Helsinki White

by James Thompson

  Moreau did an impression. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like…victory.”

  “Who’s that supposed to be?” Saska asked.

  “Robert Duvall from Apocalypse Now. These women were soaked in homemade napalm. I know it by the smell. It’s basically just gasoline and soap. It causes the most terrible pain you can imagine. Even this homemade stuff burns at about fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And it’s obvious to me, by looking at the burn pattern on their mouths, chests, and in the lawn in front of them, that they were forced to drink napalm and it was lit while they vomited. They died spewing fire like dragons.”

  Everyone went silent. Except for Moreau and myself, I believe they resisted the urges to both cry and poke.

  “But why the words burnt into the yard?” Moreau asked. “‘Whore’ is singular. There are two bodies.”

  “That’s directed at me, as a taunt,” I said. “I worked a case in which a black woman was murdered. Those words were carved in her torso.”

  Moreau chuckled and faked a different voice. “So this time it’s personal.”

  I didn’t ask which movie he quoted. “But what’s the point?”

  “It’s obvious,” he said. “To up the ante. To keep you enchanted and your enthusiasm high. The horror of the violence keeps the pressure up and the case top-priority. For some reason, the killers desire this. Probably for maximum media exposure.”

  Milo, Saska and I lit cigarettes.

  “Why are you here?” Saska asked him.

  Sweetness had been staring at the hanging girl, mesmerized. Finally, he reached out and touched her with his index finger. The rope snapped and she fell. An arm broke off. Only ash was left on the bone and it swirled away in the breeze. Sweetness watched as if in a dream state. Death fascinated him. A forensics tech started to yell at him. I poked the tech in the chest with my cane and told him to fuck off. He fucked off.

  “I’m a French policeman,” Moreau said, “and I’m here at the behest of Veikko Saukko, who has some influence with the French government. It’s been almost a year since his daughter was shot and killed. His confidence in the Finnish police has waned. And so here I am.”

  “It’s my case,” Saska said, “and a major reason I haven’t made any progress is that he refuses to cooperate with me in any way.”

  “He’s an eccentric racist. You are half Gypsy. He calls you ‘that thieving Gypsy.’ He believes you steal when you come to his home. However, he likes me, because as a former soldier, I have killed many non-white people. He considers this the most admirable of attributes. I believe all these murders, beginning with the kidnap-murder of his family, are connected to this series of murders, and to the murder of Lisbet Söderlund.”

  “Have at it,” Saska said. “I need help. I would appreciate it, though, if you share your findings with me.”

  “Consider it done. If I solve the case, I will ensure that you receive the credit.” Moreau turned to me. “I think you should meet Veikko Saukko. It might lend perspective.”

  “I was hoping to,” I said. “I’ve decided that the way to solve this case is through the interviews of a few key individuals. Some might call them interrogations, and the application of pressure may be somewhat more aggressive than is considered standard. Let’s say, with extreme prejudice. We’ll begin soon. You’re welcome to accompany us if you like.”

  “You intend to go on a rampage?”

  “Call it what you will.”

  Saska frowned, disapproving.

  “I have little choice,” I said, and pointed at the victims. “Look at these women. This can’t go on. People are being murdered almost daily. It must be stopped.”

  To Milo and Sweetness, I said, “You have girlfriends, of a kind. You drink with them. That breeds loosened tongues. Don’t tell them our business.”

  Milo smirked. “You mean like the way you don’t tell Kate our business.”

  His point was valid. I ignored it. “Just keep your fucking mouths shut.”

  I thanked Saska, told the others I would call them later, then went home to check on Kate.

  I took a circuitous route, gave myself time to think.

  As a young beat cop, I spent a lot of nights cruising these streets, watching Helsinki in the wee hours. The drunks drifting home after the bars closed. I watched a city awash in pain. I saw people run without direction, scream, beat their heads with their fists. Their pain and frustration shone and sparkled, beacons of anguish and insanity.

  I played surrogate father to a young man so broken inside that he drank vodka upon waking and could drive a knife into a man’s heart without a thought. I spent my time examining women tortured and burned. I was lucky that I felt almost nothing. I remembered what it once was like to have emotions. Those poor tortured souls that felt were the ones who suffered.

