Helsinki Blood

by James Thompson

  They both take deep drinks from the vodka bottles. I think they’re glad to have it. “What do you want to put a stop to this?” Jyri asks.

  “I already explained the consequences of fucking with me to you. Repeat to me what I told you.”

  He slurps Stolichnaya, knows his life hangs in the balance of the next few seconds. “We’ve covered that ground.”

  I put my Colt to his forehead. “Indulge me, for the sake of clarity.”

  He doesn’t want to say it. I nudge his forehead with the barrel.

  “You said you would kill me.”

  I move the gun fast, shift the muzzle to the right, fire, and shave off the bottom of his left earlobe. Not much, maybe an eighth of an inch. But he doesn’t know that. He just feels hot blood drizzling down his neck and thinks his ear is gone. He reaches up, finds it still there and sheds tears of relief.

  “By all rights,” I say, “I should go ahead and kill you, but I feel generous and forgiving.”

  He bursts into self-righteous anger. “You wanted to be someone important, to be above the law to further your own agenda. I gave you that and you stole from me.”

  “How could I steal something from you that didn’t belong to you?”

  “I didn’t send people to harass and threaten you. It’s not true.”

  “But you know who did, don’t you? Minders watched my house. Interrogating them proved that they were cutouts run by SUPO Captain Jan Pitkänen, which, Osmo, brings us back to you. He’s your axman, isn’t he? Keep drinking. If your answer isn’t satisfactory, you two begin making your ways around the apartment, leaving touch prints, grab prints, footprints. It will appear that you’ve been here for hours.”

  “Here’s the truth,” Osmo says. “You played a dangerous game and we took you into our confidence. You didn’t like the game, you cheated and didn’t want to play anymore. But you can’t walk away from it. You turned out to be a weak sister and disappointed us, stealing that ten million. You were already well-compensated. We took good care of you, and you betrayed us. The Powers That Be are most disappointed in you. Now everybody wants you and your buddies dead.”

  He drinks, wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “The truth be told, we never needed you. We didn’t care if that left-wing bitch got her head cut off. We needed Milo Nieminen. He’s a bloodhound and we knew he’d find the money. It was always about the money. He’s shit crazy and needs a handler. That was your purpose. We always thought the kidnapping a sham that would lead back to that racist pig Saukko, via the Söderlund murder, then on to his son, Antti, and the money trail.

  “And yes, I put Pitkänen on a detail to watch you with an eye toward recovering the money. He’s my liaison to Veikko Saukko, and via Saukko, to the Real Finn hierarchy and every hate group in the country. He has no strict instructions from me. I empowered him to use his own judgment in coordinating the campaign against you. Did Jyri know this? Yes. Did he fuck with you personally? No. And if you frame or kill Jyri and me, it won’t help you one jot. You’ve made too many enemies.”

  “Pitkänen is your liaison to Saukko regarding what?”

  “We were supposed to return his son and money. Instead, he got his son’s unrecognizable corpse and no money. Yet he contributed generously to the parliamentary campaign anyway and booted up the million euros he promised. Pitkänen liaises by catering to Saukko’s every whim. I don’t ask the particulars.”

  So a captain in the secret police is now an errand boy for an ultra-rich maniac. I look at Sweetness. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. It’s probably safer to kill them, but on the other hand, they’re important men, the investigation would drag on for months, and who knows how it will turn out in the end. Like the man said, we’ve made enemies. We might get sold out somewhere down the line, end up in prison ourselves.”

  “True. And in practical terms, we can always kill them later, but we can’t un-kill them if we do it now.” I turn to them. “Keep the wolves at bay and I let you live. For now.”

  Osmo swigs vodka and chases it with beer. Now he feels confident that he’ll live through this, and he’s deadening his nerves. “Here’s what happened,” he says. “Pitkänen had a run of shit luck. First your boy trashed his face, then his eighteen-year-old girlfriend got pregnant. She went to his wife, who left him and took their two boys with her. His girlfriend ditched him, too. Since it all started with his face getting fucked, you and your crew symbolize all the bad shit that happened in a short time. He’s gone a little bonkers and I sent him to placate Saukko, but mostly to get him away from me and give him something to do while he pulls himself back together. I can pull his reins, get him out of your hair.”

