“Hi,” chirped the smiling cabby, a cap perched on his head. The driver wasn’t sure if his passenger was a local or a northern neighbor, so he dispensed with the small talk. Or maybe he had enough sense to know that this hard-nosed customer in a leather jacket wasn’t looking for conversation, just a ride.
“Tööstuse 52,” Suhonen snapped and the driver stepped on the gas.
The windshield wipers were going at full tilt. The sky was dark gray and the flags on the ships were fully unfurled, snapping in the wind.
* * *
Detective Lieutenant Kari Takamäki was sitting at his computer at Pasila Police Headquarters when Sergeant Joutsamo stepped into his office. Heavy raindrops battered at the windows.
“Well?” Takamäki said in a friendly tone, looking up from his monitor. He was wearing a white shirt and navy tie. A gray blazer hung behind the desk from a screw in a bookshelf that had been deliberately loosened. Forty-five-year-old Takamäki had short brown hair, sharp features and taut cheeks, highlighted by a muscular jaw. His piercing blue eyes straddled a handsome nose.
“That welder’s suicide case is ready for your sign-off. The case is closed. I’ll file the paperwork.” Joutsamo offered Takamäki a stack of papers.
All deaths that occurred outside of hospitals or similar institutions became police investigations. The starting point was simple: the death was a homicide until proven otherwise. That’s what the police had done here.
The lieutenant remembered the case. Twenty-four-year-old Pekka Kyllönen had been fired at the end of his workday, but had wanted to work late to finish a job. The boss had told him he wouldn’t be paid overtime, but that hadn’t bothered Kyllönen. In the morning, the young welder had been found hanging from a rope in the shop. Nothing indicated a homicide and a handwriting analysis proved the suicide note was written by Kyllönen.
“No home, no job, no woman, no life,” read the note stuffed into the breast pocket of his overalls.
Not a master of literature, but he had known how to summarize. Joutsamo had combed through his background, albeit briefly. Kyllönen had dropped out of high school first, then vocational school to pursue professional hockey. But at seventeen years old, his promising career had ended with a knee injury, and he wound up in a series of dead-end jobs. He had lived with his alcoholic father, who disclosed that Kyllönen’s girlfriend had dumped him a month earlier. The job loss was the final blow.
Takamäki took the papers and scribbled his signature on them. The cause of death had been established. From this point onward, Pekka Kyllönen was just another number in the dismal suicide statistics. Autumn brought plenty of stories like this one to Helsinki.
The case was closed. Takamäki felt no sorrow, but wondered why Kyllönen had wanted to finish the job he’d been working on. Maybe the guy just wanted to accomplish something.
Earlier in his career, suicides had bothered him more, and the lieutenant had tried to think of ways of preventing them. Now, however, they were just numbers to him. Annually, about a thousand people took their own lives in Helsinki. Society seemed to have no interest in determining why and journalists were unable to cover the stories since the files for suicides were sealed.
Suicide brought shame to family members, often because they hadn’t done much-if anything at all-to prevent it. Secrecy helped cover up the shame.
Joutsamo took back the papers. “I’ll file these.”
Takamäki nodded. He could’ve said something, but there was no need. Every case that went through the Helsinki VCU was tragic. Clichés had no place among professionals. What was said to family members and the public was a different matter.
“Listen,” Joutsamo began.
“What now?”
“Suhonen went to Tallinn.”
“What about it?” Takamäki had signed off on the trip after seeing Suhonen’s photo of Gonzales and “buzz cut”. A day trip cost only twenty euros.
“Well…”
“Do you have a problem with it?”
“Right, well… Routine cases are piling up here and Suhonen is off chasing ghosts. Far as I’m concerned that’s the surveillance group’s job.”
Takamäki looked sharply at the sergeant. “Really.”
“I think we need another detective in lieu of Suhonen.”
“We need about twenty more detectives for all of the VCU. But we’ll get none. If I transferred him to the surveillance group, we wouldn’t get anyone to replace him.”
Joutsamo shifted her weight to the other foot. “There are just too many cases. We need help.”
“Listen, Anna,” Takamäki said. “It makes no sense to squander Suhonen on paperwork. He’s much more useful when something bigger is brewing.”
“Yes, I know that. But this so-called paperwork is burying us. We really need help.”
“Well, we won’t get any. Keep prioritizing. Focus on the major cases-same process. In other words: in, over and out on the stack. Forget craft, just nail the bad guys.”
“Right, of course. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Shitty job…” Takamäki began.
Joutsamo finished his sentence, “…but why did you go to the Police Academy?”
* * *
Suhonen was in the back seat of a taxi, watching out the rain-streaked window as Tallinn’s Old Town hurtled past. Though Estonia’s capital was a hot tourist destination in the summer, on a day like today, its charming buildings, restaurants and shops were devoid of tourist crowds. Only a few locals were about. After about ten minutes, the Nissan slowed to a stop in front of a white limestone building. The sign read: Estonian Central Police.
Suhonen paid and sprinted to the entrance to avoid the rain. Somebody had been monitoring his arrival through a surveillance camera, as the lock was buzzed open immediately upon pressing the doorbell.
The hallway was cramped. Though the building was the former home of a local insurance company, it seemed to have been designed for the Estonian Central Police. At the beginning of the millennium, the ECP had still operated out of the old KGB building in Old Town.
Suhonen was quickly cleared through the security checkpoint, since his Glock was in the bottom drawer of his desk back in Pasila-the Helsinki police didn’t allow weapons to be carried abroad.
A dark-haired woman in her thirties checked Suhonen’s badge from behind the bulletproof glass and nodded. Suhonen tried to make small talk in his elementary Estonian, but she didn’t respond, just picked up the phone and gestured for Suhonen to wait in the small foyer. The phone call was brief and soon a second young woman-blonde this time-came through the doors and gestured for Suhonen to follow. No Finnish officer would come to work in a skirt above the knee, Suhonen thought.
White walls lined the narrow staircase. The blonde led the way and Suhonen followed her legs to the third floor.
The matter could certainly have been handled over the phone or by email, but Suhonen preferred face-to-face meetings. Tallinn was only a short boat ride away, and besides, he’d get to see Marju. Suhonen had met the brunette the previous spring. He had been in Tallinn, shopping for parts for his motorcycle. Thirty-year-old Marju had been in the same store at the same time looking for a clutch plate for her Enfield. The possibility that her bike was the British classic had caught his attention, but it turned out to be an Indian knock-off. They had continued the conversation, and ended up at an outdoor cafe for coffee. Since then, they had met two or three times a month in either Tallinn or Helsinki.
The meeting with Toomas Indres would take an hour at the most, and then he’d have time for dinner with Marju. He had a ticket for the nine o’clock ship back to Helsinki.
The skirt directed Suhonen into a huge, modern conference room. “Have some coffee. Toomas will be in shortly,” she said in Finnish with a slight accent.