“But that’s not true.”
“It sure as hell isn’t. I know that. But try telling that to the goons in here. Anyone even rumored to be friendly with you guys ain’t very popular.”
“What can I do?” Suhonen asked.
“Tell me who it was, and I’ll take care of it my way.”
“Listen to me,” said Suhonen. “I wasn’t shitting you. It was a coincidence.”
He wasn’t lying. Suhonen had been trailing an escaped convict when a junkie had given him an address to a potential hideout. He didn’t know why Juha Saarnikangas had led the police to that apartment, but under no circumstances would he reveal Juha’s name to Salmela.
Salmela said nothing, just sat in his chair and stared. Suhonen stared back for a while, then cut the silence, “Listen, I’ll help you out however I can.”
“I don’t need your help. You know me, I’m not gonna go into protective custody. I’ll find someone else to get my back.”
He got up. The message was clear: the meeting was over.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” said Suhonen. He stood up, took the phone off the hook and dialed Ainola’s number. The men stood quietly, facing one another. Suhonen offered a cigarette, but Salmela turned it down. They waited four long minutes in silence until Ainola came and escorted Salmela out of the room.
Suhonen wondered how he passed his time in here. Did he have some prison job, was he in rehab or did he just lie around in his cell all day? The whole situation just pissed him off.
* * *
Juha Saarnikangas stopped his van on the dirt road about sixty feet short of the red mailbox. Even in daylight, the woods looked bleak, wet, and gray. He rolled down the window, trying to catch a breath of fresh air, but he just couldn’t seem to get a good breath of air-his chest felt constricted. He rubbed his face. This place was bad news, even if nobody was around. He saw a few houses a little further off-people could be watching from the windows.
Juha put the van back in gear and swung into the tree-lined driveway leading to the garage. The van splashed through puddles of water, the tires struggling to grip. If only the body were gone. Maybe the guy with the ski mask had come back to check on things and taken care of it himself. Saarnikangas didn’t have a problem with death per se-he had seen plenty of his junkie friends die from overdoses, but murder was different. And how in the hell do you get rid of a body? Would he even be able to lift it into the van?
He pulled into the yard and backed up to the garage door.
And who was this guy anyway? Saarnikangas remembered watching the victim from the gas station window, his clothes and his bouncy gait. Undoubtedly a younger guy. But why was he shot? The shooter had seemed like a professional hit man with his blue overalls and gloves. Unless he’d been on his way to work at the body shop in the middle of the night, Saarnikangas grinned to himself.
He tried to remember if the killer had looked Russian or Estonian. The man had spoken perfect Finnish, though that didn’t necessarily mean much. Seemed like a hired hit, though. Juha remembered him saying something about a “Customs nark.” Revenge then. But whose revenge? Did Lydman know the hit man…or the victim? Or was it true that Lydman didn’t know anything about it? Too many questions.
Saarnikangas rounded the corner and pushed open the side door carefully. Don’t be there, don’t be there, he muttered. Even in the light of day the garage was dark, but Saarnikangas saw the body on the floor in the exact same position where it had been left about twelve hours earlier: on its left side, curled up slightly. The baseball cap was still on, but it was slanted down over the face.
Saarnikangas didn’t see where the victim had been shot. On the cement floor next to the body’s head was a patch of dark, dried blood. He assumed the bullet had hit him in the head.
He looked around the garage, trying to calm himself down. The walls were covered in graffiti, and everything portable had been taken. Only a crude table made from rough-sawn planks remained, the sole thing nobody wanted.
Saarnikangas left the service door open to let in some light. He circled the body, keeping his distance. Still not sure what to do, he approached it slowly, occasionally stopping to think.
He bent down next to the body, extended a quivering hand, and slid the bill of the man’s cap aside. He froze when he recognized the man’s face and saw the bullet hole in his forehead.
“Shit,” he gasped, springing back to his feet.
CHAPTER 5
PASILA POLICE HEADQUARTERS
TUESDAY, 2:00 P.M.
Detective Mikko Kulta, a muscular man wearing a loose-fitting blue sweater, sat at his desk typing out a report at a leisurely pace. Not far off, fellow detectives Anna Joutsamo and Kirsi Kohonen occupied themselves with other police business. Suhonen’s chair was empty as usual. Joutsamo’s radio was on: once again the headlines trumpeted the poor economic conditions. Layoffs and defaulting companies had been at the top of the news for months.
Thanks to his headphones, Kulta missed the depressing newscast.
He yawned, saved his interview transcript with the click of a mouse, and took the headphones off. Then he ran his hands through his short, pale brown hair, stretched his back, and cleared his throat.
“You know what?” Kulta said. “Solving these violent crimes is too easy.”
Joutsamo and Kohonen looked up from their desks.
“Really,” Joutsamo said dryly.
“Yeah,” he went on. “Just look at the statistics. About eighty to ninety percent of all violent crimes are solved, but only thirty percent of property crimes. And out of all the thefts in downtown Helsinki, only about three percent are ever solved.”
Kohonen and Joutsamo glanced at one another.
“Stats don’t lie,” Kulta concluded. “Property crimes are more difficult to solve.”
Joutsamo snorted. “I can have a chat with Takamäki about moving you to a more challenging position. Hey, maybe you’d like to join the guys over at Itäkeskus.” Itäkeskus was an eastern suburb with a giant shopping mall of the same name, notorious for petty thefts and violence.
“I didn’t mean that, but just think about the case I’ve got right now.”
“You’re talking about Sandberg’s assault and battery?” Kohonen asked.
Kulta nodded. “A man calls 911 at 2:30 in the morning asking for help. He says his wife has beaten him with a potato masher, and she’s got a knife in the other hand. A squad car heads out, and they take the drunk woman into custody. She’s charged with domestic assault, so the case is transferred to us. So I interview her, and she confesses to everything, complete with a motive. The husband claims he’d been out drinking with his friends that night, but the wife could smell perfume on him.”
“Because of the smoking ban in the bars,” the red-haired Kohonen interrupted. “Used to be that you couldn’t smell anything but smoke after a night out.”
“Now don’t you start complaining about smells,” Kulta remarked. “Every time you go horseback riding, everyone here knows all about it.”
“Oh, and what about your gym bag…” Kohonen shot back.
“Okay, cut it out,” Joutsamo interrupted.
It was quiet for a moment, then Kulta continued.
“So, case in point. Violent crimes practically solve themselves. Now, what if somebody had broken into Sandberg’s garage and stolen, say, the rims from his car. Almost without question the case’d never be solved. They’d be lucky if a patrol car ever made it out there.”
Joutsamo and Kohonen glanced at each other again, shaking their heads. They could never be sure if Kulta was being serious.
“Listen, Mikko,” Joutsamo began, “Go ahead and finish your transcript, and while you’re at it, you can ponder why it’s always you who gets the cases that seem to solve themselves.”