Helsinki White

19

Milo and Sweetness were curious about what Moreau wanted. I told them he would stop by tomorrow and explain it himself. I dropped them off and went shopping. Milo and Sweetness had complained that I demanded that they be subdued in their appearance and actions, so as to not attract attention to themselves. They chided me because my own appearance, limp and facial scar, made me stand out in a big way. I would set an example. Tomorrow was my “Welcome back to the world” party, an ideal time to unveil the new and improved, surgically enhanced and nondescript Kari Vaara. I bought a cane. Plain and cheap. My knee surgery was so successful that I wouldn’t need it long.

Then I shopped for hair color. I had no idea the selection would be so large. Should I enhance my natural hair color, go subtle or dramatic? My natural color was now gray, and my hair has the feel and consistency of squirrel fur. I hadn’t had it cut in two months and had gone from a close-cropped military look to unkempt and messy. Kate pestered me to do something about it. Tomorrow, she would see why I hadn’t.

Afterward, I went home. Kate had come to accept that she must endure nine months of motherhood leave. The Finnish lesson was finally drilled into her: We do things a certain way because we’ve always done them a certain way, and we do them in that certain way because it’s the way we’ve always done them. Attempts to change our accepted norms breed disdain.

Without the sociopaths that work for me lurking about, home was tranquil. Kate seemed content. She seldom asked about my work, but when she did, sometimes she called me Michael Corleone. She didn’t smile when she said it. We got along well, though. My practiced smile carried me through the sham of emotion. We sat together for a while, talked the banalities of couples with a newborn, and then I told her I had to go back to researching my murder case.

I considered the Finnish French Foreign Legionnaire turned French policeman and figure of international intrigue and wondered if he was all that he said he was. I would grill him tomorrow. He spoke of a mutually beneficial relationship. I had all the resources of government at my disposal. What did he think he could bring to the table to entice me? I agreed with him, though. There weren’t many people capable of calculated assassinations, far fewer with the skill and wherewithal to successfully execute them without being apprehended. And in a country with a population of only five and a half million, the pool of qualified suspects was small. We might very well have been looking for the same man.

I needed to acquaint myself with the Saukko kidnapping-murder. Saska Lindgren was in charge. I called him and explained that it was possible our cases intersected, and asked him to send me some files so I could get a handle on the Saukko case. While I waited, I skimmed the Internet, looked at almost year-old newspaper articles, and got a take on the press’s views of the crimes. After reading Saska’s files, I felt I had a reasonable picture of the sequence of events and the people involved in them.

VEIKKO SAUKKO: captain of industry, alcoholic, lunatic, art collector.

His collection includes more than five hundred pieces. Many are Finnish, but there are also works by Chagall, Dalí and Picasso, among many notable others. His estranged wife fled the country and is wanted for tax evasion, among other crimes.

Born in Helsinki on 22 April, 1941, into a prestigious and politically influential family, Saukko went his own way early and began building his career as a magazine publisher, specializing in scandal sheets. Launched in 1959, his best-known and most successful publication was Be Happy magazine. It focused on so-called human interest journalism. In the 1960s and 1970s, Be Happy achieved overwhelming popularity with indecent gossip about celebrities. The articles were sometimes fact, sometimes fiction, often a combination of the two.

Suicides, divorces, destroyed careers. Be Happy paid well for skank, and the skank was good. A teen idol gets tossed from a nightclub, the doorman sells skank. Teen gets tossed in drunk tank, cops snap skank photos. Said teen gets fucked in ass in drunk tank, guard sells skank story for big money. Such hard-core skank is never stated outright, but implied in a house style that always leaves the message crystal clear. A politician fucks a minor. Be Happy. A tough guy movie star sips fruity rum drinks in fruity swish bar. Finland knows. Be Happy.

Saukko got stinking rich because, better than anyone, he understood the Finnish zeitgeist. No one must try to rise above the masses. To do so is more than to risk contempt, but abject hatred. No one must try to accomplish something special. No one must be unique or gifted. The very attempt at virtuosity of any kind suggests that a person thinks he’s better than others. Frequently heard: “Kuka sekin luulee olevansa?”—Who does he think he is?

