Helsinki Blood (15 page)

M
ilo drives his Crown Victoria, the cliché of all police cars, and we go to the National Bureau of Investigation garage. A forensic mechanic is underneath the Audi when we enter. We announce our presence, he slides out from underneath the chassis, and we introduce ourselves.

“I heard people got hurt,” he says, “are they going to make it?”

“Two girls got burned,” I say, “one very bad, somebody close to us, but she’ll make it.”

“I’m sorry for her,” he says. “I can picture the fire from the state of the vehicle.”

Milo and I nod thanks for his sympathy. “What happened?” I ask.

He wipes grease off his hands with a filthy rag. “To be honest, I’m stumped. You guys know cars?”

We both say yes.

The hood is up, some parts under it disassembled. He points at them as he explains. “You got two of the fuel injectors clogged by carbon, like you were using cheap petrol, but the others are clean. So you had two pistons not working and fuel spraying onto the engine. That could start a fire, but it would take a few minutes until the temperature reached combustion level, and the fire broke out almost as soon as she started the car. Plus, it’s a new car, has only seven thousand kilometers on it. Not enough mileage for that dense carbon buildup. And why only those two? And how did the fire make it to the gas tank? The fuel line would have had to lose pressure for the fire to travel backward and ignite there. It’s not easy to start a gasoline fire. You can throw a cigarette into a bucket of gas and like as not it will just go out. It’s the fumes that ignite, and a little oxygen helps. The gas cap is gone. I guess it blew off when the tank exploded. And last, why the fire inside the car? It came up out of the floor like it had fuel there, like the gas line sprayed it up there. The line is burned up. It’s hard to tell what happened with it.”

“The car has only been driven a few times in the past few weeks,” I say, “and for short distances. I filled it last, and I’m sure the tank was almost full. And no way the injectors were clogged. It’s just not possible.”

The mechanic raises his hands in frustration, apologetic. “I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t picture the scenario that led to a fire like that.”

Milo says, “Picture this. The car was stolen and taken to a garage where it could be worked on. Two good fuel injectors were replaced with clogged ones. The car was driven back, running on four cylinders. Then petrol was siphoned out of it and replaced with a hot fuel mix, like in race cars, to make the remaining pistons work on overdrive and heat up the engine fast. They probably didn’t put a lot of fuel in the car, because a full tank might hamper the combustion with lack of oxygen, just enough to get the car started and travel a short distance, in case it took that long for the car to heat up and the fire to start. The gas cap was left off to provide the oxygen and help the tank blow when the fire hit the fumes. Some holes were punched into the gas line, to spray up under the driver’s floorboards. Some volatile accelerant, maybe ether in plastic containers, was placed in the engine compartment and under the driver somewhere. The plastic melted, the ether or whatever accelerant ignited, and then the injector nozzles were spraying fire. The squirting fuel line lost pressure and the fire traveled backward. It shot out of the fuel line and spewed flame into the combustible under the driver, which ignited, and back into the gas tank, which then blew.”

The mechanic ponders this. “It’s possible, but so complicated that it’s not probable. Most murder attempts by tampering with vehicles are conducted in a simple way. Cut brake lines, things like that. But I can look for melted plastic, take residue samples from the engine, fuel line and gas tank and have them analyzed. It’s as good as any theory I can come up with.”

We thank him and get on our way. I want to run the prints I lifted from the murder scene when we found Loviise Tamm, to find out who visited the apartment and intervened in her intended sexual abuse after the ambassador made his call. We go to NBI headquarters. It’s the first time I’ve been there since I was moved from Helsinki homicide to NBI employ, some months ago. As an inspector, I should have an office. Out of curiosity, I ask where it is. I find it. It’s barren, except for a chair and desk with a computer on it.

I log in to the computer and check the database to see what’s come of the killing of Sasha Mikoyan and the two Russian spooks. I could have just as easily done this from my apartment. My computer is networked in to the database for a home workstation. There’s been nothing in the news, and I think crime scene investigators would have been surprised to find a bullet-riddled door and black fingerprint powder everywhere. The killings are unreported, so the Russians must have spirited the corpses away, replaced the door and covered it all up.

