Prentice Hall.
Dr Joanne McBain pacing at the front of the lecture theatre, pointing at a complicated geological map of the North Atlantic region. A hundred bleary-eyed students who were, for decency’s sake, trying to look interested.
The winding up portion:
‘… ice lay a mile thick here, in a glacier that stretched from Scotland, over the Earth’s curve, across the Atlantic to Newfoundland. Britain and Ireland were tundra and ice back then: no men, no women, just mammoth, deer, wolves, tigers. All that gone now, but not for ever. Remember that. This is the Holocene epoch. We are living in a brief warm window between inevitable ice ages. Think on that, ladies and gentlemen. Eventually … five thousand years, ten thousand, nobody knows, but eventually the ice will return and once again wipe the slate clean over much of the Northern Hemisphere.’
‘Yikes,’ Lawson said.
‘Sounds good to me,’ I said and Crabbie nodded his head in agreement.
When the lecture was done, we approached Jo McBain at her lectern. She had expended all her energy on her talk and now seemed frail and drained and broken. She put on a big jumper and hugged her flask of tea for dear life. I explained why we were here.
‘You think his death is somehow connected to that poor girl’s suicide in Carrick Castle?’ Dr McBain asked, dabbing at her eyes.
‘I don’t know if it’s connected or not, I just want to know what it was that was troubling him the night before he died, if you can remember.’
‘He did seem upset that night.’
‘Did he talk about what was bothering him?’
‘He said something about a young reporter.’
‘Did he mention her name?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘What did he say?’ I asked.
‘Eddie never talked about his work with me. Well, hardly ever. He wanted to hear about my work, but he never brought his work home with him. He is … was wonderful like that.’
‘He was very much respected in the force, Jo, and that’s not true for all the senior officers,’ I said, truthfully.
She smiled and touched me on the arm. ‘You’re very kind, Inspector Duffy.’
‘Sean, please.’
‘Eddie and I were very grateful when you found Bathsheba for us. Such a silly dog,’ she said, with a sigh.
I gave her a minute and then tried again. ‘The reporter?’
‘He was upset. He said some “English reporter was going to cause them all a lot of trouble with her wild accusations”. Does that mean anything to you?’
I nodded. ‘Yes it does.’
‘Did he say anything else?’ Crabbie asked.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Tell us about the phone call,’ Crabbie said.
‘They called early, at around eight in the morning, I think. Eddie said he had to go. He went out to the car and, well, you know the rest.’
‘Did he talk about the call, who it was from, what it was about?’
‘No. Maybe it was in his notebook. Did you see his notebook?’
‘What notebook?’
‘Well, like I say, he seldom talked about his cases but I noticed him scribbling away in the notebook the night before he died.’
‘Where is this notebook?’
‘Larne RUC took it. They would have called you, I’m sure, if there’d been something in it pertinent to your investigation.’
‘Not necessarily,’ I said, tactfully.
‘Poor Eddie,’ she said, eyes watering.
‘We all miss him,’ I said.
She smiled bravely and I gave her a little hug.
‘Well thank you so much for your help in this difficult time, Jo.’
‘You’re very welcome.’
We walked back to the BMW.
‘Larne?’ Crabbie asked as we checked underneath it for bombs and got inside.
‘Larne,’ I agreed with a heavy heart.
Larne.
Not the most aesthetically pleasing town in Ireland. Not one for the Tourist Board calendars, or the Guinness posters or the coffee-table books.
Working port, blue collar – nothing wrong with that, but the big UVF mural on the A2 as you drove into town, in which a masked gunman promised ‘death to informers’ perhaps wasn’t the most welcoming of messages.
Larne RUC was a recently renovated, rather impressive, fortress on Hope Street (no irony intended). Larne had more manpower, money and resources than Carrick RUC and their district stretched from Whitehead all the way up to the Glens of Antrim. They even had a boat division and a separate wing for the harbour and British Transport Police. So you’d think they’d be a highly professional crew who had their shit together. You’d think wrong. All the young guys were good, but the McBain murder investigation was being run by CI Kennedy – a first-class arse, if ever there was one – and CI Monroe, who was an ill-natured, red-faced son of a bitch. Both of them were masons, promoted way beyond their level of competence through insider connections. To add that they were lazy, Catholic-hating scumbags would be obvious and redundant but I’ve added it anyway out of spite.
