“Sounds like more of a problem for dad than for Detective Lieutenant Takamäki,” Suhonen chuckled.
CHAPTER 17
SUNDAY, 4:00 P.M.
OLYMPIC STADIUM, HELSINKI
Salmela was fed up. He rounded the north end of the soccer stadium and headed toward the Olympic Stadium. According to his directions, he was supposed to come to the statue of Paavo Nurmi, the famous distance runner who won nine Olympic gold medals in the ’20s.
Salmela wouldn’t have complained if it weren’t for the rain, which only seemed to mock him. Over the phone, a man had told him to go to the Sörnäinen Metro station in East Helsinki, then take the subway downtown to the central train station, and loop through the Kamppi Shopping Center before taking the streetcar to the Olympic Stadium.
The man had introduced himself as Aalto, and told him that they wanted to be sure that nobody followed him. So far, nobody had. And why would they, Salmela thought.
He reached the agreed-upon corner just as a gray Ford Focus pulled up. The driver pushed a button and the window slid down. His eyes met Salmela’s. The driver was in his thirties, with neatly-trimmed hair and a baggy blue hoodie. “Get in,” he said.
“Who’re you?”
“The police are your friends,” he said simply.
“Is there a problem?”
“No, that’s why I’m here. The situation has been deemed safe—you should get in now.”
Salmela climbed in the passenger side. “How many of you guys are involved in this?”
“Plenty,” the driver said and sped off. “As a matter of protocol, we’ve been watching, and nobody has followed you. I have orders from Aalto to bring you to the meeting place.”
The driver turned northbound onto Urheilu Street.
“What kind of a guy is this Aalto?” Salmela asked.
“What kind of a guy does he seem like to you?”
Salmela watched Töölö’s pale-green high school drift past on the left. “Pretty damn careful.”
“That’s just how he is. Doesn’t take any risks, which is good as far as I’m concerned. That’s why I can’t talk to you.”
“But you already have.”
“Not anymore. You’re in the hands of professionals.”
They passed the Finnair Soccer Stadium and continued northward. Salmela recalled his meetings with Suhonen. Those had been different—somehow peaceful, even. Often they had met over beers at the Corner Pub, but after his spell in prison, that had ended. Maybe Suhonen didn’t think the place was safe anymore.
More recently, Suhonen had always picked him up at some agreed-upon spot and they had chatted at a gas station or some other public place. Last time, Suhonen wouldn’t even agree to meet at the usual Teboil café. And now this. Salmela wondered who had changed, he or Suhonen.
They passed the Helsinki Ice Center on the right and the driver continued straight through the intersection. Oddly, having lived in Helsinki most of his adult life, Salmela had never been in this neighborhood before. The buildings looked like they were from the sixties. He wasn’t even sure what this part of town was called.
What if this was just a test from the Skulls? Would they check to see if he’d talk to someone he believed was a cop? And if he did, well… Well, what then? He had already been to the cliff in the Nuuksio forest—what else could they do? Except, perhaps, to make his death more unpleasant than a bullet in the mouth.
A painful death was something to fear, but Salmela no longer had anything to look forward to in life. He had no family to live for, nor was there any purpose for the rest of his journey. His own mistakes had cost him everything. His marriage had fallen apart while he was in prison. His son had been shot. He had no friends, save for the guys at the Corner Pub and Suhonen. They were the only ones who cared.
And now, of course, the Skulls and the NBI. Damn.
They passed a hospital on the right. Parked cars on both sides of the street narrowed the lanes.
The wheels were spinning in Salmela’s head. He tried to gather his thoughts and quiet the pulsating pain in the back of his head. Suhonen was an old friend and things had always worked both ways with him. He gave Suhonen information the police needed, and in return, Suhonen helped him out from time to time. This exchange was mutually beneficial, and its scale minimal. Salmela had never considered himself a nark.
Now the whole ordeal seemed more complicated. Suhonen had urged him to agree to it—said it would be his ticket to a new life. But was that really possible? So far, he hadn’t succeeded. His efforts had earned him a job as the Skulls’ toilet cleaner, and now as an informant for the NBI. Escape seemed impossible.
His headache was steadily seizing more space in his skull. Maybe it would pass if he quit thinking, just listened, and did as he was told.
The driver braked and stopped in front of a tan three-story stucco building. Salmela immediately noticed the fire escape scaling the outside wall. It would be easy to burglarize the building.
“That’s it. Someone in the stairwell will tell you where to go.”
“Okay,” Salmela said, and got out.
He dodged the puddles in the front yard and hurried toward the building.
The white-framed entry door was oddly tall. Salmela stopped and wondered whether the door would bring him more trouble or redemption. He wasn’t sure, but the Ford standing behind him compelled him onward. He could run, of course. Mannerheim Street wasn’t far. There he could catch a bus, and head someplace where nobody was interested in Eero Salmela. But they would find him—if not the Skulls then the police. In the end, there was really no difference between the two, he thought.
He ascended the seven steps and paused briefly in front of the door. Salvation or hell? Unable to decide, he pulled the door open.
A man behind the door startled him. He wore a suit, a short haircut and was holding out his hand.