The fingerprints from the butcher knife, though, are on record. They belong to Yelena Merkulova, wife of the Russian ambassador. How could this be? Diplomats and their families aren’t subject to arrest and booking. I call the arresting officer. He tells me she’s a kleptomaniac who likes to shoplift from the downtown boutiques and Stockmann department store. She was arrested and processed because she had no identification and refused to say who she was for several hours. He also states that she’s possibly the most beautiful woman alive.

And she almost certainly murdered Sasha Mikoyan. Interesting.

It strikes me that the Russian ambassador and whatever spooks are in on the prostitution ring might think Sweetness and I murdered Mikoyan. We were on our way there. He must have been told to meet us. Why would they think anything else?

Then it comes to me, the answer that explains the appearance of the spooks at the apartment and their re-kidnapping of Loviise Tamm: because the ambassador’s wife Yelena called someone at the embassy—as the ambassador at that point had no phone—and explained what she had done. And the troops were called in to protect her and make it all go away.

M
ilo and I go back to my house. It’s time to put the puzzle together and reconstruct the events leading up to Sasha Mikoyan’s death. His murder is of little interest to me in and of itself, but Loviise Tamm couldn’t have been the only girl pressed into the sex trade by him, and he was almost certainly working with a group of his colleagues.

First, I check Sasha’s bank account. It has a hundred and three thousand euros in it. I check his purchases. He lived the high life. Monster restaurant bills, clothing stores, and boutiques that suggest he bought gifts for a woman or women. And he had a room at Hotel Kämp permanently reserved for nine weeks. At four hundred euros a day, he accrued a massive bill, which he paid once a week. However, Kämp made sense as a place to meet a lover, as it’s in easy walking distance from the Russian embassy. Most convenient, especially if that lover was Yelena Merkulova, the ambassador’s wife.

True to her word, Mirjami loaded the info from all the electronic gadgets into my computer. Sweetness is in the bedroom with Jenna. I guess this is snuggle and make up day. Some of the info is in Cyrillic, so I need his help to read Russian. I knock and ask if he has a few minutes. “Sure,” he calls through the closed door. He doesn’t sound aggravated, so they must be all snuggled out at the moment.

He comes out in jeans, shirtless. He looks like a lifelong power lifter, but he’s far too lazy for that. He’s just blessed with good genetics. He’s also barefoot. One of his feet is almost as long as both of mine together. His nose looks swollen near to bursting and both his eyes are black and blue.

“Who broke your nose?” Milo asks.

Sweetness puts his hands in his pockets and stares at the floor, shame-faced. “Jenna.”

Milo heehaws. “Good girl.”

Sweetness won’t meet his eyes. Staring at the computer screen gives him a way around it.

On the night of the poker game, the Russian ambassador’s last phone call was to a woman named Natasha Polyanova. The last call Sasha received is identified by the number twenty-three. The number is the same as the last call made by Ambassador Sergey Merkulov, so twenty-three equals Natasha.

An Excel spreadsheet from the iPad has a list of numbers, one to seventeen across, and the time and dates by week for the year down the left-hand column. Another spreadsheet is set up the same way, numbered one to one hundred seventy-nine, gives first names, the capitalized letters of surnames—I’m certain of this because the name Loviise T is on the list—and what appear to be passport numbers, and shows “profit” and “debt.”

A debt subcategory is labeled “fines.” It seems girls who commit infractions are financially punished. The totals are further split out by percentage, which I interpret as thirty percent for the girls and seventy for Sasha and whoever he worked for.

I think it works like this: Girls are made to work as indentured servants, promised freedom when their debt is paid. But infractions result in fines, and I’m sure that coming close to paying off the debt, manufactured in the first place, results in more imaginary infractions and fines, so that the debts are never paid and freedom never given. An insidious and most efficient system.

I do the math in my head. If I’ve interpreted the information correctly, Sasha and cohorts have seventeen apartments in Helsinki that each bring in about six thousand euros a month. This comes to about one and a quarter million euros annually. A hundred and seventy-nine girls don’t fit in seventeen apartments, so there must be more properties outside Helsinki, someone else’s responsibility, and the real total income is multiples of the amount on his spreadsheets.

