Wolves and Angels

by Jokinen, Seppo

  Koskinen noticed that the man’s hands were starting to shake uncontrollably. It wouldn’t be a good idea for him to go straight back to filling beer glasses.

  “Luckily I don’t have to deal with that little shit no more,” he said. “If only I could get those two second-rate Stallones knocked off too.”

  Koskinen thought to himself that the bartender would probably have chosen his words more carefully had he known with whom he was speaking.

  “Are they the same kind of troublemakers,” Koskinen asked innocently.

  “Not as bad as Raymond, but still pains in the ass.”

  “Haven’t you told the authorities about all of this?”

  “That wouldn’t help anything. Once when Harjus threw a glass into the wall I called the police. Guess what they said.”

  “What?”

  “An invalid couldn’t be dangerous enough to have us intervene. That’s the Finnish police for you. Lazy pigs.”

  Koskinen nodded sympathetically and turned to carry the full beers to their table.

  Warm words of thanks awaited him: “Where the hell were ya?”

  “Did you get stuck having to listen to Urpo’s whining?”

  “Who?” Koskinen asked as he sat back down in his chair.

  “The owner and supreme beer bearer of this pigsty,” Ketterä explained. “Urpo’s put a bounty out on our heads.”

  This triggered a quick series of images and connections in Koskinen’s mind. He drank his beer thoughtfully and looked around. At a quick count there were a couple of dozen customers, most of them guys in tracksuits just like him, with a few women with rasping laughs mixed in. There was a payazzo gambling machine jingling away near the door, and the woman with the speech impediment was already on her third song onstage. This time it was an old Finnish song about forest fairies.

  “Whatcha thinkin’ about, copper?” Harjus had to yell over the noise, and at the same time blew smoke from his cigarette into Koskinen’s face.

  Koskinen decided not to lose his temper tonight. Instead, he replied calmly, “I heard that you two and Timonen didn’t see eye to eye…that you fought a lot. Is that true?”

  Harjus and Ketterä’s jaws dropped in mock shock like they were in a slapstick farce at the community theater.

  “Now who’d ever say somethin’ like that? We loved Raymond like a brother, and we’re just heartsick over his loss,” Harjus bleated.

  Ketterä chimed in. “The grief just knocked the legs right out from under us.”

  Koskinen knew there was no point trying to grill them in these surroundings. He’d be better off bringing them down to the station tomorrow for an interview. Their hard shells would crack in no time with Pekki and Kaatio loose on them.

  But he still decided to go after a couple of things. “Is Pike sorry that Raymond’s gone?”

  The men’s feigned surprise turned real. “So, you already met Pirkko-Liisa?”

  Koskinen nodded, omitting the fact that everything he knew was second-hand.

  “Why was she fired?”

  If Harjus’ face had been surly, now it twisted into outright apoplexy. “Pike cared too much about us cripples. Some people saw that as misconduct, and that’s why she got the boot.”

  “Cared too much?” Koskinen said in surprise.

  “Yeah. She got along too well with us three. She hung out with us after work and made us feel like normal people. We drank wine, listened to music, danced...”

  “You danced?”

  Harjus looked at Koskinen with disdain. “What? Is it some kinda miracle that a cripple can dance?”

  Suddenly the voice that had been seething with disgust turned wistful, and Harjus’ eyes closed halfway.

  “Pike bent down to wrap her arms around my shoulders. She pressed her face against my forehead and slowly swayed her hips. She smelled like flowers. I rocked my chair in the same rhythm and caressed her soft buttocks with my other hand. Even you couldn’t have danced any better.”

  You’re probably right, Koskinen thought. Then he asked his other question. “Did Raymond and Pike get along?”

  Harjus hissed. “Money makes the world go round, and even a cripple can buy love with enough cash.”

  Koskinen couldn’t help but sense the sudden change in mood. Jealous anger was apparent in both men, smoldering in their eyes. He tried to wheedle more out of them about Pike and Timonen, but it was no use. Their lips were sealed as if by common agreement.

