Had the gangs already gotten a grip on public officials and injected fear into them? What right did the police have, then, to blame ordinary citizens for not daring to testify against organized crime in court?
That could be another angle entirely: Why didn’t anyone dare speak publicly about the Skulls?
Naah, she thought. Not newsworthy. They could run something like that in a longer magazine story, but a news story would need a point.
Römpötti decided to get some coffee and drink it at her desk.
* * *
Salmela was standing alone at the bus stop. He realized his hands were trembling as the charge from the morning’s excitement drained away.
Now that there were no ears around, he slipped his cell phone out of his pocket. It took both hands to turn it on.
He waited for the cheap Nokia to boot up then scrolled back and forth through the directory. Of course, neither of the numbers had been entered under their real names. NBI’s Aalto was just “Jouko,” and a single “S” signified Suhonen. Salmela looked up the road. Cars flowed down the long stretch, but no buses were in sight.
Which one should he call? Salmela hesitated. Aalto had mandated himself as the contact, but there was no trust-that would take months to build. Something about Aalto bothered Salmela, though he wasn’t sure what it was. It seemed that he was only a tool to Aalto, nothing more. With Suhonen, it had always been different.
And was this even worthy of a call? All the two gangsters had talked about was picking up a car. Maybe they were just bringing a stolen car to the garage to be stripped down. That would hardly interest the NBI. Even so, Aalto’s orders remained on his mind.
What if he didn’t call at all? That was also a possibility.
The bus had not yet come and Salmela’s thumb roamed over the numbers. Finally, he chose one and pressed the call button.
A familiar voice answered promptly.
“How’s it going?” asked Suhonen.
CHAPTER 20
MONDAY, 2:20 P.M.
KÄPYLÄ, HELSINKI
Kristiina Ahlfors, dressed in a red hooded sweatshirt and a black knit hat, was pushing a stroller northward along Mäkelä Avenue. Ten minutes earlier, she had passed the Velodrome Cycling Stadium. In the stroller, her two-year-old girl, bundled in a green snowsuit, was taking a nap. After swimming at the nearby pool, Kristiina had decided to walk to Käpylä.
She could have ridden the bus or streetcar home, but the rain had finally ceased, and she wanted to drop by the store on the way home. Their swimsuits were in a bag, hanging from the stroller.
Throngs of automobiles surged past as the traffic lights allowed. Two streetcars, one after the other, rumbled along Mäkelä Avenue’s central tree-lined track.
Later, in police interviews, Ahlfors couldn’t exactly say what had attracted her attention to the two men. She guessed it was because, ordinarily, people went to the ball fields in sports gear, but both of these men were wearing dark, heavy clothing. She couldn’t describe the men further, except that one was wearing a worn leather jacket.
She stopped to look around. On her right was a small fast food joint, and behind it, a gas station.
The explosion rocked her eardrums and she pitched to the right. At first, she didn’t know what had happened. Had it been a tire on a passing bus?
The toddler bolted awake and began to cry in fear. Ahlfors bent down next to the girl and tried in vain to calm her. But the child seemed alright.
Ahlfors turned to look toward the ball fields, where the explosion had come from. There, she saw a column of black smoke rising about twenty yards into the air. Higher up, it spread out into a mushroom cloud that recalled an atomic bomb.
What in the world had happened? Her daughter was still wailing as Ahlfors rooted her cell phone out of her purse and called the emergency number 112. She was the first of dozens of callers to report the explosion.
* * *
Officer Tero Partio accelerated toward Mäkelä Avenue, the sirens on his cruiser howling. Some of the traffic had stopped, and Partio weaved between the cars. Half of the police cruiser was in the oncoming lane.
“There,” said Esa Nieminen from the passenger seat, and waved a finger at the column of smoke. Partio’s first thought was a car fire, since the black smoke indicated burning tires, but dispatch had reported it as an explosion.
Partio passed a few stopped cars and ran a red onto Mäkelä Avenue toward downtown. There was a gap in the hedge about a hundred yards up, and the officer guided the vehicle down the slope into the park.
A parking lot, a building with dressing rooms, and open grass fields were on the left. Partio immediately noticed that the windows on the building had been broken. On the right were a few trees, and beyond those, a gravel soccer field.
The car-or what was left of it-was in flames about a hundred yards up in the parking lot. Partio gunned it down the hill. He stopped about twenty yards from the blaze and shut off the sirens before getting out. Some trees stood between him and the flames.
In these situations, over-eagerness was dangerous. He had to think first. Nieminen stayed in the cruiser to give an initial report to dispatch. Since dispatch had given radio orders to all Helsinki units, there was no need to ask for back up.
The flames rose ten feet into the air. As Partio had anticipated, the bulk of the smoke came from the tires. Since the demolished car was alone in the parking lot, there was no danger of the fire spreading.
Once out of the car, the officer immediately detected the pungent stench of explosives. This was clearly a bomb-almost nothing was left of the car. Through the smoke and flames, only its blackened carcass was visible.
Further off, he noticed a white sports dome on the hill, slowly collapsing. Apparently, shrapnel from the car had torn a hole in it. Howling sirens closed in from all directions.
