Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall

by Jarkko Sipila

  Juha put the van back in gear and swung into the tree-lined driveway leading to the garage. The van splashed through puddles of water, the tires struggling to grip. If only the body were gone. Maybe the guy with the ski mask had come back to check on things and taken care of it himself. Saarnikangas didn’t have a problem with death per se—he had seen plenty of his junkie friends die from overdoses, but murder was different. And how in the hell do you get rid of a body? Would he even be able to lift it into the van?

  He pulled into the yard and backed up to the garage door.

  And who was this guy anyway? Saarnikangas remembered watching the victim from the gas station window, his clothes and his bouncy gait. Undoubtedly a younger guy. But why was he shot? The shooter had seemed like a professional hit man with his blue overalls and gloves. Unless he’d been on his way to work at the body shop in the middle of the night, Saarnikangas grinned to himself.

  He tried to remember if the killer had looked Russian or Estonian. The man had spoken perfect Finnish, though that didn’t necessarily mean much. Seemed like a hired hit, though. Juha remembered him saying something about a “Customs nark.” Revenge then. But whose revenge? Did Lydman know the hit man…or the victim? Or was it true that Lydman didn’t know anything about it? Too many questions.

  Saarnikangas rounded the corner and pushed open the side door carefully. Don’t be there, don’t be there, he muttered. Even in the light of day the garage was dark, but Saarnikangas saw the body on the floor in the exact same position where it had been left about twelve hours earlier: on its left side, curled up slightly. The baseball cap was still on, but it was slanted down over the face.

  Saarnikangas didn’t see where the victim had been shot. On the cement floor next to the body’s head was a patch of dark, dried blood. He assumed the bullet had hit him in the head.

  He looked around the garage, trying to calm himself down. The walls were covered in graffiti, and everything portable had been taken. Only a crude table made from rough-sawn planks remained, the sole thing nobody wanted.

  Saarnikangas left the service door open to let in some light. He circled the body, keeping his distance. Still not sure what to do, he approached it slowly, occasionally stopping to think.

  He bent down next to the body, extended a quivering hand, and slid the bill of the man’s cap aside. He froze when he recognized the man’s face and saw the bullet hole in his forehead.

  “Shit,” he gasped, springing back to his feet.

  CHAPTER 5

  PASILA POLICE HEADQUARTERS

  TUESDAY, 2:00 P.M.

  Detective Mikko Kulta, a muscular man wearing a loose-fitting blue sweater, sat at his desk typing out a report at a leisurely pace. Not far off, fellow detectives Anna Joutsamo and Kirsi Kohonen occupied themselves with other police business. Suhonen’s chair was empty as usual. Joutsamo’s radio was on: once again the headlines trumpeted the poor economic conditions. Layoffs and defaulting companies had been at the top of the news for months.

  Thanks to his headphones, Kulta missed the depressing newscast.

  He yawned, saved his interview transcript with the click of a mouse, and took the headphones off. Then he ran his hands through his short, pale brown hair, stretched his back, and cleared his throat.

  “You know what?” Kulta said. “Solving these violent crimes is too easy.”

  Joutsamo and Kohonen looked up from their desks.

  “Really,” Joutsamo said dryly.

  “Yeah,” he went on. “Just look at the statistics. About eighty to ninety percent of all violent crimes are solved, but only thirty percent of property crimes. And out of all the thefts in downtown Helsinki, only about three percent are ever solved.”

  Kohonen and Joutsamo glanced at one another.

  “Stats don’t lie,” Kulta concluded. “Property crimes are more difficult to solve.”

  Joutsamo snorted. “I can have a chat with Takamäki about moving you to a more challenging position. Hey, maybe you’d like to join the guys over at Itäkeskus.” Itäkeskus was an eastern suburb with a giant shopping mall of the same name, notorious for petty thefts and violence.

  “I didn’t mean that, but just think about the case I’ve got right now.”

  “You’re talking about Sandberg’s assault and battery?” Kohonen asked.

