Helsinki Homicide: Vengeance

by Jarkko Sipila

  * * *

  Saarnikangas backed his van up to a brick-red shipping container at a construction site in western Espoo. Two men in overalls appeared and opened the shipping container first, then the back doors of the van.

  Apart from those three, the construction site was quiet and nobody was about in the surrounding area. Hemmed in by tall trees, the place looked even darker in the steady rain.

  A small sign on the shipping container stated that a two-story office building was under construction. The sign didn’t list the general contractor, just a name and phone number.

  The men began loading cardboard boxes into the van. Saarnikangas opened the driver’s side door, thinking he’d walk back and watch, but the ground was muddy and he didn’t want to dirty his shoes. In any case, he would just get in the way, and besides, it wasn’t his job.

  He didn’t know where the goods had come from, or even what they were, but he doubted they were being stolen from here. Such a large amount would be noticed immediately.

  He suspected the shipping container was being used as a temporary warehouse to store stolen supplies and tools taken from other sites. Construction sites suited the purpose well. Transporting goods was part of the business, so people loading a van didn’t attract attention, even on a Sunday night.

  The van shuddered as the boxes hit the floor. The transfer took fifteen minutes.

  One of the men came to the passenger side door with a single box. A sticker on top read, “Handle with care,” in English.

  “Careful with this one,” he said, and placed it on the seat with his massive hands.

  Juha was tempted to look inside the box, but it was bound with so much tape that it would be impossible peek in.

  The doors slammed shut and the men disappeared. After sputtering for a while, the Fiat Ducato roared to life.

  Juha swung onto the road and dug a cheap cell phone out of his pocket. It had been given it to him expressly for this job.

  The man answered immediately.

  “Hey,” said Juha. “Where should I take these?”

  “Go to Kivihaan Road first,” said Mike Gonzales, and gave him the exact address of an apartment building. “There’s a remodeling job there. A guy will come out and get the stuff he needs.”

  “Should I ring the doorbell, or how does he know to come out?”

  “Ring the doorbell,” said Gonzales. He rattled off two more addresses in Maunula and Oulunkylä. After that, he said, the van should be empty.

  “There’s some kind of special package here?” Juha said as he pulled onto the ramp to Beltway Three.

  “Give it to the guy in Maunula. He’ll take care of it from there.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “One more thing,” said Gonzales. “You know a guy named Eero Salmela?”

  An oncoming car had its high-beams on and Juha flashed his brights back. “Why?”

  “A friend asked me to check on him.”

  “Can I ask what friend?”

  “No. Obviously you know the guy.”

  “Sure… I know him. I actually just heard something a little disturbing about him.”

  “What?” Gonzales asked eagerly.

  Juha pictured Salmela’s face. There was something pitiable about the guy, especially after his last prison term. The blow to his head had been another to his IQ. But Juha still remembered how, when he was in the depths of his heroin addiction, Salmela had treated him like trash. And now the asshole had squealed to Suhonen about the amphetamine shipment. He deserved to eat shit for it.

  “Kind of a touchy subject,” said Juha. “But according to my info, Salmela’s been in touch with the police.”

  “Dammit,” Gonzales hissed. “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not just gossip?”

  “No. It’s for sure. With a Helsinki cop named Suhonen.”

  Gonzales thanked him. “You’ll be paid well for this. This is important info.”

  Juha slipped the phone back into the breast pocket of his green jacket. Tough luck for Salmela, but he’d been asking for it. Just like Suhonen.

  * * *

  The room was dark, and the display on the cell phone lit up before it rang.

  Lying on the bed beneath the covers, Suhonen slowly became aware of the ringing. As he awoke, he wasn’t sure whether he had been sleeping for a while, or had just dozed off. Then, realizing the noise was the ringer of his number-two phone, he groped for the lamp and snatched the phone off the nightstand. He glanced at the clock on the display: 1:37 A.M.

  “What’s the matter?” he answered, having seen the caller already.

  “Did I wake you up?” asked Eero Salmela.

