“Huh,” Suhonen said.
“He sent appeals just about everywhere: the attorney general, parliamentary ombudsman, even to the European Court of Human Rights. Pretty surprised he didn’t send one to the UN. Some reporter came here to meet him, but I don’t think she ever wrote about it.”
“What was his complaint?”
“That he was innocent and had been unjustly sentenced.”
“You read the verdict. Was there anything to his appeal?” Suhonen asked. Ainola had graduated from law school.
Ainola shook his head. “Not a chance. The case was clear cut. And none of the appeals ever went anywhere. Bottom-of-the-stack stuff, the kind no one even takes a second look at.”
“But the issue was specifically his innocence?”
“Yes, and then about the conditions here too, but once he had been labeled a habitual complainer, no one took those seriously either.”
“Should they have?”
Ainola grunted dryly. “Of course. Conditions here are nowhere near to what the law dictates. A civilized nation is judged according to how it treats its prisoners, and on that measure, we’re not a Western country.”
“Not many are, if that’s the criteria we’re judging by.”
“Did you read the interview with Fredberg, the new chief justice of the Supreme Court, in Sunday’s paper?”
“Scanned it,” Suhonen said.
“He’s absolutely right that prison sentences don’t do any good. At least if we have to keep working with the same amount of resources and an increasing load of customers,” Ainola said.
Suhonen wasn’t particularly interested in getting into a discussion on criminal justice policy. “Let’s get back to Repo. How long did he keep up the appeals?”
“For a couple of years after the verdict. Then he suddenly stopped.”
“Why?” asked Suhonen.
“I don’t know. He just stopped. Maybe he realized it wouldn’t lead to anything, anyway. Gave up or got tired of it. Beats me.”
“What kind of meds was he on?”
“That’s stepping into confidential territory, but he popped sedatives, like just about everybody else here,” Ainola said.
Suhonen thought activists would have their work cut out for them if they tackled prison conditions , but evidently animals were a more sympathetic cause than criminals.
“Who did he hang out with?”
“He wasn’t in any of the gangs. Mostly kept to himself. When you said you were coming, I also asked over in his block. They told me then that he talked to a dealer named Juha Saarnikangas. He got four years for possession of amphetamines, but was released in August, if I remember correctly.”
Suhonen wrote down the name, even though he had heard of the guy before.
“What about Repo’s phone calls or letters?”
“I checked the logs. No calls in months, years actually. Some record of letters being received. Probably had to do with his dad’s death, for the most part.”
Suhonen nodded. Another strikeout. “Let’s go have a look at the cell.”
“No problem, if you have a warrant.”
“Are you serious?” Suhonen asked, but then dug out a search warrant from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. The only part that had been completed was Takamäki’s signature-a lieutenant’s approval was sufficient under Finnish law. Suhonen quickly filled in the rest of the information right there. For the crime, Suhonen wrote down “prisoner escape,” since that was what they were investigating.
“Handy,” Ainola said.
* * *
Takamäki knocked on the door of the Sello shopping center surveillance room. The person to open it was a short, uniformed guard with a moustache. He also had a big nose, and his heavy-framed glasses completed the Groucho Marx impression.
“Aho?” Takamäki asked.
Groucho nodded.
“Takamäki from Violent Crimes Unit.”
“Sure. I’ve seen you on TV before, too. Come on in.”
Takamäki followed the security guard, who had called him back about the surveillance camera photos. Aho had offered to send them via email, but Takamäki didn’t think that was secure enough.
The room, which was lit by fluorescent lights, contained a few lockers, a coffee machine, a microwave, and a fridge. A random selection of magazines was strewn across the table.
“Let’s go into the surveillance room,” Groucho Aho said.
The back room contained a dozen TV screens for the surveillance cameras. In some, the image changed every few seconds. Takamäki suspected that staring at them would give him a massive headache in no time flat.
Aho sat down at the computer. “You have a flash drive?”
Takamäki handed over his stick, which had more than 500 MB free, enough space for at least 200 premium-quality shots.
“I already went through and picked out the best ones,” Aho said. “There’s no video. It’s one of those cameras that takes a shot a second.”
The first image showed a boy in a helmet approaching the crosswalk on his bike. The wet asphalt gleamed; there was no one else in the picture. The pedestrian light was red. In the next shot, the light had turned green, and now the front tire of Jonas’s bike was in the intersection.
“In this next one, you can see the collision,” Aho said, clicking on to the third shot.
Looking at the photo turned Takamäki’s stomach. Jonas was blurry in it, because he was toppling over onto the asphalt, but you could see his arm breaking the fall. A gray car that looked like a Toyota had come from the right, and the front bumper was dead on top of the bike’s front wheel.
“This last one is probably the one you’ll find the most interesting.”
In the fourth shot, Jonas and the bike are on the asphalt, and the car had continued about five yards from the place of impact.
The brake lights weren’t on.
“I focused on the license plate,” Aho said, showing the fifth photo to Takamäki. The letters and numbers were clearly visible, and Takamäki wrote them down in his notebook.
Aho copied the photos onto the flash drive and ejected it from the computer. “Good thing you came to get these today. They wouldn’t have been here anymore tomorrow. These external camera shots are recorded over every twenty-four hours.”
“You don’t save them even if they capture incidents like this?”
“Of course we do, if we see something. I don’t know why the guy on duty yesterday didn’t notice the sequence on his cameras. The ambulance showed up pretty quick, too.” Aho handed the flash drive to Takamäki. “Here you go.”
“Thanks for your help,” the lieutenant said, adding that he’d show himself out.
* * *
Ainola and Suhonen entered the third floor of the east cell block, where most of the murderers were housed. The latest cycle of remodels at Helsinki Prison, which was originally built in 1881, had lasted for years. With the shrubs and other improvements, the block was almost pleasant now.
The corridors were quiet, because the majority of prisoners were elsewhere. That suited Suhonen, because he had no interest in showing his face to criminals in a context where he could be directly connected to the authorities.
Ainola greeted the guard and said they’d be entering Repo’s cell. Ainola fit his own key into the lock. As always in prisons, the iron door opened inwards. That way the prisoner couldn’t use the door to blindside a guard.
“Be my guest,” Ainola said, letting Suhonen enter first.
Suhonen immediately caught the distinct scent of old prison cell. It was impossible to eradicate, even if you washed and painted the walls and floors. The little cell reeked of sweat, shit, and suffering. Over the past century and a quarter they had been hopelessly ingrained.
The cell was six feet wide and ten feet long. High up on the back wall there was a tiny window. The bed was on the right and the desk to the left. A TV, an electric water kettle, and a few books were on the table. Suhonen’s eye immediately registered one detail-not a single girlie pic. As a matter of fact, the walls were spotless-not a single stroke of graffiti, either.