Helsinki Noir Read online

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Introduction by James Thompson

  PART I: DEEP CUTS

  Jenkem

  PEKKA HILTUNEN

  Töölö

  Kiss of Santa

  LEENA LEHTOLAINEN

  Stockmann Department Store

  The Hand of Ai

  JAMES THOMPSON

  Kallio

  St. Peter’s Street

  RIIKKA ALA-HARJA

  Eira

  Hard Rain

  TAPANI BAGGE

  Esplanadi

  PART II: BROKEN BLADES

  The Silent Woman

  JOE L. MURR

  Munkkiniemi

  Little Black

  TEEMU KASKINEN

  Aurinkolahti

  Silent Night

  JARKKO SIPILA

  East Pasila

  Snowy Sarcophagus

  JUKKA PETÄJÄ

  Meilahti

  Dead Cinch

  TUOMAS LIUS

  Central Train Station

  PART III: WINDS OF VIOLENCE

  Good Intentions

  JESSE ITKONEN

  Itäkeskus

  The Broker

  KARO HÄMÄLÄINEN

  Fabianinkatu

  The Script

  ANTTI TUOMAINEN

  Lintulahti

  Stolen Lives

  JOHANNA HOLMSTRÖM

  Vuosaari

  About the Contributors

  Sneak Peek: USA NOIR

  Also in Akashic Noir Series

  Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition

  About Akashic Books

  Copyrights & Credits

  INTRODUCTION

  A PARALLEL UNIVERSE

  Finland, the myths and truths. Internationally, it has a reputation as perhaps the best place in the world to live. A great economy. A low crime rate. Good and nearly cost-free health care. The needy are provided for by the state and live in reasonable comfort. Finns: peaceful and quiet people, living in the perfect example of a social democracy functioning as it should. A tourist, or even a person who has lived here for a length of time, might well view Finland as such. There is some truth to this, but like every country, Finland has many truths.

  Finnish literature, traditionally, with the exception of the work of a handful of authors such as Leena Lehtolainen (she has publishers in around thirty countries), a contributor to this anthology, hasn’t sold well abroad, especially in the noir genre. The reason for this is likely related to the fact that Finland is a quirky country, with customs, traditions, and ways of doing things that mystify some foreigners. In certain translated books, foreign readers are often wondering: Why would a person do or think that? It stops readers dead in their tracks.

  The problem is one of language—and Finnish is in certain ways a difficult and bizarre language. I sometimes consider something in Finnish, then again in English, and reach different conclusions. Finland is, like the theme so often explored in Star Trek, a parallel universe in which, on the surface, all seems normal, but under that shell lie vast differences. Finland is Oz. Like Dorothy in Kansas, Finns usually live internal lives full of dreams, of tin men and witches, lions seeking hearts and flying monkeys. And they hide their frustrations and anger—until they don’t. As this book demonstrates, Finland is a noir nation.

  The true Finland exists in the Finnish mind, in the Finnish soul, and without an occasional explanation as a guide, some readers can’t grasp the Finnish mind. Without a glimmer of understanding of the reasons belying thoughts and actions, stories can confuse and fall flat. This book has no such difficulties.

  Being chosen as the editor of Helsinki Noir brought me mixed emotions. I felt tremendous pride, because although I’m considered by most to be a Finnish author, I was given the honor of working with some of Finland’s finest and most popular writers. I felt trepidation for the same reason. I’ve lived in Finland for fifteen years, but it’s a fact of Finnish culture that if I live here for a hundred years, even if I take dual citizenship and become a Finn, I will never truly be considered Finnish. I’m frequently referred to as a Finnish-American. People often aren’t quite sure what to make of me. Would I gain the respect of the authors in the anthology, or would they be dismissive, working under an American? Scary.

  On the practical side, the stories in this volume were originally written in Finnish, English, and Swedish, whichever language the individual author saw fit to write in, so I suppose the pool of writers who are also experienced editors and able to work in those three languages was rather limited. I focus on the pride of being chosen editor in spite of this.

