Cold Trail (5 page)

“E
scaped convict?”

It didn’t take
Takamäki more than a minute to pass on the info he had received from Helmikoski.

“G
oddammit, cases like this piss the fuc... I mean really annoy me. We do our job and then...”

The
lieutenant cut off his subordinate’s rant. “You’re preaching to the choir.”

“T
hat’s not what I meant.”

“I
know,” Takamäki said. “This guy disappeared an hour ago. Find out where he might be or want to get.”

“T
imo Repo.” Joutsamo savored the name. “I might have read something about him at some point.”

“W
ell, that’s a good start. So you guys are practically friends. Where’s Suhonen?”

“H
mm, I wonder where he could be at five o’clock on a Monday?” Joutsamo said.

Takamäki
chuckled. Joutsamo grabbed the previous day’s newspaper from the top of one of her piles. “I was going to ask you about this earlier. Did you read this interview this morning?”

Takamäki
glanced at the page Joutsamo was showing him from the Sunday section of the
Helsingin Sanomat
.

“Y
eah, I read it,” he said.

The newspaper had
sacrificed two pages to an interview with Aarno Fredberg, the new
chief justice of the Supreme Court. In the article, Fredberg described his liberal views on criminal justice policy. From the perspective of the policeman, and the policewoman too, the headline was harsh: “Prison Doesn’t Do Any Good.” According to Chief Justice Fredberg, society would be better off if it focused its resources on things other than police and prosecutors, because incarceration simply escalated the cycle of marginalization.

Joutsamo
was still holding the paper. “Can I call Mr. Chief Justice and have him come down here to talk to a few victims of serial rapists? That might open his eyes.”

“N
o.”

“S
eriously, how can the highest justice in the land say stuff like this publicly? It’s going to have a direct impact—judges will be handing down more lenient sentences. The bad guys are going to be getting out faster and committing more crimes.”

“
Yes, of course, because prison doesn’t do any good,” Takamäki said sarcastically.

Joutsamo
didn’t notice the joke. She huffed, “What?”

“L
isten, if the minister of the interior said police productivity has to increase even more, would you start working overtime for free?”

“N
o,” Joutsamo replied tartly.

“W
ell, those judges don’t believe everything they read in the paper, either. They’re people, just like you and me.”

“S
till, the guy could think for a second before opening his mouth,” Joutsamo snapped, flinging the paper back on the stack.

“W
ould you believe me if I said it would be better if Repo was back sleeping in his own cell sometime soon?”

Joutsamo
laughed, and Takamäki continued. “Let Puttonen go. Apologize and say that the police have to investigate all reports of crime, even the ambiguous ones. Be apologetic enough, genuinely apologetic, I mean, so she doesn’t lodge a complaint with the Ministry of Justice. Because if she does, you get to write the response. I can’t stand doing them anymore.”

“N
o?”

“N
o, actually I can’t. They’re such
a joke. I’ll go get Suhonen and see if we can’t send Superman here back to his cell.”

“
Be sure and pack the Kryptonite,” Joutsamo said.

* * *

Takamäki parked his unmarked police vehicle, a Volkswagen Golf, in the parking lot of the Helsinki Hockey Arena, a mile up Mannerheim Street from downtown. Luckily, Monday wasn’t a game night, so there was plenty of space. On the way, Takamäki had called his wife, Kaarina, and told her he’d be at least a few hours late.

The rain
kept coming down, and Takamäki hustled to the practice rink door on the east side of the building.

As soon as he entered
the lobby, he could smell the familiar, vaguely pungent aroma of hockey arenas. He stepped into the elevator and went down a couple of floors, where the elevator doors opened to the clanking of a game. The soundscape was different from that of league games. There were only a handful of spectators and the sounds of play predominated—you could hear the swear words more clearly.

It looked like there was an actual
game underway on the ice, as it was unlikely that any team would have brought a ref in zebra stripes just for a practice. Takamäki looked around for Suhonen but couldn’t spot him. The players all looked alike in their gear. The police team was wearing electric blue jerseys that read “PUCK POLICE” in big letters. The other team was playing in red. He’d probably find Suhonen on the bench, Takamäki decided, and walked on.

Takamäki
was well aware—there’s no way he could have avoided hearing about it at the station—that a year ago Suhonen had started playing hockey with the Financial Crimes Division. The undercover detective had trained them in the use of unconventional investigative methods; in other words, how to use informants. At some point, Suhonen had mentioned having played hockey all the way up to the Under 16 team in his hometown of Lahti, which had inspired the guys in Financial Crimes to recruit him.

Takamäki
jumped when the plexiglass boomed right next to him. One of the blue players had tackled one of the reds into the boards. The ref blew his whistle and skated over.

“N
umber 27, two minutes! You know there’s no tackling in the veteran league!”

Num
ber 27 tapped the plexiglass in front of Takamäki with his stick, and the lieutenant recognized that the smirking face belonged to his undercover officer. Suhonen started skating toward the penalty box.

Takamäki
walked up to the bench and whistled loudly at the ref, who skated over. “What now? It was clearly an illegal tackle,” the sweating official bellowed.

Takamäki
flashed his badge. “I have a warrant for Number 27 there. Eject him from the game. I’m going to take him back to the station.”

“F
ine with me,” the ref laughed.

He
skated over to the penalty box, put his hands on his hips and announced that Suhonen was being kicked out of the game.

