Darling

  HELSINKI HOMICIDE:

  DARLING

  JARKKO SIPILA

  Translated by

  Katriina Kitchens

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, incidents, and situations depicted in this work are wholly the creation of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author, the translator, or the publisher.

  Originally published in Finnish as Muru by Crime Time, Helsinki, Finland. 2011.

  Translated by Katriina Kitchens

  Published by

  Ice Cold Crime LLC

  5780 Providence Curve

  Independence, MN 55359

  Printed in the United States of America

  Ice Cold Crime LLC gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of:

  Cover by Ella Tontti

  Copyright © Ice Cold Crime and Jarkko Sipila 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-937241-08-7

  Also by Jarkko Sipila

  In English:

  Helsinki Homicide: Against the Wall (Ice Cold Crime, 2009)

  Helsinki Homicide: Vengeance (Ice Cold Crime, 2010)

  Helsinki Homicide: Nothing but the Truth (Ice Cold Crime, 2011)

  Helsinki Homicide: Cold Trail (Ice Cold Crime, 2013)

  In Finnish:

  Koukku (Book Studio, 1996)

  Kulmapubin koktaili (Book Studio, 1998)

  Kosketuslaukaus (Book Studio, 2001)

  Tappokäsky (Book Studio, 2002)

  Karu keikka (Book Studio, 2003)

  Todennäköisin syin (Gummerus, 2004)

  Likainen kaupunki (Gummerus, 2005)

  Mitään salaamatta (Gummerus, 2006)

  Kylmä jälki (Gummerus, 2007)

  Seinää vasten (Gummerus, 2008)

  Prikaatin kosto (Gummerus, 2009)

  Katumurha (Gummerus, 2010)

  Paha paha tyttö, with Harri Nykänen (Crime Time, 2010)

  Muru (Crime Time, 2011)

  Suljetuin Ovin (Crime Time, 2012)

  Valepoliisi (Crime Time, 2013)

  Luupuisto (Crime Time, 2014)

  In German:

  Die weiße Nacht des Todes (Rohowolt Verlag, 2007)

  Im Dämmer des Zweifels (Rohowolt Verlag, 2007)

  In Italian:

  Morte a Helsinki (Aliberti Editore, 2011)

  HELSINKI HOMICIDE:

  DARLING

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Kari Takamäki.......Detective Lieutenant, Helsinki PD Violent Crimes Unit

  Suhonen.......Undercover Detective, VCU

  Anna Joutsamo.......VCU Sergeant

  Mikko Kulta.......VCU Detective

  Kirsi Kohonen.......VCU Detective

  Leif Nyström.......VCU Detective

  Toukola.......Narcotics cop

  Eero Salmela.......Suhonen’s old friend and ex-con

  Laura Vatanen........Victim

  Marjaana Vatanen.......Laura’s mother

  Nea Lind.......Defense attorney

  Sanna Römpötti.......TV crime reporter

  Jorma Korpivaara.......Building custodian

  Pekka Rautalampi........Mustache Guy at the Alamo Bar

  Heikki Lahtela.............The Quiet Guy at the Alamo

  Jaakko Niskala.......Small-time criminal at the Alamo

  Rautis.......Two-bit dealer

  Aarnio.......Late night garbage bag guy

  PROLOGUE

  FALL 2010

  HELSINKI PRISON

  He lay in the dimly lit prison cell. The only light was the red hue of the street lamp streaming in through the bars in the window. He couldn’t sleep, but the problem wasn’t the bed. He was used to sleeping on prison bunks by now, and the mattress wasn’t bad. The problem was his cell mate in the top bunk.

  They had brought the guy in two days ago, and it was obvious from his eyes that he’d been medicated. “Hell,” he said to the guards. “Take him to the hospital. He shouldn’t be here in that condition.”

  The guy coughed and wheezed for a minute before his breathing slowed down.

