Fatal Headwind (18 page)

Our morning meeting the next day seemed underpopulated. In addition to Ström’s absence, Wang and Puustjärvi were also missing, since they were in court. Just as we were ending the meeting, the duty officer showed up out of breath at the door.

“A call just came in from the fire department. The Malinen Meats building out by the city golf course is on fire and they want someone from Violent Crime.”

“Smoked ham sale next week,” Puupponen said. I shut him up by asking why they were telling the violent-crime unit about a fire.

“There are people inside. It looks like arson.”

I looked around. Besides Puupponen and me, everyone else was booked down to the minute all morning. I had intended to try to reach Riikka Merivaara and have a look at the family’s house, but that would have to wait now, as would the lunch date with Taskinen I had already moved twice.

Even though it didn’t really matter how quickly we arrived at the scene of the fire, Puupponen and I were in the car within a couple of minutes. Dispatch said that in addition to two neighboring fire departments, there were also teams from Patrol and White-Collar Crime on scene. The meatpacking plant’s insurance company had also already sent their own detective. How many people were inside the burning building was still unknown. The company employed a couple of dozen people. The day had begun normally at seven o’clock; the fire was discovered in the staff locker room at eight thirty.

“Wait . . . am I remembering right? Wasn’t it Malinen Meats that had the tires of its trucks slashed this spring? And didn’t a Dumpster get lit on fire too? And hadn’t somebody spray-painted an ‘AR’ at the crime scene? Like Animal Revolution?” I asked Puupponen, who was driving well over the speed limit with the lights flashing.

“I think you’re right, but that wasn’t our case because no one was hurt. Arson with injuries is another matter.” Puupponen shook his head. My colleague’s seemingly endless reserve of jokes seemed to have run dry for once.

The actual slaughterhouse wasn’t located in Espoo; this was the processing and packing plant. The cattle and pigs that ended up there were actually slaughtered at the company’s main factory about ten miles outside of town. Malinen liverwurst, hot dogs, and cold-smoked roasts were delicacies that went at 20 or 30 percent more per pound that the average assembly-line meats. The previous year the company had received a special award from the Espoo Chamber of Commerce. I remembered that because Merivaara Nautical had received the same award this spring, and the news story had listed the previous winners.

The west wind had blown the ruddy brown smoke far over the nearby fields, and the smell of scorched meat was unmistakable even inside the car. The meat plant was located in an industrial park south of the nearby train station. Traffic on the frontage road was blocked, but I sped past the line of cars. We were in my dark-blue department Saab. It wasn’t a marked police car, but the flashing light on top got the message across, and people yielded the right of way.

The fire trucks were the first thing I saw through the smoke. There were so many of them that they must have also called in the Helsinki and Vantaa departments. The building was blazing, and the neighboring structures were also in danger of catching fire. A couple of fire-department helicopters hovered over the building.

“There’s no point going in there and getting smoke-cured too unless we have to. Let’s try to figure out the chain of events first,” I suggested to Puupponen. Just then an ambulance that had been hanging back started toward the fire. Through the smoke I saw as a stretcher was prepared. Then two smoke divers carried a gray human figure out through the back door of the building. As Puupponen adjusted the radio to the right frequency, I looked around and noticed a group of people in a field to the south, behind the caution tape. They didn’t look like the usual gawkers. They had signs, but I couldn’t read them. I dug a pair of binoculars out of the glove box.

I wasn’t particularly surprised by what I saw. “Meat is Murder—Animal Revolution.” “Slaughter the Slaughterers” and so on. There were about twenty in the group, and I recognized a couple of girls who had been at the McDonald’s protest. I also thought I saw a familiar head of green hair. One of the protesters was playing an African drum, but I couldn’t hear it over the sound of the helicopters. Most of the Animal Revolution supporters were standing still—it almost seemed as if they were waiting for the police to come arrest them.

Siren blaring, the ambulance headed off toward the hospital just as Puupponen got the radio to work. The exact cause of the fire was still unknown. The fire had spread fast enough that an accelerant like gasoline must have been used. Two workers were still trapped in the refrigeration area where the beef and pig carcasses were stored before processing. For the time being they were protected by the thick steel walls, but because efforts to switch off the air conditioning had failed so far, they were in danger of asphyxiation. The storage worker who had just been brought out had received second-degree burns and was suffering from smoke inhalation, but neither injuries were life-threatening.

“Back in the day, I thought about going to fire school instead of the police academy,” Puupponen said suddenly. “But someone told me firefighting was mostly just waiting around playing cards. That didn’t sound like my thing, but now I have a better reason. This smoke makes me want to puke.”

Puupponen was paler than normal; his freckles seemed to glow.

“I don’t think I have any gas masks in the car. I’ll go get some from one of the Patrol teams. Wait here.”

As I got out of the car, the smell of smoke assaulted me. I set off toward a group that included the Espoo fire chief and a sergeant from our Patrol Division.

“Hi there. I’m Lieutenant Maria Kallio, Espoo Violent Crime. We were asked to come over because this looked like it might be an arson-homicide. Any indication of who the perp might be?”

A tall, athletic man who wasn’t wearing a respirator extended his hand and introduced himself as the head manager of meat-processing plant, last name of Kaarela.

“It was probably the same terrorist brats as last spring. The police couldn’t find any direct evidence against them that time either,” Kaarela said bitterly. “And society puts up with all of it. But they’re not just getting in the way of people making an honest living, now they’re endangering our lives! There they are right now, gloating. Can’t you lock them up?”

