Cold Trail (12 page)

“S
urveillance camera images? From where?”

“T
he shopping mall, for instance.”

“A
re there?”

“
I don’t have any interest in getting involved in the case, but the images do exist. I have some good news and some bad news about them. The bad news is that the images are from exterior cameras that are erased every twenty-four hours.”

“A
nd the good news?”

“I
went and picked them up. I have the photos.”

Solberg
thought for a second. “Under what authority?”

“L
et’s just say it was unofficial collegial
assistance.”

“
So, the media’s favorite lieutenant didn’t trust his colleagues. He just had to go and solve the case all by himself,” Solberg jabbed. “Helsinki Homicide Investigates Collision between Cyclist and Car in Espoo. Now that would make a good headline.”

This time
Takamäki silently counted all the way to fifteen. “Yeah, well, but isn’t it a good thing that someone’s actually investigating it? Are you interested in those surveillance camera images?”

“S
ure, I’m interested, but this case isn’t getting any special treatment just because a lieutenant’s son is involved.”

“I
’m not expecting special treatment, but how about a proper investigation? I could drop off a flash drive with the photos around 5:30 this afternoon. I’m tied up with a case of my own here.”

“S
orry, office hours end at 4:15, but give me a call tomorrow. I don’t have any interrogations scheduled, and I might just have time to take a look at those surveillance camera images.”

“F
ine. I’ll call you tomorrow,” Takamäki said, and lowered the receiver. This time he decided to count to twenty, and out loud, before he did anything else.

Joutsamo
walked in as he hit sixteen. “What’s up? Are you meditating or something?”

“S
eventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty,” Takamäki recited.

“W
hat’s going on?”

“Y
ou know a cop at Espoo by the name of Lauri Solberg?” Takamäki asked.

“D
oesn’t ring any bells,” Joutsamo said, confused.

“I
n that case it doesn’t matter,” Takamäki said, his voice now calm.

Joutsamo
eyed her boss as he turned to his computer.

“U
mm, Kari, the meeting’s supposed to start now.”

“H
uh? Oh yeah, of course.” Takamäki replied.

“D
oes Solberg have anything to do with Jonas’s hit-and-run?” Joutsamo asked.

Takamäki
stood up and walked past her. “Suhonen here yet?”

“Y
eah,” Joutsamo said, more perplexed than ever, following her lieutenant into the corridor.

The
conference room was just down the hall. Takamäki could see Suhonen and Kulta in the corridor. The men were counting together out loud. “Nine... ten…eleven...”

“W
hat the hell?” Takamäki wondered, before he saw Kohonen doing chin-ups from a bar rigged up in the conference room doorway.

“T
welve,” Kulta counted, but Kohonen seemed to be slowing down. “One more!”

Kohonen
strained at the bar,
trying to
pull her chin up to it. “No…problem,” she huffed, as her face turned the same shade of red as her hair.

“Y
ou got it, you got it!” Suhonen encouraged.

Kohonen
struggled, and finally managed to complete chin-up number thirteen.

“O
nly thirteen, huh,” Kohonen panted on the floor. “I ought to be able to do the same fifteen as Suhonen here.”

“H
ow many does the lieutenant have in him?” Kulta asked.

Before
Takamäki could answer, Joutsamo intervened.

“H
e just made it to twenty over in his office. Now let’s start this meeting.”

* * *

Salmela was sitting in his rusted-out Toyota van in the Hakaniemi public market parking lot. He had backed the van up so that the rear was toward the brick building.

Whereas the finer folk did their shopping at the Market Square at the southern harbor, Hakaniemi Square had traditionally been a working-class marketplace. This history still lived on in the labor unions that kept watch over the square from the surrounding office buildings. And red flags flew in honor of the working man every Mayday, when crowds of thousands gathered at the square before their traditional parade through Helsinki’s streets.

Salmela had no political convictions, but he did believe that taking from the rich was just fine. And the same went for the poor, too.

Kallio, a neighborhood of grim apartment buildings, rose behind the square on one of the city’s highest hills. Its apartments were small, mostly studios or one-bedrooms. It had been a distinctly working-class area for decades, but was now headed down the same path as New York’s SoHo. First students and artists displaced the working class, and then the rich bought up housing that was conveniently located close to the city center. The hundred-year-old Market Hall behind the van was solid but attractive, and the area’s working-class spirit had been preserved in the interior. Salmela didn’t care for the place, though. The red brick façade reminded him too much of the exterior of Helsinki Prison.

The market was closed, and
Salmela was eyeing the grim view. Everything was gray. Couldn’t they put a fountain in here or something? Salmela clearly remembered the days twenty years ago when he and his buddies used to roll drunks in the area.

S
almela leaned forward far enough to check the giant Pepsi-logo clock on the building to the left: 3:02 p.m. The asshole was late, even though Salmela had sworn him to be on time.

The criminal
eyed the cars in the vicinity, looking for any indications of a police presence. An overly curious, circling gaze, a man sitting alone in a parked car, or a supposedly random loiterer were danger signals.

An old woman dressed in a black fa
ke fur was walking her little Dachshund at the edge of the square. Salmela wondered whether she could be a police officer. Did the female undercover officers
take theater classes or something to teach them how to act? He’d have to ask Suhonen about it someday in a nice roundabout way.

