Nights of Awe (17 page)
Authors: Harri Nykanen
Klein’s helpfulness was suspect. It was even more suspect because I knew that Arctic Furs was owned by a Jewish businessman named Josef Meyer. He was a member of the board of the Helsinki Jewish congregation and the treasurer of the congregation’s primary fund. Meyer’s daughter, my former girlfriend Karmela, lived in Israel and was married to a captain of the Israeli air force.
I didn’t really get along with old man Meyer, and he had been hoping to make me his successor in the fur business. Aside from the fact that the field held no great fascination for me in the first place, I was allergic to animal dander. And so I took off for the army right after my university exams, and when I got back Karmela was dating the son of the carpet-shop owner. He was a Tatar. The Tatar vanished from the scene within six months, and Karmela travelled to Israel to lick her wounds, which is where she met her future husband.
“Thanks. We’ll be in touch with Meyer.” I gestured for Simolin, who was standing off to the side, to come over.
“I think we’ll be heading back to Helsinki.”
Klein panicked.
“I’d like to discuss the deceased.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you already know how he… how the death occurred?”
“For investigative reasons I can’t reveal any details.”
“I helped you verify the name of the deceased. I even told you something I shouldn’t have,” Klein reminded me.
“And I already thanked you. Was there anything else?”
“The killers, is there any new information on them?”
I shook my head.
“Investigative reasons. Anything else?”
Klein got the point.
“No.”
After we had driven to the main road in silence, Simolin said: “Someone’s leaking everything to SUPO.”
“Yup.”
“But you can’t leak what you don’t know.”
I glanced at Simolin. He was holding a white slip of paper in his fingers.
“Parking stub. In the pocket of the deceased.”
My mood improved noticeably. With some good luck we might be able to squeeze a surprising amount of information out of a parking stub.
As we approached Helsinki, Simolin called the parking-services office. We found out that the stub was from a machine in the Töölö district, on Aurorankatu.
“Let’s check on that soon,” I said. “But first let’s go take care of this one other thing.”
12
Seeing Josef Meyer was never a pleasant experience for me. He considered me the primary culprit in the calling off of his daughter’s wedding to me and her subsequent move to Israel. For some reason, Meyer had treated me coolly from the time Karmela and I started dating. Maybe it was my fault. I clearly wasn’t his ideal son-in-law. According to my uncle, the coolness was due to the fact that he had been forced to refuse Meyer a loan when he wanted to expand his business.
Meyer had once been one of Helsinki’s most successful fur merchants, but time had passed him by years ago. The shop was as gloomy as a mortuary and just as old-fashioned. Its decline had begun with the death of Meyer’s wife and his daughter’s move to Israel. Nor was the profitability of Meyer’s business improved by the fact that both animal activists and neo-Nazis had used his display window for target practice.
Meyer’s furs were just as outdated as the mannequins in the window, and all of his remaining customers were elderly. Meyer had experienced the same fate as my mother. When my mother closed her barber shop-slash-salon in the Seventies, hairstyles that had been in vogue in the Fifties were still being advertised in the windows. One greasy-haired model looked exactly like James Dean, and another like Marilyn Monroe.
There wasn’t a single customer in the shop. Everywhere you turned you could sense that the company was dying and Meyer had already given up. For him the shop was some sort of escape to a happier time. That’s why he didn’t want and couldn’t bear to change anything. He preferred to cling to his memories and go down with the ship.
On the way into Helsinki, I had told Simolin about the history Meyer and I shared. He had listened with interest and posed a few cautious questions about my relationship with Karmela Meyer. I suppose he imagined that the dating relationships of Jews were a lot more exotic than those of other young people.
I only managed to take a couple of steps before sneezing. I had forgotten about my allergies. I knew that spending even a few minutes among the furs would be pure hell.
Meyer emerged from the back room in his black suit so quietly that he took us by surprise. He recognized me immediately.
“Mr Kafka. So you’re still in the neighbourhood.”
After I broke up with his daughter, Meyer had begun to address me formally. It was actually a relief; forced intimacy was much more awkward.
I sneezed again and could feel my nose starting to run. Luckily I had a few tissues.
I immediately explained our business. I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.
“It’s true. Ben Weiss was here a couple of days ago discussing potential cooperation.”
“What sort of cooperation did you discuss?”
“He proposed that I act as his buyer in the next fur auction. It’s early next year.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m familiar with the markets and sellers here and because Finland is one of the world’s leading fur exporters. He didn’t know anyone here; he used to go through German brokers.”
“Did he indicate why he picked you specifically as a partner?”
“I got the impression that someone had referred me to him.”
“How did your negotiations end?” Simolin asked.
Meyer glanced at him, but turned to address me.
“I promised to look into the possibility, but I also told him that I’m gradually getting out of the business, because I don’t have a successor.”
As he spoke the words, he looked at me accusingly.
“Why are you interested in Weiss?”
“He’s dead.”
I looked at Meyer as I said this. He didn’t look surprised, despite the fact that next he asked three questions all at once.
“Dead? Weiss is dead? How?”
“He was killed.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. Do you have any idea who might have done it and what their motivation might have been?”
“No, it must be an accident, unless…”
“Unless what?”
“He led me to understand that he had a lot of money with him. He said that he would open an account here if we came to an agreement.”