  Kate ordered a pizza and a bottle of orange Jaffa, her favorite Finnish soft drink. The salt and sugar in the pizza and pop did her a world of good. She was embarrassed and felt guilty, but for no tangible reason. She remembered little and wasn’t certain if she should be mortified at her behavior last night or not. She had discovered morkkis, an integral part of the Finnish hangover. A state of usually irrational moral guilt inherent to the Finnish consciousness. I told her it was OK, I was sure she did nothing embarrassing, just got loaded. This usually helps people recover from morkkis. I chilled out with her for a while, then went to meet Jyri.

  26

  I cross the street, go back the way I came, toward the clock over the entrance at Stockmann. “Gimme Shelter” is still stuck in my head. The pretty girls have finished their ice cream, but they continue to bop, bebop and rebop, and once again, the syncopation of their jam box techno and the Stones annoys me. The Gypsy beggar remains prostrate.

  So, between January twenty-sixth, the day I asked Kate if I could become a more effective cop, a man empowered to truly help people by bending the rules of engagement in the war against crime, and today, May second, I’ve gone from, if not a paragon of virtue, a cop who mostly observed the rules governing my profession, to a man who has no qualms about breaking any law, committing almost any act, to achieve my own ends. I had become a changeling.

  I don’t care. My transformation has brought me only success and wealth. Jyri’s invitation to hang out with his pals means it has also brought me acclaim. I’m sure he doesn’t brag about me as a thief. He doubtless describes me as his protégé, but as a tough guy who bends the rules and who has single-handedly done what an entire metropolitan police department had failed to do, and turned Helsinki into the only narcotics-free big city in the world since Las Vegas during its golden years, when the punishment for dealing dope was a bullet in the head and a sandy burial in the desert.

  And also, doubtless, he invented a fiction about the source of the monies accrued—he would have admitted only to a fraction of the fortune accumulated—and claimed it had all gone to campaign funds and worthy causes.

  I make calls, check crime reports. Helsinki continues to go to hell. White and black youth gangs attack each other with knives, lead pipes, sticks, whatever crude weapons are at hand. Women, both black and white, are raped. Especially Finnish white women converted to Islam, referred to as nigger-fucking traitors. Helsinki suffers a barrage of race-related incidents. At public transportation stops, name calling and spitting is the norm. Little kids get no exemption. The emergency room at Meilahti Hospital is overrun with casualties requiring set bones and stitches.

  The media covers up the incidents. They’re unreported or downplayed, maintaining a façade of racial harmony. Helsinki? A race problem? Nope, not us. Here in the Nordic Mecca, we live in brotherly paradise. Welcome to the City of Love.

  I call Milo and Sweetness, tell them we’re to be on parade for the powers that be. Bring the girls. Wear your .45s in shoulder holsters. Wear jackets over them as if to hide them. Make an impression.

  The babysitter shows up at eight thirty sharp. She’s a pleasant older woman in a floral d
ress and her gray hair done up in a bun, as if she’s been typecast for the role.

  Kate and I arrive at Juttutupa a few minutes after nine. The restaurant is the perfect place for such a party. The building is known as “the granite castle” and looks out over a bay, Eläintarhanlahti. Juttutupa began selling booze in 1898 and has performed a number of functions over the years, including a time as a gymnasium, but most of them political. Various factions had possession of it during its early years. The Red Guard used it during the Civil War. Now the restaurant is next door to the Social Democratic Party. Come to think of it, even the gym was political. It belonged to the Helsinki Workers’ Association.

  We take a taxi, since we’ll be drinking, pick up Aino and so are late arrivals. After Anu was fed, I pumped Kate’s breast milk dry while she was sober. The politicos obviously started boozing a couple hours ago, or maybe haven’t stopped since Friday evening. They have that look about them. Milo and Mirjami, Sweetness and Jenna, excited as kids at Christmas, showed up at nine sharp. Tables have been pushed together. Jyri comes over and welcomes us all, tells us he has a tab open for the group and not to pay for anything, he won’t allow it. He introduces himself to each of the women, and I see his charm for the first time. Without showing even a hint of the wolfish slut that he is, and without effort, he makes each of the girls feel like the only woman on earth. The man has a true gift.

