Vengeance (11 page)

    
“I spent a night in there once,” Suhonen said.

    
“Really?”

    
“We were trying to figure out how jail affects suspects and their statements, so I agreed to be the VCU guinea pig and spent twenty-four hours in a cell. It was a few years ago, but the only thing we concluded was that time slows way the hell down. The boredom wears some down, but for others it just toughens them up.”

    
“Well, we’ll see which group Marju Mägi fits into.”

    
Suhonen’s second cell phone rang. He glanced at the display: Eero Salmela.

* * *

Roge was sitting behind the wheel of a matte black ’74 Chevy Nova. He had a broad, flat face with a ponytail and was large, though clearly not the colossus his passenger Niko was. In the back seat sat a third Skull, Osku. All were wearing black leather vests. Niko’s patches indicated he was a senior member—the other two were prospects.

    
“That the right car?” Niko asked.

    
“Yep. That red Alfa Romeo.”

    
“Good, let’s roll then,” Niko said. He stepped out of the Nova.

    
The Alfa Romeo was parked in the driveway of a rickety yellow ranch house encircled by a leaf-bare hedge. Beside it sat a rusty Volkswagen Beetle, which appeared to have once been blue.

    
The three swaggered down the long dirt driveway. The elephantine Niko lumbered along in the middle. On his right, lagging back a bit was the bull-like Roge, and on the left, little Osku, sporting a goatee that only made him look more like his beard’s namesake.

    
As they reached the Alfa Romeo, a man of about thirty with a blond shag of hair and a jean jacket walked out of the front door of the house. He closed the door behind him before noticing his visitors.

    
“What the hell?” he blurted, stopping in front of the door. The trio was about ten yards away. They kept coming.

    
“We want to talk to you,” Niko growled.

    
“About what,” the man stammered, his eyes darting about for an escape route. There was none and the door behind him was now locked.

    
Roge approached from the right and swung his arm back, snapping an eighteen-inch chain from his sleeve to his hand. Without a word, he lashed the back of the man’s left knee.

    
The man cried out and stumbled backwards. Niko caught him and slammed him against the door. “You little shit!”

    
Osku landed a hard side-kick in the man’s ribs. “Fuck!”

    
The man slumped to a sitting position in front of the door. “What is this?” he sputtered. “What’d I do?”

    
“The blonde at the bar last Tuesday,” Osku snarled. “That was my girl you tried to pick up. I told you to back off, but you didn’t.”

    
“I didn’t…”

    
“I told you to back off!”

    
“I didn’t…”

    
Roge flogged the man’s shins with the chain.

    
“Stop! Fuck!”

    
Niko squatted down in front of the man.

    
“Hopefully you learned something today. You hit on one of the Skulls’ women, you suffer the consequences,” he said, then thundered, “You fucking get it?!”

    
“Yeah, yeah. I get it,” he murmured.

    
“Good. And if you go to the cops, we’ll come back, nail you to the living room wall and burn this house down.”

    
“No, no… I won’t,” he wailed.

    
Niko stood, turned and walked away. Roge and Osku followed. As they reached the Alfa Romeo, the bull-like Roge took one last swing with the chain, shattering the passenger side window. “Just a reminder!” he shouted. The man was still lying in a heap at the door.

    
Their footsteps quickened on the way to the car, and the lumbering Niko was already out of breath. Roge and Osku didn’t pass him, however.

    
Roge swung into the driver’s seat and tossed the chain into the passenger footwell before Niko could sit down. Osku slid into the back seat.

    
Roge stepped on the gas and laughed. The adrenaline was still pumping in their veins.

    
“Shit, he sure learned his lesson!”

    
“You got that right,” said Niko. “How’d it feel, Osku?”

    
“Great. Looked like the guy must’ve bleached his hair, though. It was still brown back at the bar. Ha-haa!”

    
Niko turned and shot a look at Osku. “It was the same guy, though?”

    
“Yeah,” he answered hesitantly. “Pretty sure it was.”

    
“Pretty sure?”

    
“Yeah. Yes, it was him.”

    
Niko turned his gaze back to the road. “Alright. Your word is good enough for me.”

    
Osku was satisfied.

    
“Drive back to the office,” Niko commanded. Larsson will be there around noon. You guys haven’t even met him yet.”

