Authors: Jarkko Sipila
CHAPTER 8
FRIDAY, 11:50 A.M.
SKULLS’ COMPOUND, HELSINKI
The building, originally a two-story warehouse, was situated in an industrial area in north Helsinki. At some point, it had been used as a vehicle inspection office, but now the Skulls owned it. Located just five miles from downtown Helsinki, the former warehouse was still remote enough to serve as their headquarters.
The compound was on the left side of a cul-de-sac. A grove of birches stood behind the building, and further still was Beltway One. On the south end of the street was a filthy sports dome, where junior soccer star hopefuls practiced in the winter. Next to the dome were a few rusty shipping containers, and on the shoulder of the pot-holed street, giant sections of concrete tubing were scattered about. The Skulls’ compound was about a hundred yards from the nearest building.
Tapani Larsson drove the BMW sports car through the open gate into the yard, and parked it next to a few cars. He recognized the gang’s black Chevy, but the other vehicles were unfamiliar. Larsson had driven Sara from the suite to her apartment in Lauttasaari, where the Skull VP was bunking.
The yard was large enough to suit the needs of a vehicle inspection office. In the back was a test track where the engineers had tested car brakes.
The concrete building was encircled by a chain link fence that seemed too flimsy to Larsson.
He was happy that, rather than continuing to rent, the Skulls had bought the building last year. On paper, it was owned by a fronting company.
The logic was simple: If you own your house, you can’t be evicted. They had rented the downstairs garages to a repair shop for some extra income. Larsson parked the Beamer in front of the door.
The downstairs door was locked and Larsson punched in the code—it was still the same. The door seemed flimsy as well, he thought, but maybe that was just because the doors he had seen in the last year and a half were considerably thicker.
Just inside was a former service desk, and directly opposite the entrance was a stairway leading upstairs. At one time, a door had stood there. The walls were white, as offices generally were, though these were much dirtier. Larsson noticed a few posters of various metal bands hanging on the walls. The floor was filthy, as though it hadn’t been cleaned for years, and the stench of dust hung in the air.
Still nobody around. Larsson was getting pissed. They had talked about getting security cameras, but he hadn’t seen a single one. Anybody could walk right in.
The narrow stairwell was painted black, except for the rough-sawn wainscoting. Photos of the wild parties held there decorated the walls.
The stairs led directly to the second floor. At the top was a pair of saloon doors.
Larsson pushed through the doors, one of which advertised its need for oil.
A bull-like thug looked up from his game of billiards. “Who are you?” he snorted, his broad, flat nose and wide nostrils flaring in unison with his eyes. In comparison to his short legs, his massive shoulders and torso seemed unwieldy.
“The devil himself,” Larsson hissed. “You on guard duty?”
The man kept the cue in his hand. “Nobody’s on duty in the daytime.”
The stairs entered into the middle of a vast, dark room, which was furnished like a Wild West saloon, though the windows were covered with thick black cardboard.
Larsson was still standing at the top of the stairs. A bar opened up to the right, along with several tables, and in the corner sat a large flat-screen TV and an Xbox. The left side was more open: a pool table in the middle and behind it, a small, knee-high stage for bands. In the far left corner was a pinball machine. Larsson knew that the office, which he would soon reclaim, was behind the bar.
“Who are you?” Larsson demanded.
The man set his jaw before answering hesitantly, “Roge.” This guy didn’t look like someone he should mess with, he thought.
“Roge, huh. You here alone?”
A toilet flushed in the background and a smaller, goateed man stepped into the room from a door behind the pool table. “My turn?” he asked before noticing the visitor at the top of the stairs.
“Two of you here?” noted Larsson.
“You must be Tapani Larsson,” the little guy said, advancing. He dried his hands on his jeans.
“And you?”
“Osku, hang-around member. Same as Roge here.”
Osku offered his hand, but Larsson breezed past him into the room.
A huge man stepped out of the office behind the bar. “What the hell is…”
Niko Andersson spotted Larsson. “Larsson! The devil himself!”
He pounded over to Larsson and the men embraced, smacking one another on the back.
“Good to see a familiar face here,” Larsson said.
“Yeah. Meet Roge and Osku. They’ve got potential.”
Larsson shook their hands.
