Nights of Awe (3 page)
Authors: Harri Nykanen
“These are going to be the last cases of the year for me. I’m headed to Canada day after tomorrow for some further training.”
Vuorio was an enthusiastic fisherman and hunter, so enthusiastic that he had been to Africa to hunt big game. He couldn’t hope for a better destination for an educational exchange.
“Good for you.”
“Over there?” Vuorio asked, looking across the slope.
“Over there.”
“The places they make an old man root around.”
Vuorio shook his head but nevertheless started his laborious descent, muttering to himself.
I called my two other subordinates and ordered them to the scene. Simolin was also on the horn; he stood at the railing, scanning around. After wrapping things up, he walked over to me.
“They promised three more patrols to start with…” Simolin looked like he was about to pop, so I asked:
“What are you thinking about?”
“Why the killer struck here, in this spot. What if he had no choice?”
My interest encouraged Simolin to continue.
“The victim was on his way to do something that the killer wanted to prevent, to report something to the police or to meet someone. If the victim was headed towards Kallio, this is one of the last places he could be stopped without taking too much of a risk, and…”
“It’s possible.”
Simolin’s theory was precisely the kind that was useless at this point. At the beginning of an investigation, there’s no point sacrificing time to developing too many theories of equal weight. It made more sense to wait for one to have more pull than the others. Simolin knew it himself and shut up.
I looked around for a way I could access the tracks.
“How did you get down?”
“Over by the rail-traffic control centre. It’s that square glass building over there. There’s a gate.”
“Go talk to the residents of nearby buildings while I’m down there. I’ll send Stenman and Oksanen to help out as soon as they arrive. Someone must have at least heard the shots, unless the killer used a silencer.”
Simolin looked like he still had something to say. Apparently it wasn’t very important, because he turned and left.
Getting down to the tracks required a walk of at least three hundred yards along the shore path and across the lot of the traffic-control building. In addition to the crime-scene investigator, three patrol officers and a few men in State Railways overalls were standing on the tracks. I went over to the nearest officer and was told that nothing out of the ordinary had been found.
The man who had fallen or jumped from the bridge had incurred surprisingly few injuries from his collision with the train. The only contusions were on his face, which would significantly hamper identification. Still, I could tell that the victim was about forty years old, dark-haired, and looked Arab. He had on a black leather jacket, grey trousers and a pair of black loafers. You could see a black shirt and a silver-grey tie beneath the jacket; he was also wearing black leather gloves.
A train approached from the north and Siimes covered the body with a paper sheet.
“What’d you find?” I asked, even though I knew that the majority of the forensic results wouldn’t be ready until a battery of tests and exams had been conducted. But Siimes knew what I was after.
“Nothing surprising. The guy hit the roof of an A train from Leppävaara, ricocheted from there to the ground headfirst. You don’t have to be a doctor to be able to tell that his neck was broken. Other than that, minor injuries, because the trains tend to brake at this point, they’re going maybe thirty miles an hour, tops. The deceased isn’t carrying any ID, but you can see as well as I can. He looks like a foreigner. These were found in his jacket pocket.”
Siimes held out two plastic bags. One contained a mobile phone and the other a folded map of Helsinki bearing a Hertz logo.
“He may have a car rented from Hertz. They give you a map with the car and this one’s brand new. No marks on it.”
“What about a weapon?”
“Hasn’t turned up, either the pistol or the knife, but he may have chucked them or they may have been carried away by the train. The train was driven to the Ilmala rail yard as soon as the passengers were unloaded, and it still needs to be inspected. Of course I’ve taken gunpowder-gas tests just in case our buddy here is the shooter.”
“Anything to indicate that he isn’t?”
“Nothing except the fact that neither the weapons nor the missing ear and nose were found on him. There’s blood on his hands, and some splatters on the lower part of his jacket.”
I showed him the mobile phone.
“Can I play around with this?”
“Knock yourself out.”
The phone wasn’t on. I pressed the power button but nothing happened. I didn’t know what else to do, so I removed the battery and SIM card, wiped them against my sleeve, and pressed them back into place. The phone started up and asked for a PIN code. I swore. Siimes glanced at me.
“It’s asking for a PIN code.”
“Try one two three four.”
I tried, but nothing happened. I entered the same series of numbers backwards.
“No good.”
“Then try four zeros.”
I entered four zeros and four ones. No good. The minimal skills at my disposal had been exhausted. I was lousy with tech stuff, even though my dad had been an engineer. One of the guys in overalls walked up to me.
“You’re in charge of the investigation?”
I said I was.
“Our chief of security, Repo, asked when you’ll be able to question the engineer of the train that was involved in the collision. Apparently he wants to get home as soon as possible to rest. So if it’s all right with you…”
“Where is he?”
“At the Ilmala rail yard. They’ll tell you where to find him.”
“You can let him know I’ll be there soon.”
“And that means?”
“Ten minutes.”
I told Siimes: “If our guys show up, I’m questioning the locomotive engineer. Three more patrols are coming to help scour the terrain. As soon as this area is searched, close up shop. We need to get rail traffic back to normal as fast as possible.”
“Done.”
