Behind God's Back

1

I used up my fifteen minutes of fame in the first week of August. Within a three-day period, I was interviewed by morning television, the evening news, a radio talk show and the tabloids. I felt like a VIP, and waited for the notoriety to rush to my head.

I quickly came to find that fame has its advantages. The old sourpuss from downstairs gave me something resembling a smile, and when I rode the tram in to work, a good-looking young woman shot interested glances my way.

I could almost understand those people who sold their self-respect and their souls for a pittance on Big Brother, Fear Factor, or one of those other degrading television shows.

I had to admit to myself, though, that my popularity was due to of a string of coincidences. It all began when Seeds of Hate, an extremist organization that had sprung up out of nowhere, kidnapped and assaulted a professor who was researching racism at the University of Helsinki. The bruised and battered scholar had been found wandering the woods north of the city in his underwear.

The case was an unusual one in Finland. The lead investigator was Detective Kari Takamäki from the neighbouring unit, but Takamäki, who coached his son’s ice hockey team, took off for Iceland and vanished. Apparently the volcanic soil and magnetic fields prevented cell phones from functioning properly. Either that, or Iceland’s teleoperators were as deeply troubled as their banks. Takamäki remained unreachable.

Meanwhile, my supervisor, the head of the Violent Crimes Unit, was in New York on a romantic getaway with his girlfriend. From a suite in his high-rise Manhattan hotel, he ordered me to handle communications on the case. Chief Detective Huovinen thought I was the right man for the job, since the kidnapped professor was a Jew — just like me.

Apparently Seeds of Hate harboured a particular animosity for us, as half a dozen prominent Jews had received abusive, threatening letters signed by the organization. Still, not even the Security Police knew who the individual or individuals behind Seeds of Hate were. The investigation had got nowhere.

My fame evaporated as quickly as it had materialized. Takamäki emerged from his cell phone dead zone and reassumed responsibility for communications. I took my vacation, which I had split up into three stretches: two in the summer and the third in winter. That gave me something to look forward to.

For some people, the first Monday after a long summer vacation is deathly depressing. For me, it wasn’t any more so than any other day. I had already taken two weeks of vacation in May, then these three weeks in August. When I came back to work, it was the end of the month and only a few magical, dew-misted nights from autumn — not that autumn was like the autumns of my childhood any more: the Finnish school year, in defiance of all natural laws, began in August now.

Since despite my family’s matchmaking attempts I remained a bachelor, and thus a creature verging on the pathetic, my brother Eli had invited me to his summer cottage — which the world cottage was twenty times too modest to describe. I guess he figured I would soak up influences that would spark a desire for the family life. After all, establishing a family and reproducing are central tenets of Jewish existence; they are commandments given by God to man, and not to be shirked. Jewish parents live more for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren than for themselves. The future is more important than the present, and without children, there is no future.

I was able to stand Eli for almost a week. I came back to town and lolled around for the next seven days. During my final week of vacation, the weather was gorgeous, so I spent it at sidewalk cafes, reading late, watching rental movies and sleeping in. It was exactly what vacations were originally supposed to be: completely pointless, but relaxing.

The Tuesday that followed the Monday was ordinary, too. I cleared my desk of the mail and preliminary investigative material that had accumulated there during my time off.

On Wednesday, my work began in earnest.

I was just about to head downstairs to eat when my boss stepped into my office. Chief Detective Huovinen was in his shirtsleeves, but he was wearing a sharp-looking bronze-coloured tie. A former male model, Huovinen always looked polished down to the tips of his toes, as an old-fashioned style guide might say.

“You just got a gig. Take Simolin with you and head out to Tammisalo. It should be right up your alley.”

“How so?”

“Half an hour ago a man was shot at his front door. Evidently the perpetrator was pretending to be a police officer.”

“And what makes it up my alley?”

Huovinen folded his arms across his chest and frowned. “The victim’s name is Samuel Jacobson. You know him?”

“Yes.”

