The Bad Luck Bouncer

Prologue

Stockholm, Slussen – Saturday, August 18, 2001

Tapio Fokin took in the view from the Royal Crown Suite in Stockholm’s Hilton. The living area in the large suite faced the spectacular Old Town lights in the darkening night. Fokin wore his single-breasted suite, custom-made in Thailand. He had swapped out the vest for an underarm leather holster, where he carried his Austrian, semi-automatic Glock 17 pistol.

Fokin stood at the window with a pinched, irritated look on his face, his arms down in front of him with the right palm resting over his left hand. The suite was jam-packed with people, and the deafeningly loud music had made more than one carelessly placed flute of champagne totter off the speakers as the evening progressed. Although some guests danced like maniacs, most of them were seemingly satisfied with just swaying slowly to the music, gripping their drinks firmly. The women wore gorgeous cocktail dresses, all young and gorgeous themselves. One could have presumed they were fashion models on their night out, or celebrated beauties of the Stockholm upper crust, but nearly all of them were prostitutes, eagerly hawking their services to the guests. Sex, cocaine, wine, and champagne were all courtesy of the host, who had rented the suite for a week in a futile attempt at wasting even a meager slice of the millions he had inherited from his father. Tired partygoers languished on the white design leather couches and armchairs. A passionately kissing couple in the corner stood up and slunk hand in hand into the bedroom, the man slipping a tie around the handle before closing the door behind him.

Fokin observed all of this glumly. The suite had been in party mode for days. People came and went, and Fokin had no authority over the revolving door of surprise guests. Everyone who knew about the suite was welcome. Occasionally, the group headed out to the nightclubs in the city, and returned dragging a new horde of revelers along.

Tapio was sleep deprived, hungry, and fed up with the noise. He also needed to take a piss, and badly. Although this gig would net him an impressive 1,500 krona an hour, the work felt utterly meaningless. He had joined his friend’s security services company a few years earlier with completely different tasks in mind. Yet here he was, babysitting the young millionaires of Stockholm and their whores so that they could let loose and fill up their empty heads with illegal substances instead of career goals. Fucking Christ this bullshit, Fokin thought. If that was not enough, he battled with bouts of internal conflict due to his other role: a criminalist on a sabbatical.

Fokin had been keeping an eye on the argument between two dandies. The spat had apparently started from an accidental nudge, but was now brewing into a full-blown fight. One of the men was Fokin’s client, the host.

The men began to shove one another, and just as Fokin was about to interfere, the plastered guest who screamed and foamed at the mouth punched the host. Most of the guests did not even register this turn of events. Fokin rushed to the scene and gripped the pugilist by the wrist and the throat.

“Out?” he asked his client as he subdued the nuisance.

“Yes,” the host replied, staring back at his security guard with pupils the size of a snuff tin as he wiped blood off his face with a silk handkerchief.

Fokin assisted the kicking and wildly swinging beau out of the suit. He stood at the door making sure that the man wouldn’t start banging doors or otherwise expressing his displeasure loudly. The guest stumbled toward the elevators and flipped Fokin the bird with two hands over his shoulders. That’s when Fokin decided he’d seen all that providing security services for Stockholm’s elite could offer him. He would return to Finland. He missed Finland, Helsinki, and as unbelievable as it seemed, his poorly paying job as a cop.

Chapter 1: The Bear Cave

Helsinki, Vartiokylä neighborhood – Thursday, May 7, 2015

For many Finns, the dwelling of dreams was a single-family home at a lake, smack in the middle of a bustling city center; a place to enjoy uninterrupted peace and the greenery of the outdoors, yet still within walking distance from the nearest taxi pickup spot, metro station, and the shopping mall with all its amenities. Tapio Fokin, or Foka, as his friends called him, lived high up on a forested hill in the middle of the city. The location was perfect, but living there required a knack for adapting to a life without modern conveniences.

Foka lived in a janitor’s apartment in the Bear Cave, a large wooden building on the highest hill in Vartiokylä. The local sports club, Mellunkylä Bears, had built it with volunteer help back in the 1950s. Foka had learned about the club’s history enough to know that it had been an active association, offering its members everything from gymnastics to ski jumping. Over the decades, though, its activities had waned, and even the ski jumping slope was just a distant memory found only in photographs. The Cave itself was in bad disrepair. Its gray paint was cracked and the windows so drafty that Foka could hear them whistle. In addition to the janitor’s quarters, the building had a meeting room, a large banquet hall, and in the basement, a wood burning sauna and its dressing rooms. In 1974, the Bear Cave had fallen a victim to an arsonist, and when the partially destroyed Cave was fixed back up again, a small apartment for a janitor was added to it. It was unfortunate that nobody had foreseen the janitor ever having the need for a toilet, or a bathroom. Instead, a traditional outhouse stood in the backyard, at the edge of the forest, and Foka enjoyed using it in midwinter as much as his soon fifty-year-old prostate did.

Occasionally, the sports club organized get-togethers involving the sauna, and the banquet hall was rented out for various events per increasingly fewer requests as the years went by, resulting in the janitor having not much more obligations than keeping the building occupied. No more than twice a month was Foka’s presence needed to unlock doors for the banquet hall renters or to heat up the sauna for the club’s old timers.

When Foka returned from Stockholm, he went back to his old job as a criminalist at the police headquarters that were located in Helsinki’s Pasila neighborhood. At first Foka, who had grown used to a carefree life during his security guard years, had a hard time adjusting back to dealing with the violent crime unit’s drug overdose and drunken downtown stabbing cases. But soon enough he was back in his old routines and he could imagine continuing on this track until his retirement days. His views changed in 2007, when a new Chief of Police was appointed to their department, thanks to yet another reorganization. This time, it was Lieutenant Seppo Riikolainen, and he had no appetite for having Foka in his team. The tall tales of Foka’s years in Stockholm had blessed him with a reputation as a tough guy who didn’t shy away from physical altercations, and that may have had something to do with Riikolainen’s views. When Riikolainen looked at Foka he didn’t see a exemplary criminalist, and he made his opinions clear by handing out even remotely interesting cases to others. Problems with the chief slowly eroded Foka’s motivation, materializing in Foka repeatedly showing up to work hungover. It all came to a head at the department Christmas party, where Foka attempted to solve the problem with Riikolainen in the traditional Finnish art of fisticuffs. No formal inquiry was launched; the altercation was waved away as a Christmas party drama between two men who had had too much to drink. According to eyewitnesses, the altercation that was later referred to as Fokin’s performance improvement plan had not been exactly fair: one had a sore mug and the other had fists.

Foka, thoroughly over his career as a cop, quit and went to work as a bouncer at the Stone Age restaurant in Helsinki’s Sörnäinen neighborhood, around the same time when he moved into the Bear Cave. Although Foka’s dwelling was ascetic to say the least, he felt at home there. Because of his janitorial duties, the rent was merely a formality, and compared to his life in the apartment building, living on the hill was relatively peaceful. Even walking his dog had become easier: all Foka needed to do was crack the door open. Although the Cave stood on a small, remote recreational area that had public jogging and biking paths running through it, Topi the beagle knew to stay put and guard the plot of land, despite his eagerness to follow any old scent. He always alerted Foka with a grunt if someone wandered into the yard. 

Today, despite his usual night shift schedule, Foka got up already before 10 AM: he had had a day off, which had granted him an early departure to slumber land. On such early mornings, he usually had a cup of coffee, and then made his way into the banquet hall for practice.

The banquet hall was about 100 square meters of varnished birch parquet, and floor-to-ceiling windows covered one of the walls. Through the windows, Foka had a view of the forest and the large rock formation, where the ski jumping slope had once stood. At the end of the hall a typical large, round wall clock reminded visitors of the seven years the building had acted as a local school shortly after it was built. Foka stood in the middle of the hall, in front of a punching bag that hung from the ceiling, rolling his shoulders loose. They were stiff due to a well-slept night and his age. His closely cropped hair was dark, matching the five-millimeter long growth of beard on his chin. Foka, like many who worked security, favored short hair: long hair could turn into an unnecessarily easy handle poking out of a head, something for the opponent to grab onto should a wrestling match arise. Foka was 180 centimeters tall and weighed nearly exactly a hundred kilos. Some of the kilos were muscle created at the gym, some thanks to pizza and beer. With his boxy shoulders, Foka was quite a sturdy sight, especially when he wore his karate uniform.

Foka’s face, on the other hand, was more round than square. First people usually noticed the slightly crooked nose that had been broken many times over. Then they noticed his bright blue eyes. Although Foka’s gaze was friendly, something about his overall appearance gave off tough vibes, which frankly was only a benefit during his bouncer shifts. The occasional raging drunks at Stone Age were quickly subdued with a mere intense look flashed their way and a couple of choice words.

The karate uniform he wore had seen better days. It had faded and frayed from years of intense use: there were yellow sweat stains all over, and even the Japanese Kyokushin calligraphy embroidered in blue over the left breast had bits of thread hanging loose.

Foka began his morning practice every day with the same routine. First, he performed fifty sharp knuckle push-ups. Years and tens of thousands of push-ups had hardened Foka’s knuckles and numbed the thick skin over them. The push-ups were followed by a hundred crunches and then a stretching routine of his own design. For his age, Foka was still remarkably limber: he got pretty close to a side split and on good days, he could stretch into a full split. Usually, the primary practice consisted of various combinations of karate kicks and punches, either by shadow boxing or by sparring with the punching bag.

Foka rarely had mornings where something in his body didn’t feel sore. His eventful life had taken a toll on his body. Because Foka’s right shoulder had felt better than usual during the warm-up, he decided to focus solely on the punching practice. After he’d hit the bag for twelve two-minute rounds, Foka turned off the timer and sat on his knees, the tops of his feet in the seiza position. This was Foka’s favorite moment in the morning practice: his heart was still beating furiously and his breathing was laborious, and sweat ran down his tired face. Although his lungs were screaming for air, he kept his mouth closed and forced himself to breathe through his nose. Eventually, his breathing became more regular and his pulse slowed down. Foka kept his hands on his thighs and cleared his mind by focusing only on the sensations in his body.

Foka didn’t consider sitting in seiza a meditative practice. It was simply a short, focused, and calm moment in Foka’s life. Every time, right before he opened his eyes, he silently apologized to his body for having taken such poor care of it. Then he thought to himself, today is going to be a good day, got up off the floor, and headed to the sauna for a shower.

Chapter 3: Good Cop – Bad Cop

Helsinki – Friday, August 8, 2015

Miia Heliövaara was a thirty-year-old detective sergeant who worked at the Helsinki police force violent crimes unit. She was a tall, sporty blonde with a gently chiseled face that had been blessed with hypnotically bright green eyes.

As usual, she arrived at the Pasila offices a few minutes before eight in the morning. She waved her hellos cheerfully at the woman attending to visitors in the building lobby and nodded with a smile at the two uniformed officers who were on their way out the door. Miia took the elevator up to the third floor and badged herself in through the door with a Violent crimes unit sign above it. She entered a small lobby and turned left into a hallway. She stopped at a doorway to greet her colleague, Jari, who was already at his desk.

