Suhonen rose and entered. Joutsamo followed.
“Empty,” Suhonen said, holstering his gun. He flipped on the light switch next to the door.
* * *
Repo stayed as quiet as possible at the back of the cramped closet. The coats were in front of him, but he could still make out the strip of light between the closet and the floor. The old clothes were dusty, and the pungent funk of mothballs filled his nose. He felt like coughing, but he chased the thought from his mind. He was clenching his pistol tightly. The grip felt sweaty.
Repo heard a woman’s voice, “Yeah, that would have been a little too lucky, finding him crashed out here on the bed.”
Of course: they were cops, Repo thought. That made him momentarily reconsider the circumstances and the resolution he had come to in the closet. Maybe he should shoot after all. A burglar or two he might have been able to catch off guard, but police officers? There were at least two of them, but there might be as many as ten.
Yes, he’d pull the trigger. He wasn’t going back to that cell.
“Too bad he isn’t,” answered a male voice.
“Should we have a look around?” Repo heard the woman ask. The footfalls approached and stopped at the door. She must have been standing right in front of the closet, because the strip of light at the floor dimmed.
Repo could barely breathe now. If the closet door opened, he would shoot.
“No one’s slept in that bed. Those blankets are army-regulation sharp,” the man said.
“Okay. I’m going to have a quick look at the desk and the kitchen. You take the living room.”
The man paused. “What is it you want me to look for?”
“Photographs of Repo. Friends, names, anything that will help us with the case.”
“Okay. There was some mail there in the entryway, but it’s going to be Old Man Repo’s.”
The woman walked away, presumably toward the desk.
* * *
Joutsamo scanned the room once more. The home of a lonely old man. A lamp and a couple of books were on the nightstand. The book on top appeared to be the memoirs of a Finnish man who had served in the French Foreign Legion: Trained for Pain, Trained to Die. The bookmark was halfway through.
Several medications lay on the dark surface of the desk. Joutsamo recognized some from her Narcotics days as hard-core painkillers that junkies used as substitutes for heroin. There were also three boxes, which Joutsamo quickly rummaged through. It was old crap: commemorative coins and freebie promotional gear. No photo albums or address books.
Maybe they’d be in the closet? Joutsamo decided to check and started walking back toward it.
“Anna,” Suhonen called from the living room. “Come take a look at this.”
Joutsamo hesitated for a second, and then walked out of the bedroom.
Suhonen was standing at the TV, holding something in his hand.
“What is it?”
“Get a load of this,” said the undercover officer, holding up the photo taken on the deck of the cruise ship. Joutsamo examined it in silence.
“The old man blacked out his son’s face, but he still keeps it on display. Why? And in a spot like that?” Joutsamo asked, even though she already knew the reason.
“You want me to answer that?”
“No,” Joutsamo said.
The father had disowned his son.
Suhonen was quiet for a moment. “Let’s get out of here. We’re not going to find anything.”
Joutsamo continued gazing at the photo as Suhonen turned off the lights, first in the bedroom and then everywhere else. Joutsamo set the photo back down on the TV.
“The brother,” Suhonen said, as he closed the front door behind him. “Let’s go have a chat with him.”
* * *
Repo decided to wait in the closet ten more minutes, but it stretched to twenty before he dared to crack the door. The gun was still in his hand. The air in the bedroom felt cool, and he emerged warily from behind the coats, pistol cocked. The bedroom was empty. Repo had expected one of the cops would have stayed behind to lie in wait for him.
He walked into the kitchen in the dark and turned toward the living room.
Repo jumped. He was caught so off guard he didn’t even have time to raise his weapon. A thin man in a long coat was standing there in the pale light of the streetlamp, and for a moment Timo Repo thought he had come face to face with his father.
He could only see half of the old man’s face, but that was enough.
“Well, well, look who’s here,” Otto Karppi said in a reedy voice, aiming a shotgun at Repo.
CHAPTER 5
MONDAY, 7:50 P.M.
JORVI MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL, ESPOO
Takamäki raced into the spartan lobby of Jorvi Hospital, out of breath. Near the main entrance was an information desk with a few windows, but only one was open. A fifty-year-old woman was explaining something to a bored-looking guy in a lab coat.
Takamäki scanned the room, but didn’t see his wife. Plenty of images had gone through his head during the drive: his unconscious son being transported by ambulance, a breathing tube down his throat, the X-rays and MRI of his head at the hospital, the suspected brain damage.
Takamäki’s sweaty shirt was glued to his back, and his hands were trembling.
The conversation at the info desk seemed to be going nowhere fast, so Takamäki decided to take matters into his own hands. The floor was marked with stripes in various colors: black, red, orange, lavender. The lieutenant had spent plenty of time interrogating assault victims in hospitals, including Jorvi, and so he knew what the colors meant. Yellow led to Surgery, red to X-ray. Takamäki picked the yellow one.
The line led Takamäki down the corridor to a nurse’s station. A few orderlies in white coats were leaning against the desk. One had ominous bloodstains on his lapels. The lieutenant momentarily considered pulling out his badge but decided against it.
“Hello,” he said in a serious tone.
