Against the Wall hh-1

by Jarkko Sipila

  * * *

  Saarnikangas paid the young blonde behind the counter for another coffee. The nametag on her blouse said “Leena.” Saarnikangas considered how easy it would be to rob the place. He’d probably net more here than at the newsstands. Even with most people paying for gas with plastic, the register was still filled with hundreds of euros.

  The heat from the coffee warmed his hands. If he threatened to throw it in her face, she’d hand over the money. That would be more effective than waving a knife at her from across the counter.

  Saarnikangas opted for a “thanks,” and the girl responded with an uneasy smile. She was pretty, but Saarnikangas had kept his lips shut. Heroin had destroyed his teeth.

  Saarnikangas was clean today. The last fix he had had was eight days ago. The clean streak had started out of necessity when he ran out of money and credit dried up. He had lain on the floor of his apartment for three agonizing days. Now he was feeling better.

  He had gotten the call about this job in the morning. The man had first asked if he was clean. Juha had been drowsy, but had assured the caller that he could take care of it. The gig would reduce his debt by five hundred, and even net two hundred in cash. Or so he was told.

  * * *

  Eriksson’s eyes had adjusted to the dark. Now he could see that the smaller building was a garage, and behind it was a run-down, one-story wooden house. Though he couldn’t see for sure, some of the windows seemed broken. The walls were covered in graffiti. Firs encircled the yard, where a lone swing made of metal tubing stood.

  Nobody in sight.

  Eriksson continued toward the garage, the supposed meeting place. Spray-painted tags plastered the walls of the garage. To Eriksson, they were just gibberish; he couldn’t even read them. Aside from the muffled roar of distant traffic, it was quiet.

  Garbage littered the yard: wooden planks, what looked like the remains of a sofa, and other junk.

  As he neared the garage, it occurred to him for the first time that coming here might’ve been a bad idea. To come knocking at a place like this in the dark? Still no one around. Well, he’d been to places like this before. He wasn’t afraid of the dark either-it was a criminal’s best friend. He remembered how his hockey coach had always told the goalies to hug the goal posts; they were a goalie’s best friends. Now he was hugging the darkness. Eriksson chuckled nervously.

  He instinctively checked his pocket again to make sure his gun was still there.

  Reaching the far side of the garage, he peeked carefully around the corner. Nobody. What appeared to be an old stove and washing machine lay in the darkness between the garage and the house.

  A service door led into the garage. It was ajar.

  Eriksson weaved through the scrap wood on the ground and walked quietly toward the door. His stride had changed from fidgety to furtive. Shit, what if this was a trap-maybe someone wanted to get him away from the bar so they could steal his girl.

  He opened the door. Immediately, he was blinded by the glare of a flashlight in his eyes.

  “Eriksson?” a man’s nasal voice asked from somewhere inside.

  “Yeah,” Eriksson answered, trying to shield his eyes with the bill of his cap. The light moved lower, hindering his attempts.

  “Put that light out.”

  “Come inside,” the voice said stiffly.

  The light was trained on his face and his eyes hurt. Eriksson took a couple steps forward and felt the grass change to concrete. Sand scraped on the floor beneath his shifting feet. With his free hand, he groped in the darkness so he wouldn’t bump into anything.

  “That’s far enough,” the voice said.

  “Put that light out,” Eriksson said again.

  The man didn’t respond.

  Jerry Eriksson was still blinded by the light, so he didn’t see the flash from the gun barrel. He heard a muffled thump, but never had time to comprehend what it was. The bullet hit him in the middle of the forehead, and he crumpled to the ground. His body flopped over, and his head struck the concrete floor with a thud.

  * * *

  Saarnikangas drove his van along a wooded road.

  A few minutes earlier, a man had called to confirm that he was at the gas station, then given directions to a house nearby. The caller hadn’t said what was in store-just told him to drive carefully.

  Juha chewed his gum, though the taste was already gone. What kind of job was this anyway? The house probably had a stash of drugs that he was supposed to deliver. Maybe he could help himself to some of it-a small amount wouldn’t be missed. And if it was amphetamines, it would be easy to cut without anybody noticing. And selling some of his take would definitely improve his financial situation.