“Morning.”

“Good morning.”

“I’m about to send you an email. You’ll be happy to hear I have a report for you to type up,” Miia said and continued toward her office.

“Are you kidding me? Is it a bike again?” Jari yelled after her.

“Yup!” Miia’s voice rang in the hallway.

She draped her jacket over the back of her chair and sat down. Officers working on investigations didn’t wear the police uniform; they worked in their civilian clothes, which is why Miia wore stretchy slim jeans and a light green sweater. Around her neck hung a delicate gold chain, accompanied by her police badge on a silver ball chain. Miia turned her computer on, logged in with a badge reader, and quickly looked through her emails. Then she created a new draft for the recipient jari.vahalahti@poliisi.fi.

She reached into her backpack to dig out her stolen bicycle paperwork and then made her way to the kitchen for her morning coffee, which she usually drank from the mug she had received as a birthday gift from her colleagues. Good cop, read in white block letters on one side of the black mug; Bad cop on the other. Her colleagues had asked if she could kindly turn the mug on her desk to face the door depending on how her day was going. It was obviously a joke–Miia was always a good cop. She was cheerful, friendly, and diligent. Only occasionally, when she truly wanted to focus, she turned the Bad Cop side to face the door. Miia filled her mug with black coffee and returned to her emails. She set the cup at the edge of her desk and let the coffee cool a little. Today would be a Bad cop kind of day. She typed her message under the email subject: Halt! Thief!!!!

A women’s bicycle stolen–again (yes it was locked).

Former owner: Miia Heliövaaara

Current owner: How the #@!%* should I know…

Model: Trek T220 WNS (black)

Manufacturer frame ID number: W15H-I-KN3W

Value of the stolen bike: €1,120  (or about month’s net pay)

Incident location: Helsinginkatu 4 (I was having a SINGLE pint at Stone, OK?)

Incident time: Thursday, May 7, between 11PM and midnight.

Insurance: At If P&C Insurance Company Ltd.

P.S. I hope the police take action on this matter ASAP!!! Bare minimum, you have to assemble a team of commandos and publish a press release immediately! Additionally, nightly search parties (perhaps equipped with live torches) would be helpful. Yeah, I know you’re all busy, what with unsolved murders like Kyllikki Saari’s case from the 1950s still wide open, but come on, get to it. Chop, chop!

Miia chuckled as she read through her email, pleased with her handiwork, and then clicked Send.

She reported the theft to her insurance company later that day. The whole episode was handled over the phone so smoothly she wondered whether their records revealed her profession: the friendly agent on the other end of the line had promised they’d have the claim finalized within a couple of days and mailed to her home address, and that they’d get in touch if they needed any additional information.

Officially, Miia’s workday ended at four. But it was already past six when she logged out and was done with the day’s investigations. After work, she often biked directly to the Helsinki Athletic club gym to lift weights. She also went to Hokutoryu Ju-Jutsu practice at Kaapelitehdas, since she had fallen in love with this Finnish take on Japanese material arts in her police academy days. The gym didn’t entice her enough to take public transportation all the way to Ruoholahti, so she decided to stick around at the office for a while and read a book that her theology student friend had lent her.

The Gospel of Judas was a thin read, around a hundred pages. The introduction explained the gospel’s history: the manuscript, written in the Coptic language, was discovered in Egypt as recently as the 1970s, and later placed on the market for a high price to attract researchers and collectors alike, yet there were no bites. Then, the manuscript disappeared for another few decades, until the Swiss professor Rodolphe Kasser revealed in a Coptic specialist conference in Paris in 2004 that he had spent time with a piece of writing dubbed the Gospel of Judas. A committee was immediately established to translate the text, and the English version was published online in the spring of 2006. The Finnish translation that Miia was now reading was published later the same year.

The gospel showed Judas from a completely new point of view: he was no silver coin-hogging traitor, but Jesus’s closest disciple, with whom Jesus shared teachings he had kept secret from others. The other remarkable claims were that Jesus was not from this world, and that he didn’t worship the same god as his disciples did: according to the gospel, Judas had realized that Jesus came from the eternal world of the immortal Barbelo, and he had shared this revelation with Jesus. To this, Jesus had replied: “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom.”

Miia nearly finished the book in one sitting, occasionally popping only into the restroom and for another cup of coffee. Miia didn’t leave the office until it was almost nine o’clock. As she walked toward the Kallio neighborhood, she pondered what she had just read and how it provided completely new perspectives to Christian beliefs. Most of all, though, she was interested in that one word that had appeared in the gospel: Barbelo. It was tied to her investigation.

After arriving in her neighborhood, Miia decided to stop by at Stone to close out her unnecessarily long day at work with a beer. Foka sat on the coat check counter, browsing the Iltalehti tabloid, when Miia walked in.

“Good evening, m’lady,” Foka greeted her with a smile. “Did you submit that theft report?”

“Yeah, one and done,” Miia said and stopped in front of the counter.

“What about the insurance company? Did they have anything to say?”

“Seemed like a routine case to them. They should have a decision in a couple of days.”

“Good to hear. You’re here for a nightcap?”

“Yeah,” Miia said and headed over to the bar.

She would have liked to sit at the same table as the night before, but on a busy Friday, the restaurant was full of people getting their weekend started off with a bang. Instead, she stood and sipped her beer, eavesdropping on a young woman’s interpretation of pop song lyrics, and then concluded that she didn’t have a taste for the scene, after all. She would’ve rather sat in silence, just her own thoughts to keep her company, before going home. On Fridays, though, Stone Age was no place for a peaceful pint of beer if you were a beautiful young woman. When a young man powered by the liquid courage of ten tall boys smoothly sailed over to ask her how she was doing, Miia set her pint on the table and turned on her heel.

Foka was surprised at her quick visit.

“Didn’t have an appetite for a beer after all?”

“Nah. I’m pretty beat, and it’s been a challenging week at work.”

“Hey, you don’t have to make yourself buy a beer if you’re not feeling it. You can always come chat with me without any excuses, you know,” Foka said with a mischievous grin.

“Oh, is that so?” Miia said and hopped onto the coat check counter to sit next to Foka. “Well, what should we talk about?”

“We could start with that idea I had about how you copuld hide a sausage under the seat of your new bike, so that we can have my dog track it the next time it gets stolen,” Foka laughed.

“That idea truly sucked,” Miia said, although she couldn’t help but smile.

“True. Do you live somewhere around here?”

“Yeah, over there on Vaasankatu.”

“Listen, I can slip away for a moment to walk you home safely. You see, this hood is a bit restless for a woman to be walking alone. And I happen to have some business to attend to in that area anyway.”

“Fine by me,” Miia said and bounced off the counter.

Foka asked the bartender to keep an eye on the coat check for a couple of minutes, grabbed his coat, and took off with Miia.

They walked along Helsinginkatu quietly.

“So, whereabouts on Vaasankatu?” Foka finally broke the silence.

“Twenty-seven. Near the corner with the R-Kioski. Do you live around there?”

“Nah.”

“Where are you going, then?” Miia asked, watching Foka curiously.

“Just over there. I’m just going to walk you home first.”

“Well, walk me, then,” Miia laughed. “I’ve never had a bodyguard before.”

After chitchatting and strolling, they turned off Helsinginkatu to Fleminginkatu and arrived at the R-Kioski that Miia had mentioned.

“I live right next to this. Where are you heading?”

“I’ll go back to the restaurant and continue to nod off.”

“Wait, you came all this way to just walk me home? I thought you said you had some business around here?” Miia asked, still smiling.

“I suppose the business I had was to ask for your phone number,” Foka said, and despite sounding confident, he wasn’t able to look Miia straight in the eye.

“You didn’t need to walk all the way here just for that,” Miia said. She took her phone out and asked for Foka’s number, which she punched in as he recited it, and then called him. Foka answered the phone.

“Hey I’m a bit busy now; I’m courting a pretty girl. Can I call you back?”

“Girl, eh?” Miia said into the phone and hung up. “What name should I save this number under?”

“You can use Foka. How about me?”

“Miia.”

Foka gave Miia a quick hug, and headed back toward Stone Age. He felt something stirring. For the first time in a long while, he had met someone interesting.

Chapter 5: An Eight-Pointed Star

Helsinki, Pasila – Saturday, May 9, 2015

Miia reached for a piece of salted licorice from a bag off her desk and launched the StepsApp on her phone. According to the app, she had expended nearly seven hundred calories in the morning. And that translates to about fourteen thousand steps worth of volunteer cop work, she thought. Once again, she’d spent the majority of her day off from work looking into the puzzling case of the dead young woman. It was no longer listed under active, daily investigations, and besides, the police had no firm evidence that foul play had been involved.

The previous year in August, a young woman had stumbled into the Haartman hospital lobby in the wee hours of the morning, barefoot. She had died mere minutes later. When she had arrived she had been either in shock or having a psychotic episode: she had first screamed nonsense at the receptionist triaging the patients, then rushed back and forth inside the lobby until she finally collapsed onto the floor, sobbing. She had worn only an ankle-length dress. 

The freeze frame from security footage had led to the woman’s identification: she was Enni Havakka, 23 years old, born in Oulu. Nobody seemed to know what she had been up to after middle school. Enni’s father was dead and her mother was a non-functioning alcoholic. When Miia had talked to the mother, she had told Miia how Enni had often run away and once she had turned fifteen, she stopped coming back.

Miia had watched the security camera footage hundreds of times, rewinding and fast-forwarding the silent black-and-white video in an attempt at figuring out Enni’s last words. She had even reached out to lip reading specialists, who said it appeared that Enni was repeating the words barbelo and girls. Barbelo was the word the receptionist also confirmed having heard.

The cause of death turned out to be a cardiac arrest, caused by the combined effects of multiple opioids. She had had no alcohol in her system, but the drug analysis showed signs of cannabis use a few hours before her death, in addition to all the meds in her system.

Miia didn’t believe Enni’s case could be filed under an accidental narcotics overdose. She bore no signs of needle punctures, and Miia couldn’t find any other evidence of hard drug use. Yet the levels of narcotics found in her body were so high that this had to be a carefully planned suicide, or someone had murdered her. Because Enni had sought help at a hospital, Miia was leaning toward the latter scenario. The autopsy had also revealed that Enni was two months pregnant. Miia found it hard to believe that a pregnant woman would decide to kill herself and immediately regret it by running to the hospital for help. She had seen the fear and panic on Enni’s face, which told Miia that she didn’t understand what was happening to her. Enni hadn’t screamed about how she had taken too many pills; she had called out for help. This is why Miia didn’t buy the suicide theory. She was certain she was looking at a murder.