  I push the silenced muzzle up against Osmo’s temple. “If you don’t manage to keep your word, the consequences will be dire.”

  Osmo and Jyri both agree to a truce with me. Since said truce is made under extreme duress, I have no faith in their promises, but the fear factor involved might tame them. I tell them to stand still and suck vodka. A Colt in one hand and a cane in the other leaves me no free hands. Sweetness lifts prints from the most obvious places. Sweetness isn’t a cop, but I’ve taught him this skill. If Osmo and Jyri try something stupid, I’m going to shoot them, and I want to do it myself, not push more killings on Sweetness.

  Our backs are to the front door and I don’t realize anyone has entered until I hear it squeak when they close it behind them. Three men have guns trained on us. Small-bore handguns. Sweetness and I are about five feet apart. They all three look like nobody, or anybody. Spies, trained to blend in anywhere. I raise my pistol and point it at the head of one spook. In turn, he presses the muzzle of his pistol into my chest. Sweetness’s guns are holstered. A spook puts a pistol to his head. The third lowers his weapon and says, in English, “We came for the body and the girl, not to kill you. We’ll take what we came for and leave.” He looks at me. “Put down your weapon and tell me where the girl is.”

  His promise doesn’t inspire my confidence. I lower my arm but don’t relinquish my weapon or answer his question. I look at Sweetness. He’s been involved in a lot of violence, but never in an honest-to-God gunfight. I have. I see the look on his face and read his mind. He’s going to make a play as soon as he thinks he has a chance of winning. He’ll lose.

  The speaker of the three seems satisfied that the situation is under control and does a walk-through. He comes out with Loviise slung over his shoulder. She doesn’t resist, just looks at me through tears that say I betrayed her. He carries her out of the apartment. Fuck, I can’t have found her just to lose her again. What the hell is their motivation? Her future was to be a low-rent hooker. They have no money invested in her.

  No way would they go to such extreme lengths out of pride and some ridiculous adherence to gangster code, not when the consequence could involve killing cops. Diplomatic passports or not, it would bring the shit storm of all shit storms down on their heads, and they know it.

  I move my arm a fraction and shoot my assailant in the foot. He fires as he goes down and shoots me in the chest. God bless Kevlar. He goes to one knee, I shoot him in the top of his head. It bursts like an egg. Blood, skull fragments and brains splat on the floor behind him.

  Sweetness uses the distraction to move his head away from the muzzle pointed at it. He starts to draw. It all goes slow motion for me. I know he’ll be dead in under a second. I shoot the other spook in the temple. His brains shower the couch, corpse and wall behind it.

  “Go!” I yell. “Get the goddamned girl back.”

  Sweetness sprints out of the apartment.

  Jyri’s eyes show wild panic. “We’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Empty the spooks’ pockets for me,” I say.

  He rifles through them fast, tries to give me wallets, keys, phones and passports. I make him dump it all in my fishing tackle box and carry it for me.
>
  “Let’s go,” I say. “Together. I move slow. Take the elevator with me. Run, and I’ll shoot you, too.”

  We exit the building and find Sweetness alone. “I’m sorry,” he says. “He was too fast. A driver was waiting with the car running. I watched it pull away.”

  The bullet to my chest didn’t even hurt much. He’d used a little 9mm pistol. I’ve learned a few things from Milo’s technical lectures and diatribes. The shot wasn’t even as loud as a firecracker. He shot me with a subsonic bullet. It didn’t break the sound barrier. The bullet packs enough punch to enter a skull but not enough to exit it, just bounces around inside the head ripping up brains. No muss, no fuss. An executioner’s rig.

  Osmo still has a vodka bottle in his hand. Sweetness grabs it from him and takes a long drink. I tell them they’ll be hearing from me and they can walk home. My attempts at pacifism are a failure. Living in solitude in an effort to develop a Gandhi-like inner peace just didn’t work out for me.

