Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall

by Jarkko Sipila

The ministry’s new position was that all crimes should be solved according to strict standard protocols. The laws governing police investigations, interrogations, and operations were also being reformed. It would be interesting to see what came of it. One thing was clear: it was almost impossible for the new rules to be any more complicated than they already were.

  Takamäki wondered if he’d done the right thing ordering Saarnikangas’ arrest. If the man didn’t cooperate, he’d be convicted of murder with the evidence they already had. In court, his silence would be taken as an admission of guilt. If he was innocent, he had every reason to clear his name, and they would give him every opportunity to do that.

  On the other hand, Saarnikangas might take the rap to protect somebody else. In that instance, despite a successful conviction, the killer would go free.

  But Takamäki believed Saarnikangas would talk. After all, this was the same guy who had told Suhonen about the body in the first place.

  His phone rang.

  “Hello.” The caller’s number was displayed as “Unknown.”

  “Hi. Sanna Römpötti here,” said a woman’s voice.

  Takamäki would have recognized her voice anyway. She was a veteran crime reporter for Channel 3 TV news.

  “What now?”

  “Don’t steal my questions.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ll ask the questions,” she laughed.

  Takamäki was quiet for a moment. “But aren’t the detectives supposed to ask the questions first?”

  “True. So what’s new?” Römpötti went ahead with her interview.

  “What’s new… Actually, not much,” he said. Under no circumstances would it make sense to talk about the Eriksson case at this sensitive stage. Broadcasting it would only complicate matters further.

  “Nothing?” she pried in a voice that suggested she knew better.

  “Nothing that I can talk about or that would interest TV reporters.”

  “Well, I heard you found a body.”

  Takamäki swore to himself. “We find bodies every day. The population of Helsinki isn’t getting any younger.”

  “I mean a homicide victim.”

  Takamäki wasn’t sure how much she knew. So far, she was just baiting him with questions.

  “Like I said, nothing that I can talk about or that would interest TV reporters.”

  “How do you know what interests us? Besides, we’re not just TV news anymore, We’re on the internet in real-time,” she said, more aggressively.

  “I see.”

  “Listen, Kari. You’ve been investigating this murder since the beginning of the week, which means it’s pretty interesting. If it was a routine case, you would have announced it right away.”

  “Sorry,” he said bluntly. “No Scoop of the Year this time.”

  “So you’re declining to comment.”

  “What’s there to comment about?”

  Römpötti was silent for a moment. “Well, I guess I’ll just put it on the website then.”

  “Put what?”

  “Check our website in five minutes,” she said and hung up.

  Damn. How in the hell had she found out about the case already? That would be almost impossible to answer. Journalists had their sources and dozens of people knew about Eriksson’s murder.

  Competition for internet news had changed the relationship between the police and the media. Now journalists demanded every crumb of information immediately, and more often than not they published it the moment they heard it. There was a time when Takamäki could have asked her to call back in the afternoon, and they could have dealt with the issue like grown-ups. Now, Römpötti was in a rush to get the story online before somebody beat her to it.

  One thing was for sure: some details of the case were about to become public. Now Takamäki had to consider its impact on the investigation.

  CHAPTER 18

  KOUVOLA WAREHOUSE

  THURSDAY, 10:58 A.M.

  The Russian truck driver was a pro. He effortlessly backed the trailer into the warehouse, hopped out of the cab, and ducked behind the corner to smoke a cigarette. The system was simple: the driver disappears so he never sees what goes in or comes out of the truck. The second semi was idling nearby, waiting its turn.

  Markus Markkanen only knew Jormanainen—the buyer—by his last name, and figured it wasn’t real. The bearded man was in his fifties and wore a ragged brown leather jacket. Markkanen knew the man had received a suspended sentence for fraudulent invoicing of construction companies.

  Jormanainen had brought along a couple helpers.

  “Makle, Axeli, and Rahkis, let’s move.”

