“Why?”
“Tried to wheedle information about the investigation. He had heard a rumour that the killings had something to do with the Jewish congregation. And before that, I got a call from the chair of the Jewish congregation.”
“Silberstein?”
“Yup. Asked the same thing. Has every Jew in Finland been recruited to snoop on us?”
“So it would seem.”
I told him that Meyer, who had confirmed Ben Weiss’s fur-dealing alibi, was a Jew, and so was the antiques dealer whose stolen vehicle had been used at Vartiokylä and probably at Linnunlaulu too. I also told him that my brother and the chair of the Jewish congregation had already paid me a visit.
Huovinen looked at me gravely.
“The way you talk about it, it sounds like you don’t believe in coincidences.”
“At least I believe that Meyer lied to me. And that if he lied, he was protecting Weiss. I can’t think of any other reason for protecting him except that Weiss isn’t who he was pretending to be. The cooperation between him and Meyer sounds fishy anyway. Meyer had dropped out of the race ages ago, so why would an eager young fur dealer want to work with him? There are better partners to be found in Finland, Jewish ones too.”
“Do you believe that your brother and Silberstein could have got information we don’t have yet through their own channels?”
“I believe that they are in some way involved without knowing it, as are Meyer and Oxbaum. Their Jewishness alone doesn’t explain everything.”
Simolin knocked on the open door and said: “You want to come watch the tape?”
“What tape?” Huovinen asked.
When I told him about the parking stub found on Weiss’s body and the footage shot by the Parliament security camera, Huovinen got excited.
“Are you serious? I want to see it too.”
We went into the conference room, pulled up chairs, and sat down in front of the TV.
Simolin turned on the VCR. The clock was running at the bottom of the screen. It was still five minutes to the time that the parking stub was dispensed. Simolin fast-forwarded, and a white minivan flashed across the image.
“Stop!” I ordered.
The white vehicle was at the right edge of the camera’s field of view. The camera was about ten yards from the meter. It was impossible to make out the licence-plate number, but Simolin tossed out a guess.
“Probably the stolen minivan.”
The minivan approached and stopped. Simolin went up right in front of the TV.
“That’s it, I can already make out the plate.”
The vehicle backed up next to the meter. The passenger door opened, and a blond man stepped out.
“Definitely, that’s him,” Simolin repeated.
“That Weiss?” Huovinen asked.
“Yup.”
Weiss dug into his pockets and walked towards the meter, stopped, studied the coins he had pulled out, fished out a couple, and dropped them into the meter. While waiting for his stub, he glanced around and noticed the camera.
“He noticed the camera,” remarked Huovinen.
Weiss turned his back to the camera. After getting his stub, he started heading for the vehicle. At the same moment, the driver’s door opened and a dark-haired man twisted himself out.
“Got ’em both,” Simolin said excitedly.
The dark-haired man pointed a remote key at the van to lock the doors. The van’s lights flashed, indicating they were locked. He took a few steps in Weiss’s direction, and his face was clearly visible. Weiss gesticulated an order to him. The man appeared confused, glanced directly at the camera out of instinct, turned, and stroked his jaw with his left hand. It was as if someone had pressed my internal pause button. My stomach wrenched.
“Go back to the dark-haired guy,” I said.
Simolin rewound and stopped at the point where the man stepped out of the van. He went around to the pavement and turned towards the camera.
I saw a hard, muscular face and close-cropped hair. The man was tall and lean.
Huovinen looked at me.
“What now?”
“I want close-ups of both men.”
“Can I fast-forward now?” Simolin asked.
“Go ahead.”
The men walked in the direction of Mannerheimintie and stepped off-screen.
I pondered what I had seen. The security camera was blurry and it had been hard to distinguish the men’s faces. Still, I was sure. I knew the dark-haired man, even though he had changed and aged twenty years. I was sure of it.
His name was Dan Kaplan. He had moved to Israel in 1985 to do his military service there and never came back. Before that, he had been my best friend since first grade. He had picked up the thoughtful chin-stroking from a Clint Eastwood Western that we had seen together.
You couldn’t fool Huovinen. He asked: “Do you know him?”
I nodded.
“I think he’s my childhood friend. His name is Dan Kaplan. I saw him last ten years ago when I was in Israel. At that time he was a major in the army’s special forces.”
“What the hell is he doing here?” Huovinen wondered out loud.
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Not trading furs, I bet,” Simolin said.
My phone rang. It was Toivola.
“Those boys went all out, the gunpowder results came back in record time. They’re positive.”
“Thanks. Now go home and get some rest.”
“I think I will. I already called the old lady and asked her to heat up the sauna.”
“You’ve earned it ten times over.”
Toivola laughed in satisfaction. People were given far too little praise these days.
I said to Huovinen and Simolin: “Traces of gunpowder were found on Weiss. In other words, he was at Linnunlaulu and fired the gun.”
Huovinen rose so suddenly that he almost knocked his chair over.
“Make sure it’s Kaplan and put out an APB on him… what do you think, is he dangerous?”