* * *

Detective Lieutenant Takamäki was sifting through a batch of unsolved cases. The list seemed to grow by the day, and though they were mostly routine crimes, that was only the police’s view. The victims likely had a different opinion.

    
If the performance objective of the Helsinki Police Department was a solid ‘B’, the actual grade usually was somewhere around a ‘C-’ or a ‘D+’. The overall percentage of solved cases had declined sharply in the 1990s, though violent crimes continued to be solved at a satisfactory rate. The reason, of course, was that with violent crimes, most victims were able to identify who had hit, kicked, stabbed or raped them. If the victim was unable to communicate, that usually meant that the crime was more serious, and police allocated plenty of resources for those cases.

    
Takamäki’s cell phone rang. He instinctively looked at the display: unknown.

    
“Hello,” he answered.

    
“Hey there,” said a woman’s voice.

    
Takamäki recognized the caller before she could identify herself: Sanna Römpötti from Channel 3 News. For the past twenty years, she had worked as a crime reporter for various media outlets.

    
“How are you today?” Takamäki inquired before Römpötti could ask him anything. That was a first.

    
“What, have you switched to some specialized intelligence unit investigating the mood of the media?”

    
Takamäki chuckled. “Nah, just interested. You promised to teach me ballroom dancing. When do we start?”

    
Now it was Römpötti’s turn to laugh. The previous winter, the TV reporter had been selected for the popular television show
Dancing with the Stars
, and had agreed to participate. Römpötti had never really understood herself why she had consented. She did remember that she had drunk two glasses of wine before the call came. Afterwards, it had been too late to enter a plea of temporary insanity. Along with her dance partner, Römpötti had made it to the final four pairs before the dance-ignorant masses dropped her.

    
“Listen, Kari,” she said. “Anytime.”

    
Takamäki was somewhat disconcerted. “Aah, let’s look at our calendars. Shall we?”

    
She got to the point. “About the Skulls.”

    
“What about them?”

    
“This week the judge levied three-year sentences on our ‘dynamic duo’ for that pizza shop extortion.”

    
“Right,” said Takamäki. “Alanen and Lintula.”

    
“Have you read the court’s ruling?”

    
“No,” the detective lieutenant said candidly. “But I’m quite familiar with the details—it was our case, after all. What about it?”

    
Römpötti paused briefly. Takamäki wondered if she was surprised he hadn’t read the court’s ruling. He simply hadn’t had the time.

    
She went on, “Well, in court, the prosecutor argued for stiffer sentences because Alanen and Lintula were members of the Skulls, an organized crime ring. But the court rejected the argument because it determined the gang hadn’t been founded as a criminal organization. Do you have any comment on that?”

    
Takamäki paused for a moment. “Is this an interview?”

    
“No. Just gathering background information.”

    
Her answer made him wonder if she was working on a bigger story about the Skulls.

    
“Well, I wasn’t surprised,” he answered. “Generally, these laws pertaining to criminal organizations have become impossible to apply in practice. They’re like cake toppers.”

    
“Huh?”

    
“The cake looks better with the decorations, but nobody eats the plastic.”

    
Römpötti laughed sarcastically. “Right, like freedom of speech in the constitution. There’s a cake topper for you.”

    
“No comment.”

    
Römpötti steered back on course. “So what’s the status with the Skulls, by the way? Are they under police surveillance?”

    
“We don’t have time for that. Routine cases are coming in at a brisk enough pace that we don’t have the manpower to conduct extra surveillance, even if we’d like to.”

    
“Aren’t there almost ten of them in prison now?” It was more a remark than a question.

    
“Somewhere around there. I don’t know exactly. Are you working on something bigger about them?” he asked.

    
“Maybe. We’ll see what I can dig up.”

    
Takamäki considered how to put it. “Well, if you intend to get in touch with them, watch out. They’re unpredictable.”

* * *

Aleksis Kivi Street had once been wide and spacious until the addition of a streetcar line had eaten up half of the road. A few empty bottles of beer lay on the pavement in the yellow glow of the street lights. Suhonen knew it wouldn’t be long before someone gathered them up for the deposit.

    
About five yards away, an older man with a thirties-style cap exited Stairwell F on the ground floor of a seven-story building. The ponytailed cop slipped in before the door could close and the man shot him a cold stare, but Suhonen didn’t care. He was happy to have slipped inside without resorting to trickery.