Nights of Awe (6 page)
Authors: Harri Nykanen
“Nope. Apparently it died or broke when the guy hit the roof of the train or the ground. Will you guys be able to unlock it?” I asked innocently.
“I think we can manage that.”
“We expect you to deliver all call data as soon as you retrieve it.”
“Of course.” Once again, Sillanpää’s promise seemed so breezily tossed out that I didn’t believe it. Luckily, thanks to Simolin, I was a few steps ahead, and I intended to stay there.
“Of course, why wouldn’t we?” Sillanpää added, and I trusted him even less.
Oksanen returned, looking busy. One more rally arrangement had been squared away.
“Arja’s almost here… Mind if I take my legal lunch break now?”
“What about the security cameras?”
“Arja’s bringing a list. I’ll go through it right away.”
“Don’t be long. How are you going to get anywhere? Arja has the car.”
“A buddy’s coming to pick me up.”
Oksanen rushed off to meet his friend. Work matters were clearly interfering with the demands of his busy free-time schedule.
“Someone told me you’re Jewish,” Sillanpää blurted out.
“Someone was right.”
“I heard a Jewish joke yesterday. You want to hear it?”
“Don’t let a good opportunity go to waste.”
Sillanpää’s eyes bored into me.
“Let’s leave it for another time. You speak Hebrew?”
I looked at the humourless inspector.
“A little.”
“We might be able to use you from time to time. Rumour has it you’ve practised martial arts and were the best shot in your academy class.”
Sillanpää was right. I had started taking tae kwon do at the Maccabi, the Jewish congregation’s athletic club, during my first year of high school. When I was younger, I also played table tennis in the club’s competitive team.
“Let me guess: someone told you?”
Sillanpää chuckled.
“I’m serious. If you’re interested in something a little different, we might be able to use you more than you realize…”
Simolin sped up the hill and shuddered to a stop. I didn’t have time to think about what Sillanpää meant.
“Here comes the phone,” I remarked.
“Think about what I said.”
Sillanpää took off. He grabbed the phone on the fly from Simolin and jumped into his car. As soon as it disappeared from view, Simolin pulled his notebook out of his pocket.
“I wrote down all the calls out, calls in, and messages. As it turns out, the messages are in French. The last three calls out were placed to the same number, two this morning and one yesterday evening. I already checked it: some Ali’s Body Shop in Vartiokylä. Three calls were international, two to France, one to Israel, and the rest to one and the same unlisted mobile phone. I called the body shop on my way over, but no one answered.”
Simolin saw my expression and explained: “I would have just asked how much a brake job costs. Besides, it would have been the truth; the Renault needs new brake pads, and the tailpipe’s leaking too.”
I was tired of standing there, so without giving it any further thought, I said: “Let’s head over and find out in person how much a brake and tailpipe job would cost for the Renault.”
The body shop was off the Eastern Expressway, a couple of miles past Itäkeskus towards Porvoo. A right turn at the Teboil station, and then another immediate right.
The area was a mishmash of small industry housed in buildings of various ages. Some were corrugated-metal prefabs on the verge of falling apart, others were brand-new contemporary industrial structures, the rest somewhere in between. The body shop was located in one wing of an old yellow building; the entrance was at the rear. Out back there were a couple of rusty shipping containers, dented body parts, an ancient, completely rusted-out Mercedes, a newish Volvo hatchback and a relatively old 300-series BMW. At the edge of the property, right under a birch tree, stood a boxy white RV.
Over the door to the shop, it read
A. Hamid, Auto Body & Paint.
The door was locked, but the crossbar that should have been padlocked was dangling.
A. Hamid, Auto Body & Paint.
The door was locked, but the crossbar that should have been padlocked was dangling.
Simolin groped for his weapon. I instinctively did the same; my gun was right where it was supposed to be.
“Think we should load?” Simolin asked.
I nodded and pulled a round into the chamber, set the safety, and put my gun back into its holster. Simolin held on to his, but concealed his hand under the edge of his coat.
I knocked on the metal-plated door and listened. There was no response. I rattled it a little, but that didn’t produce any results either.
“Take a look in the side window,” I ordered Simolin. He obeyed, returning a second later.
“Don’t see anyone, but the lights are on.”
I beat on the door more heavily. It still didn’t open.
“Why don’t I get some tools from the car?” Simolin suggested.
“Do it.”
Simolin bounded off. When he returned, he was carrying a crowbar and a one-pound mallet.
“Go for it.”
Simolin pounded the crowbar in between the door and the jamb, right next to the lock. When it had sunk in deep enough, he lowered the mallet to the ground and twisted the crowbar. The door popped open on the first try.
The heavy, gentle scent of motor oil wafted out. Right across from the door there was a car with the hood up. A burning work lamp hung over the engine block. The distributor cap was off and the plug wires were unattached. Problem with the ignition, I figured.
The space was approximately fifteen by thirty feet. Another car was against the long wall. It had been driven onto the lift and raised a couple of yards off the ground. At the far end of the space, there was a little office around thirty square feet with big windows. Across from it was a much larger walled-off space, with double doors big enough for a car. An ad for car paint hung on the wall, next to a shelf full of paint cans. From that and the paint splatters, it was easy to deduce that cars were painted behind the double doors.
I peeked into the office. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, unless you count the fact that there wasn’t a single girlie calendar on the wall. Customer appointments had been marked in a desk calendar; it looked like A. Hamid had his hands full.