  A guy in a windbreaker and a baseball cap dragged himself to his feet and slowly swung open the container doors. A younger fellow with copious amounts of gel in his hair started the forklift. The third, a bald man smoking a cigar, sat on the back bumper of an empty cleaning company truck.

  “Didn’t you clowns hear me? Get to work!”

  The TV sets were arranged lengthwise in special racks inside the container. Helmet-hair forked the first rack of ten sets out and paused on the loading dock while Jormanainen jotted down the screen sizes from the cardboard boxes.

  The first group, all ten, were seventy-inchers. Markkanen remembered seeing in the newspaper that these top-end TVs had a suggested retail price of up to fifteen grand.

  The forklift driver transferred the TVs to the smaller truck.

  The TVs in the second rack were all fifty-inchers, and Jormanainen wrote something down in his pad.

  The forklift driver knew his stuff, and the truck filled quickly to capacity with thirty-five sets. The bald guy hopped into the driver’s seat and drove off. The guy in the windbreaker backed up a second identical truck into the building. They emptied the rest of the container into it. All together, the container had held 20 seventy- and 40 fifty-inchers.

  The forklift driver filled the semi with rubber gloves from the loading dock. The first phase of the operation had taken twenty minutes.

  Just as quickly, they unloaded the second semi and packed it full of rubber gloves. Baldie and the guy in the windbreaker had both driven off with their second loads. Once the semi was gone, Jormanainen sent helmet-hair packing and pulled a fat stack of cash out of the breast pocket of his jacket.

  He looked at his list. In total, there were 115 televisions.

  “Okay,” he said. “By my count, we had 45 seventy-inch units and 70 fifty-inch units. The price was eight grand a piece for the seventy-inchers, and the fifty-inchers are four grand apiece.”

  Markkanen nodded and did the math in his head: the seventy-inchers would come to 360,000, and the fifty-inchers would be 280,000. So all together, 640,000 euros.

  Jormanainen glanced at Markkanen. “But we could just agree that there were only 35 seventy-inchers and 60 fifty-inchers.”

  “And?” Markkanen asked.

  “A little bonus for you and me. I’ll buy ’em from you—off the record—for half price.”

  “A scam on a scam, huh?” Markkanen grinned.

  “Whatever, but we have to account for the side deal separately. Nobody really knows exactly how many units were in those crates, just as long as the numbers match up roughly.”

  Markkanen nodded. “And your pals didn’t count ’em?”

  “No, they’re from Kotka. They don’t teach math over there. Quite a bunch, by the way. I told ’em to dress normal today—nothing goofy or anything like that. And what do they do? Come here looking like the cast of Sopranos…”

  He looked back at his notepad and counted, “35 times 8…then 60 times 4…so 280 plus 240 makes 520.”

  “I thought they didn’t teach math in Kotka.”

  “I’m from the ’burbs,” the man smiled. “So let’s settle the official part first.”

  He took out a wad of money. Bundles of purple five-hundred-euro notes were bound together with rubber bands. “Each bundle’s ten grand, so twenty bills in each.”

 
; Markkanen nodded and kept a tally as Jormanainen counted off the bills. After about ten minutes of counting, Jormanainen evened up the stack and handed it to Markkanen.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay,” Markkanen said, shoving the bundles of cash into his breast pocket. The pocket strained at the seams.

  “Now for Santa’s share. Ten seventy-inchers at four grand a pop, and ten fifty-inchers at two grand each. According to my suburban math, that makes sixty Gs, right?”

  Markkanen nodded and Jormanainen counted off sixty thousand more.

  “We good?”

  “Yup,” Markkanen answered.

  “That’s it then,” Jormanainen said. Without another word, he was on his way.

  Markkanen waited a couple minutes and checked his gun again. The foursome could be waiting outside the warehouse door.

  He checked around the warehouse one more time. There was no sign that they had even been there. He turned off the lights and opened the front door warily. Nobody. Markkanen locked the door and circled around to his car.

  He grabbed a plastic bag from the passenger foot well, thrust Lindström’s money inside, and kept his own share in his pocket.

