Helsinki homicide: Cold Trail

by Sipila, Jarkko

  Salmela’s elbows were on the table, and his head was resting in his crossed hands. The cigarette was burning between the index and middle fingers of his right hand. A quarter-inch stub of ash curled down from the tip. Salmela raised his head, and the ash shivered onto the table.

  Suhonen sat.

  Salmela broke the silence. “You gonna send a Christmas card to me in the pen, or you think you’ll have time to drop by?”

  “I’ll be by. Outside normal visiting hours, of course,” Suhonen said, looking his childhood friend in the eye. He didn’t really know what else to say, and nothing else was needed.

  EARLY THURSDAY MORNING

  CHAPTER 18

  THURSDAY, 12:40 A.M.

  LAUTTASAARI, HELSINKI

  Repo pulled a suction cup and the glass-cutter he had bought from the sale bin at the Anttila department store from his coat pocket. He pressed the suction cup to the window and used the pencil-like tool to incise a circular hole around it. The glass didn’t come loose on the first try, and Repo was forced to make a second incision.

  The window was triple-paned, so Repo had to cut through the internal windows as well before he was able to push his hand through the hole and open the back door.

  He stopped to listen. The house was quiet. Repo noticed his pulse quickening, and yet he felt calm. He had planned this for a long time.

  The house was a large one by Finnish standards; Repo estimated at least 2000 square feet. It was a single-story brick home with a flat roof. The location was secluded, too—on the northern shore of Lauttasaari Island, right next to the Lauttasaari soccer fields. The marina was a hundred yards away. A long line of townhouses stood on the marina side of the house; on the other, a couple of ramshackle wooden homes.

  Inside was dim, but the living room looked to be completely decorated in black and white. The couch and the table in front of it were white, the armchair was black. Black-and-white paintings hung from the walls. The flat-screen TV had been picked to match the decor.

  There seemed to be an aquarium over to the side, but it was dark.

  Everything looked tidy and well-kept but stark. Repo eyed the furnishings and shut the back door behind him. He walked across the carpet without taking off his shoes. He removed his gray coat and tossed it across the sofa, but kept the shoulder bag with him.

  The living room was set lower than the rest of the house, and Repo had to climb a couple of steps to get to the main level. The black-and-white decor continued in the dining room. The largish dining table was black, and the ten chairs white. The dining room was separated from the living room by a low railing. Behind the dining space was the kitchen.

  Repo silently continued into the front entryway. Several coats and a woman’s black fur hung from the coat rack. A door to a room led off from the entryway. Repo opened it quietly and peeked inside. The streetlamp illuminated it enough for him to make out an office. It looked more normal than the black and white of the other rooms. In front of the window, there was an oak desk and a computer. The walls were lined in bookshelves. The room also accommodated a big, brown leather armchair with a small table at its side. Repo caught a faint whiff of cigar.

  Repo turned back toward the living room. On the left was a door bearing a small plaque—“Toilet.” Next to it was another door, which Repo guessed was a combined shower and sauna space.

  One final door stood before him.

  He carefully placed the shoulder bag on the floor and quietly opened the zipper. He found everything he needed except the Luger and Karppi’s cell phone. Goddamn Saarnikangas must have snagged them, which meant he now knew what else was in the bag. Repo pulled a red-handled, all-purpose Mora knife from the bag. He had found it in one of the Anttila sale bins, too, for four euros.

  Repo slowly thrust the door inwards and hoped it wouldn’t creak. It didn’t. The house was well tended. The owner probably paid someone good money for that.

  It was the bedroom, as Repo had guessed. First he saw the red numbers on the digital alarm clock—00:45 a.m.—and heard the breathing of two people. The man was wearing black pajamas and sleeping on the far side of the bed, near the window. The woman slept closer to the door.

  The knife was in Repo’s hand, and he moved closer. His advance was cut short—the man turned over under the blue blanket and cleared his throat, but didn’t wake up.