Yet, when an individual does succeed, he or she is beloved by the nation until that fateful day when, as they almost always do, the celebrity suffers a humiliation, either large or small. And then, proven right in their contemptuous beliefs, the nation rejoices. How Finns love to see the mighty brought low. How we hate people for trying to make the most of their talents. “Who did he think he was?” We know. He is, and always was, good only for skank.

In fact, stars are often OK with this, because after being reduced to skank fodder, they often turn it around and use it to rejuvenate their careers. Finnish stars turn alkie, dry out or claim to, then tell their sob stories to the media. A celebration of humiliation. Public applause and adoration. A common ploy. The price paid for the admission that they were no one after all. Dumped wives of stars do the same, rebuild their lives and start their own careers based on Oprah-type “Boo hoo hoo but aren’t I brave?” crap.

Finland was Skank Exultant. Finland was Skank Ecstatic. Daddy Saukko grew Skank Rich. Daddy Saukko is a good businessman and realized the limitations of wealth that can be accrued with Finnish skank, because it has no international interest. He sold Be Happy to a publishing conglomerate for hundreds of millions of Finnish marks, the equivalent of around a hundred million U.S. dollars.

Saukko invested part of this fortune in art and constructed his luxurious Villa Veikko, a mansion on a large tract of land fronted by the sea. Beside Villa Veikko is the family museum run by their foundation. Saukko diversified his corporation, Ilmarinen Sisu, and invested in the machine tool, ice cutter and paper industries, all of which flourished. After some years, Saukko foresaw the future. He divested his interests in the aforementioned industries and reinvested in securities and quantitative investment, the arms industries of various countries, investment fund management, technology and media. He believed the future of fortune building lay in technology and media manipulation, and arming Third World nations for small wars. He bought heavily into Nokia and Sanoma. As of today, his corporation controls nearly a quarter of Sanoma Corporation, his interest in it is valued at more than three hundred million euros. Forbes recently named him the five hundred and fifty-sixth richest man in the world, and the richest man in Finland, with investments in around fifty nations totaling 1.7 billion dollars.

Saukko comes from a long line of landed gentry. His father, Juho Saukko, was a lawyer, a politician and foreign minister who negotiated with the Soviet Union prior to the Second World War. During the Continuation War, Juho headed the Prisoner of War Office. After the war, in 1946, Juho was tried in a court-martial, but the charges were dropped. Post-war, he was a CEO or officer in several corporations, and headed the supervisory board in one of the nation’s largest banks. He also presided over the Finnish American Association. Juho was a devout racist, an admirer of Henry Ford’s opinions on race, in agreement with Nazi beliefs about race, and was fascinated by eugenics and the concept of Finnish racial purity.

According to his children, Veikko Saukko was an abused child, both physically and psychologically. His father was stern, critical, and impossible to please. Saukko himself is profane, cruel and violence-prone, known for striking employees without provocation, and his enjoyment of drunken bar brawls has resulted in him being locked up in drunk tanks in various cities around the world. He smokes three packs of cigarettes a day, has been an alcoholic since an early age, and even today, at age sixty-nine, habitually drinks four gin and tonics per hour. Several years ago, he spent three months in jail for drunk driving. His known associates include influential racists and a number of mafiosi from various countries. Saukko inherited his father’s racist views, and has no qualms about expressing them, either privately or publicly.

Saukko has a complex personality. Despite the above, adjectives used by friends and acquaintances to describe him include: charming, sensitive, droll, profound, open, timid, dreadfully shy, and a sophisticated and entertaining conversationalist. He’s also one of Finland’s most skilled open-sea yachtsmen. A picture emerges of a manic-depressive, even schizophrenic man.

His first wife, Anna-Leena, bore him five children, three girls and two boys. He divorced her suddenly and without apparent provocation after thirty-six years of marriage. Three weeks later, he married Tuula Jaatinen, age twenty-six. Tuula was made director of the Saukko art foundation and began embezzling right away. Over the course of two years, she absconded with, at best estimation, 10.2 million euros. She was tried and convicted for embezzlement, but disappeared rather than serve her three-year prison sentence.