A gust of air from a passing train caused the paper sheet that covered the body to billow.
Just as I reached the bridge, a white Ford Mondeo started climbing towards it. I could see that Stenman was driving and Oksanen sat in the passenger seat.
Despite the surname, Senior Constable Stenman was a woman, first name Arja. Senior Constable Jari Oksanen was the same age as his partner. He was a key player in the police-guild rally club, which is precisely why Stenman didn’t let him drive.
I gave them a quick rundown of what I knew.
“Simolin is out questioning the residents of nearby buildings. You two check everywhere else. There’s a dog park at the other end of the bridge. Talk to anyone who might have seen something. Find out if there are security cameras in the area and confiscate the tapes. Three patrols will be showing up here soon. Have them scour the slope and along the tracks. At least a pistol, a knife, a nose and one ear are missing.”
“A nose and an ear?” Stenman wondered.
“Nose and ears were cut from the deceased.”
I held out my hand.
“Keys. I’m borrowing your car. I need to go over to Ilmala and have a chat with the locomotive engineer.”
Stenman slapped the keys into my palm.
Vuorio had finished his work and was clambering back up the slope. I waited for a second for his breathing to even out.
“I must admit, you have an interesting case here. It even piques the interest of an old-timer like me.”
I let him continue at his own pace. I knew from experience that rushing him was pointless.
“Two weapons? I’d suspect that there must have been two perpetrators. First, one stabbed him in the chest twice; either blow appears fatal. Then three shots to the head and two to the chest.”
“He was shot five times?”
“Correct. One bullet hit one of the stab wounds so slyly that the entrance wound is difficult to notice. Based on it, though, I can still conclude that the knife was used first and the pistol afterwards. The man was killed deliberately and extremely thoroughly.”
I took a moment to consider what Vuorio had told me.
“Two perpetrators would explain why we haven’t found either weapon or the nose or one of the ears. Is there anything else?”
“The nose and ears were sliced off pretty handily,” Vuorio continued.
“What does handily mean?”
“It means that both ears were sliced off with a clean stroke. That takes a determined hand. Nine people out of ten would blanch and be forced to use multiple strokes. Our butcher was the cold-blooded type. He knew someone might show up and acted quickly and efficiently.”
Manner had said the same thing. Ice in the veins. If that ended up being the case, it wasn’t going to be an easy investigation.
“There’s one more item of interest,” Vuorio said. “The deceased was a drug addict. He had used drugs intravenously for years. Some of the needle marks are very fresh, in other words he may have been under the influence when he died. We’ll know once the forensic chemist finishes her tests.”
Repo, the head of security for the State Railways, was waiting outside, looking cold. The weather was chilly, and he was blowing his runny nose. Usually the heads of security at large corporations were former cops or ex-military. Repo didn’t look like either.
“The driver is still in a state of shock because of what happened. I hope you’ll take that into consideration.”
Before stepping inside, I looked around.
“Where’s the train that was involved in the accident?”
“Behind the building, on the maintenance track.”
“Has it been examined?”
“It’s being examined as we speak.”
“Our CSIs will take a look at it… Something may have fallen from the man who was hit…”
“If we find anything, we’ll let you know.”
The locomotive engineer was waiting in the break room, looking out into the rail yard. I sat down across from him. His hands were trembling.
“Coffee?” Repo asked.
“Please. Black.”
Repo took a fire-engine-red mug that read
I Love NY
from the draining board and filled it for me.
I Love NY
from the draining board and filled it for me.
The locomotive engineer stared out of the window a moment longer before looking at me. He was a thin man on the far side of fifty. His face was etched with the grooves of a hard life. He wore bifocals, the only hair he had left was at the back of his neck and on his ears – and now this.
“Who was he?” he asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“I’ve done this job for over twenty years and no one has ever jumped in front of me.”
The man turned to look out of the window again. I could barely hear his words: “Did he jump?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that.”
The engineer shook his head.
“I’m not sure… I was about fifty yards from the bridge when I saw them…”
“What do you mean, them? Was there someone else on the bridge?”
“At least three of them, all men. First they were walking side by side towards the City Theatre, so from the direction I was coming from, from right to left. Then one of them ran to the railing and jumped over it onto the lip of the bridge and began crawling towards the edge…”
The man rubbed his temples uneasily.
“I could see his face when he turned and fell. I could hear him slam into the roof… And then I caught a glimpse in the mirror of him just lying there next to the track.”
“What about the other two men? What were they doing?”
“I didn’t see them after that.”
“I mean, what where they doing when the man climbed over the railing? Did they try to stop him, for instance?”
“I’ve been thinking about that this whole time. At first I thought that they were trying to help him, to keep him from jumping…”
The driver looked at Repo as if he were entering sensitive territory and needed his approval. Repo nodded.
“Then when I heard what had happened at the bridge, I started thinking harder about it—”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “What did you hear?”
“That a murdered man had been found there.”
“Continue.”
“Afterwards I began thinking about the whole thing from a different angle, and it seems to me that the guy who fell was afraid… afraid and was trying to get away from those other two men because he was afraid. I saw his face right before he fell, and I’m pretty sure that he was a lot more afraid of them than he was of falling.”
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