TH03 - To Steal Her Love (19 page)

Trees flashed past, bushes, the park. Harjunpää couldn’t see the
slightest
trace of their man or of Onerva, and it struck him that someone cunning enough would hide in one of the bushes and attack Onerva from
behind. A bitter taste suddenly began tickling the back of his throat and he grabbed the car radio.

‘Control! This is 5-8-3. Do you copy?’

‘Copy.’

‘Send immediate assistance to the corner of Topelius Park. Our man’s done a runner. He’s heading for the city centre.’

‘Calm down… Can you give us a description?’

‘Short,’ Harjunpää gasped. ‘Thin. Grey clothes. Fast runner. Onerva Nykänen is in pursuit on foot.’

‘Copy that. Is there a patrol car in the Töölö area that could…?’

Harjunpää didn’t need to listen to the rest. He was approaching the Sibeliuksenkatu intersection. He still couldn’t see anyone along Mechelininkatu, unless the sheeting rain was obscuring the man from view. He made to take a left and braked hard, the car skidded and swung almost sideways across the street; Harjunpää frantically spun the steering wheel and managed to straighten the car just before hitting the kerb. The trees growing on both sides turned the street into a leafy grove and kept a lot of the rain out, though he still couldn’t see anyone, only parked cars. Further along the street, almost at the Topeliuksenkatu intersection, a motorbike went past.

Harjunpää stopped and rolled down the window, stared into the park and listened. At least he couldn’t hear any shots or cries for help. Somewhere in the distance he heard the faint wail of a siren. He couldn’t understand what had happened to Onerva, then all of a sudden came her voice somewhere in the distance: ‘Timo!’ Harjunpää saw her straight away; she was in the park, a good couple of hundred metres away, urgently pointing in the direction of Topeliuksenkatu. Harjunpää understood instantly: the motorbike! Its lights had been switched off, and for someone to be out in this weather… The man must have parked it ready on Sibeliuksenkatu.

He looked further up the street and could just make out a dark flash disappearing to the left, perhaps into Töölönkatu. Then he looked into the park. Onerva had stopped and was trying to catch her breath, her hands resting on her thighs, and didn’t even try to get into the car – she knew it would take too long. Harjunpää scooped the flashlight from the floor, threw it on top of the dashboard, lifted the clutch and pulled away. He groped for the switch, turned it and the car was filled with a glaring whirl of blue light.

Careful, he told himself over and over. Its engine roaring, the Golf sped across Topeliuksenkatu, waves of light flashing all around, and headed onwards. The windscreen wipers were going at full speed but the windows were beginning to steam up on the inside as moisture
evaporated
from his clothes. Harjunpää put the fan on full blast and hastily wiped a small gap in the condensation behind the windscreen with the back of his hand.

He took a left on to Topeliuksenkatu – and he could see the
motorbike
! It was probably a moped, it was so small. The man had switched the headlights on – perhaps he thought he’d got away. Harjunpää accelerated and quickly closed the gap between them. The moped-man looked behind and gave a start: the whole bike swayed from side to side. He very nearly fell over but somehow miraculously managed to regain his balance, accelerated and swerved to the left, his foot skimming against the ground. Harjunpää reached for the switch and the siren began to wail:
woa-
woa-woa
! It would make the man even more nervous, he knew this from experience and he knew the risks that came with it, but there was
practically
no traffic and, because of the rain, going too fast on the moped could have been dangerous.

The Linnankoskenkatu intersection lay ahead. The moped-man had taken a right on to Nordenskiöldinkatu and by now there was less than a hundred metres between them. An almost intoxicating sense of victory washed through Harjunpää in warm waves. He tried to suppress the feeling. It was dangerous, it could blind him in all the wrong ways. At this stage anything was still possible: he might be careless and drive the Golf into a lamp post or the moped-man might decide to turn into the narrow side streets and set off by foot – and that would be that.

