Helsinki White iv-3

by James Thompson

  Moreau was about my age, perhaps a little older. He spoke perfect Finnish, but as if it was long out of use. It lent credence to his story. Despite his jacket, I saw that his carriage and muscular frame suggested a lifetime spent in the military. His manner was easygoing and confident in a way that was somehow reassuring. He spoke in a blithe way that suggested he was a man at peace with himself. His appearance and manner were at such odds with each other that it disconcerted. In every way, he seemed an unusual man.

  “And this specific and practical matter you spoke of?”

  “My hope is that once you have concluded your business here, we could perhaps have coffee and discuss it in leisure and at length.”

  I lit a cigarette, considered it. He made me a little too comfortable. That might lead to a lack of wariness. Always a mistake. “At the risk of seeming rude, I’d prefer if you began with a concise explanation.”

  His smile said it bothered him not at all. “As I am sure you will recall, the Saukko family had two children abducted last year. The ransom was paid as per instructions. The daughter was released, but shot in the head by a sniper three days later. The son never resurfaced. I am in Finland at the request of the father of the family, who has connections with the French government via the armaments industry. He suspected the boy might have escaped and run to Switzerland, where the stepmother now resides, as it is possible they had a, shall we say, ongoing Oedipal relationship. The Finnish police were reticent to search Switzerland, and the task fell to me. The son is not in Switzerland. He has ties to racist groups in Finland, as does the father, but the father had a falling-out with them because they believed his monetary contributions not sufficient to prove his devotion to the cause of hate, and hence a possible reason for the kidnapping. I am at once to search for the son and assess the racist situation in the Nordic area. The racists may have performed the kidnapping. If so, I will return the son and money to the father, and mete out justice to the murderers of the daughter.”

  “‘Mete out justice’?”

  “In the biblical, eye-for-an-eye manner.”

  “And how do our interests coincide?”

  “I search for racists who shot a woman’s head off with a sniper rifle. You search for racists who cut a woman’s head off. Few people in Finland are capable of such violence, especially for relatively unemotional motives such as money and politics. It is entirely likely that we’re looking for the same man or men.”

  It was possible, even plausible. “Not coffee today,” I said. “I need to burn a car at the moment. I’m having a party tomorrow. Come to my house around four, we’ll discuss it then.”

  “Very well,” he said. He extended his hand and we shook.

  He turned and began to walk away.

  I called after him. “My wife will be there. Don’t mention this body dump in front of her. And bring me a present.”

  He turned and grinned. “A present. Why a present?”

  “Because it’s my party, and I like presents.”

  “And you can cry if you want to?”

  “You never know,” I said.

  He slipped out through the fence gate, chuckling.

  I had the sneaking feeling that I was about to make some kind of Faustian bargain.

  Milo and Sweetness followed me in the now liquefying gangster’s Ford. I headed into the countryside, took a back road into the forest and drove without aim. The roads weren’t plowed, and I slipped and slid, but they were passable. At last, a road ended and opened up into a field with nothing in sight.

  I told Milo to drive to the middle of the field or until the car got stuck, whichever came first, and blow it up. He had made a thick, crude fuse, much like for a big firecracker, and said it was a rough guess, but we had about five minutes after we lit it. He and Sweetness looped it around inside the car so snow wouldn’t snuff it out, then pulled off the license plate, lit the fuse and ran.

  I couldn’t go into the field because of my crutches, so I turned the car around and waited for them. Another small post-surgery revelation. My conscience was gone, or nearly so. A gangster died because of my actions, we desecrated his body, and it meant less than nothing to me. And yet another revelation came to me. The famous Helsinki Homicide record. No unsolved homicides since 1993. A quick tally. They’ve investigated around twenty thousand deaths since then, but not one unsolved murder. Not even one?

  I’d bet good money I’m not the first cop to make a body disappear. Further, I think maybe there may be a tradition of employing a small group to extort, strong-arm, or disappear people on occasion.

