Holy Ceremony

by Harri Nykanen

  “Have them send over more men and any mobile patrols to look for Laurén. He just left, and he was in a hurry. We’ve got to bring him in. If he didn’t kill Halme, he knows who did.”

  I returned to the forest gate; one of the patrols had found Halme’s car in a church parking lot a few hundred yards away. It was a late-model Volvo wagon. The officer handed me the keys. Maybe he was afraid of contaminating the scene.

  I circled around to the passenger side to search the glove compartment. I wasn’t expecting to find anything interesting, so I wasn’t disappointed. In the back seat there was a car blanket, nothing else. I opened the armrest and found a blue diary with Halme’s name printed on the cover: a gift from the Helsinki Police Officers’ Union. I flipped through the pages until an underlined note struck my eye. Above the line was a familiar name: Arto Kalliola, Deputy National Police Commissioner, Ministry of the Interior.

  17

  “Strange,” Huovinen said, upon hearing my report of the morning’s events. He looked tired and agitated. It hadn’t been the best spring for him. His Estonian-born wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and they’d had some water damage at home. The pipes in their newish house had frozen while they were on vacation, and when they returned, the bathroom and front hall had been inundated.

  “Halme is exactly the sort of guy you can picture Kalliola knowing. He scrounges for visits to places like Halme’s company. They usually bring the diary as a gift for the host. Hundreds of them are in circulation.”

  “I know. The real question is why Halme underlined Kalliola’s name. I’m betting he either had been in contact or was planning on contacting him, and right after we met with him.”

  “Maybe he just called Kalliola out of curiosity to tell him you two met, and to ask what sort of guy you are.”

  “Could be. What about Laurén?”

  “It’s not him. If he killed Halme, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have hung around the cottage waiting for the police to show up. He ran at the last minute. I believe either the owner of the cottage or the ex-wife warned him about us.”

  Huovinen switched to an easier topic. “What other alternatives do we have open to us?”

  “It could theoretically have something to do with Halme’s own life, but when you consider the time frame and the place he was killed, we have to assume his death is related to the rest of the case.”

  “Which is getting messier and messier by the day.”

  “Simolin will have finished a preliminary gutting of the student rosters by our meeting this afternoon. After that, we’ll have a net in the water we can slowly start tightening. We can go through the students one by one.”

  “Pretty hard to imagine that boarding at Daybreak would have given rise to numerous avengers, and that they’d be killing each other on top of that. At least Laurén’s motives and actions are somewhat understandable. And that crime reporter from Ilta-Sanomat. What if you contacted him to find out what Laurén’s intentions are? They clearly have some sort of agreement.”

  I promised to call, even though I knew it would be pointless. Moisio was your typical hardheaded reporter who believed source protection meant he wasn’t even obliged to divulge the brand of tax-free shop deodorant he used.

  “This afternoon in the conference room,” Huovinen reminded me on his way out of my office.

  Fresh butter-eye buns had been provided with the conference room coffee in honor of the presence of the National Bureau of Investigation. Our visitors were Lieutenant Tommi Hult and Sergeant Pekka Nikinoja. I’d met both of them before, but I couldn’t claim to know them. Generally any meetings with the NBI were held at their premises in Vantaa, which said something about our relative status in the hierarchy. Those lower on the totem pole visited those higher up, not the other way around. This time, however, Hult had suggested we meet in Pasila. Maybe they were tired of gazing out at farms and fields and wanted a breather in town. Huovinen, Simolin, and Stenman were also present.

  “How do you propose dividing up the work?” Hult asked Huovinen.

  “We’re not proposing that yet, but it looks like we have two, perhaps three murders that have occurred around Finland, along with one in Spain, and one likely perpetrator who is on the loose. We decided it was only proper to inform the NBI.” Huovinen had chosen to play his hand carefully. No point shoving the case down their throats. That just aroused resistance.

  “I’m still not particularly convinced, based on what I’ve heard,” Hult said.

  “Convinced of what?” I asked.

  “That your conclusions are accurate, that we’re dealing with a serial killer. This Laurén worked at a funeral home contracted to the medical examiner’s office and could have heard these confidential details one way or another. The fact that he applied for such work with a background like his indicates a fascination with death. Coupled with the schizophrenia, that explains a lot.”

  “Nothing is as certain as death, but we feel that under the circumstances it’s better to play it safe. We’re fine handling the investigation on our own.”

  Nikinoja chimed in: “Is it true that Laurén has been in contact with you several times?”

  “Yes. Called me twice and sent me two letters. He promised to contact me again and explain more when the time is right.”

  “So we can say that ultimately he wants to be caught. Why would he talk to you about his crimes, anyway? Doesn’t he already have a reporter he tells everything to?”

  “Seems to. Moisio from Ilta-Sanomat. He’s received confidential information in advance on two occasions.” Per Huovinen’s request, I had called the reporter again and suggested another meeting, but he hadn’t seen any use for one. Said the wishes of the police force and my stance had been made clear during our first meeting. “But ‘wants’ isn’t the right word. He knows he’ll be caught and has accepted that. It’s part of the plan, whatever that is. We could use your help, because you could have your men in the provinces look into the backgrounds of the deceased. We can do it, too, but it’s more efficient to do it in person than by telephone.”