  That duality of cultural experience gives me the ability to see things about Finns that they might take for granted, things that might never occur to them as being uniquely Finnish. As it turned out, I had no reason to be nervous about editing Helsinki Noir; every author treated me and my suggestions with respect, and the process of writing and editing the book went seamlessly.

  This anthology is, I believe, the best representation of Finnish noir ever offered to the international community. Every word rings true. It holds Finland up in a way that not only exposes this wonderful and fascinating country to the world, but acts as a mirror that reflects its people and culture in a way every Finn will recognize, vocalizing those truths that are so seldom spoken here amongst ourselves.

  Enjoy.

  James Thompson

  July 2014

  PART I

  DEEP CUTS

  JENKEM

  BY PEKKA HILTUNEN

  Töölö

  Translated by Owen F. Witesman

  There are six of us. We fill the dark street, walking in a line. People coming the other way turn immediately. They are avoiding us.

  They are avoiding fear. We are fear.

  We walk the breadth of the street. All of Töölö flinched when we appeared from that big building. It was one of those old, expensive Helsinki apartment buildings with all the fancy decorations on the walls where people like us don’t belong. Groups like ours never pile out of buildings like that, which is why the entire neighborhood recoiled.

  We were leaving Little Dude’s apartment, which we had remodeled for him. Destroyed more like. His parents aren’t going to believe their eyes when they get home. Little Dude, a distant acquaintance of one of us, is edgy and insignificant. We used him. We convinced him to let us into his house for the night and then threw him out. Little Dude is so timid that he didn’t dare come back to chase us out.

  Rapa looks at me. Rapa, there’s something too sharp in your eyes. You haven’t sniffed enough. What do you want? We have Red Sun, and we have cheap-ass Bostik from the store.

  Tonight we have everything. We have the whole city.

  Toppe is walking in the road. Come on back over here, Toppe. A car swerves to avoid him. Everyone swerves to avoid us.

  Our voices echo off the walls and the windows of the shops. People returning from the bars downtown are still trickling through the neighborhood, but our shouts keep our path clear. The night separates out the loudest and most piercing shouts. Everyone can hear us coming half a mile away.

  The six of us walk slowly. Take a good huff, boys.

  We stagger and laugh. What a night.

  * * *

  My five boys. They were all sniffing glue together at the Little Dude’s place. He didn’t have much booze, but we had our own stuff with us. I didn’t touch any of it. Glue and solvents and gas are for kids. Tonight I’m not even going to drink very much. But my boys huffed and laughed and huffed some more. They even hit the butane right off the bat, which always gives them wings.

  My five little flying demons. I can point to what I want and they bring it. They steal it. They rip
it to shreds.

  “We’ll choose someone soon,” I say.

  It takes a minute for this idea to sink in. Rapa gets it first, but still a little late. The idea wakes them all up a bit.

  Toppe lets out a shout. Howl, boys, howl.

  When we’re on the move, sometimes we choose a victim. We take anyone, theoretically a random passerby, but in reality everything but random: we choose a person and take everything they have.

  A mere facial expression is enough to justify the selection. Or clothes. Expensive clothes, and you’re done for.

  We’ve stolen everything from so many people that I don’t remember all of them anymore. At first I remembered, but over time they’ve become a faceless mass; the excitement of grabbing someone dwindled a bit, and they’ve become anyone. Just people curled up on the ground after we were done with them, half-naked, robbed—beaten if they tried to resist.

  Someone is standing on the other side of the roundabout. An old woman. She has stopped, afraid of us, waiting to see which direction we will take.

  The woman tries not to look directly at us, something grotesque and crooked in her stance. We caused that.

  Rapa looks at me, waiting for the word. Let the woman go.

  I lead the boys onto Mechelin Street, and the woman disappears. It isn’t her turn, and there isn’t any fun in humiliating old women anyway. After a life on their knees, tasting of sorrow and suffering, I can never get the expression I want to see out of them.

