Darling (7 page)

“Well, I know a little. I’m the
custodian in the building, and I unlocked the door for the cops. Someone killed the woman that lived in that joint. She used to come in here sometimes.”

“C
ome in here?” Suhonen asked. He knew now that this guy was the custodian, Jorma Korpivaara, who Joutsamo had mentioned at the meeting. That only left two men unidentified: Mustache-Raksa and Quiet-Heku.

“Was she some kinda bar slut?”

“Well…” Mustache Guy hesitated.

The waiter
brought four more beers without being asked, and Heku pulled a twenty-euro note from his pocket. The bartender had the change ready.

Jorma
took a sip and laughed softly. “She was a little sweetie. She didn’t have all the marbles in the bag, but she was a nice girl.”

Everyone but
Quiet Guy laughed vaguely.

Suhonen f
aked a laugh, though he would’ve liked to punch their faces in. “Was she some local lady of the evening?”

“Well, not exactly, even if she was everyone’s darling. Her name was Laura
, and she had a bad temper.”

“I’ll say,”
Mustache Guy added. “She could go off for no apparent reason.”

“Plenty of broads fit that description,” Suhonen snorted.

“She’d put out sometimes, too,” Mustache Guy said, leaning toward Suhonen, “if you flattered her enough, you know. She was pretty easy then, heh-heh.”

“Heh-heh,” Suhonen joined in. “The whole gang or one at a time?”

“Oh, just one at a time. But she could get mad outta the blue, just like that,” Mustache Guy said, snapping his fingers. “She’d go totally nuts.”

Suhonen had
reason enough to haul the whole gang to the station, but he still had to figure out if any others had been to the apartment.

“So who stiffed her then?” Suhonen quipped and faked a chuckle at his own pun.

Niskala stared at Suhonen coolly.

“We don’t know. And if we did,
we wouldn’t be broadcastin’ it in here.”

Suhonen answered with a cold stare. “Good
answer. I wouldn’t, either.”

He finished his beer and got up. He considered b
uying everyone a round of drinks, but decided against it. Being overly friendly would seem suspicious; Officer Suhonen might do it, but not Suikkanen.

Suhonen walked to the counter and said, “I’ll have one more.”

The bored bartender nodded and filled a glass while Suhonen dug change from his jeans pocket.

“The guys were sayin
g that some customer had been killed somewhere around here this morning.”

“Yeah, I heard. It’s too bad,” the bartender said, nodding.

“Yep, that’s what the guys said,” Suhonen repeated.

“It’s sad news.”

“They said she hung out with them sometimes.”

“Yeah, guess she sat over there occasionally, but elsewhere, too. These groups get mixed sometimes and such.”

“Yeah,” Suhonen said. “So these guys weren’t shitting me, then?”

Suhonen wanted to explain why he was asking questions, as if he was just verifying what the guys had told him.

“Nope, they weren’t. Laura seemed to like to hanging around with those four. I didn’t quite get why, but that’s really none of my beeswax. My job is to sell beer, not to get mixed in customers’ business.”

“You’re alright,” Suhonen grinned at the bartender. “I like you. You’ve got a good attitude.”

Suhonen picked up his glass and walked back to his table. He got the sense from the bartender that the core group was all here. That was enough.

He
sat quietly, and the guys at the other table didn’t talk to him anymore. He pulled his phone out and texted Joutsamo. “At the Alamo Bar. Niskala and three of Vatanen’s buddies are here. Probable cause.”

Suhonen knew J
outsamo would reply right away and the incoming text alert would give him an excuse to leave. He had made a point of looking at his phone when he walked in. Joutsamo replied with a short text: “Should we come now?”

“
Thirty minutes so I can get out of here,” he answered.

Ten minutes later Suhonen finished his beer and got up. He nodded to the group and said he was going to work. That was the truth.

Irwin’s song “Saint Paul and Reeperbahn” blasted from the loudspeakers.

CHAPTER 5

WEDNESDAY, 9:00 P.M.

HELSINKI POLICE HEADQUARTERS, PASILA

Kulta took a bite of his piz
za and noticed Joutsamo approaching. She was walking fast—and smiling, which was unusual.

“Bingo!” Joutsamo said as she joined the others.
Takamäki, Suhonen, Kulta, and Kohonen were sitting at one of the tables in the lunchroom. A kitchenette on the side sold candy on the honor system.

The homicide team was
in temporary quarters at the old courthouse while the Pasila police station was being renovated. The structure, built in the 1980s, had major mold issues and had to undergo a total remodeling. The building was visible from the homicide unit’s lunchroom through the old court building’s high open lobby. Outside, the glare from the streetlights made the falling snow appear yellow.

The
ir temporary quarters didn’t have a cafeteria, and the officers had to eat out or pack a lunch. Kulta had picked up three salami pizzas from a pizzeria at the Pasila train station, and the officers were eating them with their fingers.

“Well?”
Takamäki asked, chewing on his pizza.

“We found a match for the prints on the coffeemaker.”

“Who?” Kulta got excited and the others stopped chewing. The fingerprints would very likely lead them to the killer.

“Jorma Korpivaara,” Joutsamo said with a smile. “The custodian.”

“
Really?” Kulta said with awe. “How about that! I’m surprised he kept his cool when he unlocked the door for the police.”

Joutsamo nodded and said, “He has some explaining to do.”

The police had picked up Niskala, Korpivaara, and the two others from the bar around seven. Despite the men’s protests, the detainment went without too much drama. The bartender had confirmed to Joutsamo about Vatanen hanging out with these four men, like Suhonen had said.