Jacobson owned a chain of office supply stores. He was also prominently involved in the activities of Helsinki’s Jewish community. He was over twenty years older than me, so I mostly knew him through the congregation. He had played soccer at the national level as a young man. When I was eighteen, I had dated his daughter Lea for a few months; she and I went to the same high school. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Samuel Jacobson had absolutely no desire to become my father-in-law. I haven’t had much luck on the son-in-law market since.

“It can’t hurt the investigation that you know Jacobson and his circle — at least better than anybody else on the force. Jacobson must have got mixed up in something. He wasn’t robbed, and the perpetrator clearly wasn’t some crazy junkie killer who just happened to end up on his doorstep. Seems like a tricky case. Does Jacobson have a family?”

“A wife and two kids, a son and a daughter. The son works in the family business, the daughter lives abroad.”

I considered whether or not I should mention that I had dated Lea, and decided not to.

“OK. Take the case, then… unless there’s some reason why you can’t… something I should know about.”

“Nope.”

On the way to eastern Helsinki, I spent a minute reflecting on Huovinen’s question. Helsinki’s Jewish community was small, and all of its members more or less knew each other. That was no reason to excuse myself from the case. All the residents of a small town know each other, too, and that doesn’t disqualify the local police from doing their jobs. Still, a boss other than Huovinen might have suspected Jews of having some secret pact of mutual assistance, something that would prevent them from telling the truth if another Jew were involved in a case.

My relationship with Lea had come to an abrupt end when someone blabbed that, after a party at my friend’s, I had stayed behind with Karmela Mayer, the daughter of the fur shop owner. I had dated Karmela for over a year, and had almost ended up under the chuppah. Karmela lived in Israel these days, and had three children. I still had restless dreams about her large breasts. Lea also moved to Israel later and married a wealthy entrepreneur, or at least that’s what I remembered someone telling me. That’s the extent of what I knew about her family life.

I had dated three other Jewish girls and screwed up those relationships, too. When you added one-night stands, if you wanted to draw a hard line, I was disqualified when it came to every single Jewish family in Helsinki.

Detective Simolin drove in silence, looking a little uncomfortable. He probably blamed himself for my reticence. Simolin was a good police officer, but so inherently innocent that he often found himself coming up against life’s realities. He was fascinated by North American Indians. He even had an Indian name, which he wouldn’t tell anyone, and a set of buckskins complete with moccasins and a feathered headdress. He also had a genuine Indian bow and a steady hand. Simolin would have never confused the Crees of the northern plains with the Crows of the central plains because he was an expert on Indian tribes, their territories and ways of life. In addition, he was an enthusiastic astronomer, and had built his own reflecting telescope. Had he lived in the ’50s, it was easy to imagine him devouring those hobby magazines for boys and building all the gadgets they featured: rudimentary receivers, soapbox radios and microscopes. But these days, such enthusiasm was old-fashioned and naive.

“Huovinen told me that Jacobson was Jewish. Do you know him?” Simolin asked.

“Yeah. Not well, but a little. I used to date his daughter back in the day, but only for a few months.”

“Really?” Simolin sounded excited. “I’ve heard his name somewhere. Was he retired?”

“Not that I know of.”

Simolin frowned. “Huh. Then what was he doing at home in the middle of the day?”

“Beats me.”

The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. But it had crossed Simolin’s, and before continuing he paused for a moment, as if waiting to hear my opinion of his observation before offering his own. Simolin wasn’t ambitious that way. He let others shine.

“It occurred to me that the murderer might have been dressed like a policeman because Jacobson was afraid of something and wouldn’t have opened the door otherwise. And that’s why he didn’t go to work either.”

“Jacobson didn’t strike me as the type that anyone would want to kill.”

“And yet someone did,” Simolin pointed out. “And in a police uniform, too. I had time to do a little checking — there are three known cases in Finland where a police officer’s uniform has gone missing. That’s not very many. Two were in the Helsinki area, one in Lapland.”