  Repo held the knife in his right hand. The woman’s mouth was slightly open. She was a blonde, about fifty years old. I could do it this way, too, Repo thought, twirling the hollow-handled blade in his hand: slit her throat just like that. The thought horrified him.

  He bent down next to the woman’s head just as her eyes flashed open. Surprise and disbelief morphed into fear when she saw a man in a black suit standing over her. “What...?”

  “Death comes to call,” Repo said in a low voice, clicking on the nightstand lamp. The woman shrieked, and the man sat up in bed.

  “What the hell?”

  “Judge Fredberg,” Repo said with feigned politeness, yanking the woman over in front of him so the knife was at her throat. “Nice to see you again.”

  “What is this? Who are you?” Fredberg managed to spit out. “Put that knife away immediately.”

  Repo simply smiled. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

  The insanity of the situation began to dawn on Aarno Fredberg, chief justice of the Supreme Court. “What do you want?”

  “What do I want?” Repo said, pressing the blade more tightly against the woman’s throat. “What do you think? If I slit your wife’s throat...”

  Fredberg tried to pacify him. “Don’t hurt my wife. Leena, stay calm. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “...who would you send to prison, Judge Fredberg?”

  Fredberg didn’t answer. He tried to think of who this man was, but couldn’t come up with the answer.

  “Answer me,” Repo shouted. “If I slit your wife’s throat, who would you send to prison?”

  Fredberg hesitated. “You, because you’d be guilty, but I wouldn’t be able to judge the case, because it would be a conflict of interest. What is it you want? I have money.”

  “If I wanted money, I would have robbed you,” Repo said. “Do you know who I am?”

  Fredberg shook his head. “No. Should I?”

  “Yes. You sentenced me to life in prison for the murder of my wife eight years ago in the Kouvola Court of Appeals. Timo Repo, nice to see you again.”

  For a long moment, Fredberg wondered if he should lie and say he remembered the man. Maybe it would be best to keep up the conversation.

  “I’ve seen thousands and thousands of cases over my career. Unfortunately I can’t remember all of them.”

  “Have you ever made a mistake?”

  “As a judge? I don’t think so. Everyone is innocent until proven otherwise.”

  “But you did make a mistake!”

  “Did I?” Fredberg said. He thought about how he could surprise the knifed man, but under the circumstances it would be impossible. Fredberg was in decent shape and believed he could beat the intruder in a struggle. But the knife at his wife’s throat dampened his enthusiasm.

  “You sentenced me to life in prison for murder.”

  Fredberg was still unable to connect the man to any of his cases. He was a little ashamed and afraid, because admitting this could lead to catastrophe.

  “What mistake did I make?”

  * * *

  Suhonen left the silver-gray Peugeot on Mannerheim Street across from the Swedish Theater. It was parked illegally, but Suhonen didn’t care. He stepped out of the car, locked it with the remote, and headed into the Chaplin Bar.

  Four black men were scrapping on the sidewalk in front of the bar. Suhonen didn’t get involved in the Somalis’ argument, but was pleased to note that the refugees had evidently successfully integrated into society, because the men were screaming at each other in Finnish.

  Suhonen stepped into Chaplin. There was a bar at street
level and a billiards room in the basement. Suhonen wove between tables toward the basement stairs. A blond guy with a long-haired woman tattooed on the back of his hand was sitting at one of them, alone. Suhonen tried to place the guy but couldn’t. He definitely looked shady, though.

  The basement billiards room was divided into two areas: smoking and non-smoking. On the smoking side, there were about ten billiard tables; on the non-smoking, five. Saarnikangas had said he’d be in non-smoking. There was also a big screen TV and a bar on the smoking side.

  The link between tobacco and the game invented in France five hundred years earlier was apparent. The tables on the smoking side were full, while on the non-smoking side there was no one but Saarnikangas. He had racked the balls and was just about to break when Suhonen stepped into the doorway. Behind the billiard table stood a lonely-looking pinball machine.

  Saarnikangas noticed Suhonen and didn’t strike. Suhonen stepped up to the table. “You had something to tell me,” he said in a serious voice.

