Helsinki White (11 page)

A large crowd, mostly black people, had formed outside the Finnish Somalia Network. Sweetness pushed our way through and helped me walk until we made it inside. Two crime scene techs and a pathologist were examining Lisbet Söderlund’s head. The cardboard box it came in was on another table. I imagined the shock of whoever opened it. Heads are heavy, the package must have generated curiosity. Digging through Styrofoam peanuts and wadded-up newspaper to find a severed head would add a new dimension to anyone’s morning. The note was in the box. It looked like the letters were cut out with scissors and stuck to a sheet of printing paper with children’s glue stick. “Nigger lover.” Lovely sentiment.

I asked the techs if I could touch Lisbet’s head. The pathologist said it was OK. I picked it up by her hair, dark, with a thick shock of gray in the front. She was an attractive woman in her fifties. I spun it in a slow circle. Nothing unusual. Her eyes were closed. I flipped it upside down to look at the decapitation wound. It looked clean and neat, not a hack job. I borrowed a magnifying glass and took a close look at the spine. It was cut, not snapped, and I discerned saw tooth marks. Whoever killed her was well prepared, had the proper tools, took their time and did a good job
of it. Sweetness examined the head with me. He asked if he could hold it. I handed it to him. He stared at it long and hard.

The cutting said a great deal about the murder. Few people can remove a head and keep their calm, not make a mess of it. I asked the pathologist if she had any insights she might share with me. Not yet. I’d seen all I needed to and we left.

I went home, fired up the laptop and checked the Internet site of
Helsingin Sanomat
, the nation’s leading newspaper. It was already announced that I would lead the investigation. There was an article on me, my strength and determination, taking on the nation’s most pressing crime despite recent brain surgery. It cited other cases of international interest I’ve handled. I turned on the tube. The case—and my face—were on all the news broadcasts. My change of appearance now seemed prescient.

Several articles detailed Lisbet Söderlund’s career. They discussed her bravery and resolve, leading a life of public service that culminated in giving up that life for her beliefs. I was more interested in the reader comments on the articles than the articles themselves. They ran about two to one, those glad she was dead, stating that she got what she deserved, and those mourning her loss. The site was supposed to be moderated, but opinions weren’t censored. There were already a couple hundred, so I skimmed. “Niggers out. White men unite.” “Killer white man’s hero and patriot.” “Immigrants parasites on the Finnish taxpayer.” “Gang rapists.”

I checked out some racist sites: the most popular, Finnish Pride, and other lesser ones, some permanent, some on Facebook. The permanent ones can only go so far, but since publicly inciting racial hatred is a crime, many of the more virulent hate tracts
are on Facebook. When someone complains and a desist order is issued, the site is closed and reopened under another name until the next complaint and desist order. On these I found talk of murder and creative propaganda. “The spreading nigger cancer.” “Pus from the nigger pig order.” “Finnish whores breeding mud babies with criminal nigger scum must die.”

Sweetness sat beside me and read along with me. Arvid came out with his bag packed. He looked at Sweetness. “Mind giving me a ride home?”

He had originally come for a week and stayed for a month, but he had become part of the family. In the back of my mind, I knew better, but it seemed a permanent arrangement.

“Why so sudden?” I asked.

“It’s not sudden. I wore out my welcome long ago.”

I started to protest.

He shook his head. “You’re back in the spotlight, and having a murderer you arrested as a houseguest will be hard for you to explain away.”

He was right. “Thank you for all you’ve done,” I said.

“It was good for me.” He extended his hand and I shook it.

“Have you said good-bye to Kate?” I asked.

“She’s asleep. Tell her I’ll see her again soon. I’ll call, and come to your party.”

He left. I called Milo. “You hear about the Söderlund murder?” I asked.

“Of course I did. Why didn’t I get a look at her fucking head?”

I lied. “Sweetness was here and I was in a hurry. Trust me, before it’s over, you’ll know more about her head than you can possibly imagine. Right now, I need info. There was a Facebook site
dedicated to murdering her. Are you able to hack Facebook and ID the site members?”