Dee-daa-dee-daa
, came the yell of the siren. Harjunpää shifted into third gear and put his foot on the accelerator, only to release the pressure and brake almost immediately. It was as though the moped-man had read his mind: at the very last moment he swerved across the street and
disappeared
down a side street to the left. The Golf sped on like a train; because of the rain Harjunpää didn’t dare brake as hard as he should have. He passed the intersection and managed to stop the car, slammed the gearstick into reverse and revved the car back down the street, changed gear again and swung the car into the side street. Now that the situation had changed he quickly turned off the lights and the siren.

Another empty crossroads was right in front of him. Harjunpää slowed down until the car was stationary, and looked around. He could see neither the moped nor anyone on foot, and disappointment flooded his mind like a thick liquid. He slumped against the car seat with his full weight. No! He felt the same as when Onerva had first spotted the man in the park and now he was consumed by a pressing need to catch the stalker and to wind up the case. The moped-man couldn’t just have
disappeared
. He had to be somewhere – and so did the moped.

Again Harjunpää instinctively turned left and looked up at the street sign. He was on Messeniuksenkatu and let the car glide slowly on, making sure to look between the parked cars and along the walls. Just as he had almost reached the end of the street he saw it: the moped. It was in front of a grey van and had been parked in a hurry, almost right up against the bumper. Harjunpää pulled over, grabbed his torch and stepped out of the car, pulling his jacket back from around his revolver just in case, and walked up to the moped. It was the right one: its engine was still so hot that the raindrops hissed as they hit it.

He looked at the building in front of him: a brown block of flats, grand in a way that meant the flats inside were probably very large. He made towards the nearest stairwell, walked up the steps and pulled the handle, but the door was shut. He switched on his torch and aimed its beam of light through the thick pane of glass and on to the floor in the stairwell. The floor was dry; he couldn’t see any wet footprints. He thought for a moment and decided that it would be best to establish where the man might have gone before any possible footprints could dry out and only then call for assistance if necessary. He moved on to the next door with the same result. A moment later he had come to the corner of the
building
. It curved round on to Stenbäckinkatu, and on that side of the
building
there was a gateway.

He strode up to the gate in the thinning rain, raised his torch and illuminated the ground through the iron decorations. He drew a quick breath: on the tarmac were fresh, shining wet footprints leading through the archway and into the courtyard. The gaps between them were so large that they were clearly running steps. Harjunpää pulled feverishly on the gate, but it too was locked. But on the wall he spotted a white buzzer with the word
GATE
printed beneath it. He pressed it, and a few seconds later the lock gave an electric hiss and he pulled the gate open.

Harjunpää stepped into the archway but stopped immediately: he had a strange, almost superstitious feeling that he was stepping into a trap, that he had crossed into a realm of evil forces. He pulled out his gun and listened, but all he could hear was the sound of water splashing down the gutters and thunder booming somewhere to the north. He crept towards the courtyard, his thumb ready on the safety catch, and just before he reached the end of the tunnel he crouched down to follow the direction of the footprints. It appeared that the man had veered to the right before entering the courtyard. If this were the case, he would probably have gone into the first stairwell on the right. Harjunpää stood up and peered into the courtyard. All he could see was darkness: the stairwell window gleamed black and not a single light was on in the flats above.

Harjunpää instinctively hunched his shoulders and ran through the thinning rain to the first door after the corner and pulled the handle. The lock gave a quiet click and the door opened. He had the odd feeling that he’d done this once before but let the notion pass. He stood and listened to the deep silence inside the building. He pressed the light switch, glowing in the dark like a red eye, and a soft yellow light flickered and filled the stairwell.

First he looked at the floor. The footprints were clear. The man hadn’t used the lift but had gone up the stairs. Water had dripped from his clothes, which must have been soaked through, and the small droplets gleamed like silver coins in the light from Harjunpää’s torch. He made for the stairs. The man had gone up from the second floor, and the third. As he reached the fourth floor Harjunpää suddenly stopped. He was overcome by a hazy unease, but this time it was different from back in the archway. Now he
knew
something was not quite right.