  “Chill,” Juha said. “That last tip was a good one, wasn’t it? I’d guess Repo wasn’t there, but some other bad boys were.”

  Suhonen wondered whether he had a disagreement with someone from the criminal crew, maybe Salmela.

  “You had something to tell me,” Suhonen repeated.

  “Should we play a round?” Saarnikangas suggested. “You can’t be in that big of a hurry.”

  “Actually, I am,” Suhonen said. “I gotta go to bed.”

  “Then I don’t think I’ll tell you anything.”

  “I’ve got chalk in my pocket.”

  Saarnikangas didn’t get it. “Huh?”

  “I’m going to draw your outline on the floor in a second,” Suhonen said. He felt like smacking the druggie in the head with one of the billiard cues and putting an end to his games. Instead, he took off his leather jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. “What are the stakes?

  “If you win, I talk. If I win, I get one more pack of Subu...”

  Suhonen snorted. The guy was incorrigible. On the other hand, he seemed to know things, for instance about the apartment they just raided, so it was a relationship worth cultivating.

  “You’re on.”

  The tattooed guy from upstairs walked up to the pinball machine. “You guys probably don’t mind if I punch the machine a bit, do you?”

  Suhonen shrugged and prepared to break.

  Tattoo Guy dropped a two-euro coin in the South Park pinball machine, which, as was only befitting, came to life with a fart. He hit the flippers and the machine squawked, “They killed Kenny. You bastards!”

  Suhonen’s break dropped a stripe into the corner pocket and he continued. His next hit sank a second ball.

  “I am not gay,” announced the pinball machine. Mr. Hankey the turd howled softly in the background, and the machine farted at a steady pace. Evidently Tattoo Man knew how to play, since Mr. Hankey yelped in delight and announced “Multi-ball!” But the noise from the machine didn’t distract Suhonen.

  He sank the balls one by one, without Saarnikangas ever getting a chance to hit. At the same instant as the winning shot, the eight ball, dropped into the left center hole, the pinball machine popped out a free ball and yelled, “Kick ass!”

  “All right, let’s talk,” Suhonen said, glancing at the blond guy, who was concentrating on his game. “But over here to the side.”

  “You coulda let me hit a couple too,” Saarnikangas complained, as Suhonen dragged him away.

  “You had something to tell me,” Suhonen said.

  Saarnikangas was still carrying his stick. “Yeah, well about Repo. I saw him later that evening after you had left the church. We had some coffee, and he seemed a little confused. I decided to call you just so you don’t think I’m mixed up in his crazy scheme in any way.”

  “What scheme?”

  “Well, he was talking about some sort of revenge he was going to take on the chief justice of the Supreme Court. He had apparently unjustly sentenced him to life in prison in appeals court.”

  “What do you mean, revenge?” Suhonen asked. His eyes were on Pinball Guy, who was concentrating on his game. The machine made so much noise that he wouldn’t be able to hear their conversation.

  “Well, I was a little surprised too, but I’m pretty sure he’s serious.”

  “How so?”

  “When he went to take a leak at the café, I took a look in his bag,” Saarnikangas said.

  “What was inside?”

  “A knife, rope, cable ties, electric wires, and sticks of dynamite,” Saarnikangas listed, leaving out the pistol and phone he had stolen.

  Suhonen looked dead-seriously at Saarnikangas. “Are you positive?”

  Saarnikangas nodded. “Sure. And you know his background?”

  “What background?”

  “Before his wife’s murder he was in the military. Some sort of explosives expert in field ops. Probably knows how to use dynamite.”

  * * *

  Suhonen turned off the Western Expressway at the Lauttasaari interchange, where the road rose up to an overpass and circled southward across the expressway. The car’s tires hadn’t been changed for winter yet; Suhonen drove slowly down the snow-covered street. The sleet continued to fall.

  Once he passed the apartment buildings, Suhonen turned the car westwards onto Lauttasaari Road. He recalled that this was the spot, where Soviet army captain Ivan Belov had been shot in November 1944. Finland had by then exited World War II, and was being supervised by the Allied Control Commission. Belov was shot by a sniper, who was never caught, and the Soviets threatened military action. The Finnish government responded by setting up one of the largest manhunts in its history. That incident had been explosive at the time, and so, apparently, was the present one.

