Helsinki Homicide: Vengeance

by Jarkko Sipila

  Their footsteps quickened on the way to the car, and the lumbering Niko was already out of breath. Roge and Osku didn’t pass him, however.

  Roge swung into the driver’s seat and tossed the chain into the passenger footwell before Niko could sit down. Osku slid into the back seat.

  Roge stepped on the gas and laughed. The adrenaline was still pumping in their veins.

  “Shit, he sure learned his lesson!”

  “You got that right,” said Niko. “How’d it feel, Osku?”

  “Great. Looked like the guy must’ve bleached his hair, though. It was still brown back at the bar. Ha-haa!”

  Niko turned and shot a look at Osku. “It was the same guy, though?”

  “Yeah,” he answered hesitantly. “Pretty sure it was.”

  “Pretty sure?”

  “Yeah. Yes, it was him.”

  Niko turned his gaze back to the road. “Alright. Your word is good enough for me.”

  Osku was satisfied.

  “Drive back to the office,” Niko commanded. Larsson will be there around noon. You guys haven’t even met him yet.”

  * * *

  Detective Lieutenant Takamäki was sifting through a batch of unsolved cases. The list seemed to grow by the day, and though they were mostly routine crimes, that was only the police’s view. The victims likely had a different opinion.

  If the performance objective of the Helsinki Police Department was a solid ‘B’, the actual grade usually was somewhere around a ‘C-’ or a ‘D+’. The overall percentage of solved cases had declined sharply in the 1990s, though violent crimes continued to be solved at a satisfactory rate. The reason, of course, was that with violent crimes, most victims were able to identify who had hit, kicked, stabbed or raped them. If the victim was unable to communicate, that usually meant that the crime was more serious, and police allocated plenty of resources for those cases.

  Takamäki’s cell phone rang. He instinctively looked at the display: unknown.

  “Hello,” he answered.

  “Hey there,” said a woman’s voice.

  Takamäki recognized the caller before she could identify herself: Sanna Römpötti from Channel 3 News. For the past twenty years, she had worked as a crime reporter for various media outlets.

  “How are you today?” Takamäki inquired before Römpötti could ask him anything. That was a first.

  “What, have you switched to some specialized intelligence unit investigating the mood of the media?”

  Takamäki chuckled. “Nah, just interested. You promised to teach me ballroom dancing. When do we start?”

  Now it was Römpötti’s turn to laugh. The previous winter, the TV reporter had been selected for the popular television show Dancing with the Stars, and had agreed to participate. Römpötti had never really understood herself why she had consented. She did remember that she had drunk two glasses of wine before the call came. Afterwards, it had been too late to enter a plea of temporary insanity. Along with her dance partner, Römpötti had made it to the final four pairs before the dance-ignorant masses dropped her.

  “Listen, Kari,” she said. “Anytime.”

  Takamäki was somewhat disconcerted. “Aah, let’s look at our calendars. Shall we?”

  She got to the point. “About the Skulls.”

  “What about them?”

  “This week the judge levied three-year sentences on our ‘dynamic duo’ for that pizza shop extortion.”

  “Right,” said Takamäki. “Alanen and Lintula.”

  “Have you read the court’s ruling?”

  “No,” the detective lieutenant said candidly. “But I’m quite familiar with the details—it was our case, after all. What about it?”

  Römpötti paused briefly. Takamäki wondered if she was surprised he hadn’t read the court’s ruling. He simply hadn’t had the time.

  She went on, “Well, in court, the prosecutor argued for stiffer sentences because Alanen and Lintula were members of the Skulls, an organized crime ring. But the court rejected the argument because it determined the gang hadn’t been founded as a criminal organization. Do you have any comment on that?”

  Takamäki paused for a moment. “Is this an interview?”

  “No. Just gathering background information.”

  Her answer made him wonder if she was working on a bigger story about the Skulls.

  “Well, I wasn’t surprised,” he answered. “Generally, these laws pertaining to criminal organizations have become impossible to apply in practice. They’re like cake toppers.”

