Against the Wall (5 page)

“Hey there,” Suhonen said. He shrugged off his coat and draped it over the back of the chair. The room was cool, and Suhonen kept his sweater on.

“What’s new in the big city?”

Suhonen was tempted to point out that the prison was well within city limits, only about two miles from downtown Helsinki. From the nearby streets, a tennis ball full of amphetamines could almost be thrown into the prison yard. But Salmela didn’t seem to be in the mood for jokes. Suhonen sat down. “Been in Pieksämäki the past few days, I wouldn’t call that the big city.”

“Naarajärvi prison? What’s so interesting over there? Or should I say who?”

“No, no. It was a mandatory police driving course. Nothing really worth talking about.”

“High-speed pursuits, huh?” Salmela wore a skeptical expression, then shrugged his shoulders.

Suhonen and Salmela had known each other since childhood. Chance had dealt the criminal card to Salmela, and the cop card to Suhonen. It could easily have been the other way around as well, but Suhonen had stayed home with a fever one night long ago when Salmela and a couple other punks from Lahti were busted for breaking and entering.

Salmela, Suhonen’s part-time informant, had always provided him with valuable intel. On his end, Suhonen had helped Salmela out of a few minor legal jams.

A couple of years ago, Salmela’s son had been shot dead during a drug deal gone bad. Up to that point, Salmela had been a small-time thief and black market dealer, but the loss of his son had turned him to more serious crimes.

“How’s your woman?” Salmela asked.

“You mean Raija?” Suhonen laughed. He had managed to live with her for just one year, before they broke up. “She finally had enough a month ago and packed her bags.”

“That hurts.”

“A little.”

“You’re lying,” Salmela said.

“You’re right. Didn’t bother me at all.”

Salmela was quiet for a moment. “You’re a terrible liar. Did you bring the cake?”

“Baked it myself. Forgot to put the file in,” Suhonen chuckled. Salmela had been the one to request the meeting. He was serving a four-year sentence for drug trafficking. He had been involved with a gang planning a string of armed robberies. They were going to use the stolen money to finance a large drug shipment. Salmela was involved only in planning and executing the robberies, but the District Court had viewed him as a full co-conspirator, and he was convicted for trafficking along with the other players.

The scheme had unraveled a year ago when Suhonen, working on another case, had tagged along with a SWAT team on a raid in an apartment in West Harbor. Salmela and a couple other men were arrested along with a stash of weapons and a detailed plan of the armed robberies. The Helsinki PD had then turned over the drug investigation to the National Bureau of Investigation.

“Who ratted on us?” Salmela turned serious again.

“I already told you. It was a fluke. We were looking for another guy, checking any suspect apartments in the database. Just tough luck.”

“I don’t believe you,” Salmela said, leaning forward. “But that doesn’t matter now. Appeals Court put me in a really shitty spot.”

“Oh, it’s the court’s fault now?”

Salmela nodded.

“If you remember, the court gave me four years and Raitio four-and-a-half.”

Jorma Raitio was another of the major players in the scheme.

Salmela continued, “Nothing wrong with that. The prosecution was able to link him to more than me. Fair enough. But a week ago, the Appeals Court screwed me.”

“How?”

“They jacked up Raitio’s sentence to six years, and shortened mine to three. Guess there wasn’t enough evidence to tie me to the drugs.”

“A shortened sentence? That sounds nice.”

“Sounds nice, but it ain’t. Now everybody in here is wondering, ‘How did Salmela get such a good deal? And just as Raitio gets a lot shittier one?’ Rumor has it that I ratted out my buddies in exchange for a shortened sentence.”

“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.”

Kohonen laughed aloud.

“She who laughs last has the slowest wit,” Kulta smiled.

* * *

Markus Markkanen was sitting on the sofa at home, watching billiards on TV. His feet were kicked up on the coffee table, and he wondered when he would pick up a pool cue again. In his youth he had played quite a bit, but then again, he had been involved in plenty of other things during those years as well. He wasn’t especially proud of his past, but he didn’t regret it either. Not even his nickname, “Bogeyman.”

His eight-year-old son Eetu was doing his homework on the floor. The teachers had given him some additional assignments, as he had fallen behind in class.

The apartment needed cleaning, but that didn’t interest Markkanen. Technically, he and his wife were divorced, but the three of them lived together like a regular family. Located in Helsinki's western suburb of Espoo, next to the Big Apple shopping center, the apartment had four rooms with a sauna and a kitchen. Markkanen had pending restitution for old drug charges, so the apartment was in his wife’s name. Had he shared co-ownership of the apartment, the repo man would’ve certainly paid a visit. At the moment, his “ex”-wife was at some fitness class. She could just as well have run around the block, but if the class kept her happy, then so be it, he thought.