Nights of Awe (25 page)
Authors: Harri Nykanen
“Eija is my wife… tell the police what you saw.”
The woman hesitated for a moment, but then she walked over to us.
“I saw Ali Hamid meet a man from the Security Police near Itäkeskus. The man got out of Hamid’s car right when I was riding past on my bicycle.”
“How do you know the man was from the Security Police?”
“I used to work with his wife. I saw her with her husband when I was selling stuff at the Hietalahti flea market last summer. I had no problem remembering him.”
“What’s the wife’s name?”
“Irma Sillanpää.”
18
Sometimes disordered thoughts sort themselves out overnight. This time it felt like they had got even more muddled. When I woke up at seven, the first thing I thought about was Vivica Mattsson, as if she had settled into my head during my sleep and waited for me to stir.
“Vivica Mattsson,” I muttered to myself as I shaved.
I had to admit, she had made an impression on me. I had thought about her on numerous occasions and even considered different ways of approaching her. It would have been easiest to go meet her under the pretence of wanting to confirm whether what she heard shouted from the bridge could have been either “
Moshe manjak
” or “
Muhammad manjak
”.
Moshe manjak
” or “
Muhammad manjak
”.
A former colleague of mine had bumped into his current wife while questioning her in an assault case. He kept coming up with excuses for questioning her until the opportunity arose to invite her for coffee.
Another policeman I knew married the girlfriend of a criminal he was hunting, and a third couple was formed when a colleague from Violent Crime was trying to find the apartment that had the best view of a shooter holed up in the building opposite. Now he sees the spot they cornered the guy from his own window every day.
I opened the ventilation window to check the weather. Chilly and a light fog. From the window, I could see the building across the way and folks going about their morning business. At one window, a guy in his undershirt was taking the last puffs of his cigarette. Then he stubbed it out on the window sill and flicked it into the street.
Outside, I breathed in the damp air and buttoned up my coat. An opening car door flashed at the left edge of my field of vision. I instinctively turned to look.
“Kafka!”
The person yelling was Klein, the head of security from the Israeli embassy. I walked up to his car.
“You have time for a coffee?”
We headed over to the Primula Café at Viiskulma. Klein ordered us a couple of coffees and sat down across from me.
He didn’t look nearly as competent as his position demanded. His eyes were bloodshot and he had a cold.
“I want to apologize for stepping on your toes. I was trying to help. I was the one who called Sillanpää; he was just being friendly. Don’t blame him.”
I sipped my coffee and let Klein talk.
“After you and I met, I started thinking about things. I was in touch with Jerusalem yesterday and asked the police there to look into Ben Weiss’s background. It looks like I painted an overly rosy picture of him.”
I raised my eyebrows a little.
“Weiss really does have a fur company, and he reported business as the reason for his trip. However… the police in Jerusalem informed me that the tax authority has been looking into Weiss’s affairs, and he’s suspected of tax fraud and money laundering. And according to tip-offs the police have received, he also has connections to certain major-league drug traffickers, who in turn have a lot of contacts in the Russian mafia. You’re aware that a lot of Jews have moved from Russia to Israel. There are criminals among them, and unfortunately they often continue their illicit activities in their new homeland.”
“So Weiss wasn’t here to buy furs?”
“That’s what it looks like. I’ll be honest, someone in Israel screwed up. We should have been informed about Weiss so we would have known to look out for him… we believe he was supposed to pay for a drug shipment on behalf of some criminals who live in Israel. The tax authority conducted an investigation of Weiss’s corporate accounts, and it revealed that payments made to them lead back to certain shady enterprises. They’re linked by a complex web of sham companies.”
“What do Weiss’s drug deals and terrorists like Saijed and Bakr have to do with each other?”
“We’re not sure. We have two theories. We know for certain that Tagi Hamid used and probably also dealt drugs. Maybe that’s how he and Weiss ended up working together. Tagi Hamid used at least amphetamines and heroin. It’s not easy being a terrorist; it’s tough on the nerves.”
I encouraged Klein to continue.
“Could be that Saijed or Bakr or both found out about things somehow, flew off the handle, and killed the two of them. The simple fact that Hamid was in contact with a Jew could have been enough to make men like Saijed and Bakr suspicious, especially since they were planning a terrorist attack at the time. In their minds, Hamid had made an unforgiveable mistake that put the whole strike at risk.”
“Are you sure they were planning a strike, or is that a guess?”
“The Israeli security service received certain information about the weapons and explosives. We also know with one hundred per cent certainty that Tagi Hamid has procured weapons from Russia – the kinds of weapons that are only suitable for terrorist use.”
Klein took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his running nose.
“I’m sorry. I was out on the Baltic fishing with friends and caught a cold… Another possibility is that Weiss was kidnapped because the kidnappers discovered he was a rich Jewish businessman. Weiss had a lot of money on him, hundreds of thousands of dollars. The money’s missing. He was killed because he was Jewish. For guys like that, it would be three birds with one stone: take a Jew’s money, kill him, and then use the stolen money to buy weapons to kill more Jews.”
“There’s only one but,” I noted. “We’re not even sure that the guy who got hit by the train was Saijed and that Weiss’s killer was Bakr. Neither one has been identified yet.”
My phone rang. It was Huovinen.
I stood up and stepped a few yards away. Klein tried to look hurt.
“Where are you?” Huovinen asked.
I told him.
“That Murak Laya who’s being sought for the explosion in Vantaa just turned himself in at HQ. He’s in custody.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I went back to the table and tried to remember what I was saying before Huovinen’s call. Klein was faster.