Even the finances behind the business revolt me. I don’t know what I’ll do, how I’ll punish people when I get to the bottom of all this, but it must be something severe enough to do justice for the misery and horror they’ve meted out to these women. I can’t turn to the government. Diplomats are above the law, and anyone involved and caught would simply be returned to Russia. I hear myself sigh. Try as I might, I’m just not built for pacifism.

I call Natasha Polyanova. Her phone is disconnected. Sasha’s phone contacts include a “YM.” I hope this is the number of Yelena Merkulova, the ambassador’s wife. I call it. A woman answers.
“Da.”

My Russian is weak. This is too important for me to make a mistake and misinterpret something. I introduce myself in English. Hers is excellent. “How can I help you, Inspector?”

“I’m looking into the death of Sasha Mikoyan. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”

“I know no one by that name.”

I take a stab at faking my way through it. “Early yesterday morning, you were with your lover, Sasha Mikoyan, in Hotel Kämp, your normal meeting place for trysts. This is documented by hotel security cameras. Natasha Polyanova called him and relayed a message to him that there was business he must attend to immediately. You followed him to an apartment in Punavuori and found him about to engage in a sex act with a disabled child. Understandably, you were shocked and enraged. Words were exchanged, and the nightmare ended with you stabbing him to death.”

Her voice doesn’t waver. She offers no more reaction than she would to a waiter describing the evening specials. “What is it you wish from me?”

“A chat. Nothing more. I’m unconcerned with Sasha Mikoyan or your . . . incident. He was involved in human trafficking. I would like to discuss it with you.”

“Very well. My husband is in St. Petersburg. Meet me here at the embassy at three p.m.”

“Unfortunately, some people in the embassy have negative feelings toward me. If I walk in, I might never come out again. Can we choose a more neutral location? I have no power to arrest you, or rather, to have you prosecuted, as you well know.”

“Then meet me on the Esplanade, across the street from the coffee shop, near the fountain. The weather is supposed to be beautiful. Perhaps we’ll have a walk.” She rings off.

“We need to have a talk,” Sweetness says.

“Let’s see what happened to Kate’s brother first,” Milo says, “while Kate is asleep.”

“Milo,” I say, “can’t the voyeur in you wait until you get home? I don’t even want to know what happened to him.”

“Won’t take but a few minutes,” he says, and commandeers the computer’s mouse. I get up and go to my armchair, to give him the computer driver’s seat. Milo the voyeur. A guy who B&Es people’s homes, not to steal from them, but just to see how they live. If I don’t let him look, I won’t have his attention while we talk, because all he’ll think about is this. Our computers are networked, so he’s run John’s to his to mine.

“I used a motion sensor to activate his webcam,” Milo says, “so the only things recorded are when he sits on his couch, where he likes to sit when he snorts drugs.”

I pet Katt and ignore Milo while he plays.

Sweetness watches with him. After a few minutes, I hear them start making noises and swearing under their breaths.

“Ouch.”

“Fuuuccckkk.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“God fucking damn.”

“Fuuuuucccckkkkk.”

Milo turns to me. “Jesus, that was enough to puke a dog off a gut wagon. Well, that’s one problem you won’t have to deal with again.”

I suppose I have to see. I sent Milo there. Whatever happened is in part my responsibility. I push myself out of my chair and lean on the table to keep the pressure off my knee.

Milo starts at the beginning. John lays two big bags of dope on the table, side by side. He pours some powder from each and cuts it into rails with a razor blade. He rolls up a twenty-dollar bill, snorts them and cuts two more. And then two more. And then two more. He sits straight up, eyes wild, like he’s plugged into an electrical outlet. I expect his hair to stand on end.

Milo fast-forwards. John slumps forward. Blood shoots out of his nose and mouth. He jerks and twitches. The blood keeps gushing. He pulls a pillow up to his mouth and bites it, as if it will stanch his internal bleeding. He topples over, out of sight.

I’m not sure if I should be angry or not. “Did you give him bad dope?” I ask.

“Of course not. I stole it from his dealer. It’s the same shit he’s been using.”

“So,” I say, “he did the coke, and then heroin. The coke ran through his system too quickly, and without it to hold him together, he ODed on heroin and his heart pretty much exploded.”

