Harri Nykanen - Behind God's Back

“I’m assuming you guys tapped Nurmio’s place?”

“No. There was a deadbolt. We decided it was best not to try so we wouldn’t tip him off. Mossad training means noticing visits like that.”

“Regardless of whether or not Nurmio had Mossad training, there’s no point waiting around any more. Let’s go over and see what we can find.”

“You think so?”

“Yup. There must be some clues in there.”

The thought clearly appealed to Sillanpää. “I have to talk to my boss.” He went into the kitchen and made a call. I waited at least five minutes, listening to a hole being drilled into the wall in the next apartment over.

“They’ve been remodelling for two weeks,” the agent at the camera said.

“You guys only have one man staking out at a time?” I asked.

“At first there were two of us, but we used up our overtime pretty fast, so we had to scale back to one.”

Sillanpää returned from his expedition to the kitchen. “OK. We’re good. Our lock guy will meet us there.”

“What about me?” the agent asked as we were leaving.

“You stay here. Warn us if you see him approaching, even though I doubt he’s coming back.”

We waited outside for the SUPO lock specialist to arrive. Once he got there, we negotiated in the car for a minute and then decided to go in through the back door. To get to it, we had to head around to the back and down to the basement. We stopped at a grey door. The door had two locks: a normal house-key lock and a Boda deadbolt. The Boda looked brand new.

Sillanpää gave the order: “Go for it.” He had promised we didn’t have to worry about leaving signs of a break-in; the main thing now was getting the door open. Calling in the building super would have required too much explaining.

The specialist drilled a hole an inch in diameter between the locks, at the point where the door and the jamb met. He slid in a crowbar. One powerful wrench, and the door popped open.

Sillanpää peered in. He didn’t see anything, so he continued in. I followed.

The back door opened onto a hallway with a bathroom off to the side. That led to an unfurnished back room and the street-side storefront, where the large display window had been covered with blinds.

The main room contained a desk, a couple of armchairs, a computer, an almost-empty bookshelf and a dead body. It was lying on its back near the middle of the floor, its half-open eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. A pistol with a silencer lay next to one hand. There was a bullet hole right under the eye, another in the temple.

“Don’t touch anything,” I instinctively ordered Sillanpää. He stopped and looked at the body.

“It’s not Nurmio.”

I had noticed the same thing. The deceased looked like a foreigner.

I bent down and went through his pockets. The wallet held a driver’s licence issued in St Petersburg. According to it, the man’s name was Igor Semeyev.

“Russian.”

“He has a gun, too. What the fuck happened here?” Sillanpää growled.

“Probably what it looks like. There was a shoot-out, and Nurmio shot our friend Igor Semeyev here.”

“No wonder Nurmio split,” Sillanpää said.

I was sitting at my window, watching flashes light up the southern sky somewhere above Suomenlinna. I counted the seconds: one, two, three, four… ten. A scattered rumbling rolled between the buildings and deepened to a drum-like thud.

Ten times the speed of sound in a second. The thunderstorm was two miles away.

I had always liked storms and thunder, but only on land. They scared me at sea. When we were kids, Dad would take us to down the Kaivopuisto marina, where the waves would crash onto the rocks and the wind would hurl salt spray in our faces. Dad had loved it, too. Eli, on the other hand, had always been terrified of storms and thunder. He’d drag his feet and shriek until Dad would be forced to lug him down the shore. Things like that had to leave indelible trauma.

The wind rattled the open ventilation window, and the raindrops pelted my face. The sensation of water and wind felt like a caress from Mother Nature.

My beautiful scheme, which had been based on Nurmio’s culpability, was completely demolished, and I hadn’t managed to piece together a new one in its place.

The dead body that had been found in Nurmio’s room had been confirmed as the person indicated on the licence. The St Petersburg police had corroborated his identity. He was a criminal that the Russian police were more than familiar with, a paid hitman for the Minsk mafia. It was a pretty sure bet that he was also the man I had seen at Max’s boat, as well as the one Jari Wallius had seen leaving the Jacobsons’ house.

After receiving this information, it felt like I was trying to put together two different puzzles whose pieces had been scrambled up. No matter how hard I tried to fit them together, I couldn’t form a picture that made any sense.

Was the mafia killer after Nurmio, or vice versa? Or had they been working together and then argued about something? When two killers argued, more often than not dead bodies would result.

Semeyev must have entered through the back door, because the SUPO stake-out man hadn’t noticed him. I almost felt sorry for the guy who had been on duty at the time.

Nurmio presumably knew Semeyev, because he had let him in. The gun we had found at Semeyev’s side had been fired once. A.22 calibre bullet was found in one of the cupboards in the kitchenette. It had pierced the door and bored into the back wall. In addition to being the right calibre, Semeyev’s gun was the right make, a Margolin. It looked like Semeyev had killed both Max and Jacobson.

The bullets that had killed Semeyev, on the other hand, had been fired from a 9 mm.

Sillanpää had been just as mystified as I was. On top of it, he cursed the fact that Semeyev had been shot while SUPO was staking out the premises. That wouldn’t look good in the reports, especially if it got leaked to the press.

A huge bolt of lightning lit up the sky, and the thunder followed only a few seconds later. The thunderstorm was right overhead now. It was like the sky was pummelling the city in its ribs. Rain drummed against the windowsill at an ever-intensifying pace, and the wind picked up until the large linden in the courtyard of the building opposite was forced to bend to it. A woman was running down the street with an umbrella, trying to get into her portico. The umbrella turned inside out from the force of the wind. She found her keys and dove into the shelter of the stairwell.

Like a lot of old-fashioned people, Mom had been afraid of thunderstorms and had rushed around unplugging all the appliances as soon as she heard any rumbling. She told us stories from her childhood of lightning balls entering a home through the telephone, circling the room and exiting through the window…

My cell phone rang. I glanced at the screen: blocked.

“Is this Detective Kafka?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Someone you’ve been pretty eager to find these past few days — at least according to the papers.”

“Nurmio?”

“No, Leo Meir. I’ve already got used to my new name. Are you interested in meeting me?”

“Why? I’m not —”

“This is an offer that will not come again. Do you want to meet me or not?”

“Of course —”

“Good. Where are you?”

“Central Helsinki. Punavuori.”

“Good. Then fifteen minutes is enough. Does your phone have enough battery?”

I glanced at the power symbol. Four bars. “Yes.”

“Keep your phone on the whole time so I can hear you. Put on a warm coat and head towards Iso Roobertinkatu. Do it now… And leave your gun at home so there aren’t any accidents.”