“According to the information we have, they are Saijed and Bakr. The source is extremely reliable. Saijed and Bakr have worked together before, and both of them left Denmark at the same time. According to our source they came here. We’ll be happy to offer you expert assistance in identifying the deceased, if that’s acceptable to you.”
“I was under the impression that you don’t have any fresh photos of them, not even fingerprints.”
“We have our methods.”
“One more thing about the latter theory. If Weiss’s murder was political, how come no one has exploited it?”
“Because things went awry and one of the kidnappers died.”
“And the man who was with Weiss?”
“You mean Dan Kaplan, or Josef Kayly, the name he was going by here?”
“What do you know about him?”
“Please understand that this is extremely embarrassing for us. In principle, Israel protects her citizens tooth and nail. We believe that Kaplan is involved in Weiss’s death. If the first theory holds true, he was here protecting the interests of the Israeli criminals. If the latter theory is true, he was in on the kidnapping and helped Israel’s worst enemies… You Finns have a fitting saying for this. The one about the goat and the cabbage patch.”
“The goat guarding the cabbage patch.”
“That’s the one. Kaplan was like the goat guarding the cabbage patch.”
“Isn’t he in the service of the Israeli army?”
“Was. A few years back, the army discovered some cases of weapons theft. Kaplan was implicated, but they couldn’t gather sufficient evidence of criminal activity against him. Nevertheless, he was forced to leave the army. After that, he set up a security company with a dodgy reputation.”
“Do you have an idea of why Tagi Hamid’s cousin Ali was killed then?”
“Maybe he had got mixed up in the drug dealing or the kidnapping and once Tagi botched things they didn’t trust him any more. Wasn’t the burnt car his or rented by him? Another possibility is that Bakr, Saijed or Kaplan didn’t want to split Weiss’s money with anyone else.”
“Do you know where Kaplan is?”
Klein sneezed again.
“No. We’ll do anything we can to help the Finnish police apprehend him, but he’s a tricky bastard… and he has a lot of contacts from his army days. The Jerusalem police have been tailing him for years, but they’ve never caught him red-handed.”
“We’ve checked every hotel in the Helsinki area. Neither Kaplan nor Weiss stayed at any of them. Do you know where they were staying?”
“I’m afraid not.”
I considered how much I could reveal to Klein. Then I decided I didn’t have anything to lose by rattling his peace of mind a little.
“Weiss had business dealings with a Jewish fur trader, he consulted a Jewish lawyer, and Weiss and Kaplan used a car that was stolen from a Jewish antiques dealer.”
“Blood is thicker than water. You know that Jews prefer dealing with Jews.”
“Why did they have to steal the car?”
“Because they were involved in criminal activity. Maybe they heard about Oxbaum’s van and trip by accident.”
“I never said that the stolen van was Oxbaum’s.”
Klein looked at me almost sympathetically. It annoyed me, because it reminded me of my brother Eli when he was a move away from checkmate. It made me want to get my butt kicked by him the old-fashioned way rather than lose the game.
“It’s part of my job to be on top of things like that.”
“You know everything else, but not the things that would help us.”
“We’ll get Kaplan as soon as he returns to Israel.”
I reminded Klein that that wouldn’t do us much good, because Israel doesn’t extradite its citizens.
“We can still question him, and maybe even allow the Finnish police to interrogate him. If he was mixed up in Weiss’s death, he will definitely be prosecuted. Israel is a democratic state and operates under rule of law, the only one in the Middle East,” Klein added.
“I want a recent photo of Kaplan.”
“I’ll try to get you one.”
Observing my reaction, Klein asked: “Is it true that Kaplan was your childhood friend?”
I answered in the affirmative.
“What about nowadays?”
“He’s a criminal suspect I’m looking for.”
Klein glanced at his watch.
“Unfortunately I have to get going, I have a meeting with the ambassador… we sincerely hope that Bakr is found and apprehended prior to the visit of our foreign minister. I hope you’re taking this seriously enough; he’s a dangerous man.”
Klein rose, and so did I.
In the doorway, I asked him casually if any Mossad agents were still in Finland.
“No… Why would they be?”
I don’t know if the question surprised Klein, but nonetheless, he hesitated for a second.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I lent my car for a couple of hours. Is that a crime?”
Laya was on the verge of crying. He hugged his arms around his chest and tried to pull himself together.
“I loved Taina. If I had known, I would have gone myself…”
A stream of tears rolled down from the corner of one eye. I didn’t doubt that his grief was genuine.
Murak Laya was a small man a little over thirty. His hair was short and curly. He was sitting on a concrete bed in the lockup at headquarters. Stenman and I had been interrogating him for almost an hour. Simolin and Oksanen were on the other side of the wall, listening to the interrogation through a speaker and immediately verifying anything they could.
According to Laya, this is how it had all happened:
Laya knew Tagi Hamid. They had met at an establishment frequented by Arabs and hung out there together on a few evenings. Hamid had a lot of money, so he treated. When Hamid had moved to the apartment on Toinen Linja, Laya had helped out with his car. A week ago, Hamid had explained that an important friend of his might need a car for a few hours and asked if Laya would agree to rent his in exchange for good compensation. Initially Laya had been hesitant, because he suspected the car would be used for criminal activity. Hamid had laughed and promised that there was no danger of that. Laya had eventually given in, and Hamid had told him that someone would be in touch if his friend ended up needing the car.
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