Suhonen pressed the doorbell and the door popped open.
“Hey,” Yugi said. There was a victorious smile on his face and a touch of fear in his voice.
Suhonen handed over two fifties to Yugi, who was still wearing the same Arsenal tracksuit. “Where is he?”
“In the kitchen.”
“You lead the way.”
Yugi led. The apartment was grim, with hardly any furniture. On the way, Suhonen glanced into the bedroom, where there was only a mattress, no bed. The living room was the exception, containing a sofa, a thirty-two-inch flat-screen TV, DVD player, Xbox 360 console, and three piles of movies and games on the floor.
Yugi hadn’t lied; Saarnikangas was sitting at the kitchen table, with his hands tied to the chair behind his back. Suhonen had seen the mug shot taken of Juha during his last trip to the clink, but he probably wouldn’t have recognized this crater-faced skeleton from it. His cheeks were hollow and his brown hair matted. He was wearing a brown T-shirt so splotchy that Suhonen wondered if it had originally been white.
“Here,” Yugi announced.
“Good. Untie him.”
Yugi was visibly disappointed. No doubt he wanted to watch Suikkanen rough up the poor junkie. He unknotted the laundry line. Saarnikangas tried to say something, but couldn’t get form the words.
“Did he have a coat?” Suhonen asked.
“Yeah,” Yugi said, stepping over to the balcony door. “I had to put it outside, because it smelled so fucking bad.”
He retrieved the coat and handed it over to the quivering druggie.
“I hope you get what you deserve.”
“All right, let’s move,” Suhonen said, pushing Saarnikangas in front of him. Despite the brief airing, the army jacket reeked like a disgusting blend of dirt, dog shit, and puke.
In under a minute, Suhonen and Saarnikangas were out of the apartment. Yugi came to the door. “Hey, Suikkanen, don’t you think I deserve some thanks?”
Suhonen pressed the elevator button and gave Yugi a cold stare.
“One. Never say my name in the presence of the target. Two. You already got your money.”
Suhonen opened the elevator door and shoved Saarnikangas in. Luckily he was able to stand, so Suhonen didn’t have to carry him. The junkie leaned against the brown wall as the elevator shuddered downwards to the floor. Suhonen dug a white tablet out of his pocket, peeled off the plastic, and handed it to Saarnikangas. The junkie gave the man in the leather jacket a questioning look.
“Subu,” Suhonen said.
Saarnikangas snapped the pill in two. He put half under his tongue and slipped the other half into the pocket of his jeans. Suhonen was sure he would shoot it. Subutex-brand buprenorphine had taken a firm foothold in the Helsinki drug market as the fighting in Afghanistan was cutting into heroin production. In France a Subu pill cost two euros; in Helsinki, twenty.
Suhonen quickly escorted Saarnikangas to the passenger seat of his car. Suhonen got in behind the wheel and headed out. He opened both front windows a good couple of inches so the worst of the stench would dissipate. The car clock read 11:09 a.m.
By the time they hit the Itäkeskus Mall on the Eastern Expressway, Saarnikangas had found his tongue.
“Who are you?”
“Does it matter?”
“What’s up with all this? That Arsenal retard kept talking on and on about some debt.”
“Forget the debt.”
“But there’s gotta be some reason for all this.”
Suhonen pushed it up to fifty-five, passing a red Volvo with a ski rack. Traffic was heavy. “I need your help.”
Saarnikangas didn’t respond, he just looked at Suhonen. “He said your name was Suikkanen.”
Suhonen eyed the gaunt junkie. The trembling had stopped.
“Look, Suikkanen, are you a cop?”
“How so?”
“No real gangster that looks like you would give a rat’s ass about a speed freak like me. They would’ve let that Arsenal spaz take care of me. You’re not from the AIDS support center either, and I’ve never seen you at the needle exchanges, so that doesn’t leave many alternatives.”
Suhonen thought for a second. “I’m not a cop. Cops don’t give junkies drugs,” he said with a smile.
“There’s a first time for everything. At least for me.” Saarnikangas grinned. Suhonen wished the guy would have kept his mouth shut. A few teeth were missing, and the ones he had were in bad shape. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for a friend of yours.”
“Do I have any friends?”
“From what I’ve heard, you know this guy.”
“Who?”
“Timo Repo.”
Saarnikangas furrowed his skinny brow. “Repo? That sap who wrapped a pretty necklace around his wife’s throat? He’s still in the hole.”
“Not any more.”
“He skipped out?”
Suhonen nodded. “A couple of days ago.”
They passed the Kulosaari metro station on the right.
“So where’s this taxi headed?”
“You get to decide. If you promise to help me, I’ll take you wherever you want, but if you don’t I’ll take you straight to police headquarters. You’ve got a big stack of unpaid fines on the books, and society needs you in jail to make good on them.”
“So Repo escaped,” Saarnikangas said.
“Does that surprise you?”
“A little. He was basically a nothing. Losers always stick together, and that goes for the joint, too. That’s why we used to talk. Okay, so he’s bitter, but I always thought he’d tough it out. If you’ve already done eight years of a life sentence, it doesn’t make any sense to cut out.”
“Why did he take off?”
“He had a chip on his shoulder a hell of a lot bigger than Lance Armstrong’s, but he didn’t really talk about it in recent years. You could sense a stifled rage in him. See, I’m a good judge of people. And sensing what they want.”
Once they hit the end of the Eastern Expressway, Suhonen turned into the lane leading to Teollisuus Street. Police headquarters was more or less just down the road.
“Well, then you probably know what I want.”
“Repo back in the pen.”
“Right. You are good,” Suhonen said. “So what’s it gonna be? You decided where we’re headed?”
“One more question. What do I get?”
“A pack of Subu,” Suhonen said. That was seven tablets.
Saarnikangas tried to bargain: “Two.”
“This isn’t an auction. So, police headquarters it is.”
Suhonen drove under the Sture Street bridge, and the smell of the coffee factory reminded him that he hadn’t had his morning coffee yet.
“Okay, Okay. One’s good,” Saarnikangas said. “But I need a phone. Mine’s…at the pawnshop.”
Sure, thought Suhonen. Pawnshops didn’t take phones. Suhonen dug the old Nokia 6110 out of his pocket and handed it to the junkie.
“What the hell is this? No one uses these anymore.”
“That’s why I happen to have an extra one,” Suhonen replied. At one point he had bought a few from Salmela precisely for situations like this. “Do you have your own SIM card? Because there’s a new one in there.”
“What good is that going to do me?” Saarnikangas said, taking the phone’s back cover off. He dug his old SIM card out of his inside pocket of his jacket and switched it into the phone. But somehow Suhonen’s SIM card still disappeared into his pocket.
“So the deal is simple. If Repo calls you, you set up a meeting with him and you tell us. After that, you get…”
Saarnikangas shook his head. “No way. I’ll get a rep as a snitch. I’ll find out where he is and tell you. You guys grab him in a way that I don’t get burned.”
“That’ll work,” Suhonen said. The car was stopped at a red light at the end of Teollisuus Street. The Pasila rail yard was in front of them, and beyond it the forbidding office blocks of West Pasila.
“Where am I going to drop you?”