Nights of Awe (14 page)
Authors: Harri Nykanen
“Well, come on in then. But I’d like to ask you to leave as soon as possible.”
The interior of the home matched the exterior. All of the furniture was designer goods: carefully selected and expensive.
The woman hurried upstairs. She returned a couple of minutes later.
“My daughter will be right down. Before that, I’d like to hear what this is about. My daughter is a minor, so as her guardian, I assume I have that right.”
I asked her how old her daughter was.
“Seventeen.”
The girl was the same age as my nephew and godson Leo. In my godfatherly eyes, he was still a child.
“We’re investigating a car fire. We believe your daughter was present when the car was burnt.”
“Was it an accident?”
“It might have been, but someone died.”
“Who?”
“We suspect it was your daughter’s boyfriend.”
“Kimi?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible! Don’t you think Säde would have told me?”
The daughter came downstairs, a bathrobe wrapped around her nightshirt. One half of her face was bandaged. She looked as though she’d been crying. The mother stood and placed a protective arm around her daughter.
The girl sat down on the sofa. Stenman went over next to her.
“You can probably guess why we want to talk to you.”
“Tell them everything,” her mother encouraged her.
“Where did you get the car?” Stenman asked right off the bat, as if she already knew the whole story. I would have used the same tactic myself.
“Kimi and his friend found it.”
“Stole it, you mean?”
“Yeah… or I mean the keys were inside.”
“What happened at the sandpit?” Stenman continued.
“Kimi and I went there last night. We slept in the car… I told Mum I was at my friend’s place… In the morning I went to pee and when I came back, the car caught fire or exploded. The door was open and the flames hit my face… Then the whole car burnt up… I ran away… Once I got to the main road I called a taxi and took it to Korso. I waited for the health centre to open and then I came home.”
“If you slept in the car, why was your boyfriend in the front seat?”
“We were just getting ready to leave.”
Now I asked a question: “Did the car explode or did it catch fire?”
“It exploded… At least it burst into flames… they were coming out of the window… I could hear Kimi yelling… then the whole car was on fire…”
The girl collapsed into sobs, and we let her mother soothe her for a moment.
I glanced at Stenman, and she continued the interrogation.
“Where did Kimi and his friend get the car?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t with them then. From somewhere pretty close by, I guess.”
“Did Kimi tell you that the keys were in the car?”
“Yeah, and I saw them too.”
“What’s Kimi’s friend’s name, the one who was with him when they found the car?”
“Tomi, Tomi Siltala.”
“Can you tell me where we can find this Tomi?”
“In Kerava, in prison.”
“In the Kerava prison?”
“Yeah, he was on leave… He went back yesterday.”
I had been to the Kerava prison before. Back in the day, it had housed mostly young or first-time offenders. Nowadays lots of other kinds of criminals were jailed there too. The prison’s buildings sprawled across a broad expanse in the middle of some fields. The old prison building was as stately as a manor house; the new juvenile department built in the Sixties stood farther back. The prison also had a greenhouse that produced some of the prison’s food, a car workshop, a barn and wood and metal workshops.
Siltala was working in the metal workshop, which was located between the old building and the new one, in the former stable. When we arrived, he was finishing a solid-looking sauna stove with a corner sander.
Toivola watched him work with interest. “The sauna stove for my nephew’s cabin in Mäntyharju was made here. Gives a nice steam.”
The guard interrupted Siltala’s handiwork and brought him over to a break room that stood near the doorway. The kid’s overalls were full of holes from soldering sparks. He could tell we were police, and his demeanour turned aloof.
“Sit,” I ordered. He sat on the bench. His narrow face framed lethargic eyes and a moustache of peach fuzz. He was only about twenty.
I asked the guard to leave us alone and said to the kid: “This is an unofficial interrogation. We couldn’t give a crap about the fact that you and your friend ripped off a car, but we’re interested in everything else. Tell us how it went down, and the theft will stay our little secret. Help us and we’ll remember you.”
“Did Kimi rat on me?”
“Kimi’s dead.”
“Don’t yank my chain, I just saw him yesterday.”
“Your buddy died today, early this morning. The car you stole caught fire. He burnt along with the car. I could take you to go have a look at him; on the other hand, a grilled body isn’t pleasant to look at.”
The kid thought for a moment.
“Fuck me!”
“That’s not all you have to say, is it?” Stenman prodded gently.
“I just went along for the ride. Half an hour at most.”
“Where did you find the car?”
“A little ways outside town. It had been left on one of the forest roads. The key was in the ignition and all the doors were unlocked.”
“What were you guys doing there?”
Despite his young age, Siltala had the body language of a professional crook. He eyed us and thought for a second before continuing.
“Kimi had bought an unregistered .22 target pistol from somewhere and we were just going to go into the woods and try it out, shoot up a few beer cans.”