“If he wants to be.”
“Do you think he wants to be?”
“It looks like it.”
“Mention in the APB that he’s dangerous and possibly armed.”
“Are there any better pictures of him?” Simolin asked.
“I took some photos of him on my trip to Israel, but they’re already ten years old.”
“His family must have more recent ones,” Huovinen suggested.
“I’ll try to get my hands on them.”
13
It was the seventh day of the month of Tishri, and the ten days of repentance were already leaning towards Yom Kippur. Jews believe that there is a book in heaven in which a person’s every deed, word and thought is recorded. The book opens on the second day of the New Year holiday and God reads what each person has done. Based on this, he decides our fates: who must suffer death, who may live, who will be made poor and who rich, who may live in peace, and who will be cast into ruin.
However, this judgment is not final. Everyone has ten days to reflect on their deeds and pray to God for forgiveness. During the ten days of repentance, one must settle one’s quarrels, pay one’s debts, and ask for forgiveness from those one has trespassed against. Only after that may one hope for mercy and forgiveness from God.
During the ten days of repentance, attendance at the synagogue was much higher than normal. Now it was almost packed.
Looking from the podium, the bimah, the Kafkas sat at the front right. In addition to me, there were only two Kafkas present, my brother Eli and his son Leo. Eli was sitting hunched over so far that he looked almost like a dwarf among the tall chairs. His yarmulke grazed the back of the bench in front of him. Knowing my brother, the position was excessively pious. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye but didn’t say anything.
The seats to our right were reserved for the Oxbaums, and the Weintraubs were at our left. The Kaplans sat, from our perspective, behind the Wei
ntraubs. Their family was represented solely by Salomon Kaplan, Dan’s father.
After the service ended, I loitered in the foyer. My brother Eli came over to me, looking put out.
“What now? Don’t try and tell me you’re here to pray.”
“Of course I am. I have plenty of things to repent for.”
My brother greeted people walking past on both the right and the left. He was clearly an important and well-known person in the congregation, which was no surprise to me. The surprise was how rapidly it had all happened. Just a few years back, he had, at least when he was drunk, laughed at the silliness of the activities of the congregation’s “old guard”. Now he appeared to be one of its mainstays.
“I want a word with you a little later,” I said.
Eli frowned. My tone was clearly too bossy when you took into account that he was, after all, the older brother. He didn’t answer, he just kept on walking.
The next person to stop and talk to me was my now-retired English teacher, and before long my former religion teacher joined us. When they left, I was approached by the leader of the Maccabi table-tennis club, who reminded me that I would be welcome in the club veterans’ series.
Veterans’ series sounded so bad that I immediately drove it from my mind. In my high-school years, I had been the greatest talent in the history of the club, and I would have been accepted for grooming for the national team. But when Karmela Meyer and her D cups entered the picture, my adolescent hands found better things to do.
It wasn’t until the police academy that I took up ping-pong again and immediately rose to the top ranks of the police-guild table-tennis club. At least there was one thing I was better at than my brother.
I forgot all about ping-pong when I saw a grey-haired, bearded man with a black, silver-tipped cane exit the sanctuary. I positioned myself in such a way that he was almost forced to bump into me.
I turned and faked surprise.
“Mr Kaplan! It’s been a while.”
Kaplan couldn’t see well without his glasses, but as he came closer he recognized me.
“Ari! Is that you?”
“It’s me, Mr Kaplan.”
“You’ve become a real celebrity. I’m very proud of you.”
I’d always liked Salomon Kaplan. I had spent a lot of time in their home, and they had always treated me like a son. If it was mealtime, they would set a place for me; if it was teatime, a cup would be poured for me, too. I was a shy child, but Salomon Kaplan and his wife Ethel had broken through my defences.
Salomon Kaplan was a master tailor by profession and Ethel was a housewife. She had died a couple of years back. It had been a tough time for Salomon, because his and Ethel’s marriage had been a real, genuine love story. I never once heard them fight.
I was envious of Dan for many reasons, but most of all of his parents and the love they showed their children.
“Being on TV a few times doesn’t make you a celebrity,” I said modestly.
“I’ve read about you in the papers, too.”
“It’s just the job.”
Kaplan appeared a tad reproachful, but only a tad.
“Ari, we don’t see you here at the congregation very often.”
“I’ll try to mend my ways.”
Salomon smiled. “There are probably a few too many of us old codgers standing in the way.”
I decided that it was the right moment to get to the point.
“Have you been to Israel to see Dan lately?”
“I don’t have the energy any more, I can’t stand those long flights. They’ve even been pestering me to move, but there’s far too much commotion and hubbub there. Everybody talks too much.”
I chuckled. Salomon sounded like my Uncle Dennis.
“Has Dan become talkative too?”
“Well, not Dan of course, but his wife is a real motor-mouth.”
“How’s Dan doing, is he still with the army? I haven’t heard from him in years.”
