Helsinki homicide: Cold Trail

by Sipila, Jarkko

  Takamäki couldn’t get the Sello surveillance images out of his head; he had to call. The mall switchboard connected him to the head of security currently on duty.

  A male voice grumbled into the phone, “Aho.”

  “Lieutenant Takamäki here,” Takamäki said, intentionally omitting Helsinki Police.

  Aho suddenly sounded like a security guard whose sights were set on the police academy: “What can I do for you, sir?”

  Takamäki held a brief pause. “Something pretty simple, actually. There was an accident yesterday evening over on the side of the mall facing the railroad. A cyclist was hit by a car.”

  “Really? There wasn’t anything in the papers.”

  “Well, the injuries weren’t very serious, but now we’re tracking down the driver, who fled the scene.”

  “So you’re looking for surveillance footage.”

  “Right,” Takamäki said. “There’s a little uncertainty here as to whether someone has asked for it yet.”

  “Not today, at least,” Aho said. “I’ve been here all morning, and of course I can check yesterday’s log, too.”

  Takamäki could hear Aho tapping at his computer.

  “Nope, the images haven’t been picked up. I mean, no one has even requested them.”

  “So you have the footage?”

  Aho backtracked. “I’m not sure about that. I’m just saying it hasn’t been turned over.”

  Takamäki began to see why the guy hadn’t made it into the police academy and probably never would. Nevertheless, he kept his voice as steady and relaxed as possible.

  “You think you might have a minute, buddy, to check and see if you guys have the footage there? It happened around 7 p.m. yesterday on the railroad side of the mall. Of course I’d be particularly interested in any shots of the car.”

  “Of course. It’ll take me a second, though. I can call you back.”

  Takamäki gave Aho his cell phone number, thanked him, and ended the call.

  “What footage are you looking for?” Suhonen asked from the doorway. Takamäki hadn’t noticed him. Suhonen stepped in.

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with this Repo case.”

  “With what, then?” Suhonen continued. His curiosity was piqued, because it wasn’t every day that a lieutenant called and asked for surveillance camera footage himself. That was a job for subordinates.

  “Jonas got hit by a car over at Sello yesterday. I’m just making sure they hold on to the shopping center’s surveillance cam images.”

  “Hurt bad?”

  “Nah,” Takamäki answered. “Not too bad. Broke his arm. But the driver fled the scene.”

  Suhonen thought for a second. “Isn’t that an Espoo police case? Or I mean, at least not yours?”

  “Yeah, it’s Espoo’s,” Takamäki admitted, before deciding to change to a less-awkward subject. “Why isn’t Repo back behind bars yet?”

  Suhonen smiled at his lieutenant’s clumsy attempt to change the subject. “’Cause we haven’t found him.”

  “You think you might want to do that?”

  “Do you remember when you ordered me to attend that class given by the Security Police last summer?” Suhonen asked, sitting down in his favorite spot on the windowsill across from Takamäki’s desk.

  “What does that have to do with this?”

  “There was this one army intelligence officer lecturing about military intelligence, and he had a PowerPoint slide that he flashed up on the screen. It was this matrix that said that the most important task of military intelligence is to determine the other nation’s capability and intentions. That’s what helps you assess threats.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I’ve been trying to apply that matrix to Repo. Does this Repo have the capacity for wrong-doing? Okay, he killed his wife years ago, so theoretically the potential exists. Still, I’d estimate his capability as being pretty minimal.”

  Takamäki tried interjecting, “I wouldn’t.”

  “Let me finish. What about his intentions? That’s a trickier thing, because we don’t know why he fled. It’s still pretty hard to see it as a particularly planned escape. It seems to have been more of a momentary impulse. Repo doesn’t belong to a criminal gang, so we can’t conclude, for example, that he’s off on some vendetta he was ordered to handle. That being the case, I would also assess his intent to commit wrong-doing as pretty minimal. And since both factors are low, the threat assessment is also pretty low. The guy’s a sheep.”

