Lisbet Soderlund’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
Several articles detailed Lisbet Soderlund’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 Soderlund 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.
14
At 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 Soderlund, 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 Soderlund’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.
