Raid and the Blackest Sheep (26 page)

    
Jaatinen tossed the papers aside.

    
“Maybe it’s best if we wait for Kempas and then have another meeting.”

    
“Agreed,” said Huusko.

    
He glanced at the empty sandwich tray.

    
“With another round of sandwiches, right?”

* * *

Jansson and Huusko were checking into a hotel near the police station.

    
“You have a mini-bar?” was Huusko’s first question.

    
“No.”

    
“Dancing?”

    
“No.”

    
“What about porn channels?”

    
The young female receptionist stared at Huusko coolly.

    
“There’s a magazine stand just across the street. You can find some adult materials there.”

    
Jansson and Huusko got adjoining rooms on the top floor.

    
“Huusko, stop into my room once you’re unpacked. Let’s have a little meeting before Kempas gets here.”

    
“I just thought of something really important,” said Huusko.

    
“What’s that?”

    
“Are we getting overtime?”

    
Huusko got his things organized within ten minutes. Afterwards, he knocked on Jansson’s door.

    
“Better than mine,” Huusko said as he sized up the room. “What’d you wanna meet about?”

    
“The plan.”

    
“What about it?”

    
“That maintenance man from the casino case. I got the name from Susisaari.”

    
“And?”

    
“We’re going to visit him.”

    
“In Helsinki?”

    
“He lives near Rovaniemi now.”

    
“You think he knows something about Nygren?”

    
“Kempas had marked all of Nygren’s acquaintances on his map. One of the marks was near Rovaniemi.”

    
Jansson looked at the name he’d written on the back of a business card.

    
“Keijo Hiltunen…runs an auto repair shop somewhere around there. Name ring a bell?”

    
“No.”

    
“It should. He killed two people…two young women. The case was one of the most notorious of the sixties. The new age sociologists considered it a prime example of the connection between childhood social circumstances and criminal behavior. They made a correlation between unhappy childhoods and a tendency toward crime. He got out sometime toward the end of the seventies.”

    
“How does that relate to Nygren?”

    
“I was coming back from a fishing trip in Lapland with Lieutenant Hedenius when we stopped to gas up. You know him, right? He investigated the Hiltunen case. Unlike me, he recognized the guy right away. I just couldn’t connect a casino maintenance guy from Helsinki with a service station manager in Rovaniemi. Especially not twenty years later.”

    
“Didn’t they look into Hiltunen’s background when they were investigating the shooting?”

    
“It didn’t seem necessary. Now that I think of it, it was pretty odd that nobody recognized him back then, as notorious as he was. Maybe the name was too common, and it didn’t pop up anywhere. Susisaari looked into his background when she found his address for me.”

    
“How is it connected to this case?”

    
“When Hedenius told me about Hiltunen’s story, he also told me that Hiltunen and Nygren had been cell mates. According to Hedenius, after being released, Nygren had gone to see Hiltunen and arranged for regular deposits to his prison account.

    
“That made Hedenius wonder, and he looked into it. He found out that Nygren and Hiltunen had gone to the same elementary school. Nygren was a few years older. It appears that Nygren also got Hiltunen that maintenance job.”

    
“Why you think Nygren would go see this guy now?”

    
“Because Nygren’s settling accounts, taking revenge and doling out rewards. He punishes Pastor Koistinen by exposing his sham in front of the church. Then he goes to see his estranged daughter and gives her a wad of cash. Next he’s bent on vengeance again, and he targets Rusanen, who he knows from prison. What his motive was, I don’t know. Nygren and Raid are headed north and Oulu was right on the way.”

    
“Brilliant deduction, Holmes,” said Huusko. “How come you didn’t mention Hiltunen to Jaatinen?”

    
“Maybe a little competitive spirit.”

    
“And I thought I knew you. You gonna tell Kempas?”

    
“I doubt it.”

19.

The last time Jansson had stayed at the Hotel Pohjanhovi in Rovaniemi was several years earlier. At that time, he’d been returning from a fishing trip in Lapland with a couple of other detectives. Jansson wasn’t a terribly avid fisherman, but never objected to having a rod and reel in his hand.

    
For him, the Lapland trip had been more of a chance to meet up with old friends. Jansson had met Captain Hedenius, who now worked at the Rovaniemi division of the National Bureau of Intelligence, while attending a management training program. Hedenius was a hard-core fisherman, but even he knew how to fish just for the fun of it.

    
At the start of their police careers, Hedenius and Jansson had walked a beat that spanned most of Helsinki’s downtown area. Walking side by side in hefty police-issue oxfords for thousands of miles had bonded the two enough that Hedenius had served as best man in Jansson’s wedding.

    
The Hotel Pohjanhovi had also played another important role in Jansson’s life, and even made the list of his top romantic memories, a list that wasn’t terribly long. In the 1960s, as a young officer, he had toured Lapland in his first car, a dark-green Volkswagen beetle. The girl who had sat in the passenger seat would become his wife a few years later.

