“Hold on and rewind so I can get onboard,” Suhonen said and stopped playing Tetris.
“Goddamn reporters and cameramen are swarming the place and a lawyer is there, too. Pretty hard for us to operate.”
“You lost me.”
Toukola drew a deep breath.
“First of all the junkie stakeout you told us about last night at the Kannelmӓki bar has been a complete waste of time. It didn’t lead to anything, and I’m shutting it down.”
“Yeah,” Suhonen said.
“We followed that third guy you talked about and he went home to his place in Haaga. Anyway, the name on the door was Aarnio.”
“The third guy was Aarnio?”
“Yep, and you didn’t need to be Sherlock to figure that out. Kimmo Aarnio: drug deals, a rape, and other such niceties. He got out of prison last summer.”
“Are you sure it’s Kimmo Aarnio, and not Mikael?”
“Who the hell is Mikael Aarnio? You gone off the deep end?”
Suhonen drew a breath. “How do you know it’s Kimmo? According to our info, it’s Mikael Aarnio who lives there.”
“Suhonen, have you had too much police station coffee?” Toukola said laughing. “Are you nuts? If I say it’s Kimmo Aarnio, it’s him. I have a picture that looks the same as Kimmo. I don’t know of any Mikael.”
Joutsamo heard the upset tone and came in the room.
“Toukola, give me ten seconds.”
Suhonen turned to Joutsamo and said, “It could be that the Aarnio above Vatanen’s apartment is not the guy we thought. Did Aarnio’s fingerprints on Vatanen’s door get run through the system?”
Joutsamo nodded and quickly got the papers.
“What the hell,” Joutsamo spurted after ten seconds. “Aarnio’s prints were not recognizable on the computer and couldn’t be found in the database. Kulta matched them after he collected information from neighbors and compared the fingerprints. Shit, Kulta!” Joutsamo yelled.
Kulta was having coffee in the next room and heard Joutsamo. He could tell from her tone he wouldn’t be finishing his coffee.
“What’s going on?” Kulta asked at the door.
Joutsamo looked mad. “You obtained Mikael Aarnio’s prints from his apartment. How’d you know it was him?”
Kulta was confused.
Suhonen heard Toukola on the phone. “Hello, are you there?’
“Hold on a minute,” Suhonen replied.
“Aarnio told me his name,” Kulta said.
“Did you ask him to show you ID?” Joutsamo asked.
“No, should I have?”
Joutsamo turned to Suhonen and said, “We’re not sure of Aarnio’s identity.”
“Did you hear that?” Suhonen asked into the phone.
“Yep. You guys don’t know whose fingerprints you have, which is a pretty good accomplishment.”
“It happens,” Suhonen said. “But tell me what’s going on over there.”
“I’m at the station, but my guys say the lawyer that Römpötti interviewed on TV the other day has been buzzing around the apartment building for the past few hours, and now Römpötti is there, too, filming. It’s pretty hard for us to conduct a secret police investigation in the middle of all that.”
“That shouldn’t be so hard,” Suhonen said and let out a small laugh. “Nobody’s going to pay any attention to your guys.”
Toukola laughed too, and said, “You may be right. But our targets won’t dare do anything either, so we’re pulling the team.”
“Don’t do that,” Suhonen said and told him quickly about Aarnio’s potential involvement in a woman’s death he’d found out about that afternoon.
“Okay, so homicide will pay for the overtime.”
Suhonen couldn’t care less about who paid for what. “Tell them to observe for now. No rush and no need to react; just watch.”
Joutsamo found Kimmo Aarnio’s information. The rape happened in Pori, out of their jurisdiction, so they hadn’t handled the case.
“That’s him,” Kulta said, looking at the picture of the surly man.
* * *
The attorney’s phone rang, but Kimmo Aarnio didn’t want to answer it. He waited for it to stop and then removed the battery. That’s what he’d done before.
Aarnio glanced outside and saw the cameraman and the reporter in a dark coat. He couldn’t go out yet. He’d have to drive the car around to the front door, wrap the woman in a rug, and put her in the trunk. It wasn’t too smart to do it in front of television cameras. So he had time.
The unconscious woman lay on the couch in her jacket. Aarnio got turned on, thought for a moment, and got busy. He pulled off her pants and underwear. The rape took three minutes. He didn’t want to do it in his apartment, but he just couldn’t help himself.
Aarnio went to the bathroom and returned. The half-naked woman was conked out on the couch. Aarnio made some coffee and drank it. He thought of the young girl from Turku. It had been an easy case, just like this one. He dropped the drug into her glass and dragged her out of the restaurant. His van was parked nearby. He drove farther out and raped the girl repeatedly in the back of the van. The girl had woken up in the middle of the act, so he strangled her. He buried her body behind the Helsinki airport.
He thought he had handled it professionally. It didn’t always work out so well, and for a few of the cases-Aarnio always referred to the rapes as cases-he was sent to prison. While in prison he was given a strange drug that made him lose his memory. Part of his time in the slammer was a blur, until he started flushing the pills down the toilet. His memory was spotty.
Aarnio raped the woman again.
Then he looked out the window and didn’t see the reporter anymore. He still had time. The woman would stay unconscious for a few more hours. He could enjoy each of them. He turned the TV on and watched a reality show about cops. They were stupid.
The case of the attorney was going as planned-unlike the young woman downstairs. He had listened to the noises from downstairs many times and pleasured himself in bed. The one time he rang her doorbell, the girl was in a foul mood. She made coffee, but saw him slip something into the cup and refused to drink it. But Laura didn’t get it. Nobody told him no. Laura had been standing in the living room with her back to the door, when he came in from the kitchen carrying a knife. He had planned on forcing her to have sex with him, but it didn’t work. He realized it when he came into the living room and didn’t feel anything between his legs. It was her fault, he thought, and just slashed her throat from behind.
He had killed a woman before, but this was different. Kimmo Aarnio had panicked, returned quickly to his apartment, and tried to figure out how to get out of it. He thought of the building custodian. The guy ran his own little whorehouse and made his money by selling Aarnio’s drugs to teenagers.
The boozing grandma across the hall had called the cops before Aarnio had a chance to set the apartment up, but somehow the police hadn’t recognized him. The apartment was leased in his second cousin’s name. If you paid your rent on time, the city didn’t care who lived there.
The custodian had unlocked the door for the police and Aarnio had paid a visit to Korpivaara a few hours later. Korpivaara was shocked and pretty wasted. Aarnio demanded he pay his debts and threatened Sini.
Now he laughed. It was all going according to plan. The attorney’s crotch called to him again, and he raped her a third time. He was actually hoping the reporter would come knocking on the door.
The drug’s effect would last at least four more hours. By then it would be dark outside and he could move the woman somewhere. He couldn’t let her live, but couldn’t return to the apartment since the attorney had gone around to several apartments asking questions. Aarnio came to the conclusion he had to move on. He began packing his most important things.
Aarnio looked at the woman. He wondered if he even needed to bother getting rid of the body, if he was going to be linked to her anyway. But he decided he should do it to keep things from being too easy for the cops.
* * *
Römpötti was standing in front of the Haaga strip mall, when her phone rang. It was Takamäki.