  “Simolin, why don’t you share with everyone what you discovered about the incident in Spain?” Huovinen said.

  Simolin was flustered by the attention and concentrated on his notes to get past the embarrassment. “With the help of our local lead, I managed to get my hands on the preliminary investigative material, which is of course, in Spanish. I also received Interpol’s request for police assistance that was made to Finland at the time. I haven’t had time to have it all translated yet, but the main points have been read to me. I can also read some Spanish myself…” Simolin’s embarrassment was deepened by this admission, but he plugged on tenaciously. “The victim was Veijo Kivalo, former headmaster of the Daybreak Academy. He was driving home from Malaga in the early evening when the car was somehow ordered to stop and forced onto a side road. The incident bears many of the hallmarks of a normal car robbery, which are relatively frequent there; what’s rarer is for the victim to be killed, let alone burned alive. According to the coroner, the victim was alive when the car ignited or was ignited. He had smoke particles in his lungs. The victim was quite social, an active participant in the Finnish community on the Costa del Sol. He had many friends and no known enemies. He was a widower and lived alone in Fuengirola.”

  “I could go to Spain to do some digging around. Seventy-seven in the shade is perfect investigative weather,” Nikinoja joked. He was thirty years old, tops, but nearly bald.

  “It’s not the paradise it used to be, unless you’re a Russian mafioso or Baltic crook,” Hult said. “I read an article in one of the tabloids that said the majority of the seaside real estate there is in the hands of Eastern European criminals. And then of course you have the Finnish drug kingpins hiding out there.”

  Nikinoja ignored his lecture: “That doesn’t change the weather.”

  The intervening commentary threw Simolin. After scanning his papers for a moment, he continued: “The perpetr
ator or perpetrators didn’t leave any traces, nor were any eyewitnesses found. The only clue was that Kivalo had spoken via telephone with one of his local Finnish friends in Spain and indicated that he was going to meet a Finn that day. He hadn’t revealed a name or anything else about this compatriot, even whether it was a man or a woman.”

  “Did they search Kivalo’s apartment?” Huovinen asked.

  “The Spanish police considered it a clear case of robbery–homicide, and as a result, the home search was superficial. They didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. Kivalo owned the apartment, so they left everything as it was. His nearest relative, in this case his daughter, was informed. She went to Spain and retrieved anything of personal interest before putting the place up for sale, which she did as soon as the estate was settled. The daughter lives in Minnesota, but I got hold of her there last night. She remembers finding a letter among her father’s belongings that had been mailed from Finland a couple of months earlier. It didn’t have the sender’s name, but based on the postmark, it was mailed from Helsinki. It stuck in her mind because all it read was Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? I checked the precise wording from the Bible. It’s from the Gospel of Saint Matthew, chapter 23, verse 33.”

  I interrupted Simolin with a glance. “This same Bible passage was written on the back of the body discovered in Laurén’s apartment. There was additionally a verse from Psalms 91, the one that goes something like this: He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways…” I turned to Simolin to help me out.

  “They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet…”

  “So we have three bodies, Anteroinen, Kivalo, and Sandberg, who all have links to the Daybreak Academy. Kivalo the headmaster, Anteroinen the maintenance man, and Sandberg, the CFO of the B. E. Kajasto Foundation. In accordance with a change in the foundation’s governing principles, the 30-plus million markkas and other property Kajasto left the foundation, including real estate in Helsinki, was to be dedicated primarily to developing Daybreak. Sandberg handled the transfer of the endowment on the foundation’s behalf. And then Attorney Henry Silén invested at least twenty million markkas of foundation money in various mutual funds. Laurén studied at Daybreak. It can’t be a coincidence. Laurén has to have been involved in the murders somehow; maybe he’s the murderer, or at least one of them. Laurén spoke of five evils. If Silén is the fourth and is already dead, that means there’s one more to go. So we have to look for the fifth among the same cohort, which is pretty large, or what, Simolin?” I said, tossing the ball back to him.

  Simolin had reviewed the student rosters he had received from Daybreak. “Pretty big. If we limit our search to three years, there are still about a hundred students plus Daybreak staff. There were around forty people in Laurén’s class, seven of whom are dead. That’s a surprisingly high number for such a young group.”

  Hult roused himself. “How did they die?”

  “Three by their own hand, one in a car accident, one drowned, one from health complications, one was stabbed to death.”

  I pointed out that the students were spread all over the country, as were the suspected crimes, and there was no way our little team could investigate everything effectively enough.

  “I think we’re done here; we’re going into overtime,” Hult said. “Why don’t we proceed by you prepping a proposal containing everything concrete you want us to handle. I’ll fast-track it through.”

  Huovinen clearly had no use for the bureaucracy this entailed, but was forced to capitulate. “Ari is probably the best person to take care of that.”

  Huovinen left to see the visitors out. I stayed in the conference room. There was still coffee in the thermos and butter-eye rolls in the basket. I could tell by the look on Simolin’s face that he still had something he was bursting to tell.

