Darling

by Sipila, Jarkko

  * * *

  Takamäki turned to Nykänen and said, “Römpötti saw Lind by the apartment building.”

  They stood behind the desk of the on-duty lieutenant at Helsinki police headquarters. The desks had screens, and on the back wall was a large screen showing all the patrol cars’ locations on the map, with a live feed from the police surveillance cameras.

  Joutsamo came into the room. “I have location data from her phone. It was last spotted around the Nӓyttelijӓ Street apartment buildings.”

  “That’s not good,” Nykänen said.

  The Narcotics surveillance team was in the apartment building’s parking lot and the on-duty lieutenant, Helmikoski, had a police radio connection with them.

  “Anything new?” Helmikoski asked.

  “No. The lights in the apartment are still on and there’s no change in the situation. It’s too high up for us to see in. The man has been to the window a couple of times.”

  “I’m sure you heard,” Helmikoski said. “Should we go in?”

  Takamäki and Nykänen exchanged looks. Joutsamo stood next to them.

  “Would we ruin anything by going in?” Takamäki wondered.

  “The Rahkola case is still under investigation. If it was just about that, I’d say we wait. But it isn’t.”

  “If we can prevent something, then let’s go in,” Joutsamo offered. “But what would we be preventing? We don’t know where Lind is. Maybe her phone battery died. On the other hand, she sent the text about Korpivaara’s innocence, so she must be up to something.”

  “We don’t have many pieces to the puzzle, and they may give the wrong impression,” Takamäki said. “Look at them individually: Is Aarnio involved in Lind’s possible disappearance? No idea. Is he involved in Maiju Rahkola’s murder? No idea. Laura Vatanen’s murder? We don’t know. Is he connected to all of these somehow? It’s likely.”

  “We don’t have the SWAT guys together yet, but the dogs are ready,” Helmikoski said. “They can be in there in two minutes.”

  * * *

  Kulta rang the doorbell carefully.

  “Coming,” the woman screeched.

  Twenty seconds later the drunken Mrs. Ridanpӓӓ opened the door.

  “Well, we know each other.”

  Mikko Kulta pushed the woman aside and walked in.

  “Aren’t we feeling frisky today,” she said, breathing red wine into his face.

  Closing the door, Kulta asked, “Do you remember who I am?”

  “You’re one of the cops, and didn’t you go get me that wine?”

  “Good,” Kulta said. “Listen, Mrs. Ridanpӓӓ, I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer me straight. Did a brunette lady in a jacket come see you today?”

  “The lawyer? Yeah, that fancy lady was here.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That’s a secret!” the drunken old woman said, pressing her finger to her lips. “She’s a lawyer, so I told her. Cops will spill it to everyone.”

  “If you don’t tell me,” Kulta said, looking at the woman angrily, “I’ll get you sent to a rehab place for old alcoholic women. They’ve got no red wine there, only tea and water.”

  The woman looked horrified. “They don’t have places like that.”

  * * *

  Suhonen rang the doorbell of the apartment on the top floor. He had his ID ready. A twenty-year-old bearded guy in a T-shirt and shorts opened the door.

  “Police,” Suhonen said, showing the guy his blue-and-white card.

  The guy’s face was beet-red. “I’m not…”

  “Oh, hell,” Suhonen said, as he noticed the sweet smell of pot coming from the apartment.

  “I, um… for my own use,” the man whimpered.

  “What’s your name?” Suhonen asked.

  “Vesa Mӓkinen,” the guy blurted out.

  Suhonen pushed the man in and down in the only chair in the living room. A mattress lay on the floor and a TV and an Xbox console by the wall. The guy had been playing “Call of Duty.”

  “And I bet you haven’t paid your cable bills either,” Suhonen ventured.

  “Well, no.”

  “Sit there and don’t move.”

  Suhonen peeked into the bedroom where several bright lights and pots of healthy-looking cannabis plants sat on the floor. The flowers would be made into hash and the pedals into marijuana.