It took an hour of tedious wrangling before Kennedy finally let us see Ed McBain’s notebook and another hour before he finally gave us his permission to photocopy the final page, which had relevance for our investigation.
All the hassle, however, was worth it.
The last page of the notebook was electric:
February 7th Carrick
Finnish delegation. Theft. Wallet. DI Duffy Carrick RUC called to scene. Good horse sense.
Talked to English reporter. Bigelow. FT. Accusations against Finns. Harald Ek the man to talk to. A fixer. Real operator. WW2 record. Mid 60’s? Very good English. Spent a lot of time in America. Played cards with him. Finnish game. Paskahousu. Ek won every hand even against boss. Arrange to interview Ek before they fly out tomorrow. Delay flight if necessary. Interview Ek under caution if necessary.
We took the photocopied note back to Carrick RUC. I blew it up and pasted it on the whiteboard in the incident room.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Lawson asked.
‘Kenny Dalziel’s not going to like it,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Because we’re going to have to interview Mr Ek.’
18: FINLANDIA
Two Ylikomisario (Senior Commissars) from the Central Criminal Police met Lawson and myself at the airport. Crabbie was needed back at the fort to run the CID and check in on my cat, but to be honest, I would have preferred him here rather than Lawson, who had listened to horrible music on his Walkman the whole way from Belfast to Heathrow and Heathrow to Helsinki. Horrible music from bands I’d never heard of. When I’d protested he’d skewered me with, ‘Come on, sir, you don’t want to be one of those guys yelling “Judas” at Bob Dylan because he plugs in an amp.’
The two Commissars introduced themselves as Alvar Akela and Aarno Ruusuvuori, which didn’t help much. To further complicate things, they looked similar: big, beefy blonde-haired men, about 30. As liaison officers they weren’t up to snuff either: their English was minimal and their bedside manner gruff and taciturn. They were dressed in the same sartorial mode as Detective Sergeant John McCrabban, who only ever wore a neo-Calvinist colour spectrum that ranged from dark grey to black. When they shook our hands, they gave me the old-fashioned hard-squeeze handshake and their small talk, while we waited for our luggage, was non-existent. If I’d been a conspiracy theorist I’d have thought that the Finnish police were trying to fuck with us from the getgo, but I’ve never been much of a one for conspiracies …
We cleared Customs and, much to our surprise, Alvar, or possibly Aarno, took us to one of the domestic gates and gave us each an air ticket.
‘What’s all this about? I thought we were in Helsinki?’ I said.
‘Mr Ek and Mr Laakso have arranged to meet you in Oulu,’ Alvar said.
‘Oulu?’
‘Oulu.’
‘Where’s Oulu?’<
br />
‘North.’
‘But why Oulu?’
‘Lennätin headquarters is in Oulu.’
‘I thought we’d arranged to meet them at a police station in Helsinki?’
‘No,’ Aarno said.
‘Change of plan. You will be met at airport by local police,’ Alvar said.
‘I can only hope that they’ll be as charming as you two.’
Lying just a degree of latitude from the Arctic Circle, Oulu in February cannot be wholeheartedly recommended as a pleasant place to either visit or do police work.
The small Dash 7 aircraft unnervingly, and rather bumpily, touched down on a frozen runway that seemed to have just been freshly scraped from the forest. It was only 2 pm when we landed, but already the sun was setting.
‘Vampires must have a field day up here,’ Lawson said gloomily.
The walk from the Dash 7 to the terminal building wasn’t exactly Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s Worst Journey in the World, but it wasn’t a walk around the vicar’s rose garden, either. Lawson and I were in suit jackets and raincoats and the wind howling straight down on us from its icy prison at the pole was murderous. All the other passengers were in furs or heavy woollen overcoats.