  I want to see the shock when a person realizes how random the continuation of his life really is. I can get that with a younger person, by putting them face-to-face with death.

  When I choose the person who we’re going to accost tonight, my boys will howl and bray and laugh, and I won’t even have to raise my hand to take from that person their feeling of security. The boys will do it all.

  My boys: Rapa, Toppe, Mika, Marko, and Liban. Brothers bound by booze and glue, comrades already serving their future jail sentences in their hearts. They have abandoned everything normal, everything ordinary. They are up-and-coming losers united by their shouts and euphoria and hate. Big, bad boys. Inconvenient questions that no one can answer, living and in the flesh.

  I am not one of them. I’m too grown-up for that. I lied to the boys about my age. They think I am twenty-six, but really I’m thirty-three. They are just thirteen, fourteen. Rapa is sixteen. They are at the age when they can’t tell the difference between twenty-six and thirty-three; to them, everyone my age is simply an adult.

  Except that I’m not like the other adults, not their fathers, not their brothers. I am the leader of their group.

  Fly, boys, jump on top of the cars. Slash to pieces the lives of these rich mortals, my little demons, fly. Claw marks in the sides of their cars and make these middle-aged fools weep. See the row of men at dawn standing on this street crying for their cars.

  Shriek, boys, shriek. Is anything more beautiful than the guttural, mindless shriek of youth?

  The night hears as we approach.

  * * *

  Toppe finds something and calls, his voice hoarse, from the edge of a small park along the road. I don’t go to see what it is. The boys know without being told that they should bring their discoveries to me or tell me what there is to see.

  A pile of dog shit. Standing over a mound of dog droppings, Toppe waves excitedly. In these parks and carefully swept streets there shouldn’t be anything like that, but there it is, a big pile of crap that is sending Toppe on a tear.

  “Le’s make jenkem!”

  Is anything more beautiful than the guttural mindlessness of youth?

  “What’s ’at?” Marko asks.

  They gather around the pile. I don’t. I keep my distance.

  Jenkem is a drug made from excrement. The others’ eyes go wide as Rapa explains. In the slums of Lusaka they put human shit and piss in containers to ferment and then huff the end result.

  “Where da fuck is Lusaka?” Marko asks.

  “Zambia,” Rapa says.

  His quick response surprises me. This is the first time in a long time anything has surprised me.

  Rapa, when did you get so smart? Are you getting too smart maybe?

  “Oh fuck!” Marko yells. “Is dat true?” he asks me.

  I think for five seconds. “No.”

  Jenkem is mostly just an urban legend. No one really uses it much anywhere. The guys who have tried snorting it are mostly just kids living in the projects in America looking for new limits to how hard they can go. I remember a time when tricks like this spread across the world slowly, but now everyone knows about them everywhere at once. The slums of Lusaka, excrement, drugs—the combination is heavy enough to stop anyone, anywhere in his tracks. People believe jenkem exists because they want to believe.

  But I simply tell the boys jenkem doesn’t exist. Half of my position as their leader comes from what I decide to tell them and what I decide not to tell.

  Rapa, you look unhappy. Relax.

  Take a huff, boys. Not from that dog crap, from the plastic bags Toppe and Mika are carrying.

  I start moving again, and the boys follow me.

  * * *

  On Rajasaari Street we feel the sea before it comes into view.

  In the warmth of the early-morning hours, a wave of cooler air—nights this warm don’t come along very often, perhaps four or five times a summer. Nights when you could lie down and curl up with the warmth.

  We have to be outside on a night like this.

  Summer changes boys this age. When they spend two long months free from school, they go wild like dogs put out of the house. Their coats change. Their barks change. They don’t come up to be petted as quickly as before. These boys haven’t let anyone pet them for years, and after a summer like this, they are dogs that bite.