The security camera at the Institute of Occupational Health in Haartmaninkatu 1 had captured Enni. She had appeared from the direction of the city center, and had ducked into a recess where she had hunched down. A few seconds later, a taxi had passed by the cameras. As soon as the taxi was gone, Enni had continued stumbling toward Haartman.

This part of Enni’s journey told Miia two things: that she had come from the direction of the city center, and that she was obviously hiding from other people on the road. At first, it was strange that nobody had called the police about a confused, barefoot woman in a long dress stumbling along, but perhaps the late time and Enni hiding from people explained that.

The security camera was so close to the hospital that it didn’t help much in figuring out where Enni had started her journey. Still, Miia had figured out a clue relating to the size of the area she’d need to be investigating: Enni was neatly dressed and clean, except for the soles of her feet. Miia thought this meant that she had been indoors first, and had walked over to Haartman. If she had been dropped off in a car, why didn’t they bring her all the way to the hospital? There was no sign of Enni or any suspicious cars in the city center traffic cameras.

Enni had a curious tattoo on her ankle: a blue symbol signifying femininity, a circle with a cross hanging off the bottom. Inside the circle was an eight-pointed star. Miia had searched for information on the significance of this tattoo that appeared to be only a few years old. More than one tattoo artist had criticized its quality, saying it didn’t seem like the work of professionals. She didn’t find out who had tattooed her, and a reverse image search online didn’t produce any results, either. Miia decided on a simpler approach, and typed eight-pointed star in the search field. It produced a Wikipedia page.

Inanna is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility. She is also associated with beauty, sex, divine law, and political power. She was known by the Sumerians and Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians as Ishtar…

Miia had already read this page multiple times. Ishtar didn’t seem to have anything to do with the Bible or Barbelo. She had looked up online more information on the Queen of Heaven cult in Babylon that Ishtar was associated with, where a central tenet revolved around sexual rites. The Sumerian priestesses had taught sexual acts to men within the temple walls; the Sumerian sexual traditions had been a form of religious worshipping to them.

One of the words Enni had repeated, Barbelo, brought up many results online, most commonly in connection with materials discussing the Gospel of Judas. Unfortunately, the Gospel had given Miia no clues to solving the case.

She had also tried to figure out the origins of Enni’s blue dress and the silk fabric in particular, but had gotten nowhere. She had concluded that what appeared to be a homemade dress could very well hint at a religious community or a cult. The second word Enni had repeated haunted Miia: girls.  

Enni’s fair, untanned skin seemed to imply that she hadn’t spent time outside during the summer before she died. So where had she been, then? And why hadn’t she shown up on most security cameras? These questions kept bugging Miia. She had looked for other security cameras that could have caught Enni in their eye, but there were none. This led her to thinking that Enni had been drugged somewhere in Töölö and made her way from there, through hundreds of potential routes that weren’t tracked by security cameras. 

Miia had walked Enni’s potential routes from the city center to the hospital countless times. The large A1-sized map of Töölö’s environs on her office wall showed them all. Miia had tried to come up with routes she would have taken, if she wanted to avoid cars and other people; she had checked apartment buildings and their notification boards in the lobbies along the routes to find anything relating to Enni, some place where Enni could’ve been hiding or had been held against her will. But Miia didn’t even know what she was looking for. She just hoped she would know it when she’d see it.

Recently she had been walking along Mannerheimintie and checking the apartment buildings along the road, lobby by lobby. It felt like an endless task, and Miia found herself doing it on her own time in the evenings and on the weekends. Whenever Miia began to feel frustrated from snooping around for free, she tried to adjust her attitude and consider it a useful, daily exercise. The beginning of the thread that would lead to unraveling the case had been cleverly hidden from her, but at least she felt like she wasn’t just sitting idly when Enni needed justice.

Miia marked the addresses she’d visited that day on the map and wrapped up her volunteer work for the evening.

She grabbed another piece of salted licorice and opened Facebook. In the search field, she wrote Foka. No results. Google’s offerings for the same search term were pictures of a seal and a camera wholesaler. Miia was annoyed. Why hadn’t she asked the man’s full name? She tapped the phone in her hand and wondered whether to call Foka or not. She didn’t want to seem too eager, but then again, she thought it would be fun to take control of the situation.

I’ll let the love licorice decide, Miia thought. If it’s the side embossed with letters of the alphabet, I’ll call him. If it’s the flat side, I’ll wait for his move. She reached into the bag of candy, gave the piece a good luck kiss, and flicked it up in the air. She caught it midair and slammed it onto the back of her left hand. After a tense moment, she removed her right palm. Flat. Damn. Well, I guess I’ll just wait, then, Miia laughed to herself.

Chapter 9: Credit Card Craze

Stockholm and the Baltic Sea – Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Foka woke up in his Promenade cabin quite hungover and noticed he was still wearing all his clothes. He even had one of his shoes on. The bed on the other side of the cabin was pulled down, and Foka’s travel bag, jacket, and a few plastic bags from the tax-free store were piled on it. The other shoe had made its way onto the pillow. Foka had no recollection of having returned to the cabin, and panic began to take over his hungover mind. “No fucking way, not this again,” Foka hissed aloud and started feeling for his wallet. Whenever he had blackouts, it was his first reflex. If he were alive, and he found his wallet, then in the grand scheme of things it couldn’t be all that bad. The wallet was under a bag of potato chips, and Foka let out a sigh of relief. All of his cash had ended up in a troubadour’s tip jar, but his cards were intact. His routine checkup continued with the knuckle check. “At least I didn’t smash any faces, by the looks of it,” he continued talking to himself in a voice scratched by cigarettes and shots. Disjointed snippets from the nightclub began to emerge in his brain, and something about chatting up a woman. The usual, he thought.

Stepan poked at Yevgeny, who was still sound asleep. “Wake up. We’re already docked. We have to be out of here in thirty minutes tops.”

Yevgeny sat up drowsily and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, then reached for a warm can of beer. He popped it open and took a big gulp. “Fuck, I feel terrible.”

“Soon you’ll get some fresh air. We have to walk at least a few kilometers.”

Anatoly’s hungover face appeared over the edge of the bunk bed.

“Stepan, is it too much to ask if you could finally tell us who we are going to be making this deal with?”

“As you know, this command came straight from Edik, and Rami knows nothing about it. Edik didn’t tell me who the buyer was, he just let me understand that this is an extremely important probational sale,” Stepan said as he looked into the mirror and straightened the sleeves of his blazer.

“And where did Vorobyev say we needed to deliver the package?” Yevgeny asked and finished his beer in one long swig.

“A few kilometers away from the docks. In some park. I have the details on my phone. If this works out, we might be getting a significantly lot more business. I hear we have the potential to be part of a much bigger scene than in Helsinki. And Rami is not going to be getting a single slice of this. Who knows, maybe we’ll end up moving here permanently and we’d be finally rid of him. I’ll work directly with Edik and take care of everything.”

“How are we making the deal?” Anatoly asked as he clambered down from the bed.

“There’s some kind of a boating club that we can get to by just walking. Right next to it there’s a park, and we’re supposed to hide the package there somewhere. We’ll send a message when we’re done, but we won’t give any coordinates yet. Because we’re testing out this partnership, we want the money first.”

“Damn right. I don’t trust these Swedes any more than I trust the Finns. We’ll count the euros first,” Yevgeny said.

“Except that they’ll be paying us in kroner. And that should total seventy-four thousand,” Stepan said.

“All right. And how do we get past the customs?” Anatoly asked, looking out the window to the promenade down below. “Most of the travelers have already gotten off the ferry.”

“Yevgeny has the package. You go first through the customs. If you see nobody, message me and I’ll follow you. As I go through, I’ll be on the phone with Yevgeny, and he’ll follow me if I tell him there are no problems ahead. The risks are going to be minimal.”

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Anatoly said. “And then what?”

“You can stay in the terminal cafe and have breakfast, and then return to the cabin whenever you feel like it. Me and Yevgeny will take care of the rest.”

“All right.”

“Well, let’s get ready then, we should be out the door any minute now,” Stepan said. “Hey, Yevgeny, how about you bring a couple of beers with you?”

Anatoly tossed the package of amphetamine to Yevgeny, who wrapped it inside a towel and placed it in his backpack. He also packed the remaining cans of beer and the nearly full bottle of vodka. Stepan pulled out the Yarygin pistol from his luggage and handed it to Yevgeny.

“Take this, too.”

The men had no problems walking straight through customs. Outside, Stepan opened the map app on his phone and chose the destination he had already saved earlier. “We just need to find the Ropsten boat club first,” Stepan said as he interpreted the directions. Their shortest route was along Norra Hamnvägen through the port. It would take them 38 minutes on foot to walk the 3.1 kilometers.

“Give me one of those beers,” Stepan said. “Looks like we have a long walk ahead of us.”

The duo began their trek on the shared pedestrian and bike lane, which was flanked by enormous gray silos. The other buildings along the way appeared to be storages or offices. The traffic passing them by consisted mostly of trucks. After they’d passed the intersection of Lidingö, the map routed them under a bridge toward the shore. They cut across a parking lot behind a Shell station, where Yevgeny stopped between a couple of cars and took out the vodka. He had a long swig and then handed the bottle to Stepan.

“I think my hangover’s slowly getting better,” Yevgeny said. “You’re right, walking is helping.”

“I’m just glad it’s not blazing hot today,” Stepan said and took a swig, too. The morning clouds hung low, and the air felt humid, making the men sweat. They opened a can of beer each and continued onto a road lined with large maples near the Ropsten metro station.

They arrived at the seashore halfway through their journey. Stepan checked the route in the map.

“We’ll take a left here.”

         A tall chain link fence circled the docks, and between the fence and the docks grew a thicket of willows. “I’ll go for a piss,” Yevgeny said and slipped through a hole in the fence onto a dock, where a large, gray barge, Oliver af Stockholm, was moored. Stepan followed suit and the men tended to their business in the thicket next to the dock. Yevgeny pulled out the vodka once again and took a big gulp. “Wish I had some pickles right now. I should’ve bought a sandwich from the terminal.”

He handed the bottle to Stepan, who didn’t skimp on the drink, either. He dropped the bottle back into the backpack, grabbed his pistol, and shoved it in his pants. The duo, whose hangover was quickly turning into a new drunken episode, slipped through the hole back to the street and headed toward Husarviksgatan, which ran along the shore of Husarviken. The narrow inlet didn’t look much more than a river or a channel even at its widest. When the men reached Fågelhundsgatan, they spotted the bridge over Husarviken. On the bridge, Stepan checked their location once more; they were almost there. On the opposite shore, they saw Norra Djurgården’s verdant park, and the boat club that was a mere few hundred meters away along the channel. The men crossed the bridge and walked back toward the harbor on the other side of Husarviken, and soon enough they encountered a long line of yachts and a gate that said Ropstens Båtklubb.

“We’re supposed to hide the package over there somewhere,” Stepan said and nodded toward the forested area a few hundred meters ahead of them. As the men approached the rendezvous point they looked around nervously, in case they’d spot the buyers somewhere nearby waiting for them. Dozens of sheep grazed among the trees in a fenced area at the edge of the forest. Stepan checked his map again.

