“Are you sure they aren’t Kantola’s own prints?”
Pekki sighed tiredly. “Yes, I am. They had Nike swishes. We couldn’t find a single pair of sneakers in the house, and Kantola was wearing slippers when he was found.”
A cautious knock came from the door, and Milla peeked in again.
“This Laine guy.” She was whisper
ing
so quietly that the men in the room could barely hear her. “He’s starting to get antsy. Apparently he’s in a hurry to get somewhere.”
“In a minute.” Koskinen waved his hand, and the door closed. He explained to Pekki what it was about, which made Pekki sigh with relief.
“Glad you’re taking that one…
I don’t have time to interrogate him. I have to start looking up Kantola’s relatives. He’s supposed to have a son somewhere near Helsinki and two brothers in Ostrobothnia.”
Koskinen decided to end the meeting. He quickly summarized for Pekki the information they had obtained from Wolf House and emphasized once again how important it was to find the missing wheelchair. They had to find it as soon as possible.
Eskola asked for a turn to speak by raising his hand. “What if he was robbed?”
“Who?”
Pekki and Kaatio coughed at the same time.
“Raimo
Timonen
. An electric wheelchair like that is probably worth thousands of euros.”
All three turned to stare at Eskola, and redness began to rise steadily from his collar to his face as if he’d been put in a steam bath.
“Oh, so he was robbed, was he?” Pekki snorted. “Listen up whil
e I tell you one little thing: o
ver the years I’ve run into all kinds o
f
rats. Guys who would snatch their own grandmother’s purse or the collection basket at church. But I still don’t believe there’s anyone on God’s green earth with such a black heart that he would take a wheelchair from under a cripple.”
Pekki shook his head for a moment and then pointed his finger at Eskola. “It
’
d be almost as cruel as pilfering a lollipop from you.”
Eskola lowered his eyes to the floor, ready to take more tongue-lashing. “The March of the Pori Brigade” saved him. It rang out from Pekki’s phone.
Everyone was quiet for the two minutes the phone call lasted, except for Pekki’s occasional grunts.
“It was the hospital,” he said after the phone call ended. “Apparently Kantola is going to survive the assault.” He fell silent for a couple of cryptic seconds, then sighed. “But he’s going to die soon anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Apparently the old man has advanced stage liver
cancer. It was discovered a few weeks ago
,
but for some reason he didn’t want treatment.”
Koskinen sighed. “I see.”
“Apparently liver cancer is pretty damn painful.”
Pekki jumped up out of his chair. He looked at Koskinen and Kaatio in turn and then began declaiming grandi
osely
, “The quarry we are hunting is even more evil than we had imagined.”
He raised two fingers and continued: “
Timonen
was seriously disabled and no doubt suffered from his disability. Kantola was withering away in the grip of an incurable cancer. Believe it or not, but now we’ve got a first-class madman on our hands. He thinks of himself as some sort of angel—freeing poor suffering souls from this forge of torment and agony.”
Neither Koskinen nor Kaatio, let alone Eskola, had anything to say to that.
Pekki lowered his voice in portentous intensity: “With
Timonen
this maniac succeeded, and with Kantola almost. But who will be our mercy killer’s next victim?”
9.
Ilmari Laine was an ill-tempered man. His wide, ruddy face glowed with indignation and his nostrils were quivering like a bull left unsold at market.
“Why did I have to come here in the middle of my
busy day? It was such a hell of a lot of fun sitting here in the hallway for half an hour for nothing! As if I didn’t have anything else to do.”
Koskinen looked silently at the man sitting across from him. This made Laine even more upset.
“You don’t seem to understand that I’m a
n
entrepreneur
. I have a customer waiting for me in Hatanpää. I can’t
afford to
los
e
customers—the competition is stiff in this line of work.”
Koskinen pushed the desk phone closer to Laine. “Call them and ask them to wait. This could take a while.”
Laine didn’t touch the phone, but rather turned his head and stared dismally at the closed door. Koskinen searched through his papers and came up with a black
-and-
white photograph. He handed it to Laine.
“Do you know this man?”
Laine glanced at the picture. “Yes, I know
Timonen
. He’s one of my regulars.”
“Not anymore.”
“Why not?” Laine asked morosely. “What did he do this time?”
“He died.”
There was a sudden flash in Laine’s eyes. But it wasn’t sorrow.
“I have customers die all the time. You get used to it in this job.”
“As victims of homicide?”
It took Laine a moment to realize what Koskinen meant.“You’re not saying
Timonen
...”
“Yes.”
“Hey, hold on just one minute!” Laine raised his hands in a defensive gesture. “If someone went and knocked off
Timonen
, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Koskinen noticed how a line of beaded sweat had appeared at Laine’s dark hairline. There wasn’t the slightest bit of evidence against him, nothing that would have justified putting him under suspicion. But the interview had gained some good momentum, and Koskinen decided to step on the gas.
“When was the last time you
g
ave
him
a ride?”
“On Saturday as I remember. I took him out to Kaanaa to watch the motorcycle races. Raymond was a motorcycle fanatic. He paid for two hours of wait time, and we went back to Wolf House at around five.”
“And after that?”