“Something to drink?” asked Roge, as he squeezed behind the bar.
“I’ll take a water.”
Roge glanced at the rows of bottles inside the glass-door fridge. “Sorry. No water. We got Pepsi. And diet.”
“Sure.” Larsson mumbled.
“Which?”
“Doesn’t fucking matter.”
Roge grabbed the first can he struck upon and hurried it over to Larsson.
“Notice anything?” Niko asked. “We fixed up some things.”
“Looks pretty much the same to me.”
“Osku, let’s get some light in here!” Niko hollered.
Osku walked briskly to the end of the bar and snapped on a row of switches. The lights along the bar lit up in blue and red, and a spotlight illuminated the pictures on the walls.
Larsson nodded. “The downstairs is total shit, though.”
“Still working on that,” Niko admitted. “We’re going to build a coat check down there as well as a guard station.”
“A coat check? This some kind of speakeasy?”
Niko laughed. “No. But in case we ever need one, we’d have it. We could install a gun safe too, so we don’t have any accidents. Heh-heh!”
“Be a damn church if guns are checked at the door,” Larsson muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The saloon doors creaked again, and a short-haired man stepped in. Sami Aronen, the Skulls’ weapons expert, bellowed, “Larsson!” The men went through the same patting ritual.
Aronen was a few years older than Larsson. The size of his biceps and the lack of a beer belly showed he was in excellent shape. Close-shaved hair and three-days of stubble capped off his steely looks.
“Good to see you again,” said Aronen.
“Same.”
Niko and Aronen formed the gang’s current nucleus, since half of the members were doing time. Larsson trusted both as much as he trusted anybody.
Aronen had been a member for a couple of years now. He had served in Afghanistan with the Finnish peace-keeping forces some years ago, but was discharged after punching a Swedish officer in a bar fight. When a sergeant hits a captain, he’ll take the blame, regardless of the reason.
As luck would have it for Aronen, the Finnish forces were in Northern Afghanistan’s ISAF-operation under Swedish command and the loud-mouthed captain happened to be the unit’s judge advocate officer—Aronen never stood a chance. He was one of the few Skulls that had never been in prison. For the swing at the Swedish officer, he was fined and received a dishonorable discharge from the Finnish Army, where he had worked as a weapons specialist in several regiments.
Larsson drank his Pepsi straight from the can.
“Larsson, let’s sit down,” said Niko, gesturing toward the wooden tables in front of the bar. “I wasn’t sure when you’d get here, so I asked the others to come over at half past twelve.”
* * *
Suhonen was sitting in the same Customs control room at the West Harbor as he had on the previous night. The director of port security had arranged to replay the video of the previous evening’s passengers. Then, the undercover cop had seen it live, now he could see it on tape.
Unlike in real life, video allowed him to pause, rewind and fast forward. The previous evening, the police had only been looking for a woman in a red coat, but another mule had also disembarked. Who? They had spotted Karjalainen, the junkie, but what about
after
Marju Mägi?
The director hadn’t asked why Suhonen wanted to see the footage again. It had been enough that Suhonen had asked for it. They also had footage of the parking lot, which Suhonen and Toukola hadn’t needed the night before. All of the footage was on a hard drive, so Suhonen could switch between cameras and zoom in on passengers.
The director had also shown Suhonen how to print the images. They could be emailed as well.
Before leaving the control room, the director had lamented the fact that facial recognition software wasn’t fully functional yet. In the future, cameras would be able to identify people based on their facial structure. Facial metrics—the distance between one’s eyes or between one’s nose and ears, the length of one’s chin measured from the bottom lip—were unique to each person. Every person with a driver’s license or passport photograph, for example, would receive a unique facial ID. Computers would be able to match that ID to individuals captured on security camera footage. However, the director knew that the current systems still had a 25 percent failure rate, even under near-laboratory conditions
With corresponding legislation, the technology would be implemented in Finland. He had surmised that the legislation would be passed under the guise of counter-terrorism. If passengers could be positively identified before boarding, those deemed dangerous could be picked up then. It would be even better if the system were integrated with the police database.
That done, it was only a matter of determining who would be deemed dangerous, thought Suhonen. A history of nights in the drunk tank probably wouldn’t qualify. At least the shipping lines would make that argument, since they’d lose their best customers.