Currently, Tuula lives in Switzerland. Finnish authorities requested that the Swiss return her to Finland, but the Swiss prevented the extradition. She’s wanted by Interpol, as requested by Finnish officials. Her location in Switzerland is known to Finnish police and press. Interestingly, she’s still married to Veikko Saukko, even though, aside from the embezzlement described above, she’s rumored to have been the lover of Veikko’s son, Antti—also married with children—throughout the course of her marriage to Veikko.

Veikko’s first wife, Anna-Leena, is in deep legal difficulties herself. As former director of the foundation, she was accused, via multiple lawsuits, of misappropriation of funds. In 2007, she declared bankruptcy, after being court-ordered to return 17.5 million euros to the foundation.

The five Saukko children all live at home, with the exceptions of Kaarina, deceased, and Antti, missing for nearly a year, in the mansion that stands two hundred meters behind the museum. Veikko insists that he stays surrounded by his children, whether single or married, and that they reside in the mansion. He enforces this through financial blackmail. His children are:

SON JANNE—member of corporation’s board of directors. Age thirty-seven.

SON ANTTI—member of corporation’s board of directors, but a less-than-serious person. He prefers yachting, snowboarding and surfing to working. Married. Father of four. Age thirty-nine.

DAUGHTER KAARINA—party girl. A Finnish Paris Hilton. She would have been age thirty-two.

DAUGHTER JOHANNA—married and mother of two. Lutheran priest. Age forty-two.

DAUGHTER PAULIINA—the troubled child. Engaged in prostitution as a minor, presumably to antagonize her father and defy him to publish her antics in Be Happy. Finally he did, after which she gave up prostitution. She did, however, become a heroin addict. She’s now a recluse, seldom if ever leaves the mansion, and is addicted to methadone. Age forty-four.

His children despise their father and have made no effort, not even in the media, to pretend otherwise. Some of them believe he has a narcissistic personality disorder, and a total inability to feel empathy. They complain that he subjects them to late-night drunken monologues, and pits them against one another by constantly changing the provisions of their inheritances.

Veikko, for many years, put off choosing which of his children would take over the family business. Finally, apparently no believer in primogeniture and for reasons incomprehensible, Veikko chose Antti, the prodigal son, and transferred all power in the family company to him without informing his other children. This despite that Antti had for years called his father an asshole, a human monster, the worst sort of pig, and probably fucked his wife on a regular basis.

The children had formerly felt a solidarity. When Antti was chosen, that solidarity disappeared, and they began slagging one another in the media. Janne was sacked from his position on the board of directors. Each of the other children had held honorary positions in the corporation, to provide them with exorbitant incomes. They were also let go, and are now at the complete mercy of their father for income. This situation continued until August 2008 when Antti—in the same way that he was appointed, and equally unfathomably—was removed as chairman of the board, and complete control over the company reverted back to Veikko. This remained the family dynamic for the better part of a year.

Then in 2009, on May twenty-seventh, almost a year ago, two of the Veikko children, Antti and Kaarina, were kidnapped from the family home, and at the same time, paintings Veikko had recently acquired, by Cézanne, Lautrec and Mary Cassatt, were stolen. As the children came and went without notice for lengths of time, and although the theft of the paintings was realized the following day, the absence of Antti and Kaarina wasn’t taken seriously by either the family or authorities for three days, and then only because they couldn’t be located for questioning concerning the theft.

These two members of the Saukko industrial dynasty were kidnapped and held hostage for ransom. A kidnapping of such magnitude from such a powerful family was unprecedented in Finland. A long and complicated course of events unfolded.

May thirtieth: The brother and sister were declared by the police to be considered missing persons. However, the police didn’t immediately assume kidnapping to be the reason for their disappearance.

June second: A ransom e-mail was sent, in English, to the family matriarch, Anna-Leena. It read:

Sender: Charles Brown

Sent: 2. June 9:47

To: Anna-Leena@gmail.com

Mrs Saukko.

Please note that this email concerns your daughter K. and son A. who we will from now on call merchandise.