  We men go to the bar and get kossu and beer. Sweetness orders four kossus, downs three of them at the bar, and brings one back to the table, for sipping purposes. We get caipiroskas for the girls. I don’t know if the drink is a Finnish invention or not. Kate had never had one before coming here. It’s half a lime and a couple teaspoons of sugar in a short glass, muddled, packed over the brim with crushed ice, snow-cone style, filled with vodka and mixed. The sugar makes the vodka go to the head quick, and they taste good as well, hence their popularity.

  On the way back to the table, Milo stops me. “You’re a lucky man,” he says.

  “How so?”

  “Having two beautiful women.”

  And a child was born in Bethlehem. He’s about to do what he enjoys most, and stretch a simple statement into a story of epic proportion. “As far as I know, I’m married to Kate and monogamous. Did brain surgery make me forget I’m a Mormon?”

  “On the way over here, Mirjami told me she’s in love with you.”

  “That’s just silly. She doesn’t even know me.”

  He shrugs. “She wasn’t joking.”

  I ignore this foolishness, take Kate’s drink to her, and sit beside her.

  None of us had ever been in such company before. Prime Minister Paavo Jokitalo. Minister of Finance Risto Kouva. Minister of Foreign Affairs Daniel Solstrand. Minister of Foreign Trade and Development Sauli Sivola. The head of the Social Democratic Party, Hannu Nykyri. Member of European Parliament and the head of Real Finns, Topi Ruutio, and Minister of the Interior Osmo Ahtiainen. Most of them are accompanied by husbands or wives, girlfriends, mistresses. It’s a big do, decided upon last night, on Vappu, when they were drunk. They decided to continue today. Their country and their hangovers can wait.

  The band is great. I eavesdrop on conversations held in loud voices that carry over the music.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe great people discussing weighty matters of state. It was the gossip of the smashed. So-and-so had a bad scrape job and now she’s sterile. So-and-so gave so-and-so snout. She’s a tampon—a stuck-up cunt.

  Given my recent problem with teen-type hard-ons and sexual preoccupation, I thought having Kate, Aino, Mirjami and Jenna surrounding me might cause slavering and maybe even auto-ejaculation. The effect is the opposite. It’s a bit like eating at a gourmet buffet. All that sumptuous quiff in one place adjusts my perspective and has a calming effect. The others are young beauties, but I still think Kate the most gorgeous.

  At a certain point, the prime minister stands and taps his glass with a spoon for quiet. When he has the attention of all, he says, “We have special guests with us tonight.” He asks Milo and me to stand. “These men are national heroes.”

  He talks about me being shot twice in the line of duty, and recounts the story of how Milo and I, without backup, entered a school for dysfunctional children under attack by a maniac and ended the siege. Who knows how many young lives we saved?

  I imagine the school shooter’s head slump after Milo put a bullet in the back of it. And then the prime minister both pisses me off and makes me cringe.

  “And now,” he says, “along with this young man…” He gestures for Sweetness to stand. Sweetness plays the role, lazily stretches his arms in a way that seems natural, and shows the twin monster .45s in their holsters under his jacket. The crowd is drunk and over-impressed. Sweetness gets up. “…they’ll soon bring to justice the murderer of Lisbet Söderlund, an event of such horror that it will be remembered as a dark nadir in the annals of Finnish history. These men are our Untouchables.” He slurs the word. “Untushables.”

  Milo shoots me a “Told ya so” smirk. “Inspector Vaara,” the prime minister asks, “would you tell us how the case progresses?”

  Rounds of shots start hitting the table at regular intervals. The true boozing begins.

  Jenna gazes at Sweetness with an adoration that extends far beyond familial love. A Jerry Lee Lewis scenario is in the making.

  I put on my practiced in the mirror smile, the extra-wide version. “With strong-arm tactics, shakedowns, extortion, threats, intimidation and beatings, we intend to terrorize Finland’s racist community until they give up the killer of their own volition, to save themselves more pain.”