“We’ll be soon at the sea again. Let’s see what the terrain is like closer to the shore,” he said and lit a cigarette.

Behind the sheep corral, the duo headed toward the narrow pedestrian path that led to the shore and then followed along. The terrain between the shore and the path was overgrown willows mixed with fern and tall grass, and the men couldn’t even see the water through it. Stepan spotted a fallen tree on a rise along the shore, its trunk fallen into the willows.

“Wait there,” he said and started to descend the rise. The tree had fallen from old age and the trunk was nearly hollow, providing multiple potential hiding places.

“Bring the brick here,” Stepan barked.

 Yevgeny slid down the rise and gave Stepan the package. Then he clambered back up to the path, lit a cigarette, and went to take a leak under a tree. On the other side of the path, the terrain rose onto a forested hill. As Yevgeny zipped his pants and turned around, he thought he saw something on the hill. It was more like a feeling rather than an astute observation, but it seemed like something had moved in the forest. Yevgeny glanced toward the hill, but saw nothing. He continued standing on the path, smoking his cigarette.

It took Stepan fifteen minutes to create a hiding spot for the package. He had to choose a good spot, and then check accurate coordinates from his phone, and save them. After he had waded back to Yevgeny he cursed his dirty shoes and tried to wipe the worst of the dirt off with a handful of ferns.

“Let’s walk back to the boat club and send the message from there,” Stepan said after realizing he needed something stronger than ferns to clean the mess.

A hundred meters or so later, Yevgeny thought to mention his sighting to Stepan.

“Don’t look back, but I just had this funny feeling that someone was standing on the hill.”

“Oh, you saw something?”

“Maybe some movement… or a figure. But I didn’t stare at them any longer than that. What if someone was watching us and saw us hide the package? Didn’t they tell us to go into the forest near the boat club? They could’ve guessed we were going to be on this path, right?”

“True… Let’s just send that message, and at least they’ll think everything is going according to their plan. We’ll wait a bit and then go back to the shore,” Stepan said.

“Yeah. Go ahead and text them.”

Stepan texted the number he had saved and muted his phone. He gave his gun a quick check, removed the safety, and slipped it back under his jacket.

“All right. Let’s go.”

The men began to make their way carefully along the path, keeping an eye on the forested hill to their left. As they got closer to the path leading to the shore, Yevgeny gestured silently to the area where he thought he’d seen something. As he scanned the hill, Stepan grabbed his arm and pointed toward the shore. Yevgeny looked toward the place where they’d hidden the goods and noticed a camouflaged man crouching nearby. Stepan pulled out his pistol. They tried to approach the man downhill from them silently, but he noticed the men and crashed through the willows toward the shore. Stepan took a shot. The bullet hit the man in the lower back, and he fell down in the muddy grass with a pained yelp. Yevgeny reached him first. He yanked the crawling, howling man and turned him around, then pressed him on the ground by the throat.

“So you fucking dickheads were going to steal our shit and not pay, eh?” Yevgeny hissed at the man in Russian. “Don’t you clowns know better than fuck with the Russians?” he drunkenly spat words between his teeth. Yevgeny took his hand off the man’s throat to cover his mouth, took a credit card out of his breast pocket, and ran it deliberately slow across the man’s forehead. Blood poured out of the wound instantly, covering the man’s face. The Swede watched in paralyzed horror at Yevgeny’s face that was twisted in rage.

Stepan tried to get through the thicket without muddying up his shoes again. When he reached Yevgeny, he silently leaned forward, placed his gun on the blood-soaked forehead of the man, and pulled the trigger. A group of scared birds took flight. He straightened up and looked around, but didn’t see any other movement in the area. The camouflaged man had small hunting binoculars around his neck. Yevgeny yanked them off.

“Boy scouts shouldn’t play big boy drug games,” he said and hurled the binoculars into the reeds.

He couldn’t locate a wallet on the body, or anything else that would have identified him. He only had three hundred kronor bills in his pocket and keys to a car. The package was in his backpack. Stepan took the bills, tossed the keys the way of the binoculars, and handed the package to Yevgeny.

“Put it in your backpack. We need to get out of here, and fast.”

The men headed back the way they came. As they speed-walked, Yevgeny pulled off his jacket and dress shirt, and used his T-shirt to wipe the blood and mud off his hands. Once he had put the rest of his clothes back on, he used the T-shirt also to wipe the mud off his jeans.

“Fuck, they really tried to steal it and not pay,” Yevgeny said and shoved the crumpled shirt into his backpack’s side pocket.

“Yeah, no deal,” Stepan laughed and lit another cigarette. On the bridge, Stepan stopped to scrape mud off his shoes onto the railing. “I’m so sick of this shit,” he growled.

“Well, at least we didn’t lose the package,” Yevgeny said and patted his backpack.

“That’s now what I meant. Look at my shoes. Fuck, they’re all muddy.”

“Wasn’t there a corner store right over there? They’ll have paper, go get some,” Yevgeny suggested.

“Oh yeah, you’re right,” Stepan said.

They walked up to the corner store in the intersection of Fågelhundsgatan and Högviltsgatan.

“Wait here,” Stepan said.

Behind the counter stood a skinny Asian man in his forties. Stepan took two cinnamon rolls from the display and a thick pile of napkins, and paid with the camouflaged man’s kronor.

He cleaned his shoes outside. “I got you some rolls for breakfast. Now let’s head back to the ferry.”

An hour after waking up, Foka was smugly enjoying himself in a hot tub. Breakfast, coffee, a cognac, and an ice-cold lonkero drink had wiped away his hangover. His blackout from the previous night didn’t bother him any longer, either. New day, new beginning, he thought, and allowed himself to take in the moment. His next bouncer shift wasn’t until Friday evening, so he didn’t need to survive on soda water only on the way back.

Satisfied with his improved condition after the hot tub, Foka decided to drop in at the Old Port. He ordered an Irish coffee and headed out to the deck for a smoke. On the sunny aft, he saw a young couple in love, leaning onto the railing and admiring the view in Värta Hamnen. Foka also noticed he wasn’t the only one with a cup in his hand this early in the evening: the trio of Russians was there partying, as if they had been going hard at it since the day before. They were loud and stumbled around, sloshed again.

Foka spent the first couple of hours of the return trip having dinner at the Happy Lobster and then playing roulette at the casino. At ten in the evening, he decided to check the forward of the ferry for nightclub action. He parked himself at the bar, and sat facing the dance floor so that he could observe the people milling about in the club. Shots and snuff were consumed at a steady pace. Around midnight Foka realized his snuff tin was empty. He was about to head to his cabin to get some more when he saw the familiar Russian faces again. The three men stood a few meters away from him, gathered around a high top covered in empty glasses, with fresh drinks in hand. They spoke Russian and occasionally laughed so hard they were about to choke. Two of the men were about Foka’s height, but the third was a real ogre of a man, at least 190 cm tall with wide shoulders. The one who looked like a businessman in his gray suit and blue dress shirt gestured with his glass of whisky as he loudly explained something to the other two.

Without giving it much thought, Foka went over.

“You guys didn’t happen to have a tin of snuff to sell me?” he asked, showing the men his empty tin along with a ten euro bill he was going to offer for a new one.

The man in the suit paused his tale and the three turned to glare at Foka. The ogre with the Beatles hairdo turned to face Foka with a grumpy expression.

“Buy it from the store if you need some,” he said in unexpectedly fluent Finnish. Then he turned his back to Foka to signal that the conversation was over.

“How about I give you a twenty for a tin,” Foka still tried, nonchalantly producing another tenner from his pocket, although he was annoyed by the men’s cavalier attitude toward his nicotine problem, especially when he knew that the men had boat loads of snuff in their possession.

The ogre said something to his companions in Russian that made them all burst out laughing, and then he turned to Foka.

“We don’t have any. Now fuck off,” he said again in Finnish.

“Fine. Keep your snuff, assholes,” Foka said.

“All right, Finn boy, you go back to your cabin and drink some more booze,” the Russian smirked at Foka.

“You Russkies go fuck yourselves in your cabin,” Foka muttered, turned his back to the men, and stumbled out of the club.

A couple hours later Foka found himself in the disco on deck twelve. The techno beat, the bass thump he felt all over his body, the laser lights piercing through the smoke, and the cheerfully partying people all nearly convinced Foka to get on the dance floor. Once he’d given the situation a quick one-eyed glance he decided against it. Foka was certain no women in their twenties wanted to dance with him. He ordered two shots at the bar, and downed them one after the other. He didn’t want to dance, but he wasn’t ready for bed yet, either. He wanted to see the nightclub once more.

The elevator seemed to take an eternity to arrive, stuck somewhere on the promenade deck, so Foka headed down the stairs toward the ninth deck. Two decks down he spotted the annoying, tall Russian ogre who had spoken Finnish to him. He stood on a landing between the stairs, and his pals were nowhere to be seen. Foka pulled out a snuff tin and twirled it in front of the tall man.

“I took care of myself, moron, so you Russkie piece of shit can keep your damn jack,” Foka said and flashed his stupid, drunken grin.

The man said nothing. In a split second, his hands were around Foka’s throat, his eyes clouded in rage. The assault took Foka completely by surprise and he found himself with his back against the wall as the oaf strangled him with both hands. Foka instinctively punched the strangler in his right flank. He could tell by the man’s pained grunt that Foka had hit him in the liver. The man immediately let go of Foka’s throat and crashed onto his knees. Foka shoved the man against the wall.

“Take it easy, little Russkie boy!”

Foka thought the situation was over, but to his amazement the ogre clambered back onto his feet and pulled out a credit card from his breast pocket as he turned to face Foka. He hissed something in Russian as he took a step closer.

“What the fuck is this card shit about, asshole?” Foka said and chuckled at the Russian who was squeezing the card in his fist. The man swiped the card at Foka’s face, but Foka blocked the jab with his left hand, then punched the man’s sternum with his right hand knuckles, and in a swift upward movement brought the top of his foot to meet the man’s groin.

The ogre yelped and crumpled over. Foka aimed a tight shin kick on the man’s thigh, which sent the goon groaning onto the floor as his legs caved in. Foka picked up the credit card off the floor and saw that two of its edges were filed razor sharp.

“Oh, fuck me! You asshole tried to shred my face with this!”

Foka folded the card in half and threw it at the man, then stomped on his hand. Won’t be slashing people with that hand for a while, Foka thought and began to walk toward his cabin.

Chapter 19: Snooping and Sausage Sampling

Helsinki and Luhtikylä – Saturday, May 23, 2015

The people from the pizzeria didn’t live only in Pakila; they were able to use a rented one-bedroom in Malmi that Rami had arranged for them. Stepan, Yevgeny, and Anatoly usually spent the night in Pakila, where they had enough sleeping arrangements for four. They didn’t feel comfortable in the Malmi hideout when Rami was there. Leku occasionally stayed in the pizza place, or couch surfed with friends in Kallio. But Malmi had better amenities: besides a shower there was also a sauna, and the Russian trio immediately descended on the apartment whenever they heard that Rami was staying at a hotel or was out of the country.