  “I…um…”

  “Vesa Mӓkinen,” Suhonen said tensely. “Sit quietly. Don’t do anything. This has nothing to do with your plants.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Just sit there and don’t move,” Suhonen said.

  The undercover detective almost wanted to laugh. He had picked the apartment because he wanted to see into the next building fifty yards away, specifically into Aarnio’s apartment. And of course it had to belong to a pothead.

  He turned off the living room lights and glanced at Mӓkinen, who was sitting still.

  Suhonen looked into the binoculars and found the right apartment. He saw a man by the window and recognized him from the bar in Kannelmӓki: Kimmo Aarnio.

  Suhonen leaned against the wall to steady the binoculars. He could now see details in the apartment. He noticed a woman’s bare leg.

  He grabbed his phone and called Takamäki.

  “Aarnio is in his apartment and there is someone else there. I can see a leg.”

  “Alive?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Okay,” Takamäki said.

  * * *

  Pave, a K-9 dog, walked silently by its master. The only sound was its nails scraping the stairs. That could’ve been prevented with dog socks, but today it wasn’t necessary.

  Four uniformed officers waited behind the door, and Kulta was standing to the side. Kulta heard the same command in his earpiece as the K-9 patrol: “Go in now.”

  The first officer broke the lock and dropped the ram. Between his knees he held cutters that he would use next to cut the safety chain. But the chain wasn’t latched, and the door opened. Two officers went in and the dog waited by the door. They heard a dog bark inside the apartment.

  “Police!” yelled the officer, who looked like TV’s Jack Bauer, pointing a gun.

  They reached the living room in two seconds and saw Kimmo Aarnio lying on top of a woman in a chair.

  “Disengage! Move away from the woman!”

  The man didn’t react.

  The officers were only a few feet away, but the man kept on. The Jack Bauer-lookalike kept his weapon aimed at Aarnio. The other officer jumped over the chair and tackled Aarnio by the waist, dropping him to the floor.

  The officer with the gun came to help, and within three seconds the naked Aarnio was sprawled on his stomach on the floor, his hands cuffed behind his back.

  “Police brutality,” Aarnio grunted. “Fuckin’ cops. The Attorney General’s gonna get you for this. I want a lawyer.”

  TWO WEEKS LATER,

  DECEMBER 22, 2011

  CHAPTER 28

  THURSDAY, 8:55 A.M.

  HELSINKI POLICE HEADQUARTERS, PASILA

  With the wind from the northwest, the smell of smoke drifted all the way to the Pasila Police Headquarters.

  The fire department had received the call at 2:50 A.M.

  The fire trucks arrived at the scene within five minutes but were too late. The fire was exceptionally ravaging. The rest of the Haaga strip mall could be saved, but the Alamo Bar was gone.

  Joutsamo and Takamäki found out about the fire from Sanna Römpötti’s morning report on TV. Takamäki woke up at six forty-five and watched the seven o’clock news after his shower.

  Joutsamo didn’t watch the news until seven thirty.

  Römpötti reported that the fire started around closing time. The cause was unknown, but the fire chief suspected foul play. Römpötti said it was likely that people died in the fire, but it wasn’t until the eight o’clock news that they learned there were four victims. One person, the bartender, was re
scued.

  Takamäki got a call on his cell phone after eight o’clock. The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, wanted to meet with him at the police station at nine. She said she had information about the Alamo fire, and she requested to have Detective Sergeant Anna Joutsamo present as well.

  It was 8:55 A.M., and Takamäki and Joutsamo were waiting in the lobby. A dozen passport applicants were in line, so the officers kept their voices down.

  “Suhonen sent me a text message yesterday,” Joutsamo said. “Salmela will be released from the hospital after the New Year.”

  “Good,” Takamäki said. “Salmela is tough. I don’t think he’ll die of a heart attack; I think he’ll either go in his sleep or get shot.”

