Helsinki homicide: Cold Trail

by Sipila, Jarkko

  In the lobby, Suhonen paused to think. The streetlamps were shining in enough that he didn’t need to turn the hallway lights on yet. The corridor to the elevator was maybe twenty feet long, and the stairs rose to the right of the old-fashioned wire-cage elevator. On the left there was a door leading to the courtyard or the basement.

  Suhonen looked at the name board—there really was an apartment on the third floor occupied by a Mäkinen. At least Saarnikangas hadn’t been totally lying. Numerous companies also appeared to be in the building.

  The undercover detective decided to punch on the stairwell lights and headed toward the stairs. He opened his leather jacket and instinctively checked his Glock. No point waiting in the corridor.

  He chose the stairs; they rounded the elevator in a semicircle up to the second floor. Halfway up was a window to the backyard with streetlight shining through it. Suhonen stopped on the second floor for a moment. All was quiet.

  He climbed up to the third floor. Mäkinen’s apartment was immediately to the left of the stairs. Suhonen continued past the elevator door, climbed a couple of steps higher, and paused to listen.

  He decided to take a closer look at the apartment. He crept up to Mäkinen’s door and carefully cracked the mail slot. He could hear muffled speech inside. Evidently there was an inner door that was almost shut. Nevertheless, Suhonen was able to make out that it was human voices, not a radio or TV. He tried to think who Repo might be with—if he was in the apartment at all, that is.

  Suhonen silently closed the mail slot and retreated back to the stairwell.

  His cell phone began to ring! Goddammit, Suhonen silently swore. The sound would definitely carry into the apartment. He pulled his phone out from his jacket pocket and quickly descended the stairs.

  “Hello,” Suhonen answered. He punched on the stairwell lights at the second-floor landing, because someone talking on the phone in the light was probably less suspicious than someone talking in the dark.

  “What’s the situation?” asked Turunen.

  “Where are you?” Suhonen asked.

  “A minute away.”

  “Main door’s open. Come on in.”

  “What kind of lock’s on the door?”

  Suhonen was confused by the question. “I just said it was open.”

  “No, I mean the apartment door,” Turunen said. “I know you didn’t stay outside or in the lobby to wait.”

  Suhonen chuckled. “Normal residential. You’ll have no trouble getting in the door with your gear. It’s on the third floor, immediately to the left of the stairs. Door says Mäkinen. There are at least two people inside the apartment.”

  “Listened through the mail slot, huh?”

  “No, I levitated myself inside.”

  “All right, we’re pulling up outside now.”

  “I see you guys,” replied Suhonen, who by now had made it down to the main door.

  The SWAT team was traveling in two vans. Three men in masks and helmets jumped out of the first one, and four from the second. One grabbed a big shield, and another a metal pipe meant for smashing locks. The others raised what looked like ski goggles from their necks to their eyes.

  “Flashbangs?” Turunen asked one of the men, who nodded in response. A flashbang was a light-and-noise grenade intended to stun the target for a few seconds. Turunen put on a mask, too.

  “You want one?” he asked Suhonen.

  Suhonen shook his head.

  “Well, here’s a radio for you at least,” Turunen said, handing him a headset.

  Only about thirty seconds had passed since the cars had parked, and the police were already filing in the main door.

  “How certain are we that Repo is in there?”

  “Uncertain, but possible.”

  “So it might be some civilian’s apartment.”

  Suhonen nodded. The SWAT leader’s comment was a clear reference to the earlier pointless raid near the Kallio fire station. “I didn’t call you in, Takamäki did.”

  Turunen clicked on his headset. “Change of plans: no flashbangs. Otherwise entry as planned.”

  The police climbed the stairs, treading lightly. None of their gear clinked or clanked. Suhonen and Turunen brought up the rear and had just reached the second floor when the point man, “Jack Bauer” Saarinen, whispered into the headset: “Ready.”

  “Okay, let’s go in,” Turunen ordered.

  Suhonen heard a dull crash as the pipe crushed the lock. Then came the shouts: “Police! Don’t move! Keep your hands visible!”

