from Helsinki Homicide. He was at a crime scene investigating the murder of two black men. A note at the scene, the letters clipped and glued to a sheet of printing paper, read, “For Rami Sipila,” the soldier whose throat had been cut the day before.
I’d consulted with Saska before, and he’s sharp, considered one of the best policemen in the nation.
The murder scene was in East Helsinki, a district with a bad reputation and a high immigrant population. Sweetness grew up there, and so knows the area like the back of his hand. We headed over. It was a little below zero, but we had twelve hours of sunlight a day now.
We arrived at a single-family home with a yard. There weren’t many around here. The area is dominated by apartment buildings, most of them built in the 1970s, when functionality was the style and ugly was the result. The area was cordoned off. Television news vans and reporters lined the street. They waved microphones and shouted. Saska and I exchanged greetings and ignored them. I introduced Sweetness. He usually takes people aback because of his massive size, but Saska appeared not to notice. Half-Gypsy, he’s taken a lot of racial shit in his life, and I’ve noticed that he’s non-judgmental about people, or at least reserves judgment until given cause to form one. “Have a look,” he said.
Two young black men had been poisoned in a makeshift gas chamber. They were taken to their garage and made to lie on the floor under the rear of a station wagon. A blanket was draped over the exhaust pipe, the bumper and the men. The engine was left running until they died of carbon monoxide poisoning and the car ran out of gas.
“They’re brothers,” Saska said, “Dalmar and Korfa Farah. Somalis. They lived here with their mother and sister. Their father was killed in Somalia. I don’t know anything about them yet.”
Milo, Saska and I went to the front lawn to smoke. Sweetness tagged along, looking back over his shoulder. Corpses have a strange effect on him. I notice he can’t stop staring at them. “I called you because of the note,” Saska said. “Some blacks and whites are playing tit for tat. White racists murdered Lisbet Sonderlund. Angry blacks stole rifles and murdered a soldier. The same racists probably killed these guys. It won’t stop here. Reprisals are inevitable. I’d like for us to stay in touch, share relevant information.”
“Yeah,” I said, “let’s do that. This country is already in a hate frenzy. It could lead to places we never thought possible.”
He ground out his cigarette. “That’s my fear.”
“Where are the mother and sister?” I asked.
“Hiding in the house. They’re afraid to come out. They were asleep, didn’t hear a thing.”
“How’s the Saukko case going?” I ask.
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. The case is a kidnap-murder involving Finland’s richest family. It went wrong. Almost a year has passed and it’s gone unsolved. A source of embarrassment. The case belongs to Saska.
“It isn’t going,” he said. “I’m going to have to start from the beginning, re-read every document and report. I’ve missed something.”
I tried to commiserate. “The Soderlund case isn’t going any better.”
Of course, I’d been working on my case less than a week, and he was coming up on a year, but he knew I was just trying to be politic. “Let me know when you get some background on those guys, will you?”
“Yeah,” he said. Sweetness knocked reporters out of my way so I could get through them on crutches, and we left.
17
I went to physical therapy, got my knee tortured and went home. The surgery and therapy worked, though. My knee hadn’t had this much mobility since I got shot, and its range of motion increased daily. Pretty soon, I could say good-bye to the crutches.
Sweetness and I tossed Lisbet’s home and office. I went through her correspondence, looked for threatening letters. Her purse was missing, and her mobile as well. Her office was neat, orderly. It spoke of efficiency. I noted that there were no personal touches. No photographs. No awards or signs of achievement, and given her success, she must have received many. This told me she was private and modest.
Having processed hundreds or thousands of crime scenes, I’ve been in countless Finnish homes, and what has always struck me the most is their similarity. Almost everyone uses the same styles of cups and saucers, furniture. Most homes are nearly interchangeable, and hers was the same. I noted that she liked plants. There were almost two dozen plants of various kinds throughout her apartment. And she had a large temperature-controlled fish tank. The fish looked exotic—no goldfish—so I assumed they brought her pleasure. I fed them, and made a note to have them removed and cared for.
Her wardrobe was commonplace businesswoman boring. She had workout clothes. Shoes for aerobics and jogging. She took care of her physique. As with her office, she had few knickknacks or photos displayed. She believed in functionality.
Once home, I got her phone records, called every person she had called or had called her for the past couple months. She was single, had no romantic interests. Her work dominated her life. She was well liked, hadn’t spoken of threats or enemies, other than the website that wished her dead. She didn’t take it seriously. I spoke to her colleagues. They told me the same. She was last seen leaving work on the day of her death at about six p.m.
She used public transportation, owned no car. Officers were posted at the bus and tram stops she normally used. For several days, every person who used those stops would be queried and asked if they remembered seeing her. But if they didn’t, it meant nothing. Helsinki public transportation passengers seldom look around, avoid eye contact.
Milo and I worked from our own apartments. There was no need for us to be in the same building. Our computers were networked, the database set up, and we had split up the files to sort through them. We could videoconference with webcams if needed. I sat for a long time, thinking about a practical way to search for her body. In this large, metropolitan area, I could think of none. I could only hope that it turned up in a Dumpster or some such thing. In Helsinki, at this time of year, anyone with half a brain would weigh her down and give her a burial at sea.
“It’s good to see you being a detective again, instead of a thief,” Kate said.
“I like it better, too,” I said. And I did. I had no moral problem with taking down dope dealers. I was just more at home in an old and comfortable role. I couldn’t focus on the mountain of material detailing every racist in Finland, though. Kate and Aino talked on the phone. Their friendship was deepening. I kept picturing Aino’s blue eyes and blond hair. The way her sweater accented her breasts. Thoughts of fucking her were far more interesting than those of Lisbet Soderlund’s decapitated head. I couldn’t work until Kate hung up the phone and ended their conversation.
I sat at the table with my laptop for two more days. Katt slept in my lap or sat on my shoulder, dug his claws into my neck. The pain kept my mind from wandering. Yes, going through this morass of material, routine police investigation, and following up on hundreds of most likely possibilities would eventually lead to Lisbet’s murderer, but how long would it take? People were dying daily. Routine work wouldn’t do. I went through the Facebook pages given to me by the woman at the Finnish Somalia Network. I felt the answer lay inside them.
I joined every Finnish social networking hate group I could find. One, Auttakaamme Maahanmuuttajarikolliset Takaisin Kotiin— Let’s Help Send the Immigrant Criminals Back Home—had over twenty-six thousand members. Another needle in a haystack. But the group on Facebook that directly threatened her, I Would Give Two Years of My Life to Kill Lisbet Soderlund, had a member with a user name and picture of Heinrich Himmler who on multiple occasions expressed a desire to send all of Finland’s black immigrants to the gas chamber. And now two brothers were dead, murdered in a homemade gas chamber. Many members of the group went by Nazi user names: Goering, Ilse Koch, Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Eichmann, but the tone of the rhetoric of the member that called himself Himmler told me he was the man I wanted to locate. If he hadn’t himself murdered Lisbet Soderlund, I thought he knew who did. But how would I find him?
Saska Lindgren called me. The murdered young men were known low-level drug dealers. They sold everything from hashish to heroin. Their bank cards indicated they had taken a train to Turku on the day of their murder. Bought one-way tickets. They ate at McDonald’s in Turku. That was the last trace of them.
I watched the news. Assaults and beatings, white and black youth gang clashes. Attacks on apostate Finnish