“After that... Since then I haven’t seen or heard from him.”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
Laine was growing impatient again. “Christ! If I say I haven’t seen him, then I haven’t seen him!”
“I heard something different.”
Laine shifted uncertainly in his chair and tried to sneer contemptuously. “I’d just love to hear what.”
“According to a reliable eyewitness, you collected Raimo
Timonen
with your vehicle from Wolf House on Monday night at ten forty-five.”
Laine’s dark face grew even more somber. “Who’s shoveling that shit?”
“Let’s just leave that a secret for now. Instead, how about you tell me where you took Raymond that night.”
“Nowhere,” Laine said, raising his voice. “Damnit, nowhere. I haven’t seen him since Saturday.”
“Are you completely sure you
r
mem
o
r
y
is working
?”
“You bet your ass I am!”
“So where were you on Monday night between ten and eleven then?”
“Sleeping.”
“Where?”
“At home of course!”
“With your wife?”
“I don’t have a wife
.
”
“And any other companions?”
“No.” Laine wiped the sweat from his brow. “I live alone.”
“Is that so?”
“Is that so! Is that so!” Laine parroted. “Go ahead and say it straight out: I don’t have an alibi!”
Koskinen didn’t say anything. Laine was having a hard time holding still.
“What motive could I have?”
The phone’s ringing interrupted the interview at the worst possible moment. Koskinen had forgotten to tell the switchboard not to put any calls through. He turned off the recorder on the table.
“Koskinen,” he snapped.
“Hey, it’s
Tomi
,” came a halting voice from the receiver. “I guess you’re busy.”
Koskinen turned to the side from Laine and changed his tone.
“Not at all. I’m glad you called.”
Obviously
Tomi
didn’t believe him, because he started to fumble his way through an explanation. “About yesterday. When I left so fast. I could have stayed longer, but—”
Koskinen interrupted him
, feeling awkward. “Don’t worry about it.”
He needed to be alone for this conversation and take his time—he knew how sensitive
Tomi
was to picking up on his moods just from the tone of his voice.
“Don’t worry about it,” he repeated. “Come again at a better time.”
“It didn’t occur to me yesterday, but isn’t it about time to go turn the boat over?”
“Yeah, it’s just about time.”
“How about we go fishing at the same time? The pike are still biting on Lake Hervanta.”
“Good idea.”
Koskinen hoped that
Tomi
wouldn’t interpret his short answers incorrectly. He didn’t want to be rehashing this in front of Laine. In police work, it was important to hold on to your privacy.
He made an attempt to dig out his desk calendar while still talking into the phone.
“When would work for you?”
“Maybe Saturday.”
“What time?”
“Noon.”
“That’s good for me to. See you then.”
“Cool. I’ll bring the fishing gear. Maybe you could make lunch.”
“Great. See you then.”
Koskinen had barely set the handset in its cradle before Laine guffawed.
“So you hooked some other new suspect?” he said sarcastically.
Koskinen didn’t respond at all. He looked at Laine and saw from the man’s expression that he had gathered his lost self-confidence during the pho
ne call. He had been right—Tomi
really couldn’t have called at a worse time.
“Well, now, let’s get back to business,” Koskinen said, trying to regain the hardness that had been in his voice moments before. “Like back to that Monday night.”
“Let’s,” Laine said, leaning forward. “How can your witness be so sure that he actually saw my vehicle? There are other handicap taxis in this town, you know.”
Koskinen thought it over. In fact, Taisto Toivakka had only seen the taillights, and that was unquestionably the weakest link of the whole investigation at this point. Even the most straight-faced defense lawyer would laugh at it. However, Koskinen didn’t want to reveal that to Laine just yet. Instead, he responded with what he had heard from Kaatio.
“Your van is easy to identify. As I understand, it’s
completely different from the other taxis in town.”
Laine set his right hand on the desk and squeezed it into a fist.
“It must be one of that Fallen Angels crew. They specialize in seeing pink elephants.”
Koskinen raised his eyebrows inquisitively, which make Laine explain: “They call themselves the Fallen Angels. They’re supposed to be some sort of motorcycle gang on wheelchairs. They booze and get into fights constantly. And now with
Timonen
dead, then there are only two of them left: Ketterä and Harjus.”
Koskinen remembered Kaatio having mentioned the same names a few minutes previously. “Did there used to be more of them?”
“At least six. One died a year ago from bone cancer, one found religion, and another was forced to move somewhere else.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. There were a lot of stories going around about him.”
“Choose one.”
“Well, someone said that he tried to rape an intern.”
“An invalid trying to rape someone?”
Laine looked at Koskinen with disdain. “Don’t tell me you see the same glossy angel picture of them as everybody else?”
“I didn’t mean that, just the physical side.”
Laine laughed dryly. “Give me a break! They’re capable of a lot more than most people would believe.”
“How did these Fallen Angels get along with each other?”
“Exactly the same as their role-models,” Laine said. He snorted and then stared at the fish painting on the wall.
“Explain,” Koskinen said impatiently.
“When the
y
left to go drinking they were always friends, but when they came back they were belligerent drunks. Sometimes it was like open warfare between them with death threats and everything flying around.”