The phone is a new Nokia N82, which does just about everything and costs as much as a month’s rent for an average apartment. It has a Global Positioning System, an MP3 music player, a digital camera and Internet-access capability. I check the downloaded files, mostly a bunch of useless crap from diet and exercise websites, and then finally I find the connection I’ve been hoping for: the download from the true-crime website in Heikki’s computer, about the murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.
Maybe I should be surprised, but I’m not. Ever since I found Heikki’s suicide note, my instincts told me that Heli put him up to murder. Not because I wanted to vilify her, but because I thought that she, more than anyone else involved, possessed the requisite tools-her sexuality and knowledge of Heikki’s religious beliefs-to turn him into a killer. It makes me sad, because now I’m convinced someone I once loved committed an act so evil.
The question remains, if Heli and Heikki killed Sufia, who killed Heli? The field is narrowing and the chief was right. If I arrest everybody, someone will talk. I send the chief a text message, ask him to have Heli’s and Seppo’s residence in Helsinki searched with an eye for true-crime material. I don’t tell him I’m investigating Heli and not Seppo, so he won’t think I’m off on a wild, grief-stricken tangent. The evidence is provocative but not damning. I decide to keep my suspicion of her guilt to myself for the time being, to keep from being accused of chasing ghosts.
My case notes are in a pile in front of me. I browse through them, look for something I’ve forgotten that could explain why Seppo or Peter, or both of them together, might want to kill Heli. I run across my note to check out Abdi Barre. I never did it.
Things Abdi said come back to me. He claimed he can’t pass the Finnish medical boards because his language skills are insufficient. Yet his Finnish is excellent, more proper than mine. He feared Sufia’s death would go unavenged, asked me if I believed twelve years in prison was adequate punishment for what was done to his daughter, warned me that I had to find her murderer. I more or less told him Seppo was guilty, then Seppo walked free and married Heli. Abdi had called me, angry, distraught.
I remember reading that in Somalia and Rwanda, filling a tire with gasoline and burning the victim alive has sometimes been used as a form of execution. The method was popularized in South Africa by the African National Congress during the eighties. They called it a tire necklace, the verb is necklacing. It was also used in the Mogadishu area during the early years of the Somali civil war. Abdi has a potential source of knowledge about how to commit the crime. I know nothing about his activities during the conflict. He could have seen it done or even necklaced others in the past. Abdi has motive: an eye for an eye. He could have taken from Seppo as he believed Seppo had taken from him.
We have minority populations in Finland-Lapps, Gypsies and Swedish-speaking Finns-but they’re all of a long-standing and homegrown kind. Between five and six thousand Somali refugees poured into the country in the early 1990s, our first major experience with foreigners. A lot of us had never seen a black person before the Somalis arrived.
At first, popular feeling was benevolent. Most Finns were pleased to have an opportunity to help the downtrodden. Then we realized the refugees had to be supported by our rather generous welfare system. They got apartments, televisions, an income, all on the public dole. They often wear more expensive clothes than our working class can afford, because most Muslims don’t drink up their money like we do and can use it for other things. Public resentment grew and has never abated.
I remember what I’ve read about the Somali civil war. The Somalis who took flight during that time were mainly Daarood clan members, escaping violence at the hands of the Hawiye clan. As Somalia disintegrated, the Daarood residents of Mogadishu became the objects of revenge killings. In Somalia there was chaos, clan warfare, genocide, a mass exodus. Few people had passports. It would have been easy to steal an identity and go undiscovered in the flood of refugees. If Abdi had never been a doctor in the first place, it would explain his inability to practice medicine here.
The problem is how to investigate him. Somalia has had no government worthy of the name for the better part of twenty years. The country is ruled by regional warlords, has no infrastructure. There’s no one I can call to request a background check or crime sheet. Then it comes to me. Abdi said he studied at the Sorbonne. They should have a yearbook or at least some kind of student photo. Maybe they even keep up with alumni, can tell me something about what happened to Abdi after he graduated. All this is contingent upon whether the man who calls himself Abdi Barre committed identity theft. Maybe he really is Dr. Abdi Barre. Maybe there never was a doctor with a practice in Mogadishu by that name.
I call Interpol and get lucky. I talk to a cop who tells me he’s seen what a beating I’m taking from the world press. He’s sympathetic and anxious to play a part in a glitzy homicide investigation. I explain what I need, tell him I’m in a hurry. He promises to help me out. Then I call Finnish passport control, ask them to e-mail me a photo of Abdi. It occurs to me that maybe I should even just question Abdi about his past myself. I call him and ask him if he would allow me the privilege of attending his daughter’s funeral. I say I’d like to pay my final respects. This is true.
“Are you a Man of the Book Inspector?” he asks.
“What do you mean by Man of the Book?”
His tone suggests I’m an uneducated moron. “According to the Koran, the term describes non-Muslim peoples who received religious scriptures before the time of Muhammad. The Koran completes these scriptures and is God’s true and final message to the faithful. However, because People of the Book recognize the supreme Abrahamic God, as do Muslims, they practice revealed faiths based on Divine ordinances. As such, a certain level of tolerance is accorded them under Islamic law. If you are a Man of the Book, I will allow you to attend Sufia’s funeral. If you are not, I must regard you as unclean and will not permit you to defile her last rites.”
At first I excused it because of his grief, but with every interaction I’ve had with him, Abdi’s arrogance and superior attitude have grown more tiresome. “You may consider me a Man of the Book,” I say. “I’m a baptized Lutheran and I’ve read the Bible.”
“Very good then, you may attend.” He gives me the time and place and hangs up without saying thank you, fuck you or good-bye.
31
I go out to the common room. Valtteri is still sitting at his desk, still staring at nothing. “How did it go with Seppo?” he asks.
“Not well.”
Abdi is a possibility but a long shot, so I don’t mention it. Most likely, this will end with Seppo or Peter or both tried and convicted. “Did search and arrest warrants come for Eklund?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
I wish Valtteri would go home. “Then let’s pick him up,” I say. We take a squad car and I drive. It’s snowing hard-wind drives it toward us in blinding sheets. My head hurts from the whiskey, my mouth is still sour. My hangover magnifies everything: the hiss of tires slicing through snowdrifts on the road, the drumming of the windshield wipers. The headlights penetrate the dark, light up the falling snow and the glare burns my eyes. Even the silence between Valtteri and me seems amplified.
In the passenger seat beside me, he drums on the dashboard with chewed fingernails. He grinds his teeth and bites his lip. I doubt if he knows he’s doing any of it. I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror and barely recognize myself. I can’t help but think that in our current conditions, we’re not fit to be dog catchers, let alone law enforcement officers. But I’ve investigated enough crimes to know this is almost over. Soon, Valtteri and I can rest, maybe in time for Christmas. When Kate’s cast comes off, I’ll take her somewhere warm on vacation, maybe the Canary Islands. I can make this up to her. We’ll put all this behind us.