Case Histories by Various

Author:Various [Various]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-04-29T19:21:04+00:00

The Cost of Knowing

By Jussi Marttila, ©2001.

The rain is pouring on the dusty suburban streets of Helsinki. July is as always in Helsinki, alternating with pouring rain and baking sun. The summer night is quieter than usual, all one can hear is the ubiquitious silent roar of traffic from the downtown area and the sound of rain falling heavily on the pavement outside the bar. The bar, which is your typical Helsinki suburban pub, grimy, smelling like old cigarettes, smelling like unemployment, smelling like welfare checks, smelling like spilled beer on the plastic tabletops, is almost empty. The clock strikes half past one, signaling that soon it is time to go home.

The fat old barkeep has already turned off most lights and locked the door. In the table next to the back wall and the emergency exit, two guests of this establishment are sitting. Both of them are wearing jeans and dress coats, like any middle-aged Finnish men out for a night of serious drinking and getting laid by odd women. Tasting the last drops of his cheap lager, the other man grimaces and throws his cigarette butt into the remains of the beer. Then he continues.

“So, we didn’t really expect anything more than a failed business with a bad reputation. I mean, a hotel meant for 400 guests, smack in the middle of nowhere. In the Northwestern parts of Finland, and we all know there ain’t anything to see there. However, there was a few warning signs. First, there had been a spree of murders sometime in the thirties, which was never solved. Second, the Finnish FBI…what would you call them, Ylönen? Ah, the Central Criminal Police, developed an interest in the hotel a couple of years back. We at the embassy had heard that your department too had, now and then taken an interest in cases which were… disturbing.”

Markku Ylönen, the other man looks across the stained table at the man sitting there to him. A clerk at the US Embassy, the man was just known by the name Frederick. A code name, no doubt. And, Ylönen would bet, he was definitely not just a clerk.

“After those policemen had disappeared, I sent some information to the higher-ups in my organization. The next day I got orders from them. Go there, they said, investigate and if you need to do it, torch the place.

“So, I gathered my stuff and told the ambassador I was going up to Vaasa for a holiday. I rented a car and drove there. And, let me tell you, I had the bad-mojo heebie-jeebies right from the beginning. You’ve seen pictures of the place, right? They don’t do the place any credit. The hotel is four stories high, a Functionalist fortress from the thirties. The entire building is gray and it’s shaped like a big H-letter. No real outside decoration or anything, the place looks like a bunker. Just gray concrete and windows. Smack in the middle of fields ten miles wide, with nothing else around.

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