  Last night the guard asked him if the upper-bunk guy had taken his medication. What the hell did they think he was, a damn nurse? If the guard was so worried about it, he should watch the guy himself. Or take him to the hospital. The guard snorted and disappeared.

  Unlike his cell mate who lay in bed all day, he’d at least kept himself busy in the license plate shop.

  He heard mumbling from the top bunk but couldn’t make it out.

  He wasn’t scared of the guy; he could take care of himself, no problem. Sometimes, though, hallucinating junkies could get violent if they thought you were someone else.

  They’d exchanged a few words earlier in the day and it seemed like the guy was at least aware that he was in prison.

  “I killed her.”

  The direct statement startled him.

  “I killed her, goddammit.”

  Was the guy talking in his sleep or was he awake?

  “Strangled her. Fuck, I strangled her.”

  He wondered if he should say something to the guards, but for now decided against it.

  WEDNESDAY,

  DECEMBER 7, 2011

  CHAPTER 1

  WEDNESDAY, 11:25 A.M.

  NӒYTTELIJӒ STREET, HELSINKI

  The apartment complex custodian stood at the door in blue-and-yellow overalls, fiddling with a set of keys. Two uniformed police officers were waiting behind him. They didn’t mind the time he was taking, since this wasn’t an emergency call.

  The stairwell of the 1980s apartment building was as dull as the decade: pale gray walls, a landing laid in dark stone, stairs up and down, and four brown doors. Sergeant Tero Partio had seen hundreds of these stairwells. Despite the impression from TV reality shows, Partio sometimes had quiet nights at work, and on one of these he had wondered if there was an apartment complex left in Helsinki he hadn’t visited.

  Intrigued, he had looked up a website which gave the number of apartment buildings in the city as forty-five thousand. Over his career the total number of shifts he had worked amounted to about a tenth of that number, and he had never had as many as ten calls during a shift. So Partio concluded that he hadn’t even been to every block in the city, especially since the calls always seemed to concern the same few areas and buildings. This city-owned apartment complex in North Haaga was one of them.

  The last time he was in this building was back in August, when police had been called to an apartment on the first floor. Two men had shared a cab and ended up in a knife fight. A man who lived in the building had shared a ride with a thirty-year-old guy he had just met in a bar, and had offered to let him crash in his apartment. The police were called at ten o’clock after the men dug out their knives to settle an argument. With their wounds treated, they both ended up spending the night in the Töölö jail.

  That apartment was two floors below. Partio had glanced at the name on the mailbox and thought it was different from before. Maybe the hospitable gentleman had been evicted.

  “Okay, good,” Partio said when the maintenance man finally managed to unlock the door. He had a bandage on his index finger, which might have been why it took him so long. Perhaps he expected thanks, but Partio didn’t see the point, especially since the man smelled like booze, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

  “Stay here,” Partio said to the guy.

  The apartment was quiet, but the lights were on. At first glance the place looked clean—no piled-up mail behind the door or empty bottles rolling around to trip over. A piercing, sickly-sweet smell of iron
hit him, which was never good news.

  “Anybody home?” Partio asked loudly. “It’s the police.”

  No answer. As he walked down the hall he saw a coat rack and a small closet on the right. A beige rug covered the floor, and Partio noticed a rusty stain on it. Not a good sign.

  “Don’t step on the rug,” Partio warned his colleague Esa Nieminen, who was behind him.

  Tall, square mirror tiles divided the left wall in half, and he noticed that one of the squares was broken. He carefully opened the door on the right to what he correctly assumed was the bathroom. It was empty.

  Partio continued along the mirrored wall to the end of the hall. Past the bathroom, the door leading to a bedroom was cracked. Partio told Nieminen to check it out.

  “Anybody here? Police!” Partio yelled again. Finding someone passed out on the sofa wouldn’t be a first.