On Saturday evening, Yevgeny stayed alone in Pakila, although the Malmi apartment was empty: Rami had come to some money, and was spending it on a night at a hotel. Yevgeny made excuses to the others, telling them he wasn’t feeling too well and how he wanted to get a good night’s sleep alone. Stepan and Anatoly had to take a cab to Malmi, because neither of them had a driver’s license, and as soon as they stepped their foot into the cab Yevgeny flipped open the laptop they’d been using and began to search on the web for ways to figure out a motorcycle owner’s name and address with the motorcycle registration number. His problem was solved within a few clicks. He didn’t have a Finnish credit card that would’ve granted access to the site, so he ordered the records from Trafi’s phone number services by texting Foka’s motorcycle registration number to them. He received the information he was looking for within seconds:

This vehicle is registered to: Tapio Fokin

Address: Kukkaniityntie 10, 00900 Helsinki

Huh, the man has a Russian last name, Yevgeny thought. He opened Google Maps and typed in the address. The red pin appeared over a lone building at the end of a small road, between Vartioharju and Puotinharju. That’s a weird place to be, Yevgeny wondered, and used the street view function to take a closer look. But the area around the pin was nothing but forest. He had to scroll around for a while before he noticed a narrow sandy road lead up to a hill. Through the verdant forest, he could barely detect a piece of a light colored spot that could be the wall of a building. My, my, how appropriately remote, Yevgeny grinned to himself and decided to take the van on a spin as soon as he got up in the morning.

Foka had just managed to oil his motorbike’s chains when Miia appeared at the Cave yard on her bike.

“Whoa, that’s cool,” she yelped when she spotted the shiny, black motorbike.

“Hello, cutie,” Foka greeted his visitor.

“Hello, handsome moped man,” Miia replied and got off her bike to hug Foka.

“At least the weather’s cooperating today,” Foka said, looking up at the cloudless sky.

“You’re damn right,” Miia said.

She turned toward the Cave. “So this is where you and Topi live, then. I checked online and this place has a lively history.”

“The place is a bit rough, but Topi is living the dream. He gets to run freely in the bushes and among the rocks, smelling animal tracks,” Foka gestured to capture Topi’s territory.

“Looks indeed like a dream for a man and his dog,” Miia agreed. “Is he inside?”

“No. You see, I thought we could ride to my Old Man’s cabin in Luhtikylä. And I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to convince you to ever leave that cabin, so I asked my Dad to dog sit at his home in Kannelmäki,” Foka said and flashed a smile at Miia.

“I’m pretty sure we’ll be back today,” Miia laughed.

“You’re thinking of riding with those pants on?” Foka asked, checking out Miia’s tight biking pants.

“I have jeans in my backpack; I’m planning on wearing them over this pair.”

“OK, good. Let’s go inside and get you geared up.”

In the living room, Foka handed Miia two different sized helmets to try on.

“I see, you have a variety of helmets in case women happen to drop by,” Miia laughed.

“Come now,” Foka said and disappeared to fetch more gear. He reappeared with a size Small black and red riding jacket, a black tube scarf, and riding gloves. Foka had purchased the Dainese brand women’s jacket from a second-hand store some years earlier, although at that time he wasn’t seeing anyone who wanted to go on regular rides with him. Miia put on the white full-face helmet.

“This fits really well.”

“Nice. Lower and lift the visor a couple times to make sure you’ll be able to do it one-handed if needed.”

Miia tested the visor and then removed the helmet.

“Try this jacket on,” Foka said and handed the leather jacket to her. Miia set the helmet on the sofa.

“Dang, this feels kind of stiff and tight on me.”

“Honestly, it’s better that way. Then the jacket protects and supports you well. Check out these gloves, too. I think they might fit you.”

Miia tried them on. “They’re a bit large, but they’re not too bad,” she said.

“Then there’s nothing else to it but to gear up and move out.”

“Yup,” Miia said, already pulling jeans over her biking pants. Foka returned from the fridge with a package of sausages and a couple of beers.

“Put these in your backpack so that we won’t starve on the trip.”

“A real sausage fest,” Miia laughed as she packed the items. “What else could a girl dream of?”

“Oh, behave,” Foka grinned.

Outside, Foka ran through the basics of riding in the back of a motorcycle and how to use hand signals.

“If I start to pass someone or I simply ride faster, I’ll tap you on your hand. That’s a sign for you to hold on tight. If I give you the thumbs up, it means I’m asking if everything’s all right. You just reply with a thumbs up, if all’s good. If you want me to stop, tap me on my leg and point your thumb to the right. If you wrap your arms around my waist, you’ll always lean correctly in the corners. But remember not to open the visor or peek around me when we’re going fast.”

“Got it. I’ll remember.”

Foka looked at the young, beautiful woman standing in front of him and thought how the bulky biking gear hadn’t managed to make Miia any less sexy in his eyes. He hopped on the bike and turned the rear foot pegs out.

“Well then, hop on.”

Miia climbed behind Foka and adjusted her feet on the pegs. He guided her arms around him.

“And off we go.”

He turned the engine on, flipped his visor down, and maneuvered the bike out of the yard. Foka was happy. This is going criminally well, he thought. His driving style was completely different now that he wasn’t alone. He sped up and slowed down more patiently, and avoided leaning in the curves, unless necessary.

When they got on the freeway, Foka touched Miia’s hands to signal that she should hold on tighter, and then sped up to a steady traveling speed. After a stretch, he gave Miia a thumbs up to check if she was all right. Miia’s gloved hand appeared over the gas tank, with her thumb up, too.

Foka increased the speed to 140 km/h and enjoyed the ride. Usually he found giving rides to other people boring: his arms fatigued faster and he had to change his riding style to a sleepy snail’s pace. Now he found that riding like this was actually sexy. He felt the woman glued to his back, and this filled his head with hopeful thoughts about what was to come.

Couple of times Foka noticed how Miia lightly brushed her glove over his crotch. Foka responded by taking his left hand off the handle bar and resting it on Miia’s thigh. “This girl can’t be a Jesus freak, that’s for sure,” he thought.

Forty-five minutes later, Foka turned onto the short stretch toward the cabin, a gravel road that required Foka to slow down. Miia loosened her grip, and enjoyed the rural springtime scenery.

On the parking spot at the cabin, Foka rotated and stretched his stiff wrists.

“So, what did you think?” he asked.

“It was really fun. I thought I would get cold, but I didn’t,” Miia said and unzipped her jacket.

“Good to hear. I hope I didn’t ride too fast.”

“Not at all. We could’ve gone even faster.”

“By the way, I thought I asked you to hold on around my waist, not rummage around in the nether regions,” Foka said.

“Pfft, I rummaged for nothing.”

“Alright, have it your way,” Foka said and smiled as he began to walk toward the main building. “Let’s go check out the cabin.”

The cabin belonged to Foka’s father, Antti. The main building was finished at the end of the ‘70s, and complemented by a storage, a woodshed, and an outhouse. The yard was a well-maintained lawn. The cabin had been built on a grade, and it was made of logs that were painted brown. Red wooden stairs led up to its porch. Large muntin windows faced the yard and the parking spot. A traditional log table and log benches were placed on the porch, as well as a swing made for two. There were two doors: one led to the sauna’s changing room, the other into the cabin itself.

Miia stood on the lawn and looked around. She filled her lungs with the fresh countryside air. “I just love the look of this place.”

Inside the cabin, they found a galley kitchen, a sofa, and a small bookcase. A dining table with its wooden benches had been placed at one of the large windows. Bright sunlight streamed through them. A door led to a small bedroom.

“I wonder if those beers are still cold,” Foka said.

Miia opened her backpack and pulled out two large cans of beer. “They feel cold to me,” she said as she handed one of the cans to Foka. They opened the cans and clinked them together.

“Bottoms up,” Foka said.

“And heads down,” Miia replied with a smile. “Should we sit in the swing for a bit?”

They went back onto the porch and settled into the large swing.

“Did your dad build this cabin himself?” Miia asked.

“Yeah. The Old Man likes spending time here almost more than he does in the city. Understandable, as he’s from rural Kajaani. I don’t think he’d ever be fully urbanized.”

“What about your mom? Is she still alive?” Miia asked, bluntly. She had noticed how Foka only talked about his father.

“Ma died when I was seven,” Foka said, and took a swig from his can.

“Oh no, I’m sorry. That must’ve been awful for you,” Miia said and reached for Foka’s hand.

“Hit and run. A drunk driver.”

“Terrible,” Miia said and squeezed Foka’s hand harder.

“It was the local bank manager. He was a member of the Lions Club and owned a fancy house in Kaarela. He did two years for it,” Foka said quietly, and didn’t feel like getting further than that. The accident had filled his head with black rage that he wanted to unleash onto the entire world. The devastating injustice young Foka had witnessed had informed all of his choices and actions well into his adulthood. It was the reason why Foka had become a police officer, whose belief in justice was on a shaky ground.

Foka slowly snaked his hand out of Miia’s grip, and held onto his beer with both hands. Miia understood the signal: the memory was painful, and he didn’t want to share further details. Foka sat in silence for a long time, drinking his beer. Miia decided to change the subject.

“Are there any neighbors nearby?”

“Yeah, there’s a man, Timppa, who lives about a couple hundred meters that way. I usually tinker with him on some project when I’m here. He comes by quite often for a sauna,” Foka said and got up to open the sauna door. “That’s right, I almost forgot. Come check out this sauna.”

Miia followed Foka to the small entryway in the sauna, lined with narrow wooden benches. She peered into the sauna room and saw the wood-fired stove and a large tank for heating up water for washing.

“Ugh, I’d love to get into a proper sauna,” she said.

“I can fire up the stove in no time. It won’t be a problem at all.”

“Great!” Miia cheered.

They went back inside, and while Miia looked around the cabin, Foka went into the bedroom.

“There are clean towels here, so we’re all set,” he yelled from the room.

“Nice. If you don’t need me, I’ll be here checking out the books your dad has.”

“I’ll be quick; looks like the Old Man had even filled up the water tank before he left,” Foka said.

As Foka fumbled with the kindling and pieces of bark to get a fire going, he thought about how the two of them partaking in sauna together would absolutely lead to sex later. If only he’d had a flamethrower to light the fire faster.

When he returned to the cabin, Miia was on the sofa reading a book on birds with her beer in her hand.

“You know, I’ve seen goshawks here before,” Foka said.

“Is that so?”

Miia set her beer on the armrest and began to leaf through the book. “Goshawk, goshawk, goshawk… Oh, that’s what it looks like. How big are they?”

“Well, I’ve been told they used to nab kids from the yards.”