Merchandise is in good shape, healthy and so on. There are certain rules to obey in order to make us deliver Merchandise back to you.

1. No contact to any authorities! Not to any third parties, etc.

2. 0400769062, your mobile, should be on and ready to receive further instructions.

3. price will be paid in cash, used notes only. No new notes.

4. procedure. we instruct the payment delivery, you leave the cash there, and we will secure the payment. Please note that we will also check payment for any surveillance devices, etc. When payment is secured merchandise will be released. If surveillance devices are used to follow us, we will begin amputating the limbs of the merchandise, tourniquets used to prevent death, and will continue to do so until we have identified all surveillance devices and surveillance is discontinued.

5. ANY fault or trick, and you will never hear from us or the Merchandise again.

6. Price shall be 10,000,000 paid in euros, 6 in 500 notes, 2 in 200 notes, and 2 in 100 notes.

7. payment will be packed in two sports bags, instructions concerning delivery will be given later. Deliverer needs your mobile phone, a gps map and a car.

I noted that this was inconsistent with demand number two, as they had already stated that they had the mobile phone number. Were they careless, or working to give the impression of carelessness?

8. answer this email and let us know when you are ready to deliver.

Merchandise is out of the country of the moment.

You have now 12 hours to answer this email.

XM

Anna-Leena called her former husband, Veikko. He went against the kidnappers’ wishes and called the police immediately. He also made the requested initial contact by e-mail. The police considered whether the kidnapping was legitimate, and if so, whether the kidnappers’ use of English was a reasonable indication that Kaarina and Antti were truly now outside of Finland. Veikko Saukko made it clear that the police were to investigate, but should they fail to recover his children, the ransom would be paid according to the kidnappers’ instructions, whatever their demands might be.

Over the coming days, hundreds of police took part in the investigation, headed by the Helsinki Police Department, and the minister of the interior was kept informed of every action and development. The police had two significant clues.

1. Although the stolen paintings were valuable, artwork of far greater value was left untouched. Presumably, the kidnappings were perpetrated at the same time that the art thefts occurred. The stolen paintings were recently acquired and as yet uninsured. This displayed knowledge that insurance companies will continue investigations for years, long after police have thrown in the towel, thus demonstrating that the kidnappers and thieves were experienced and knowledgeable criminals. They devoted a great deal of attention to doing their homework, somehow accessing privileged information about which paintings were most prudent to steal.

2. The villa’s security system was disabled. Investigation of the company that installed the villa’s system revealed that the files detailing the Saukko security system were accessed on Sunday the ninth of May, almost three weeks prior to the crime. A great deal of time, thought and preparation went into the crime beforehand. The security company had noticed no signs of break-in, a slick job, and the files were user name and password protected, so the criminals were technologically savvy. These were people to be reckoned with.

No effort or expense was spared. The kidnapping sparked a major operation involving the police, the Defence Forces, the Border Guard, and Finnish Customs.

June fifth: The small airfield at Kiikala was shut down to aid in the investigation of the kidnapping. Under the pretense of an exercise, civil aviation assisted police authorities by restricting the use of the airspace between Helsinki and Turku for nearly the next two weeks. Radio-controlled pilotless planes from the Finnish Defence Forces’ base in Niinisalo were taken to Kiikala for use in discreet reconnaissance work. Equipped with powerful cameras, the diminutive unmanned aircraft were able to transmit high-resolution images from an altitude of two thousand meters or even higher. Police refrained from the use of traditional aircraft and helicopters in the search, for fear that they would alert the kidnappers and the result would have fatal consequences for the Saukko siblings.

On June ninth, authorities give up on the search from the sky. The Kiikala airfield was re-opened.

There was a gap in Saska’s notes here. Saska doesn’t make such mistakes. I took it that there was information he wished to hold back for reasons of his own, and he deemed that information irrelevant to my investigation. I trusted his judgment. I wouldn’t question it.