  Suhonen had made it almost up to the third floor when an announcement arrived in his ear, “Apartment has been cleared. Three men in custody inside.”

  Three of the SWAT officers withdrew from the apartment as Suhonen entered. The entryway was small, it contained nothing but a coat rack. The room itself was furnished with a bed and a dining table. The apartment was clearly the sort that was rented out for a day or two.

  Three men were lying on the floor in handcuffs, guarded by three members of the SWAT squad. Suhonen nodded at the lead SWAT man. Then he looked at the men on the floor, one at a time. The first had a greaser-style haircut, sideburns, and ʼ50s clothes. It was Jorma Raitio, the guy from Järvenpää that Nykänen had mentioned during the meeting and whose phone the NBI had been tapping.

  The second man was wearing a black sweater and army pants. His face was so lean that he could well be in the military. Suhonen didn’t recognize him, but somehow he got the feeling the guy wasn’t Finnish.

  The third one he knew, however. All too well. Lying there on the floor was Salmela. The men’s gazes met, but neither said anything.

  Turunen tapped Suhonen on the shoulder and gestured him over to the dining table. There were some maps and other papers on it. Jewelry shop addresses were written on one of them. Neither of the police officers touched the papers. Let Forensics studythem first.

  “Take them all to Pasila,” Suhonen announced, and the SWAT team roughly hauled the detainees up from the floor. As Salmela was led out, their gazes met again.

  Turunen was the only one who stayed behind in the room with Suhonen.

  “What is this place?”

  Suhonen shook his head.

  “Were they planning some robbery?” Turunen asked, gesturing at the papers.

  “That’s what it looks like. This is a job for the NBI,” Suhonen replied, bending down to look under the bed. There was an ice hockey bag there, and Suhonen carefully pulled it out. It held three pistols and two sawed-off shotguns. Suhonen would rather have found Repo crouching in fear.

  The undercover detective thought about Saarnikangas, and whether he had known who really was in the apartment.

  “Goddammit.” Suhonen exhaled heavily, whipping out his cell phone. He pulled up Nykänen’s number.

  CHAPTER 17

  WEDNESDAY, 10:10 P.M.

  HELSINKI POLICE HEADQUARTERS, PASILA

  “Well, well,” Nykänen grunted. He was in the Homicide conference room, along with Takamäki and Suhonen. Joutsamo entered and said that a call had been made to Emergency Response from Karppi’s landline that morning. The call had been logged as a wrong number, but Emergency Response had promised to pull up the recording. She didn’t have any information on Karppi’s cell phone yet.

  Nykänen returned to the raid that Suhonen and the SWAT team had made. It was clear that the case would be transferred over to the NBI for investigation.

  “I should’ve guessed this. We’ve been tapping their phones for a couple of months, but as soon as we tell you, it doesn’t take even 24 hours and our suspects are sitting in jail.”

  His tone of voice was such that Suhonen couldn’t tell if it was a reprimand or praise.

  “I had no idea they would be in there,” Suhonen explained. It was possible that they had moved too early on the potential perpetrators.

  “Suhonen said something about some papers,” Joutsamo said.

  “Forensics is going through the fingerprints, but the places
where getaway cars would be swapped were marked on the map, and the other list was of the targets themselves.”

  “So attempted grand larceny,” Joutsamo said.

  “Actually several attempts,” Nykänen corrected.

  Takamäki looked thoughtful. “The Supreme Court has decided that when planning of a crime has begun, it can be considered an attempt. Finding the plans indicates, of course, that something was in the works. Especially if we can connect it to the Manner recording.”

  “There’s a felony weapons charge in there, in any case,” Joutsamo said. “Those shotguns were sawed off.”

  “There’s just one problem here,” Nykänen reflected. “If those guys don’t talk or if we don’t find a connection from the call data or anywhere else to Manner, then he won’t get his toes wet.”