“No. And nobody else is, either.”

“Haven’t you told me any site can be hacked?”

“Give me a year, and if I dedicate my life to it for that time, there’s a small possibility I can get in.”

“My feeling is this,” I said. “Whoever killed her did it for prestige, to brag to his hate buddies, and it’s an open secret among that group. We have to find out what circle the killer moved in and apply pressure until somebody rats out the murderer. Our best bet is the members of that site.”

“Probably so. We find one, scare the shit out of him, he gives up the others. It might not be that hard.”

“Maybe, but until then, we have to do police grunt work. Plan on devoting your life to looking at rap sheets until something turns up.”

I told him I’d call in the morning and rang off.

Next call, Jyri Ivalo. “I need you to use your superpowers to get me sheets on every known racist in Finland. That includes anybody who’s committed or been accused of committing a hate crime in the past few years, and the membership rolls of every racist organization in Finland.”

“Since you’re calling me, apparently you own a fucking phone. Get off your lazy ass and make the calls yourself.”

“I would if I could. If I call, racist sympathizers on the force may suppress information or drag their feet. If the national chief of police calls and says jump, they just ask how high.”

“Anything else I can do, Your Highness?”

“I’ll have to look at thousands of people. If I have paper files,
it will be almost impossible. Get it all scanned so I can build a database.”

“So you want an army of secretaries.”

“No, the president wants the case solved.”

“Fair enough. You think it’s going to be a tough one?”

“Depends.” I explained it to him the way I put it to Milo. “I need somebody to roll over. I can’t do that if I play nice.”

“In my experience,” he said, “playing nice rarely accomplishes much. You’ll start receiving the files tomorrow morning. I’m starting to see your reasoning behind hiring the oaf.” He rang off.

A
t five thirty the following morning, I got a call from Colonel Alexander Nilsson of the Finnish Defence Forces. He was instructed to call me because one of his soldiers had been murdered while on guard duty. The killing might be related to the murder of Lisbet Söderlund, and although, as he emphasized, the murder fell under the jurisdiction of the Finnish military police, as a courtesy, I could examine the crime scene if I wished. It was in a wooded training area near Vantaa. I thanked him and told him I would be there as soon as possible.

I called both Milo and Sweetness. Milo because he might be of some value, as despite his annoying ego and overconfidence he was an astute detective, and because I hadn’t taken him along to examine Lisbet Söderlund’s head, he would be justifiably offended if I excluded him again. Sweetness, because hiking through the deep snow in the forest might prove impossible on crutches, and I might need him to more or less carry me.

Army conscription takes place twice a year, in January and July, but conservatives in the government are determined that Finland will join NATO. As such, they were holding maneuvers that they ordinarily wouldn’t, to prove their zeal to other countries. There
are several large training areas around Finland. That the maneuvers were being conducted near Helsinki was good fortune.

We took my Saab. When we arrived at the training area, military police at checkpoints guided us in the right directions, and we arrived about seven thirty. Colonel Nilsson greeted us, then stepped out of our way, indicating that he would leave us to our own devices.

The sun had been up for only an hour and cast long shadows. The crime scene techs were done with the body and combing the surrounding area for evidence. Snow is a double-edged sword in a homicide investigation. Fresh snow is every cop’s investigative dream. Even the smallest objects, unless white themselves, leap out and announce themselves. Trampled snow, the policeman’s nightmare.

This area, in a stand of birch, had been stamped on by hundreds of soldiers for the past couple days. The snow was gray, most of it mashed up, and full of pockets created by footprints beside the main walking paths. Even a detailed, thorough search would yield only the most obvious evidence. A squad had occupied this small area. After the murder, they had been ordered to vacate it, with the exception of a soldier who was on guard duty when the attack occurred. Only their empty tents and a rifle rack made of crossed tree branches remained. Two rifles remained on the rack.