  After driving through the gate he got out to lock it up. That took thirty seconds.

  He glanced at his watch: 11:59 A.M. Thanks to Jormanainen’s shrewdness, his hourly wages were much more than he expected. With sixty grand on top of the ten he’d get from Lindström, the job had turned out to be pretty lucrative. A construction worker would have to work a few years to earn the same pay.

  Satisfied, Markkanen turned on the radio and drove off.

  * * *

  Anna Joutsamo poked her head into Takamäki’s office. “It’s on the radio now too.”

  “Yup,” Takamäki nodded. “A couple of Römpötti’s cohorts have already called.”

  “What’d you tell ’em?”

  “Same thing I told Römpötti. No comment. I can’t deny it, since I’d be lying in their faces, but I can’t admit it either.”

  Joutsamo scratched her head. “But if you don’t deny it, they’ll consider it an admission.”

  Takamäki had Römpötti’s article pulled up on his screen. The headline was striking: “Helsinki VCU Investigates Underworld Hit.” The article itself was quite short: “The Helsinki Violent Crimes Unit is investigating a murder that occurred earlier this week. A body was discovered in northern Helsinki. Detective Lieutenant Kari Takamäki of the Helsinki VCU declined to comment. The murder appears to have resulted from a dispute between two criminal organizations.”

  Based on the article, Römpötti didn’t seem to know much about the investigation. On the other hand, she could be protecting her source by being intentionally vague.

  A number of VCU detectives, Forensics, the Financial Crimes Unit officers, and the staff of the medical examiner’s office all knew something about the case. Who in the world had squealed? And with all the talk that flies in the police cafeteria, who would ever know? It was a pity, but nothing to cry about.

  Takamäki wasn’t interested in how much Römpötti or anyone else knew about the case. Now he was focused on how to use the media for the benefit of the investigation.

  “Any ideas?” Takamäki asked. Joutsamo leaned against the door frame and shrugged.

  “Alright. I think we should release a photo of Eriksson and ask the public to notify the police if they have any information. Let’s say he was murdered, but no other details. Römpötti used ‘northern Helsinki’ and that’s close enough,” Takamäki said.

  “But a name and a photo?” Joutsamo hesitated.

  “Yup, otherwise it’ll be too ambiguous. That should also allow us to find out more about Eriksson’s circle of friends and recent activities.”

  “But if the media has a name, they’ll dig up his record.”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Probably not, since we didn’t get any leads from the fraud cases anyway.”

  “Maybe the media guys will dig up something else,” Takamäki said. “I’ll send out a press release at three. Before then, make sure a police chaplain or somebody from our team goes to visit his family, as well as the girl who filed the report…what was her name again?”

  “Kristiina Nyholm.”

  Takamäki reflected for a moment.

  “What is it?” Joutsamo asked.

  “It’s a long shot, but find out if this Kristiina is related to Jouko Nyholm from Customs.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Takamäki looked Joutsamo in the eyes. “Just the last name…that’s all.”

  * * *

  Markkanen had been driving for about a half an hour, when his phone alerted him to an incoming text. The message was from Lydman, and concise: “3.”

  Markkanen cursed.

  He had heard the news on the radio. There was no reason to panic, but Lydman seemed ruffled. The message meant that Markkanen should call Lydman on his #3 phone, which had a new prepaid SIM card and a brand new number. Any calls made with it would be secure, since the cops couldn’t tap it in real-time.

  A sign reading “The Baron” in cursive directed him to a gas station, actually more of a tourist trap. Markkanen didn’t need any of their coffee, gas, food, books, magazines, playgrounds, or tourist trash, nor any of their other services. He pulled the Beamer into a snowy parking space and stepped out to get his phones from the trunk. He had some half-dozen cellphones, and the same number of SIM cards. He had written a number on the back of them for times like this when he needed a secure line himself. Lindström also had a few more secure phones in his apartment.