‘It must be 20 below,’ Lawson said, his lips turning blue.
‘Courage, Lawson. Remember Captain Scott.’
With morale-boosting talk like this I kept Lawson’s spirits up until we reached the terminal. A young woman in a gigantic furlined parka was holding a sign that said ‘RUC’.
I introduced ourselves and she said that she was ‘Vanhempi Konstaapeli Signe Hornborg.’
‘That’s easy for you to say.’
‘Vanhempi Konstaapeli’ apparently meant senior constable, although she was only 23. She was another blonde with short-cropped hair, rather eerie blue eyes and a pixie-like upturned nose.
‘Did you have a pleasant flight?’ she asked, in utterly perfect English.
‘It was OK,’ I said.
‘Oh yes. Very pleasant,’ Lawson insisted.
‘Is this your first visit to Oulu?’
‘Are you a local?’ Lawson asked, clearly smitten.
‘Very much so.’
After we retrieved our bags, she led us outside to her Volvo 240. Lawson jumped in the front and I sat in the back. We drove out of the airport and were quickly skirting a dense spruce forest. I could see glimpses of the town to the north and east, but we seemed to be heading in the other direction. Lawson asked Constable Hornborg about the nature of the landscape and she was happy to oblige him, in rather exhaustive detail.
‘The land is rising due to post-glacial rebound, the forests are spruce and fir with some birch, there are nine hundred lakes in this province alone, many of which are linked to the Baltic Sea …’
I stopped paying attention and tried to figure out where the hell we were going. The town was definitely in the other direction. Far to the east, I could see glimpses of chimneys, factories, houses – we seemed to be making a bee-line for the coast.
‘Excuse me, Constable Hornborg, where are we heading?’
‘To interview Mr Ek and Mr Laakso. I thought you knew? Yes?’
‘Well, yes, but where exactly are we going?’
‘Hailuoto.’
‘What’s Hailuoto?’
‘An island where Mr Laakso and many of the Lennätin executives have their homes. Lennätin has an estate there.’
‘Shouldn’t we be doing it at a police station?’
‘Mr Laakso has not been well. We did not want to put him to unnecessary stress,’ Constable Hornborg explained.
‘An island. Are we taking a ferry?’ Lawson asked, excited.
‘The ferry does not run in the winter,’ Constable Hornborg said.
‘How are we getting over there?’
‘There is an ice road across the Baltic. Hopefully there will be enough light for you to see. It is really something.’
‘An ice road! Wow. Wait till I tell my dad, he loves things like this,’ Lawson said.
‘In the future, because of the post-glacial rebound I was speaking about, Hailuoto will become joined to the mainland. All of Hailuoto was underwater only a few centuries ago.’
We reached the ice road and it indeed really was something. A narrow stretch of frozen sea-ice, reaching out five kilometres towards Hailuoto island.
‘Do not put your seat belt on. If we somehow go off the road into the sea we will need to make a quick escape from the car,’ Hornborg said. ‘You are supposed to have special tyres for driving on this, but I don’t use them,’ she said, comfortingly.
The sun set as we were on the ice and as we drove off on to the island it was pitch black.
Ten minutes more on a windy road through more forest and we arrived at a gate lodge which led to a massive house built in what, we would subsequently learn, was the ‘Finnish Deconstructivist’ style. It looked as if a giant had stomped on a massive block of stainless steel and put triple-glazed windows between the gaps. It was all angles and points and curves. I rather liked it.
‘Who lives here?’ I asked Constable Hornborg.
‘This is Mr Ek’s house.’
‘Impressive.’
The guard at the gate waved us through and we parked in front of the house.
‘Would you like a cup of tea or coffee before the interview?’ Constable Hornborg asked, as we walked towards the front door.
‘Sorry, what?’
‘Would you like a drink before the interview?’
‘We’re interviewing Ek and Laakso now?’
‘Yes. Mr Ek and Mr Laakso are travelling to America tomorrow.’
‘We’ve just got off an international flight! We’re in no fit state to conduct an interview,’ I protested.