“If it even was a police uniform. People think anyone in a dark-blue uniform and a cap is a police officer.”

“True enough,” Simolin admitted.

“You already take your vacation?” I asked, after we drove a moment longer in silence. We were just passing through the neighbourhood of Herttoniemi.

“Two weeks. I’m saving the rest for winter. I’m going to travel to the States for two weeks.”

“Alone?”

Simolin appeared to be blushing.

“With my girlfriend… We’re going to go visit this one Indian tribe. They have a big celebration around that time. Everyone dresses in traditional ceremonial garb, and the men perform the buffalo dance. It’s not your run-of-the-mill tourist show.”

“That must be an amazing experience.”

“I’ve been saving up for this trip for almost two years.”

I knew that Simolin didn’t discuss his Indian pursuits with anyone at work except me. Maybe he figured that, being a Jew, I understood other minorities. But the fact was I had never poked fun at his interest in Indians. Sometimes we’d talk about the stars and space, too.

The infinity of the universe impressed everyone, but it aroused endless awe and admiration in Simolin. Words never sufficed to explain what he’d seen the previous night through his reflector telescope. He’d spotted the rings of Saturn, or the Horsehead Nebula of Orion. Such things reminded you how small and finite man’s existence truly is, Simolin had confessed during one late-night shift.

“Did Jacobson have a family?” he asked. “Oh, that’s right, you dated his daughter.”

“Wife and two grown children.”

“Do you want me to talk to the daughter if there’s still something between you guys? Or maybe Arja can? She’s coming out, too.”

“Lea’s still in Israel. Besides, it’s not a very delicate subject any more. It’s been over twenty years.”

We turned towards Tammisalo, leaving Herttoniemi Manor behind to the right. The Jacobsons had lived in Tammisalo back when I dated Lea, and on several occasions we had taken walks in the manor grounds. It had been August, and there on the lawn, under cover of the balmy darkness, I tried to get into her pants. Even though things always started out promisingly, Lea would eventually put on the brakes. My efforts weren’t rewarded until a little before our relationship came to an end. It had been at the Jacobson summer cottage in Emäsalo, where we spent a weekend without old man Jacobson’s knowledge.

As I took in the familiar scenery, I remembered how I used to ride the blue Tammisalo Transit bus to pick up Lea. Back then, it had felt like I was travelling to the countryside: the houses had been old and dilapidated and their orchards large. Now they had been subdivided, and the road was lined with brick homes, each one grander than the next.

We crossed the bridge, circled the roundabout, and turned towards the shore.

“Pull up next to that fence,” I told Simolin. The Jacobson residence was a boxy, flat-roofed brick house built in the 1970s. Samuel Jacobson had commissioned it himself, and in the end he died in the doorway of his own home. Much to my surprise, he was still lying there.

Two patrol cars and a tech van stood in the drive. I could see an elderly couple peering out of the windows of the house next door. You couldn’t miss the woman’s silvery hair. Evidently they were the eyewitnesses to the crime.

I didn’t want to disturb the CSIs right when they were busiest. The sky was growing dark and threatening rain. A downpour wouldn’t do anything to further the technical investigation.

The deceased was lying on his left side, head towards the front door. He was dressed in dark-blue cotton trousers and a lightweight sweater. The door was wide open, and I could see an investigator going about her business in the hallway. Someone else was taking a photograph inside.

I touched Simolin’s sleeve. “Let’s go have a chat with the neighbours.”

They were expecting us; the door opened before I could ring the bell. The man and grey-haired woman who had just been standing at the window were peering out through the crack. I introduced Simolin and myself, and the man asked us in.

A mid-length fur coat was hanging in the hallway, then the family dog trotted in and started sniffing at my feet. It was small and white and fluffy; I didn’t recognize the breed. My nose started to itch and I could feel a sneeze coming on. I was allergic to animal fur, which was one reason the relationship between me and Mr Mayer’s daughter had withered on the vine. Both Old Man Mayer and Karmela had wanted me to take over the fur shop.