  Switching phones was the criminal’s way of combating the Finnish police, who easily obtained warrants for phone taps. Beyond listening for illicit activity, the police also used cellphones to link criminals with each other by monitoring who they called. The cops listened in on criminals, and continually extended their knowledge of crime networks by finding new links.

  Markkanen, too, was using a brand-new SIM card with a completely new phone number. This way, both of them eliminated the chance that the police could listen in.

  Markkanen installed one of the new SIM cards into an old Nokia 3310. The battery was dead, so he got back in the car and plugged it into the cigarette lighter. He found the number to Lydman’s #3 phone in his notes and dialed. It rang three times before Lydman answered.

  “Fuck,” said an icy voice.

  “What’s up?”

  “You been listening to the radio or surfing the Web?”

  “I heard it on the radio,” Markkanen said coolly.

  “Fuck.”

  “You’re like a broken hip-hop record. What’s your problem?”

  “They found Eriksson!”

  Markkanen watched a family get out of their car. The kids were jumping around, elated to be outside.

  “So what? We’re ready for it. Nothing to worry about. If someone goes down for this, it’ll be your buddy. There’s nothing for us to worry about. You know, we’ve set the stage. The note about the debt and what not. So, take it easy…”

  “I ain’t worried about Juha, but that Korpela is another story.”

  “The Skull?”

  "Yeah him. He threatened me with the scissors. He thinks he’s gonna get life and we’re to blame.”

  Tony Korpela was a lunatic who had done time for a brutal scissor murder. But Lydman had used one word that Markkanen didn’t like.

  “What do you mean we?” he menaced. If Lydman had done his job correctly, the Skulls shouldn’t know anything about him.

  “Yes, we. Korpela said he checked around and found out that this extends beyond me. He mentioned your name.”

  “You didn’t tell him?”

  “No.”

  Liar, Markkanen thought, but understood Lydman’s concern. The Skulls were good at keeping their end of the bargain, but if things went bad, you’d likely wind up on the wrong end of it.

  “What did he say exactly?”

 
; “I didn’t tape it!” Lydman snapped, then calmed down. “He cussed like the devil and said that we didn’t keep our end of the deal. He wished you and me the best in hell, blustered on about revenge, then demanded more money.”

  “How much?”

  “Hundred grand.”

  “No!”

  “Apparently that’s the standard penalty for contract violation,” Lydman said.

  “Really.”

  Lydman paused. “So, you gonna pay?”

  “Where would I get that kind of money?” he said, glancing at the plastic bag on the floor.

  It contained many times that sum. He thought of another alternative: he had seventy grand in his pocket…maybe he could scrape together another thirty, but… Shit!

  Eriksson had been asking for it—he had become too arrogant. Markkanen could have tolerated his crowing and the fact that the kid had passed him up in Lindström’s organization, but the blackmail was the last straw. Somehow, the brat had figured out that Markkanen was embezzling money from Lindström, and had threatened to rat on him. In the end, the decision had been easy—Eriksson had stepped, or rather, had tried to step on the wrong toes.

  Markkanen had lured Lydman into the scheme by claiming that Eriksson was a Customs nark. Markkanen was amused that in the end, Eriksson did actually have a Customs connection. Lydman had an in with the Skulls, and had arranged the hit for twenty-five grand. Lydman had also found a convenient sacrificial lamb for the murder: Juha Saarnikangas, who had been brought in to dispose of the body. If Eriksson vanished for good, they’d be in the clear. And if Saarnikangas failed, he would take the heat. The hit man wouldn’t talk, Lydman wouldn’t talk, and neither would he.

  Now the hit man was worried for no good reason, unless he was just trying to rake in more money. Or was Lydman trying to stiff him? He wouldn’t dare.

  “Listen,” Markkanen said. “It’s water under the bridge. Nothing’s changed, so take it easy.”

  “Are you gonna pay him?”

  “I can negotiate with them.”

  Lydman laughed. “Good luck with that.”

  Markkanen considered his options. He didn’t want to irritate or provoke Lydman. The man was trustworthy, but unpredictable in his own way. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”