He pointed at the tree. Much of the tape was still hanging from it in tatters, where he’d been found and cut free.
“My mouth was taped shut. Two men were dressed in black military clothing and balaclavas, but they were definitely black. I could tell from the areas around their eyes. The squad’s rifles were stacked on the rack. They packed all they could into duffel bags. There are two left, so they took ten. One of them got up close so our faces almost touched. He had a thick accent and really bad grammar, but I guess he knew it and spoke slow to make sure I understood. He said, ‘I allow you to live so you will deliver this message. We pray that Allah gives us the strength to use these weapons to do His will.’ Then they just walked off, and about half an hour later, somebody got up to take a piss and found us.”
“What kind of unit are you in?” Milo asked.
“A mortar squad.”
Milo walked over to the rack and picked up one of the two remaining rifles, gave it a once-over. “This is an Rk 95 Tp,” he said. “Most people just call it the M95.”
A Kalashnikov AK-47-style rifle made by Sako, the Finnish arms manufacturer. “And the significance is what?” I asked.
“There aren’t that many of them. A lot of them went to mortar units. Most soldiers are still carrying the old Rk 62. That means if we come up with a suspect in possession of an M95, as compared to an Rk 62, the odds of him having stolen it from here are quite high.”
I asked Harri, “Is there anything else you think I should know?”
He shook his head. “Just that I feel responsible. Safeguarding this area was my duty, and now Rami is dead.”
He wasn’t still a kid. His uniform was almost new. He’s probably only been in the army since the last cycle, in January.
“I’ve been a cop for twenty-two years,” I said, “and my experience is that when a man turns predator and you’re the target, you don’t know you’re being hunted and you don’t stand a chance. There was nothing you could do.”
His face said my pep talk, which was a simple truth, made him feel no better.
A reasonable assumption was that black immigrants had taken the murder of Lisbet S?derlund as a declaration of war and begun arming themselves. Somalis have a semblance of political organization and gangs that occasionally commit violent race crimes against whites, and vice versa, so their desire to acquire arms wasn’t entirely surprising, especially given the threats and violent rhetoric that were now daily directed against them. But blacks armed with AK-47s would terrify many Finns. The extremist Real Finns preached the inevitability of a race war between Finns and immigrants. I had an ominous gut suspicion that it might be coming true.
This lent a new sense of urgency to the S?derlund murder, and I wondered how many would die before I solved it.
15
It was almost noon by the time we got back to Helsinki. I figured Jyri Ivalo would have put out the nationwide call to police forces, and also to SUPO, requesting that all information concerning racists be sent to me. I asked Milo to come over to my house so we could start the sorting process and begin looking for potential suspects in the murder of Lisbet S?derlund.