But how did he know? He couldn’t work it out. Was it something he’d heard? He tilted his head to one side and listened – perhaps there was someone on the attic floor above. But no, the silence was just as thick as before. His mouth felt dry and he inadvertently gripped the handle of his revolver, took a deep breath, then another – and there it was. There was something else in the air. He knew that smell; he’d smelled it hundreds of times. It was the bitter, sickly smell of a human body in the advanced stages of decomposition.

Balancing on the balls of his feet Harjunpää silently moved up towards the fifth floor and wondered whether he was imagining it. Drains
sometimes gave off a similar smell, which explained why people went for months without realising there was a body in the next-door apartment. He sniffed the air again; the smell seemed even more pungent and he knew he was right: one of the flats on this floor contained a dead body.

He craned his neck to see on to the landing above, but it was as empty as the other floors. Only droplets of water glistened on the stone floor and Harjunpää went back to following them. They led to a door at the far right-hand corner of the gable. There was more water in front of the door than anywhere else, it had collected into a small puddle, and there were indistinct, smudged marks on the floor as though someone had been crouching down there or on their knees.

Harjunpää remained at a distance, allowing the wall to shield him, then he carefully crouched down closer to the door, reached out his hand and opened the letterbox – and the smell of death spilled out like a gas. Helga Kivimäki, read the sign on the door. Harjunpää was at a loss: did their intruder
live
with the body? It was possible, he’d seen it before. He’d even seen people try to feed mummified bodies with gruel. Perhaps the intruder’s wife or mother had died, Harjunpää thought, and the man has had some sort of breakdown as a result. Or maybe he’d killed one of his victims and wanted to turn himself in. But whatever the circumstances, he was inside that apartment waiting to be caught, and a look flashed in Harjunpää’s eyes that was almost malevolent.

Silently he moved to the other side of the door, crouched down and peered through the jamb at the lock. The gap around the door was so wide that he could see the bolt clearly. He realised it would only take him a minute or so to open the door, he had a pouch full of different hooks in his jacket pocket, and without a moment’s hesitation he laid his revolver on the floor and reached for the pouch. He opened the drawstring and the tarnished, glinting steel hooks slipped into his hand – then he froze. After a moment he raised his head slowly as though he were waking up. He was about to do something unforgivably foolish: what if, as the door opened, the man were to point the barrel of a shotgun at his head and pull the trigger?

He swallowed, his throat stiff, backed away from the door, pushed the pouch back into his pocket and replaced the revolver in its holster. His whole body was shaking, he was so angry – at something, at himself. Then he took out his badge, walked up to the door at the other end of the
corridor and rang the bell again and again. A minute passed, another, before he heard the sound of steps approaching the door. Finally a sleepy, suspicious male voice asked: ‘Who’s there?’

‘Crime Squad,’ Harjunpää replied. ‘I need assistance. I need to make a phone call.’

At first the stairwell seemed very quiet, but when Harjunpää listened more closely it was filled with almost imperceptible movement and tiny, barely audible runaway sounds: someone shifted position, handcuffs jangling on someone’s belt. Somewhere further off somebody discreetly blew their nose. There were over a dozen police officers in the stairwell and things were almost ready. They were all waiting for the go-ahead.

Still in his damp clothes, Harjunpää leaned against the wall between the fifth and sixth floors. It was so late at night that everything seemed rather surreal, like catching a glimpse of someone else’s dream, and with that came a sense of relief: he was no longer solely responsible for matters. The operation was being led by Heikkanen, the acting chief inspector from the Public Order Police, who despite his relative youth was quick and firm in his work and didn’t expect people to fawn over him. As long as people did their job well, he was happy.

‘Anything else you can tell us?’ asked Heikkanen and looked over at Harjunpää, though perhaps only to give himself another few seconds to think. He already had the radio in his hand and looked like he was about to give the order to enter the apartment. Harjunpää shook his head.