  “I’m pretty sure these guys won’t talk,” Suhonen said. He made a mental note to swap out the SIM card of his off-the-record phone in the very near future, because if the number were found in Salmela’s mobile phone, the NBI might decide to tap it.

  “Well, at least we achieved our number-one goal. We prevented the crime from taking place,” Nykänen grunted.

  “For Manner we still have that hit-and-run, plus Espoo could also investigate the vehicular arson. We could also revoke his security company license,” Takamäki stated, and then held a brief pause. He shifted his gaze to Suhonen. “You or me?”

  Suhonen shrugged.

  Takamäki elected to continue. “There’s one more thing here that you need to know about, but it can’t be discussed outside of this room, or used in any way in the investigation. Do I have your word?”

  “How can I give you my word, if I need to know about it?” Nykänen asked.

  “Let’s just say it would be good for you to know,” Suhonen corrected. “And we’re only telling you this because you used to work in this unit.”

  “Okay,” Nykänen rumbled, stroking his moustache. He wasn’t sure what was going on.

  Takamäki took back the floor. “One of the men apprehended in the apartment is Eero Salmela, whose son was killed a year ago. It was a witness protection case, if you remember.”

  “Hard to forget.”

  “Okay, but the thing is that this Salmela is a close friend of Suhonen’s.”

  “A close friend…” Nykänen repeated.

  Suhonen eyed Nykänen. “I’m sure you get the drift.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Nykänen nodded. “Would he be interested in talking to us?”

  “I can ask, but if it doesn’t work out, then Salmela can’t receive any special treatment during the investigation that would tip outside parties to... anything.”

  * * *

  Salmela was sitting in his green overalls in the interrogation room, with its light-brown table and gray walls. The guard let Suhonen in and closed the door behind him. Suhonen stroked his beard.

  “How’re you feeling?” he asked.

  “How do you think?” Salmela answered.

  Suhonen sat down on the wooden stool across from Salmela and tossed a pack of cigarettes onto the table. Salmela took one, and Suhonen scratched him a light.

  Salmela sucked in a long drag and slowly blew the smoke out. “Fuckin’ a,” he said.

  “Why?”

  Salmela laughed.

  “Is this some interrogation?”

  “No.”

  “Is there a recording device in this room?”

  “No,” Suhonen repeated.

  Salmela hung his head. The cigarette was in his right hand, and the smoke writhed up lazily toward the ventilation system.

  “How did you guys know to hit the apartment?” Salmela asked. “Who gave us out?”

  “Shitty luck. We were looking for Repo.”

  “Repo?” Salmela wondered, raising his head. “The escaped murderer?”

  Suhonen nodded. “We heard he might be there. We found that apartment in the customs office register. Some cigarette smuggler used it last winter.”

  “Fuckin’ a!” Salmela blurted out. “We rented it with cold hard cash from this old lady to make sure it wouldn’t be in some police database. You can’t trust anyone, goddammit.”

  “Got dealt a shitty hand.”

  “And it had to be a nobody like Repo. Fuck, if you would have told me he was such a big deal to you guys, I would have scraped him out of some dumpster till my fingernails bled.”

  “As I recall, I did tell you,” Suhonen retorted. “Let’s get back to the situation at hand. What do you want me to do for you?”

  Salmela thought for a moment. “I don’t know. How much do you guys know?”

  “We know about your plan to jack those jewelry shops and that Manner is running the whole show.”

  “Fuckin’ a!” Salmela blurted out again. “How? How the hell?”

  “I’m not even sure,” Suhonen said. “It’s NBI’s case. We’ve just been helping them out. But you do know where this will lead?”

  “Time in the pen,” Salmela said. “That’s obvious...”

  “So is there anything I can do for you?”

  Salmela shook his head. “Yeah well, maybe a cup of decent coffee, because this is starting to look a hell of a lot like I’ll be drinking freeze-dried from here on out.”

  Suhonen rose and returned a couple minutes later. He was carrying two cups of coffee.

  “Black, if I remember right,” Suhonen said, setting the cup down in front of Salmela.

  “Yeah.”