“You are correct, sir.”

“Erase it,” I say, “and forget it ever happened. My marriage would be over if Kate found out.”

“He did it to himself,” Milo says. “He could have gone to rehab.”

“I know,” I say, “but I never want to speak of it again.”

Milo knew that John, given that amount of drugs, would OD. Milo killed him as surely as if he put a gun to his head. He set up the webcam so he could view his handiwork, but he did it for Kate and for me. Kate can never go to her brother to self-destruct again. I feel only gratitude.

I sit back down with Katt for a few minutes until the mind movie of John dying fades. Suddenly, the pain is excruciating. My knee screams a shrill throb. I’ve done everything Jari told me not to when he shot it up with cortisone, and I’m paying the price. A half glass of water sits on the table beside me. I drop a couple codeine and Tylenol tabs in it and wait until they stop bubbling, then chase a couple tranquilizers with it.

I take back the chair in front of the computer. I still have all the files from the kidnapping of Veikko Saukko’s son and daughter in it. Included in them is information concerning his employees. I look at Phillip Moore’s file. At the time of the kidnapping, going on two years ago, he had a boy, now age eleven, and a wife, although they were estranged.

His son attended the International School of Helsinki. His wife taught English in a high school. Pictures of both of them are in the file. I bump the pics over to my cell phone, and find Moore’s number in the download from Saukko’s iPhone. I send him a message with the photos attached. The message is short. “Burned car. Girl dead. Blood debt.”

Moore calls me straightaway. “What is the meaning of your message?” he asks.

“We had that discussion before you got out of our Jeep. Knowledge equals collusion.”

“I told you I’m a soldier and a bodyguard, not a murderer, and I disapprove of hurting women and children.”

“I’m uninterested in what you approve or disapprove of.”

“I had no prior knowledge that your car would be firebombed.”

“You’re a bad liar. Tell me the truth.”

“I only know that his girlfriend had a miscarriage, and that the girl who was burned so badly is your subordinate’s cousin and your mistress.”

I don’t bother to clarify the mistress comment. “Lie to me again,” I say, “and I’ll hang up and proceed to make good on my word.”

“So you’re ready to take me on. It could prove fatal.”

Sweetness sets a
kossu
on the table beside me. “I agree that people will die. Who they are remains an open question.”

He hesitates, thinking. “In the interest of saving blood from being spilled, I’ll tell you what happened. In return, you give me a chance to get my family out of the country.”

I sip the
kossu
. The pain in my knee is calming down. “I’ll agree to make that part of the arrangement. Tell me the story, and I’ll decide if I feel it fair to place other demands upon you.”

“We have to come to an arrangement,” he says, “or I have to hunt all of you down to save my family and my own skin.”

I say nothing.

“I had nothing to do with firebombing that car, and I didn’t know about it until after the fact. It was Veikko’s idea, I believe after consulting with some Russians. NBI Captain Jan Pitkänen and the two Corsicans carried it out.”

“Even if you didn’t learn about it until after it happened,” I say, “you failed to inform me. I told you that you work for me now. Kill the Corsicans.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“You’re lucky I’m not demanding that you kill Veikko Saukko, but especially after the kidnap-murder of his daughter and shooting death of his son, it would spark the biggest manhunt in Finnish history and you would be caught. Kill the Corsicans, and they’ll just have their bodies dumped and be forgotten.”

“That’s a fucking lot to ask,” he says. “I’ll have to leave the country as well.”

“Not my concern. No Corsicans, no Shit List until they can be replaced. It buys me time. Call me when it’s done.”

“I’ll get you for this one day.”

“Fine. I’ll see you then.”

He rings off.

“Damn,” Sweetness says. “You’re not fucking around, are you?”

I close my eyes and think. It goes against my nature to threaten a man’s family, but my own comes first.

Pitkänen. The minister of the interior’s axman. I spared Osmo Ahtiainen’s life and this is the thanks I get. Maybe he doesn’t know his man is waging war on me. I start to call him but think better of it. It would tip him that I have someone inside, and as head of the secret police, he could run phone records checks and know who it is in about two and a half minutes.

Impressed and a little shocked, Milo asks, “Were you really going to go after Moore’s family?”