Helsinki White

25

The post-Vappu blues. Kate woke, scurried to the bathroom, retched and vomited. I was asleep when Kate got home, but she and Aino must have really tied one on. Kate isn’t much of a drinker. She was becoming more and more Finnish every day. She made it back to bed by way of serpentine tacking, too dizzy to walk straight.

Anu heard the heaving and woke up crying. I changed her diaper and used breast pump milk to feed her. I had coffee and a cigarette, got comfortable in my man chair, and Anu laid in my lap while I browsed the Sunday paper. Katt perched on my shoulder, as if reading along with me.

The violence, turmoil and rioting was downplayed, described as “displays of discontent and anger, as demonstrated by friction between blacks and whites and a lack of order in those areas in which immigrant populations were concentrated.”

Cover-up.

Editorials discussed “the justified fear of whites, confronted by armed and violent malcontent foreigners.”

Because our experience with people of color is relatively new, the Finnish language has yet to develop the wide range of hate vocabulary compared to, say, the United States, but write-in commentators did their best. Little nigger children should be vaporized, or at least sterilized, before they reached breeding age. Quotes by “Martin Lucifer King” were mimicked. “We shall overcome…all over your nigger faces.” “I have a dream…to see your faces burnt off with blowtorches.” And so on.

Hate congealed. Amoebas of hate divided and subdivided and renewed themselves in abhorrent mitosis. Almost all the countries in the European Union were faced with immigration problems. An interesting response to an editorial. “If we can’t kill them outright, could we re-institute slavery and sell them as chattel, and thus receive compensation, recoup the monies spent on their maintenance?” The most reasonable suggestion was to simply revoke the EU membership of those countries with low per capita incomes, and send their former inhabitants back where they came from. A thoughtful comment by a good hater.

I expected a call from Saska Lindgren, and my premonition proved correct. He asked if I could meet him at the same address as before. The entire black family there was now dead. I told him I’d like to bring the rest of my team, and a consultant I was working with. He said no problem. I called Milo, Sweetness and Moreau, and told them where to meet me. I didn’t need them, but Milo would want to take part, I had promised Moreau, and because of Sweetness’s unusual reaction at the murder scene of the soldier in the forest, I thought he needed to get accustomed to death investigations.

I put Anu in her crib and told Kate I was sorry to leave her in such a condition, but I had to go to a murder scene. She was ghastly pale and nodded acknowledgment without opening her eyes.

On the way over, I called Jyri and arranged to meet him later. He was less than pleased that I called at such an early hour the day after Vappu, but I assured him it was worth the pain of having his hangover disturbed. I promised he would be glad to see me, because I had a hundred fifty thousand euros for him. I usually skimmed ten percent off the top, but there was so much money, and the amount had such a nice ring to it, that I didn’t bother.

I arrived about ten a.m. The street was lined with vehicles. The press, cops, forensics people, curious citizens, all milled about. Police tape lined the whole of the property, meaning the house and its small front and back yards. Spring was here. The snow was all gone now, and likely wouldn’t be back for the next few months. The temperature was about the same as yesterday, but a wet breeze made it feel colder. Milo was already there, sitting on the front stoop, talking to Saska. Sweetness and Moreau hadn’t arrived yet.

“So they killed the rest of the family,” I said.

Saska nodded.

“How?”

“It’s too much to describe. Go out back and have a look if you want.”

“I’m in no rush. I’ll wait on the others.”

“I don’t like looking at it,” he said. “It’s just another murder in a sense, but this one is just so fucking disillusioning.”

Milo got up and motioned for me to follow him out of hearing distance of the crowd. “We took the body and dumped it like we planned,” he said.

“Good.”

“Well…it was weird. We opened the trunk and the guy wasn’t dead. Almost, but not quite. He didn’t move or say anything, but he looked at us and blinked. I wasn’t sure what to do. We could have dumped him in front of a hospital.”

“But,” I said.

“But Sweetness didn’t even want to talk about it. He took a pull off that flask of his, felt around the guy’s chest and found a spot between his ribs near his heart. Then he took that knife I gave him and just slid it into the guy’s chest. Killed him dead as a hammer. ‘Problem solved,’ he said. Then we suited up, dropped the guy in acid, sealed up the barrel and left.”

“What did you do with the car?”

“Took it to East Helsinki and torched it with a Molotov cocktail. I figured it would go unnoticed, since other cars were burned in the area.”

“Good plan.”

“That’s all you have to say? ‘Good plan’?”

I shrugged. “What should I say? What’s done is done.” I felt a little silly for thinking Sweetness needed to get used to murder scenes. Other than that, I had no other feelings about it, one way or another.

“Sweetness is a fucking psycho.”

“I watched you kill a man. Are you a fucking psycho?”

“The circumstances were different.”

“Semantics.”

He stared at me for a minute. “That surgery changed you,” he said.

“Listen,” I said, “I hired Sweetness in part because I recognized in him the ability to commit acts of violence without angst or upset. You enjoy violence because it makes you feel like a tough guy and reinforces your self-image. But your self-image is a lie you tell yourself. If you hurt someone, you feel guilty about it, suffer, have to unburden yourself and cry on my shoulder. You probably feel bad about wrecking that SUPO agent’s face. Sweetness couldn’t give a shit less if he hurts someone, just doesn’t care one way or the other, and I don’t have to listen to his sob sister boo hoo hoo remorse.”

I pounded Milo’s ego to dust. I didn’t mean to. He stared down at his muddy boots. “You can be really mean sometimes.”

I fake smiled and held up my cane. “I can also be nice. You be nice, or I’ll tell my lion to bite you.”