  Or maybe not cops, but criminals allowed to act with limited impunity for the occasional favor. Rationale for said revelation: Jyri never mentioned the possibility that there would be no black-ops unit if I died on the operating table. He had no concern about the surgery. My conclusion: because he didn’t care if I lived or died. He had someone else already chosen in the event that I shuffled off this mortal coil. None of this bothered me, but it interested me. It was something to look into. Collecting skank on Jyri Ivalo had become a hobby with me.

  They ran across the field. To fuck with them, I made them buckle their seat belts: for safety, I said, before I would move. Then I hit the gas and we bolted. After a couple minutes, at a safe distance, we stopped to watch. The thermite lit up the day sky with a crack, and then the gas tank went with a boom. Flame and dirty smoke shot into the air. This job was becoming more interesting with every passing day.

  19

  Milo and Sweetness were curious about what Moreau wanted. I told them he would stop by tomorrow and explain it himself. I dropped them off and went shopping. Milo and Sweetness had complained that I demanded that they be subdued in their appearance and actions, so as to not attract attention to themselves. They chided me because my own appearance, limp and facial scar, made me stand out in a big way. I would set an example. Tomorrow was my “Welcome back to the world” party, an ideal time to unveil the new and improved, surgically enhanced and nondescript Kari Vaara. I bought a cane. Plain and cheap. My knee surgery was so successful that I wouldn’t need it long.

  Then I shopped for hair color. I had no idea the selection would be so large. Should I enhance my natural hair color, go subtle or dramatic? My natural color was now gray, and my hair has the feel and consistency of squirrel fur. I hadn’t had it cut in two months and had gone from a close-cropped military look to unkempt and messy. Kate pestered me to do something about it. Tomorrow, she would see why I hadn’t.

  Afterward, I went home. Kate had come to accept that she must endure nine months of motherhood leave. The Finnish lesson was finally drilled into her: We do things a certain way because we’ve always done them a certain way, and we do them in that certain way because it’s the way we’ve always done them. Attempts to change our accepted norms breed disdain.

  Without the sociopaths that work for me lurking about, home was tranquil. Kate seemed content. She seldom asked about my work, but when she did, sometimes she called me Michael Corleone. She didn’t smile when she said it. We got along well, though. My practiced smile carried me through the sham of emotion. We sat together for a while, talked the banalities of couples with a newborn, and then I told her I had to go back to researching my murder case.

  I considered the Finnish French Foreign Legionnaire turned French policeman and figure of international intrigue and wondered if he was all that he said he was. I would grill him tomorrow. He spoke of a mutually beneficial relationship. I had all the resources of government at my disposal. What did he think he could bring to the table to entice me? I agreed with him, though. There weren’t many people capable of calculated assassinations, far fewer with the skill and wherewithal to successfully execute them without being apprehended. And in a country with a population of only five and a half million, the pool of qualified suspects was small. We might very well have been looking for the same man.

  I needed to acquaint myself with the Saukko kidnapping-murder. Saska Lindgren was i
n charge. I called him and explained that it was possible our cases intersected, and asked him to send me some files so I could get a handle on the Saukko case. While I waited, I skimmed the Internet, looked at almost year-old newspaper articles, and got a take on the press’s views of the crimes. After reading Saska’s files, I felt I had a reasonable picture of the sequence of events and the people involved in them.

  Veikko Saukko: captain of industry, alcoholic, lunatic, art collector.

  His collection includes more than five hundred pieces. Many are Finnish, but there are also works by Chagall, Dali and Picasso, among many notable others. His estranged wife fled the country and is wanted for tax evasion, among other crimes.

  Born in Helsinki on 22 April, 1941, into a prestigious and politically influential family, Saukko went his own way early and began building his career as a magazine publisher, specializing in scandal sheets. Launched in 1959, his best-known and most successful publication was Be Happy magazine. It focused on so-called human interest journalism. In the 1960s and 1970s, Be Happy achieved overwhelming popularity with indecent gossip about celebrities. The articles were sometimes fact, sometimes fiction, often a combination of the two.