“Hello. I’m Aalto. We have a lot to talk about. Let’s go up to the second floor.”
“What’s up there?”
“An apartment. It’s our safe house—one of many. We can speak privately there. Nobody will bother us or suspect anything. It’s completely secure.” Aalto headed up the stairs.
Salmela followed close behind.
Halfway up, Aalto turned around. “Are you hungry?”
“Well, a little.”
“Good. We have sandwiches up there.” He had used the same question many times before in similar situations. He had no real reason to ask the question in the stairwell, but it created a sense of security. Naturally, the informant was nervous. But if the police had time to talk about sandwiches on the stairs, it would calm down the prospective informant. At the same time, it created the illusion that the police were actually interested in the person, not just the information they possessed.
The door to the apartment was ajar and Aalto went in first. This too was pre-planned: an underlying message that the police were looking out for the informant’s safety. The informant didn’t have to enter a strange place alone with the police behind their back.
Aalto knew that emotions were made of simple things.
The two-room flat was modest, but not barren. In the entry hall was a row of coat hooks and a shallow table. The bedroom featured a double bed, and in the living room were a small dining set and two loveseats. The walls were decorated with a few uninspiring prints. Despite its dreariness, the apartment was clean.
The NBI had numerous apartments across the country for just these types of situations. They could be used to interview informants, to lodge participants of the witness protection program, and even as a base for undercover surveillance operations. Of course, neither the Interior Ministry nor the police were listed as the official owners. The flats usually belonged to fronting companies that then rented the apartments to the NBI, making it difficult for the criminals to identify or locate them. Nearly all of the apartments had wound up in the state’s hands after an elderly person died and no next of kin were found. The Interior
Ministry and its subordinate organizations, such as the police departments, didn’t have the money to buy apartments on the open market.
Aalto invited Salmela into the living room. An older, portlier cop named Lind was seated at the dining table. Fifty years old and sporting a thick mustache, Lind could have been a regular at just about any corner pub. His voice was low and soothing, but his gaze was cutting.
“Hello,” said Lind, offering his hand. “Glad you came.”
These words too were scripted, ensuring that the cops didn’t say, “Glad you could make it,” or, “Glad you’re here.” Instead, he specifically said, “Glad you came.” It implied that Salmela had made the choice himself.
Salmela shook hands with the man. Aalto and Lind were in some respects opposites of one another: a stiff suit and a street-smart cop.
* * *
Suhonen knocked on the doorframe. Narcotics Detective Toukola was sitting alone in an office he shared with four other cops. The space was almost identical to the VCU’s, one floor up.
“Hey there,” said Toukola.
Suhonen had been hoping to talk earlier, but Toukola’s evening shift didn’t start until four.
“Busy?” Suhonen said as he stepped into the room.
“No, not yet anyway.”
Toukola was dressed in jeans and a red hooded sweatshirt. On the night shift, he was responsible for reacting to whatever happened in the field. If all was quiet, he would work on existing cases, fill out overdue paperwork or just drink coffee. Nonetheless, a case could arise suddenly from, say, a routine traffic stop where officers stumbled upon a large stash of dope.
“Hard to say if that’s good or bad,” Suhonen commented.
“What, are you crazy? Of course it’s good.”
“I guess.”
Suhonen steered a neighboring chair between his legs and sat down.
Toukola looked at Suhonen. “Well? You need more work, or…?”
“How’s that Marju Mägi?”
Toukola laughed. “Miss mini-mule? Why you so interested in her? It’s not even your case, even if the tip came from you.”
“That’s exactly why I’m interested.” Suhonen relayed the story of how Karjalainen, the druggie who had been on the ship with Mägi, had died of an overdose. He told him about the visit to Karjalainen’s apartment, the stash they found, and the conversation with his girlfriend.
“I see,” said Toukola, somewhat displeased. “You should’ve called me. I would’ve come.”
“You were off duty and I don’t have the clout to authorize your overtime. Has she said anything?”
Toukola shook his head. “Last time we spoke was yesterday, and she didn’t want to say anything. I doubt she will today either. Looks like she’ll take the rap for the drugs rather than open her mouth and end up in deeper trouble.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“Me neither,” said Toukola. “But now you think Karjalainen was in on it too? Didn’t I tell you back at the harbor we should search the guy?”
“Possibly. I can’t remember.”
“Karjalainen doesn’t have the brains to run a four-pound dope smuggling operation. So, who’s behind it?” Toukola mused.
Now, for the first time, Toukola was engaged in the conversation. It finally interested him more than surfing the news on the web. He had wound up on a page that flaunted the biggest silicone boobs in Hollywood.
“Good question,” said Suhonen. “Don’t know.”
“This girlfriend of Karjalainen’s…” Toukola began, but cut his sentence short. “Shit, you already questioned her and found a couple ounces. What’d she tell you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on. A woman with a bag of dope in her apartment, and I haven’t seen a single report about it on the computer. We see every drug case in the database and I just looked through them.”
“Look under cause-of-death investigations.”
“Aha,” said Toukola and tapped out something on his keyboard. He found the report of Karjalainen’s death and of the amphetamines found in his home. “No mention here of any woman. What’d she tell you about those drugs?”