  Takamäki looked at Suhonen. He tried to keep his face serious, but a smile crept into his eyes.

  “But guess what. You’re not some major from military intelligence, you’re a...”

  Takamäki held a brief pause, and Suhonen stepped into the trap.

  “I’m a what?”

  “You’re a shepherd. So get that lost sheep back into the fold, pronto.”

  Suhonen stood and saluted, raising a hand to his nonexistent cap.

  “Yes, sir!”

  At that moment, Joutsamo walked up to the door. “I’m headed up to Riihimäki now,” she said, before registering the scene. “All riiight. No need to explain.”

  CHAPTER 7

  TUESDAY, 11:20 A.M.

  RIIHIMÄKI POLICE STATION

  Joutsamo was sitting in a small, windowless interrogation room. The preliminary investigation report for the Repo case lay open on the brown tabletop. Someone had etched the word “Fuck” into the table. The stack of papers was surprisingly slight, not even half an inch’s worth. She’d been reading the interrogation transcripts for an hour and was almost done.

  The case appeared relatively simple. Repo had been drinking at home with his wife. The next morning the police had found Repo sleeping in his bed and his wife sprawled out on the floor next to the kitchen table. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear. There was a ton of blood in the photos. That detail alone told Joutsamo that the woman had lived for some time after the deed, because the heart had kept pumping blood out of the carotid artery.

  Joutsamo jotted down Cruelty = Murder? in her notebook. She could of course verify from the verdict whether it was cruelty that tilted the sentence from manslaughter to murder, but it wasn’t a priority.

  In the first interrogations, Repo had vehemently denied the act. He claimed he had passed out in bed and didn’t remember anything about what had happened. A week later he had changed his tune, when his lawyer had been present at his questioning. According to the transcript, at that juncture Repo had said, “I consider it possible that I killed my wife, because evidently no other alternatives exist. I do not consider the act murder, but manslaughter. There was no way it was premeditated, and the act was neither exceptionally brutal nor cruel.”

  It was plain as day from the statement that the lawyer had gotten Repo to confess to the deed. Joutsamo made a note of the lawyer’s name: Mauri Tiainen. Repo had not offered any motive.

  The Repo family had lived in an apartment building. The neighbors had been interrogated, of course, and said that occasionally loud arguing could be heard coming from their apartment. Yet no one had heard anything of the sort on the night of the murder. No one had seen anyone else entering or exiting the apartment, either.

  Repo’s fingerprints had been found on the murder weapon. The photo docket contained a photo of a serrated eight-inch bread knife with a black handle. The blade was bloody. Powdered fingerprints could be made out in the close-ups. Looking from behind, they were on the left side of the handle. Joutsamo paused to work out how Repo had been holding the knife. Based on the fingerprints, he’d been gripping it the way you would normally hold a knife when you’re carving wood. Had the throat been slashed from the front or the back? There was no indication in the report. No DNA analysis had been conducted on the weapon, but the blood found on the blade matched the wife’s blood type.

  The court-ordered evaluation of Repo’s mental health had also been appended to the papers. That gave Joutsamo pause, because a psychologica
l evaluation was a confidential document, and the police didn’t need it to do their work. Yet someone had delivered it to the police, and of course Joutsamo read it.

  Repo had not been diagnosed with any mental health problems. His father, Erik, had been a career military officer, and the family had moved frequently from base to base. The mother had worked in the base kitchens as a cook. Timo had told the doctor about his parents’ alcohol use, strict discipline, and corporal punishment, as well as continuous competition with his big brother, who was two years older.

  “When discussing childhood memories, the subject often mentions soccer, which appears to have been of significance to him. This indicates that, as a child, he looked outside the home for approval he was lacking.

  “The subject says that in the 1960s, his father was suspected of causing the death of a serviceman in a hazing incident. Even though Erik was found not guilty, the matter had caused substantial friction within the family. The subject describes his father as having increased his alcohol consumption and grown more withdrawn.”