“Yikes! No way.”

“Fine, no way, but they’re able to catch prey the size of a chicken.”

“Seriously? Good thing Topi is no Chihuahua–he’d make a quick snack.”

“Aren’t I a Chihuahua type of a guy?” Foka laughed.

“I’m sure you’d like a little fella you could carry around,” Miia now laughed, too.

“Right.”

Foka let Miia continue reading while he fetched more wood from the shed. The next time he popped back into the cabin, Miia was so engrossed in the book, as if she were waiting for her turn at a hair salon. Her one can of beer seemed to last for a week. How fucking slowly does she drink beer, anyway? Foka wondered. If he’d been alone at the cabin, he’d be looking at the bottom of his fourth can by now.

There was zero erotic charge in the air. Foka didn’t even try to make a move. Instead, he decided to wait and see what would happen in the sauna. Come on you bastard, hit sixty already, he cursed the slow ascend of the thermometer. Foka stared at it with sweat beading on his forehead and decided he wouldn’t return to the cabin until the sauna was warm enough.

“Hey, the sauna is warm now,” Foka called out nonchalantly from the cabin door and wiped sweat off his brow.

“Yay! Let’s get some steam going, shall we?” Miia said.

She set the book down and drained her beer, swooped up her towel, and walked past Foka with a neutral expression, as if she was on her way to the fridge to check its contents.

Foka followed Miia, undressed hastily, and slipped into the sauna first. He threw a large scoop of water onto the hot stones. The stove let out an angry hiss. Within seconds, the sauna door cracked open and Miia came in. Foka stared at the naked woman and her gorgeous breasts. Her athletic figure would’ve looked right at home in a swimsuit ad.

Miia sat next to Foka. “I just love the scent in these traditional saunas.”

“Yeah, it’s a good sauna,” Foka said when he couldn’t come up with anything smarter.

They sat for a while in silence, enjoying the steam.

“So, what did you think of the ride?” Foka asked to break the silence.

“Like I said it was really fun, although the helmet was a bit uncomfortable.”

“Oh yeah? Was it too tight, after all?”

“No, it was too heavy. My neck is all jacked up,” Miia said and massaged her neck.

“You know, I could massage your neck.”

“Sounds good,” Miia said and moved to the lower bench and sat between Foka’s legs. Foka moved her hair out of the way and began to rub her shoulders.

“Right there. Feels really good,” Miia sighed.

Foka pressed and kneaded to the best of his abilities, and as Miia continued to sweat in the heat, her skin turned slippery. Foka’s motions began to resemble fondling more than a massage. Foka touched Miia’s neck and shoulders gently. After gathering some courage, he leaned forward and let his hands fall and brush over Miia’s breasts. Because this didn’t result in a negative reaction, he began to touch the breasts, too.

“Hey, honey,” Miia said.

“Yes?”

“We’re not here to have sex, is that clear?”

Oh my fucking god, this can’t be real, Foka thought. His mind went blank for a second. If Miia had set out to further devastate Foka, who was in heat not just because of his testosterone but literally because of the sauna, she would’ve had to jam an icicle up his ass.

“Uh… why not?” Foka asked, doing his best to hide his disappointment, his hands still on Miia’s breasts.

“We’re just not going to.”

“I understand,” Foka said, not understanding a single thing about women or what they were thinking. Foka leaned back against the wall with his hands now firmly on his thighs, and then felt emboldened to probe the subject.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“What is it?”

“This no sex thing… it’s not because of religious reasons or something like that, is it?”

“Huh? Where did you get that idea?” Miia said and turned to face Foka with a surprised look on her face.

“Well, the bartender told me he’d seen you go to some sort of a Jesus gathering downtown.”

“Oh, had he? Listen, this has nothing to do with that. I’m just not into having sex on the first or a second date. And that downtown visit, it’s part of my job: we’re in the middle of an investigation and it might have ties to that place,” Miia said. “Silly, did you think I’m in some cult?” she laughed.

“Come on, I didn’t honestly think you were,” Foka lied.

“Well, rest assured, I’m not,” Miia said, and turned herself completely around so that she could push her face between Foka’s legs. She began to touch him with her lips, with her tongue. Foka wrapped his fingers around Miia’s hair and felt how the pestering disappointment transformed into a full-bodied ecstasy.

“Jay-sus,” Foka sighed and closed his eyes.

After the sauna, Foka and Miia sat inside to cool off, Miia on the sofa with a towel wrapped around her hair.

“Are you hungry?” Foka asked. “I could wrap some sausages into tin foil and bake them on the sauna stove. There’s still some heat left.”

“No thanks, I just ate,” Miia replied with an unsettling, laconic voice, but she couldn’t keep up the ruse and burst into laughter.

“Seriously, Miia?”

“All right then, let’s have sausages.”

They ate in the cabin in silence.

“So let me get this straight: your investigation centers around some sort of a revivalist woo-woo group?” Foka asked, once again to break the silence and to have something to say.

“Yeah, but I can’t get into the details.”

“Can you tell me if it’s about fraud, or something else?”

“I work in the violent crimes unit, that’s all I’ll say.”

When they headed back to the city, Foka took the smaller surface roads. Miia sitting so close to him felt so right that he would have happily detoured through the west coast back to Helsinki.

27 The Eagle Speaks

Helsinki – Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Timppa and Foka got off the freeway on the Pakilantie off-ramp. Their first approach would be a quiet drive by the pizzeria, so Timppa slowed down to a crawl when they reached the restaurant. Nobody was out in the yard, but there was a van parked on the left side of the building, nearly touching the stairs leading up to the side door. Only nighttime lights were on in the dining area. The place was obviously closed.

“I don’t like the look of that van, parked like that. I bet someone’s in there,” Foka said, nervous. “Head over to that parking lot behind the sports field. By the big garbage cans.”

Timppa parked the car behind the tall, green recycling bins.

“All right then, let’s get suited in this lumberjack gear,” Timppa said.

“Fuck yes let’s,” Foka laughed.

He pulled the neck gaiter all the way over his eyes and the baseball cap further down, mumbling from under the fabric.

“Good thing you carry the metal because I can’t see shit. I’d have to rely on pure intuition if I was shooting.”

“Put these glasses on, too,” Timppa said and placed his sunglasses on Foka’s covered face. “Now nobody’s going to pay any attention to you,” he said, and burst out laughing.

The men were hammered. Their strange clothes and the nonexistent plan would have made more sense as a comedy sketch. Foka tossed the glasses onto the dashboard, pulled the neck gaiter down, and got out of the car. He grabbed a baseball bat and mustered a serious expression.

“Let’s walk around, along the field.”

The two pals walked around the field and then slipped into a narrow path that led them to Välitalontie, where they continued toward the pizza place. They hid behind two birch trees next to the restaurant for a status check. The van was still in front of the stairs, about seven meters away from the duo who crouched in the bushes at the edge of the concrete yard.

“Nothing to it but game on,” Timppa whispered with a grin.

He pulled on his gloves and slowly cocked his gun, then proceeded to sneak his way to the corner of the building, getting closer to the van. Foka followed suit and put his gloves on, and followed Timppa. The men crept into the narrow space between the van and the wall. Foka gestured to Timppa that he’d go up the short, grated stairs to the side door and see if it was unlocked.

He got onto the second step when he heard noises and the door swung open. A familiar, Russian face emerged from the door and was just about to light his cigarette when his eyes met with Foka’s. The Russian didn’t have time to react before Foka already swung the bat. It let out an oddly hollow, metallic sound as it hit the man’s head. Yevgeny fell unconscious into the doorway. Timppa pulled out his gun.

“Get in. Quick!” he hissed.

They crept inside. Timppa pulled out a pair of handcuffs and handed them to Foka.

“Pull the guy in, close the door, and cuff him,” he whispered.

Foka hooked his arms under Yevgeny’s armpits and dragged him inside, then peeked out briefly to see if any bystanders had seen what happened. Satisfied that nobody else was around, Foka closed the door quietly. He flipped the unconscious man on his belly and cracked Timppa’s handcuffs around Yevgeny’s wrists. Foka and Timppa crouched around the Russian, looking around nervously.

The space was like straight out of a movie set for a stereotypical pizza place backroom: piles of pizza boxes atop shelves and tables, walls lined up with canned goods. Reams of documents, a stack of newspapers, and a laptop were strewn across a table. A few chairs were nearby. Foka touched the Russian’s neck to get his pulse. The man was alive, although his head was bleeding profusely. The rush of adrenaline nearly wiped out Foka and Timppa’s inebriated state.

“This is that same Finnish-speaking Russian that I pummeled on the ferry,” Foka whispered to Timppa.

Timppa nodded and turned to look around again. He noticed there was a stairwell at the back of the room that led downstairs. He gestured to Foka and started to make his way down the stairs. Timppa stayed low and pointed his gun down the stairwell, then gestured again at Foka to stay with the punched-out Russian and keep guard. Then he stopped to listen. Nothing. He began to descend the stairs, preparing to encounter at least two other Russians. He placed his foot down carefully, as if he were walking on a single centimeter thick ice. He made no sounds as he went.

There was a door downstairs. As he got closer to it, Timppa heard muffled voices behind it. He made a mental note that the door opened outward. He waited a beat for his breath to stabilize before he yanked the door open with his left hand. He slipped in and dropped down to a crouch.

The room erupted in shouts. There were two men, screaming at each other in Russian. One of the men, the one Foka had described to Timppa as the suit guy, rushed toward a table at the end of the room. Timppa saw a gun on the table and shot at the man before he could reach the pistol. The bullet entered the man’s flank and smashed his spine into shrapnel where it met the bullet. Timppa swung around to face a man rushing toward him. He didn’t have time to wonder whether the man had a gun or not. He took a shot. The man cried and slumped in front of Timppa. He had shot the man in the chest, and he knew he had just killed two men. The gun he used wouldn’t leave anyone behind to suffer, if his shots were even halfway decent.

Timppa stood up to check his surroundings. First, he checked the table that was covered in small freezer bags, an electronic kitchen scale, and a variety of plastic containers. Some of the bags and containers had white powder in them. Without knowing anything else about drugs other than what he’d learned on TV, he realized that these men were serious criminals. “Oh shit, now we’re in trouble,” he said aloud.

Although Foka had jumped at the sounds of shots that rang indoors, he had stayed put. Soon Timppa emerged from downstairs.

“Can you check if the van had keys in it, and fast? I’ll check upstairs. There’s only one room downstairs,” he said.

Timppa went through the remaining rooms quickly. He expected to find no one else, because Foka had talked about three Russians. In the meantime, Foka crept out the door with his head on a swivel. He didn’t detect anyone else around, so he looked into the van. No keys dangling in the ignition. He went back inside and patted the handcuffed Russian’s pockets. Keys. He lifted them up for Timppa to see.

“Found ‘em.”

“Good. Let’s take a quick tour downstairs, shall we?” Timppa asked.