  On the right was the living room. A couch set against the wall was facing a TV, and a low coffee table was between them. Partio noticed a pool of blood on the floor. He walked closer, keeping to the wall, and saw a pair of feet. It didn’t seem like this call would have a happy ending—there was a lot of blood. He needed to check the victim without destroying any evidence. Walking along the wall, he stopped ten feet short of the body. A young woman, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, was lying on her back. Partio’s eyes fixed on her throat; it was slashed, leaving her head barely attached.

  Partio thought he had seen it all in his line of work, but this was almost too much. He swallowed hard.

  “There’s a body over here,” he told Nieminen. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Partio glanced at his young, baby-faced colleague and watched him slowly push the bedroom door open with a pen. Nicely done, he thought.

  It was critical to keep from touching anything so the Forensics team could extract as much uncontaminated evidence as possible. Nonetheless, Partio and Nieminen had to check the rest of the apartment in case the perpetrator was still there. In the kitchen, Partio half expected to see a man who had committed suicide.

  The officer’s eyes stayed fixed on the woman. If he had suspected that she might still be alive, he would have acted to save her life, not caring about preserving evidence. But there was no doubt she was dead: her gray shirt had dark-red stains on it, and had folded over a bit to reveal some of her abdomen. Her blonde hair was covered in blood.

  Partio noticed three teddy bears on the couch. A “mother” bear held a small, black teddy bear with a bow on its ear in her lap, while a “father” bear was propped up to hold hands with the “mother.” Above the couch was an unframed poster: the setting sun over a beach with palm trees. Partio wondered if that was what the woman had dreamed about. He sighed, and imagined that a beach vacation was exactly what he needed.

  “Nobody in the bedroom,” Nieminen said.

  “Okay,” Partio barked. “Go back to the front door and don’t touch anything.”

  “Got it,” his colleague said, frustrated by Partio’s orders.

  Partio walked from the couch to the other side of the room, staying close to the TV to preserve any possible footprints. The door to the balcony was in front of him. He peered out between the curtains and saw only a pile of junk on the balcony floor. It was still sleeting.

  He glanced at the woman again. She looked grotesque amidst the partially dried blood. Her heart, in panic, had pumped out a lot of blood onto the floor, so Partio concluded that she had been alive for some time after the slashing. Otherwise the apartment looked clean and undisturbed. The coffee table still had a bottle of wine and two glasses. He could see no signs of struggle—no items strewn about, no upturned furniture, nothing broken.

  Partio peeked around the corner into the kitchen and saw a counter, a refrigerator, and a small white table with two wooden chairs. He noticed a pungent smell and saw that the coffeemaker was on. The coffeepot was half full, and two empty cups sat on the table. Did someone have coffee here before the bloodbath? It definitely seemed like the killer and the victim knew each other. Partio touched nothing and left the coffeemaker on.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and called Dispatch. On-duty lieutenant Helmikoski answered quickly.

  “Patrol 281,” the sergeant said grimly. “The call at Nӓyttelijӓ Street in North Haaga.”

  “What about it?” Helmikoski asked tersely. Partio wondered if he was interrupting the guy’s coffee break. Instinctively, he glanced at the coffeemaker again.

  “We’ll need the guys from Violent Crimes over here. There’s a body.”

  “Homicide or natural cause?” Dispatch asked.

  “Homicide.”

  “Is it fresh?” Helmikoski asked calmly.

  “I’d say it’s from this morning. A young woman’s throat was slashed from ear to ear.”

  “Shit. Any sign of the killer?”

  “No, nobody’s here.”

  “Alright, don’t touch anything. I’ll alert Homicide. I think Takamäki’s crew is on duty; they like this kind of thing.”

  “Well, let them like it, I don’t,” Partio said and hung up. He pulled out a pad of paper and a pen and drew a sketch of the crime scene and the position of the corpse. It wasn’t a great picture, but it provided the basic facts. He always drew a sketch in homicide cases, just in case the body got moved before VCU or Forensics arrived. Of course there was no risk of that this time.

