Behind God's Back

by Harri Nykanen

  “Major impacts, major money.”

  “What about Jacobson?” I asked. “I’m sure you can provide us with a good theory as to why Nurmio killed him, and what that has to do with Livson’s arrival.”

  “I think the reason for Jacobson’s death is the same as for Oxbaum’s. Nurmio blackmailed Jacobson first, but failed. Oxbaum was next on the list.”

  Something about Sillanpää’s sudden generosity nagged at me, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. “What good am I to the Security Police? You guys already know everything.”

  “We suspect all kinds of things – that’s different from knowing. We want proof. For instance, information on what kind of hold Nurmio had over Jacobson and Oxbaum, and if he can use the same ploy on anyone else. We believe the answer is going to be found among your people… I’m curious: How did you find out about Nurmio?”

  “Jacobson’s daughter IDed him from surveillance camera footage. They had attended the same party in Tel Aviv. Someone had mentioned to her that he was Finnish, and they had chatted. She remembered his name, too, Nurmio’s Israeli name.”

  Sillanpää’s interest was piqued. “What kind of party?”

  “One thrown by her husband’s employers. The employer happens to be the same company that owns Baltic Invest.”

  “Quite a coincidence. Or is it a coincidence?”

  “I really have no idea.”

  “I’m assuming you milked the daughter for everything she had?”

  “All she knew was that Nurmio lived in Tel Aviv, that he had received Israeli citizenship, and that he worked at the company as some sort of head of security. He reported directly to Hararin. That was the only time she met him.”

  “And I assume you told her not to discuss this with anyone, including her husband?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “Good job,” Sillanpää said, as if he were a higher-up praising a subordinate. He stood and smacked his hands together. “So that’s settled, then.”

  “When do I start?”

  “Right away.”

  “So what exactly does that mean in practice? Will I be working from Ratakatu for the duration?”

  “No need. All you have to do is keep us informed. We’ll pass on more detailed requests for assistance as necessary. You can continue leading the investigation as you have been.” Sillanpää eyed me for a moment, then continued: “And the most important thing is to not do anything that would endanger our operation. So the photo is not going to the press. Is that clear?”

  He stood to leave.

  “Sit down,” I said. “One more thing. Even though you seem to have good informants inside your unit, you don’t know everything. The ballistics tests for the bullets that killed Jacobson and Oxbaum just came in. They were fired from the same gun.”

  “Yeah, I thought that was understood.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. It’s just too bad that the man who killed Oxbaum on his boat and fled by kayak wasn’t Nurmio, or even Meir.”

  19

  When it came to the affairs of Finnish Jews, I had an advantage, and not simply because of my background. I’m referring to the fact that my uncle Dennis was the first one to hear about anything that happened in the community. He was one of the congregation’s most liberal supporters, and all doors were open to him. It was high time to pay him another visit.

  He lived alone in a large apartment in Töölö. It was surrounded by parks, and had a view of the Rowing Stadium and the sea. A museum-like stillness prevailed inside, even though details revealed that a living family had once resided there. That family had dwindled as one of Dennis’s sons died of a drug overdose, his daughter moved to Stockholm, and the second son to Israel. His wife had died over ten years earlier. The deaths of his son and wife had struck a deep wound in my uncle’s soul, but he had engaged in a long, grim monologue with God and they had come to an understanding.

  My uncle had suffered a severe heart attack early that summer, and as a result had been spending more and more time alone by choice. He told me that he wanted to reflect on things in peace. I still visited him a couple of times a month, and phoned him more often.

  I was fond of my uncle. He had helped Mom out after Dad died and lent her the money to buy a hair salon. He was the only one of my relatives who had supported me when I had applied to the Police Academy.

  My uncle was sitting in his patinated club chair like Marlon Brando in The Godfather. He was wearing a light-blue plaid shirt under his V-neck sweater. Despite his casual dress, my uncle radiated an uncommon dignity, and his soft, wandering gaze could sharpen bright and diamond-hard at any moment. He knew I was there on business. A steaming cup of tea stood on the cigarette table. After his heart attack, he had hired an elderly housekeeper. She had carried in tea and sandwiches for us.

  “All right, let’s have it.”

  I protested innocence: “Let’s have what?”

  “The question you want to ask.”

  “We’ll have time to get to that.”

  “But I’m not just impatient, I’m also curious.”

  “It has to do with Jacobson’s death… and Max’s.”

  “I heard about Max. He’s the last one I’d have expected… I mean that he’d get himself killed. I was certain that with all those extra pounds and cholesterol levels like that he’d die of a heart attack or a stroke. I suppose my heart attack didn’t ask what my cholesterol levels were, though. Which, if anything, taught me that I’m mortal, too. Somehow I’d managed to forget. I’m sorry, go on.”

  “I believe that the murders are not only linked to each other, but to something else, something bigger. One possibility is that Jacobson was first pressured into getting involved in something. After that, the killer came after Max, and I’m afraid that won’t be the end of it. The killer needs help, and he’s looking for a new helper.”

  “So the killer must have had some sort of hold over Jacobson and Max?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Then it must have to do with Max’s business dealings. I’ve always suspected that they wouldn’t stand the light of day. I warned your brother, but evidently he didn’t listen to his uncle.”