Korpivaara
, Niskala, Mustache-Raksa, and Quiet Guy Heku were sitting in their cells at the station. The men were examined and fingerprinted, and their DNA samples were taken before they were put into individual holding cells. Mustache-Raksa’s real name was Pekka Rautalampi and quiet Heku was Heikki Lahtela. Rautalampi had a few misdemeanors on his record, and Lahtela had been arrested several times for public drunkenness and vandalism.

Kulta grabbed the last
slice of pizza from one of the boxes, leaving a few in the other two.

“If I remember
correctly, Korpivaara never mentioned being in the victim’s apartment that morning, when we met him at the door.”

“No. He said he was at home having a beer and watch
ing a movie. Besides, he knew the victim better than he let on, and they even had some sort of a relationship. It looks pretty promising, if you ask me. I believe the DNA samples will confirm that he’s been in the apartment.”

Kulta continued, “We might even have a motive—sex.
He wanted it and she didn’t. They argued and Korpivaara got fired up. It might explain the cut on his hand, too. He could’ve gotten it during the slashing.”

“What about the others?” Kohonen asked.

“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Joutsamo said. “Niskala might’ve been there too that morning, since his fingerprints were on the fridge, but we don’t know when the prints were put there. I’ll talk to the men tonight, but we can’t legally interrogate them until tomorrow because they are still legally drunk from all the beer they had.”

“
I’d say at least five,” Suhonen inserted. “But probably closer to ten.”

Joutsamo glanced
at her notes. “Looks like the latter is more accurate. They each blew around 0.2.”

“Alright,”
Takamäki said. “Next we should check out the suspects’ apartments. Who’s going?”

Kohonen glanced at Kulta, who nodded. “We can go.”

“Good. I’ll take care of the paperwork.”

“Can I have those?” Joutsamo asked, eyeing the last two pieces of pizza.

“Go for it,” Kulta replied.

* * *

The man was sliding his finger down the list of names on the smudged piece of paper, slowly and with hesitation. The list was titled “Attorneys.”

The interrogation room was bare;
no interior decorators needed here. The VCU detectives knew the room needed to have gray walls and wooden furniture—no windows or plants, nothing to give the suspects a focal point.

“N
o rush, take your time,” Sergeant Joutsamo said, sitting across from Jorma Korpivaara. The man glanced at her with misty eyes but didn’t say anything. Joutsamo noticed his finger trembling slightly.

The smell of
cleansers lingered in the room, now mixed with the stench of booze and sweat.

The
man kept reading through the long list of attorneys in Helsinki. He recognized several of the names from TV: Arvela…Fredman…Jaatela…Lampela.

Anna Joutsam
o focused on the man’s face rather than his finger. He kept his gaze on the list. Suspects had the right to an attorney; they only had to ask. The man requested an attorney early on, and he did it nicely, so Joutsamo was confident he would confess quickly. Especially since he was no professional criminal.

Of course a confession
alone wouldn’t be enough, but it would go a long way to support other evidence they had gathered in the case. Joutsamo had hoped Korpivaara would confess during initial conversation, but something seemed to hold him back. That’s why the man had said he needed an attorney. When a suspect requested a lawyer it meant they were halfway to a confession anyway; an innocent person would deny everything and want to leave as quickly as possible.

The man was drunk and obviously had trouble thinking clearl
y. A couple of times he started to say something but quickly changed his mind. Joutsamo glanced at the corner of the room to make sure a trash can was at the ready in case he had to vomit.

Korpivaara
’s finger stopped on a name. “This one,” he said.

Joutsamo peered at the name. S
he didn’t recognize it. The lawyer wasn’t one of the regulars at the station.

“Why that one?” she asked.

“You said I could pick whoever I wanted.”

“Yeah, that’s your right
, but…”

“That’s the one I want,” he stressed with drunken determination.

“Alright, I’ll make a call and see if they’re available. Some of them are quite busy.”

“Okay.”

Joutsamo decided to try one more time and took a chair across from the man. She looked him in the eye—not piercingly, but with police-like urging.

“We can talk about this some mor
e, just so it’s all clear. That’s for your good, too.”

The man ignored her effort by lowering his eyes to stare at the table.

“I told you I don’t remember anything. I…uh…well.”

“Where did you…?” Joutsamo began, but the man interrupted
her.

“How ’bout we talk when the attorney gets here.”

“Fine, we’ll do that,” Joutsamo said and stood up.

This
was nothing new to the sergeant. It wasn’t personal. The man was afraid to confess, but he’d eventually do it. For a fleeting moment, Joutsamo felt sorry for the man, not for the act of killing, or his fate, but because he lacked the courage to confess. Six months ago, in the spring, she had questioned a tattooed career criminal for assault and battery, and right away the guy admitted to beating someone with a baseball bat. Stone-faced, he said, “If you can’t take the heat, stay outta the kitchen.”

Korpivaara
was not ready to face the consequences. Not yet.

“The guard will take you to your cell,” Joutsamo
said in a neutral voice. They’d sit in the same room several times in the next few days, and making the guy mad wouldn’t help the case move in the direction she wanted. If it wasn’t for that, she would’ve cussed him out as one of the biggest assholes and cowards she’d ever met—and she had met plenty of them over the years.

* * *

A scooter buzzed past a trendy street café in the Trastevere district of Rome. The waiter, Alberto, was carrying two glasses of wine on a small black tray. His shirt was spotless—the restaurant had the staff’s uniforms laundered daily—and he skillfully carried the pasta and salads to the tables without spilling anything. The restaurant could seat about fifty customers, counting both the indoor and outdoor tables. The two steps leading to the terrace were the trickiest spot; last spring a fat Finnish tourist—drunk, naturally—had surprised him, and a plateful of
pasta carbonara
had splattered all over the man’s T-shirt.