Harri Nykanen - Behind God's Back

Ethel looked as if she wanted to know what right I had to ask for the keys. Maybe she momentarily forgot that I was a police officer, not some kid who was after her daughter. I held out my hand and, after a moment’s hesitation, she dropped the keys into it.

“There’s also some money in the safe. Not much, but a small emergency fund.”

“Do you mind if I take a look at that coat, please?” Stenman asked.

Ethel reluctantly handed over the coat. Stenman went through the pockets and the wallet she found in the breast pocket: a few business cards and a little over a hundred euros in cash.

“Samuel didn’t even have an ATM card. He was afraid someone would steal it and empty the account,” Ethel said.

As we left, I saw Ethel watching us from the window.

“Next stop: Jacobson’s office,” I said to Stenman.

“You know how to get there?”

“I think I can manage it.”

I chose a route that passed by the manor and continued towards Herttoniemi. As we were crossing the bridge between Tammisalo and Herttoniemi, an idea occurred to me.

“Jacobson’s killer had to escape either this way or take Tammisalontie to Roihuvuori. Either way, he had to cross a bridge. If I were the killer, I’d toss the weapon into the sea.”

“Me too. Should we call in the divers?”

“Definitely.”

The Jacobson family business had been founded by Samuel Jacobson’s father, Ruben Jacobson, back in the 1930s. It imported office machines and supplies. The company had grown rapidly after the war, ballooning from a small office-machine repair shop into a big-time importer. The era was so favourable for expansion that everyone who showed a little initiative did all right for themselves. Ruben Jacobson showed a lot of initiative and did better than all right. He spoke German and English, and managed to secure exclusive import and maintenance rights for a couple of international brands, and that was enough.

When computers burst onto the market in the 1980s, manual and electric typewriters turned into fishing-net weights and scrap metal overnight. That moment almost proved fatal for the company. Ruben didn’t think much of computers, and because at the age of seventy-five he was still the chair of the board, his opinion mattered. But Ruben wasn’t stupid; it didn’t take him long to realize that he had bet on the wrong horse, and he changed course. He stepped aside and turned control over to his only son, Samuel. His daughter lived in Denmark; she wasn’t interested in office machines.

The maintenance and repair company that had its start in an old wooden building in a Punavuori courtyard moved to new, more central premises in 1948. In the ’50s, Ruben Jacobson bought a bigger space in Vallila, and the firm operated there until Samuel Jacobson commissioned a new building for it in a northern Helsinki industrial area in 2005.

The new building had two stories and a glass-and-aluminium facade. The lower floor contained the storeroom, the repair shop and social areas; the upper floor the offices and conference room.

I learnt the company’s history from the brochure I read at the break room table. I knew the rest from before.

Stenman and I were waiting for the company’s chief financial officer, who was at some negotiations away from the offices. He had promised to return as soon as possible. It had already been almost twenty minutes.

“If you’d married Jacobson’s daughter, you’d be investigating your father-in-law’s murder right now,” Stenman observed. She had crossed her long, denim-sheathed legs. Her coat was unbuttoned, and underneath there was a pale-blue blouse whose two top buttons were also open. My eyes took in the scenery in spite of the prohibition I had set for myself. “So why didn’t you, anyway?” Stenman asked.

“Because I got caught with another woman. It’s not as dramatic or sexy as it sounds, but it was enough for Lea. She said she just couldn’t respect me any more. We were both eighteen.”

“Sounds pretty melodramatic.”

“You are when you’re eighteen.”

“Did you regret it?”

“Not then, and not now. It wasn’t even a serious relationship. We were just more feeling things out — with both hands. I knew Lea was looking for a different kind of man.”

“Feeling things out with both hands, huh?” Stenman chuckled. “You must have been pretty wild.”

“No more so than most kids that age.”

“Did she find what she was looking for? She’s married and has kids, right?”

“Hopefully. She married a businessman.”

“Do you mean that at least she has money?”

“I think that weighed in the balance.”

Stenman had divorced a couple of years ago, and had definitely not been left high and dry. She had taken the two children and moved into a large apartment in Kruununhaka. I had been by a couple of times to pick her up for work. You didn’t buy a place like that on a detective’s salary.

A man approaching sixty walked in. My hunch was that the chief financial officer, Pekka Hulkko, had just arrived. He wiped the sweat from his brow. He must have come in a rush. I stood up.

“I’m sorry you had to wait… It’s just that you never imagine that… The letter is in my office.”

We followed Hulkko into a room with a view of the tallest building in Vantaa. The letter was in a plastic file organizer.

“No one has touched it since I read it, so we wouldn’t leave any fingerprints.”

Television police shows were of some use after all.

The contents were brief and to the point, like vitriolic outbursts usually are: “ Greedy fucking Jewish scum. One day you’re going to get what you deserve. The Seeds of Hate .”

No other signatures, or anything else for that matter.

“When did this arrive?”

“It was in the company’s mail box this morning. There was nothing on the envelope, so someone came last night or early this morning and left it there.”

“Have you ever received anything like this before?”

“Not that I know of. I think Samuel would have told me if we had. He always took matters like this seriously.”

A round table stood in the corner, surrounded by four chairs. Hulkko invited us to sit.

“Jacobson didn’t come in to work for three days. Do you know why?”

“He called and said he wasn’t feeling well. The flu, I guess. It’s going around.”

“Doesn’t it seem odd to you that the threat was delivered here?” Stenman asked.

“How so? Jacobson is a Jew. For some people at least, this is a Jewish company. People who oppose Israel won’t even eat Jaffa-brand oranges.”

“But Jacobson wasn’t especially well known. How did the person who made the threat know he was a Jew in the first place?”

“Those guys know. They read the congregation newsletters and spend time online. And you can guess from the name — the first name, at least.”

“We haven’t heard about any other similar threats. You’d think they’d have started from the top, from the head of the congregation or the rabbi or some public persona.”

“Aren’t the police investigating that Seeds of Hate group? You’d think that’d be the place they’d start looking for the perpetrator.”

“The other letters are different. This is a short, violent outburst that seems personal. The others contain ramblings of a deeper ideological nature,” Stenman explained.

“Crazy people are crazy. Who can tell what’s going through their heads? In any event, this is a racist threat.”

“Do you have surveillance cameras?” Stenman asked.

“No. We do have an alarm system for the indoor premises, though.”

I launched a sneak attack. “How is the company doing financially?”