The infuriated Karppi raised his voice and circled around in front of Repo: “You will not push me around in my house!”
“Take it easy,” Repo said, passing the other man without touching him.
Karppi huffed, but took a couple of steps backwards. Repo turned and ran water from the tap into the coffee pot. Two, three cups would do it. The coffee was in the cupboard, and Repo eyeballed roughly the right amount as he poured it into the filter.
Repo turned and noticed that Karppi was crouching down at the end of the couch, where he had left his shoulder bag. Repo marched into the living room. Karppi rose. The couch stood between them.
Karppi looked Repo in the eye. “What is it you’re planning on doing?”
“I’ll say it one more time: it’s none of your business.”
“Where’d you get that?” Karppi asked, glancing into the shoulder bag. “Tell me.”
“Found it in town,” Repo said. He started circling the couch from the right.
Karppi took a couple of steps left. Even though he leaned against the couch as he moved, his voice remained forceful. “Timo! You’re doing something I don’t want to be a part of; as a matter of fact, I don’t even want to know about it.”
“So stop asking then,” Repo said from the foot of the sofa. Now he was closer to the bag.
“I’m asking for your own sake. You’re planning on doing something evil.”
“In prison, you have time to think about all kinds of things,” Repo said, taking a step toward the old man, who was now standing about ten feet away.
“I think we need to call this game off right now,” Karppi said, picking up his cordless phone from the table. “I’m going to call the police and tell them what’s going on before you can do anything irreversible with that.”
“Life is irreversible,” Repo said, lunging at Karppi.
“Stop!” cried the old man. “Wait.”
Repo stepped closer and Karppi stepped back. Karppi looked at his phone and typed in 000 before he realized that the emergency number had changed; it was now 112 everywhere in Europe.
Karppi raised his hand from the phone just as Repo came within arm’s reach. His right hand grabbed for the phone.
“You’re not calling anyone.”
“Stop! Listen!” Karppi, terrified, stepped backwards. Repo’s palm smacked the old man’s shoulder hard. Karppi lost his balance and fell. He tried to break his fall with his hand, but his head cracked against the corner of the oak dining table.
A voice came from the phone: “112, what is your emergency?”
Karppi felt a blackness filling his head. He could see the ceiling, and the pain gradually faded. He tried to talk, but was incapable of making a sound. He heard a rattling in his breath, and then the blackness ended too.
What Repo saw was an old man sprawled on the floor with a bleeding head. Karppi’s mouth was agape, but he was silent.
The woman’s voice repeated: “112, what is your emergency?”
Repo raised the phone from the floor, “Sorry, it was a mistake.”
He gazed at the old man from a distance of a couple of yards. The pool of blood slowly began to grow.
“Sir, is there an emergency?”
“Everything’s fine,” Repo said. “My kid was just playing with the phone. Sorry,” he managed to say.
“All right, sir.” The operator ended the call.
Repo bent over and felt Karppi’s throat for a pulse. There wasn’t one. Goddammit, he swore. He stood and rubbed his face. Why did this have to happen? He hadn’t intended for things to go this way. He hadn’t wanted to kill Karppi. Repo wanted to shout that it had been an accident. This wasn’t supposed to happen!
He tried to calm himself, but he couldn’t. He looked into the dead man’s gaping eyes. Why did Karppi have to try to resist him? It didn’t make any sense. Why had he come to the old man’s house in the first place? You should never mix others up in your business, but that’s exactly what he had done.
Repo couldn’t stand looking at the body, so he went and took a sheet from the old man’s bed. The fugitive spread it across the corpse. A corner of the sheet was immediately soaked in blood.
Repo stepped back over to the couch and sat. He was tired, but he wondered whether the woman at emergency response believed him. Did she think everything was all right, or were an ambulance and the cops already on their way? Repo picked up his bag from the floor and pulled out the Luger. He was exhausted, but he couldn’t stay here.
God-fucking-dammit. What just happened? And why? Why did things always have to turn out this way?
CHAPTER 14
WEDNESDAY, 10:20 A.M.
KALLIO NEIGHBORHOOD, HELSINKI
Suhonen was at home in his one-bedroom Kallio apartment, lying in bed in his underwear. He wasn’t asleep, but he didn’t have the energy to get up either. He had made it home around four, and Raija had left at seven without saying a word. Suhonen had tried to give her a kiss, but she had just walked out.
I could get up in a bit and make some coffee, Suhonen thought. Or maybe he’d wait until the noon meeting that Takamäki had sent him the text message about. Suhonen ruminated about breakfast, but couldn’t decide: cold cereal, granola, hot cereal, sandwich? Maybe he wasn’t hungry yet; he had dropped by a 24-hour deli around three and chowed down a double-sausage meat pie.
Suhonen rubbed his face-stubble. His hair felt greasy, too. He needed a shower.
His phone rang. Suhonen could tell it was his off-the-record phone and rushed into the entryway to dig it out of his jacket pocket. The phone displayed the caller’s number, but Suhonen didn’t recognize it.
“Yeah,” Suhonen answered.
“Is that Suikkanen?”
“Yeah,” Suhonen said. He was standing in front of the mirror and could see all his scars. He turned his back to the mirror.
“Hey, man,” answered a male voice. “We met at the bar yesterday. Yugi.”
Suhonen remembered Arsenal Fan. “Yeah, what do you want?”
“You promised me a C-note for that clown Saarnikangas.”
“Where is he?”
“Right here in my kitchen. I found him at Itäkeskus Mall this morning and brought him here. Tied him to a chair.”
Fuck, thought Suhonen.
Yugi continued, “He says he doesn’t have any money. I can take care of him for you for five grand. No one will ever hear from him again.”
“No!” Suhonen said emphatically. “I need to talk to him.”
“Can I take care of him afterwards?”
Suhonen felt like being the man from Del Monte and saying yes. Because the world would doubtless be a better place if Saarnikangas weren’t in it and Yugi were behind bars, but unfortunately that wasn’t an option. “Where do you live?”
“Eastern Helsinki,” Yugi said and gave Suhonen the address.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Don’t touch him.”
Yugi’s voice sounded disappointed. “Okay. He’s in pretty bad shape, though. Shivering and whining, says he needs a fix.”
Suhonen ended the call and swore. He went into the bathroom and took a zip-lock bag from the medicine cabinet that contained several packs of drugs. He dug out three packs, wrapped a rubber band around them, and put them in the inside pocket of his leather jacket.
He had to keep Saarnikangas coherent. He retrieved an ancient light blue Nokia cell phone from his nightstand drawer and inserted a prepaid SIM card into it.
* * *
Ten minutes later, Suhonen parked his car on Manor Road. The building’s balconies protruded from its brown stucco wall in the style of the ’60s. It was only three stories tall, but it had several entrances. Suhonen mused that in the US such buildings had been built upwards, while in Finland they had grown horizontally.
He got out of the car and walked to the door leading to Yugi’s stairwell. He pressed the buzzer, and a few seconds later the lock clicked.
Suhonen took the elevator up to Yugi’s floor and checked on the landing to make sure that his Glock was within easy reach. Suhonen didn’t actually think he needed the weapon; the gesture was primarily directed at Yugi, just in case he was watching through the peephole.