He just shook his head and wandered off.

Sweetness and Moreau showed up, I introduced them to Saska, and we all went back to view the murder scene. The racists who promised retaliation proved as good as their word. First, the young men were gassed to death, and now this.

Their mother and sister were laundry-line lynched, then set ablaze. The laundry poles stood opposite each other, and cords to hang up wet laundry were stretched between them. The poles weren’t high enough for a proper lynching, so the killers had tied their ankles and wrists, cinched them tight behind their backs so they only needed about three feet of clearance, and hoisted them up the laundry poles. One body lay on the ground. The other, miraculously, still hung. The rope hadn’t quite burned through.

The bodies were mostly burned down to the bone, the flesh reduced to soot hanging on it. And in the grass near them, the words neekeri huora were burned into the lawn.

Milo shook his head in disbelief. “For God’s sake, why them?”

“It was likely the most repulsive thing the murderers could think of,” Moreau said.

Saska said, “I don’t know what they used, but it was a really powerful accelerant.”

Moreau did an impression. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Smells like…victory.”

“Who’s that supposed to be?” Saska asked.

“Robert Duvall from Apocalypse Now. These women were soaked in homemade napalm. I know it by the smell. It’s basically just gasoline and soap. It causes the most terrible pain you can imagine. Even this homemade stuff burns at about fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And it’s obvious to me, by looking at the burn pattern on their mouths, chests, and in the lawn in front of them, that they were forced to drink napalm and it was lit while they vomited. They died spewing fire like dragons.”

Everyone went silent. Except for Moreau and myself, I believe they resisted the urges to both cry and poke.

“But why the words burnt into the yard?” Moreau asked. “‘Whore’ is singular. There are two bodies.”

“That’s directed at me, as a taunt,” I said. “I worked a case in which a black woman was murdered. Those words were carved in her torso.”

Moreau chuckled and faked a different voice. “So this time it’s personal.”

I didn’t ask which movie he quoted. “But what’s the point?”

“It’s obvious,” he said. “To up the ante. To keep you enchanted and your enthusiasm high. The horror of the violence keeps the pressure up and the case top-priority. For some reason, the killers desire this. Probably for maximum media exposure.”

Milo, Saska and I lit cigarettes.

“Why are you here?” Saska asked him.

Sweetness had been staring at the hanging girl, mesmerized. Finally, he reached out and touched her with his index finger. The rope snapped and she fell. An arm broke off. Only ash was left on the bone and it swirled away in the breeze. Sweetness watched as if in a dream state. Death fascinated him. A forensics tech started to yell at him. I poked the tech in the chest with my cane and told him to fuck off. He fucked off.

“I’m a French policeman,” Moreau said, “and I’m here at the behest of Veikko Saukko, who has some influence with the French government. It’s been almost a year since his daughter was shot and killed. His confidence in the Finnish police has waned. And so here I am.”

“It’s my case,” Saska said, “and a major reason I haven’t made any progress is that he refuses to cooperate with me in any way.”

“He’s an eccentric racist. You are half Gypsy. He calls you ‘that thieving Gypsy.’ He believes you steal when you come to his home. However, he likes me, because as a former soldier, I have killed many non-white people. He considers this the most admirable of attributes. I believe all these murders, beginning with the kidnap-murder of his family, are connected to this series of murders, and to the murder of Lisbet Soderlund.”

“Have at it,” Saska said. “I need help. I would appreciate it, though, if you share your findings with me.”

“Consider it done. If I solve the case, I will ensure that you receive the credit.” Moreau turned to me. “I think you should meet Veikko Saukko. It might lend perspective.”

“I was hoping to,” I said. “I’ve decided that the way to solve this case is through the interviews of a few key individuals. Some might call them interrogations, and the application of pressure may be somewhat more aggressive than is considered standard. Let’s say, with extreme prejudice. We’ll begin soon. You’re welcome to accompany us if you like.”

“You intend to go on a rampage?”

“Call it what you will.”

Saska frowned, disapproving.

“I have little choice,” I said, and pointed at the victims. “Look at these women. This can’t go on. People are being murdered almost daily. It must be stopped.”

To Milo and Sweetness, I said, “You have girlfriends, of a kind. You drink with them. That breeds loosened tongues. Don’t tell them our business.”

Milo smirked. “You mean like the way you don’t tell Kate our business.”

His point was valid. I ignored it. “Just keep your fucking mouths shut.”

I thanked Saska, told the others I would call them later, then went home to check on Kate.

I took a circuitous route, gave myself time to think.

As a young beat cop, I spent a lot of nights cruising these streets, watching Helsinki in the wee hours. The drunks drifting home after the bars closed. I watched a city awash in pain. I saw people run without direction, scream, beat their heads with their fists. Their pain and frustration shone and sparkled, beacons of anguish and insanity.

I played surrogate father to a young man so broken inside that he drank vodka upon waking and could drive a knife into a man’s heart without a thought. I spent my time examining women tortured and burned. I was lucky that I felt almost nothing. I remembered what it once was like to have emotions. Those poor tortured souls that felt were the ones who suffered.

Kate ordered a pizza and a bottle of orange Jaffa, her favorite Finnish soft drink. The salt and sugar in the pizza and pop did her a world of good. She was embarrassed and felt guilty, but for no tangible reason. She remembered little and wasn’t certain if she should be mortified at her behavior last night or not. She had discovered morkkis, an integral part of the Finnish hangover. A state of usually irrational moral guilt inherent to the Finnish consciousness. I told her it was OK, I was sure she did nothing embarrassing, just got loaded. This usually helps people recover from morkkis. I chilled out with her for a while, then went to meet Jyri.