    
The summer had been cold and rainy, and since the heater in the car was broken, much of the trip was spent shivering. The tent had been even colder, as their sleeping bags never quite managed to dry in the damp weather.

    
The only consolation about the weather was that the gnats and mosquitoes were practically nonexistent.

    
The car’s exhaust pipe had fallen off in the fells and they toured a beautiful mountainous region to the blistering drumroll of unmuffled exhaust. Only after fifty miles of incessant droning did they find help, and the pipe was patched up with pieces of sheet metal, hose clamps and asbestos tape.

    
By this time, Jansson had realized that the journey was slowly but surely approaching catastrophic failure. He tried to salvage what was left to salvage and called the Hotel Pohjanhovi from a roadside general store just off Highway 4, reserved a nice room and ordered a bottle of bubbly and some flowers.

    
The investment was taxing on Jansson’s meager savings, but it doubled its value many times over. The relationship flowered, and six months later, they moved into their first apartment. A couple of years later they were married. Their first child was born…

    
Huusko tapped on the passenger side window.

    
“The Benz is in the hotel ramp and they signed in with Nygren’s name like a couple tourists. If they’re the kind of pros they’re purported to be, then what the hell are they thinking?”

    
Huusko’s agitation stemmed from the fact that, in his experience, wrong was right. He’d be fine if the Mercedes had stolen plates and Nygren and Raid had signed into the hotel as Pekka and Matti Virtanen.

    
“Let’s find out.”

    
“Just us two?”

    
“Just us two. I promised Raid we’d come alone.”

    
“Well, there are promises…and then there are promises.”

    
“I only make promises.”

    
“I guess you’re from the old guard. The rest are in the elephant graveyard.”

    
“Nygren’s not violent.”

    
“Wishful thinking.”

    
Nygren’s room was the upstairs suite. Huusko cocked his weapon and kept it at the ready under his jacket.

    
“Let’s go.”

    
Jansson rang the bell, positioning himself in clear view in front of the peephole. The door opened and Raid appeared.

    
“Come in.”

    
Jansson went inside, but Huusko hesitated momentarily. Raid eyed the hand beneath his coat.

    
“Peace and love,” he said in English.

    
Huusko holstered his gun and stepped inside.

    
“Nice to see you,” said Nygren.

    
He lay on a large double bed in a semi-seated position, fully clothed, with a huge pile of pillows behind his back.

    
“Pour yourselves something to drink… I can order something to eat, too, maybe some sandwiches…”

    
“No thanks,” said Jansson. He poured himself some mineral water. Huusko opened a beer.

    
“Thanks for coming,” said Nygren.

    
“I guess I’m curious.”

    
Jansson slid the desk chair to a roomier spot and sat down. A syringe and a box of medication lay on the nightstand.

    
“You guys are on quite the tour.”

    
Nygren chuckled.

    
“A farewell tour.”

    
Huusko examined the syringe.

    
“Hard stuff.”

    
“Prescription meds. You won’t get me on drug charges.”

    
“What, then?” Huusko replied.

    
“That’s what we’re here to discuss,” Nygren said.

    
“There’s nothing to discuss. You’re suspected of murder and attempted murder. You think you’ll get off by talking? And this other one too…”

    
“No. And that’s not my intention.”

    
Huusko looked confused.

    
“Huusko, we’d best listen first,” said Jansson.

    
“Lieutenant Jansson is right, it always pays to listen,” said Nygren.

    
Nygren took a sip from his water glass and scooted himself into a more upright position. His hair hung over his forehead and his face was pallid. The tumult of disease roiled behind his glossy eyes.

    
“Here’s my offer… I’ll confess to killing Rusanen and give you the evidence. You’ll get the murder weapon and an exact description of what happened and why. Then the case is closed.”

    
“But why?” Huusko asked.

    
“Rusanen was a violent psychopath—and smart—a dangerous combination. Not to mention he was a megalomaniac…trying to dominate the entire country’s drug market and build his own mafia.”

    
“Whose toes did he step on?” Huusko asked.

    
“You got it wrong. It wasn’t a matter of snuffing out competition; it was a personal issue for me and a few friends. I was in the pen with him when he started building his organization. He called it his ‘käng.’ Guess his English wasn’t that good. He forced people to join. The prisoners were made to smuggle in drugs unless they wanted their old ladies beaten badly enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. He couldn’t boss me around so he ended up asking me to join the käng’s leadership. I told him to eat shit. While I was on parole, he sent a torpedo after me, so I just sent my own back. Mine prevailed. It shocked the shit out of him…then he left me alone.”

    
“Is that your torpedo over there?” said Huusko, nodding toward the window sill where Raid was sitting.

    
Raid sat motionless.

    
“No names.”

    
“Go on,” Jansson implored.

    
“I found out about the cancer six months ago while in Sweden. They started treatment there, but ongoing treatment could only promise me a few extra months. No thanks. I’d rather settle up with my friends and enemies and get my affairs situated.”