This was all new to Sweetness. He’d exercised his right to choose civil service over military duty. After he graduated from high school, while most of his male classmates were performing their mandatory nine months in the army, he spent a year working in a kindergarten. He preferred crayons to hand grenades, even if it meant an additional three months’ service for being—in the eyes
of most men—a sissy. The victim was a young man with his throat cut. The corpse seemed to mesmerize Sweetness. He couldn’t stop staring at it.

Milo knelt down and examined the wound. “Nothing special,” he said. “The throat was cut from left to right with a single motion. The weapon had a long, sharp blade. He was probably grabbed from behind, and it was all over before he knew it even happened.”

The remaining soldier sat on the trunk of a felled tree, chain-smoking. He flicked ashes and put extinguished cigarettes in his coat pocket, so as not to further contaminate the crime scene.

I was right. Sweetness had to pretty much carry me around. It was a bit on the humiliating side. The military pathologist told me to have a look at the body. His preliminary examination was complete. The murder was self-explanatory, he said. The victim had been placed faceup on a stretcher. His arms crossed. They were only waiting for me to view him before taking him away. The cut across his throat was deep, nearly to his spine. His tongue flopped out through the laceration.

I sat down on the tree trunk beside the soldier, introduced myself and the others. Milo and Sweetness stood in front of us, listening.

“What’s your name,” I asked.

“Harri.”

“Can you relax and tell me what happened? We’re not here to judge or blame you for anything. We just want to find out who did this.”

We all lit cigarettes except for Sweetness. He hit his flask and injected
nuuska
.

Harri pointed at the corpse. “Me and Rami were taking our
turn at guard duty. Everybody else was asleep in their tents. I got tased and everything after that is blurry. I guess I got hit with a lot of volts and a couple times, because the burns on my back and neck are bad. When I got my senses back, I was duct-taped to a tree, and Rami was dead.”

He pointed at the tree. Much of the tape was still hanging from it in tatters, where he’d been found and cut free.

“My mouth was taped shut. Two men were dressed in black military clothing and balaclavas, but they were definitely black. I could tell from the areas around their eyes. The squad’s rifles were stacked on the rack. They packed all they could into duffel bags. There are two left, so they took ten. One of them got up close so our faces almost touched. He had a thick accent and really bad grammar, but I guess he knew it and spoke slow to make sure I understood. He said, ‘I allow you to live so you will deliver this message. We pray that Allah gives us the strength to use these weapons to do His will.’ Then they just walked off, and about half an hour later, somebody got up to take a piss and found us.”

“What kind of unit are you in?” Milo asked.

“A mortar squad.”

Milo walked over to the rack and picked up one of the two remaining rifles, gave it a once-over. “This is an Rk 95 Tp,” he said. “Most people just call it the M95.”

A Kalashnikov AK-47-style rifle made by Sako, the Finnish arms manufacturer. “And the significance is what?” I asked.

“There aren’t that many of them. A lot of them went to mortar units. Most soldiers are still carrying the old Rk 62. That means if we come up with a suspect in possession of an M95, as compared
to an Rk 62, the odds of him having stolen it from here are quite high.”

I asked Harri, “Is there anything else you think I should know?”

He shook his head. “Just that I feel responsible. Safeguarding this area was my duty, and now Rami is dead.”

He wasn’t still a kid. His uniform was almost new. He’s probably only been in the army since the last cycle, in January.

“I’ve been a cop for twenty-two years,” I said, “and my experience is that when a man turns predator and you’re the target, you don’t know you’re being hunted and you don’t stand a chance. There was nothing you could do.”

His face said my pep talk, which was a simple truth, made him feel no better.

A reasonable assumption was that black immigrants had taken the murder of Lisbet Söderlund as a declaration of war and begun arming themselves. Somalis have a semblance of political organization and gangs that occasionally commit violent race crimes against whites, and vice versa, so their desire to acquire arms wasn’t entirely surprising, especially given the threats and violent rhetoric that were now daily directed against them. But blacks armed with AK-47s would terrify many Finns. The extremist Real Finns preached the inevitability of a race war between Finns and immigrants. I had an ominous gut suspicion that it might be coming true.

This lent a new sense of urgency to the Söderlund murder, and I wondered how many would die before I solved it.