  Harjus banged his empty glass on the table and set off rolling towards the karaoke stand. The woman with the curlers in her hair had just finished, and two men who had been leaning against the bar lifted Harjus and his chair onto the stage. One of them even pushed the microphone over to where Harjus could reach it.

  “I love the life born anew each morn...” Another old Finnish standby, but this time one with real pathos.

  Koskinen felt cold chills run down his spine—Tapani Harjus knew how to sing. His voice wasn’t quite equivalent to Martti Talvela’s operatic bass, but it surely ran rings around all of the other karaoke soloists at the Cat’s Meow. The buzz of conversation quieted, and Koskinen noticed eyes being dabbed surreptitiously at a couple of tables.

  Ketterä didn’t seem to care much for his compatriot’s singing. He lit another cigarette and stared, nauseated, at the trail of smoke before his eyes. Koskinen decided to take the opportunity.

  “Tell me a little about Raymond.”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything at all. Did he sing karaoke?”

  “Raymond just mewled like a sick moose. He made enough fucking noise, but had trouble forming words… I guess his bump on the head caused that too.”

  Ketterä stopped to suck on his cigarette before continuing. “Not that I care about that yodelin’ anyway, but I don’t mind banging on a piano. I got my own in my apartment...a Hellas Tapiola model with a rigged hand damper pedal.”

  A flash of warmth flickered in Ketterä’s narrowed eyes. Apparently his piano was an important part of his austere life. But Koskinen didn’t have the patience to continue on that topic, and his interest turned elsewhere.

  “What did you mean by Raymond’s bump on the head?”

  Ketterä didn’t think long, instead rattling off an explanation from memory. “It’s the usual story. In June of ’86, Raymond dove off a dock into a lake and hit his head on a rock.”

  Koskinen thought about how many similar cases he had run into during his career. He couldn’t even count them anymore. He stared at his beer glass and sighed. “Such a waste.”

  “It was even more pointless with me.”

  Koskinen raised his head, and Ketterä continued: “You would’ve asked anyway what happened to me...so I might as well just tell you. One Christmas Eve I went out skiing in Hervanta. Someone had pulled a little prank on the trail around the lake and stretched a white nylon cord across the bottom of the steepest hill… I saw it way too late and flew fifty feet head-first.”

  Ketterä lit another cigarette again and closed his eyes. “So that was the turning point of my life. I came to a couple of minutes later and immediately knew what had happened. I couldn’t feel my legs. I lay there for almost an hour in ten-degree weather before the next skier came by. It was Christmas Eve after all, and people were at home decorating their trees, and the most impatient ones were opening their presents already. I lay in the forest and thought about my future. I knew I’d never walk again, let alone ski.”

  Koskinen remembered the incident. He hadn’t investigated it, but it had rocked everyone at the station. They couldn’t understand who would set such a cowardly trap, or come up with a motive. They tried to profile the perpetrator—was it just kids playing a prank or some sick sadist? But they never made any arrests. Koskinen rewound the calendar in his brain. “But that was only five years ago!” he said, taken aback.

  Ketterä stroked his red beard between his fingers and nodded. “Not any more than that.”

  Koskinen tried to come up with s
omething sympathetic to say, but everything that came to mind felt too trivial in that moment. And Ketterä didn’t need anything like that anyway.

  “No sense crying in my beer,” he said, raising his glass.

  Harjus had begun a second song, another golden age sentimental Finnish schlager complete with accordion accompaniment.

  Koskinen pointed his thumb at the karaoke stage. “What happened to him?”

  “Tappi went diving too.”

  “Onto a rock?”

  “No, the street.”

  Ketterä paused to take a swig from his glass, leaving beaded drops of beer in his tapered mustache. “Nine years ago Tappi jumped off the roof of the Olympia restaurant onto the sidewalk.”

  “He attempted suicide?”

  “Well, he wasn’t trying to learn how to fly.”

  “Why did he jump?”

  “He’s never said. I doubt anyone at the house knows.”

