outside the front door. He wasn’t breathing anymore.”
“You held him suspended by the neck,” I say. “How long was he in that position?”
“Ninety seconds, two minutes tops.”
More than enough time to kill him. “You broke his hyoid and caused him to choke to death.”
The bouncer says nothing.
“Why so long, why was it necessary to remove him in that manner, and did his brother interfere?”
Timo ignores the first two parts of the question. “No, his brother just followed us and screamed for us to stop.”
Now I have a sense of the situation. Two brothers have a spat. Two bored bouncers overreact because they have nothing else to do. They have a bit of fun at the victim’s expense while they eject him. He dies.
The rent-a-cops are a man and a woman. The man is in his late twenties. The woman, just out of her teens. He’s a skinhead, has an Iron Cross tattooed on the meat between his right thumb and forefinger. A tribal tattoo runs up his neck and curls around his ear. She looks like a mean-spirited, gum-chewing cow with bad acne.
I take their personal information. “Did anyone try to revive him?” I ask.
The skinhead says, “I did. I tried mouth-to-mouth and chest compression. They didn’t work.”
“That much is apparent,” I say, and turn back to Timo. “You dropped him outside. Why is he inside?”
“We carried him back in.”
“Why?”
“It’s warmer in here.”
“He wasn’t breathing. I don’t think he cared.”
Timo goes quiet, and I get it. It had nothing to do with the victim. He and his buddy were cold, since they just have on T-shirts. Bouncer number one comes back. I tell him to stand behind the bar and await further instructions. I don’t want him and his buddy to talk and mesh their stories together any more than they already have. I call for cruisers to take them and the rent-a-cops to the lockup. They’ll remain in custody while we sort this out.
I go over to the victim’s brother and introduce myself. He’s sniffling. He has a big baby face, too. It’s glazed from shock.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Sulo Polvinen. My brother’s name was Taisto.”
Using the past tense makes him sob. The brothers’ names are old-fashioned, were popular during the Second World War. Sulo means “sweet.” Taisto means “battle.” Their family is patriotic.
“Those bastards killed him,” he says.
“Tell me why.”
He blinks, shakes his head. “It didn’t make any sense. We were just squabbling, we argue all the time. It’s a brother thing. We pushed each other a little, just playing, and those guys started to manhandle us. I stopped moving so they wouldn’t hurt me, but Taisto struggled a little and yelled at them. They bent him over and the fat one got him by the head. The other got his knees and picked him up. I followed them and begged them to leave him alone, but they just laughed. And then they took him outside, tossed him up in the air, and when he hit the ground he wasn’t breathing.”
“How much did you and Taisto have to drink?” I ask.
“Four beers.”
“Tell me the truth. Toxicology will measure the alcohol in your brother’s system.”
“We weren’t drunk. I swear. We were drinking our fourth beer when it happened. Why did they kill my brother?” He starts to cry again.
“I wish I knew. I’m sorry. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“The securitas, the one who tried CPR. When we were outside and he couldn’t bring Taisto back, he looked up at the bouncers and said, ‘Why did you have to kill one of us instead of one of those goddamned foreigners?’”
I sigh. This situation makes me sad. The Silver Dollar has a reputation for foreigners showing up at last call. They try to score with blasted Finnish girls. A last-ditch end of the night effort to fuck some random drunk girl. When Finns witness this, especially if the foreigners are black, xenophobia often wells up. Goddamned foreigners come here and take our jobs. They steal our women. Run the cocksuckers out of the country.
Securitas has become more prominent in the Helsinki law enforcement apparatus over time. The police department has no room for additional officers in its budget. As a result, many businesses, especially bars, and even the public sector, like our transportation system, use rent-a-cops. Some of them are pretty good, military- trained, have even studied to be cops but couldn’t get jobs.
However, many s ecuritas are poorly trained, and worse, have psychological profiles that make them unfit as guardians of the community. The pay is bad, the work thankless. Bullies, racists, the kind of people who like authority so they can use it to push others around, tend to gravitate toward the rent-a-cop business. Often, they’re the kind of people our citizens need protection from, and have no business enforcing the law. What pisses me off most is that the city has the money for things like heated sidewalks in the shopping district, so tourists won’t get snow on their shoes, but not enough to provide its citizens with adequate protection.
“Those bastards killed my brother,” Sulo says. “What are you going to do to them?”
I see no point in lying and causing him disappointment later. “I’m going to investigate, but I doubt much will come of it. This kind of thing happens on a regular basis. Very few bouncers are even charged, let alone convicted.”
“But they murdered him.”
“I’m sorry to tell you this, but at most, they’ll be charged with involuntary manslaughter. You can file a civil suit if you want. They’ll counter and have you charged with disorderly conduct. Most likely, they’ll walk and you’ll end up paying a fine.”
“That’s insane.”
Sulo is right, it’s insane. Finnish drinking culture is a hypocrisy. Men are expected to drink. If they don’t, they’re considered untrustworthy. Both social and business life revolve around booze. Deals are often made at night, drunk. The good ole boy system comes into play. Since a lot of those drunken meetings take place in saunas segregated by sex, women are often shut out from the decision-making process.
If something goes wrong in a bar and somebody gets killed, most of the time it’s just too fucking bad. Witnesses are discredited. They can’t prove they weren’t drunk. The courts lay blame on the victim and refuse to convict. Alcohol abuse is a cultural requirement, but once people are drunk, they in effect lose all legal rights.
“I feel for you,” I say, “and I’ll do the best I can. I just don’t want you to expect too much.”
Shock combines with anger. His face turns scarlet. Veins in his neck and forehead pulse. He’s unable to speak.
I get his address, telephone and social security numbers, and tell him I’ll have him taken home.
My cell phone rings. I answer.
“Hi. My name is Arska Kuivala. I’m Securitas. Are you related to an American named John Hodges?”
“He’s my wife’s brother. Why?”
“He’s in trouble, and this is a courtesy call. I’m with him in Roskapankki. He ran up a bar tab close to three hundred euros, doesn’t have money to pay it, and he’s fucked up. Do you want to come here and fix this? If not, he goes to jail.”
Kate will be devastated if he gets locked up. “I’ll be there,” I say, “and I owe you a favor.”
“Yeah,” he says, “you do. Your brother-in-law is an asshole.” He hangs up.
I’ve got the Filippov murder, the Arvid Lahtinen situation, and various and sundry other deaths to investigate at the same time. My qualification to be in murharyhma is already under question by my colleagues, and now I have to walk out on an investigation because my brother-in-law is a lush. It’s more than just an inconvenience, it’s fucking humiliating.
I tell Milo I’ve got an emergency and have to leave. He says he can clean this up. I give him the car keys and take a taxi to Roskapankki.
