Behind God's Back (2 page)

The Tuesday that followed the Monday was ordinary, too. I cleared my desk of the mail and preliminary investigative material that had accumulated there during my time off.

On Wednesday, my work began in earnest.

I was just about to head downstairs to eat when my boss stepped into my office. Chief Detective Huovinen was in his shirtsleeves, but he was wearing a sharp-looking bronze-coloured tie. A former male model, Huovinen always looked polished down to the tips of his toes, as an old-fashioned style guide might say.

“You just got a gig. Take Simolin with you and head out to Tammisalo. It should be right up your alley.”

“How so?”

“Half an hour ago a man was shot at his front door. Evidently the perpetrator was pretending to be a police officer.”

“And what makes it up my alley?”

Huovinen folded his arms across his chest and frowned. “The victim's name is Samuel Jacobson. You know him?”

“Yes.”

Jacobson owned a chain of office supply stores. He was also prominently involved in the activities of Helsinki's Jewish community. He was over twenty years older than me, so I mostly knew him through the congregation. He had played soccer at the national level as a young man. When I was eighteen, I had dated his daughter Lea for a few months; she and I went to the same high school. It didn't take long for me to realize that Samuel Jacobson had absolutely no desire to become my father-in-law. I haven't had much luck on the son-in-law market since.

“It can't hurt the investigation that you know Jacobson and his circle – at least better than anybody else on the force. Jacobson must have got mixed up in something. He wasn't robbed, and the perpetrator clearly wasn't some crazy junkie killer who just happened to end up on his doorstep. Seems like a tricky case. Does Jacobson have a family?”

“A wife and two kids, a son and a daughter. The son works in the family business, the daughter lives abroad.”

I considered whether or not I should mention that I had dated Lea, and decided not to.

“OK. Take the case, then… unless there's some reason why you can't… something I should know about.”

“Nope.”

On the way to eastern Helsinki, I spent a minute reflecting on Huovinen's question. Helsinki's Jewish community was small, and all of its members more or less knew each other. That was no reason to excuse myself from the case. All the residents of a small town know each other, too, and that doesn't disqualify the local police from doing their jobs. Still, a boss other than Huovinen might have suspected Jews of having some secret pact of mutual assistance, something that would prevent them from telling the truth if another Jew were involved in a case.

My relationship with Lea had come to an abrupt end when someone blabbed that, after a party at my friend's, I had stayed behind with Karmela Mayer, the daughter of the fur shop owner. I had dated Karmela for over a year, and had almost ended up under the
chuppah
. Karmela lived in Israel these days, and had three children. I still had restless dreams about her large breasts. Lea also moved to Israel later and married a wealthy entrepreneur, or at least that's what I remembered someone telling me. That's the extent of what I knew about her family life.

I had dated three other Jewish girls and screwed up those relationships, too. When you added one-night stands, if you wanted to draw a hard line, I was disqualified when it came to every single Jewish family in Helsinki.

Detective Simolin drove in silence, looking a little uncomfortable. He probably blamed himself for my reticence. Simolin was a good police officer, but so inherently innocent that he often found himself coming up against life's realities. He was fascinated by North American Indians. He even had an Indian name, which he wouldn't tell anyone, and a set of buckskins complete with moccasins and a feathered headdress. He also had a genuine Indian bow and a steady hand. Simolin would have never confused the Crees of the northern plains with the Crows of the central plains because he was an expert on Indian tribes, their territories and ways of life. In addition, he was an enthusiastic astronomer, and had built his own reflecting telescope. Had he lived in the '50s, it was easy to imagine him devouring those hobby magazines for boys and building all the gadgets they featured: rudimentary receivers, soapbox radios and microscopes. But these days, such enthusiasm was old-fashioned and naive.

“Huovinen told me that Jacobson was Jewish. Do you know him?” Simolin asked.

“Yeah. Not well, but a little. I used to date his daughter back in the day, but only for a few months.”

“Really?” Simolin sounded excited. “I've heard his name somewhere. Was he retired?”

“Not that I know of.”

Simolin frowned. “Huh. Then what was he doing at home in the middle of the day?”

“Beats me.”

The thought hadn't even crossed my mind. But it had crossed Simolin's, and before continuing he paused for a moment, as if waiting to hear my opinion of his observation before offering his own. Simolin wasn't ambitious that way. He let others shine.

“It occurred to me that the murderer might have been dressed like a policeman because Jacobson was afraid of something and wouldn't have opened the door otherwise. And that's why he didn't go to work either.”

“Jacobson didn't strike me as the type that anyone would want to kill.”

“And yet someone did,” Simolin pointed out. “And in a police uniform, too. I had time to do a little checking – there are three known cases in Finland where a police officer's uniform has gone missing. That's not very many. Two were in the Helsinki area, one in Lapland.”

“If it even was a police uniform. People think anyone in a dark-blue uniform and a cap is a police officer.”

“True enough,” Simolin admitted.

“You already take your vacation?” I asked, after we drove a moment longer in silence. We were just passing through the neighbourhood of Herttoniemi.

“Two weeks. I'm saving the rest for winter. I'm going to travel to the States for two weeks.”

“Alone?”

Simolin appeared to be blushing.

“With my girlfriend… We're going to go visit this one Indian tribe. They have a big celebration around that time. Everyone dresses in traditional ceremonial garb, and the men perform the buffalo dance. It's not your run-of-the-mill tourist show.”

“That must be an amazing experience.”

“I've been saving up for this trip for almost two years.”