  Suhonen felt like cussing him out, but only managed to repeat, “What’s the matter?”

  “Actually… It’s nothing, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I have a bad feeling about this gig.”

  He sounded relatively sober. “How so? Something happen?”

  Suhonen sat up in bed.

  “Just nervous. I can’t sleep.”

  Shit, watch a skin flick and fall asleep to that, thought Suhonen, but he bit his tongue.

  “That’s normal. I’ve been nervous too.”

  “I’m pretty much convinced they’re gonna see right through me tomorrow.”

  “They won’t know a thing. You’ve already been there a couple of days—you’re like a piece of furniture.”

  Salmela laughed. “Speaking of furniture. Did you know they brought a headstone in there?”

  “A headstone?”

  “A big slab of granite with a bunch of names on it.”

  “Uuhh. What names?”

  “Pretty sure they were dead gangsters, but I didn’t want to stare. Jyrkkä, Kahma and Korpela were on there. Tomorrow I can dust it and look closer.”

  Suhonen remembered the names well. All three were Skulls who had been killed in firefights with the police.

  “Those are gangsters. No need to worry about it,” said Suhonen, though he wondered why they had a headstone at the house.

  “But what the hell is with the gravestone?”

  “They want a memorial for their dead and it suits their sense of humor.”

  “I’m not sure I wanna know what they come up with next.”

  “Listen, your case is in good hands at the NBI. You’re in no danger. Tomorrow, just do the same thing you’ve been doing, and things will take care of themselves. This is routine stuff.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes, of course. I think I know what kind of info these agents want—you don’t need to rush.”

  Salmela paused briefly. “I’d rather be working with you. That dry-ass suit with the NBI scares me. He doesn’t know a thing about this stuff.”

  “Yes, he does,” said Suhonen, surprised at his own impulse to defend Aalto. But assuring Salmela was important for the success of the operation. “They’re professionals. Just do as they say.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “This is your chance to get out of your mess. Take care of your job and the NBI will take care of you. Everything will go just fine,” said Suhonen. “Catch a few hours of shuteye. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “Promise?”

  Suhonen didn’t really know what he was promising, but answered nevertheless, “Of course.”

  MONDAY,

  OCTOBER 26

  CHAPTER 19

  MONDAY, 9:15 A.M.

  SKULLS’ COMPOUND, HELSINKI

  Salmela dumped the contents of an ashtray into a plastic wastebasket. He considered whether he should sneak the butts out, as the NBI agents had instructed, but recalled Suhonen’s advice and decided against it.

  Salmela’s gait was calm, much like it had been in prison. There, it had been best to blend in with the masses so as not to attract attention. The zipper on his sweater was pulled all the way up and he wore a pair of jeans. Standing in the middle of the bar room, he glanced around, but nobody s
eemed to pay him any attention.

  The janitor went from one table to another, gathering ashes. There were less butts than yesterday, and no doobies, at least not yet.

  In five minutes, the job was done. Next, he decided to wipe the tables. He grabbed a rag from the bar, rinsed it under the tap and began wiping the nearest table.

  His eyes returned occasionally to the headstone behind the bar. The granite slab gave him goose bumps.

  The bull-like Roge and the goateed Osku stepped out of the office and closed the door behind them. They didn’t even look at Salmela.

  “Where’d he say the car was?” asked Roge as they walked toward the stairs.

  “Weren’t you listening? The Käpylä ball fields. In the gravel parking lot on the north end.”

  “And what time we gotta pick it up?”

  “Three!” You better pay attention or Larsson is gonna whack you.”

  Roge’s expression was serious. “I remember the dope is in a beige Opel.”

  “Betcha it’ll have some fuzzy dice,” said Osku.

  “You drive it outta there, then,” said Roge as they reached the stairs.

  Osku shook his head and Salmela heard them settle the matter with a game of “key, file, and bars”. The file wins over bars, but loses to the key. And the key doesn’t work on bars.