  “What about the corpses upstairs?” Sweetness asks.

  “The spooks were already going to dispose of one body,” I answer. “I doubt if dealing with two more is much of an additional inconvenience for them.”

  18

  After so much effort, peril and death, the night is an utter failure. Loviise was in dire straits and terrible danger before I set out to save her. Now powerful people who hate me and know that I want to give her life back to her own her again. Surely, whatever ravages they intended to heap upon her before my interference will be increased tenfold as a way of getting back at me. I’m angry, dispirited and awash in the self-pity of failure.

  We arrive at Filippov Construction at a quarter after seven a.m. I’m so tired I can barely hold my head up. We destroyed the locks the first time we broke into this place, months ago. I had new ones installed and have my own key. The bodyguard in the back of the Wrangler has yet to make a sound. Saukko has the best of everything. I’m certain his personal security is no exception, and the man we took prisoner is viper dangerous. Sweetness pulls away the tarp he lies under and blindfolds him. I keep my gun ready. Sweetness cuts the zip-lock shackles from around his ankles so he can walk inside. We have to wait. His legs have gone numb in the cramped position and he can’t manage it for a few minutes.

  We take him inside a garage where tools are stored and maintenance on vehicles pulled. Sweetness sets a chair in the middle of the room, then zip-lock-shackles him to it. The chair is wooden. His strength is obvious. His forearms are as thick as sturdy oak tree limbs. He could burst the chair to splinters if he wished. I whisper to Sweetness, ask him to add shackles up and down his arms and legs so he can’t get leverage for a powerful muscle contraction. We keep silent, work by way of motioning to each other, to build fright. Scary things happen in the dark, in the silence.

  I fill the two syringes with Stolichnaya and set out some props. A vehicle battery and cables. A chain saw. Bolt cutters. A burlap bag. Sweetness dumps a bucket of water over his head, refills it and sets it on the floor. The garage has a hydraulic lift for vehicle repairs. We chain his chair to it and lift him off the floor. I would cut his clothes off him—people are so much more vulnerable naked—but I intend to return him later, have nothing against him and don’t want to humiliate him by dumping him naked on the street. My knee throbs like hell. I drag a comfortable chair with wheels out of the office and sit down. Sweetness takes off his blindfold.

  He looks around, takes everything in. He remembers me from the times I visited Saukko at his home. “Inspector Vaara,” he says, “that’s an interesting collection of toys you’ve assembled for my interrogation. Your crime-fighting techniques are unusual.”

  I lean forward with my hands one atop the other on the handle of my cane. “You’re the second person tonight to comment on that. What’s your name?”

  “Phillip Moore.”

  “I have no desire to hurt you. I want information. To what lengths I go to get it is up to you. But I’ll warn you, I’m in a really fucking bad mood and my temper is short.”

  “I see two needles there,” he says. “What’s in them?”

  “One is sodium pentothal. The other is LSD.”

  “So, by the looks of it, you’ll start by running me up with jungle juice and begin torturing me with waterboarding . . .”

  I cut him off. “Get with the times. It’s now called enhanced interrogation.”

  He ignores me. “And if that doesn’t work, you’ll use the LSD to drive me out of my mind, then start with electric shocks—tongue and probably genitals—and then finally, if all else fails, start removing parts of my body.”

  I have no stomach for anything like that. I doubt even Sweetness has that in him. “Something along those lines.”

  “May I tell you a little bit about myself?” he asks.

  Sweetness stands behind and to the left of him, just behind his peripheral vision, to keep him nervous. “Please do,” I say.

  If he’s frightened, he doesn’t betray it. His voice is steady, his demeanor businesslike, almost friendly. “I’m retired from the SAS, elite British forces. I know a bit about interrogation, even took a course in how to bear up under it. I could take whatever you have to dish out for a while, but everybody talks in the end. The purpose of enduring torture, usually, is to protect secrets and/or to give your team time to escape. I have no secrets to keep from you and no comrades to protect. As such, you have no need to hurt me, unless you derive pleasure from it. I’ll tell you anything you would like to know. Since it saves you time, and my life, it’s a bargain that benefits all of us. What do you think?”

