ rumor is true.”
“You think Salmela even heard them?”
“Of course he did.”
Steiner raked his blond hair. “You never know with these old ex-cons. They’ve learned how to not hear anything, or otherwise they drink themselves deaf.”
“Trust me-he heard,” Aronen said.
Larsson slammed his fist against the edge of the pool table. “Fucking cops piss me off. I get it when the S.W.A.T. team charges in through the front door, or when they snoop on the phones. But they recruit some old yard bird to spy on us? The cops have to play by the book when it comes to raids and surveillance, but it doesn’t get any shadier than this nark business. Just the idea of it pisses the hell outta me.”
Aronen could see that Larsson wasn’t kidding.
“If they wanna know what goes on here, they should stop by for coffee and a chat,” Larsson went on. He snatched a billiard ball off the table and flung it hard against the wall. The ball ricocheted off the wall before clattering to the floor.
Aronen and Steiner were quiet.
“And then there’s this fucking Suhonen. Goddamn!” he shouted. “Of all the shit faces down at homicide, he’s the shittiest. First he serves me up a prison term by acting like an ex-con. Then as soon as I get out, he plants a fucking rat in here. Not gonna happen. Definitely not. He was number-one on my hit-list, but now he takes the whole top three.”
“The bastard is so nosy he’ll walk right into it. Everything’s set, and our new recruits acted their part like true stars,” said Aronen. “What should we do to Salmela?”
“Dead man walking,” Larsson replied.
Steiner nodded. “You can say that again.”
“Should we get going?”
Larsson checked the time: 12:15. “Not yet. I’m not gonna sit there for four hours. It’s good enough if we get there by one.”
“But what if Suhonen goes right away?”
Larsson thought for a moment. “True. The weasel might just do that. You’re right-let’s go.”
According to the plan, the trio would secure their
alibis by sitting under a security camera at a north Helsinki mall’s coffee shop all afternoon.
* * *
Sanna Römpötti was seated at her desk in the newsroom. Monday looked to be a slow news day with no court hearings, nor anything else on her itinerary. The reporter had spent the morning calling nearly twenty acquaintances in the Police Department, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Department of Justice. Returns were slim. No news on the loose, apparently, or at least it wasn’t falling into her trap.
Four other reporters were at work, and all were on th
e phone. Three managers were standing in the middle of the office, cradling coffee cups and trading fall vacation stories.
Maybe now would be a good time to pursue the Skulls’ story, thought Römpötti. It had snowballed into a larger project and she was debating between doing a series for the evening news or a longer one for their news magazine program.
The pieces were beginning to come together, but they still didn’t form a complete picture. The secret footage of Aronen’s interview in the Hotel Pasila was a success, but he hadn’t contacted her, nor had he answered her calls. It seemed he didn’t intend to open his mouth until she opened her legs.
She had compiled a file of every Skull member that included their convictions. Almost everyone had a record, but that fact was not newsworthy. It would’ve been surprising if only a few of them had been arrested before.
She had taped an interview with Jaakko Nykänen, the NBI’s chief of intelligence, but had gotten only superficial comments. Nykänen had stressed the growing threat of organized crime, but true to his habit, he didn’t mention any gangsters by name, even when Römpötti brought up some of their case histories.
Römpötti had also asked about the differences in interpretation between the police and the courts. The police considered the Skulls to be a criminal gang, but in the latest cases, the courts had dismissed the prosecution’s requests for additional penalties based on membership in a criminal organization.
The police had their interpretation and the courts another, Nykänen had explained. Römpötti had grilled him harder, of course, but his responses on this topic were just as round as the others. The ball rolled back to the reporter.
It appeared that she would have to interview Takamäki. She might get stronger opinions from the VCU lieutenant, especially if she succeeded in provoking him.
Who else would know something about gangs, she kept wondering. Reports from the Legal Policy Institute were every bit as long as they were broad. The National Penal Agency’s organized crime team had plenty to say, but once the camera was rolling, they turned their backs and fell silent. Same with the prosecutors.
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