‘I’m still worried because of what the neighbour said about the weapons in there,’ Heikkanen whispered. ‘I’m just wondering whether to use tear gas first. Though the dog will serve the same purpose.’

‘Right, especially since we haven’t heard a sound from inside. And given that we’ll probably have to process the place as a murder scene, the tidier we can keep things the better.’

Heikkanen was silent for a moment, as though he was scouring his mind for something but couldn’t find it. Finally he gave a chuckle: ‘He’s probably dangling from the ceiling…’

From his expression you could tell this wasn’t simply a statement. It was more a wish, and there was no doubt that, as far as defusing the
situation
was concerned, this would have been the simplest case scenario.

‘Everybody ready,’ Heikkanen spoke into the radio, this time without the slightest hint of joking or indecision in his voice. ‘Let’s get started. Kettunen, open the door.’

Harjunpää pressed back against the side of the lift shaft and through the mesh he had a clear view up on to the fifth-floor landing. Kettunen from Forensics moved along the wall and stopped in front of Kivimäki’s door. His hands were raised and he was holding a hook or a needle ready. They hadn’t been able to obtain the door key as no one from the housing association was on night duty. He knelt down and began working in silence. Behind him, up against the wall, stood two constables in helmets and bulletproof jackets, one of whom was holding a canister of tear gas at the ready while the other carried a small, toy-like submachine gun.

The seconds passed. Not a sound came from inside the apartment. The lock clicked and the door was ajar. Kettunen leaned back tight against the wall. Everybody waited. For a shot, a scream, anything. But still nothing happened. Kettunen turned and dashed for cover, his shoulders hunched. The smell of death grew stronger.

‘Dog,’ Heikkanen indicated. A muffled scraping sound came from the stairs leading down from the fifth floor, followed by a few instructions and the dog’s excited yelping, then came the sound of claws and the Alsatian bolted towards the door like a dark shadow. It stopped before the door and hesitated, as though the smell from the flat made it feel ill too. The order came again, more forcefully this time, and the dog pawed the door open and slipped into the darkness inside. An avalanche of post spilled out into the stairwell; there must have been several months’ worth in the hallway. The man with the tear gas started spluttering and brought a hand up to his mouth. Not a sound came from inside.

‘He’s strung himself up,’ Heikkanen repeated, now clearly relieved, apparently just for the sake of saying something. He looked at his watch; its second hand moved across the clock face in regular twitches, started and completed a new cycle, and only then did a soft scratching sound
emanate from the flat. The Alsatian came back into the stairwell and returned obediently to its trainer, whimpering all the while, almost sobbing, as though it was mourning what it had just seen.

‘What do you think, Lehto?’ Heikkanen said into the radio.

The dog trainer answered immediately: ‘There’s certainly nobody alive in there.’

‘You don’t think the smell confused him?’

‘A bit, probably, but not that much. We’d have heard barking and screaming, believe me.’

‘Copy. You two. Inside.’

Two officers in helmets and jump suits appeared on the floor from the same direction as the dog. Both were carrying powerful halogen lamps and pistols, and though to all intents and purposes it was clear that they were in no immediate danger, they darted inside with their shoulders hunched, keeping tight up against the wall. A moment later the lights came on in the hallway, then somewhere further inside the apartment. The pile of post was enormous. The hallway gave the distinct impression of considerable wealth.

‘Faint drops of water on the floor here too,’ came a voice from the radio. ‘And it stinks in here. The place is huge…’

Then everything went quiet. Harjunpää moved restlessly. He wanted to go inside, but he knew it was impossible. The fewer people that went inside the less physical evidence they would destroy, and the matter of determining the cause of death and investigating a potential homicide fell to the Crime Squad officers on night shift.

Heikkanen’s radio crackled, then the same voice spoke again: ‘There’s a door off the kitchen leading out into the other stairwell. There are still a few drops of water right next to it.’