Cold Trail (28 page)

“I
’m pretty sure these guys won’t talk,” Suhonen said. He made a mental note to swap out the SIM card of his off-the-record phone in the very near future, because if the number were found in Salmela’s mobile phone, the NBI might decide to tap it.

“W
ell, at least we achieved our number-one goal. We prevented the crime from taking place,” Nykänen grunted.

“F
or Manner we still have that hit-and-run, plus Espoo could also investigate the vehicular arson. We could also revoke his security company license,” Takamäki stated, and then held a brief pause. He shifted his gaze to Suhonen. “You or me?”

Suhonen shrugged.

Takamäki elected to continue. “There’s one more thing here that you need to know about, but it can’t be discussed outside of this room, or used in any way in the investigation. Do I have your word?”

“H
ow can I give you my word, if I
need
to know about
it?” Nykänen asked.

“L
et’s just say it would be good for you to know,” Suhonen corrected. “And we’re only telling you this because you used to work in this unit.”

“Okay
,” Nykänen rumbled, stroking his moustache. He wasn’t sure what was going on.

Takamäki took back the floor.
“One of the men apprehended in the apartment is Eero Salmela, whose son was killed a year ago. It was a witness protection case, if you remember.”

“H
ard to forget.”

“Okay
, but the thing is that this Salmela is a close friend of Suhonen’s.”

“A
close friend…” Nykänen repeated.

Suhonen eyed Nykänen.
“I’m sure you get the drift.”

“Okay
, I get it,” Nykänen nodded. “Would he be interested in talking to us?”

“I
can ask, but if it doesn’t work out, then Salmela can’t receive any special treatment during the investigation that would tip outside parties to... anything.”

* * *

Salmela was sitting in his green overalls in the interrogation room, with its light-brown table and gray walls. The guard let Suhonen in and closed the door behind him. Suhonen stroked his beard.

“H
ow’re you feeling?” he asked.

“H
ow do you think?” Salmela answered.

Suhonen sat down on the wooden stool across from Salmela and tossed a pack of cigarettes onto the table. Salmela took one, and Suhonen scratched him a light.

Salmela sucked in a long drag and slowly blew the smoke out. “Fuckin’ a,” he said.

“W
hy?”

Salmela laughed.

“Is this some interrogation?”

“N
o.”

“I
s there a recording device in this room?”

“N
o,” Suhonen repeated.

Salmela hung his head. The cigarette was in his right hand, and the smoke writhed
up lazily toward the ventilation system.

“H
ow did you guys know to hit the apartment?” Salmela asked. “Who gave us out?”

“S
hitty luck. We were looking for Repo.”

“Repo
?” Salmela wondered, raising his head. “The escaped murderer?”

Suhonen nodded.
“We heard he might be there. We found that apartment in the customs office register. Some cigarette smuggler used it last winter.”

“
Fuckin’ a!” Salmela blurted out. “We rented it with cold hard cash from this old lady to make sure it wouldn’t be in some police database. You can’t trust anyone, goddammit.”

“Got dealt a shitty hand
.”

“A
nd it had to be a nobody like Repo. Fuck, if you would have told me he was such a big deal to you guys, I would have scraped him out of some dumpster till my fingernails bled.”

“A
s I recall, I did tell you,” Suhonen retorted. “Let’s get back to the situation at hand. What do you want me to do for you?”

Salmela thought for a moment.
“I don’t know. How much do you guys know?”

“W
e know about your plan to jack those jewelry shops and that Manner is running the whole show.”

“
Fuckin’ a!” Salmela blurted out again. “How? How the hell?”

“I
’m not even sure,” Suhonen said. “It’s NBI’s case. We’ve just been helping them out. But you do know where this will lead?”

“Time in the pen,” Salmela said.
“That’s obvious...”

“S
o is there anything I can do for you?”

Salmela shook his head.
“Yeah well, maybe a cup of decent coffee, because this is starting to look a hell of a lot like I’ll be drinking freeze-dried from here on out.”

Suhonen rose and returned a couple minutes later. He was carrying two cups of coffee.

“Black, if I remember right,” Suhonen said, setting the cup down in front of Salmela.

“Y
eah.”

Suhonen sat at the table and let Salmela drink his coffee. He had some himself.

“Your son’s thing, is that it?” Suhonen asked. A year earlier, Salmela’s son had been shot during a drug deal gone bad. Salmela didn’t take his eyes off his coffee.

“I
guess. Everything felt pretty empty after that. Junkies sell me phones and computers and I front them. It seemed so
stupid and empty. I thought, one big gig and that’d be it. Enough dough that I could take it easy, at least for a while. Okay, it’s stupid to even think that way, but it was a chance.”

“W
hat, that you guys would hit several targets at the same time?”

“T
hat, plus a few other jobs,” Salmela said. “You’re the only one I’m going tell this to. In the interrogations, it’s going to be no comment down the line.”

“W
hat other gigs do you mean?”

“D
o you remember that armored truck robbery in Mariehamn a few years back? First they set up a diversion by burning a car and then executed the robbery. Something like that. On a normal day there’s max thirty to forty patrols in the greater Helsinki area. It wouldn’t take much for half of them to be tied up in bullshit cases. Certain areas could be emptied of cops pretty easily. The idea was specifically in the massive scale.”