Downstairs, Foka stumbled onto bodies lying in pools of blood.

“Shit! What are we going to do now?” Foka asked in shock.

“Drag this one into the van. I’ll take the suit guy,” Timppa ordered him calmly. He grabbed the pistol that the man had been reaching for.

“Think you might have some use for this?” Timppa asked and slipped the gun into the suit man’s breast pocket, then began to drag him toward the door.

Hoisting two dead bodies upstairs turned out to be quite an ordeal, and the thick lumberjack jackets and work pants that Foka and Timppa wore didn’t make it any easier. Both men gasped for air and were covered in sweat by the time the bodies were upstairs.

“Check again if anyone’s out there, and then we’ll heave-ho these two into the back from the door,” Timppa commanded in a clipped voice.

“I want to first see if I can find Topi,” Foka said and ran off to check the other rooms. He didn’t expect to see anyone else, but he still kept his baseball bat close. He also knew he wouldn’t find Topi in the building, at least not alive, but he wanted to check just for his peace of mind. He also looked into the freezers and the trash bins, and was relieved that he didn’t find Topi’s dead little body there.

There was nobody outside, and the van blocked the view from the house across them. Foka and Timppa dragged the bodies out and then shoved them into the van. They also flung in the ogre that Foka had knocked out. Foka took the driver’s seat and the duo rushed toward Pakilantie.

“Drive to my car. I’ll hop in and then I’ll meet you at the first rest stop on the Lahti freeway. And don’t go over the speed limit. We could do without speeding camera snapshots right now,” Timppa said.

That was pretty much all they said during their short drive. Foka and Timppa expected approaching sirens at any moment, but they continued to drive in silence. Foka pulled over for only a few seconds for Timppa to jump out and get into his car. Foka turned left off the parking lot, his plan to get out of Pakila via Paloheinä. He rolled down the window enough to better hear howling sirens, while he kept his eyes on the speedometer with anxious attention. Foka’s head was empty and his ears rang. This was a mess he wouldn’t get out of.

Foka waited at the rest stop only a few minutes before Timppa careened in and parked next to him. The men got out of their cars.

“All three of them into my car and fucking fast,” Timppa barked.

The pizza place van floor was covered in blood. Blood continued to sputter from the unconscious man as he was hoisted into Timppa’s car first. When they were done dragging the dead bodies into the other car, Timppa hopped into the back of the other van and used a tow strap to tie the senseless man by his handcuffs to the d-ring on the floor.

“Now what?” Foka asked. “Should we burn that van?”

“No,” Timppa growled. “We wore gloves, so there are no fingerprints. A burning car would attract cops sooner. Let’s go. I’ll drive.”

The men split the rest of the cognac and took off.

They were ten kilometers away from Timppa’s cabin in Luhtikylä, when Yevgeny came to.

“Help! Stop the car! Call the police!” he yelled in Finnish, then switched to Russian to scream some more, and then back to Finnish. “Help! Police!”

“Shit, there he goes,” Foka said.

“Christ,” Timppa hissed. “Someone will hear that if we’ve run out of luck.”

“You back there, shut the hell up!” Foka yelled.

Yevgeny banged the walls with his feet and continued screaming.

“Hey Foka, put on your seat belt and hold tight,” Timppa said with an eerily calm voice. “Let’s slow down a little.”

Foka clicked his seatbelt on and grabbed onto the handle above the door with his right hand while bracing himself against the dashboard with his left.

“On the count of three,” Timppa said, and began to count. “One, two, and three.”

Timppa slammed the brakes. The entire car shuddered, as the Russians flew into the wall behind the cab. The sudden stop jerked Yevgeny around violently and sent him flying head first into the wall. He lost consciousness immediately, and lay there with a broken collarbone and a dislocated shoulder, and a thin river of blood dripping out of his ear onto the floor.

Timppa picked up speed again.

“Isn’t this better, driving when it’s so nice and quiet?”

“Jesus, man,” Foka said, shocked.

Timppa pulled out his flask, popped it open, and took a long swig of cognac.

“Sergeant Major Laasonen from Finland, honorably discharged – kills even resistant Russians dead!” Timppa said in his most convincing military voice, and then burst out laughing. Although Timppa’s loud laughter was usually contagious, this time Foka remained silent. I thought I was crazy, but this man is in a league of his own,” he thought.

Chapter 28: Examining and Excavating

Luhtikylä – Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Timppa parked the van right next to the large, corrugated steel doors of the massive grain-drying barn constructed of wood. At the back, there was a tower-like extension hovering above ten meters. Timppa opened the barn doors, drove the van in, and commanded Foka to close the doors behind him. He turned on the lights and took another long swing from his flask.

The front of the barn was just a massive open space, with supporting beams crisscrossing in the ceiling. The floor was made out of wide slabs of wood. There was a tractor and a hauler to the right and next to them, a green, metallic grain bucket that reached high up toward the ceiling. Behind the bucket were the grain containers. A variety of metal chains, jump cables, a large, round saw blade, and miscellaneous junk hung off the walls.

“Let’s check in on our guests to see how they enjoyed the drive over,” Timppa said coolly and opened the back of the van. He peeked in and then closed the door again.

“Just a second.”

“Is that one still alive?” Foka asked, tense.

“What would’ve killed it?” Timppa said, went over to a table to fetch a roll of duct tape, and hopped back into the van.

Yevgeny was conscious and moaned quietly. The dead Russians lay across the floor near the cab, and the van floor was completely covered in blood. Timppa pulled Yevgeny up to sit and pulled his hoodie up halfway his face, so that his eyes were covered. Then Timppa began to wrap the tape around Yevgeny’s head, layering it heavily over his eyes.

“No peeking,” he said in a sickly sweet voice.

Then Timppa untied the man and yanked him onto his stomach. Yevgeny screamed in pain.

“Let’s take this one out,” Timppa said.

Timppa and Foka carried their stumbling prisoner out of the van and sat him in a chair.

“Where the fuck is my dog? What did you assholes do to him?” Foka screamed, but he got no response.

“Let’s store this guy while we come up with how to deal with these other two,” Timppa said coolly. He pulled out his pistol and jabbed Yevgeny twice in the chest.

“See, I have a gun. Remember that. Now get up!”

The prisoner swayed as he stood up. Timppa began to push the Russian forward by the neck, toward the wooden stairs leading upward while he pointed the pistol at the man’s spine.

When they reached the nearly vertical stairs, he barked more orders.

“The stairs are there. Up. Chop-chop.”

Yevgeny felt for the steps with his feet, but made it clear with his gestures that he wasn’t about to start climbing up.

“I see, I see. Don’t feel like going up? Foka, bring me that tow strap from the van,” Timppa ordered.

Foka went back to the van and opened the door. The white tow strap was stained with blood, crumpled in a pile. Foka rolled it up, trying not to look at Anatoly and Stepan’s corpses.

“What do you want this for?” Foka asked when he handed the tow strap over.

“Make a loop, and slip it around the Russkie’s neck. He doesn’t have to walk if he doesn’t want to. We can help him by hoisting him up.” Foka did as he was told.

“You go first, and pull him up by the rope. If he won’t walk, I’ll hang him in the rafters,” Timppa said, presuming that the threat would increase their prisoner’s willingness to cooperate.

Foka squeaked past Yevgeny in the tight space and began to climb up the steps carefully. The angle of the steps was so steep that under normal conditions they’d be difficult to climb, let alone while dragging along a reluctant prisoner swaying on the edge of consciousness. The loop around Yevgeny’s neck did the trick, and Yevgeny began to climb slowly, feeling for each step, while Timppa followed close behind. The three inched their way to the top of the tower.

In the tower, Foka had a good view of the grain silos. They were rectangular, about two by two meters, and uncovered. A railing in the catwalk prevented people from falling in. Plates of metal lined the silos on the inside. Foka looked into the silo closest to the edge. In the dark, he couldn’t even see the bottom.

“Lower him down there. We won’t let this Russkie back up until he tells us what he’s done with Topi,” Foka said, now determined.

“He might even have some company down there,” Timppa said.

“What company?”

“Rats. They can’t get up when they fall in. So they first eat everything that they can find, and eventually, each other.”

“And how were we going to lower him down?”

“Like so,” Timppa said, and grabbed Yevgeny by his neck and his belt, and heaved the tall man over the railing, tow strap and all. A loud boom rang eerily in the barn, and a dust cloud puffed out of the silo.

“Hey, come on, Timppa,” Foka said, shocked by Timppa’s aggressive solution to logistics. “Did he even survive that fall?”

“Fuck if I care.”

The two friends were exhausted from the day’s events. Still, they agreed that there was no use in sleeping.

“Let’s first go to sauna and take a good, long stock of this whole business,” Foka said as they left the dryer barn.

“What stock is there to take?”

“Such as, how do we get rid of those bodies?”

“I’ll bring the digger over and make a little hole at the edge of the field. Come to think of it, I might as well do it right now.”

The men walked to Timppa’s house, where he locked his Desert Eagle back in the gun safe, and snagged two cans of beer from the fridge.

The beer-sipping duo headed toward the small hill about a hundred meters from the house, where a sauna waited for them. In the changing room, Timppa grabbed another couple of cold beers and placed them into his pockets.

“You start heating up the sauna, I’ll go dig around a bit in the meantime,” he told Foka, and drank half of a can in one, long swig, then lit a cigarette. “I’ll be an hour, max.”

Foka lit the fire in the sauna stove and filled a plastic basin with cold water. He washed his hands and watched how the water in the basin turned red. He was exhausted and numb. He was nearly sober, too. He went to Timppa’s bar and grabbed a bottle of Jarraud and a cognac glass. He opened the bottle, filled the glass halfway, and glugged it all in one go.

A covered porch circled the sauna, and the two friends usually cooled off there between bouts of steam. Foka began to set a fire in the fireplace on the porch: he placed fire wood upright and jammed smaller twigs in as kindling. He filled his glass, took a sip, and spilled the rest of the cognac over the wood. The Old Man wouldn’t approve of this, Foka thought, and lit a match. The fireplace roared immediately with the sweet smell of cognac.

Foka was more than fine with Timppa dealing with the dead bodies, as long as he never had to see the Russian corpses again. Instead, his mind wandered back to Topi. I wonder if there’s even a slim chance that he’s still alive. Well, we’ll find out tomorrow. Foka was certain that the man would speak after a night spent in the silo.

Foka’s thoughts returned to the ferry ride. How the fuck did everything go so awry? I fucked up when I was drunk, and now two people are dead and Topi is missing. Timppa is in big shit, too, Foka agonized, although he knew that blaming himself didn’t help anyone, or anything, at this point. What was done couldn’t be undone. Foka decided to play the cards he had been dealt until the bitter end.

By the time Timppa returned, the sauna was warm enough. He walked straight to the fridge, and without a single word, took out another beer. He took a long drink, then wiped his mouth, and lit a cigarette.

“The Russkies are buried.”

Foka handed the bottle of cognac to him, and Timppa poured himself a full glass.

