Cold Trail by Jarkko Sipila Page B

Kohonen wasn’t there, she was busy writing up a report for an old case. The team had reviewed the original Repo file and concluded that the exercise hadn’t been very productive. They had invested a decent amount of effort in the process but had achieved nothing. Tracking an escaped prisoner was clear cut—you either succeeded or failed, and this time the results were pretty evident.
    “T he guy’ll get caught in some raid sooner or later,” Suhonen said. “It’d be nice to get a real case, so we could do some real work.”
    “A ll right, now,” Takamäki said. He wasn’t sure how serious Suhonen was, but he could sense a level of frustration. The danger was that it would spread to the others.
    “L ooks like all we have is this Saarnikangas,” Kulta said. “It’s the only name in this case. I talked again with the guard who allowed Repo to escape, but he didn’t have anything new to give me.”
    “H as anyone been back to the father’s house?”
    Takamäki asked. “He’s got to be sleeping somewhere... If he doesn’t have any friends, then let’s check the old places one more time.”
    “W e can go by there again,” Joutsamo said. “But this looks like it’s headed for passive investigation pretty fast. No point dedicating much more effort to it.”
    Takamäki tried to drum up enthusiasm. “We’re not giving up just yet. There’s one trick we haven’t tried yet.”
    “G ive it to the papers?” Joutsamo guessed.
    Takamäki nodded and read from a handwritten draft. “The headline reads ‘Helsinki Police Seek Tips on Escaped Murderer.’”
    Kulta smiled. “Not likely to make it to press in that format.”
    “I t’s not supposed to,” the lieutenant retorted. “The rest goes more or less like this, ‘On Monday morning, Timo Repo, serving life for murder, escaped from his father’s funeral...’”
    Joutsamo interrupted, “Do we have to say that he fled from the funeral?”
    “L et me respond with another question,” Takamäki said. “Why should we keep it a secret? It’s not significant in terms of our investigation, and we have to give them some details. If we send out a press release with no details, the papers will ignore it, which means we won’t get any response.”
    “O kay.”
    “A nyway, this goes on to say that Repo left the Restaurant Perho and headed toward downtown Helsinki. Since then, police have not received reports of any sightings, and are now asking the public for help. Then there’s a description of him.”
    “A ren’t you going to send a photo?” Joutsamo asked.
    “N ot yet,” Takamäki said.
    “W hy not?”
    “I t might get us another round in the media a couple days from now if this one doesn’t work. I did put here at the end that Repo was convicted of murdering his wife in Riihimäki in 1999. The police do not consider Repo particularly dangerous.”
    “W hy does it say ‘particularly dangerous?’” Kulta asked.
    “S hould we put ‘completely harmless?’” Takamäki retorted.
    “S omewhat dangerous, potentially dangerous, a smidgen dangerous?” Kulta mused.
    Takamäki grunted. “I can drop the ‘particularly’ if we all agree that the guy isn’t dangerous.”
    “Y eah,” said Suhonen. “The thing that still gets me about this case is, why did he check out? He’s already got eight years behind him. There’s gotta be some reason, and that’s still the big mystery here.”
    “T he reporters will probably ask that, too,” Kulta reflected. “And don’t tell them ‘No comment,’ either.”
    Takamäki chuckled. “I won’t. I’m perfectly capable of saying, ‘We don’t know.’”
    “A nd then their next question will be, how do you know he’s not dangerous if you don’t know the motive for his escape?” Joutsamo added.
    “W ell, that’s why I have ‘particularly dangerous.’”
    Now it was Kulta’s turn to grunt . “Okay, leave the ‘particularly’ in.”
    “D id we have anything else?”
    “I ’ve got a deck