  “Huh?”

  “The cake looks better with the decorations, but nobody eats the plastic.”

  Römpötti laughed sarcastically. “Right, like freedom of speech in the constitution. There’s a cake topper for you.”

  “No comment.”

  Römpötti steered back on course. “So what’s the status with the Skulls, by the way? Are they under police surveillance?”

  “We don’t have time for that. Routine cases are coming in at a brisk enough pace that we don’t have the manpower to conduct extra surveillance, even if we’d like to.”

  “Aren’t there almost ten of them in prison now?” It was more a remark than a question.

  “Somewhere around there. I don’t know exactly. Are you working on something bigger about them?” he asked.

  “Maybe. We’ll see what I can dig up.”

  Takamäki considered how to put it. “Well, if you intend to get in touch with them, watch out. They’re unpredictable.”

  * * *

  Aleksis Kivi Street had once been wide and spacious until the addition of a streetcar line had eaten up half of the road. A few empty bottles of beer lay on the pavement in the yellow glow of the street lights. Suhonen knew it wouldn’t be long before someone gathered them up for the deposit.

  About five yards away, an older man with a thirties-style cap exited Stairwell F on the ground floor of a seven-story building. The ponytailed cop slipped in before the door could close and the man shot him a cold stare, but Suhonen didn’t care. He was happy to have slipped inside without resorting to trickery.

  Built in the 1960s, the stairwells of the building had been painted many times over the years, but judging by the flaking paint, yet another coat was in order. Suhonen stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. The elevator reeked of urine.

  There were four apartments on the fifth floor. Next to the stairwell leading upstairs was a brown door with no name tag.

  Suhonen couldn’t remember if he had ever been here on a bust. The VCU had ransacked quite a few of the flats on Aleksis Kivi Street.

  Suhonen rang the doorbell.

  His old friend Salmela opened the door, and the nauseating stench of sweat and rotting food mixed with fresh cigarettes wafted into the hallway. “Come in,” said Salmela.

  Dirty clothes lay all over the entry. Shoes were cluttered about and only two coats remained on the hangers; the rest were in a heap on the floor.

  Suhonen didn’t say anything, just followed Salmela, who was dressed in jeans and a grubby white shirt, into the living room. Suhonen dodged the beer cans, bottles and laundry littering the floor, glancing briefly into the bedroom on the right. He wouldn’t have been surprised at all to see a city rat slink out from behind one of the cardboard boxes.

  The living room was on the smaller side, with a TV in the corner, and in front of that, a gray sofa that even the Salvation Army wouldn’t have deemed acceptable. Its seat cushions were sagging and the upholstery was torn in many places. Salmela sat down at the table. A full ashtray, glasses, two opened cartons of milk and a few dishes lay on the table. Apparently, Salmela enjoyed liver casserole as well as mac-and-cheese.

  Looking fatigued, Salmela dug out a twenty-two caliber pistol and set it on the table. “Take it.”

  “What’s going on?” Suhonen asked, a shade of worry in his voice.

  Had his friend shot someone? The apartment stunk, but not of a corpse.


  “I was thinking about shooting myself, but then I came to my senses. This .22 is just too small for the job. If you’ll give me your Glock, I can take care of it right now.”

  Suhonen’s 9mm Glock 26 was in a shoulder holster beneath his leather jacket, but he had no intention of lending it to his childhood friend. Developed specifically for concealed carry, the “baby” Glock packed power and accuracy into a small package.

  Suhonen and Salmela had been friends since childhood. They had both grown up in Lahti, a town of about 100,000, an hour north of Helsinki. The two had belonged to a small youth gang that burglarized attics. When the gang was finally busted in action, Salmela was along, but Suhonen was at home with a raging fever. The best friends had ended up on opposite sides of the law, though their friendship hadn’t ended. It had actually blossomed—Suhonen picked up street intel from Salmela, and in return, had helped his friend out of a few legal jams.