“Hey,” was the expressionless response of one of the orderlies, a guy with a buzzed head.
“Jonas Takamäki was brought here a little while ago,” he announced, his voice quivering.
None of the orderlies responded immediately. Takamäki wondered whether that was a bad sign.
“Sorry, we don’t know names. You might wanna try the info desk, back where you came from.”
“Umm, 16-year-old kid. Bike accident.”
Buzz-cut glanced at his buddy. “Oh, him. Yeah, what about him?”
“I’m his father.”
“All right. I can take you there.”
Takamäki noticed a familiar-looking bicycle helmet that was split at the side. Ugly visions and some that were worse than ugly flooded into his head. “Is that his?”
Buzz-cut nodded.
“How bad is it?” Takamäki gulped, as the orderly stopped at a door.
“He should be in here.”
The orderly knocked, and a woman’s voice responded with an “Uh-huh?” Buzz-cut opened the door and let Takamäki in.
It was a normal hospital room. A nurse in a white coat was at the treatment table, and Jonas was lying on it. Takamäki saw his bloody shirt.
“This is the father,” the orderly announced and walked out.
The nurse turned away from Jonas and gave Takamäki a friendly smile. “It’s nothing serious,” she immediately said. “Just a broken arm.”
Takamäki sighed, and Jonas turned to look. Takamäki registered his son’s relatively bright eyes. The kid was grimacing a little from the pain, but managed a grin.
Takamäki came over to the head of the bed and stroked his son’s hair extremely tenderly; his hand barely made contact. “Hey, buddy. I’m glad you’re okay.”
“The helmet took the worst of the blow,” the nurse said. “But there’s still the potential for a mild concussion. The doctor will examine more closely in a bit. We’re definitely looking at X-rays and a cast, though.”
The nu
rse continued cleaning the wounds on Jonas’s right arm.
“It wasn’t my fault. I had a green light. He went through a red light.”
“That doesn’t matter right now,” Takamäki said, still stroking his son’s hair. “What’s important is that it wasn’t anything more serious.”
* * *
In the dark house, Karppi kept his shotgun trained on Repo at a distance of maybe ten, twelve feet.
“Were those your friends?”
“Who?” Repo wondered. He was still holding the Luger, but the barrel was pointed at the floor.
“Those two who just left.”
“No,” Repo grunted. “They were cops. Looking for me.”
Now it was Karppi’s turn to laugh. “You did hightail it out of that restaurant pretty fast. Is that what you came here to get?”
Repo gathered the old man meant the pistol. “No, but it was there in its old spot in the hatbox.”
“Erik told me the story.”
Repo wondered which story his father had told his neighbor. “The war thing?”
Karppi nodded.
According to the story, Erik Repo had been given the gun right after World War II, as a young man of fifteen, by an old vet who wanted Erik to safeguard it for him. Apparently it had been used to shoot more than a few Russkies—the rumors were that several Soviet commissars had been executed at close range. The vet had been more than happy to give it away, so it couldn’t be traced back to him.
“This gun is the real deal,” Repo said, activating the safety with his thumb and shoving the gun into his waistband. “But we don’t need any more bodies.”
“We sure don’t,” Karppi agreed, lowering the barrel of his shotgun to the floor.
The men stood across from each other in silence.
“You didn’t get a chance to finish your coffee back at the restaurant. Would you care to now?”
Repo shrugged. “Maybe. But not here.”
“Of course not. Those cops might come back. I meant over at my house. Might be a better place for you, anyway.”
* * *
Karppi poured the coffee. The cups were delicate and old fashioned, not mugs.
“Cream or milk?”
“No thanks,” Repo answered. He was sitting at the dining table in his black suit. He had loosened his tie.
“You take it bald, huh?”
“What?”
“Up north they used to say if you drank your coffee black, you liked it bald,” the old man explained.
Karppi’s house was the same size as his neighbor’s, but the decor was a touch more genteel. The difference lay in the dark furniture and the massive bookshelf that took up a whole wall.
Karppi sat down across from Repo. There were also sandwiches and mineral water on the table.
“You and your dad have some of the same features. He’d always sit the same way, a little hunched over with his arms across his chest.”
The remark prompted Repo to sit up straighter and uncross his arms. Karppi laughed and tasted his hot coffee.
Repo glanced at Karppi’s old-fashioned cell phone on the kitchen table. “Why didn’t you call the cops?”
“How do you know I’m not about to?”
Repo didn’t respond.
“Why did he hate you so much?”
Repo turned his gaze to his black coffee. “Why do you think?”
“Because of what happened back then.”
“We never really talked about it, so it’s hard to say. You never asked him?”
Karppi dodged the question. “Erik was a reticent man.” He took a sip of coffee before continuing. “Why did you kill your wife?”
Repo didn’t answer, and Karppi backed off.
“I was just asking. That photo on top of the TV always made me wonder.” Karppi stood. “Why the hell did your dad keep it out? If you want to forget something, you don’t keep a photo that reminds you of it in a prominent spot.”
“He may have had his reasons.”