“Not a living soul,” Simolin said.
I stopped in front of the double doors and sniffed the pungent fumes coming from the painting chamber. Then I opened them.
A young man in overalls was leaning in a sitting position against a wall covered in splashes of paint. Another, older man dressed in slacks and a checked jacket was sprawled in a recliner sitting in the middle of the floor, both hands tied to the arms of the chair. There were bruises on his face and two bullet holes at his right temple. A fire-engine-red air compressor stood next to the chair, its hose dangling in his lap.
Simolin peered over my shoulder and saw the same thing I did. He said, almost enthusiastically:
“That’s four bodies already. Looks like we got the biggest case of the year.”
As I looked at the bodies, the Rabbi’s words came to mind: Yamim Noraim.
Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe.
If Rabbi Liebstein was right and the world was falling to pieces, an unpleasant role had been reserved for me. It was my job to gather up all of the gears that were flying off and repair the clock so it would work again.
5
A good thirty minutes later, the crime scene was buzzing. The area was marked off, the medical van had come and gone, and an ambulance had been ordered for the bodies. The same CSIs who had been at Linnunlaulu, Manner and Siimes, were opening their aluminium cases.
I had already called Huovinen and apprised him of the situation.
“Stay there and direct the investigation; I’ll send over as many people as I can tear away. Someone’s going to regret they ever started making trouble in our territory. Tell everyone no breaks, not even for a second, not even if they see a pair of elephants fucking right in front of their face. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
I went back inside. I had already communicated our movements to Manner, who was marking them on the floor with chalk. He saved himself from having to take a few shoe prints this way. Siimes was getting some wider shots before moving in to the details. Manner walked over to me.
“A day to remember.”
“You can say that again. How does it look?”
“I can already tell you that this was a last-nighter, in other words these two were offed first, before the guys at Linnunlaulu. Based on the samples, I’d say it looks like the same killers were at work.”
I had come to the same conclusion, and it hadn’t been the least bit hard.
“This guy lounging in the chair here was tortured before he was done in: you notice the compressor and the air hose? The other one was just shot; there’s no sign of other external injuries.”
Manner squatted and inspected the pockets of the body that was in the chair. In the breast pocket of the sport coat there was a wallet; the side pocket contained two bunches of keys. He opened up the wallet and showed me the driving licence in its plastic sheath.
“Ali Hamid, apparently the owner of this body shop. In addition to the driving licence, a little money, business cards for the shop, photos of the wife and kids, that’s it.”
He put the wallet away and studied the keys.
“Two normal Abloys: one to a Disklock and the other to a deadbolt. The other bunch is all car keys.”
“Check the other body while you’re at it.”
Manner put the wallet into a plastic bag and tucked the bag into his case. Then, carefully picking each step, he walked over to the other, noticeably younger victim. A black wallet was found in the back pocket of his overalls.
“Wasin Mahmed, born 1979,” Manner said. “Judging by his outfit, works here.”
Wasin Mahmed’s wallet also contained business cards for the shop, plus a photo of him posing with a man about ten years older with bad skin. They had similar features; perhaps they were brothers. There was still sixty-five euros in the wallet, a few coins, and a letter in Arabic that was, judging by its shabbiness, at least several months old.
“Ari!” Simolin called from the doorway.
I handed the wallet back to Manner and went over to Simolin.
“Looks like the employee lived here. We found a back room.”
Calling the nook a room was a slight exaggeration. A sofa that seemed to double as a bed, a small table and a chair had been jammed into the tiny space. On the table there was a bag of bread, a bottle of water and a few cans of food. Next to the wall stood a metal locker containing a pair of belted jeans, a sweater and a padded nylon windbreaker.
Two receipts, one for groceries from a nearby store and one from a petrol station, were found in one of the jeans pockets. There was a mobile in the inside pocket of the jacket. I handed it to Simolin.
“Have it checked, although it doesn’t look like the most urgent thing. But we need to find out who the loved ones are anyways and let them know what’s happened.”
Beneath the bed there were two cheap plastic suitcases. I opened them. All they contained was clothes.
Stenman swept in.
“There’s someone in that RV out there.”
The mobile home was at the edge of the car park, only twenty yards from the body shop. A piece of paper covered in plastic wrap had been taped to the door. It read JÄPPINEN in stick letters.
The door was opened by an elderly man who looked half-asleep and hung-over. His grey hair was sticking out all over the place, and there was some cream-coloured gunk in the corners of his eyes. I could make out the stench of stale booze from a yard off.
He was dressed in old-fashioned polyester trousers and a moth-eaten flannel shirt that spilled out over his waistband. His shoulders were so narrow that his faded grey braces barely stayed up.
“Jäppinen,” I guessed.
“What do you want?” he asked crankily, licking his dry lips. His gaze was unsteady.
I showed him my police ID.
“From Criminal Investigations. So’s she.” I nodded in Stenman’s direction. “You live here?”
“A person’s gotta live somewhere. It’s not a crime to not report your address, is it? Besides, I work here.”
“Where here?” Stenman asked.
“Around… As much as a person on disability is allowed to, building maintenance and stuff like that. I fill in over at the body shop if they need me. Had my own for thirty years, but it was too hard on the joints. I’ve had both knees operated on, and my back—”
I interrupted Jäppinen’s recitation of his medical record. “Were you home last night?”
“Home last night? Probably.” His gaze brightened. “Yeah, now I remember for sure. I was watching TV.”
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