  Timo Repo had ended up serving in the army himself. He hadn’t made it into officer school, and had had to settle for the NCO academy. “The subject says he performed well at the institution he termed the ‘rat academy.’ Psychological evaluations previously conducted on the subject and medical reports were acquired from the armed forces for the purposes of this mental health evaluation. They do not reveal any issues related to mental health.”

  The evaluation indicated that Timo had met his future wife, Arja, at a bar in Helsinki in the early ’90s. A one-night stand had led to a relationship and marriage in 1993. The wife had one childless marriage behind her. Repo had also told the psychiatrist that Arja and his father, Erik, had occasionally argued, because Arja had once belonged to the Communist Youth Association. Erik’s needling had prompted Arja to look into his old hazing incident. Timo had felt caught between a rock and a hard place, and visits to Timo’s parents had subsequently grown less frequent.

  “The subject described his family life as normal. According to the subject, alcohol was consumed, but not to excess. The subject indicates that alcohol use did not lead to absences from work. In 1995, a child was born into the family, which, according to the subject, was a happy and anticipated event. Joel’s birth was a cause for joy, but the same year had also been marked by grief, as the subject’s mother died of cancer.”

  Interesting, Joutsamo thought. And yet the trip to Riihimäki hadn’t advanced the investigation in the least. She hadn’t found a single name in the papers that would have been useful in tracing Repo. No acquaintances, no childhood friends. Nothing.

  Several things nagged at her, however. She found herself wondering about the bread knife and how Timo Repo had been gripping it at the moment of the murder.

  Fifteen minutes later, she knocked on the door of Detective Lieutenant Johannes Leinonen. Leinonen had led the Repo investigation and given Joutsamo the preliminary investigation report to read.

  “Come in,” Leinonen growled. He was sitting at his computer. A brown sport coat hung from the back of his chair. Sixty and gray, he was heavy enough that the buttons of his white dress shirt strained at the gut.

  “Thanks,” Joutsamo said, returning the stack of papers to Leinonen.

  “Find anything?”

  “I have a couple of questions.”

  Leinonen gestured for Joutsamo to take a seat across from him. His office was just like Takamäki’s and that of a thousand other police officers. The shelves were full of folders, and there were stacks of papers next to the computer.

  “Shoot.”

  Joutsamo referred to her notes. “In the first place, why was it classified as a murder?”

  “Did you take a look at those photos? That woman’s throat was slashed wide open.”

  “Repo initially denied the crime, and then he confessed. But only to manslaughter.”

  “He had no choice,” Leinonen said. “The case was cut-and-dried. The lawyer, whatever his name was, I think it was Tiainen, talked some sense into him. Into Repo. No point fighting a clear case... That’s not going to help anyone.”

  “But it never reverted to manslaughter?”

  “No, because the act was so brutal and cruel. The medical examiner estimated that the woman had been alive for at least several minutes after the deed.”

  “Were any reconstructions done?” Joutsamo asked.

  Leinonen frowned and looked intentionally perplexed.

  “What is it you’re getting at? I thought you were looking for this Repo?”

  “Were any reconstructions done?”

  “No, nothing like that. The case was totally clear.”

  “Was her throat slit from the front or from behind?” Joutsamo asked, still thinking about the fingerprints on the knife.

  “I don’t know. Does it matter? His fingerprints were on the knife, and there was no one else there. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  Joutsamo didn’t reply immediately. “I’m just trying to get inside Repo’s head and try to think where I might find him,” she said after a while.

  “Is this some new profiling thing, or?”

  “Yeah. We’re piloting it down in Helsinki Homicide,” Joutsamo lied.

  “How about that,” Leinonen said. “More American BS, sounds like.”

  “It’s a system developed by the Germans, as a matter of fact,” Joutsamo said, her face deadpan. “The Hannover police got really good results with it. But back to where Repo was standing when it happened. We can deduce from the bloodstains that the wife was on her feet when she was killed.”