I got right to the point. “Which one of you saw the assailant?”

“Kalevi, my husband, did,” said the woman.

“So you didn’t see him at all?”

“I saw him sitting in the car, but by that time it was too late to tell if he was a policeman or not.”

“What about the vehicle? What can you tell us about that?” Simolin asked. The man leant in. Now we had entered his area of expertise.

“It was a dark-blue Volkswagen Golf, no doubt about it. Isn’t that what the police drive? There weren’t any police markings on it, but there was a blue light on the roof… Or wait, I wouldn’t bet my life on that; it was behind the bushes and I could only see part of it. But there was definitely something on the roof. I didn’t see the licence plate.”

“Could you tell us what else you saw? Start from the beginning, and tell us everything.”

“I didn’t see the incident itself — the murder, I mean. I went to the window to have a look once Titi started barking. Titi has her very own chair set up there, because she’s a curious little girl. So I heard her barking and went to have a look. Through my binoculars, I could see Jacobson lying in the doorway and a man who looked like a police officer walking away. Kaarina was upstairs and I yelled for her to come down. The second she got here, the man drove off. Ooh, I was miffed at her, but Kaarina’s legs aren’t too good.”

“Yours are even worse,” his wife huffed.

“Which is why I was downstairs.”

The man showed us the binoculars that were on the hallway table.

“I had these. I looked out the window to see what had happened to my neighbour, and I could see there was blood on his face. I phoned an ambulance right then and there, and they called the police when I told them what had happened.”

“So the man was dressed like a police officer?”

“That’s what it looked like. Blue uniform and a cap. He had badges on his chest and his sleeve that looked like police badges to me, you know, the sword and everything.”

“So you didn’t see the actual shooting?”

“No, but who else could it have been? No one would leave someone lying in a pool of blood unless they were the guilty party.”

“No doubt you’re right about that. What about the shot?”

“I definitely would have heard a shot. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing. The murderer must have been a professional. They use silencers.” Now Kalevi was getting excited.

“So you didn’t see the gun?” Simolin asked.

“No. That darned bush was right in the way.”

“Was Jacobson often home in the middle of the day?”

The woman shook her head. “No, he wasn’t.”

Her husband agreed: “Not a chance. Jacobson was a workaholic. Owned a chain of office supply shops. Inherited it from his father and expanded it quite a bit. Must have at least twenty employees. Jews have a nose for business.”

“What about recently? Was he home yesterday? Or the day before?”

“I think he was. Yes, he was. Now that I think about it, he’s been home for at least three to four days. Which is a little odd, because he didn’t seem ill. Usually if he’s ill, his wife stays home to tend to him. The kids have already flown the coop, of course.”

“How well do you know the Jacobsons?” I asked.

“As well as neighbours do after having lived next door to each other for close to thirty years. We used to visit each other now and again, but because we’re of different generations that was the extent of it. The Jacobsons have been good neighbours: never make a fuss and keep the yard tidy. The children were always polite, too.”

“Did Jacobson ever mention receiving any threats?”

“No,” the man sighed. “He got along with everyone, at least here in Tammisalo. Belonged to the neighbourhood association, may have even been on the board. Who would want to threaten him?”

“Someone killed him,” Simolin pointed out.

“Yes, that’s true,” the man said thoughtfully. “You don’t kill someone for no reason, so the murderer must have had one.”

“Do you have any idea what it might have been?”

“No, unless it has to do with him being a Jew — maybe one of those Nazis or terrorists or what have you that hates their kind…” The man glanced at me and must have put together my name, my appearance and my ethnic background. “It’s just that it’s been happening lately. They beat up that foreign professor, too. Can’t think of anything else.”

“And you never saw anyone suspicious snooping around the house?”

“Nothing but apple thieves. This time of year the kids go around raiding orchards — not as much as they used to, though. You almost wish they would, with the apples rotting on the ground and all…”

“What kind of people live around here?”

