We burgled, heisted, robbed, almost nightly. My role, because of my lack of mobility, was to sit in the car and watch, cell phone in hand, to make sure no one walked in on Milo and Sweetness. Since the B amp;Es were almost always in the wee hours of the morning, I left after Kate was asleep and was home before she woke. My family life was at least outwardly unaffected. Kate knew. I hid nothing. I sensed her disapproval, but she didn’t complain.
During B amp;Es, Milo mirrored the hard drives from criminals’ computers, stole their banking codes, lifted their financial info, inserted viruses so that he could manipulate their computers from his own. We emptied their bank accounts, left them penniless. We continued in this way for weeks. A small fortune accrued.
There were consequences, some foreseen, some unforeseen.
I believed, and at that point rightly so, that no violence would be necessary. These thefts would be seen as betrayals among criminals, who would then go to war because of them. Foreign criminals are reticent to kill each other in Finland. Russian and Estonian criminals prefer to kill each other in their home countries, where corruption is rife, because they have little fear of prosecution, whereas in Finland, they almost certainly will be caught and incarcerated. The Helsinki Homicide history intimidates them. No murder had gone unsolved in Helsinki since 1993.
However, in the criminal world, to come up missing a large quantity of cash or drugs leads to mistrust. Theft isn’t an acceptable excuse. Mistrust and uncertainty, like as not, end in homicide. In Tallinn and St. Petersburg, mafia wars raged. The body count, both cities combined, numbered seventeen. And of course, that only counted the bodies that had been found. This was OK with me.
Milo listened to the threats made during their telephone conversations. When the thieves were caught-meaning us-we would be tortured for days, slowly destroyed physically but not allowed to die. They would cut off our dicks, make us eat them. And so on.
If I wanted criminals locked up, either Finnish or foreign, I had various options. Drugs or guns discovered during B amp;Es could be left in place, or moved to the home of a criminal I had a particular disdain for and used for a frame-up. A simple phone call to the police would lead to an arrest. I had yet to exercise this option. Gangsters running free could be robbed again.
Unforeseen consequences. We did our job so well that we ran Helsinki dope dry. Junkie suicides and pharmacy break-ins reached astronomical proportions. A pharmacist was shot to death.
Milo and Sweetness stopped any pretense of comradeship. Milo called Sweetness “the court jester,” “doofus,” “clown,” “the other half of a halfwit.” Sweetness responded with a long list of insults suggesting Milo was effete: “Mary,” “sissy,” and my favorite, “Miss Froufrou.”
On March third, I went to Fazer, the best bakery in Helsinki, and bought the fanciest cake they had. Fazer makes some of the world’s best chocolate, and this was Karl Fazer’s first shop. He opened it in 1891. I had a coffee and a pastry while I was there, because the back room is built under a dome that echoes. You can eavesdrop on conversations around the room from reflecting voices.
Then on to Alko, the state-run liquor monopoly. I had specialordered a bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII cognac. Price: one thousand five hundred euros. The youngest cognac in the blend is fifty years old. The oldest, about a hundred years. I hid them until the evening, then set them on the table. Kate and I waited until Arvid ambled in. “Happy ninetieth birthday,” I said, and we sang to him.
It moved him so much that he almost shed a tear. He opened the cognac box and took out the crystal decanter. “It was the only gift I could find that’s older than you,” I said. It made him laugh and we passed a pleasant evening.
On March seventh, Anu was christened and officially named. Winter hung on as if it would never end. The temperature was minus ten that day. We asked my brother, Jari, and his wife, Taina, to be Anu’s godparents. They’re good people, have two fine boys of their own. I invited Jyri Ivalo to the ceremony, and to our house afterward for coffee and cake. He took it as a sign of respect, a gesture meaning that I wanted to solidify our relationship. He attended and gave Anu the traditional gift of a silver spoon set.
Milo didn’t attend. During the ceremony, he was busy black-bagging Jyri’s home. He made a mirror copy of Jyri’s hard drive and photographed relevant papers. We now had the user names and passwords for all information available to the national chief of police. Milo said Jyri was so fucking stupid he didn’t even password protect his home computer. He also planted a MAC-10 and eight balls of heroin and cocaine in various places around the house. More insurance, should Jyri choose to betray me.
On March fifteenth, my sick leave officially ended and I returned to duty, whatever that meant. I supposed I had an office at NBI headquarters with my name on the door. I had no intention of ever going there to find out. The date, the Ides of March, struck me as a harbinger.
13
Wednesday, March seventeenth. It was late morning. I lounged around in bed. Katt had crawled inside my shirt, shredded my chest with his claws and fallen asleep. Anu chewed on the little finger of my left hand. I was doing nothing, thinking nothing. Just existing. My cell phone rang. I reached over, careful not to wake Katt, and took my phone from the nightstand. Jyri Ivalo was calling. To answer or not to answer? I answered.
“Good morning,” I said.
“And good morning to you. I have a job for you.”
We’d heisted the town dry. I had nothing to do, wanted to do nothing. “I’m covered up in work,” I said.