  Salmela moved on to the next table and wondered what car the men were referring to. He repeated it in his head: a beige Opel with dope on the north end of the Käpylä ball fields at three.

  He looked at the clock: 9:30. Cleaning would take another couple of hours. After that he could call.

  * * *

  Suhonen was sitting at his workstation studying a spreadsheet of Vesa Karjalainen’s phone records. He didn’t know whether the junkie had had any other phones—he had found out about this one from the man’s common-law widow.

  The date, time, cell tower, and of course, the callers’ and recipients’ phone numbers were in columns on the spreadsheet. On suspicion of drug-trafficking, the District Court had allowed Takamäki’s team access to all of Karjalainen’s phone records from October 15 until October 25. The data began a week before Karjalainen had left for Tallinn. The cut-off date, as requested, had been yesterday, but the last recorded call was on the day of his death.

  Suhonen was no fan of fiddling with computers, but he couldn’t really ask the other detectives to help. They had plenty of their own cases. Had it been a homicide, he would have just gotten someone else to do it. Joutsamo was good with computers, but even Suhonen knew the basics of spreadsheets. If he needed to create a graph, though, he’d have to ask for help.

  Suhonen quickly scanned the data. Initially, there had been about ten calls a day, many of them to his common-law wife’s phone.

  Apparently, Karjalainen hadn’t brought his phone to Estonia, since the data had a one-day hole on the date that Suhonen had seen him at the harbor. After that, the calls resumed, as before, at a rate of about ten per day.

  Suhonen had checked a few of the numbers in the police database, but they were all pre-paid cards, which were inherently anonymous.

  The last call on the list had been placed three days ago, on the day of Karjalainen’s death. The time was 9:20 A.M. and the call was fielded by a cell tower in northern Helsinki. The recipient had been downtown, which didn’t help him identify the owner of the phone.

  Suhonen suspected that this just might be one of Juha Saarnikangas’ numbers, though it wasn’t one that he knew about. Maybe Karjalainen had called the ex-junkie to say he was running late for the meeting. Saarnikangas had called about the death a little after ten.

  Suhonen found four more calls between the same two phones. Of those, one was dated before the trip to Estonia, and three after. All of them, with the exception of the last, were initiated by the phone that Suhonen suspected was Saarnikangas’.

  This call data in itself didn’t connect Saarnikangas to the drug case. Had Karjalainen called him from Tallinn, or from the ship on the return trip, it would be a different matter.

  On the other hand, now Suhonen had a number, which could very well belong to Saarnikangas, and which his informant had wanted to keep secret. Using that, he could reconstruct Saarnikangas’ web of connections.

  Right, but connections to what, Suhonen thought. To other anonymous numbers, of course. Suhonen knew Takamäki had worked out an arrangement with Narcotics for Homicide to obtain all phone records in these types of drug-related deaths. They had also agreed that if any of these grew into larger drug investigations, Narcotics would take the lead.

  So in order to obtain additional phone records, Suhonen would need permission from Narcotics. A mere cause-of-death investigation did not grant the right to obtain phone records, but drug cases did.

  Suhonen scanned the numbers prior to Karjalainen’s trip across the gulf, and one captured his attention. It seemed familiar. He took out his phone, scrolled through the directory, and found what he was looking for: Vesa Karjalainen had called Narcotics Detective Toukola two days before his trip to Tallinn.

  * * *

  Toukola let out a tense laugh. “Uuh. Well, yes, he was my informant.”

  Suhonen was sitting on the end of Toukola’s desk. “Tell me more.”

  “Or maybe that’s too strong a word. He certainly wasn’t able to give me any real intel, but he kept us up to date with word on the street.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Suhonen demanded.

  “I told you back at the harbor that I knew him and had busted him for a few pounds of weed. Didn’t you read between the lines?”

  Suhonen shook his head. It hadn’t occurred to him. “What about the mule? Mägi?”