  Suhonen sat at the table and let Salmela drink his coffee. He had some himself.

  “Your son’s thing, is that it?” Suhonen asked. A year earlier, Salmela’s son had been shot during a drug deal gone bad. Salmela didn’t take his eyes off his coffee.

  “I guess. Everything felt pretty empty after that. Junkies sell me phones and computers and I front them. It seemed so stupid and empty. I thought, one big gig and that’d be it. Enough dough that I could take it easy, at least for a while. Okay, it’s stupid to even think that way, but it was a chance.”

  “What, that you guys would hit several targets at the same time?”

  “That, plus a few other jobs,” Salmela said. “You’re the only one I’m going tell this to. In the interrogations, it’s going to be no comment down the line.”

  “What other gigs do you mean?”

  “Do you remember that armored truck robbery in Mariehamn a few years back? First they set up a diversion by burning a car and then executed the robbery. Something like that. On a normal day there’s max thirty to forty patrols in the greater Helsinki area. It wouldn’t take much for half of them to be tied up in bullshit cases. Certain areas could be emptied of cops pretty easily. The idea was specifically in the massive scale.”

  “Whose idea was this? Yours or Manner’s?” Suhonen asked.

  Salmela winked. “Hey, we were all just execution. They told us we had to keep our eye on a couple of spots. My job was to chop down this big birch, because it was blocking the view from this one house. And if it fell on a couple of cars and tied up the police and fire & rescue departments, then that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.”

  “Right,” Suhonen said, not believing a word of what Salmela said about the part he played. Someone who chopped down trees didn’t need to know about any other robberies. Suhonen knew that there were many more perpetrators involved than the three they had behind bars, but figuring that out was the NBI’s job. “I guess there’s not much I can do.”

  “A man has to take what he has coming. Goddammit, I should have known after that car thing that this is going to get screwed up.”

  “What car thing?”

  “It was no big deal. Just this one little thing, but I should have seen it coming.”

  “What happened?” Suhonen asked.

  “You know Skoda Sakke?”

  Suhonen nodded.

  “Well, he was supposed to be the driver for the Espoo vehicle, and he had headed over to scout out the area around Sello early this week. In Manne
r’s car. Well, he didn’t dare to say anything at first, but later he told Manner that he knocked over some cyclist out there. Sakke hadn’t hung around, of course. When Manner heard, he had a conniption. Kicked Sakke’s ass and then made him burn the car. Sakke’s debt grew by twenty grand, even though Manner’s going to claim the insurance money too, of course. So then the Espoo police got in touch with him.”

  “Sounds like a clusterfuck.”

  “That it was.”

  Suhonen snagged the cigarette pack from the table.

  “One more,” Salmela said, pulling a smoke from the pack in Suhonen’s hand. Suhonen lit it for him.

  Joutsamo rushed in. “Suhonen, I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.”

  “Take your time, enjoy your smoke,” Suhonen said to Salmela, before following Joutsamo out of the room.

  Joutsamo withdrew thirty feet down the corridor from the interrogation room door and kept her voice to a whisper, even though she was well aware that the interrogation rooms had solid soundproofing. “Saarnikangas called the phone that was in the jacket on your desk. I didn’t answer, but I listened to the message. Said he had something urgent. His voice sounded agitated, maybe even alarmed.”

  Suhonen didn’t particularly care for other people listening to his messages, but he accepted Joutsamo’s decision. “What was he alarmed about?”

  “He didn’t say, but he asked you to come to the Chaplin Bar on Mannerheim Street right away. Has some information on Repo, apparently.”

  Suhonen considered whether Saarnikangas was trying to finagle more pills, or if he really had something new. Either way, he’d have to check it out.

  “I’ll probably head over, then,” Suhonen said. He’d have plenty of time during the drive to call Takamäki to let him know what Salmela had said about the hit-and-run. The problem was, of course, that the information could never be used, because then the crew would find out that someone was talking to the cops.

  “How’s Salmela?” Joutsamo asked.

  “Pretty bummed,” Suhonen said, returning to the interrogation room.