  Kulta nodded. “A man calls 911 at 2:30 in the morning asking for help. He says his wife has beaten him with a potato masher, and she’s got a knife in the other hand. A squad car heads out, and they take the drunk woman into custody. She’s charged with domestic assault, so the case is transferred to us. So I interview her, and she confesses to everything, complete with a motive. The husband claims he’d been out drinking with his friends that night, but the wife could smell perfume on him.”

  “Because of the smoking ban in the bars,” the red-haired Kohonen interrupted. “Used to be that you couldn’t smell anything but smoke after a night out.”

  “Now don’t you start complaining about smells,” Kulta remarked. “Every time you go horseback riding, everyone here knows all about it.”

  “Oh, and what about your gym bag…” Kohonen shot back.

  “Okay, cut it out,” Joutsamo interrupted.

  It was quiet for a moment, then Kulta continued.

  “So, case in point. Violent crimes practically solve themselves. Now, what if somebody had broken into Sandberg’s garage and stolen, say, the rims from his car. Almost without question the case’d never be solved. They’d be lucky if a patrol car ever made it out there.”

  Joutsamo and Kohonen glanced at each other again, shaking their heads. They could never be sure if Kulta was being serious.

  “Listen, Mikko,” Joutsamo began, “Go ahead and finish your transcript, and while you’re at it, you can ponder why it’s always you who gets the cases that seem to solve themselves.”

  Kohonen laughed aloud.

  “She who laughs last has the slowest wit,” Kulta smiled.

  * * *

  Markus Markkanen was sitting on the sofa at home, watching billiards on TV. His feet were kicked up on the coffee table, and he wondered when he would pick up a pool cue again. In his youth he had played quite a bit, but then again, he had been involved in plenty of other things during those years as well. He wasn’t especially proud of his past, but he didn’t regret it either. Not even his nickname, “Bogeyman.”

  His eight-year-old son Eetu was doing his homework on the floor. The teachers had given him some additional assignments, as he had fallen behind in class.

  The apartment needed cleaning, but that didn’t interest Markkanen. Technically, he and his wife were divorced, but the three of them lived together like a regular family. Located in Helsinki's western suburb of Espoo, next to the Big Apple shopping center, the apartment had four rooms with a sauna and a kitchen. Markkanen had pending restitution for old drug charges, so the apartment was in his wife’s name. Had he shared co-ownership of the apartment, the repo man would’ve certainly paid a visit. At the moment, his “ex”-wife was at some fitness class. She could just as well have run around the block, but if the class kept her happy, then so be it, he thought.

  “Dad, what’s fourteen plus seventeen?” Eetu asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Fourteen plus seventeen. What’s that make?”

  “I’m not gonna tell you. Do the math.”

  “Come on…” the boy whined. “This is lame.”

  “Nobody’s gonna hold your hand during the test,” Markkanen said.

  “This is bullshit.”

  “Hey, where’d you learn that kind of language?”

  The boy didn’t respond. Markkanen continued, “You gotta learn to figure things out on your own. Just do it.”

  Markkanen snatched a bottle of Johnny Walker off the coffee table and poured some whiskey into his empty glass. He gulped down half. Markkanen had had better whiskey, but this was alright. Alcohol helped him think.

  “What’s twenty minus thirteen?”
r />   “Didn’t I just tell you…”

  He stopped short when his cellphone rang. The display said ‘Lindström,’ and he got up and walked into the hallway.

  “Hello,” Markkanen answered coolly.

  “Heard anything about Eriksson yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “This is very important.”

  “Well, he hasn’t reported to me,” Markkanen said dryly.

  “Don’t talk back. We’ve gotta find him.”

  “I’ll let you know right away if he contacts me.”

  “No, you have to look for him,” Lindström demanded. “Have you been to his apartment?”

  “Is this something that I could help out with?”

  “No,” Lindström snapped and hung up.

  Markkanen went back into the living room. Eetu had abandoned his homework and was playing some first-person shoot-em-up game on Xbox.

  “Eetu, what’s twenty minus thirteen?”