  I see no reason for him to dissemble. His job is to protect Veikko Saukko, and Saukko is safe. It makes sense. “It does indeed sound like the most expedient route for me,” I say, “and the benefits for you are obvious. But if I catch even a whiff of a lie, I’ll make you sorry.”

  “Agreed,” he says. “All these zip-locks are chafing, cutting into my skin and cutting off my circulation. Could you let me down and take them off?”

  It’s stupid to un-cuff such a dangerous man, but I’ve always been foolish that way. I nod to Sweetness. We take out our Colts. Sweetness lowers the hydraulic lift to the floor and cuts Moore’s bonds loose with his Spyderco. Moore thanks us.

  “Stay seated and keep your distance,” I say.

  He rubs his wrists, tries to get his blood flowing. “What do you want to know?” he asks.

  I ask a few basic questions to get a feel if he’s lying to me or not. “You’re Saukko’s head bodyguard, correct?”

  He switches languages, to Finnish. “Correct.”

  “What does that entail?”

  “I also serve as his personal assistant, in a sense. I keep track of all his appointments, so I know who’s coming and going. I run background checks on people I’m unfamiliar with before letting them see Veikko. He has six bodyguards total. I make out the duty rosters, make sure the security cameras are working and monitored, make sure the others are doing their jobs to my satisfaction. In short, do everything possible to keep a man with as many enemies as Veikko has alive.”

  I light a cigarette and offer him one. He declines. “He’s a grade-A prick,” I say. “Why would you want to?”

  He chuckles. “That he is. But as I’m entrusted with his life, he doesn’t treat me like he does the rest of the world. He pays me a king’s ransom, and he treats me with courtesy and respect.”

  “That’s hard to imagine.”

  “Veikko is motivated by a morbid fear of death. He’s a strange man. Afraid to die, but stays drunk from the time he wakes up until he goes to bed—which is saying a lot, since he sleeps very little—and smokes at least three packs a day. He’s been doing both for fifty years. He must have the constitution of a rat.”

  His language skill makes me question the truth of his background. “Your Finnish is excellent. How did you learn it?�
��

  “If I can’t speak the language of the country my client lives in, I can’t do my job to the best of my ability. Therefore, I learned the language.”

  Phillip Moore is a formidable man on many levels. “I brought you here because I want to know about his Shit List. Apparently, I and my family are on it, and after tonight,” I motion toward Sweetness, “I believe my colleague is, too.”

  Now he laughs. “Then you, my friend, are in some serious fucking trouble.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t share your sense of humor. Explain.”

  “Since Veikko has such a terrible fear of death, he assumes everyone else does, too. So some years ago, he started a list of people he wanted dead or otherwise destroyed. He enjoys telling his would-be victims their fates to come. He’s had people killed a week after issuing his edict. Some people have been on the list for better than a decade, which he considers worse, since it gives them all that time to contemplate their demises, and just when so much time has passed that they’ve decided the threat must have been empty, bang! He lowers the boom. As you can imagine, many people try to murder him first. It adds a bit of challenge to my job.”

  “Who does the killing? You?”

  He takes umbrage. “Inspector, I’m a professional soldier and protector of lives, not a murderer.”

  “Then who does? Just tell me how his fucking Shit List works.”

  He stretches some kinks out and folds his arms. “Two of the bodyguards that work for him are from the Corsican Mafia. A father and son. The family has been in the assassination business for decades or maybe even centuries, and the son is learning the trade from the father. They have a very formal system. Veikko discusses the punishments he’s devised with them. They agree on a price. That money is placed in a safe-deposit box in Nordea Bank, in the branch downtown on Aleksanterinkatu. The father and son have a key. Veikko has a key. He goes with one of them to put money in when a contract is agreed upon, and when a hit is carried out, the money for payment withdrawn. In the event of Veikko’s death, they are to complete the list and empty the box. This, of course, is on an honor system, which is why Veikko chose them for the task. He trusts them.”