“That’s a shame, and you were such good friends… The army? Not any more, I guess. I don’t really know what he does these days, but they’re doing well. Nice house and a new car. My son doesn’t talk much about his doings.”
“Has he brought his family over to Finland yet?”
Salomon Kaplan’s friendly eyes were strangely bright for someone his age.
He squinted a little. “Oh, I’ve asked them, but they haven’t deigned to grace me with a visit.”
“I heard somewhere that Dan was in Finland.”
“I’m pretty sure I’d know if he were. Who told you that?”
“Someone mentioned it in passing. It would have been nice to see him again after such a long time.”
Kaplan gazed off into the distance. For a moment it looked as if he were about to say something important. Then he said, a little wistfully: “Sometimes when I look out the kitchen window, it’s almost as if I can see you two playing there in the yard while Ethel prepares the Sabbath meal… Ethel was so fond of you…”
I knew it. And that Ethel adored her son. Dan was the son every mother wished for, and every mother-in-law’s dream son-in-law. Fun, bright, athletic and handsome.
We had known each other since the first grade. The Kaplans had moved to Helsinki from Turku, and Dan started at the Jewish school in the middle of the school year. I remember when Ethel brought him there. It was raining, and we were floating boats made from wine-bottle corks in the schoolyard gutters. Dan had come over to watch us play and introduced himself precociously. It turned out that he lived in the building next to ours. We walked home from school together, and from that day on we were best friends until he moved to Israel.
Salomon Kaplan raised his cane and headed towards the door, dragging his right leg slightly.
I watched him go and felt like a real jerk. Here I was playing my best friend’s elderly father – and in the synagogue, too. For once I’d really have something to repent for on Yom Kippur.
Eli was talking with Silberstein in the foyer. I hung back a couple of yards.
“Have you considered what we discussed yet?” Silberstein asked, like a teacher who imagined his punishment had proved effective on a lackadaisical student.
“Haven’t had time.”
Eli glanced at the stone-faced Silberstein.
“You go ahead, Ari, I’ll be out in a couple of minutes.”
It was cold outside. A sliver of moon and a couple of the brightest stars could be seen among the clouds.
I had to wait for Eli for almost ten minutes. We walked over to his Audi, which was parked on Freda.
I sat down in the leather passenger seat. The car smelt new. Eli started up the engine, and the car purred softly to life.
“You have a new car,” I remarked.
“Buy my old one. I would have got so little in exchange that I didn’t have the heart to give it up.”
Eli’s former car was a five-year-old BMW hatchback.
“It’s too hard finding parking downtown.”
“Get a spot in your garage.”
“You’re overestimating a cop’s salary.”
“Fair enough.”
“What are you mixed up in?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where did you get your information?”
“There are rumours going around.”
“When you know more than you should about things you shouldn’t know about, you might end up being suspected of complicity. Six people are dead.”
“That’s why Silberstein and I came to meet you. We don’t want anyone else to die.”
“Who is Ben Weiss?” I asked sharply.
“A fur dealer from Israel.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Then I don’t know. I met him when he came to the office to see Max. Max advised him on some contractual matters.”
“Have you heard that a car was stolen from Max’s father?”
“No. How so?”
“It was found at the Siilitie metro stat
ion in Herttoniemi. Ben Weiss used it. He was found a day later in Kerava, dead.”
I could see from Eli’s expression that he didn’t know about Weiss’s death. His alarm was genuine.
“Believe me, he’s no fur dealer,” I said. “And everyone who tells you so is lying.”
I almost felt sorry for my brother. He started desperately trying to figure out what he was mixed up in.
I asked him: “Who told you that Weiss is a fur dealer?”
“Silberstein.”
“Why, where did he hear that?”
“He said that Weiss came to the synagogue. He had asked if Silberstein knew some Jewish lawyer who could advise him in local banking matters. Silberstein directed him to us.”
“To your office, or did he mention Max specifically?”
“Silberstein said he gave him our firm’s name. Max happened to be there when Weiss contacted us and got the job.”
Eli was beginning to see that he had got mixed up in something that he could most easily extract himself from with my help.
He stopped at the traffic lights at the old opera house. The restaurant Bulevardia was being remodelled. When Dad was still alive, he’d take us to Bulevardia for Sunday lunch now and again. We’d always sit upstairs at the window table. Maybe the choice of restaurant came from the fact that Dad had been born at the corner of Hietalahdentori Square and Lönnrotinkatu. The building had been damaged in the first bombings of the Winter War. A disco that Dan and I used to go to all the time was near the same place.
The lights changed. Before he started off, Eli glanced over at Bulevardia.
“Bulevardia’s being turned into some trendy joint too. You remember Dad’s Sunday lunches? One time he admitted to me that the manager was some army buddy of his. That’s why we always went there. He got a discount.”
Eli’s revelation amused me.
“Is that why?”
“That’s why. Our clan’s known for its stinginess.”
“Speak for yourself.”
We arrived in my neck of the woods. Eli pulled up in front of my building.
“At whose instigation did you come to ask me for information about the investigation?”
Nights of Awe Page 13