Behind God's Back

16

I couldn’t keep from swearing the moment we stepped outside. “Fucking Eli!” Stenman watched me, curious, but didn’t interfere with my rant. I pictured Eli as an imbecilic little boy who was always underfoot, bouncing around as aimlessly as a pinball. It almost felt like he was making my life difficult on purpose: Baltic Invest, sex videos, an illegal weapon, and now screwing a murdered man’s wife.

At the car, I paused for a moment and gazed out over the sea shimmering in the autumn sun. The northern wind already felt cold. I didn’t understand why I had taken Eli’s womanizing so seriously. Maybe as his little brother, I subconsciously expected him to act as some sort of moral example. My father had died when I was eleven.

“Do you want to talk?” Stenman asked, walking over to me.

“No thanks. I just want to get some fresh air for a minute.”

A flock of barnacle geese flew southwards across the bay. I started thinking about what would happen if the birds didn’t come back one day. Absurd. A criminal investigator who should be chasing a murderer is reflecting on the migrations of birds.

“All right, let’s go,” I said, climbing into the car.

“What was that SUV thing?” Stenman asked, once we were headed towards the Western Expressway.

“I think it was a clue Max left for me, even though I don’t understand why he couldn’t speak openly, why he had to drop hints.”

“Has Oxbaum’s car already been examined?”

“Forensics is working on it right now. Simolin and I took a quick look through it last night. I didn’t find anything interesting except the pistol, which happened to be my grandfather’s prize of war. It doesn’t even have a permit. My best-friend’s-wife-screwing brother gave it to Max because he was afraid of something. But Max didn’t say what.”

“Is that a bigger sin for Jews than it is for us Lutherans?” Stenman asked.

“What?”

“Screwing your friend’s wife.”

“Just as big.”

“What’s your relationship like with your brother?”

“Good, at least up till now. He could stop sabotaging my life.”

Fortunately, Stenman didn’t fixate on my revelation. She concentrated on driving, because we were turning onto the highway.

Once she found a gap in the lane headed downtown, she said: “There must have been something else in there, too. Parking stubs, unpaid tickets, stuff like that. There is in every car.”

I remembered the receipts for coffee and gas from the service station. Max had purchased thirteen litres of gas…

“Thirteen litres of gas,” I said out loud.

“What?”

“There was a receipt in the glove box showing that Max had bought thirteen litres of gas from a service station in Vantaa, and a receipt for coffee showing he had bought two cups of coffee, meaning he paid for someone.”

“That’s a strange amount,” Stenman said. “Why would anyone buy so little gas for an SUV… unless you’re buying with cash and that’s all you have on you.”

“It wasn’t a cash receipt — it was a credit-card receipt.”

“Do you remember the date?”

“I do, and the time, too.”

I could tell Stenman was thinking the same thing I was. She beat me to the punch. “Why don’t we head out there right now?”

The car had satellite navigation, so finding the place was easy. There were a few pumps under a canopy; behind them stood a tacky, boxy service station with an attached cafe. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. The service station had a surveillance camera, or actually two. One was on the wall under the canopy; another was on the ceiling behind the register.

I addressed the twenty-year-old cashier. “I’d like to speak to the manager, please.”

She pointed at a man who was stocking the shelves with multi-grade motor oil. I showed him my badge, and he dropped the oil for a second.

“What can I do for you?”

“How long do you keep the tapes from the surveillance cameras?”

“They’re recorded on a hard drive, not tape. A month, unless there’s some reason to keep them longer.”

“We’d like a copy of a specific hour, to begin with.”

“What hour?”

“1:30 to 2:30 p.m. last Friday.”