“W
hose idea was this? Yours or Manner’s?” Suhonen asked.

Salmela winked.
“Hey, we were all just execution. They told us we had to keep our eye on a couple of spots. My job was to chop down this big birch, because it was blocking the view from this one house. And if it fell on a couple of cars and tied up the police and fire & rescue departments, then that wouldn’t have been such a bad thing.”

“R
ight,” Suhonen said, not believing a word of what Salmela said about the part he played. Someone who chopped down trees didn’t need to know about any other robberies. Suhonen knew that there were many more perpetrators involved than the three they had behind bars, but figuring that out was the NBI’s job. “I guess there’s not much I can do.”

“A
man has to take what he has coming. Goddammit, I should have known after that car thing that this is going to get screwed up.”

“W
hat car thing?”

“I
t was no big deal. Just this one little thing, but I should have seen it coming.”

“W
hat happened?” Suhonen asked.

“Y
ou know Skoda Sakke?”

Suhonen nodded.

“Well, he was supposed to be the driver for the Espoo vehicle, and he had headed over to scout out the area around Sello early this week. In Manner’s car. Well, he didn’t dare to say anything at first, but later he told Manner that he knocked over some cyclist out there. Sakke hadn’t hung around, of course. When Manner heard, he had a conniption. Kicked Sakke’s ass and then made him burn the car. Sakke’s debt grew by twenty grand, even though Manner’s going to claim the insurance money too, of course. So then the Espoo police got in touch with him.”

“S
ounds like a clusterfuck.”

“T
hat it was.”

Suhonen snagged the cigarette pack from the table.

“One more,” Salmela said, pulling a smoke from the pack in Suhonen’s hand. Suhonen lit it for him.

Joutsamo rushed in.
“Suhonen, I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.”

“T
ake your time, enjoy your smoke,” Suhonen said to Salmela, before following Joutsamo out of the room.

Joutsamo withdrew thirty feet down the corridor from the interrogation room door and kept her voice to a whisper, even though she was well aware that the interrogation rooms had
solid soundproofing. “Saarnikangas called the phone that was in the jacket on your desk. I didn’t answer, but I listened to the message. Said he had something urgent. His voice sounded agitated, maybe even alarmed.”

Suhonen didn’t particularly care for other people listening to his messages, but he accepted Joutsamo’s decision.
“What was he alarmed about?”

“H
e didn’t say, but he asked you to come to the Chaplin Bar on Mannerheim Street right away. Has some information on Repo, apparently.”

Suhonen considered whether Saarnikangas was trying to finagle more pills, or if he really had
something new. Either way, he’d have to check it out.

“I
’ll probably head over, then,” Suhonen said. He’d have plenty of time during the drive to call Takamäki to let him know what Salmela had said about the hit-and-run. The problem was, of course, that the information could never be used, because then the crew would find out that someone was talking to the cops.

“How’s Salmela?” Joutsamo asked.

“P
retty bummed,” Suhonen said, returning to the interrogation room.

Salmela’s elbows were on the table, and his head was resting in his crossed hands. The cigarette was burning between the index and middle fingers of his right hand. A quarter-inch stub of ash curled down from the tip. Salmela
raised his head, and the ash shivered onto the table.

Suhonen sat.

Salmela broke the silence. “You gonna send a Christmas card to me in the pen, or you think you’ll have time to drop by?”

“I
’ll be by. Outside normal visiting hours, of course,” Suhonen said, looking his childhood friend in the eye. He didn’t really know what else to say, and nothing else was needed.

EARLY THURSDAY MORNING

CHAPTER 18

THURSDAY, 12:40 A.M.

LAUTTASAARI, HELSINKI

Repo pulled a suction cup and the glass-cutter he had bought from the sale bin at the Anttila department store from his coat pocket. He pressed the suction cup to the window and used the pencil-like tool to incise a circular hole around it. The glass didn’t come loose on the first try, and Repo was forced to make a second incision.

The window was triple-paned, so
Repo had to cut through the internal windows as well before he was able to push his hand through the hole and open the back door.

He stopped to listen. The house was quiet.
Repo noticed his pulse quickening, and yet he felt calm. He had planned this for a long time.

The house was a large one
by Finnish standards; Repo estimated at least 2000 square feet. It was a single-story brick home with a flat roof. The location was secluded, too—on the northern shore of Lauttasaari Island, right next to the Lauttasaari soccer fields. The marina was a hundred yards away. A long line of townhouses stood on the marina side of the house; on the other, a couple of ramshackle wooden homes.

Inside was dim, but the living room looked to be completely decorated in black
and white. The couch and the table in front of it were white, the armchair was black. Black-and-white paintings hung from the walls. The flat-screen TV had been picked to match the decor.

There seemed to be an aquarium over to the side, but it was dark.

Everything looked tidy and
well-kept but stark. Repo eyed the furnishings and shut the back door behind him. He walked across the carpet without taking off his shoes. He removed his gray coat and tossed it across the sofa, but kept the shoulder bag with him.

The living room was set lower than the rest of the house, and
Repo had to climb a couple of steps to get to the main level. The black-and-white decor continued in the dining room. The largish dining table was black, and the ten chairs white. The dining room was separated from the living room by a low railing. Behind the dining space was the kitchen.