  “That’s what I think, too. Max had brokered loans for Jacobson’s company. The lender was an outfit named Baltic Invest.”

  “I’m familiar with it. I can’t imagine ever being desperate enough to borrow money from them.”

  I believed my uncle. On the other hand, it was easy for him to say. His financial affairs were more than in order. He had been a bank director for over thirty years, and in addition was a partner in a successful investment company. I was certain that he had a seven-digit account balance; in other words, four digits more than my own. I hadn’t inherited the knack for moneymaking that was considered the birthright of every Jewish boy.

  I had thought on many occasions about how different brothers can be. My father was the scientist type, a humanist and a nature lover. He was more at ease during his work trips to Lapland than he was in his own home. My uncle, on the other hand, was an urban, cigar-smoke-scented businessman down to the tips of his fingers. He had softened with age, but I still couldn’t imagine him walking down a hiking trail in Lapland or binding birch whisks on the sauna steps.

  “When he was in Israel, Max wandered off the straight and narrow, and someone videotaped it. He, at least, was being blackmailed with those tapes. Samuel Jacobson was probably being blackmailed with something else, but what that was, I don’t know. I don’t even have a good guess.”

  My uncle listened, apparently absent-mindedly. But I knew he heard every word, including the ones I left out.

  “Samuel intended to pay off that loan. He came here to discuss the matter, and I gave him some advice. Despite the fact that things weren’t going quite as well as they had in the past, his company had considerable assets. So it can’t have had anything to do with the company’s loan.”

  “His son Roni’s loans were also arranged th
rough Max. He took out loans totalling almost a million euros.”

  “Still.”

  “You know that Jacobson’s daughter Lea is married to the Israeli director of Baltic Invest. Maybe the killer threatened to do something to them?”

  My uncle’s hands started to tremble as he sipped his tea. This was due to his age, though, not the topic of conversation.

  “Did Jacobson offer any reason as to why he intended to pay off the Baltic Invest loan?” I asked.

  “He had heard that they were under investigation in Israel. He thought there was something fishy about the company. He was angry with his son-in-law because he had recommended a loan from them even though he was perfectly aware of the scandal.”

  “Did he use the word ‘angry’?”

  “No, but it was clear from his tone. He told me he had read his son-in-law the riot act, and also spoken to his daughter about it.”

  “What feelings did he have about Max’s role in the matter?”

  “He was irked about that, too. He felt that Max just skimmed off his share and bore no concern or responsibility for the company’s credibility. Max had boasted about what a financially solid company Baltic Invest was. Samuel said that he had given Max a piece of his mind, and your brother, too, even though Max was the one who handled all the loans.”

  “Did Roni intend to change lenders, too?”

  “We didn’t discuss that.”

  “What’s your opinion of Roni?”

  I valued my uncle’s knowledge of human nature. As a bank director, he had learnt to assess people’s character. I remember him telling me that not a single one of his customers had skipped out on a loan. Or one had, but he had a good excuse: he was hit by a car and died.

  “Roni is the type who tears down everything earlier generations have built up. There’s no way he would have ever been a director if he hadn’t been Samuel’s son. Samuel would also bemoan Roni’s tomfoolery from time to time.”

  “What did he mean by tomfoolery?”

  “Oh, most recently he’d complained about the affair… When Roni started seeing that former beauty queen.”

  “So it wasn’t about money or anything more serious?”

  “If it was, he didn’t tell me.”

  “You said that the company’s loans couldn’t have been used to blackmail Jacobson… But what if Roni had screwed up his finances, and that was used to blackmail his father? How do you think Jacobson would have reacted to that?”

  “He would have cleaned up the mess, or at least helped Roni clean it up.”

  “What if the mess was too big to be cleaned up with their money?”

  “Then it would have had to be a truly massive… How would Roni have ever achieved anything of that scale?”

  “I don’t know, but I know there are plenty of ways. Some guys are gamblers, some make bad investments, others take drugs. Roni was in Lapland when his father was shot. One possibility is that the father knew of the threat and sent his son away to safety. He locked himself up in the house and told everyone he was sick.”

  “Is that what you suspect?”

  “It’s one possibility that occurred to us.”

  “Have you interrogated Roni?”

  “No, we’ve talked to him, that’s all. We don’t have any evidence of anything like what I just mentioned. Other motives could exist. Does anything else occur to you?”

  My uncle leant back in his chair and let his head fall back until his gaze hit the spot where the ceiling and the wall met. It was his typical stance when he was concentrating. It was his way of shutting himself off from the outside world. I let him think in peace.

  “Is there room for the victims’ Jewishness in your theories? I’m not talking about the most obvious thing, anti-Semitism, but something related to our community. Could that be the factor linking the two cases?”

  “That occurred to us, too, but we couldn’t come up with the link.”

  “How about the Jewish congregation? Jacobson was on the board.”

  “But not Max, at least as far as I know.”

  “No, but he was on the congregation’s security committee ever since your brother resigned.”

  “That’s not much of a coincidence. Any congregation member who’s the least bit active is invited to take a leadership position.”