  Juha spotted the red mailbox where he was supposed to turn. He had been told to park by the garage, and that the man on the phone would be waiting inside.

  The headlights of the Fiat illuminated the graffiti-covered garage and the house behind it. Juha stopped in front of the garage as directed and got out.

  Nobody around. Juha wondered if he should holler, then chose not to. His orders had been to wait. He spit out his gum.

  Suddenly, the garage door creaked and rose, startling him. He saw a dark figure hoisting up the door.

  “Back up to the door.”

  Juha got back in the van, turned it around and backed up.

  The man giving orders stood behind the van so that Juha couldn’t see him in the mirrors. The interior walls of the garage were also covered with tags.

  “Stop!” the man yelled. Juha stopped the van, killed the engine, and engaged the emergency brake. “Come here.”

  The garage was narrow, but Juha managed to squeeze between the door frame and the side of the van. He was initially blinded by the glare of a flashlight in the far corner, but the light shifted to the floor, and Juha saw the corpse. Jesus Christ, he thought to himself, then said it aloud.

  “Shut up. Just listen,” said the voice. Saarnikangas couldn’t see the man, only that he had on a black ski mask and blue overalls. “Gimme your phone.”

  He fished the cellphone out of the pocket of his jacket and handed it over. The man took it, gave him a pistol with a silencer, and pointed at the body with the flashlight. Juha couldn’t see the face.

  “Get rid of the body and the gun. Dump it someplace where he won’t be found. Ever. If they find him, you’ll end up in the same spot.”

  “How in the…”

  “Shut up. Just do it,” he snapped.

  Juha took a closer look at the man lying on the floor and noticed a familiar-looking jacket with a broad hood, now hanging from the victim’s neck. It was the same guy he had seen strolling past the gas station twenty minutes ago.

  “Where should I…”

  The shadowy figure shut off his flashlight. “Use your imagination. And don’t fuck up. This asshole was a snitch for Customs.” Then he slipped out and disappeared behind the van.

  Juha was alone now. Unable to move, he just stood next to the body, looking at the gun in his hand. What the hell should he do now?

  CHAPTER 2

  DINING CAR ON THE PENDOLINO TRAIN

  MONDAY, 10:20 P.M.

  Suhonen, wearing his trademark leather jacket, was sitting on the rearmost bench of the dining car on the Pendolino express. With his back leaning against the wall, he took a sip from his pint. It was pitch dark outside and the windows reflected the interior of the train like a mirror.

  Suhonen’s stubbly, street-worn reflection stared back at him. His dark hair, usually in a ponytail, had recently been cut short. Now forty, Suhonen had been a cop for half his life, first patrolling the streets of Helsinki then working undercover in Narcotics before Detective Lieutenant Kari Takamäki had recruited him to the Violent Crimes Unit to obtain more intel from the streets. Suhonen got more valuable info than most because he treated his informants like human beings, not like tools of the trade.

  Over the years, Suhonen and Takamäki had grown to be close friends. While T
akamäki appreciated Suhonen’s rampant enthusiasm for catching criminals, at times Suhonen had to be reined in. His methods couldn’t be found in police manuals, but they got results.

  Two drunks at the bar were providing the entertainment. One of them, a man in his mid-thirties wearing a stocking cap, had brought two mugs along, which the other one filled from beer bottles hidden in his bag. The friends had boarded the train in Jyväskylä, and had obviously already had a few.

  “Want some more?” the one with the bottle asked.

  “Drink what you got first,” the one with the stocking cap shot back. The mugs were still half full.

  “Shit, you sound like my old lady,” he said. In plain view, he dug a beer out of his bag and filled his own glass to the very top.

  Suhonen was returning from a three-day driving course at Lake Naarajärvi, near Pieksämäki in Eastern Finland. The class had covered high speed pursuits, and the training on the practice track had included evasive maneuvers and emergency braking. Suhonen had gone on the trip with doubts about the usefulness of the class, but at least he had had fun. Instructors had been pissed off when Suhonen spun a few unauthorized donuts; the other cops had just laughed.