  It had taken one phone call for Suhonen to get the address of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, and he had headed straight from the bar the couple miles west to Lauttasaari. He thought it was better to go check things out first rather than send over a patrol. Suhonen hoped he’d make it to the house before Repo.

  An elementary school stood on the left, with a park behind it, where a monument, a 76mm anti-aircraft cannon from WW II era, rose up from the bedrock. Suhonen had staked out this place from the nearby woods in the ’90s, when one drug gang had used the cannon’s base as a cache.

  Suhonen had wondered whether he should call Joutsamo and tell her about the visit to Lauttasaari. The tip was worth checking out, of course, but Suhonen felt that at this point it was enough that he’d go have a look. Joutsamo might easily overreact, and if Saarnikangas’s tip was nothing more than a lure for Subu, a quieter approach was better, since they were looking at the chief justice of the Supreme Court. In any case, he’d have to call in a patrol to watch the place for the night—and probably for the next days, too. But it was still better to check things out first.

  Suhonen turned the Peugeot right and drove under the expressway into a graffiti-scrawled tunnel. The marina brought back good memories. On one summer night in the mid-eighties, Suhonen and Salmela had been on the shore hucking rocks at an empty buoy thirty yards out. The bet had been that the one who didn’t hit the buoy had to swim around it. Fifty throws later, both found themselves in the water. The shore was so full of boulders that they had scraped their legs and sides raw.

  Suhonen passed a complex of low-slung townhouses. Fredberg’s house was twenty or so yards away. In between there were woods and some sort of hedge. Suhonen drove past the house and turned into the soccer field parking lot.

  After pulling on a black ski cap, he walked back down past the house and to its far end. The streetlamp illuminated the relatively small front yard. No footprints could be seen in the snow. The place looked silent and peaceful. For a second Suhonen wondered whether he should ring the doorbell. Maybe it would be best to circle the house first.

  There was no point trying to peek in any of the windows, because there were curtains drawn across all of
them, and he found the same on the left side of the brick house. He found no footprints, but the snow was coming down pretty hard.

  Suhonen made it to the edge of the back yard. Part of the yard was covered in stone pavers; the centerpiece was a large brick grill and a wooden table set. The other side of the yard looked like it was filled with berry bushes.

  Suhonen tried the back door, but it was locked. Shivers ran up and down his spine when he noticed the hole that had been cut into the window.

  The curtain on this side of the house was drawn too, so Suhonen couldn’t see inside. For a second he wondered what to do, but then decided to stick his hand through the hole and open the back door. But first he opened his leather jacket so his Glock would be easily accessible. The gun stayed in its holster for now.

  Suhonen was careful not to cut his hand on the sharp edge of the glass. He got a grip on the door handle and twisted down. The door opened outwards. Suhonen slowly drew the curtain to the side. The living room was dark, but it looked enormous. Suhonen immediately noticed the woman lying on the sofa. The position she was in was somehow unnatural: her hands and legs were together. It only took Suhonen a second to realize she was bound, but was she alive? What had happened in the house?

  Even though the soft carpet muffled Suhonen’s footfalls, he crept over to the sofa. The woman watched him approach, and Suhonen hoped she wouldn’t scream. Her eyes were full of terror. Suhonen raised a finger to his lips.

  She didn’t make a sound.

  Suhonen made it over to her and whispered, “Police. Shhh.”

  Despite his instructions, the woman immediately spoke, luckily at a whisper, “That crazy man has my husband. He’s going to kill us.”

  “Stay calm,” Suhonen said, pulling his switchblade out of his pocket. He cut the ropes from the woman’s hands and legs.

  “Out,” Suhonen ordered. “And quietly.”

  He slipped his knife back into his pocket and took his pistol. The woman had made it to door when the living room lights blazed on. The sudden brightness momentarily dazed Suhonen. He noticed the woman pause.