  “It’s only been a month and a half. Your brother’s resignation was unexpected.”

  “Do you know why he resigned?”

  “Because of time commitments, evidently. I heard that Silberstein was a little peeved. Max stepped in for him.”

  I hadn’t heard about this, but I wasn’t too up on goings-on in the congregation. I only attended synagogue on the most important holidays, like Yom Kippur, which was coming up way too soon.

  “What do you know about the killer?” my uncle asked.

  I broke the Criminal Investigations Act by revealing confidential information to him, but with my uncle I knew that I’d get my investment back in spades. Furthermore, I trusted him. He would never do anything that would put me in a compromising position. I told him everything, down to the surprise visit from Sillanpää.

  “That’s quite the quandary you’re in. You could have excused yourself from the case because of Eli, and Lea too.”

  “I didn’t want to, at least not yet. If anything else comes up, I guess I’ll have to.”

  “More coincidences. The presumed killer is working for Baltic Invest. Your friend at the Security Police suspects that the killer is here in Helsinki to assassinate a Russian criminal while he attends synagogue. That sounds believable at first, but when you start thinking about it, it doesn’t. Not really. In the first place, why kill someone at the synagogue? It’s not the easiest place for an operation like that. The synagogue will be monitored and guarded, and making a getaway would be difficult. It would be a lot easier to kill the Russian somewhere else. Let me show you something…”

  My uncle rose, retrieved a folder from the glass-fronted bookcase, and handed it to me. It contained press clippings from an Israeli newspaper, some in Hebrew and others in English. They were about Amos Jakov, who was considered one of the wealthiest men in Israel, and delved into the criminal investigations focusing on him and Benjamin Hararin.

  “I’ve been keeping up with the story purely out of my own interest,” my uncle said.

  “I heard that the investigations had been called off,” I said.

  “That’s true. But they might be starting up again. It all depends on one man.”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t you follow events in your spiritual homeland? The Israeli Minister of Justice resigned four months ago, and the new Minister of Justice has announced that the affair will be investigated down to the very bottom. He’s a dangerous man; evidently he’s so insanely honest that he intends to expose his experience and knowledge of bribes involving politicians from his own political party. He has already revealed how the Mossad sold information gathered through wiretapping to businessmen, and how they made millions off it by buying or selling stock at the right time. One columnist wrote that the new Minister of Justice is so principled that he can look forward to a very short life.”

  My uncle’s story sparked a vague memory that I sensed was somehow important, but I couldn’t get a proper grip on it.

  “Who is the new Minister of Justice?”

  “Haim Levi. Former secretary of the Labour Party. He has held prominent positions in the party for almost fifteen years. Levi also knows about the Mossad’s doings, so they don’t have a lot of love for him, either.”

  “Haim Levi,” I repeated, as I remembered where I had heard the name. He was the young man posing with his host in the photo in Samuel Jacobson’s office. The former exchange student had metamorphosed into a man of influence. No wonder Jacobson had hung the picture on his wall. I doubted it had been there before Levi’s advancement to power player.

  I told my uncle about the photo. He furrowed his bushy brows and gazed at me, almost in wonderm
ent.

  “So now do you understand?”

  “I’m not following…”

  “Levi will be paying a visit to Finland soon, and Samuel was one of those responsible for planning the agenda. Last time we met, he said that Levi had announced that he wanted to go and relive old times at their cottage. He was an exchange student here, and stayed with the Jacobsons. My guess is that the target is not some Russian mafioso, it’s Levi. And my guess is that your friend at the Security Police knows it, too.”

  20

  It was starting to feel like, in addition to keeping tabs on me, Sillanpää always tried to screw me over whenever I ran into him. My instincts told me that my uncle was right and that Levi was the killer’s true target. But in spite of the political dimensions, Sillanpää’s deception felt too egregious. I asked myself what he imagined he was achieving by sending me after some Russian mafioso. Then I answered my own question: he was afraid I would arrest Nurmio before they had accumulated sufficient evidence that he had been hired to kill Levi. If that were the case, Sillanpää had, strictly speaking, told the truth. And it was presumably also true that he wanted to exploit my connections to the Jewish congregation. I had to admit that the mafia man thing was a pretty clever ruse. While Sillanpää was sending me off on a wild goose chase, the information brought in by my investigation would help them crack the Levi case.

  I decided that he wanted to hide the true target because it involved foreign policy and the delicate relationship between Finland and Israel. Anything of the sort was too sensitive to turn over to normal criminal investigators. Such matters were hallowed to the Security Police.

  After reflecting on it, I eventually decided to see how things progressed without revealing my suspicions to Sillanpää. I’d borrow a page from his book, and bluff.

  I decided to start by making the rounds of the bigwigs in the Jewish community. In a sense I had already begun with my uncle and brother, but now I’d step outside the family. I chose Silberstein as my first target.

  I didn’t beat around the bush; I went straight to his workplace. He was upper management at a large engineering firm, where the lords of millimetre-precision machining and the princes of stress calculations sat in meticulous, modest cubicles staring at their computer screens, as if all earthly wisdom were contained therein.