The style was ponderous and swelled from catalogue-style reportage to sentimental syrup. It was hard to imagine a publisher being interested in it. He was probably writing it for his children and grandchildren.
Jacobson’s email correspondence had been brisk, but most of it had to do with the company. I read a few messages that had been sent to clients; they were almost imploring. They appealed to long-lasting business relationships and reminded the clients how conscientiously their wishes had always been taken into consideration. The company must have been doing poorly and Jacobson must have been desperate; there’s no other way he ever would have written those emails. He must have been ashamed.
I kept browsing and found an email Jacobson had sent to Roni. It was from a month ago.
Mikkola’s dismissal has been on my mind, and my feeling is you acted too hastily and high-handedly. Mikkola has always carried out his duties in an exemplary fashion, and as someone who had been with us for such a long time, he deserved better treatment. In the future, I want you to immediately report any problems to me so that nothing of this sort happens again. I must admit I’m disappointed in your actions.
I met with two of our key clients today and both of them have to postpone their hardware upgrades. All in all, it’s starting to look like I’m going to have to put off my retirement. I believe that my connections and experience are too valuable to sacrifice in this financial situation. I hope you’re not disappointed, even though I had promised to turn the reins over to you. I’ll step down as soon as circumstances allow.
I also discussed the loan with Joel. He sounded almost angry, but I explained that switching the loan over to Finland was best, especially since the Israeli police are investigating the parent company. Joel assured me that it’s a matter of internal politics and that everything would be fine. Frankly, I don’t know what to believe. He’s afraid that transferring the loan will spark a chain reaction in Finland, which I find odd. I tried to put him at ease, and told him I had no intention of announcing my affairs over a loudspeaker. I’m too old to be taking risks, especially since I want to leave you a thriving company, not a string of complications.
Could you please contact him right away and tell him you support my decision. That should calm him down. After all, you two know each other better.
Your father, Samuel
It was clear that the relationship between the father and his son was not unproblematic. Nor was the one between the father-in-law and his son-in-law, Joel Kazan.
8
I almost felt guilty that we hadn’t got any further, so I went in to work around 7 a.m. I had given orders that I was to be called if anything important turned up, but I had been allowed to sleep through the night without interruption. Hope springs eternal, though. I was eager to find out if some minor lead had appeared that would advance the case.
The car had been gone over carefully, and plenty of fingerprints, hairs, fibres, even dog hairs, had been pulled from it. All of these offered new possibilities for attacking the case. It wasn’t likely that a professional like Jacobson’s murderer would leave fingerprints or DNA behind in the car. But you never knew; something might turn up.
Nevertheless, things had gone the way I was afraid they would. The night had brought nothing new. Several tips about the car and shady characters had been called in during the late-night hours, but a couple of the callers were “old friends” of ours whom we didn’t take seriously. The rest of the tips were vague to the point of being useless.
Huovinen arrived a little after eight and asked me to bring Simolin and Stenman into his office for a meeting as soon as they came in. Both showed up at about the same time, quarter past eight. They had been working until 9 p.m. Two other investigators had been assigned to the case, but they were out in the field, doing things like talking to people who lived near the spot where the Golf was found.
Huovinen was a good boss. He trusted me, and didn’t expect the moon and the stars. All he expected was that everyone do their best. Now he looked at me questioningly, but didn’t say anything. He waited for me to start. I reported that the investigation hadn’t advanced at all since the previous evening, and that we didn’t have any new information. Then I told him about the meeting with Roni, and everything else I knew about him.
“So there’s some tension between the father and son,” Huovinen said.
“That’s what it looks like. Roni was supposed to become CEO, but Jacobson senior decided to stay on for the meantime.”
“It’s hard to imagine that the son would have anything to do with his father’s murder. Or?”
Stenman chimed in. “It wouldn’t be the first time. Don’t forget the Solhbeck case, where the son ordered a hit on his father to get his inheritance faster.”
“OK, keep that possibility open, too.”
“Jacobson was also arguing with his son-in-law, Joel Kazan. Kazan works for the company that owns Baltic Invest, and he’s somehow involved in the loan business. He got upset when Jacobson announced he was paying off the loan and taking out a replacement loan in Finland. So we’re starting to see some logical motives take shape.”
“What reason would he have to get upset because his father-in-law wanted to pay off his loan?” Stenman asked.
“He was afraid word would spread and other borrowers would follow suit — that they’d suspect that Jacobson had some inside information from his son-in-law. Or maybe he just saw it as a demonstration of no confidence and took offence.”
“At least things are starting to happen. How are you planning on proceeding?”
“We’re still trying to piece together the movements of the car… Simolin’s been in touch with the Estonian National Bureau of Investigation again and requested further information on the vehicle and the theft.”
“My friend at the Estonian police told me that the theft was fishy, because the vehicle had disappeared from a locked garage,” Simolin reported. “The explanation was that the building was undergoing a major renovation at the time and there were a lot of construction workers around. The doors had been left open, and the keys were on the receptionist’s desk. The idea was that anyone who needed the car could use it. The registration was in the glove box, so no one would have noticed anything at the border.”
“Why did your friend think there was something fishy about the loss of the car?” Huovinen asked. “The renovation sounds like a perfectly reasonable explanation to me.”
“Because the garage surveillance camera had not been on that particular day. The renovation was also used to explain that, but none of the construction workers admitted to having turned it off, and there wasn’t any reason to. The camera’s controls were in the same reception area as the key.”
“Let’s hope the Estonians find out more,” Huovinen said.
The ball was in my court again, so I said: “We’ve asked them to rush the telecommunications data. They promised to get it to us by this afternoon. Even if it doesn’t tell us who made the threatening call to Jacobson, the mast data might give us something important.”
Huovinen was more doubtful. “The killer seems smart enough to know what kind of information can be gleaned from telecommunications data and has probably taken that into account. We shouldn’t rely too much on it. He might even try to throw you off with it.”
“We’ll take that possibility into consideration.”
“If the killer is Estonian, there’s a good chance he’s back home already.”
“Simolin also asked the Estonian NBI if they knew anyone who would be a good match for our case and who happened to be out of the country at the time. We’re waiting for them to get back to us. If we go with the assumption that the killer was Estonian, then we have to ask why. Only two alternatives make sense: either a Finn ordered a hit from Estonia, or Jacobson’s murder is somehow related to Estonia. In the latter case, the first thing to come to my mind is the fact that Jacobson’s company took out a loan from an Estonian lender. The company doesn’t have any other connections there.”