homicide is a body factory. I check out three to four corpses during a normal shift. Always understaffed, the three teams in murharyhmä, the homicide division, a total of around twenty-five detectives, look into about thirteen hundred deaths a year. Most of them, as homicide cops call them, are grandmas and grandpas, the natural deaths of the elderly. A fair share of the remaining deaths are accidental. About a dozen of those twelve hundred will be ruled homicides and investigated, down from about three dozen murders only a decade ago, due to improved on-site trauma care and response time. It’s saved a lot of lives. Also, I figure because of the massive volume of death investigations, some of the more subtle premeditated murders go undetected.
We also look into an average of a hundred and twenty-five suicides each year. Helsinki has a higher rate than the rest of Finland, partly because of sexual minorities. They come from all over the country to the nation’s largest city, seeking the acceptance and promise of happiness that they lacked in smaller communities. Since they have higher rates of depression and mental illness than the city’s norm, and hence a greater propensity toward self-destruction, I presume many of them don’t find what they’re looking for. In the couple of weeks that I’ve been working in homicide, I’ve looked at twenty-seven dead bodies, but I’ve yet to investigate one as a possible murder.
Over the next hours, Milo and I examine an overdosed junkie, a middle-aged man who died of a heart attack while watching television, and a teenage girl who got drunk, passed out in the snow and froze to death. It’s eight thirty a.m. We should have gotten off work a half hour ago. My phone rings. It’s Arto, my boss. ‘I know your shifts are over,’ he says, ‘but we’re shorthanded. I’ve got a murder for you if you want to take it.’
This takes me aback. I didn’t think he was prepared to trust either me or Milo with a murder and risk the precious murharyhmä winning streak and reputation, unless we stumbled upon one in a normal death investigation and he couldn’t take it away from us.
‘Do tell,’ I say.
‘A woman was beaten to death in Töölö. The responding officers say it’s bad.’
I ask Milo. He’s about to jump up and down from excitement. If I take it, it means I won’t get a chance to sleep tonight, but solving a murder might go a long way toward quelling the misgivings the other homicide unit members have about me. What the hell. I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘we’ll take it.’
Arto gives me the address and says, ‘A forensics team is already on the way. Get over there now.’
Chapter 5
Milo and I take the car we signed out from the police garage earlier. The department is big on economy. We get a Ford Fiesta. Milo wants to drive, and given the icy road conditions, he does so faster than necessary. The murder scene is only a few minutes away. A time and temperature sign on the side of a building reads eight forty-four a.m. and minus twenty-four degrees. Snow cascades through the darkness.
Europe is experiencing its worst winter in thirty years. Even Helsinki, eminently well-prepared for cold-weather conditions, is in chaos. Hoarfrost coats everything. Constant plowing has created mountains of snow and buried cars. The central railway station is out of commission. Trains still running have to be frequently deiced, and it’s wreaking havoc on their timetables. Water mains have burst and flooded the streets. The water has turned into vast sheets of ice and brought the tram lines to a standstill. Traffic accidents abound.
This is the antithesis of the normal Helsinki winters I experienced living here years ago. Usually, in January, the temperature hovers around zero. Helsinki is like that most of the winter, although sometimes the temperature dips down to as much as minus twenty or thirty. We get some snow and it melts. Snow melt snow melt snow melt. Makes it like walking around in icy gray mud for most of the winter. Still, at a certain point some snow piles up. Then the spring thaw exposes a winter’s accumulation of dog shit, and the city is overwhelmed by the stench for a week or two. I missed Arctic winter during my seven years here, the meter or two of snow reflecting moon and starlight. The beauty of snow-laden forests. This year, we get to experience real winter in Helsinki, and it brings joy to my heart.
Töölö is a fashionable district. It’s not tremendously expensive, but has a reputation for a better class of resident. We pull up behind a police van, next to a snowbank in front of a pretty yellow apartment building at the address Arto gave me. My phone rings. The forensics team’s pathologist tells me their vehicle was involved in a minor collision with another car. One of the crime-scene technicians wasn’t wearing a seat belt and his head hit the windshield. He needs stitches. They have to take him to the hospital, and we have to wait until he’s patched up.
‘Fuck that,’ I say.
‘Excuse me?’
‘The investigation starts now, without you.’
‘That’s against procedure.’
‘Time is wasting. We’re setting a new procedural precedent.’
Pause. ‘Do you have the right gear to wear?’
‘Yep.’
‘Okay, we’ll be there as soon as we can.’
Milo and I enter the building and take the elevator to the fourth floor. A uniformed officer stands in the hall. ‘You the detectives?’ he asks.
‘That’s us,’ I say.
‘Where are the crime-scene techs?’
‘Late. They had a car wreck. Fill us in.’
‘This apartment belongs to Rein Saar, an Estonian citizen. He called in the murder himself. He claims an unknown assailant struck him from behind and knocked him unconscious. When he woke up, he was in his bed beside his lover, Iisa Filippov. She was beaten to death, and he was covered in her blood.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In the back of our van.’
Something is amiss here. ‘Where’s your partner?’ I ask.
‘He went to get us coffee.’
So much for police procedure. ‘You left an injured suspect, alone and unsupervised, in the back of your vehicle?’
He reddens. I let it go.
‘What’s your impression of the situation?’ I ask.
‘Rein Saar has a bad cut on his head from a blunt instrument. It looks to me like a lovers’ quarrel ended badly. She hit him with something, he killed her and hasn’t been able to think of a better lie.
‘Does he need stitches?’
‘At least not immediately. The bleeding stopped. He might be concussed.’
Milo and I don surgical gloves and paper suits, complete with head and foot coverings, to prevent our fingerprints, hair and clothing fibers from contaminating the crime scene, walk into the apartment and take a look around. The home is neat and clean, in large part decorated with inexpensive furniture from Ikea. The kitchen is off the living room.
I go back out into the hall and hand the patrol officer the keys to the Ford Fiesta. ‘There are more gloves and paper suits in the trunk of our car. Get some
