Cold Trail by Jarkko Sipila

case isn’t getting any special treatment just because a lieutenant’s son is involved.”
    “I ’m not expecting special treatment, but how about a proper investigation? I could drop off a flash drive with the photos around 5:30 this afternoon. I’m tied up with a case of my own here.”
    “S orry, office hours end at 4:15, but give me a call tomorrow. I don’t have any interrogations scheduled, and I might just have time to take a look at those surveillance camera images.”
    “F ine. I’ll call you tomorrow,” Takamäki said, and lowered the receiver. This time he decided to count to twenty, and out loud, before he did anything else.
    Joutsamo walked in as he hit sixteen. “What’s up? Are you meditating or something?”
    “S eventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty,” Takamäki recited.
    “W hat’s going on?”
    “Y ou know a cop at Espoo by the name of Lauri Solberg?” Takamäki asked.
    “D oesn’t ring any bells,” Joutsamo said, confused.
    “I n that case it doesn’t matter,” Takamäki said, his voice now calm.
    Joutsamo eyed her boss as he turned to his computer.
    “U mm, Kari, the meeting’s supposed to start now.”
    “H uh? Oh yeah, of course.” Takamäki replied.
    “D oes Solberg have anything to do with Jonas’s hit-and-run?” Joutsamo asked.
    Takamäki stood up and walked past her. “Suhonen here yet?”
    “Y eah,” Joutsamo said, more perplexed than ever, following her lieutenant into the corridor.
    The conference room was just down the hall. Takamäki could see Suhonen and Kulta in the corridor. The men were counting together out loud. “Nine... ten…eleven...”
    “W hat the hell?” Takamäki wondered, before he saw Kohonen doing chin-ups from a bar rigged up in the conference room doorway.
    “T welve,” Kulta counted, but Kohonen seemed to be slowing down. “One more!”
    Kohonen strained at the bar, trying to pull her chin up to it. “No…problem,” she huffed, as her face turned the same shade of red as her hair.
    “Y ou got it, you got it!” Suhonen encouraged.
    Kohonen struggled, and finally managed to complete chin-up number thirteen.
    “O nly thirteen, huh,” Kohonen panted on the floor. “I ought to be able to do the same fifteen as Suhonen here.”
    “H ow many does the lieutenant have in him?” Kulta asked.
    Before Takamäki could answer, Joutsamo intervened.
    “H e just made it to twenty over in his office. Now let’s start this meeting.”
     
    * * *
     
    Salmela was sitting in his rusted-out Toyota van in the Hakaniemi public market parking lot. He had backed the van up so that the rear was toward the brick building.
    Whereas the finer folk did their shopping at the Market Square at the southern harbor, Hakaniemi Square had traditionally been a working-class marketplace. This history still lived on in the labor unions that kept watch over the square from the surrounding office buildings. And red flags flew in honor of the working man every Mayday, when crowds of thousands gathered at the square before their traditional parade through Helsinki’s streets.
    Salmela had no political convictions, but he did believe that taking from the rich was just fine. And the same went for the poor, too.
    Kallio, a neighborhood of grim apartment buildings, rose behind the square on one of the city’s highest hills. Its apartments were small, mostly studios or one-bedrooms. It had been a distinctly working-class area for decades, but was now headed down the same path as New York’s SoHo. First students and artists displaced the working class, and then the rich bought up housing that was conveniently located close to the city center. The hundred-year-old Market Hall behind the van was solid but attractive, and the area’s working-class spirit had been preserved in the interior. Salmela didn’t care for the place, though. The red brick façade reminded him too much of the exterior of Helsinki Prison.
    The market was closed, and Salmela was eyeing the grim view.