“I suppose he did,” Karppi said. He walked over to the kitchen cabinets and pulled out a folder. “I wasn’t blessed with children, so maybe that’s why I found it so intriguing. I don’t think I would have been capable of that sort of hatred myself.” He set the green folder down in front of Repo. “Here.”
“What’s that?” Repo asked, without touching it.
“I gathered a few papers that looked important from your father’s home a few days after his death. Just in case burglars came to call.”
Repo opened the folder. The documents that had once belonged to his father were neatly organized in plastic sleeves. The bank statements were on top. Repo skipped past them and browsed through documents regarding the house, paid bills, a passport, and other important-looking papers. There were about fifteen plastic sleeves. The second-to-last one contained cash, maybe three hundred euros, at an eyeball estimate.
“Take it. You must need money.”
Repo fished the bills out and placed them in his breast pocket.
The final sleeve, clearly the fattest, contained letters. Repo pulled them all out and glanced at Karppi.
“I haven’t read them.”
Topmost were postcards printed in a child’s hand. Someone else had written Erik Repo’s address on them. One was from the Canary Islands. “Hi Grandpa! We’re in the Canary Islands. It’s nice and warm here. I’ve been swimming every day. Love, Joel.” The postmark was January 2003; Joel would have been eight years old.
The coffee was cooling. Karppi watched closely as Repo scanned through the mail.
There were several vacation and Christmas cards. There was also a letter from Joel. Timo read it quickly. In it, the boy thanked his grandpa for the Christmas money. He had used it to buy a computer game. It also contained a photograph of a boy, about ten, smiling broadly in front of a Christmas tree.
Karppi caught Repo wiping a tear from the corner of his eye.
Timo stared at the photo for a long time. He hadn’t seen his son in eight years because the child had been taken into custody and placed with a foster family, and Repo wasn’t allowed any information about them.
“You can sleep on the sofa.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Where else are you going to go? It’s comfortable enough.”
Repo took a sandwich and reflected. In a lot of ways, running into Karppi was a stroke of luck—and would definitely make things easier.
TUESDAY MORNING
CHAPTER 6
TUESDAY, 8:30 A.M.
HELSINKI POLICE HEADQUARTERS, PASILA
Joutsamo yawned. They had searched for Repo until after eleven the previous night, after which she had biked home to Töölö. She hadn’t slept properly, and a few hours later she had cycled back to Pasila.
“Good morning,” Takamäki called from the doorway.
Joutsamo turned around. “Good morning. How’s Jonas?”
“Broken arm and mild concussion. Kaarina’s staying at home with him.”
“Thank God it wasn’t worse. Who was the driver?”
“Don’t know. Took off.”
“Hit-and-run, huh?” Joutsamo said.
“The Espoo Police Department is investigating.”
“In that case, you’ll never know,” laughed the sergeant. She had worked in the Espoo PD Narcotics division before transferring to Helsinki Homicide.
“I don’t know. It’s not such a tough case. Happened near Sello. There are a ton of surveillance cameras around there.”
“The Sello shopping mall, huh?” Joutsamo turned back to her computer. Takamäki walked over behind her to follow along as she looked up data from Homicide’s list of surveillance cameras.
“There,” Joutsamo said. “They’ve got two kinds of recordings. Some are stored for a week, but others just for twenty-four hours. Hopefully they’ve got the sense to go look at the images today.”
“Could be that some eyewitness caught the license plate and they wouldn’t even nee
d photos,” Takamäki said, before changing the subject. “Where are we with the escaped convict?”
“Suhonen and I were out looking for him all evening. Went to the father’s house, but got nothing. Well, we did find out that relations between father and son probably weren’t the warmest. The brother indicated the same about their relationship, too. After murdering his wife, Timo Repo was shut out by his family.”
“Well, he can’t make it on his own out there. He’s going to need help. He probably doesn’t have any money,” Takamäki said.
“Suhonen and I were thinking the same thing. We agreed I’d go visit the Riihimäki police and check out those old preliminary investigation reports, see if maybe we can find some names there. Suhonen will work the prison angle.”
“Good,” said Takamäki. “Any new cases last night?”
“Nothing serious. A couple of assaults out east at Itäkeskus, but the precinct will handle them. Couple of cars disappeared, a few B&Es, nothing out of the ordinary.”
“You need some extra hands to help you with the Repo investigation? I could free up Kohonen and Kulta. They’ve almost got the railway station homeless case wrapped up.”
“I don’t think so. Let’s see how things start rolling here. If we find any names in the old documents or the prison, then maybe.”
Takamäki walked to the door. “Okay. Let’s have a status check at two.”
“If the rat stays in his hole and doesn’t move, it’s going to be pretty hard to find him. Should we use the media to smoke him out?”
“We’ll take a look at two.” Takamäki thought for a moment. “What do you think, should I make sure the Espoo police picked up those images from Sello?”
“I’m pretty sure they’ve got it under control.”
* * *
Takamäki deleted an email from the National Police Board reminding staff of the communication guidelines, thanks to some hapless sergeant who had given a lecture at some school. According to the new, stringent regulations, no officer was to make a public appearance without a written request detailing the purpose and message of the visit delivered in advance to the National Police Board.
Helsinki homicide: Cold Trail Page 5