He stopped mid-story. I encouraged him to continue.
“We were on the forest road when we noticed the car – Kimi took a look in the window and saw that the keys were inside. He tried the door, and amazingly enough it was unlocked. Kimi jumped behind the wheel and I got in the passenger side. We forgot all about going shooting.”
“Then what?”
“The car hadn’t been there for long, because Kimi said the engine was still warm. I was pretty surprised that someone could be dumb enough to leave the keys in the car and the doors unlocked. Just to be sure we waited for a second, but no one came.”
“Was there anything else in the car?”
“Like what?”
“Anything personal that doesn’t belong to a car’s standard equipment. The car was a rental.”
“Nothing that I can think of, at least.”
“How much petrol was there?”
“Almost half a tank.”
“Then what did you do?”
“We drove around Kerava for a while, but then my leave was about to end so I went home and Pops gave me a ride here. Kimi took off in the car. He said that now that he had a decent ride for once, he was going to pick up his girlfriend and sweet-talk her into going off somewhere to screw. Is that who told you about me, Säde?”
“Did you see anyone else when you left the forest road, or anything else, for instance cars?”
This time, he didn’t have to think twice.
“There’s a bus stop right where it hits the main road. There was a car waiting there and some guy was just getting into it.”
“What kind of car?”
“Ford Focus, that colour that looks like an old lady’s underwear, real light green. Normal four-door. Stockmann Auto tag in the back window.”
“Do you remember anything about the plate number?”
The kid frowned in thought.
“Was it Finnish?” I helped.
“I guess, because I definitely would have remembered if it was foreign.”
“Try to remember more.”
“The number was short; foreign plates are normally long. This one had four characters at most, could be that there were only three.”
“Like EO-1, or what?”
“Exactly.”
“And the man?”
“Pretty old, at least forty.”
“That’s pretty old, all right,” Toivola grunted.
“What did he look like?”
“His hair was kinda grey and he had glasses. Clothes must have been pretty normal cause I don’t remember them.”
“Did he look like a foreigner?”
“Maybe, I’m not sure. He was at least fifty feet away and Kimi was hitting the gas as hard as he could.”
“What then?”
“Kimi freaked out when the dude looked at us a little too long. At first we were afraid that the car was his and that they’d follow us, but luckily they didn’t.”
“What about the driver, did you see him?” Stenman asked.
“Nothing except that it was a woman.”
“Brunette, blonde, young, old?”
“More like young and I think dark hair, but there was glare off the window and I couldn’t really see.”
“What did you guys do after that?”
“Drove around the back roads and ripped off… Kimi ripped off new licence plates from this one car. We went to the sandpit to put them on. Then I had to come here.”
“How well did you know Kimi?”
“Pretty much as long as he’s lived in Kerava. We were at the same summer job.”
“What did he think about foreigners, like Arabs, for instance?”
“Not much anything. Sometimes when he was drunk he’d say that someone needed to draw a line so they don’t steal all the apartments and jobs. The only Arab we know is this guy Hasid, he’s got a pizza place off the square. Kimi thought he was cool.”
We talked with the kid until he convinced us that he had nothing more to tell us. I gestured the guard over. I asked the kid to contact us if he remembered anything.
“You promised that the car thing is gonna stay between us…”
“It will.”
“Can you hook me up with something a little extra?”
“Like what?”
“Like a short leave… Just tell them that you need me for some important IDing. They’re not gonna check up.”
“What do I look like, Santa Claus?”
The kid hadn’t expected too much. He gave up right away and stood, looking preoccupied.
“How did the car catch fire?”
“We’re investigating that right now.”
“Man, talk about lucky. I could have fried in there too.”
“That’s right. Take this as a lesson and mend your ways, or next time you won’t be so fortunate,” Toivola advised.
The kid left, reflecting on his good luck.
“I’m guessing that good advice is going to go to waste,” Toivola said, watching him walk off.
Before we began our journey home, we agreed that Toivola would go with Siltala to take a look at the spot where the car was found and have the terrain searched.
On the way back into Helsinki, I distinctly felt the extraordinary burden of responsibility carried by a lead investigator from the Violent Crimes Unit. If a theft, break-in or incident of tax fraud didn’t get solved, it didn’t arouse any particular passions. But if a homicide remained unsolved, it left a blood-red mark on the forehead of the investigative lead. Plus, a killer on the loose was a real risk factor. It was the nightmare of every violent-crime investigator that an unsolved crime would lead to another.
At the top of the unofficial ranking of violent-crime investigators were those who didn’t have a single unsolved homicide to their name. This was the case despite the fact that everyone knew that solving a crime was as much a matter of luck as skill. It just seemed like some people ended up with all of the particularly difficult violent crimes.
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