“W
hat?!” Suhonen protested. “What’d I do?”

“T
alking back to the ref! You’re done! Out of here!”

Suhonen
glared ominously at Takamäki, who was smiling on the other side of the plexiglass, skated submissively toward the team bench, and stepped off the ice.

“N
ice tackle,” Takamäki said. Suhonen snatched the key to his locker from behind the bench and headed into the locker room without a word. Takamäki followed him down the linoleum corridor.

The
locker room reeked of years of ingrained sweat. The stench took Takamäki back to his patrol-cop years; their locker room had smelled the same. It was a good stink in a way, because it carried a whiff
of action. Suhonen sat down on the bench and pulled off his helmet.

“W
hat now?” he asked, irritated
.
The forty-year-old detective’s black hair was long and sweaty. He was sporting a beard like the pros during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Although Takamäki suspected that Suhonen wasn’t as superstitious as the NHL players were about shaving and losing.

“Y
ou guys were ahead 6–2, so forget about the game,” Takamäki said.

When
Suhonen took off his blue shirt, Takamäki noticed the extra gear under his shoulder pads and began to laugh.

“B
ullet-proof vest? Why?”

Suhonen
looked a little sheepish. “Let’s you take the corners a little harder. Almost all our guys wear them.”

“B
oy, you are Puck Police, all right,” Takamäki said, sitting down on a bench. There were about twenty guys’ bags and gear in the locker room. How many department-issued weapons were here? Well, these guys were financial crimes investigators, so probably not many.

S
uhonen tossed his neck guard and shoulder pads into his bag and began unlacing his skates.

“W
hat’s up?” he asked, without raising his gaze from his skates.

“W
ork. A lifer escaped.”

Suhonen
stopped unlacing and gave Takamäki an intense look. “Who?”

“A
pparently no one that bad.”

“W
ho?”

“T
imo Repo.”

Suhonen
went back to his laces. “Repo? Killed his wife somewhere in Riihimäki or Hyvinkää before the turn of the millennium?”

“Bingo
.”

“F
rom prison?”

“N
ah, his old man’s funeral in Töölö. Ran for it.”

“A
nd you had to get me tossed from the game for that?” Suhonen said, drying and packing up his skates.

“Y
ou’re on the clock,” Takamäki chuckled.

Suhonen
took off his bullet-proof vest and sniffed it. “Pretty fragrant. Hopefully I get to hunt Repo down with you and Joutsamo in the teeniest compact vehicle ever.”

“
Go take a shower.”

CHAPTER 3

MONDAY, 7:00 P.M.

THE
CORNER PUB, KALLIO

Suhonen was sitting alone at a table in a stuffy bar in Helsinki’s working-class neighborhood of Kallio. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he was wearing a leather jacket. A half-full pint stood in front of him. Salmela hadn’t shown up yet. Half a dozen guys were standing at the bar, even though there was plenty of room at the tables. An elderly customer was watching some old soccer match from the muted TV bolted to the ceiling. Over the loudspeakers, a classic rock band was offering advice about socking cash away, but for the clientele of the Corner Pub, the advice had gone in one ear and out the other.

At the next table over,
Suhonen heard a heavy-set guy recounting his weekend escapades to a couple of buddies. “Check it out, we were there at the strip bar and this chick came over to give me a lap dance and just kept going, ‘Tip me, tip me.’ So I dug a fistful of change out of my pocket and dropped it into her panties.”

“
Dude, hell no,” laughed one of the other guys.

“A
nd that’s not even the best part,” Fatso continued. “I figured she’d go right over to get the bouncer so I took out one more two-euro coin. I heated it with my lighter and when the goon showed up, I said, ‘My bad,’ and put the red-hot coin in his hand. Fuck, that dude screamed loud! I hauled ass out of there as fast as I could.”

As the group burst out
laughing, Salmela entered and walked straight to the bar. The forty-year-old regular had short hair and a brown bomber jacket; its faded lambskin collar was wet. He got his pint in no time and came over to sit next to Suhonen.

“W
hat’s up? Any good gigs lately?” Salmela asked.

Suhonen
glanced over at the guys sitting at the next table. “Nothing worth talking about here.”

Salmela
tapped the heavy-set guy on the shoulder.

“H
ey, why don’t you guys move over to that corner table. Watch some TV for a sec.”

Fatso
was about to say something, but his buddy stepped in. “Sure, okay. No problem,” he said, picking up his beer. The others followed in silence.

“Y
our reputation’s growing,” Suhonen joked.

“S
ometimes it even comes in handy,” Salmela answered. Suhonen looked him in the eyes. Suhonen thought they looked even harder than before. Suhonen and Salmela had been friends since childhood. They had both grown up in Lahti, a town of about 100,000 an hour’s drive north of Helsinki. When they were teenagers, they had belonged to a small gang that burglarized attics. When the gang was finally busted, Salmela got caught, but Suhonen was at home with a raging fever. The best friends had ended up on opposite sides of the law, but their friendship hadn’t ended. It had actually blossomed—Suhonen picked up street intel from Salmela and, in return, had helped his friend out of a few legal jams. Salmela had continued to earn his living fronting stolen goods, but now there were rumors that he had ratcheted up into more serious crimes.

“W
hat about your gigs?

“B
ah,” Salmela said. “It’s been quiet. Quiet.”

Suhonen
wasn’t completely sure he believed him.