Meyer was not a good actor, not even amateur-dramatics calibre. He repeated everything as if he were reciting memorized lines.
“Were you in touch with each other after his visit?”
My nose was running like a tap and my eyes were itching. I was having a hard time concentrating. This gave Meyer the advantage.
“No. He promised to get back to me before he left.”
I noticed that there was a security camera above the register. I pointed at it.
“We’d like the tape from the security camera.”
“It’s broken,” Meyer said, and started straightening out some fox furs hanging from a rack.
“How did he first get in touch with you, by phone or letter?”
Meyer’s demeanour sharpened, and he thought for a second.
“He called from Jerusalem before he came.”
“Where did he get your contact information?”
“My impression was that he got it from one of my acquaintances in Israel. I didn’t ask who.”
“Of course not,” I muttered. “Does anything else come to mind?”
“No, I’m sure it must have had to do with the money. What other reason would anyone have for killing him?”
“Do you know where he was staying and if he knew anyone in Helsinki?”
“No, we only discussed business.”
“In what language?” Simolin asked from behind my back.
“How so?”
“I’m assuming he didn’t speak Finnish. Did you speak Hebrew or English?”
The question surprised Meyer, and he was forced to think again for a minute.
“German and English.”
I blew my nose and made for the exit.
“Kafka.”
“What?”
Meyer waved his hand in a broad arch, looking at me with bottomless melancholy.
“This would all have been yours now, if you had married Karmela. She would have made you a good wife.”
Apparently he sincerely believed I was bitter about losing those heaps of hair.
“Is it really better being a bachelor at the age of forty?” he asked.
“It has its advantages.”
I sneezed three times in the entryway.
“I don’t think you would have made much of a fur salesman,” Simolin remarked. “What do we do now?”
I blew my nose.
“Let’s go take a look at that parking meter.”
The parking meter was behind the curved annexe to the Parliament House. A small bakery-café stood opposite. We went over and showed the photograph of the deceased Weiss. The person at the counter didn’t recognize him, even though she had been at work on the right day.
I stood next to the meter and looked around. As I turned towards the Parliament House, I practically jumped for joy. Between the original building and the annexe, a set of granite stairs rose up to the former, and a silvery security camera gleamed above them. We walked around to the main entrance of the Parliament House and asked the guard sitting in the lobby’s glass cubicle to call the head of security and ask him to come down. Fifteen minutes later, we had the videotape containing the footage that had been recorded by the security camera on the Aurorankatu side of the building two days earlier. I had shamelessly lied that we were investigating an assault that had taken place on Aurorankatu, and the head of security had looked suspicious. Maybe he recognized me from the newspaper photos and knew what I was investigating. For some reason, my name stuck in people’s heads. But he still didn’t have any reason to not give me the tape.
As we returned to the car through the fine drizzle, I remembered the thing that had been bothering me.
“Where was that white minivan that was found at the Siilitie metro station stolen from again?”
Simolin pulled out his notebook. His handwriting was meticulous, each line was exactly the same length. My notes were always a huge mess. A word here, another there. No one could make anything out of them except me, and not even me all the time.
“It was registered to some antique shop, on Freda or Eerikinkatu I think.”
“Oxbaum Antiques?”
“That’s the one.”
I stopped for a moment. I felt dizzy. Josef Meyer was Jewish; Levin Oxbaum, the owner of the antique shop, was Jewish; and his son Max was a partner in my brother’s law firm, which was located on Aurorankatu, only fifty yards from the parking meter.
It was almost six p.m. and the drizzle hardened into a real rain. I shivered.
“Let’s go straight to HQ after all.”
Huovinen was still at work. He seemed anxious, and it took a lot to make Huovinen anxious.
“The Israeli ambassador called me to express his displeasure that we had not given enough information to Klein, even though the victim was an Israeli citizen. He threatened to call the Minister of the Interior, said they’re golf buddies.”
“That’s exactly why.”
“They want the body. You know how stubborn your people are about funerary rites.”
Of course I knew. Jewish tradition mandated that the deceased be buried within twenty-four hours. Every Jewish congregation had a burial-preparation office, a
chevra kadisha
, a holy society that took care of burying the dead.
chevra kadisha
, a holy society that took care of burying the dead.
When my dad died in Lapland, two men from the
chevra kadisha
were sent there to wait for the coroner to finish his work and then brought the body back to Helsinki for burial on the double. The practice was so established that a Jewish body took priority over others in autopsy lines.
chevra kadisha
were sent there to wait for the coroner to finish his work and then brought the body back to Helsinki for burial on the double. The practice was so established that a Jewish body took priority over others in autopsy lines.
Even though I honoured Jewish traditions, I had my limits. In the case of a crime, the
chevra kadisha
could wait.
chevra kadisha
could wait.
“We won’t turn over the body until all tests and exams have been conducted and identification is certain.”
“That’s what I told him, and for some reason he didn’t like it. According to the ambassador, Ben Weiss was a respectable businessman who was the victim of a crime and doesn’t have the slightest thing to do with the events at Linnunlaulu.”
“What about the photographs?”
“They’ve been released through the Finnish News Agency, and we’re also asking for information about both Tagi Hamid’s and Weiss’s movements. Oksanen and Stenman are accepting tip-offs all evening. Some have already rolled in.”
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