He fished the cellphone out of the pocket of his jacket and handed it over. The man took it, gave him a pistol with a silencer, and pointed at the body with the flashlight. Juha couldn’t see the face.
“Get rid of the body and the gun. Dump it someplace where he won’t be found. Ever. If they find him, you’ll end up in the same spot.”
“How in the…”
“Shut up. Just do it,” he snapped.
Juha took a closer look at the man lying on the floor and noticed a familiar-looking jacket with a broad hood, now hanging from the victim’s neck. It was the same guy he had seen strolling past the gas station twenty minutes ago.
“Where should I…”
The shadowy figure shut off his flashlight. “Use your imagination. And don’t fuck up. This asshole was a snitch for Customs.” Then he slipped out and disappeared behind the van.
Juha was alone now. Unable to move, he just stood next to the body, looking at the gun in his hand. What the hell should he do now?
CHAPTER 2
DINING CAR ON THE PENDOLINO TRAIN
MONDAY, 10:20 P.M.
Suhonen, wearing his trademark leather jacket, was sitting on the rearmost bench of the dining car on the Pendolino express. With his back leaning against the wall, he took a sip from his pint. It was pitch dark outside and the windows reflected the interior of the train like a mirror.
Suhonen’s stubbly, street-worn reflection stared back at him. His dark hair, usually in a ponytail, had recently been cut short. Now forty, Suhonen had been a cop for half his life, first patrolling the streets of Helsinki then working undercover in Narcotics before Detective Lieutenant Kari Takamäki had recruited him to the Violent Crimes Unit to obtain more intel from the streets. Suhonen got more valuable info than most because he treated his informants like human beings, not like tools of the trade.
Over the years, Suhonen and Takamäki had grown to be close friends. While Takamäki appreciated Suhonen’s rampant enthusiasm for catching criminals, at times Suhonen had to be reined in. His methods couldn’t be found in police manuals, but they got results.
Two drunks at the bar were providing the entertainment. One of them, a man in his mid-thirties wearing a stocking cap, had brought two mugs along, which the other one filled from beer bottles hidden in his bag. The friends had boarded the train in Jyväskylä, and had obviously already had a few.
“Want some more?” the one with the bottle asked.
“Drink what you got first,” the one with the stocking cap shot back. The mugs were still half full.
“Shit, you sound like my old lady,” he said. In plain view, he dug a beer out of his bag and filled his own glass to the very top.
Suhonen was returning from a three-day driving course at Lake Naarajärvi, near Pieksämäki in Eastern Finland. The class had covered high speed pursuits, and the training on the practice track had included evasive maneuvers and emergency braking. Suhonen had gone on the trip with doubts about the usefulness of the class, but at least he had had fun. Instructors had been pissed off when Suhonen spun a few unauthorized donuts; the other cops had just laughed.
On the way up, he had travelled with a couple of traffic cops from the Helsinki Police. They had stayed a few more days for a course on police escorts, but Suhonen had been allowed to return to Helsinki.
The dispute between the two drunks was getting louder, and two women from a neighboring table got up and left.
The conductor stepped into the car, and the drunks quieted down.
Suhonen’s cellphone rang, and he pulled it out of his breast pocket. The caller appeared on the display: Takamäki.
“Hello,” Suhonen answered.
“Vacation over already?” the detective lieutenant ribbed in his deep voice.
Suhonen glanced at the advertisements near the ceiling of the train car. One of them was for the Pendolino dining car, in which he now sat. It showed a photo of Venice or something like that and the text read, “Pendolino-a piece of Italy wherever you are.” Pieksämäki, a not so picturesque part of Finland, sure hadn’t felt like Italy. The small town had once been voted the ugliest place in the country.
“What could be better…speed and danger.” Suhonen said.
“I suppose you guys got to know the local bars.”
“Yep, that too,” Suhonen smiled. Actually, their daily saunas had included just one beer. Who says Finns can’t draw the line at one? Otherwise, everything had been pretty low-key. Combine a cop with a car, and booze just doesn’t fit the equation.
“What’s up in Helsinki?”
“Nothing much. Mostly routine stuff,” Takamäki replied.
Suhonen knew that “routine stuff” often meant brutal assaults, arsons, and other violent crimes that were part of a homicide cop’s daily diet. Though Kari Takamäki’s group was officially known as the Violent Crimes Unit, or VCU for short, the old name of ‘Homicide Squad’ still stuck, even though their job description went beyond catching murderers.
“So you didn’t miss me then.”
“Not really,” Takamäki said. “I actually just called to ask if you’re coming in tomorrow. Or are you taking the day off?”
“Not sure,” said Suhonen. He had a morning meeting at the Helsinki Prison that was a high priority. “Actually, I’ll stop by at least, I gotta go to the gym.”
“Let’s go get a cup of coffee at some point tomorrow. Can’t wait to hear about all the latest pursuit tricks.”
The conversation ended and Suhonen looked up towards the ceiling, where a monitor displayed the train’s current speed. Though it didn’t feel like the train was accelerating, the numbers on the display changed every few seconds: 147 mph, 189, 204, 229, 258…
“Pendolino-a piece of Italian technology wherever you are,” Suhonen thought, and hoped the train would make it all the way to Helsinki.
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 25
CHAPTER 3
LINDSTRÖM’S APARTMENT,
TEHDAS STREET, HELSINKI
TUESDAY, 8:30 A.M.
Kalevi Lindström stood up from the seat of his rowing machine. The front of his white tanktop was stained with sweat, and Lindström was pleased. The sixty-year-old man didn’t care much for jogging, so he had converted an extra bedroom into a fitness room.
In addition to the rowing machine, he had a stationary bike, a stepper, and a punching bag. The floor was covered by a black padded mat. A large television sat in the corner, the screen dark. A pull-up bar hung from the high ceiling, and Lindström approached it with stiff, awkward steps.
He wasn’t muscular, but wiry. His short hair had turned gray, and he had wondered if he should dye it back to black, but had decided instead to embrace it. He believed it made him look more sophisticated.
Markus Markkanen leaned against the wall, watching Lindström’s workout with amusement. Lindström also paid a fitness instructor to come on Fridays. In Markkanen’s opinion, his boss was tossing money down the drain-unless, of course, he was banging her as well, but he wasn’t going to say anything.
If Lindström evoked an image of the elderly Roger Moore, Markkanen was more like a plain version of Sean Connery in Dr. No.
It bothered him that the gym didn’t smell like sweat, just some citrus-scented air-freshener that either Lindström or the house cleaner sprayed everywhere.
“You seen Eriksson?” Lindström asked and hopped up to the pull-up bar from a little stool.
Markkanen knew that Lindström wouldn’t make it past four. “No. He said he was going to the bar last night, and he’d call me in the morning. Hasn’t called.”