  “Well, he didn’t remember anything about it, so I guess we’ll never know.”

  Joutsamo rose. “Do you mind standing up?” she said, picking up a twelve-inch ruler from the desk. “This is the knife. Based on the fingerprints, Repo was holding it the way you would if you were slicing bread.” She circled around behind Leinonen. “Look, if you’re holding a bread knife like this, then your hand isn’t naturally going to twist into a position where you could slit someone’s throat from behind.”

  The lieutenant turned around and looked Joutsamo dead in the eye. “Well, it must have been from the front then.”

  Joutsamo raised the ruler and made a slashing movement at Leinonen’s throat. “Pretty harsh way to kill your wife, eye to eye,” she said.

  “I’m sure there’ve been harsher ones.”

  “But the photos didn’t show any injuries on her hands from blocking the knife.”

  “He probably surprised her,” Leinonen said.

  “According to the witnesses, they didn’t hear any shouting coming from the apartment, and Repo wasn’t mentally ill.”

  “Well, it was a cut-and-dried case anyway. Repo was the perpetrator. Appeals court confirmed it too, so there’s no point trying anything,” Leinonen said, annoyed. “Was there anything else? I’ve got some real work to do here.”

  * * *

  The red walls of Helsinki Prison rose up before Suhonen. A bald guard in a blue uniform was walking in front of him. Suhonen knew the way, since he had been to the “Big House” dozens of times. He had left his gun and phone behind at the entrance.

  The guard opened the door and turned right, toward a narrow stairwell. The administrative offices were upstairs. The second-floor corridor had been painted light gray and was lined by rooms on either side. Fifty feet ahead loomed the iron door that led into the prison proper.

  The bald guy knocked on the door marked Warden.

  “Come in.”

  The guard remained at Suhonen’s side as he entered. The room was big—thirty feet long and fifteen wide. Most of it was taken up by a long wooden conference table that butted up against the warden’s desk. Behind it sat a dry-looking forty-year-old in a gray suit. Saku Ainola, who had been promoted from assistant warden to warden a year ago, was an old buddy of Suhonen’s.

  “Hey there,” Ainola said. “Give me a sec. I still have to deny a
couple more leave applications.”

  “No worries,” Suhonen said. There was a thermos on the table. Suhonen pumped coffee from it into a paper cup. Prison coffee contended in the same league as police coffee, gas station coffee, and hockey arena coffee.

  It took Ainola three minutes, and after that he came over and helped himself to coffee, too.

  “Annoying, this Repo incident,” he began.

  “Prison escapes always are.”

  “We didn’t see this one coming. No indication at all that the guy was a flight risk. Several years of a life sentence behind him. Probably would have been allowed to take unescorted leaves in a year or two.”

  “What kind of guy is Repo?” Suhonen asked.

  “Harmless. Caused no problems for years.”

  “But before that there were?”

  “Not for us, exactly.”

  Suhonen knew that Ainola knew all the lifers. He read the court papers on all incoming convicts.

  “Well,” Ainola began. “Repo admitted manslaughter in district court but still got life for murder. Then in appellate court he denied the whole thing, but of course the sentence didn’t change at that point, nor did the Supreme Court grant permission to appeal. After that, he began a massive but obviously futile round of appeals.”

  “Huh,” Suhonen said.

  “He sent appeals just about everywhere: the attorney general, parliamentary ombudsman, even to the European Court of Human Rights. Pretty surprised he didn’t send one to the UN. Some reporter came here to meet him, but I don’t think she ever wrote about it.”

  “What was his complaint?”

  “That he was innocent and had been unjustly sentenced.”

  “You read the verdict. Was there anything to his appeal?” Suhonen asked. Ainola had graduated from law school.

  Ainola shook his head. “Not a chance. The case was clear cut. And none of the appeals ever went anywhere. Bottom-of-the-stack stuff, the kind no one even takes a second look at.”