  “There’s one interesting name in the student roster,” he said, a little hesitantly. “When you think about the theft of the bodies and how it was done…”

  “Lay it on me.”

  “One of the students in Laurén’s class was Esa-Pekka Vuorio.”

  “So? It’s a common enough name.”

  “Yes, but Esa-Pekka Vuorio happens to be medical examiner Esko Vuorio’s little brother. I checked it out. There’s no doubt.”

  Simolin’s revelation silenced me.

  “What does he do, this Esa-Pekka?” Stenman asked.

  “Nothing. He’s dead. He’s one of the ones who killed himself. Was a successful and respected internist who killed himself at his summer cabin.”

  Stenman turned to me. “What do you think?”

  “Based on what we saw on the surveillance tapes, it would make a lot of sense that someone on the inside helped Laurén with the body.”

  “If Vuorio helped Laurén steal the body, is it possible he was otherwise involved?” Simolin said, still with an odd timidity. The notion was clearly repugnant to him. Simolin was fond of Vuorio, just as I was. Vuorio had been a mentor of sorts to him. Vuorio would ponder things at a crime scene with Simolin that he typically only communicated post-autopsy.

  “Such as?”

  “What if Roosa Nevala’s death wasn’t a suicide after all?”

  “So Laurén would have killed her and Vuorio helped with a cover-up?”

  “That was the first thing to cross my mind.”

  I knew what I had to do, even though I didn’t want to. “If – at this point, everything is still speculation – if Vuorio helped Laurén, you’d think it would have something to do with him knowing Vuorio’s little brother. Which in turn implies revenge, in other words that he’s helping Laurén get back at someone who he feels drove his brother to suicide.”

  “Särkijärvi?” Simolin suggested.

  “Presumably. It’s a shitty situation, but all we can do is ask him directly.”

  I was on my way out the door when I remembered something: “Find out if Heikki Moisio is related to Moisio the reporter. Heikki Moisio was a former Daybreaker too.”

  Simolin hurried off to his office. Immediately afterward, Huovinen stuck his head in the room and crooked his finger at me. I followed him into the corridor and closed the door behind me.

  He only said one word: “Oksanen.”

  “What about him?”

  “He was ordered over at a breathalyzer checkpoint in Koivuhaka and fled the scene at speeds approaching 120 miles per hour. His car was found near his home with the doors open. He’s at home but refuses to open the door. Three patrols are there. Get over there and make sure he doesn’t ruin his chances permanently. Handle it as gracefully as you can.”

  I had driven Oksanen home to Puistola plenty of times, so I knew where he lived. After his divorce, he’d used an inheritance to buy a modest postwar house for the big garage on the lot. Without his nagging wife around to put the brakes on his favorite pastime, he’d popped it into high gear and let it fly.

  “Absolutely.”

  18

  When I got to Oksanen’s place, two of the patrols were already gone, or at least they had moved their vehicles further away. The police knew it was a colleague’s home and were doing their best to avoid arousing the neighbors’ attention. The presence of three police cars would have brought the first reporter to the scene in under an hour.

  I found an officer lounging casually in a metal lawn chair. “Are you sure he’s in there?”

  “Yeah. We just talked to him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Fuck off! I don’t mean you; that’s what he said.” The cop, who had been hardened by house calls, appeared amused.

  I wasn’t. “So he’s drunk?”

  “At least 1.5 percent. Can tell by the way he’s slurring. I’m guessing he’s playing for time so he can claim he didn’t start drinking till he got home. It’s a good strategy, tried and
tested in court.”

  “Did he claim someone else was driving the car?”

  “We didn’t get that far in our uplifting conversation. He’s listening to music now.”

  I circled around to the junk-strewn backyard, knocking over a front fender that was leaning against the wall as I rounded the corner. I didn’t recognize the brand, but it was emblazoned with an ad for an auto supply business. It clattered down onto a stack of rims with an ear-splitting screech. Without making any more noise, I picked my way through Oksanen’s wrecking yard to the living-room window. The officer was right. I could hear the music clearly: ‘Riders on the Storm’. I was fond of The Doors myself.

  I heard Oksanen’s drunken voice stumbling as it tried to keep time with Jim Morrison. He more or less caught up by the time the chorus started.

  I knocked on the window. No response.

  I knocked again so hard I was afraid I’d break the glass.

  Oksanen’s head and a hand holding a bottle appeared next to the window. He glared down at me, took a swig of beer, then closed the blinds without saying a word.

  “Oksanen!”

  No response.

  I pulled out my phone and called Oksanen’s number. I got a prerecorded message: The number you are trying to reach is out of service.

  I went back to the front yard. A large garage and a small shed, its wall decorated with a half-dozen old-fashioned chromed hubcaps, stood at the far end. The lot was bordered by a dense, overgrown hedge. Everything pointed to the fact that there wasn’t a woman on the premises; just a man who was into cars.

  “You’re right, he’s listening to music: The Doors.”

  “At least he has good taste,” the officer said. He glanced at his partner and continued: “It doesn’t make any sense to have three patrols hanging out here wasting time. Either we’re going in or we’re leaving. Is he dangerous?”

  “I don’t think so.”