I knew that Simolin didn't discuss his Indian pursuits with anyone at work except me. Maybe he figured that, being a Jew, I understood other minorities. But the fact was I had never poked fun at his interest in Indians. Sometimes we'd talk about the stars and space, too.

The infinity of the universe impressed everyone, but it aroused endless awe and admiration in Simolin. Words never sufficed to explain what he'd seen the previous night through
his reflector telescope. He'd spotted the rings of Saturn, or the Horsehead Nebula of Orion. Such things reminded you how small and finite man's existence truly is, Simolin had confessed during one late-night shift.

“Did Jacobson have a family?” he asked. “Oh, that's right, you dated his daughter.”

“Wife and two grown children.”

“Do you want me to talk to the daughter if there's still something between you guys? Or maybe Arja can? She's coming out, too.”

“Lea's still in Israel. Besides, it's not a very delicate subject any more. It's been over twenty years.”

We turned towards Tammisalo, leaving Herttoniemi Manor behind to the right. The Jacobsons had lived in Tammisalo back when I dated Lea, and on several occasions we had taken walks in the manor grounds. It had been August, and there on the lawn, under cover of the balmy darkness, I tried to get into her pants. Even though things always started out promisingly, Lea would eventually put on the brakes. My efforts weren't rewarded until a little before our relationship came to an end. It had been at the Jacobson summer cottage in Emäsalo, where we spent a weekend without old man Jacobson's knowledge.

As I took in the familiar scenery, I remembered how I used to ride the blue Tammisalo Transit bus to pick up Lea. Back then, it had felt like I was travelling to the countryside: the houses had been old and dilapidated and their orchards large. Now they had been subdivided, and the road was lined with brick homes, each one grander than the next.

We crossed the bridge, circled the roundabout, and turned towards the shore.

“Pull up next to that fence,” I told Simolin. The Jacobson residence was a boxy, flat-roofed brick house built in the 1970s. Samuel Jacobson had commissioned it himself, and in the end he died in the doorway of his own home. Much to my surprise, he was still lying there.

Two patrol cars and a tech van stood in the drive. I could see an elderly couple peering out of the windows of the house next door. You couldn't miss the woman's silvery hair. Evidently they were the eyewitnesses to the crime.

I didn't want to disturb the CSIs right when they were busiest. The sky was growing dark and threatening rain. A downpour wouldn't do anything to further the technical investigation.

The deceased was lying on his left side, head towards the front door. He was dressed in dark-blue cotton trousers and a lightweight sweater. The door was wide open, and I could see an investigator going about her business in the hallway. Someone else was taking a photograph inside.

I touched Simolin's sleeve. “Let's go have a chat with the neighbours.”

They were expecting us; the door opened before I could ring the bell. The man and grey-haired woman who had just been standing at the window were peering out through the crack. I introduced Simolin and myself, and the man asked us in.

A mid-length fur coat was hanging in the hallway, then the family dog trotted in and started sniffing at my feet. It was small and white and fluffy; I didn't recognize the breed. My nose started to itch and I could feel a sneeze coming on. I was allergic to animal fur, which was one reason the relationship between me and Mr Mayer's daughter had withered on the vine. Both Old Man Mayer and Karmela had wanted me to take over the fur shop.

I got right to the point. “Which one of you saw the assailant?”

“Kalevi, my husband, did,” said the woman.

“So you didn't see him at all?”

“I saw him sitting in the car, but by that time it was too late to tell if he was a policeman or not.”

“What about the vehicle? What can you tell us about that?” Simolin asked. The man leant in. Now we had entered his area of expertise.

“It was a dark-blue Volkswagen Golf, no doubt about it. Isn't that what the police drive? There weren't any police markings on it, but there was a blue light on the roof… Or wait, I wouldn't bet my life on that; it was behind the bushes and I could only see part of it. But there was definitely something on the roof. I didn't see the licence plate.”

“Could you tell us what else you saw? Start from the beginning, and tell us everything.”

“I didn't see the incident itself – the murder, I mean. I went to the window to have a look once Titi started barking. Titi has her very own chair set up there, because she's a curious little girl. So I heard her barking and went to have a look. Through my binoculars, I could see Jacobson lying in the doorway and a man who looked like a police officer walking away. Kaarina was upstairs and I yelled for her to come down. The second she got here, the man drove off. Ooh, I was miffed at her, but Kaarina's legs aren't too good.”

“Yours are even worse,” his wife huffed.

“Which is why I was downstairs.”

The man showed us the binoculars that were on the hallway table.

“I had these. I looked out the window to see what had happened to my neighbour, and I could see there was blood on his face. I phoned an ambulance right then and there, and they called the police when I told them what had happened.”

“So the man was dressed like a police officer?”

“That's what it looked like. Blue uniform and a cap. He had badges on his chest and his sleeve that looked like police badges to me, you know, the sword and everything.”

“So you didn't see the actual shooting?”

“No, but who else could it have been? No one would leave someone lying in a pool of blood unless they were the guilty party.”

“No doubt you're right about that. What about the shot?”

“I definitely would have heard a shot. There's nothing wrong
with my hearing. The murderer must have been a professional. They use silencers.” Now Kalevi was getting excited.

“So you didn't see the gun?” Simolin asked.

“No. That darned bush was right in the way.”

“Was Jacobson often home in the middle of the day?”

The woman shook her head. “No, he wasn't.”

Her husband agreed: “Not a chance. Jacobson was a workaholic. Owned a chain of office supply shops. Inherited it from his father and expanded it quite a bit. Must have at least twenty employees. Jews have a nose for business.”