  Suicides, divorces, destroyed careers. Be Happy paid well for skank, and the skank was good. A teen idol gets tossed from a nightclub, the doorman sells skank. Teen gets tossed in drunk tank, cops snap skank photos. Said teen gets fucked in ass in drunk tank, guard sells skank story for big money. Such hard-core skank is never stated outright, but implied in a house style that always leaves the message crystal clear. A politician fucks a minor. Be Happy. A tough guy movie star sips fruity rum drinks in fruity swish bar. Finland knows. Be Happy.

  Saukko got stinking rich because, better than anyone, he understood the Finnish zeitgeist. No one must try to rise above the masses. To do so is more than to risk contempt, but abject hatred. No one must try to accomplish something special. No one must be unique or gifted. The very attempt at virtuosity of any kind suggests that a person thinks he’s better than others. Frequently heard: “Kuka sekin luulee olevansa?”-Who does he think he is?

  Yet, when an individual does succeed, he or she is beloved by the nation until that fateful day when, as they almost always do, the celebrity suffers a humiliation, either large or small. And then, proven right in their contemptuous beliefs, the nation rejoices. How Finns love to see the mighty brought low. How we hate people for trying to make the most of their talents. “Who did he think he was?” We know. He is, and always was, good only for skank.

  In fact, stars are often OK with this, because after being reduced to skank fodder, they often turn it around and use it to rejuvenate their careers. Finnish stars turn alkie, dry out or claim to, then tell their sob stories to the media. A celebration of humiliation. Public applause and adoration. A common ploy. The price paid for the admission that they were no one after all. Dumped wives of stars do the same, rebuild their lives and start their own careers based on Oprah-type “Boo hoo hoo but aren’t I brave?” crap.

  Finland was Skank Exultant. Finland was Skank Ecstatic. Daddy Saukko grew Skank Rich. Daddy Saukko is a good businessman and realized the limitations of wealth that can be accrued with Finnish skank, because it has no international interest. He sold Be Happy to a publishing conglomerate for hundreds of millions of Finnish marks, the equivalent of around a hundred million U.S. dollars.

  Saukko invested part of this fortune in art and constructed his luxurious Villa Veikko, a mansion on a large tract of land fronted by the sea. Beside Villa Veikko is the family museum run by their foundation. Saukko diversified his corporation, Ilmarinen Sisu, and invested in the machine tool, ice cutter and paper industries, all of which flourished. After some years, Saukko foresaw the future. He divested his interests in the aforementioned industries and reinvested in securities and quantitative investment, the arms industries of various countries, investment fund management, technology and media. He believed the future of fortune building lay in technology and media manipulation, and arming Third World nations for small wars. He bought heavily into Nokia and Sanoma. As of today, his corporation controls nearly a quarter of Sanoma Corporation, his interest in it is valued at more than three hundred million euros. Forbes recently named him the five hundred and fifty-sixth richest man in the world, and the richest man in Finland, with investments in around fifty nations totaling 1.7 billion dollars.

  Saukko comes from a long line of landed gentry. His father, Juho Saukko, was a lawyer, a politician and foreign minister who negotiated with the Soviet Union prior to the Second World War. During the Continuation War, Juho headed the Prisoner of War Office. After the war, in 1946, Juho was tried in a court-martial, but the charges were dropped. Post-war, he was a CEO or officer in several corporations, and headed the supervisory board in one of the nation’s largest banks. He also presided over the Finnish American Association. Juho was a devout racist, an admirer of Henry Ford’s opinions on race, in agreement with Nazi beliefs about race, and was fascinated by eugenics and the concept of Finnish racial purity.

  According to his children, Veikko Saukko was an abused child, both physically and psychologically. His father was stern, critical, and impossible to please. Saukko himself is profane, cruel and violence-prone, known for striking employees without provocation, and his enjoyment of drunken bar brawls has resulted in him being locked up in drunk tanks in various cities around the world. He smokes three packs of cigarettes a day, has been an alcoholic since an early age, and even today, at age sixty-nine, habitually drinks four gin and tonics per hour. Several years ago, he spent three months in jail for drunk driving. His known associates include influential racists and a number of mafiosi from various countries. Saukko inherited his father’s racist views, and has no qualms about expressing them, either privately or publicly.