  On the way up, he had travelled with a couple of traffic cops from the Helsinki Police. They had stayed a few more days for a course on police escorts, but Suhonen had been allowed to return to Helsinki.

  The dispute between the two drunks was getting louder, and two women from a neighboring table got up and left.

  The conductor stepped into the car, and the drunks quieted down.

  Suhonen’s cellphone rang, and he pulled it out of his breast pocket. The caller appeared on the display: Takamäki.

  “Hello,” Suhonen answered.

  “Vacation over already?” the detective lieutenant ribbed in his deep voice.

  Suhonen glanced at the advertisements near the ceiling of the train car. One of them was for the Pendolino dining car, in which he now sat. It showed a photo of Venice or something like that and the text read, “Pendolino-a piece of Italy wherever you are.” Pieksämäki, a not so picturesque part of Finland, sure hadn’t felt like Italy. The small town had once been voted the ugliest place in the country.

  “What could be better…speed and danger.” Suhonen said.

  “I suppose you guys got to know the local bars.”

  “Yep, that too,” Suhonen smiled. Actually, their daily saunas had included just one beer. Who says Finns can’t draw the line at one? Otherwise, everything had been pretty low-key. Combine a cop with a car, and booze just doesn’t fit the equation.

  “What’s up in Helsinki?”

  “Nothing much. Mostly routine stuff,” Takamäki replied.

  Suhonen knew that “routine stuff” often meant brutal assaults, arsons, and other violent crimes that were part of a homicide cop’s daily diet. Though Kari Takamäki’s group was officially known as the Violent Crimes Unit, or VCU for short, the old name of ‘Homicide Squad’ still stuck, even though their job description went beyond catching murderers.

  “So you didn’t miss me then.”

  “Not really,” Takamäki said. “I actually just called to ask if you’re coming in tomorrow. Or are you taking the day off?”

  “Not sure,” said Suhonen. He had a morning meeting at the Helsinki Prison that was a high priority. “Actually, I’ll stop by at least, I gotta go to the gym.”

  “Let’s go get a cup of coffee at some point tomorrow. Can’t wait to hear about all the latest pursuit tricks.”

  The conversation ended and Suhonen looked up towards the ceiling, where a monitor displayed the train’s current speed. Though it didn’t feel like the train was accelerating, the numbers on the display changed every few seconds: 147 mph, 189, 204, 229, 258…

  “Pendolino-a piece of Italian technology wherever you are,” Suhonen thought, and hoped the train would make it all the way to Helsinki.

  TUESDAY NOVEMBER 25

  CHAPTER 3

  LINDSTRÖM’S APARTMENT,

  TEHDAS STREET, HELSINKI

  TUESDAY, 8:30 A.M.

  Kalevi Lindström stood up from the seat of his rowing machine. The front of his white tanktop was stained with sweat, and Lindström was pleased. The sixty-year-old man didn’t care much for jogging, so he had converted an extra bedroom into a fitness room.

  In addition to the rowing machine, he had a stationary bike, a stepper, and a punching bag. The floor was covered by a black padded mat. A large television sat in the corner, the screen dark. A pull-up bar hung from the high ceiling, and Lindström approached it with stiff, awkward steps.

  He wasn’t muscular, but wiry. His short hair had turned gray, and he had wondered if he should dye it back to black, but had decided instead to embrace it. He believed it made him look more sophisticated.

  Markus Markkanen leaned against the wall, watching Lindström’s workout with amusement. Lindström also paid a fitness instructor to come on Fridays. In Markkanen’s opinion, his boss was tossing money down the drain-unless, of course, he was banging her as well, but he wasn’t going to say anything.

  If Lindström evoked an image of the elderly Roger Moore, Markkanen was more like a plain version of Sean Connery in Dr. No.

  It bothered him that the gym didn’t smell like sweat, just some citrus-scented air-freshener that either Lindström or the house cleaner sprayed everywhere.

