Stalag 309 opened in July 1941. It was a normal German prisonerof-war camp. In other words, an abattoir. Twelve Finns and between fifteen and thirty members of Einsatzkommando Finnland worked together there. It was huge, held several thousand inmates, had special sections for “dangerous prisoners.” Bolsheviks, both military and civilian. Jews. Commissars. Russian officers and maybe also noncoms. Details remain fuzzy. The German army destroyed most of its records when it dismantled the camp in 1944.
Germans looked for informers in the camp and used them to collect data. Valpo assisted in setting up these networks. On page 218, I find a set of eleven criteria used to determine eligibility for execution. The rules were written in such a way that the Gestapo could execute anyone they chose at their discretion: political organizers, administrators, Red Army officers, intelligentsia. And, of course, all Jews.
Each day, individuals were selected, their names called out. They were driven outside the camp. Their clothes were taken away. They were dressed in sacks and forced to climb down into bomb craters. A bomb crater could hold a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred people. They were machine-gunned to death. When the craters were full, the victims were covered over with dirt.
I read enough to get a good sense of what happened there. Pure evil. A little piece of the Holocaust. I also see that, while not much is written about Arvid, it’s enough to get him extradited, maybe convicted. I need to find out if he lied to me. If he told the truth, I want to help him. Even if he lied, I consider whether I want to help him wriggle out of this mess. I don’t know yet. If Ukki were alive, I would still love him. I wouldn’t condemn him for past sins and ancient history, so how can I do it to Arvid? I check my watch. It’s time to go back to work.
16
I drive to Pasila. Two detectives, Ilari and Inka, are sitting in the common room. They glance up at me. Ilari nods. Inka ignores me. Ilari is in early middle age, has a bad haircut-he parts it too far over on the side and rakes thinning hair over his scalp to cover his bald spot-a mild dandruff problem, and a paunch. He does, however, wear expensive suits to work. Inka is middle-aged, has a short, shapeless haircut that renders her sexless, as do her frumpy clothes. She also has a paunch. Our two other team members, Tuomas and Ilpo, are working a kidnap murder and are seldom seen lately.
Ilari and Inka are reading today’s Helsingin Sanomat, the nation’s largest-circulation newspaper. They quarrel over who gets the sports section. I pick up the local news section. Murders rarely make the front page of Sanomat. The Filippov murder gets an eighth of a page, says nothing of interest. The press has left me alone about it. Arto and the PR folks are fielding the calls, an advantage of working for a major metropolitan police force.
One pastry sits in a box on the table. Ilari takes it.
“I wanted that,” Inka says.
Ilari shrugs. “You snooze, you lose.”
She calls him a bastard. He tells her to go fuck herself. I go to my office.
I log on to my computer and check e-mails. Without knocking, Milo jerks my door open and shouts, “Boo!”
It makes me jump in my chair.
“See,” he says, “you don’t like it, either.”
Milo is strange and antagonistic. It makes me laugh. “At least I wasn’t building weapons of mass destruction in secret,” I say. “Did you turn up anything at Saar’s apartment?”
“The only thing of interest was in his laptop. He has a collection of photos and videos of himself having sex with Iisa and other women in his bedroom. Judging by the camera angle, that’s the purpose of the hole in his closet door.”
“Doesn’t make him a murderer. Have a seat. The Filippov autopsy results are here.”
Normally, autopsy transcriptions aren’t delivered until months after the event, but I asked nicely, so the coroner sent me a summary.