  Saukko has a complex personality. Despite the above, adjectives used by friends and acquaintances to describe him include: charming, sensitive, droll, profound, open, timid, dreadfully shy, and a sophisticated and entertaining conversationalist. He’s also one of Finland’s most skilled open-sea yachtsmen. A picture emerges of a manic-depressive, even schizophrenic man.

  His first wife, Anna-Leena, bore him five children, three girls and two boys. He divorced her suddenly and without apparent provocation after thirty-six years of marriage. Three weeks later, he married Tuula Jaatinen, age twenty-six. Tuula was made director of the Saukko art foundation and began embezzling right away. Over the course of two years, she absconded with, at best estimation, 10.2 million euros. She was tried and convicted for embezzlement, but disappeared rather than serve her three-year prison sentence.

  Currently, Tuula lives in Switzerland. Finnish authorities requested that the Swiss return her to Finland, but the Swiss prevented the extradition. She’s wanted by Interpol, as requested by Finnish officials. Her location in Switzerland is known to Finnish police and press. Interestingly, she’s still married to Veikko Saukko, even though, aside from the embezzlement described above, she’s rumored to have been the lover of Veikko’s son, Antti-also married with children-throughout the course of her marriage to Veikko.

  Veikko’s first wife, Anna-Leena, is in deep legal difficulties herself. As former director of the foundation, she was accused, via multiple lawsuits, of misappropriation of funds. In 2007, she declared bankruptcy, after being court-ordered to return 17.5 million euros to the foundation.

  The five Saukko children all live at home, with the exceptions of Kaarina, deceased, and Antti, missing for nearly a year, in the mansion that stands two hundred meters behind the museum. Veikko insists that he stays surrounded by his children, whether single or married, and that they reside in the mansion. He enforces this through financial blackmail. His children are:

  SON JANNE-member of corporation’s board of directors. Age thirty-seven.

  SON ANTTI-member of corporation’s board of directors, but a less-than-serious person. He prefers yachting, snowboarding and surfing to working. Married. Father o
f four. Age thirty-nine.

  DAUGHTER KAARINA-party girl. A Finnish Paris Hilton. She would have been age thirty-two.

  DAUGHTER JOHANNA-married and mother of two. Lutheran priest. Age forty-two.

  DAUGHTER PAULIINA-the troubled child. Engaged in prostitution as a minor, presumably to antagonize her father and defy him to publish her antics in Be Happy. Finally he did, after which she gave up prostitution. She did, however, become a heroin addict. She’s now a recluse, seldom if ever leaves the mansion, and is addicted to methadone. Age forty-four.

  His children despise their father and have made no effort, not even in the media, to pretend otherwise. Some of them believe he has a narcissistic personality disorder, and a total inability to feel empathy. They complain that he subjects them to late-night drunken monologues, and pits them against one another by constantly changing the provisions of their inheritances.

  Veikko, for many years, put off choosing which of his children would take over the family business. Finally, apparently no believer in primogeniture and for reasons incomprehensible, Veikko chose Antti, the prodigal son, and transferred all power in the family company to him without informing his other children. This despite that Antti had for years called his father an asshole, a human monster, the worst sort of pig, and probably fucked his wife on a regular basis.

  The children had formerly felt a solidarity. When Antti was chosen, that solidarity disappeared, and they began slagging one another in the media. Janne was sacked from his position on the board of directors. Each of the other children had held honorary positions in the corporation, to provide them with exorbitant incomes. They were also let go, and are now at the complete mercy of their father for income. This situation continued until August 2008 when Antti-in the same way that he was appointed, and equally unfathomably-was removed as chairman of the board, and complete control over the company reverted back to Veikko. This remained the family dynamic for the better part of a year.