Partio took a couple steps to the side and surveyed the scene. He could make out two crumpled figures behind a small shrub, which had blocked his sightline from the cruiser. He ran in to get a closer look, and once within ten yards of the first, he could see that it was a man.
The man’s leather jacket was torn to shreds and his wounds were severe. The face was burned and the blistered skin had peeled off. His hair was smoldering and his features were impossible to recognize. Partio also noticed the man was missing his left hand, which lay on the pavement about fifteen feet off. Partio checked the man’s pulse carefully using the one intact wrist. He was still alive.
An ambulance pulled into the park through the opening in the hedge and Partio waved it over.
He proceeded to the second heap. This man was dead. The face was just a mass of flesh. Both legs were severed and a metal chunk was jutting out of his chest.
The sight was gruesome, but Partio had seen so many dead bodies that it no longer affected him.
As the ambulance came to an abrupt halt and the EMTs leaped out, Partio returned to the first victim.
“This one’s still alive,” he said. “The other’s dead.”
“Got it,” said the medic, and knelt down beside the first.
Partio went back to the squad car and Nieminen got out.
“What’s the situation?”
“One dead, one still alive. Report it to dispatch and go have a look at the dressing rooms. See if anyone there is injured.”
“Roger,” said Nieminen, and got back in the car.
Partio circled to the trunk, took out a camera, and began to photograph the scene as another squad car and a fire truck pulled up.
Partio took photographs of the dead body and the victim that the medics were working on. The dome had flopped down entirely and he took a photo of that as well.
He circled to the other side and noticed a cell phone lying in the gravel. Though he didn’t touch it, he noticed that it was still on.
As he approached the phone to take a closer look, he spotted a familiar blue symbol in the background of the display. A sword with a lion’s head handle-the
official emblem of the police.
His heart sank as he realized that the casualties were fellow officers. Goddamn, he muttered.
* * *
Salmela strode down Helsinki Avenue toward the Corner Pub. The zipper of the ex-con’s lambswool leather jacket was pulled to the very top. The street was very familiar to him. Salmela had come to the conclusion that the number of loitering bums here was pretty much constant. When one died, another replaced him. The same went for the bars. Over the years, Salmela had been to them all-both those that had failed and those that had risen as replacements.
He passed a clock store that had barricaded its display window with thick bars. For some reason, the shopkeeper wanted all the clocks to read the correct time: it was 3:45 P.M. Salmela wondered if Suhonen had found anything in the car at the ball fields, and if he had, whether it would affect his assignment at the Skulls’ compound.
He came to an old shop with TVs and radios displayed in the front window. Salmela stopped in front of the window and stared at the screen, on which flickered a wide-angle view of the Käpylä ball fields. In the upper corner, it read: Breaking News.
Salmela rushed inside and listened to the reporter’s newscast, “According to the latest reports, one man was killed in the explosion and another was critically wounded. The explosion appears to have occurred inside an automobile.”
The jumpy picture showed CSI techs in white coveralls scouring the gravel fields on all fours. White tarps attached to a scaffolding about fifteen feet high were already surrounding the car. The broadcast was being filmed from the top floor of the parking ramp at the Pasila exhibition hall, which was the nearest spot that hadn’t been roped off.
Salmela watched with his mouth agape.
“Crazy story,” remarked the graying shopkeeper, who had come up alongside him.
Channel 3 Reporter Sanna Römpötti, dressed in a black blazer, appeared on the screen and continued, “I should emphasize that this has not been verified, but according to our sources, both men caught in the explosion were police officers. Again, this account has not been verified. At this stage, we have no information about the cause of the explosion.”
Salmela’s eyes were glued to the screen. The female reporter continued with details on the time and the number of emergency vehicles, but Salmela wasn’t listening anymore. It all seemed surreal. The picture snapped back and forth from the newsroom anchor to a field reporter and any eyewitnesses, or at least earwitnesses that they had found.
“You alright?” the shopkeeper asked.
Salmela snapped out of it. “Uhh, yeah.” he said. When the broadcast cut back to the studio, Salmela walked out the door.
Outside, he pulled out his phone and dialed Suhonen’s number. It went straight to voicemail. He tried to call Aalto with the same result-straight to voicemail.
Salmela glanced around, but nobody seemed to notice him. He tried to think about his situation. No sense going home-that wouldn’t be safe. He didn’t have enough money for a hotel. He’d have to find one of his friends and crash at his house for the night. The guys would be at the Corner Pub, and a couple
beers would take the edge off.
Jesus, what had happened? What had he done?
* * *
Römpötti hopped into the satellite truck to warm up for a while. The wind was gusting on the roof of the exhibition hall parking ramp, but at least it wasn’t raining yet. The back of the van was packed with monitors and other electronics. One of the screens showed a live feed of the accident scene, still veiled by white tarps. The operator sat near the monitors in an office chair. Römpötti plopped down in the passenger seat and pumped some coffee from a thermos into a paper cup.
Her fingers soaked in the warmth of the coffee. Thin leather gloves didn’t suffice for these cold conditions, but they looked better than mittens on camera. She couldn’t wear a hat either, at least not unless the temperature dipped below zero degrees Fahrenheit.
