The rent-a-cops are a man and a woman. The man is in his late twenties. The woman, just out of her teens. He’s a skinhead, has an Iron Cross tattooed on the meat between his right thumb and forefinger. A tribal tattoo runs up his neck and curls around his ear. She looks like a mean-spirited, gum-chewing cow with bad acne.
I take their personal information. “Did anyone try to revive him?” I ask.
The skinhead says, “I did. I tried mouth-to-mouth and chest compression. They didn’t work.”
“That much is apparent,” I say, and turn back to Timo. “You dropped him outside. Why is he inside?”
“We carried him back in.”
“Why?”
“It’s warmer in here.”
“He wasn’t breathing. I don’t think he cared.”
Timo goes quiet, and I get it. It had nothing to do with the victim. He and his buddy were cold, since they just have on T-shirts. Bouncer number one comes back. I tell him to stand behind the bar and await further instructions. I don’t want him and his buddy to talk and mesh their stories together any more than they already have. I call for cruisers to take them and the rent-a-cops to the lockup. They’ll remain in custody while we sort this out.
I go over to the victim’s brother and introduce myself. He’s sniffling. He has a big baby face, too. It’s glazed from shock.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Sulo Polvinen. My brother’s name was Taisto.”
Using the past tense makes him sob. The brothers’ names are old-fashioned, were popular during the Second World War. Sulo means “sweet.” Taisto means “battle.” Their family is patriotic.
“Those bastards killed him,” he says.
“Tell me why.”
He blinks, shakes his head. “It didn’t make any sense. We were just squabbling, we argue all the time. It’s a brother thing. We pushed each other a little, just playing, and those guys started to manhandle us. I stopped moving so they wouldn’t hurt me, but Taisto struggled a little and yelled at them. They bent him over and the fat one got him by the head. The other got his knees and picked him up. I followed them and begged them to leave him alone, but they just laughed. And then they took him outside, tossed him up in the air, and when he hit the ground he wasn’t breathing.”
“How much did you and Taisto have to drink?” I ask.
“Four beers.”
“Tell me the truth. Toxicology will measure the alcohol in your brother’s system.”
“We weren’t drunk. I swear. We were drinking our fourth beer when it happened. Why did they kill my brother?” He starts to cry again.
“I wish I knew. I’m sorry. Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
“The securitas, the one who tried CPR. When we were outside and he couldn’t bring Taisto back, he looked up at the bouncers and said, ‘Why did you have to kill one of us instead of one of those goddamned foreigners?’”
I sigh. This situation makes me sad. The Silver Dollar has a reputation for foreigners showing up at last call. They try to score with blasted Finnish girls. A last-ditch end of the night effort to fuck some random drunk girl. When Finns witness this, especially if the foreigners are black, xenophobia often wells up. Goddamned foreigners come here and take our jobs. They steal our women. Run the cocksuckers out of the country.
Securitas has become more prominent in the Helsinki law enforcement apparatus over time. The police department has no room for additional officers in its budget. As a result, many businesses, especially bars, and even the public sector, like our transportation system, use rent-a-cops. Some of them are pretty good, military-trained, have even studied to be cops but couldn’t get jobs.