  But Salmela was now in a steep downhill slide, not unlike many of the other former members of their youth gang. Their alternatives had been violent death, suicide or drinking themselves to death. Some romantic might think that a tough enough woman would be able to set her man straight, but that wasn’t really true. Suhonen knew that the women in these circles were every bit the alcoholics the men were. A tough woman would just make the fights more vicious and inflate the risk of a violent end.

  “You won’t get my weapon,” said Suhonen.

  “Not fair.”

  In a tough situation, a firm approach was best. “If you shot yourself with my gun, how do you think I’d explain that to the NBI?”

  Salmela’s eyes met Suhonen’s for the first time. His eyes were bleary, but at least he wasn’t terribly drunk.

  “Guess you have a good point.”

  “Right.” Suhonen chose not to ask questions, but waited for Salmela to make the first move. The man sure hadn’t called him here to win pity with his suicide talk. Or at least Suhonen presumed so.

  “Listen, Suhonen.”

  No response.

  “You know my life has been going down the shitter for the last twenty years,” Salmela continued.

  Suhonen knew. His prison terms had destroyed his marriage. His son—a promising soccer player—had ended up a drug dealer and was shot to death in an apartment a half mile from where they now sat. During his most recent stretch in the brig, Salmela had gotten mixed up with the Skulls and took an iron pipe to the head. Not from the Skulls, but from someone else.

  Suhonen thought about what to say. Expressing regret for the past was pointless, but Salmela shouldn’t expect much from the future either. “What happened now?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Come on… I know you. What’s there to whimper about in the past?”

  A tear came to Salmela’s eye. “A lot, actually.”

  “Well, I know,” Suhonen eased off. “You’re right about that.”

  “And you’re right that there’s nothing I can do about it,” Salmela brushed the tear out of his eye and lit a cigarette. “Suhonen, our history…”

  “Eero, don’t bother…” said Suhonen unflinchingly. “Get to the point.”

  Salmela laughed. “That’s what I’ve always liked about you. Nip the bullshit in the bud. Good.”

  “So?”

  “I need some money.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten…actually twenty.”

  Suhonen looked pensively at Salmela. Under other circumstances, he would have fished out a twenty-euro note and handed it to Salmela as a joke. But he knew what the man had meant: ten or twenty grand.

  “What happened?”

  “You know I wouldn’t have called unless I was in real trouble, given you’re a cop and all. I’m in pretty deep shit.”

  “So?”

  Salmela took a drag on his cigarette. “Actually, it started with this childish idea that I should get off this damn hamster wheel. I ran up some debt in prison and wanted to take care of it once and for all. So, with some help I managed to order a few pounds of speed from Tallinn.”

  Suhonen stared at Salmela, whose eyes were fixed on the table.

  “I borrowed the money to pay for it, since I don’t have any. The dope was supposed to arrive on last night’s boat, but Narcotics busted the mule at the harbor.”

  Suhonen startled.

  “So the whole job went to shit. Now, on top of the old debt, I owe another ten grand. And to some heavies, too.”

  “Who?”

  “No, I can’t…”

  “I can’t help if I don’t know.”

  “That fat porker from the Skulls. You know Niko, right?”

  Suhonen nodded. He knew Niko Andersson: a true prototype of a gangster. Tormented in school for being overweight, he was driven to crime, then prison and found brotherhood in a gang, where he got the admiration he so lacked. During long stakeout nights, Suhonen had often mused that many of these guys could have ended up in some radical religious sect, but in prison, the gangs were a more powerful influence.

  “How much do you owe all together?”

  “Well, the two grand from prison has ballooned to eight grand with interest, plus this ten grand. So eighteen grand all together.”

  Suhonen reflected. He had two grand in his bank account, but he could never raise the other sixteen.

  “How’d the two grand turn into eight?”

  Salmela chuckled. “Don’t ask me about the math, but supposedly the interest keeps running up because I haven’t been able to pay. I’ve got nothing to sell either. Social security pays for the flat and I’d barely get a hundred for this crap.”