  “Seven,” he answered, without looking up from his game.

  “You did the math yourself?”

  “I used the calculator on my cellphone. You said I should learn how to figure things out on my own.”

  That made him laugh, but he quickly regained his stern expression. Clever kid, maybe he’ll become something after all. He thought about watching some more pool, but decided against it. Instead, he poured himself another drink.

  “Dad!” the boy exclaimed. “Did you see that shot… From the hip! Here, watch the replay. Right in the forehead!”

  CHAPTER 6

  DOWNTOWN HELSINKI

  TUESDAY, 8:32 P.M.

  Juha Saarnikangas’ van was parked on the east end of the Boulevard in the heart of Helsinki. Raindrops were falling lazily onto the windshield. Through the blur, the lights and billboards on Erottaja were visible.

  The junkie glanced at the clock on his phone: 8:32 P.M. Two minutes late already. He had been agonizing over his problem and now he had a solution, or at least he thought so.

  The door swung open suddenly, startling him, and Suhonen slid inside. His leather jacket glistened with rain.

  “Nice Ducato. Is it yours?”

  “You’re late,” Saarnikangas snapped.

  “Your clock is fast,” said Suhonen. The broken dashboard clock showed 1:30.

  Saarnikangas forced himself to breathe slowly. Both his hands were on the steering wheel. He knew Suhonen would study his every movement and draw his own conclusions from them.

  “So?” Suhonen asked. “You wanted to meet?”

  “I have a question for you,” Saarnikangas began, still looking out the windshield. He hit the wipers once, so he could see through the glass.

  “You see that small brown building up there? If you can tell me what’s special about it, I’ll tell you something you don’t know.”

  Suhonen studied the plain building at the intersection of Boulevard, Erottaja, and Northern Esplanade. He recalled that sometime in the early nineties he had received a tip, which had led him to a couple of sport-gambling hustlers who were operating out of the basement of the building. Probably not what Saarnikangas had in mind. Besides, such operations weren’t that unusual—sports had become a big business.

  “Listen Juha,” the officer snorted. “Enough with the quiz show. You called me, so let’s have it.”

  “You know, if all you do is stare at the pavement when you walk in this city, you’ll miss out on all the interesting stuff,” Juha said.

  Suhonen knew that Saarnikangas had studied art history at the University of Helsinki before drugs had taken over.

  “So, we’re talking about history,” Suhonen feigned excitement. “I do remember a story about that building from the sixties or seventies. Narcotics was on a raid and confiscated a whole half an ounce of hash. Helsingin Sanomat even ran a story on it that hung on the wall of the office for quite a while. It takes a bit more than half an ounce to get a journalist excited nowadays, although the police are interested in whatever crumbs they can find.”

  “No, art history! Alright I’ll tell you. That building is the first one that Alvar Aalto ever designed in Helsinki. It was finished in 1951, soon to be followed by the, Cultural Center, Finlandia Hall, and the Enso-Gutzeit headquarters. This is where it all began.”

  “Thank you. I’ve been enlightened,” he scoffed, though he was actually amazed by this tidbit.

  “There’s something else.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  Saarnikangas continued to stare straight ahead and kept his hands on the wheel. “I heard something that should interest you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Do you know Jerry Eriksson?”

  Suhonen thought for a second. “Seems vaguely familiar… Eriksson you say? Wasn’t he involved in some internet fraud or something like that?”

  “Yeah, that too.”

  “What about him?” he asked, but was interrupted when his cellphone rang. It was his ex-girlfriend Raija. He pushed “End Call,” and the ringer cut short.

  Saarnikangas waited a bit before continuing, “I heard he might be in deep shit.”

  “How deep?”

  “Deep. Maybe six feet deep, or at least in danger of it.”

  Suhonen didn’t ask how Saarnikangas knew about it, since he wouldn’t have answered anyway. A streetcar rumbled along the Boulevard and sped past the van. It would continue to the Hietalahti Market, then turn around.

  Rain was keeping almost everyone indoors. Only a few umbrellas bobbed along the street.

