Harri Nykanen - Behind God's Back

Eli tried to laugh, but his laughter turned into a nasty-sounding snort.

“Has Nurmio been in touch with you?”

Eli put his forefinger to his mouth. “My lips are sealed.”

“Is he blackmailing you with something besides women?”

This time Eli didn’t even listen. “Max was my best friend.”

I shook Eli by the shoulder. “You’re drunk, but I still want you to tell me what Nurmio wanted from Max. We believe Nurmio is going to try and blackmail some third person next. Is it you? Is it Roni?”

Eli tossed the empty bottle into the bushes and popped open the second one.

“Why did you go back to the congregation and rejoin the executive board?”

“Someone had to do it… ‘Before them lay the bog… rough boards bridged the mire… they crossed them through the fog… to the hut, humble and dire…’”

Eli leant back against the tree and appeared to fall asleep. I shook his shoulder harder.

“Eli, you can’t pass out there.”

Eli opened his eyes. “Who’s passing out? I’m just resting my eyes. You can keep a lookout to make sure no one steals my wallet and my Amex Gold or my Rolex, which is not actually a cheesy Rolex but an elegant Patek Philippe. But before that, there’s one thing I want to say, then I’ll shut up. You guys are so fucking wrong, you have no idea.”

“What about?”

“Meir or Nurmio or whatever his name hasn’t killed anyone. He’s here for totally different reasons…” Eli closed his eyes again, and a barely audible murmur slipped out between his lips: “…there they bore the farmer’s lass…” Then he started to snore.

I shook him by both shoulders. “Eli. You can’t pass out here.” This time he didn’t react.

There wasn’t anything I could do except wait. I decided to give him half an hour’s grace. Then I’d wake him, even if it meant dumping a bucket of water over him.

I made myself comfortable and turned my face towards the sun.

It looked like it had fallen to me to be my brother’s keeper.

“Nurmio’s gone,” Sillanpää said the instant we met. He had called me at work and asked me to come right over to the site of the stake-out. “He disappeared last night, probably through the basement, and we haven’t seen him since.”

I looked around the apartment from which Security Police agents had been monitoring Nurmio’s doings for over a month. I wondered whose name was on the lease and who paid the rent.

The place was a one-bedroom flat on the third floor. It was furnished as spartanly as possible; there were no unnecessary comforts. That might have encouraged slacking. The only furnishings were a couple of chairs and a table, on top of which lay a laptop and a black notebook. All events of interest were logged in the notebook, along with the time. The kitchen contained a microwave, a coffee machine and a fridge. A digital video camera on a tripod stood at the window, with a SUPO agent sitting at it.

“Pretty lousy stake-out if you didn’t notice anything,” I remarked, taking a look through the camera.

Sillanpää walked over to where I was standing at the window. He raked his fingers through his greasy hair and left it sticking straight up. Then he pointed across the street. A hard rain was whipping the city and the window, blurring the view. Thunderstorms had been forecast for that evening. Autumn had arrived in Helsinki.

“I wouldn’t say so. Nurmio’s place is in that building diagonally opposite. Tough floor plan. There’s a back door in the stairwell that goes to the basement, and from there routes lead in all kinds of directions — including the back yard and the courtyard of the building next door. We had one vehicle parked outside, prepared to follow if Nurmio made any moves. During office hours, we’d get a couple more too, but do you think we have the resources to watch every single escape route and rat hole? We’re already cooking the books to stretch our budget.”

“What are your plans regarding Nurmio?”

Sillanpää walked into the kitchen and took a paper mug from the table. “You want some coffee?”

I nodded, and Sillanpää poured some for me. I sipped it. It was old and strong. Coffee like that kept agents alert during their shift. I dropped in a couple of sugar cubes and stirred it with a plastic spoon. Sillanpää tapped two sweeteners into his cup.

“You wouldn’t believe how many packs of coffee we’ve gone through in a month, and how many kebabs and pizzas. The restaurant’s probably going to go out of business once surveillance ends. I wonder how they’ll claim those kebabs on expenses? Probably the bosses’ entertainment account.”

“Have you started looking for Nurmio?”

“All the places we know of: former girlfriends, criminal buddies, his sister who lives in Vantaa. Nothing. It’s a tough manhunt, because we can’t ask directly. We don’t want him to find out about us.”

“You’d think he already had.”

“There’s nothing to indicate that. We believe he went underground because he saw a drawing of himself in the papers. So thanks a lot. I’d be grateful if you had something in your back pocket that would help us find him. We’ve got so much political pressure on us that we’re starting to split at the seams. The Minister of the Interior knows about this and his calcified veins are about to pop.”

Regardless of how he was talking, Sillanpää didn’t appear particularly stressed.

“Has he had any visitors?”

“Over the course of the stakeout, he only had four visitors, three of whom were women. Nurmio brought them home from a nightclub and they disappeared within a couple of hours. Boom-boom, bye-bye. We stopped them and told them we were narcotic agents. None of them knew Nurmio from before. They just left with him since he lived nearby and was pleasant company. None of them had been given his phone number. All he had told them was that he sold Israeli boat and car chemicals and had lived in Israel for a few years.”

“And the fourth?”

Sillanpää gazed out at the rain sweeping the street as if he found the natural phenomenon truly fascinating. “It’s raining pretty hard… The fourth was Max Oxbaum.”

Sillanpää saw my face, and could tell I was seriously ticked off.

“Sorry. We hadn’t agreed on cooperation at that point. Now I’m playing with an open hand. Oxbaum came here two days before he was killed. He came in the middle of the day and was inside for twenty minutes or so.”

“I suppose you talked to him, too?”

“He was an attorney and a sly old fox. We decided it was wisest to not expose ourselves.”

And now I decided it was time for me to show my hand.

“That story about a Russian gangster visiting Finland was a complete fabrication. You said you were playing with an open hand.”

Sillanpää knew how to maintain a poker face. “Says who?”

“You think Nurmio is here to kill the new Israeli Minister of Justice, Haim Levi, who is coming to Finland in a week.”

Sillanpää considered this for a moment. “All right. Open hand. We didn’t want to tell you about Levi, because we suspected that your brother was involved. We do believe that Levi is the target, but we don’t suspect your brother any more.”

“Why not?”

“Something turned up.”

There was no point pressing him. Sillanpää wouldn’t give me anything more about Eli. On the other hand, what he had told me put my mind at ease.

“Max must have been in touch with Norm. We could compare his telecommunications data with Jacobson’s.”

“Good. Do it.”

“Who paid the rent on his place?”

“Nurmio paid half a year’s rent in advance. The money came through an Estonian bank, a former shell company. Oxbaum bought it three months ago and is on the board. Nurmio’s name doesn’t appear anywhere.”