  “You seen Eriksson?” Lindström asked and hopped up to the pull-up bar from a little stool.

  Markkanen knew that Lindström wouldn’t make it past four. “No. He said he was going to the bar last night, and he’d call me in the morning. Hasn’t called.”

  “Count out loud,” the older man commanded.

  Markkanen clenched his chiseled hands into fists, but Lindström didn’t notice. Markkanen wore jeans and a gray sweatshirt. He had to leave his shoes in the entryway, and had learned to always wear nice socks so the old man couldn’t tease him.

  A tall, muscular man, Markus Markkanen’s face was flat and featureless. His brown hair was straight and closely cropped around the ears.

  The first chin-up was easy. “One,” Markkanen said in a bored voice. His thoughts wandered elsewhere. His son had been slapped with a D-minus on his math test, and it worried him.

  “Count louder!” Lindström snapped.

  In good form, he completely straightened his arms, then pulled himself up again.

  “Two,” Markkanen said with a little more pep.

  Same thing again. So far so good.

  “Three!”

  Lindström lowered himself somewhat, but this time he didn’t straighten his arms. He wrestled his chin over the bar anyway.

  “Four.”

  “One more,” Lindström panted.

  This time he only let his arms go to ninety degrees before starting to pull himself up again. His face was bright red, and his chin barely squeaked over the bar. Markkanen couldn’t have cared less had a blood vessel popped in the man’s brain.

  “Five,” Markkanen counted.

  Lindström hopped down. “Five! A new record, and good form too. I should make you go the gym more often. It’d do that paunch of yours some good!”

  What paunch, Markkanen thought, but didn’t say anything. He was six foot three and weighed just under 220 pounds. Maybe his stomach had gotten a little softer in the last year, but as far as he was concerned, he was still in very good shape. He had gotten his body as a youth, street fighting and running from the cops. It had been perfect training for a street debt collector.

  He had met Lindström about five years ago, and soon started working for him. Since then, his job description had changed-he didn’t have to beat the shit out of junkies anymore. That morning, Markkanen had used a scanning device to check the apartment for any microphones or taps. As usual, he hadn’t found any.

  Kalevi Lindström’s background was a whole different story: a good family, MBA, and now, a few businesses operating on the very fringes of the law-some on the wron
g side.

  Markkanen wasn’t in the loop about everything, nor was it his place to ask.

  “Go ahead!” said Lindström, challenging him. “Five chin-ups, bet you a ten-spot.”

  Markkanen hopped up to the bar. He knew he could do at least ten, but after two, he let his hands tremble and rose only halfway.

  “Ha! I knew you’d choke.”

  Markkanen fished a rumpled ten-euro note out of his black pants and set it on the bench of the rowing machine.

  Lindström sat on an exercise mat and stretched his hamstrings. “You should be doing this, too. Feels good in the… I gotta talk to Eriksson.”

  “I don’t know where he is. His phone goes straight to voicemail.”

  “Shit! Go find him,” Lindström snorted. “Tell him to get over here.”

  “Is it something I can help out with?”

  “No.”

  Geezer, Markkanen thought, as he slipped quietly out of the room.

  * * *

  Juha Saarnikangas’ eyes were clouded. He was waiting at a red light near the Ruskeasuo Teboil station, heading downtown. The worn-out wipers struggled to clear the rain off the windshield, only succeeding in smearing the dirt.

  Juha hadn’t slept at all last night. The events at the garage seemed like a bad dream. He had been on the verge of loading the body into the van when he decided that it wasn’t his kind of work.

  There was a limit to what he would do. Stolen goods and drugs were his turf, not corpses.

  Saarnikangas had shut the rear doors, jumped into the van, and had made it to Beltway One before he started to shake. He had to go back. Had to get rid of the body. He had no choice; they’d find him for sure.

  Juha’s hands wouldn’t obey his head, nor the other way around. He hadn’t gone back. Instead, he had driven a hundred miles north to Tampere and from there, another sixty miles further. In the early morning he had stopped for gas at an unmanned Parkano ABC, then turned back toward Helsinki.