  Partio returned to the hallway, avoiding the blood-stained rug. He stopped to examine it and could see a couple of small dried-up drops of blood. He wondered if they belonged to the victim or the murderer. Sometimes killers accidentally cut themselves in the process of stabbing or slashing their victims. But it wasn’t his job; the homicide detectives would take care of it. The sergeant’s task list was simple: to do a preliminary check of the crime scene and then secure the premises to make sure no one touches anything.

  The sergeant pulled his notepad back out of his pocket and glanced at his watch. He wrote down the time: 11:33 A.M. He also wrote down his other observations, including the coffeemaker. He knew the guys from VCU would ask.

  Next Partio would find the person who called the police. Nieminen could guard the door.

  * * *

  Detective Mikko Kulta was driving an unmarked Volkswagen Golf, heading north on Nӓyttelijӓ Street. It was a gray Wednesday in December, and the wipers were lazily clearing the sleet off the windshield. A couple of inches of slushy snow covered the asphalt. The start of this winter didn’t seem to promise the idyllic snow banks seen on postcards—more like the typical Helsinki weather of 32 degrees and wet shoes.

  The car’s heater didn’t work properly, and the windshield kept fogging up. The Golf was a little worse for the wear anyway. The tires crunched against the pavement. A couple of Coke cans and a crushed Styrofoam coffee cup rolled on the floor in the foot well of the passenger seat. The undercover unit had used the car the night before to cover the President’s Independence Day Ball. Apparently guys called in from out of town had used it; they hadn’t even bothered picking up the trash. The smell of farmer’s sweat confirmed the husky blond detective’s suspicion.

  The drive from the station at Pasila to the crime scene took only five minutes. The North Haaga neighborhood sat at the intersection of the Hämeenlinna Freeway and the Ring One Beltway. Most of the box-like structures built in the 1950s had a stucco or brick finish.

  Sergeant Anna Joutsamo sat next to Kulta. She was about ten years his senior, and he had noticed a few wrinkles appear on her face. He wasn’t sure if they were due to her age or profession.

  The two didn’t talk much, but not because they didn’t get along; they were both focusing on the job at hand. The preliminary report didn’t give them much to go on. Twenty-six-year-old Laura Vatanen had been murdered in cold blood in her apartment. She was unmarried, had no children, and no criminal record.

  Despite the fact that there was no husband, their starting point was clear: in the majority of cases with a female victim, the perpetrator
could be found among family or friends. Clues for possible boyfriends might be in the woman’s cell phone records, email, or calendar. Her whereabouts the night before would be investigated. Maybe she had met someone at a bar.

  Kulta drove past a strip mall at the corner of Nӓyttelijӓ Street and Ida Ahlberg Street. A blue city bus pulled into a stop right in front of them, blocking the lane. Kulta leaned forward to wipe condensation off the windshield and waited for the bus to pull out. It slowly chugged up the slight hill and veered to the left.

  “We’re headed to one of the city-owned public housing buildings, right?” Kulta asked.

  “Yup,” Joutsamo replied. “Not the most peaceful neighborhood.”

  Joutsamo lived in a studio apartment in Töölö, an upscale neighborhood in the city. She knew that a few months ago Kulta had moved to Kannelmӓki, a mile north of here.

  “So, is your apartment city owned?” she asked.

  “Actually no, privately owned. My girlfriend thought it’d be nice to get some uninterrupted sleep and not have to listen to the brawls from the bar across the street. Other than that, our old place was nice…so close to the local pub.”

  “So your new place is near that old strip mall?”

  “Just a few hundred feet away. No shortage of drunks in Kannelmӓki, either.”

  Joutsamo seized on Kulta’s mention of a girlfriend. “You two planning on getting hitched?”

  Caught off guard, Kulta’s head snapped right to look at his colleague. Joutsamo had a hard-line approach that often showed on her face; she didn’t talk about her own life and usually didn’t pry into others’ affairs, either. Anna went to the homicide unit’s parties and happy hours, but was always a little reserved.

  “Why you asking?”