  “What do you mean?” Suhonen asked.

  “Murdered. Maybe.”

  “Where? When? Why? And by who?”

  “I don’t know. Everyone has enemies, but I haven’t the slightest clue who Eriksson’s are.”

  Suhonen scowled at him. Saarnikangas continued to stare out the windshield. “Either you’re shitting me or there’s something you’re not telling me. Which one is it?”

  Saarnikangas shifted, keeping his hands on the wheel. He didn’t dare look Suhonen in the eyes.

  “Aalto would’ve been better off had he never designed the Enso headquarters. Otherwise he’s a first-class architect.” The headquarters of Enso, the largest Finnish paper company, sat on an imposing site on the Helsinki waterfront, about a quarter mile down the Esplanade from where they were. The modern five-story building was composed of large windows surrounded by white marble squares, and seemed utterly orphaned in its nineteenth century Art Nouveau surroundings.

  “Juha!” Suhonen barked.

  Saarnikangas didn’t answer.

  Suhonen jerked Juha’s right hand off the wheel and twisted it, forcing him to make eye contact.

  “Listen,” Suhonen said quietly, looking him directly in the eyes. “You called me. Eriksson’s disappearance is interesting, so if you know anything more about it, speak now.”

  “Or never,” Saarnikangas continued. Suhonen wasn’t smiling.

  The silence lay heavy. Saarnikangas muttered in a low voice, “Well, there is this one thing. Rumor has it that Eriksson was some sort of Customs nark, and that he was knocked off in some abandoned house or garage.”

  “What garage? Where?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Talk!”

  “Well, uhh, I don’t know what garage, but you know the Pakila Teboil, right?”

  Suhonen nodded.

  “Somewhere close by there. That’s all I know.”

  “Where’d you hear that Eriksson was a Customs nark?”

  Saarnikangas laughed. “I overheard someone talking on the subway.”

  Suhonen wasn’t surprised by his answer.

  “Okay,” Suhonen said, “When did this happen?”

  “I’m not really sure. Not long ago. I heard about it today and thought, being an upstanding citizen and all, maybe the authorities would be interested in this,” Juha said, almost forgetting one important thing.

  “Intel has its price, right?”

  “Of course,” Suhonen chuckled.

&n
bsp; “Five hundred, at least.”

  “Let’s see if we find the body first, then I’ll get back to you. You can count on it.”

  “Okay,” Saarnikangas backed down. “It’s just a rumor, not a sure thing or anything.”

  “I’ll get back to you,” Suhonen said and got out of the van.

  The door slammed shut, and Juha watched as the cop crossed the Boulevard and disappeared. He took a deep breath before starting the van. It had gone well. With Suhonen’s help, maybe he could wash his hands of the whole thing.

  * * *

  Suhonen was walking west on the Boulevard toward “Plague Park,” nicknamed after the epidemic that hit Helsinki in 1710. About a thousand people were buried under the park in mass graves. Yellow lights gleamed off the wet cobblestones. He crossed Yrjö Street, where his car was parked about a hundred fifty feet away. The linden trees had dropped their leaves, and through their canopies, he could clearly see Helsinki’s Old Church, bathed in light.

  Jerry Eriksson’s name was familiar, but Suhonen couldn’t picture his face. A young newcomer, anyhow. But a Customs nark? Why would Customs be interested in a low-class swindler like him? Or maybe his info on Eriksson was out of date.

  As he reached his unmarked Peugeot, Suhonen unlocked the doors with his key fob, and the blinkers flashed.

  He had a murder to solve—if indeed there was one—but no corpse. Yet. The first order of business would be to find Eriksson, dead or alive.

  Suhonen started the car and considered organizing a search party.

  The Pakila Teboil, he mused. Maybe he’d just go have a look around. Yeah, there were a hell of a lot of houses in that area, but not so many abandoned ones. A few hours of canvassing the neighborhood wouldn’t hurt.

  His cellphone rang again. It was Raija. For a second, Suhonen considered answering, then hit the red button.