‘I’m afraid it is now or never,’ Constable Hornborg said, glumly.
‘Oh I’m sure it’ll be fine, eh, boss?’ Lawson said. ‘I mean, what other choice do we have? We can’t go back to the Chief Inspector with no interview at all. He’ll go ballistic. The expense, Sergeant Dalziel …’
I said nothing and, frowning, followed them inside.
We were met by a tall, cadaverous bald man in a black suit who introduced himself as Kevin Wilmot QC, Mr Laakso’s ‘legal counsel’. Wilmot was an English barrister and had been brought in especially from London for this interview.
‘Quite the firepower for a simple chat,’ I said to Wilmot, shaking his proffered hand.
‘We just want to make sure that your interview is conducted within the parameters of Finnish law and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act,’ Wilmot explained, with a not entirely friendly smile.
I turned to Constable Hornborg. ‘Yes coffee would be good and some food, if you can find any. I’ve had nothing since a very early breakfast,’ I said.
We went up an open-plan staircase to a large conference room overlooking what presumably was the water (although it was too dark now to tell for sure).
Ek, Laakso, two more Finnish lawyers, a female stenographer, several male assistants and a female secretary were waiting for us. A tape recorder had been set up at one end of a large mahogany table and one of the flunkies was filming the proceedings through a video camera on a tripod.
‘Jesus,’ I muttered to myself.
‘It’s quite the set-up,’ Lawson agreed.
‘Aye, maybe it’s a sign that they’ve either got money to burn or something to hide.’
‘Or both,’ Lawson replied.
We shook hands with everyone in the room and sat down at the head of the table. Ek and Laakso seemed friendly enough. Laakso had on a dark business suit, his grey face rather like that famous self-description of W. H. Auden: a wedding cake left out in the rain. Ek was svelte and relaxed in a black sweater, brown cords and black loafers. Neither man looked particularly nervous.
Wilmot started the tape recorder. ‘If you’d like to begin gentlemen, my clients have a very tight schedule,’ he said.
‘Let’s wait until we get some
coffee. We’ve just finished a long journey,’ I stated firmly and said nothing while the tape spooled. There was an awkward five-minute silence until someone came in with a coffee pot and little cakes. I ate a cake and took a drink of coffee.
‘My name is Detective Inspector Sean Duffy, this is my colleague, Detective Constable Alexander Lawson. We’re investigating the violent death of one Lily Bigelow in Carrickfergus Castle on the night of February 7th 1987 and the possibly related violent death of Chief Superintendent Edward McBain in the village of Glenoe on the morning of February 8th 1987. Both Superintendent McBain and Miss Bigelow were travelling with the Lennätin delegation on its visit to Northern Ireland from February 5th through the 8th. Mr Laakso and Mr Ek, I take it that both victims were known to you?’ I began.
Neither Ek nor Laakso said anything.
Mr Wilmot smiled with a cool sanguine indifference and opened a file. ‘We’ve done a little research on this case and into your investigation,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘We were able to get the files on both deaths.’
‘What files? From whom?’
‘The Attorney-General has been in contact with your DPP.’
‘The Attorney-General of … Finland?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Just so. He is a friend of Mr Laakso. The Attorney-General spoke to your Director of Public Prosecutions, who was good enough to fax us your preliminary report on the case.’
‘When did all this happen?’
‘Today.’
‘While we were in the air?’
‘I believe so.’
I looked at Lawson. Did he see what was going on? We were being dicked about. The question was, why? Just your casual corporate bigfootery, or something more interesting?
‘In Lily Bigelow’s case you have arrested and charged a suspect, a Mr Clarke Underhill?’ Wilmot continued.
‘Yes, arrested, charged and released on bail,’ I said.
‘And as I understand it, the nature of the crime scene implies that only Mr Underhill could have committed the murder of Miss Bigelow.’
‘That would seem to be the situation,’ I agreed.
‘Mr Underhill seems to have been acting alone. No unusual amounts of money were paid into his bank account and he does not fit the profile of a “hit man”.’
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