June tenth: Veikko Saukko e-mailed the kidnappers and informed them that he had raised the cash and was prepared to make the exchange. He was given the following instructions. He was to park a car at one p.m. in a specific space in a parking garage in Helsinki. The bags of cash were to be in the trunk, the key taped under the rear bumper. An orange traffic cone should be placed in the adjacent space to the right to reserve it.

The kidnappers chose their parking spot well. Only one security camera picked up on them, and they were obviously disguised in wigs, sunglasses and false facial hair. In front sat a driver. In the rear, Kaarina Saukko and a man holding a surgical saw in one hand and a scalpel in the other. Kaarina’s eyes and mouth were covered by tape. The driver moved the cone, parked, and transferred the sports bags of money to the front seat of his own car. They left the garage and were monitored by UAV aircraft until they entered a forested area near Turku under tree cover, out of view.

Twenty minutes later, the car exploded. Kaarina Saukko had been moved a safe distance from the vehicle, bound hand and foot but uninjured. The man in the rear of the vehicle beside her was discovered to be a mannequin fastened upright in the car. The lone kidnapper appeared to have left the scene of the explosion on a small motorcycle, probably a dirt bike. Kaarina reported that during the time she had spent abducted, she received good treatment in the basement of a home. During transport, her eyes were covered, but it had been a long journey. She also stated that she and Antti had been separated, and that she never saw him during the time of her abduction.

That evening, on the bank of the Aurajoki River, which runs through Turku and into the sea, the body of Jussi Kosonen was found. He had been murdered by a single gunshot to the back of the head. His body was near a speedboat that he had purchased in Turku, with cash, three days previously. The money and paintings were nowhere to be found. Multiple sets of Kosonen’s fingerprints were found in the wreckage of the burnt-out car used in the crime. Fingerprints also proved Kaarina had been held hostage in the basement of his home, which he had soundproofed.

Investigation into Jussi Kosonen raised many questions but answered none. He had been a forty-four-year-old corporate lawyer employed by the University of Turku. Kosonen had studied in Turku and Stockholm and spoke several languages fluently. His profile bore no resemblance to that of a high-stakes kidnapper, and according to his employer, he didn’t have money difficulties.

The Turku branch of the Social Democratic Party was flabbergasted by the revelation. Kosonen had stood as a Social Democratic candidate in the municipal elections in the autumn of the previous year. He lost the election. Kosonen was the father of three and in the process of getting a divorce. He was supposedly tending to the children while his wife was on a two-week vacation in Tenerife. The children hadn’t attended school during that time. Kosonen had informed the school that he had decided to take the children and join his wife on holiday, in an apparent attempt at reconciliation.

Antti Saukko wasn’t returned to his family and remains missing, raising the question of whether he took part in the crime or was murdered by his kidnappers. Kaarina Saukko was assassinated with a high-powered rifle while strolling outside the family villa three days after her release. The bullet entered one temple, passed through her head, and exited out the other side. The bullet was never recovered. However, the wound channel suggested the bullet had been fired from a.308 caliber rifle with a full metal jacket. A simulation of the sniping, guesswork at best, and a calculation of trajectory based on it indicated that the shot had been fired from about seven hundred fifty meters.

If the killer were proficient enough, he could have fired a sniper rifle with the intent of passing the round through her head without hitting hard bone, and he would know what lay beyond her, and could have intended to ensure that the bullet came to rest in a place from which it would be impossible to locate and recover. For instance, in a patch of grassy lawn, where the bullet would bury itself and be impossible to find, or into the sea. Such an assassination would require a marksman of significant prowess.

No progress whatsoever has been made in the case since her murder.

I got an e-mail from Milo. He spoke with Ismo, the pathologist, about Lisbet Söderlund’s head. Ismo hates to be called and asked for synopses of autopsies. He expects a detective either to take enough interest to show up at the autopsy, or wait for the transcription, which may take months. I’ll send him a bottle of scotch. Grumpy though he was, he informed Milo that Lisbet was dead when she was decapitated. Her neck was severed through to the spine with a single ring-like cut, and then her spine was severed with a fine-toothed electric saw. The act was smooth enough to be worthy of a talented butcher. More expertise and professionalism. My talk with Moreau tomorrow seemed of growing importance.