According to Patrol, there wasn’t any direct evidence yet that Animal Revolution was behind the fire. Still, the protesters showing up at the same time as the fire didn’t seem like an accident.

“There are people in there, goddamn it!” Kaarela shouted in frustration. “Those bastards could be murderers soon. Why don’t you arrest them?”

I drew the Patrol sergeant aside, and after we conferred for a moment, we decided that it would be a good idea to take the protesters in for questioning. Causing a commotion at a hamburger joint and slashing tires were relatively minor crimes. Intentionally endangering human lives was an entirely different matter. I didn’t like what was happening one bit. It also rubbed me the wrong way that Jiri Merivaara was always visibly involved in everything Animal Revolution did. Could other members of the group have put him up to killing his father? Who were the organizers behind Animal Revolution? There had been rumors about the English Animal Liberation Front having ties to terrorist groups, and some people claimed that the Finnish Animal Revolution was led from abroad.

The problem with this line of reasoning was that Juha Merivaara hadn’t exactly been environmental enemy number one. Quite the contrary. He had been more or less on the same side as Animal Revolution.

The downdraft caused by the fire-department helicopters blew smoke in my face. I tried not to breathe, but it didn’t work. The smoke blurred my vision and forced its way into my throat and lungs. Most of tonight would be spent washing my hair and clothes. I had to get a gas mask soon. The most sensible thing would be to head back to the police station to organize the questioning of the AR protesters. No one needed me here to witness the asphyxiation deaths of two people surrounded by animal carcasses.

I managed to get gas masks from the firefighters for myself and Puupponen, who was still sitting in the car. The firefighters struggled to contain the blaze. I saw three police officers move toward the protesters standing in the field, somehow expressing more power and anger through silence than they ever could have shouting slogans.

I opened the car door.

“We’re taking that lot down to the station for questioning,” I told Puupponen. “Come on.”

As we started walking along a muddy path across the field, the trio of officers was about a hundred yards ahead of us. Over the radio I gave instructions, reminding them to avoid any violence. My gas mask hung from my neck, but Puupponen had pulled his on, making him look like a cartoon bug with red hair. The action started as soon as the officers reached the protesters.

Instantly they threw down their signs and started running. Some headed east, and I waved for Puupponen to follow as I sprinted after them as fast as I could on the wet grass.

“Stop, police!” I yelled at the four girls, who were dressed in sweaters and anoraks. They looked back frantically as if they expected me to be pointing a gun at them. We weren’t even carrying any, and luckily the patrol officers hadn’t pulled theirs out. A couple of the officers who had been directing traffic ran to help, and someone started driving a police van across the field too. A few bystanders even started playing cop, and although their interference didn’t thrill me, they did help us get the protesters rounded up like a herd of escaped foxes. As had happened in the McDonald’s incident, most of them stopped trying to get away and came along quietly. Only one older-looking boy and a tall girl with a completely shaved head tried to resist, but they had to surrender in the face of superior force. Yliaho from Patrol had to drag the girl to the van because she wouldn’t walk.

It had started to rain, which hopefully would help the fire crews. The smoke formed a ceiling over the valley we were in. Some of the protesters were coughing, and Puupponen still had his gas mask on. I tried not to think about the two plant workers who were still trapped in the refrigerator. Over the radio I heard that the fire had been contained in that area and the smoke divers were going to try to rescue them within moments. No one knew whether the men were still alive.

“Take everyone’s information and call the parents of anyone under fifteen. Then put them all in the same room. Maybe the seminar room on the third floor. I’ll be there soon,” I said to the guys from Patrol and then went with Puupponen to round up help for the interrogations. Some of the young people looked like they might be under fifteen, but I didn’t trust my sense of ages anymore. The older I got, the harder it was for me to determine the age of anyone more than ten years younger than me.

I walked around to the workshop on the north side of the meat-processing plant, where a temporary command center had been set up. The fire department’s arson expert was currently conferring with the fire specialist from the insurance company. Both agreed that the fire had been started inside the building.

“As if one of our workers would do something like that!” Kaarela, the plant manager, said angrily. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Next you’re going to accuse me of setting my own building on fire!”

“Have you taken on any temporary workers lately?” I asked calmly.

“No. We handle everything with our own people.” Then Kaarela frowned. “Or, actually, in September we had an intern for a week from one of the local schools . . .”

“Which school?”

“I think it was Espoo Bay. Really smart girl. She mostly helped around the office.”

Espoo Bay High School, the same one Jiri Merivaara went to. There might be some connection there. I asked Kaarela to send me information on the intern and the other plant workers, and then started to head back to the station.

“The smoke divers are heading in,” the fire chief told Kaarela.

“What’s the possibility of success?” the insurance investigator asked.

“About sixty percent. Hard to know what shape they’ll be in. If they’ve been breathing smoke this whole time . . .” The fire chief spread his arms in a way that said it all, and Kaarela swallowed. I noticed my abdominal muscles clenching. Fortunately I had a good reason to leave. I couldn’t help the trapped workers, but at least I could try to figure out what had happened.

We drove nearly a mile before the smoke had completely cleared. After getting on the freeway, I opened the windows and turned the fan on high. Normally around this time of day I started getting hungry, but now the thought of any food but raw vegetables nauseated me.

The Animal Revolution kids sat in the police station seminar room surrounded by five officers.

Yliaho said that they had been quiet and were obviously scared. Jiri Merivaara sat on a chair in the corner with his legs crossed, playing with the drawstrings of his army coat. Now and then the drummer beat his muddy instrument.