“Huh?”
“Do you have a gun?” Suhonen repeated.
“No,” he answered hesitantly.
“Good to know.”
“Why?”
“Well, we won’t have to send the Bear Squad to bring you in when we figure out your role in this case.”
The Helsinki SWAT team was nicknamed the “Bear Squad.” The unit had been formed to protect foreign dignitaries for the 1975 US-Soviet summit in Helsinki. The police had chosen a bear as its symbol because in a confrontation, the team would swat like a bear.
“Don’t start…”
“I’m serious. You’ll be in deep shit if you don’t talk now. If you don’t have anything to say, then find something out. I’ll call you tonight.” He turned away.
“Suhonen,” Juha said. The detective stopped.
“What?”
“About the swearing. You know where the word ‘hell’ comes from?”
Suhonen walked away. “I don’t have time for your trivia.”
“It’s Ancient Swedish, derived from the name of ‘Hel’, the mistress of the netherworld…”
Suhonen closed the door behind him and took out his phone. He made it to the stairs by the time Joutsamo answered.
“Well?”
“I met with Saarnikangas.”
“Yeah. You must’ve been in his apartment,” Joutsamo said. “The phone tap is working and we listened in on your little phone conversation earlier.”
“Good,” Suhonen said and thought that going forward, he’d have to watch what he said to Juha on the phone. “He wriggled and squirmed, but it won’t be long before he either calls me or makes a run for it. If anything happens, let me know.”
“Yup.”
“Oh yeah,” Suhonen added. “The tires on his van were GT Radial Maxways.”
Joutsamo asked him to repeat the brand again.
“It’s a match then,” she said.
Suhonen ended the call and opened the police GPS tracking application on his phone. A glowing red dot indicated that the tracking device was in the parking lot on Vuolukivi. All systems go. The battery wouldn’t be a problem; these newer models could last up to a few weeks.
CHAPTER 12
LINDSTRÖM’S APARTMENT,
TEHDAS STREET, HELSINKI
WEDNESDAY, 3:55 P.M.
“Bogeyman” Markkanen stepped into Kalevi Lindström’s apartment building. Classical music boomed into the stairwell and rose into the vaulted ceilings, seeming to lift the elegant decor with its lilting tempo. Everything was of the highest quality. The walls had been recently painted, complete with an elaborate molding where they met the ceiling. Markkanen knew that the renovation team had used original 1930s photographs of the building as inspiration.
It had taken Markkanen about forty minutes to drive the ten miles from Espoo to South Helsinki. This was the swankiest part of town. Parking spots were impossible to find, as most of the Art Noveau buildings were from the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, and had no garages.
Lindström’s door was made from solid walnut. The chrome doorbell looked original, though it had been bought at an antique store and installed during the renovation.
He pressed the button. The bell jangled forcefully and he waited. He was forbidden to ring twice. It took Lindström about a minute to come to the door. He wore brown tailored pants and a white dress shirt.
“There you are,” Lindström said, and let Markkanen inside.
The younger man knew the rules. As usual, he left his black shoes in the foyer and hung his coat on a hanger.
“Let’s go to my office,” the boss said. The apartment was spacious by Finnish standards, at least 2,000 square feet. In addition to the office and the fitness room, he had a kitchen, a formal dining room, a bedroom, and a living room.
Lindström lived alone. As far as Markkanen knew, he wasn’t married, probably never had been. Markkanen wasn’t sure if he was straight or not. Of course, he had never asked about it; it wasn’t relevant. At least the older man had never come on to him.
The office was designed like a library. A laptop and a few stacks of paper rested on a large desk. Dark built-in bookcases encircled the room. Near the door were a low table and two armchairs. The window offered a view of Tehdas Street, but at the moment, brown curtains hid the spectacular view.
Lindström turned on some lights, gestured for Markkanen to sit in one of the armchairs, and took a seat opposite him.
“Still haven’t heard anything about Eriksson?” Lindström asked.
Markkanen shook his head. “Vanished into thin air.”
“Just doesn’t make sense. I know he would’ve told me if he was going on a trip. Do you know if he had any enemies?”
“Who doesn’t?” Markkanen remarked. What kind of a question was that, he thought, but said nothing. Everybody had them, some more than others.
Lindström nodded his head. “Right, right… We’ll have to figure out who they are, but right now I have a more pressing matter.” The man set his elbows on the armrests of his chair and brought his fingertips together so they mirrored one another. “Markus…” Lindström began.
Markkanen was taken aback to hear his first name. His boss hadn’t addressed him that way in a long time, if ever.
“…I’ve always considered you hired muscle. Don’t take this wrong, but your fists have been your best assets.”
You should know, Markkanen thought. He hadn’t received the “Bogeyman” nickname in his youth for nothing. He kept his expression serious.
“You’re good at settling debts and roughing people up. And also organizing things. But now that Eriksson is missing, you’re going to have to step into his shoes. At least for a while.”
Hmm, Markkanen thought. So now he was supposed to squeeze into that rookie’s shoes? As long as diapers weren’t part of the deal. Still, he liked the direction this was headed. “Right,” he said as impartially as possible.
“Tomorrow I’ll be receiving twenty freight containers of flat-screen TVs. The ship will be docking in at the Kotka port. Each container will have fifty to seventy-five units. Altogether, roughly one thousand to fifteen hundred TVs, between forty and seventy inches. Very good quality. Not the cheap stuff you get from clearance sales.”
The man leveled a steady gaze at Markkanen. “I won’t go into details now, but there’s a considerable difference in taxes if the paperwork says ‘rubber gloves’ rather than ‘top-of-the-line electronics.’ Understand?”
Markkanen nodded. He knew that one of Lindström’s businesses had something to do with import-export. Markkanen had arranged some of the transport logistics himself and also rode shotgun from time to time. Goods that were officially bound for Russia had actually stayed in Finland and were sold onto the black market tax-free.
“Good. The containers are headed for Russia, but we still need to disclose the contents to Customs when they arrive here. Russian Customs isn’t a problem, but the Finnish side has occasionally been a little sticky. That’s where Eriksson has been coming in. He’s taken care of any issues with the Finnish Customs.”
“I see,” Markkanen said. Though he had suspected something like this, he never knew the exact details.“How?”
“He gathers information.”
“From where?”
“This is why you’ve always been the hired muscle,” Lindström said with a wry smile. “From Customs, of course. He has a man on the inside. I know his name, but Eriksson never told me what their arrangement was.”
A man on the inside. Wow, Markkanen thought. “That’s good.”
“Right. At first, I thought it was a secretary. But this guy is management.”
“Money?”
Lindström smiled. “Yes. It involves money, but there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Jerry is a clever kid. He’s my cousin’s son; he knows how to play the game.”
Markkanen was shocked. Cousin’s son! Eriksson and Lindström were related? This was news to him. And something he definitely should’ve known. Shit, he thought.