“Good people. Over on the other side of the Jacobsons’, there’s a hockey player who spends most of the year abroad, in the US. Their house has been empty for over a month. No one lives up across the street. An older couple used to live there. He died five years ago, and then she passed two years later. The heirs plan to sell the land, and I guess the house will be torn down, because it’s in pretty bad shape. Back in the day, it was the pride of the neighbourhood: huge rosebushes and flowerbeds, cherries, apples, plums and pears. The man had quite the green thumb. Now the yard is so overgrown you can’t even see the house from here any more.”

I had noticed the home on the hill when we drove up. Its former beauty was still evident, as was that of the yard, even though the grounds were overgrown and the house was falling apart. There was no doubt that the plot, over twenty-thousand square feet, was worth a bundle.

“Do all the neighbours know each other?”

“Everyone except the hockey player are old Tammisalo locals, have lived here as long as we have… It’s a shame. Jacobson and I exchanged a couple of words a few weeks back, and he said he intended to retire at the end of the year and leave the company to his children. Sad. Didn’t have a chance to enjoy a single day of his retirement. One thing’s for sure: death comes like a thief in the night. You never know whether you have an hour left, or ten years.”

I left my card with the man, who was lost in philosophical reverie, and asked them to get in touch if something came up.

As we walked back over to the Jacobson property, a TV news van pulled up in front of the house. The cameraman and a crime reporter I knew climbed out and walked in our direction.

“Can we shoot the yard?”

“At your own risk. Privacy laws apply to the entire property, as you well know.”

The reporter looked disappointed. Then she told the cameraman to get a few panoramas of the road, the house and the police car.

“We know that the resident was shot at his front door. What else can you tell us?”

“I don’t know any more than you do.”

The reporter looked sceptical. “Do you have anything on the motive? Was it a robbery, for instance?”

“Doesn’t appear to be, but we’re looking into it. We’ll send out a press release this afternoon once we get something together.”

A silver Audi was approaching the house. I had seen Jacobson drive it before and knew that it was his wife, Ethel. Facing the loved ones of the deceased was never easy, and it was even less so if you happened to know them and like them. During that brief period when I had spent some time at the Jacobson household, I had liked Lea’s mother more than her father. Ethel was a couple of years younger than her husband. Her family was originally from Gdansk, Poland, but had lived in Turku since the ’50s. We hadn’t seen each other in years, because neither Ethel nor I were very zealous synagogue attendees, and since no familial bond existed, where else would we have run into each other?

I threw a warning glance at the reporter, even though I didn’t think that either she or the cameraman would ambush Ethel. “Keep your distance, and think before you shoot.”

I crossed into the yard to wait. Ethel scratched the side of her car against the gatepost, but didn’t even seem to notice. She jumped out and lunged for the stairs, where her husband lay waiting under a white sheet. It was like footage from those news clips of war-zone tragedies I’d seen a hundred times. Ethel clutched her husband and held him in her arms as she knelt there on the landing, wailing and rocking the body, face turned heavenwards. Her blazer and shirt were stained with blood, and she was looking off somewhere in the distance beyond me. The emptiness of her gaze frightened me. I touched her shoulder, but she didn’t react in the least.

“Ethel. Do you remember me? It’s Ariel. Ariel Kafka. I used to date Lea.”

Ethel startled me by grabbing my hand and squeezing it so hard it hurt.

“Ariel. You naughty man… Why haven’t you been to see me or Lea?”

I helped her up and she immediately collapsed into my arms, weeping and rambling. “Why did they kill Samuel? He was a good man. You liked him, too, didn’t you, Ariel…?”

“Of course I did.”

I led Ethel inside, because there was no point trying to ask her anything while she was standing next to her husband’s body. Sensitive Simolin followed at a discreet distance. He was a singularly inconspicuous civil servant.