  The crowd doesn’t know if I’m joking or not. Either way, they like it. They laugh and clap. I notice Kate does neither. The crowd gets drunker and mills around. All the men make it to our end of the table at some point. Whether they’re interested in us crime fighters or not, we’ve got the young primo tail and they want a closer look. Of course, the nation’s leading politicians combined with said primo tail makes our group the focus of attention of all the other patrons in the restaurant.

  Kate makes friends with Mirjami and Jenna. Kate wears an evening dress and her Manolo pumps. Mirjami has forsaken Hello Kitty garb and stadin slangi for a white and pretty, rather conservative summer dress that accents her tan, and she speaks standard Finnish. Jenna wears nice jeans and top that shows her magnificent cleavage to good advantage. Casual dress is fine in Juttutupa—I’m wearing jeans myself—and I don’t think Jenna has a big wardrobe budget. She doesn’t drop her East Helsinki dialect. I doubt she can. She doesn’t try to be anything but herself, and with her looks, she doesn’t have to. Mirjami asks Kate questions about me. “What’s it like to be married to a famous cop?”

  Kate gives a smirk and drunken snort. “Like being married to Tony Soprano.”

  Mirjami asks more personal things, what I’m like as a person. Sneaky. Kate doesn’t catch on. I don’t care for it.

  The male politicos all introduce themselves at some point. They’re at that state of drunkenness where they’ve forgotten their own escorts and that our girls are taken and hope our lookers will shoot them some trim.

  The prime minister isn’t so drunk, just polite. He strikes up a conversation with Kate, finds out she manages Kämp, and suggests the possibility of making a deal for all foreign dignitaries to stay there at a fixed rate. She gives him a business card. He promises to call. She beams excitement. Everyone drinks too much, except me. A little after midnight, the interior minister suggests a continuation of affairs of state aboard his yacht tomorrow. All present are invited and should meet at the Nyland Yacht Club Blekholmen clubhouse at noon. He asks who’s in. All shout approval.

  The interior minister and Jyri approach me. “Allow me to introduce Inspector Vaara, my hatchet man,” Jyri says.

  I say, “I prefer the term ‘enforcer.’”

  The minister says he’d like for me to be at the yacht club, and hopes I’ll bring Kate
. He would like to speak with her as well. This piques my curiosity. I thanked Jyri for arranging the babysitter, she seemed perfect, but said I would need another tomorrow.

  “She’s my aunt,” he said, “and she loves kids. She’d probably pay you to let her babysit again, just ask her. Come to the bar with me,” he says, “and I’ll show you something.”

  We walk over, lean against it, and Jyri keeps his voice hushed. “Did you know,” he says, “that there are now more spies in Finland than at any time since the Cold War?”

  “No, I didn’t,” I answer.

  “Russia has by far the most here, around thirty trained operatives, followed by the U.S. and China, and then there are small representations by other countries as well. They’re seeking information about our defense policy and intentions toward NATO, and countries economically and technologically behind us are looking for shortcuts through espionage.”

  “And the point is?”

  “I know who they are, and some of them are quite upset about heroin revenues lost by theft. Your campaign against the drug trade ends now until the Söderlund murder is solved, for the obvious reason that you’re under scrutiny. You were upset because we’ve taken no steps to interdict the human slave trade. You made an attempt and it ended badly.”

  I start to speak, but he raises a hand to silence me. “Yes, I know all about it. I had you move money and drugs from one criminal’s house to another. I then spoke to a Russian spy, told him I knew about his problem, gave him names and the address where you left the money and dope, and said I prefer they take care of it in-house. The men who raped and murdered the women you tried to help were among them. I asked him for proof when the matter was resolved.”

  He takes out his iPhone and shows me an image. Five men are in a warehouse, naked. Chains hanging from a crossbeam have hooks on the end. These hooks are driven into the soft flesh behind the chins of five men. Their toes are inches from the floor. They’re in various states of being tortured to death. Electrodes are attached to tongues and genitals. A couple lack genitals and or other body parts. A couple have most of their skin flayed off.