“Are you sure nobody saw you?” Foka asked.

“Who the hell would be walking around here in the sticks at this early hour? The men are in the ground and that’s where they’ll stay,” Timppa said.

Soon the two sat glumly in the sauna, listening to the stove hiss and click. They’d been able to divert the course toward approaching soberness, thanks to the cognac, and they ensured they’d remain steadfastly loaded by drinking beers at a steady pace.

“So, Timppa. What do you think…? Do you think Topi is still alive?” Foka interrupted the silence.

“I wouldn’t bet on it, with that blood on the floor at your house and all.”

“I’d pay anything to get him back alive,” Foka said and hung his head.

“I know. Let’s try to get some sleep after this and tomorrow we’ll squeeze the truth out of that Russian.”

“I hope rats are gnawing on the bastard,” Foka said.

“They might be.”

Chapter 29: Rain, Rain, Go Away

Luhtikylä – Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Foka and Timppa stayed in the sauna until the wee hours of the morning, and finally stumbled out of the steam into Timppa’s cabin to get some sleep. Around noon, Foka woke up on the couch to his phone ringing. It was his father.

“And there was evening and there was morning,” Foka grunted into the phone, realizing he was still utterly wasted.

“Right. Where are you?”

“At Timppa’s cabin. We had quite an invigorating sauna session last night.”

“I see. You sound like you’re just bursting with energy,” Antti said.

“I came by and we partook in a little bit of Jarraud. Where are you, if I may ask?”

“At the cabin. I got here this morning. Is Timppa awake already? I could walk over, if he’ll fix me some coffee.”

Foka startled himself awake.

“He’s still in bed, so don’t waste your time coming over. We were drinking late into the morning, you know.”

“Well, once the two of you are up and about, come see me. We can go to the sauna here, too.”

“I’ll call you when little Mr. Sunshine is awake.”

Foka sprang up and rushed to the bedroom to shake Timppa awake.

“Antti is at the cabin. He called me just now.”

“Oh yeah?” Timppa said, rubbing his sleepy eyes. “So?”

“What do you mean, so? He was about to fucking stomp over here to see us!”

“Ah. Shit.”

“I told him you were still snoring away. He said we should get over there later, for more sauna.”

“Fine, we’ll have a sauna with him, too. Listen, could you put some coffee on, I need to be reanimated.”

The men slurped down their morning coffee and headed to the dryer barn for a chat with their prisoner. Foka still held onto a glimmer of hope that Topi was alive and the prisoner would reveal where the dog was. As they walked along the gravel road, they made sure there was no sign of Antti anywhere, and then they slipped into the barn. There they carried a bright LED lantern up to the rafters, and pointed it down into the silo. Moldy grain and rat droppings covered the floor, and on top of the mess, Yevgeny lay on his side. He appeared to be breathing heavily, but he had obviously survived the fall. Two rats dashed around to avoid the beam of light.

Yevgeny stirred when he heard the men.
“Let me out of here! I’m hurt! I’ll pay you, just let me out!”

“Money won’t get you out of this trouble. What did you do to my dog?” Foka yelled back into the silo.

“I’ll arrange ten thousand euros, if you let me go,” Yevgeny’s voice broke in desperation. “I won’t say a word to anyone, I promise.”

“Where’s my dog?” Foka replied icily.

“How the hell should I know?” Yevgeny yelled. “I didn’t do anything to it. Maybe it ran away.”

Foka didn’t believe the man. 

“That blood in the entryway. Was that my dog’s blood? Did you kill him?”
“I know nothing about the dog! I was just the driver!”

Foka had a hard time believing that the man he had fought would’ve resorted to a mere chauffeur’s role on their little vendetta road trip.

“My crazy friends wanted to pay you back,” Yevgeny moaned from the depths of the silo.

It was Timppa’s turn to react.

“Oh, so you’re the one whose ass got kicked, and your friends did your dirty work? Come on, we’re not that stupid. You’ll never come out of there if we can’t find the dog!” he screamed.

The silo was quiet.

“How about we speed up this interrogation,” Timppa said, and grabbed a long, wooden staff, with a metal hook attached to the end. He used it to reach the grain chute hanging over another silo, and pulled it over. Yevgeny listened in horror to the sounds of screeching metal.

“You’ll get ten grand each, if you let me go! I know nothing about your dog!”

“Let’s pay a visit downstairs and see if we can get this old machine to run one more time,” Timppa said, and began to descend the stairs.

The grain bucket elevator was ready to hoist grain into the silo. Timppa pulled the large square of particle board off to reveal the feed bin. The bin was half-full of brown rapeseed seeds.

“What’s that? Looks like beans or something,” Foka wondered as he looked into the bin.

“Rapeseed. I left it there when I had to fix and tune up that elevator.”

“Are you thinking of pouring it on the Russkie?”

“Yeah, he’s going to be experiencing some interesting times in the silo,” Timppa chuckled.

The dashboard next to the bucket elevator was fitted with various knobs and meters used to adjust the drying process and the elevator. This time, though, Timppa wasn’t planning to dry grain. He was only going to turn the engine on to haul the rapeseed up from the bin to the tower, and from there down the tube into the silo. He twisted the on-off lever and pressed Start. The engine coughed into action, and a cacophony of engine rumbling mixed with the clinking of the buckets and rapeseed rustling filled the silent barn.

“Go make sure I won’t pour in too much,” Timppa yelled to Foka, who began to clamber back up.

As he climbed up to the tower, he heard a horrified scream and coughs from the silo. Thick dust swarmed in the rafters. Rapeseed rattled happily, as it fell to the bottom of the silo. No-one can breathe long down there,” Foka thought as he pulled his shirt up to cover his mouth and nose, and rushed back down.

“Turn that fucking thing off already,” he yelled, and that’s when he saw his father at the door.

Timppa turned to look at the old man and yanked the lever into the Off position. The engine noise and clanging ceased.

“You’re testing the dryer, then?” Antti said.

“Yeah,” Foka replied.

Antti walked over to the grain bin and looked inside.

“Rapeseed. I thought you two were hungover. What possessed you two to start this project?” Antti wondered.

“We just wanted to see if this old piece of junk still worked,” Timppa said.

“How about we go back inside to make some coffee, now that my Old Man is here, too,” Foka said, and rushed toward the door.

“Right, let’s have a cup, and then you’ll come over to my place for a sauna,” Antti beamed.

That’s when a cough rang from above.

“Help!”

Antti turned around. “What in the world is going on here? Who’s that yelling?”

Foka and Timppa looked at each other.

“It’s a long story,” Foka said.

“Let’s first see who needs help up there,” Antti said, and with a determined gait began to climb up the steep steps.

Foka and Timppa followed in silence. The dust had already settled by the time the men reached the rafters.

Antti picked up the lantern off the floor and shone it down to the silo. “Who the hell is this?”

“They’re going to kill me!” Yevgeny coughed and screamed. “Help me get out!” He was now standing up, rapeseed reaching up to his knees. “They shot my friends! Call the police!”

“These boys wouldn’t shoot anyone just for the heck of it,” Antti said calmly, and turned to face Foka and Timppa. ”Now, tell me why this fella is down there.”

“That fucking Russkie broke into my house and he’s done something to Topi,” Foka said. “I can’t find him anywhere and there was blood on my floor.”

“So that’s what this man has been up to? And Topi is missing?” the old man said and leaned onto the railing for support.

“That one and his friends took Topi,” Foka told his father.

“What friends? Where are they, then?” Antti asked and looked at Timppa askance, as if he already had an idea of what had happened.

Timppa made a small vertical movement with his hand across his throat.

“Ah, I see,” Antti said. “Well, then our comrade here should tell us where Topi is,” he said, pointing the light back down into the silo. “Are you going to tell us where the dog is?” Antti asked, his voice about to break.

Yevgeny was quiet. He kicked the silo wall in rage.

“Let me out of here,” he screamed.

“Well, well, well. I think it’s time for us to have that coffee break, boys,” Antti said, and pointed toward the stairs.

Antti came down last. He had a lump in his throat and his eyes welled with tears; Topi had been a dear, faithful friend to him. He wiped his eyes as he set foot on the downstairs floor.

“Hell, look at all this dust.”

The men brewed a pot of coffee, and each topped their large mugs with a proper serving of cognac. Then Foka and Timppa told Antti the highlights of what had gone down.

“You two sure get around,” Antti said. “I have this gut feeling that we’ll find Topi,” he said calmly, aiming these words at his son, yet not looking Foka in the eye. He cast his eyes down, as liars would. “Anyway, my sauna is warm and ready to go. How about we head over there? We can then take a moment to think about what the heck we’re supposed to do next.”

The men began to walk toward Antti’s cabin, but halfway the trek Antti remembered something and stopped.

“Timppa, you had a stocked bar at your sauna, right? I think we need better liquid thinking caps than what I have. I didn’t come exactly prepared for this.”

“Yeah, I have a bar. Should I grab something?”

“Foka, go with Timppa and bring us some beers and towels for yourselves. I’ll meet you at the sauna.”

Antti lit a cigarette and watched as the men headed across the hill toward Timppa’s sauna. When the duo disappeared, Antti turned back. Tears filled his eyes. He knew that if the man hidden in the silo knew that Topi was alive, he would’ve said so already.

Antti took the bottle of cognac from Timppa’s cabin and walked to the grain dryer. He sat on the trailer beam smoking his cigarette, and pulled a swig from the bottle. Antti thought about Topi. He recalled the times he’d spent together with the dog at his cabin and at his home in Kannelmäki. He remembered vividly what a little fool the dog had been as a puppy, and how it had felt to hold him for the first time. The old man let his tears flow. He wanted to grieve alone.

He snapped back from his reverie when he heard shouting from the silo.

“Is there someone there? Help! Let me the fuck out!”

The prisoner rampaged inside the silo and kicked the walls so hard that the entire barn boomed.

Antti wanted to say something, but he kept his mouth shut. Instead, he walked to the dryer dashboard. He flipped the switch and the elevator began to rumble.

“Where the hell were you?” Timppa asked when Antti finally appeared through the sauna door.

“I had to go back for that cognac you had earlier,” Antti said, and sat on the sauna bench.

The men sat in silence for a long while, enjoying the hot steam. They crouched down in the punishing heat, sweat falling off their bodies. This time, Antti was the one to break the silence.

“How about we cool off outside and have a little drink?” he suggested.

In the changing room, he poured them all generous servings of cognac, and the trio stepped outside for a smoke.

“We’ll manage this somehow, boys,” Antti said quietly, as if to assure himself.

“We’ll see if the Russkie is ready to sing in the morning,” Foka said.

“And if rats can’t make him talk, thirst and hunger will. It’s a pretty dusty place, that silo.”

“No amount of hunger or thirst will make him talk now,” Antti said, and sipped his drink. “I let rapeseed rain on the dog killer.”

Copyright © 2025 Jyri Hokkinen