“Lisbet Soderlund was murdered. Her head was sent by mail to the Finnish Somalia Network. It was sent by normal post, packed in Styrofoam peanuts and newspaper. A note composed of letters cut from headlines of a newspaper said ‘nigger lover.’ Forensics is there now. The case is yours. I need you to go over there right now.”
I turned the relevant facts over in my mind, considered the ramifications of taking the case. The Finnish Somalia Network, as the name suggests, is a political group that represents Somali immigrants in Finland. Soderlund was a Swedish-speaking Finn-and so, needless to say, white-politician belonging to the Swedish People’s Party. Soderlund was a member of the European Parliament for about a decade. After the 2007 elections she was chosen to be the new minister of immigration and European affairs. She had come to be a symbol in her self-appointed role as a champion of immigrants’ rights, far beyond the call of duty of her post. As the government’s foremost advocate of immigrants’ rights, she became the object of contempt and hatred of the extreme right and racists. For a time, until it was removed because of its illegality, a Facebook page existed called I Would Give Two Years of My Life to Kill Lisbet Soderlund. The page attracted some hundreds of members.
Her head in the mail was an escalation over a previous event involving the Finnish Somalia Network. During the last holiday season, they were sent a pig’s head, along with a note reading “Merry Christmas.”
I said, “It’s political, it’s high-profile. Her assassination will be remembered by history and the eyes of the world will be focused on the investigation. It will draw attention to me that I don’t need. It doesn’t serve your purposes, either. It’s a bad idea.”
“It’s the most significant murder in the region since Olof Palme was assassinated in 1986. I agree, and I don’t want you involved. However, the president does.”
“Why the fuck does Tarja Halonen think I should investigate this?”
Jyri sighed, aggravated. “It goes back to the Sufia Elmi murder. Immigrants are going to be up in arms over this. There will be protests, maybe retaliatory crimes. You solved the only case in our history of a high-profile black person’s murder. Therefore, Halonen believes your involvement will give the immigrant community confidence that the government is committed to solving Soderlund’s murder, and help assuage their anger. And she’s probably right.”
“Then I suppose there’s nothing to be done about it,” I said. “The president gets what the pr
esident wants.” There was no possible argument to the contrary. “But let’s do it like this. You say this is a matter of national security and I can’t speak to the press until the case is over. You take the limelight and attention away from me.”
“That was my plan. The address is Kuninkaantie 38. Let me know what happens. I have to keep the president apprised.” He rung off.
I thought about bringing Milo, decided against it. He would talk incessantly and have strong opinions on every detail. I didn’t want to hear them. I called Sweetness and he drove me to the crime scene. It had been five weeks since my surgeries. In a couple weeks, after I gained just a little more strength in my knee, I could trade in these crutches for a cane and drive again.
On the way over, I tried to impress the gravity of this case on Sweetness and repeated Jyri’s comparison to the murder of Olof Palme.
“Who’s he?” Sweetness asked.
I couldn’t fucking believe it. Had this boy been to school? Did he spend history classes sniffing glue?
“He was a Swedish prime minister and was assassinated in 1986. He was a harsh critic of both the U.S. and the USSR, among other governments. The murder went unsolved. Conspiracy theorists claim that either the CIA or KGB assassinated him. The point is that these two murders will be compared, and the whole world will be watching to see what happens.”
“Are we going to be famous?”
“Probably.”
“Cool.”
The city streets were still lined with high banks of snow and ice, but we hadn’t had much fresh snow for a while, so they were dirty and gray, the edges fringed in black filth.
A large crowd, mostly black people, had formed outside the Finnish Somalia Network. Sweetness pushed our way through and helped me walk until we made it inside. Two crime scene techs and a pathologist were examining Lisbet Soderlund’s head. The cardboard box it came in was on another table. I imagined the shock of whoever opened it. Heads are heavy, the package must have generated curiosity. Digging through Styrofoam peanuts and wadded-up newspaper to find a severed head would add a new dimension to anyone’s morning. The note was in the box. It looked like the letters were cut out with scissors and stuck to a sheet of printing paper with children’s glue stick. “Nigger lover.” Lovely sentiment.
I asked the techs if I could touch Lisbet’s head. The pathologist said it was OK. I picked it up by her hair, dark, with a thick shock of gray in the front. She was an attractive woman in her fifties. I spun it in a slow circle. Nothing unusual. Her eyes were closed. I flipped it upside down to look at the decapitation wound. It looked clean and neat, not a hack job. I borrowed a magnifying glass and took a close look at the spine. It was cut, not snapped, and I discerned saw tooth marks. Whoever killed her was well prepared, had the proper tools, took their time and did a good job of it. Sweetness examined the head with me. He asked if he could hold it. I handed it to him. He stared at it long and hard.
The cutting said a great deal about the murder. Few people can remove a head and keep their calm, not make a mess of it. I asked the pathologist if she had any insights she might share with me. Not yet. I’d seen all I needed to and we left.
I went home, fired up the laptop and checked the Internet site of Helsingin Sanomat, the nation’s leading newspaper. It was already announced that I would lead the investigation. There was an article on me, my strength and determination, taking on the nation’s most pressing crime despite recent brain surgery. It cited other cases of international interest I’ve handled. I turned on the tube. The case-and my face-were on all the news broadcasts. My change of appearance now seemed prescient.