  “Hasn’t said a word. We finally had to let her take a shower today. I’ve completed the interview transcripts so now we’re just waiting for the lab analysis on the drugs and we’ll send the files to the prosecutor. What about the other three pounds? You find them yet?”

  “No. Probably never will.”

  Toukola stared at Suhonen for a long time. “Have you told me everything? What’s this all about?”

  Suhonen skipped the first question. “As I said earlier, the chance to bust the Skulls.”

  “But that’s in the NBI’s court now.”

  “Not the drug case.”

  “That’s mine,” Toukola replied. “Why can’t you let it go? I’d think you’d have plenty of assaults, rapes and the like. You know these cases well enough to know what can and can’t be achieved. Mägi is locked up, Karjalainen’s dead, and the NBI is taking care of the rest of it. Had we found forty or fifty pounds, we could lean on her a lot harder, but we’re only dealing with four.”

  “Karjalainen’s stash was obviously strong, and it’s probably already been cut to fifteen, sixteen pounds.”

  Toukola ignored the comment. “If later it becomes evident that this shipment was part of some larger operation, which I wouldn’t doubt at all, then we’ll combine Mägi’s share with it. As is, this case isn’t going anywhere further.”

  “So the drug case is closed.”

  “Yup,” said Toukola. “I already spoke with my boss. We’re not pursuing it anymore with the NBI on the case.”

  Really, thought Suhonen.

  * * *

  Salmela put the cleaning supplies in the closet and took out his lambswool leather jacket. He shrugged it on and glanced around one last time. He was alone on the second floor.

  He grabbed the garbage bags and headed downstairs. All the while he had the feeling that, at any moment, someone would press the barrel of a pistol against the back of his head and stop him. Reaching the first floor, he stepped outside. The dumpster was on the side of the building and he carried the bags there. He realized that gathering the butts would actually be rather easy. He had only to dump them into a separate plastic bag hidden inside the larger garbage bag, and at this point, he could slip the smaller bag into his backpack. The same method would work for glasses with fingerprints. If he needed to,
he could “accidentally” break some first.

  Maybe Suhonen had been right after all. He could get used to this, but under no circumstances could he get careless.

  Salmela noticed that there were fewer cars in the yard. He wondered if business was slow at the downstairs garage. Had the recession caught up to them as well? It certainly shouldn’t have. The shop was connected to the Skulls, and criminals didn’t feel the pain of economic woes. The downstairs also had a storage room for many of the gangsters’ bikes. He’d have to clean it one of these days.

  Salmela walked casually out of the gate, not yet daring to take out his phone. It had been off all morning in his jacket pocket.

  The walk to the bus stop was a good three hundred yards. He should call soon. He repeated once more in his head: Roge and Osku will pick up a beige Opel with drugs on the north end of the Käpylä ball fields at three o’clock.

  Four facts. Roge and Osku. Beige Opel. At the Käpylä ball fields. At three. Sure, he’d remember.

  * * *

  Sami Aronen had pulled aside a corner of the cardboard covering the window and watched Salmela hurry down the sidewalk. “Well, there he goes,” he said.

  Tapani Larsson and Rolf Steiner stood a few yards further back by the pool table.

  “Nobody was waiting?” asked Steiner.

  “No,” Aronen replied. “I doubt even they’d be that stupid.”

  “The only thing dumber would be for them to pick him up at the front door.”

  Aronen left the window and joined the others. “I guess now we’ll see if Gonzales’ rumor is true.”

  “You think Salmela even heard them?”

  “Of course he did.”

  Steiner raked his blond hair. “You never know with these old ex-cons. They’ve learned how to not hear anything, or otherwise they drink themselves deaf.”

  “Trust me—he heard,” Aronen said.

  Larsson slammed his fist against the edge of the pool table. “Fucking cops piss me off. I get it when the S.W.A.T. team charges in through the front door, or when they snoop on the phones. But they recruit some old yard bird to spy on us? The cops have to play by the book when it comes to raids and surveillance, but it doesn’t get any shadier than this nark business. Just the idea of it pisses the hell outta me.”