  Ketterä rocked his head back and forth and smiled to himself. “Our Fallen Angels had a skier and two divers. Now there’s only one of the divers left.”

  “Fallen Angels?”

  “That’s the name of our Hell’s Angels gang. Originally there were six of us. But then the group split in two, and we were what was left. Raymond, Tappi, and me. Now there are only two of us.”

  “Where did the others go?”

  “Lindkvist died of bone cancer, and Ruomala found Jesus. He moved somewhere in Ostrobothnia to a nursing home run by the Laestadians.”

  Koskinen remembered that the taxi driver, Laine, had talked about three that had moved away from Wolf House. “And the third?”

  “That was Simo Supala.”

  Ketterä smashed his cigarette in the tray with an angry motion, and ash spread around the table. “Simo got evicted.”

  “Why?”

  “He tried to rape one of the summer interns and a couple of weeks later tried to kill Raymond.”

  “Tried to kill?” Koskinen was alert now. “How?”

  “Wolf House has two floors on the one side. Downstairs are the saunas and a gym fitted for us cripples with bench presses and everything. We go down in the elevator, but there’s also stairs. Simo shoved Raymond down. Unfortunately, his attempt failed.”

  “Wasn’t Raymond hurt?”

  “If he hadn’t been a cripple already, then he would’ve been after that. He lay in the hospital for two months. Just got out this Easter.”

  Koskinen counted the months in his head. It had been just a year since the incident. He was so astonished that all he could do was ask why.

  “Wolf House wasn’t big enough for Simo and Raymond. Not even close. Both of them always had to be king of the dunghill and be the center of every conversation.”

  Koskinen shook his head in disbelief. The Fallen Angels appeared to be a perfect copy of the real thing. Both gangs had wheels under them—they had just traded two-wheeled hogs for four-wheelers that accelerated somewhat more slowly.

  Harjus had been lifted down from the karaoke stand, and rolled his chair back to the table.

  “How’d you like it?”

  He addressed his words to Koskinen, who didn’t even have to pretend. “It was beautiful.”

  “So go get some beer. I don’t croon for free here.”

  Ketterä jumped in too. “Be a man and drink the legs out from under us.”

  Koskinen collected the glasses and went to get refills. It didn’t take long before those were empty too, and he had to go visit the counter one more time.

  He thought about whether he would dare file an expense report—the information he had gotten was valuable enough.

  He tried to pry more out of them, but Harjus and Ketterä were starting to get intoxicated, and it was hard to get clear answers. Koskinen was interested in Raymond’s finances; he had heard about his casual spending from two people now. But Harjus and Ketterä didn’t know where his money came from, or they just didn’t want to say. Both claimed that Raymond had never talked about his money—he had just flashed his big bills, using them to buy himself comfort and attention.

  After their fourth beer, Koskinen saw how differently alcohol affected each of the men. While Ketterä started to nod off, Harjus became more and more aggressive.

  He glared at Koskinen from under his bushy eyebrows and then suddenly hissed: “Pig! Why the fuck did you come down here? Now the whole fucking place smells!”

  Strange thanks for four free rounds, Koskinen thought, but didn’t say anything in response.

  “Do you have a blue-and-white waiting out in the parking lot?”

  “No, bicycle.”

  “A bike?”

  “Yeah.” Koskinen smiled good-naturedly. “I always bike to work.”

  “You’re some sort of fitness nut?”

  “Something like that.”

  Harjus slammed his fist on the table. The butts flew out of the ashtray onto the table, and everyone in the bar turned to see what was going on.

  “So you’re a fucking biking nut?” he announced in a loud voice. “You’ve got a lot of nerve coming down here and bragging about how fit you are to guys like us, pig.”

  “I didn’t do that,” Koskinen began, but Harjus wasn’t listening. He waved his fists in Koskinen’s face. “All I have to do is snap my fingers and half of the guys in this bar will come over and lay you out, flatfoot!” he shouted.

  Koskinen was getting tired of it—he tapped his mobile phone through his jacket pocket and mimicked Harjus: “All I have to do is make one phone call and half of the Tampere police department will come down here and smash this whole bar to pieces.”