Several articles detailed Lisbet Soderlund’s career. They discussed her bravery and resolve, leading a life of public service that culminated in giving up that life for her beliefs. I was more interested in the reader comments on the articles than the articles themselves. They ran about two to one, those glad she was dead, stating that she got what she deserved, and those mourning her loss. The site was supposed to be moderated, but opinions weren’t censored. There were already a couple hundred, so I skimmed. “Niggers out. White men unite.” “Killer white man’s hero and patriot.” “Immigrants parasites on the Finnish taxpayer.” “Gang rapists.”
I checked out some racist sites: the most popular, Finnish Pride, and other lesser ones, some permanent, some on Facebook. The permanent ones can only go so far, but since publicly inciting racial hatred is a crime, many of the more virulent hate tracts are on Facebook. When someone complains and a desist order is issued, the site is closed and reopened under another name until the next complaint and desist order. On these I found talk of murder and creative propaganda. “The spreading nigger cancer.” “Pus from the nigger pig order.” “Finnish whores breeding mud babies with criminal nigger scum must die.”
Sweetness sat beside me and read along with me. Arvid came out with his bag packed. He looked at Sweetness. “Mind giving me a ride home?”
He had originally come for a week and stayed for a month, but he had become part of the family. In the back of my mind, I knew better, but it seemed a permanent arrangement.
“Why so sudden?” I asked.
“It’s not sudden. I wore out my welcome long ago.”
I started to protest.
He shook his head. “You’re back in the spotlight, and having a murderer you arrested as a houseguest will be hard for you to explain away.”
He was right. “Thank you for all you’ve done,” I said.
“It was good for me.” He extended his hand and I shook it.
“Have you said good-bye to Kate?” I asked.
“She’s asleep. Tell her I’ll see her again soon. I’ll call, and come to your party.”
He left. I called Milo. “You hear about the Soderlund murder?” I asked.
“Of course I did. Why didn’t I get a look at her fucking head?”
I lied. “Sweetness was here and I was in a hurry. Trust me, before it’s over, you’ll know more about her head than you can possibly imagine. Right now, I need info. There was a Facebook site dedicated to murdering her. Are you able to hack Facebook and ID the site members?”
“No. And nobody else is, either.”
“Haven’t you told me any site can be hacked?”
“Give me a year, and if I dedicate my life to it for that time, there’s a small possibility I can get in.”
“My feeling is this,” I said. “Whoever killed her did it for prestige, to brag to his hate buddies, and it’s an open secret among that group. We have to find out what circle the killer moved in and apply pressure until somebody rats out the murderer. Our best bet is the members of that site.”
“Probably so. We find one, scare the shit out of him, he gives up the others. It might not be that hard.”
“Maybe, but until then, we have to do police grunt work. Plan on devoting your life to looking at rap sheets until something turns up.”
I told him I’d call in the morning and rang off.
Next call, Jyri Ivalo. “I need you to use your superpowers to get me sheets on every known racist in Finland. That includes anybody who’s committed or been accused of committing a hate crime in the past few years, and the membership rolls of every racist organization in Finland.”
“Since you’re calling me, apparently you own a fucking phone. Get off your lazy ass and make the calls yourself.”
“I would if I could. If I call, racist sympathizers on the force may suppress information or drag their feet. If the national chief of police calls and says jump, they just ask how high.”
“Anything else I can do, Your Highness?”
“I’ll have to look at thousands of people. If I have paper files, it will be almost impossible. Get it all scanned so I can build a database.”
“So you want an army of secretaries.”
“No, the president wants the case solved.”
“Fair enough. You think it’s going to be a tough one?”
“Depends.” I
explained it to him the way I put it to Milo. “I need somebody to roll over. I can’t do that if I play nice.”
“In my experience,” he said, “playing nice rarely accomplishes much. You’ll start receiving the files tomorrow morning. I’m starting to see your reasoning behind hiring the oaf.” He rang off.
14
At five thirty the following morning, I got a call from Colonel Alexander Nilsson of the Finnish Defence Forces. He was instructed to call me because one of his soldiers had been murdered while on guard duty. The killing might be related to the murder of Lisbet Soderlund, and although, as he emphasized, the murder fell under the jurisdiction of the Finnish military police, as a courtesy, I could examine the crime scene if I wished. It was in a wooded training area near Vantaa. I thanked him and told him I would be there as soon as possible.
I called both Milo and Sweetness. Milo because he might be of some value, as despite his annoying ego and overconfidence he was an astute detective, and because I hadn’t taken him along to examine Lisbet Soderlund’s head, he would be justifiably offended if I excluded him again. Sweetness, because hiking through the deep snow in the forest might prove impossible on crutches, and I might need him to more or less carry me.
Army conscription takes place twice a year, in January and July, but conservatives in the government are determined that Finland will join NATO. As such, they were holding maneuvers that they ordinarily wouldn’t, to prove their zeal to other countries. There are several large training areas around Finland. That the maneuvers were being conducted near Helsinki was good fortune.
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