James Thompson - Helsinki Blood

The mechanic ponders this. “It’s possible, but so complicated that it’s not probable. Most murder attempts by tampering with vehicles are conducted in a simple way. Cut brake lines, things like that. But I can look for melted plastic, take residue samples from the engine, fuel line and gas tank and have them analyzed. It’s as good as any theory I can come up with.”

We thank him and get on our way. I want to run the prints I lifted from the murder scene when we found Loviise Tamm, to find out who visited the apartment and intervened in her intended sexual abuse after the ambassador made his call. We go to NBI headquarters. It’s the first time I’ve been there since I was moved from Helsinki homicide to NBI employ, some months ago. As an inspector, I should have an office. Out of curiosity, I ask where it is. I find it. It’s barren, except for a chair and desk with a computer on it.

I log in to the computer and check the database to see what’s come of the killing of Sasha Mikoyan and the two Russian spooks. I could have just as easily done this from my apartment. My computer is networked in to the database for a home workstation. There’s been nothing in the news, and I think crime scene investigators would have been surprised to find a bullet-riddled door and black fingerprint powder everywhere. The killings are unreported, so the Russians must have spirited the corpses away, replaced the door and covered it all up.

The fingerprints from the butcher knife, though, are on record. They belong to Yelena Merkulova, wife of the Russian ambassador. How could this be? Diplomats and their families aren’t subject to arrest and booking. I call the arresting officer. He tells me she’s a kleptomaniac who likes to shoplift from the downtown boutiques and Stockmann department store. She was arrested and processed because she had no identification and refused to say who she was for several hours. He also states that she’s possibly the most beautiful woman alive.

And she almost certainly murdered Sasha Mikoyan. Interesting.

It strikes me that the Russian ambassador and whatever spooks are in on the prostitution ring might think Sweetness and I murdered Mikoyan. We were on our way there. He must have been told to meet us. Why would they think anything else?

Then it comes to me, the answer that explains the appearance of the spooks at the apartment and their re-kidnapping of Loviise Tamm: because the ambassador’s wife Yelena called someone at the embassy-as the ambassador at that point had no phone-and explained what she had done. And the troops were called in to protect her and make it all go away.

Milo and I go back to my house. It’s time to put the puzzle together and reconstruct the events leading up to Sasha Mikoyan’s death. His murder is of little interest to me in and of itself, but Loviise Tamm couldn’t have been the only girl pressed into the sex trade by him, and he was almost certainly working with a group of his colleagues.

First, I check Sasha’s bank account. It has a hundred and three thousand euros in it. I check his purchases. He lived the high life. Monster restaurant bills, clothing stores, and boutiques that suggest he bought gifts for a woman or women. And he had a room at Hotel Kamp permanently reserved for nine weeks. At four hundred euros a day, he accrued a massive bill, which he paid once a week. However, Kamp made sense as a place to meet a lover, as it’s in easy walking distance from the Russian embassy. Most convenient, especially if that lover was Yelena Merkulova, the ambassador’s wife.

True to her word, Mirjami loaded the info from all the electronic gadgets into my computer. Sweetness is in the bedroom with Jenna. I guess this is snuggle and make up day. Some of the info is in Cyrillic, so I need his help to read Russian. I knock and ask if he has a few minutes. “Sure,” he calls through the closed door. He doesn’t sound aggravated, so they must be all snuggled out at the moment.

He comes out in jeans, shirtless. He looks like a lifelong power lifter, but he’s far too lazy for that. He’s just blessed with good genetics. He’s also barefoot. One of his feet is almost as long as both of mine together. His nose looks swollen near to bursting and both his eyes are black and blue.

“Who broke your nose?” Milo asks.

Sweetness puts his hands in his pockets and stares at the floor, shame-faced. “Jenna.”

Milo heehaws. “Good girl.”

Sweetness won’t meet his eyes. Staring at the computer screen gives him a way around it.

On the night of the poker game, the Russian ambassador’s last phone call was to a woman named Natasha Polyanova. The last call Sasha received is identified by the number twenty-three. The number is the same as the last call made by Ambassador Sergey Merkulov, so twenty-three equals Natasha.

An Excel spreadsheet from the iPad has a list of numbers, one to seventeen across, and the time and dates by week for the year down the left-hand column. Another spreadsheet is set up the same way, numbered one to one hundred seventy-nine, gives first names, the capitalized letters of surnames-I’m certain of this because the name Loviise T is on the list-and what appear to be passport numbers, and shows “profit” and “debt.”

A debt subcategory is labeled “fines.” It seems girls who commit infractions are financially punished. The totals are further split out by percentage, which I interpret as thirty percent for the girls and seventy for Sasha and whoever he worked for.

I think it works like this: Girls are made to work as indentured servants, promised freedom when their debt is paid. But infractions result in fines, and I’m sure that coming close to paying off the debt, manufactured in the first place, results in more imaginary infractions and fines, so that the debts are never paid and freedom never given. An insidious and most efficient system.

I do the math in my head. If I’ve interpreted the information correctly, Sasha and cohorts have seventeen apartments in Helsinki that each bring in about six thousand euros a month. This comes to about one and a quarter million euros annually. A hundred and seventy-nine girls don’t fit in seventeen apartments, so there must be more properties outside Helsinki, someone else’s responsibility, and the real total income is multiples of the amount on his spreadsheets.

Even the finances behind the business revolt me. I don’t know what I’ll do, how I’ll punish people when I get to the bottom of all this, but it must be something severe enough to do justice for the misery and horror they’ve meted out to these women. I can’t turn to the government. Diplomats are above the law, and anyone involved and caught would simply be returned to Russia. I hear myself sigh. Try as I might, I’m just not built for pacifism.

I call Natasha Polyanova. Her phone is disconnected. Sasha’s phone contacts include a “YM.” I hope this is the number of Yelena Merkulova, the ambassador’s wife. I call it. A woman answers. “Da.”

My Russian is weak. This is too important for me to make a mistake and misinterpret something. I introduce myself in English. Hers is excellent. “How can I help you, Inspector?”

“I’m looking into the death of Sasha Mikoyan. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”

“I know no one by that name.”

I take a stab at faking my way through it. “Early yesterday morning, you were with your lover, Sasha Mikoyan, in Hotel Kamp, your normal meeting place for trysts. This is documented by hotel security cameras. Natasha Polyanova called him and relayed a message to him that there was business he must attend to immediately. You followed him to an apartment in Punavuori and found him about to engage in a sex act with a disabled child. Understandably, you were shocked and enraged. Words were exchanged, and the nightmare ended with you stabbing him to death.”