“That they belonged to Karjalainen. We sent the sample to the lab to find out if it’s the same stuff we found on Mägi.”
“That will take weeks, at least,” said Toukola. He thought for a second and stared hard at Suhonen. “Why are you here?”
Suhonen grinned. “Just to warn you not to make any mistakes. The case is now connected to a covert NBI investigation.”
Toukola pretended to be frightened. “Oh shit, we should be trembling and turning off the computers. He groped around for the desk phone, snatched it up and pressed it to his ear.
“The state prosecutor, please. I’d like to turn myself in for overzealousness. Just don’t hand me over to the NBI…”
That got a laugh from Suhonen, but Toukola ended the show. “So where are they going with this and what am I supposed to do?”
“Mägi had twenty ounces, so somebody else has the other three pounds. Isn’t that interesting to you? Especially when the dope is so strong that an experienced user ODs.”
“Sure, but it’d be more interesting with another zero after the three. You seem to have an idea on where we could find it.”
“At least on who we should ask.”
“Well?”
“Just before he died, Karjalainen met Juha Saarnikangas. You know the guy?”
“No, but the name is familiar. A heroin addict who’s supposedly clean now. Friend of yours?”
Suhonen circled to the window and looked out over the wet landscape. How could it keep raining this long?
“Sort of,” Suhonen replied. “I helped him out a couple times when he hit bottom and we’ve been on speaking terms since.”
Toukola knew what that meant: Saarnikangas was Suhonen’s informant.
“Should we go after your aspiring informant? If the guy is in good shape, knows a lot and stays out of trouble, I’d say he’s pretty valuable.”
In a way, Toukola was right. There was a time when that’s how it worked with Salmela, too, but on the other hand, informants had to be kept humble and obedient.
“You want to come with and have a chat with him?”
Toukola looked at the stack of paper on his desk. “You need me?”
“No.”
“Why’d you ask, then?”
“Because this Mägi thing is your case. You should know what’s going on.”
“I trust you. Let me know if you find that three pounds and I’ll come get it.”
* * *
Roge had a shovel, and Osku, a backpack. The Toyota Camry they had borrowed from the downstairs garage stood fifty yards off on the shoulder of a dirt road. The woods were quiet in western Espoo, about ten miles from the Skulls’ headquarters. Raindrops pattered on the leaf-covered ground. The forest smelled of wet soil.
Along with the bag, Osku had a cell phone and a handheld GPS system.
“How ’bout that rock over there?” Roge asked.
Osku gave a nod of approval and Roge set the blade of the shovel at the base of the rock. He scraped the leaves aside, carved out a chunk of mossy sod just bigger than a sheet of office paper, and set it carefully to the side.
The soil in the nature reserve was soft and the work advanced quickly. Roge shoveled the soil into a large black garbage bag. Once the depth reached about two feet, he stopped digging.
Osku, wearing gloves, glanced in his backpack. At the bottom of the pack were four one-pound packages of amphetamines, shrink-wrapped with an additional layer of foil around them. He dropped the backpack into the hole.
Roge dumped soil from the garbage bag into the hole until it reached grade level. With the shovel, he compacted the soil and added some more from the bag. Then he carefully lifted the layer of sod back into place and sprinkled some leaves over the area.
Osku took a photograph of the spot with his cell phone, and saved the coordinates
from the built-in GPS system onto the picture. He compared the coordinates in the photograph to those on the handheld GPS unit. They matched. Just to be sure, he stored the coordinates in the handheld unit as well.
The operation had taken fifteen minutes.
A few days earlier the Estonian shipment had been cut to 15-20 percent purity—typical street grade. Out of the three pound shipment, they now had sixteen pounds to sell. Roge and Osku had already dug two similar holes elsewhere. This package was the last to be hidden in the woods.
Osku wasn’t sure how the sale would be made, but he guessed the buyer would get the photograph, cell phone or GPS unit, or a map based on one of them. He didn’t care. People he didn’t even know would take care of that.
The men trudged back to the car.
“Well, that’s that,” Osku smiled.
CHAPTER 18
SUNDAY, 5:10 P.M.
THE NBI SAFEHOUSE, HELSINKI
To Salmela, everything had seemed to go smoothly at first. The NBI agents had treated him to a sandwich, a soft drink and coffee. The discussion had seemed harmless. They had even offered him a beer from the fridge, but he had declined.
The agents had asked about his life and Salmela had told them everything—from the best to the worst. From his son’s shining moments on the soccer field as a twelve-year-old to his wife demanding a divorce while he was doing time.
One of the agents was continually taking notes, which bothered Salmela.
Then the questions had turned to his past crimes, but Salmela only talked about the ones that he could remember being convicted of. He could no longer remember all the details of the cases. The statutes of limitation had been reached in most of the others anyway. Some of the questions were asked twice, with slightly different wording.
The NBI was also interested in his relationship with Suhonen. Who said what, and when. Salmela had dodged these questions. At one point, he had even wondered whether the NBI was actually investigating Suhonen, but then he recalled the Skulls.
Helsinki Homicide: Vengeance Page 16