Goddammit,
Salmela laughed to himself. Had he really gotten that paranoid? Oh well, better paranoid than in prison.

The Pepsi clock
now showed 3:04 p.m. Salmela would wait two more minutes, and then he was out of there. At that instant there was a knock on the passenger window, and Salmela immediately regretted having stuck around
.
He could tell from the man’s eyes that he was on something stronger than booze. The door was locked, and Salmela didn’t feel like letting the emaciated junkie into his car. He gestured for him to come around to the other side.

Juha
Saarnikangas looked like he was in pretty bad shape as he circled around the front of the van. His brown hair reached down to his shoulders and probably hadn’t been washed in a week or more. His green army jacket looked foul. He also had a nasty-looking scar on his cheek that Salmela hadn’t seen before.

Salmela
rolled down the window. “What’s up?”

Saarnikangas’s
heroin-decayed teeth turned his smile into a grimace. “Hey, man. Good to see you.”

“N
o, it’s not. What’s so urgent?”

“I
’ve got some really good stuff for you,” Saarnikangas said, trying to maintain the smile.

“S
orry,” Salmela said tersely. “I’m not buying anything. Shop’s closed.”

Saarnikangas’s expression grew serious
. “Hey, hey, come on, man! You don’t even know what I’m selling.”

Salmela
pulled a cigarette from his pack and listened, mostly out of pity. He used to buy all kinds of stolen goods from Saarnikangas, but not anymore.

The junkie continued
his spiel: “I’ve got a Compaq 6220 right out of the box. Retails at more than a grand! I’ll give it to you for a hundred.”

Salmela
blew smoke into Saarnikangas’s face.

“A
ll right, fifty. Please.”

“I
’m not buying.”

“
Come on, thirty... Fuck, man, I need some dough.”

Salmela’s interest was actually piqued by the
time they got down to thirty, because that was almost nothing for a laptop. Juha must be really desperate.

“L
ook, asshole, you said you had something important to tell me. Not that you wanted to unload some junk.”

Salmela
started up the Toyota.

“
Come on, man, at least give me
a smoke,” Saarnikangas begged.

Without saying a word,
Salmela rolled up the window and drove off. He heard a thunk as Saarnikangas kicked the side of the van, and he could see the junkie giving him the finger in the rear-view mirror. If there hadn’t been any bystanders nearby, he would have stopped the van, gotten out, and beat Saarnikangas’s ass. Instead, he just flicked on his blinker and turned south out of the parking lot. The ugly complex belonging to the Federation of Trade Unions rose up at the end of the street.

Salmela was annoyed that he had wasted
his time on Saarnikangas. The question crossed his mind of whether his son, who had been shot a year ago, would have been in the same condition if he had lived. The prognosis had been similar.

* * *

There were no windows in the conference room. Takamäki, Suhonen, and Kulta had mugs of coffee; Joutsamo had tea. Kohonen wasn’t there, she was busy writing up a report for an old case. The team had reviewed the original Repo file and concluded that the exercise hadn’t been very productive. They had invested a decent amount of effort
in the process but had achieved nothing. Tracking an escaped prisoner was clear cut—you either succeeded or failed, and this time the results were pretty evident.

“T
he guy’ll get caught in some
raid sooner or later,” Suhonen said. “It’d be nice to get a real case, so we could do some real work.”

“A
ll right, now,” Takamäki said. He wasn’t sure how serious Suhonen was, but he could sense a level of frustration.
The danger was that it would spread to the others.

“L
ooks like all we have is this Saarnikangas,” Kulta said. “It’s the only name in this case. I talked again with the guard who allowed Repo to escape, but he didn’t have anything new to give me.”

“H
as anyone been back to the father’s house?”

Takamäki
asked. “He’s got to be sleeping somewhere... If he doesn’t have any friends, then let’s check the old places one more time.”

“W
e can go by there again,” Joutsamo said. “But this looks like it’s headed for passive investigation
pretty fast. No point dedicating much more effort to it.”

Takamäki
tried to drum up enthusiasm. “We’re not giving up just yet. There’s one trick we haven’t tried yet.”

“G
ive it to the papers?” Joutsamo guessed.

Takamäki
nodded and read from a handwritten draft. “The headline reads ‘Helsinki Police Seek Tips on Escaped Murderer.’”

Kulta smiled.
“Not likely to make it to press in that format.”

“I
t’s not supposed to,” the lieutenant retorted. “The rest goes more or less like this, ‘On Monday morning, Timo Repo, serving life for murder, escaped from his father’s funeral...’”

Joutsamo
interrupted, “Do we have to say that he fled from the funeral?”

“L
et me respond with another question,” Takamäki said. “Why should we keep it a secret? It’s not significant in terms of our investigation, and we have to give them some details. If we send out a press release with no details, the papers will ignore it, which means we won’t get any response.”

“O
kay.”

“A
nyway, this goes on to say that Repo left the Restaurant Perho and headed toward downtown Helsinki. Since then, police have not
received reports of any sightings, and are now asking the public for help. Then there’s a description of him.”

“A
ren’t you going to send a photo?” Joutsamo asked.

“N
ot yet,” Takamäki said.

“W
hy not?”

“I
t might get us another round in the media a couple days from now if this one doesn’t work. I did put here at the end that Repo was convicted of murdering his wife in Riihimäki in 1999. The police do not consider Repo particularly dangerous.”