  Suhonen surveyed the room. A hundred was wishful thinking.

  “The old debt is for the Skulls. What’s the new one for?”

  “The Skulls too.”

  Not good, Suhonen thought. “Who organized the drug deal?”

  Salmela looked up from the table. “Can’t talk about it.”

  “Really?”

  “A middle man. He promised to arrange the four pounds, but he wanted ten grand in advance. I scraped up some of it from a couple sources and Niko wrapped it all up. I don’t know where it went wrong. We were waiting for her last night and everything seemed fine, but the cops picked her up right in front of the terminal. Don’t know much more. Obviously, Narcotics was tipped off.”

  “Had they been tipped off, they would’ve arrested her right away in the terminal. That’s how it usually works, anyhow.”

  “Well, that could be, but it doesn’t change the outcome.”

  Suhonen was glad that he and Toukola hadn’t arrested her, but had stayed further back among the other travelers. “I can ask around in Narcotics. Won’t do you much good now… But she had the whole four pounds?”

  “Yeah. Apparently she’s made the trip a few times before, too. Tapes the stuff to her sides and just walks off the boat. Simple but effective, they say. Not this time, though.”

  “Who was the middle man?”

  “Some Estonian shithead. Niko knows him.”

  Suhonen mulled over Salmela’s story. According to his friend, the mule should have had four pounds, but they only found twenty ounces on Marju Mägi. Had Salmela been swindled? What role did the Skulls and Niko play in the scheme?

  “Well, let’s think about it. I have an idea what we can do next, but I need to do some research first,” said Suhonen.

  Salmela nodded. “Okay.”

  Suhonen rose and began to clear the dirty dishes off the table. “This pad of yours is quite the dump. I’ll just clean a little if you don’t mind.”

  Salmela didn’t say anything, just stubbed out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. A butt tumbled over the rim onto the table, but Salmela didn’t bother to pick it up.

  Suhonen opened the window, scraped everything off the table into a couple of yellow plastic bags and began to gather the dirty clothes from the floor into one bag, and the empty bottles and cans into another.

  After a good h
our, the dishes were washed, the floors swept and the apartment was almost in better shape than Suhonen’s own.

  He didn’t pry any more about Niko or the Skulls. He’d have time to get back to that later.

  CHAPTER 8

  FRIDAY, 11:50 A.M.

  SKULLS’ COMPOUND, HELSINKI

  The building, originally a two-story warehouse, was situated in an industrial area in north Helsinki. At some point, it had been used as a vehicle inspection office, but now the Skulls owned it. Located just five miles from downtown Helsinki, the former warehouse was still remote enough to serve as their headquarters.

  The compound was on the left side of a cul-de-sac. A grove of birches stood behind the building, and further still was Beltway One. On the south end of the street was a filthy sports dome, where junior soccer star hopefuls practiced in the winter. Next to the dome were a few rusty shipping containers, and on the shoulder of the pot-holed street, giant sections of concrete tubing were scattered about. The Skulls’ compound was about a hundred yards from the nearest building.

  Tapani Larsson drove the BMW sports car through the open gate into the yard, and parked it next to a few cars. He recognized the gang’s black Chevy, but the other vehicles were unfamiliar. Larsson had driven Sara from the suite to her apartment in Lauttasaari, where the Skull VP was bunking.

  The yard was large enough to suit the needs of a vehicle inspection office. In the back was a test track where the engineers had tested car brakes.

  The concrete building was encircled by a chain link fence that seemed too flimsy to Larsson.

  He was happy that, rather than continuing to rent, the Skulls had bought the building last year. On paper, it was owned by a fronting company.

  The logic was simple: If you own your house, you can’t be evicted. They had rented the downstairs garages to a repair shop for some extra income. Larsson parked the Beamer in front of the door.

  The downstairs door was locked and Larsson punched in the code—it was still the same. The door seemed flimsy as well, he thought, but maybe that was just because the doors he had seen in the last year and a half were considerably thicker.