  As fall approaches, the boys’ anxiety increases. Vacation has been their time to graze, the time when the grip of parents and neighbors and teachers and child psychologists and the police and the whole organized world loosens on them. At the end of summer, they are almost uncontrollable. The knowledge of what is ahead begins to weigh on them, the knowledge that soon they will be chained and measured again.

  Howl, run, fly, my demons. How many nights like this do we have left?

  What more does this night still hold?

  * * *

  Toppe has found something again. He is tottering in the street, carrying something in his hands. Big balls that shine strangely in the gloom.

  Heads of cabbage. Spoiled heads of cabbage, their leaves already covered in slime, their stench biting from yards away.

  “They’s all kinds o’ stuff over there,” Toppe explains.

  Someone threw a sack of trash on the side of the road. A discarded mound of food. Vegetables, smashed bits of someone’s meal. It looks like leftovers from a restaurant. No one has that amount of vegetables at home.

  “Fuck yeah!” Toppe yells and throws a head of cabbage high in the air.

  It comes down in the middle of the road, pieces flying everywhere. It’s a pale green artillery shell, a grenade sending shrapnel across the street, leaving only the heart.

  There are at least five cabbages, but before the boys have time to throw and smash them all, I motion for them to stop.

  “Practice,” I say.

  Rapa grins, the only one in the group who gets it from just that word. He takes out his knife. Grabbing a cabbage, he launches it into the air. When it comes down, it splits in two.

  The others join in. Suddenly they all have their knives out, and Toppe is hacking Rapa’s split head into ever smaller parts.

  The sounds that come from them: yahh, hiyaaa, ugh-ugh-ugh.

  Why do people always yell when they use a switchblade?

  I don’t carry a knife. I don’t need one, and since I don’t have a weapon, I could never get caught using one. Not even on a security camera.

  Helsinki is full of cameras. The life of the residents is filmed from every angl
e like an action movie, and everyone who carries a weapon gets recorded by the government as armed and dangerous. But here there are no cameras. Here where Rajasaari Street approaches the sea, the buildings fall behind.

  Are you done, boys?

  The heads of cabbage are all gone. The scent of grass and sea and spoiled food with young, unwashed sweat mixed in.

  The boys sound bigger than before. They have slashed themselves up a size, filling all the space given them.

  Shreds of cabbage lie on the asphalt, shining an insolent white in the night.

  * * *

  No one comes along. Not a single man, woman, or child.

  It’s already past two, and despite the warmth no one is around at this hour. Perhaps the city is suffering from heat stroke, everyone lying in their beds panting and drenched in sweat. People don’t even come out on nights like this because it would break from everything familiar. On weekday nights, life in Helsinki crams into the buildings to sleep, to wait, to mourn.

  Toppe and Mika send the plastic bags around again. Huff it up, boys, tonight is our night.

  They stand in a ring, my five boys, slender bodies getting their cheap glue high. Every breath takes them somewhere farther away from here.

  Rapa breaks the line, coming over to me. He walks without stumbling, but the stuff he was just sniffing will get to his legs eventually.

  He looks at me. “Which one of us?” he asks. His voice is low and flat. An earth-shattering question uttered in the most muted tones.

  Rapa, how you keep surprising me. You want me to choose one of us. There isn’t anyone else on the street, so why couldn’t the victim be one of the boys?

  Rapa, you want to rise, you want to be bigger than the other four.

  The intoxication of the choice rushes through me like the glue and solvents in the boys’ plastic bags.

  Of course I will, Rapa, I’ll choose. You want to please me, and how could I say no?

  We haven’t ever done this before. We’ve done a lot of other things as a group, but never this. Chosen one of our own and made something new of him. A person marked by us, who will carry that mark to his grave.

  “Marko,” I say.

  The boys hear it and try to understand the meaning of what they have heard. Their consciousness is saturated with glue that normal people use for patching flat bicycle tires. And butane, which can take down any man in a matter of years, a child in months if his luck is bad.