  Joutsamo sipped her coffee from a paper cup she had gotten upstairs.

  “Did you hear about Lind?”

  “I heard she was recovering,” Takamäki said.

  “Physically, anyway. We haven’t been able to question her yet. She’s okay but can’t talk about it. She’ll be spending her Christmas in the hospital, too.”

  Kimmo Aarnio was arrested in his apartment in the act of raping Lind. The Forensics team had found Laura Vatanen’s DNA, from her hair and blood, in Aarnio’s washing machine filter. The man had washed his bloodied clothes, but enough DNA had remained.

  Maiju Rahkola’s remains also had samples of Aarnio’s DNA—he would get life in prison.

  The mystery of the bloody fabric scraps found in the plastic bag from the woods was also solved. The rags had feline blood on them. Aarnio didn’t say anything about it during the questioning, but Joutsamo guessed he had urged his Rottweiler to kill a cat. He had buried the cat in the woods and was bringing the towels to the dumpster when Kulta and Kohonen happened to be there. He apparently used the towels to clean off his dog that had since been put down.

  Takamäki and Joutsamo had scrutinized the mistakes in their investigation. Laura Vatanen’s murder had seemed much too simple at first. They’d missed the new developments in the case and forgotten their motto, “Never Assume,” and replaced it with “Let’s get it done.”

  They’d just wanted to solve the case

  The police had questioned the tenants further. Sini Rentola-Lammi, whom they found in a drug cave in Tampere, told her story. Jorma Korpivaara was let go four days after Aarnio’s arrest. The whole thing had been in the headlines for a week. Among the most interviewed was Vatanen’s next-door neighbor, the old alcoholic woman, who spoke freely. Apparently her willingness to comment was kindly rewarded by the reporters.

  Joutsamo finished her coffee and glanced at her watch. It was one minute to nine.

  “What’s this about? Who is this woman? And why does she want us both here?”

  “She didn’t tell me her name. She said she’d give us more information if we showed up.”

  It was snowing again outside.

  A woman in a beige coat walked through the doorway and into the lobby. Both Takamäki and Joutsamo recognized her immediately: Marjaana Vatanen.

  She looked tense as she glared first at Joutsamo and then at Takamäki.

  “You set free the men who raped my child.”

  The officers were silent.

  “Pieces of shit,” the woman spat. “You’ll probably want this on video, but I’ll tell you right off so you know what we’re talking about. I confess to setting fire to the Alamo Bar.”

  The woman paused but the officers didn’t say anything.

  “You let the rapists go, so this is on you too,” the woman yelled.

  The people in line for passports turned to see the angry woman.

  Takamäki grabbed the woman by the arm and said, “Why don’t we go upstairs to talk about this.”

  Marjaana Vatanen didn’t resist when Takamäki walked her to the VCU’s glass doors.

  “Hah,” the woman laughed. She spoke fast. “Five days. Five days I waited for my chance. Every night in my car, in front of that place. It wasn’t easy… It wasn’t easy. Then finally, last night, they were the last ones to leave. All the fucking assholes. Korpivaara, Niskala, Rautalampi, and Lahtela. They were the last ones at the bar. It wasn’t even hard. A few drops in the bartender’s coffee and the men’s beer. Hah, not hard at all, not at all.”

  Joutsamo opened the door.

  “Calm down,” Takamäki said.

  “Not hard at all, a few drops were enough. I got the bartender to get some teabags from the backroom. A few drops, I knew that was enough. So-o-o easy… I did feel sorry for the bartender, I really did. I felt sorry for him,” the woman said and laughed.

  “Assholes,” she went on. “It’s a shame. What kind of a word is that, anyway? Those men didn’t know that word. The fucking assholes got just what they deserved. A gallon of gasoline and a match. Fucking assholes.”

  The woman stopped in front of the elevator and turned to the detectives.

  “I don’t understand why they didn’t get put away for what they did to my girl.”

  The detectives were silent. The elevator bell rang.