  Harjus looked at Koskinen appraisingly and fell silent for a moment. Ketterä had woken up from his nap at the bang of the fist and started egging Koskinen on. “Do it! Tappi’s always a killjoy when he starts off the day on the wrong foot.”

  “That piece of shit couldn’t put me away if he tried,” Harjus started again. “He’s tall enough, but otherwise it’s all cardboard from his balls to his brain.”

  Harjus’ shaved head was flushed red and his lips were trembling. Koskinen realized that it was a sudden, uncontrollable burst of anger, and he had ended up as the target by chance.

  Suddenly he felt a wet droplet on his cheek. Harjus had spit in his face. That was too much. Koskinen jumped up and took a threatening step. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed how men stood up all around the room and started moving toward them. Apparently they were ready to defend Harjus and Ketterä. The old military esprit de corps was alive and well here. You didn’t leave buddies behind, and you defended the weaker ones to the last drop of your beer.

  Koskinen was barely able to control himself. It was only when he had taken a few deep breaths of the bar’s smoky air that his emotions calmed down enough for him to be able to comprehend the possible repercussions. The old discrimination article in Hymy would be child’s play compared to these new headlines: DRUNK POLICE OFFICER ASSAULTS HANDICAPPED KARAOKE SINGER…

  He turned around and walked out. It wasn’t until he was on the saddle of his bike that he realized he was drunk. At two hundred pounds, he usually didn’t feel four beers. But on an empty stomach it was a different matter. After his lingonberry mush that morning, he hadn’t eaten anything except the chocolate bar Milla had given him. The thought ignited an uncontrollable hunger in his belly. A salami sandwich layered with pickles appeared before his eyes, and he took off pedaling home with his mouth watering.

  11.

  On Thursday morning things started happening immediately. Koskinen slunk through the door of the police station in his biking gear and tried to slip into the elevator without anyone noticing. It didn’t work.

  “Koskinen!” someone yelled from the front desk. “Come over here for a sec!”

  Irked, Koskinen turned and took his wet baseball cap off. The rain had started halfway through his ride. He dug a paper tissue from his pocket and dried his face on it, but his beard was still wet. Water dripped on the counter as he
leaned in to hear what Tiikko, the officer on duty, had to say.

  “The SS Patrol just called from Hervanta.” Tiikko glanced at his watch. “Not more than two minutes ago. They wanted to talk to someone on the Peltolammi homicide case.”

  “I’m the lead investigator,” Koskinen replied impatiently. He could feel water running from the hair on his neck under his shirt and down his back.

  “Sopanen said they’re on their way here.”

  “I’ll go meet them in the garage,” Koskinen said and then wiped the counter with his sleeve. It only made it wetter.

  But Tiikko didn’t let him off that easily. A curious grin formed on his pockmarked face. “So, you’ve switched vehicles?”

  Koskinen sighed and wondered how many hundred times he’d had to explain this. As if cycling needed to be defended. “Riding to work combines fun, exercise, and savings. It’s a pleasant way to commute,” he said, sounding like a fitness therapist delivering a lecture.

  “In weather like this?”

  “It just started raining. I was already halfway here when it started dumping on me.”

  “And you’re getting in shape?”

  “Big time,” Koskinen said with a snort and then turned to go. But Tiikko still had something on his mind. “I heard you’re doing the Pirkka Trail Run,” he said to Koskinen’s back. “Racing against Kangas and Havakainen.”

  Koskinen closed his eyes, slowly counted to three, and turned. “Who’s spreading that around?”

  “Everyone’s talking about it,” Tiikko said, spreading his arms. “Big bets going on in the canteen on who’s gonna win.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Tiikko nodded his large head and then lowered his voice, like he was telling some big secret. “Believe it or not, I put down ten on you.”

  “You’re probably the only one.”

  “How did you guess?” Tiikko grinned. “You can’t expect to win big without taking big risks.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Koskinen said, trying to leave again, but he didn’t succeed the third time either.