Römpötti sipped her coffee as she scanned the screen on her laptop. With a wireless connection, she was able to access the production program. She was back on the air in eight minutes. Something new to report would be nice, but the cops had been tight-lipped. Their initial statement had been brief: An explosion had occurred, and of the two victims, one had died and one was injured. One of Römpötti’s friends at dispatch had tipped her off about the victims being cops. She had called again, but the friend hadn’t learned anything more.
Something about the incident seemed peculiar to Römpötti. Car-bombs per se were nothing new-Helsinki had been rocked by a few. She recalled the 1994 explosion in the parking lot of Pasila Police Headquarters. Though the police had a suspect, the case still remained unsolved, as nobody had dared to testify against organized crime. At that time, the cops had been the target, but the circumstances of today’s incident were still unclear. Another car bombing had occurred downtown in the summer of 2002-a contract killing.
At a loss for new info, she considered mentioning those stories in her next spot. But viewers wanted new information, not just recaps. Römpötti’s phone rang. The caller was unidentified.
“Yeah?” answered Römpötti briskly. Occasionally, these types of incidents stirred up some strange people who were best dumped at the outset. She had no time for them.
“Sanna Römpötti?” a man asked.
“Yes?” She said, unable to recognize the voice.
The man paused briefly. “It’s Sami Aronen, from the Skulls.”
For a moment, Römpötti was confused. Why was Aronen calling her now? “Oh, hey Sami.”
“I suppose you’re kinda busy.”
“If you’ve seen the news, you know why.”
“Yeah. Listen, I have some information for you about that.”
Römpötti nearly dropped the phone. One of the top men in the Skulls wanted to give her a lead on a breaking story. “What’s that?” she said in a voice that seemed to have fielded hundreds of similar offers.
“I know the police think we’re behind this, but that’s not the case.”
Römpötti wasn’t surprised. “No?”
“Nope. I don’t care if you make their suspicions public, but I don’t want our denial to be aired at this point.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“You look just as good in person as you do on TV,” Aronen said without the slightest hint of comedy. “The cops have been working on some kind of an undercover operation against us and they think we did it. But as I said, that’s not the case. If you wanna air what the cops think, be my guest.”
Römpötti was confused. Typically, people suspected of a crime would want to minimize or clarify their role. But here was Aronen, tipping her off that the gang was a suspect, yet not wanting to publicize a rebuttal. Suddenly, it occurred to her to record the conversation.
“I’m not sure I understand,” she said as she glanced at the operator. He was holding up four fingers-four minutes until she was back on camera. “Why would the police suspect you if you had nothing to do with it?”
“Listen to what I’m saying,” Aronen’s voice was tense now. “They’ve been running an undercover operation against us and they think we’re behind the bombing. The truth will come out later, but for now, you can say the police suspect us of being involved. That’s a true statement.”
The operator raised three fingers.
“Okay. I’m on camera in a minute. Thanks for the lead.” Römpötti tried to think of how she could say it on the air. Needless to say, the police wouldn’t confirm any suspicions at this stage; they seemed to have ceased all communications with the outside. Undoubtedly, the entire police organization was in chaos as the different branches scrambled to figure out who would investigate what. Maybe she could say something like this: “According to our sources, the bombing may have been connected to organized crime. Reportedly, the Skulls motorcycle gang is a prime suspect.”
Römpötti took a gulp of coffee and climbed out of the van into the cold
wind. The camera operator, dressed in a thick parka and knit hat, waved her in front of the camera.
The top level of the parking ramp was surrounded by a five-foot-tall concrete wall, so the cameraman had set up two plastic crates for the reporter and him to stand on. That way, the scene of the accident, and not just the concrete wall, would be visible in the background.
She cleared her throat. In her hand was a small notebook, where she had written her keywords. Stepping onto the crate, she asked the camera man if everything was ready.
* * *
It was still several minutes before the meeting would begin. In the corner of the conference room at Helsinki Police Headquarters was a television, the volume at a whisper. Several officers were conversing in subdued tones as the NBI’s Jaakko Nykänen, dressed in a gray suit with his walrus mustache bristling, stepped inside.
The VCU conference room had been made into the command center for the investigation. About thirty officers, some sitting in front of their laptops, others standing beneath the cold fluorescent lights, were gathered in the room. Nykänen remembered dozens, if not hundreds of meetings that Takamäki had led in this room. Dammit, he thought.
The news broadcast came on and Nykänen told someone to turn up the volume. He hadn’t had time yet to see how the media was handling the incident, but now he had a minute and a half before the meeting would start. Nykänen grabbed a half-liter bottle of water from the basket on the table, opened it and took a swig. Sanna Römpötti appeared on the screen.
First, Römpötti spoke about the victims and the fatality, and alluded to the Pasila Police Headquarters bombing of fifteen years ago. Nykänen remembered it well, since he was still in the Helsinki PD at the time.
“Again in 2002, a car bomb exploded downtown. Car bombs don’t choose their victims,” the reporter said. “So it’s not clear yet whether the bomb was intended for police, or whether it was an accident.”
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