Once inside, Ethel was able to detach herself from what had happened, and began thinking about practical matters. “I have to call Roni. Roni’s in Lapland… and Lea’s in Israel… Both the children are away when their father dies…”

She was cut off by a gush of tears, but it didn’t take her long to pull herself together.

“I’d like to ask a few questions. It’s important that we get the investigation started as quickly as possible. Do you think you can you manage that?”

“Of course. Luckily, you’re a good detective and you’ll find whoever did this. Ask whatever you need to.” Ethel blew into her handkerchief, and looked at me expectantly.

“Your husband stayed home from work for several days. Why was that, even though apparently he wasn’t ill?”

“I don’t know.”

“But his absence from work was not due to illness, is that correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“And you don’t know the cause?”

“Of course I asked him. He said he had his reasons, but that he couldn’t talk to me about them. I was worried, because work is so important to him… I tried my best to get him to explain what was going on, but he wouldn’t budge. He could be a stubborn man. He wouldn’t let me help, his own wife…”

I continued questioning before her emotions got the best of her again.

“How many days had he been away from work?”

“Three.”

I glanced around. The living room looked almost exactly the same as it had twenty years earlier, with the exception of a new flat-screen television in place of the old TV and a couple of striking bronze sculptures standing on the floor. But the sofa was the same one where I had tried to warm up Lea on the few evenings we had spent out from under the watchful gaze of her parents.

“And you don’t have the slightest idea what it could have been about?”

“No. I thought so hard I couldn’t sleep and my imagination started conjuring up all kinds of strange ideas, but in the morning I understood they were complete nonsense.”

“I’d still like to hear them.”

“At first I thought Samuel had written something that had angered those crazy racists. I kept telling him to think twice before he wrote but —”

“Where did he write?”

“For Hakehila.”

Hakehila was the publication of the Helsinki Jewish congregation.

“Then I thought he had embezzled money and was too ashamed to go in to work… Until I realized that you can’t embezzle from yourself, can you?” Ethel laughed bitterly. “It even crossed my mind that he may have had some ugly affair at the office, and that the woman’s husband was threatening him.”

“Affair? Was he involved with one of his employees?”

“No, but I imagined he was. He had several attractive women working for him.”

“Did he seem anxious?”

“I asked him if had done something that was forcing him to hide. He denied it. I still thought he was afraid, though. He tried to act as if everything was normal, but I noticed that he’d walk over to the window from time to time and look out, and he tested the door several times a day to make sure it was locked. He told me not to let in anyone I didn’t know. It wasn’t until I asked him why that he told me he might be in danger. He wouldn’t say any more than that.”

“Did anything else come to mind besides racists or a husband who had been cheated on?”

“My mind was on a roller coaster. I thought it was one thing, then something else. In the end I decided it was money… Maybe he’d had a disagreement with someone over money, a deal or something like that… Maybe someone felt like they had been cheated.”

“How did he respond?”

“He said it wasn’t about money. For him, life was too short to argue about money.”

I had a slightly different view of Jacobson’s philosophy of life, but this wasn’t the right time to discuss it.

I took Ethel’s hand and gave it a consoling squeeze. It was well manicured; the back of her palm was soft as chamois. It was the hand of an ageing woman.

“I’m sorry, but I need to ask you some unpleasant questions. Is it possible that Samuel had any gambling debts?”

“Not in a million years,” Ethel huffed. “Samuel wouldn’t even play bridge, no matter how hard I tried to get him to. Gambling didn’t interest him in the least.”

“Might he have been mixed up in something criminal, financed a project that later turned out to be criminal?”

“Neither he nor the company had enough money to fund criminal activity. Ariel, I’ll be honest with you… Building our own office building was Samuel’s biggest mistake. We did it right at the peak of the construction market, and it cost five million euros, two of which were borrowed. The building was finished three years ago, but anything extra still goes to paying off the construction loans. Meanwhile, turnover has dropped and things are getting worse and worse. Samuel was worried about that, because he had promised Roni that he would turn over directorship to him at the end of the year. The whole reason Samuel wanted the new building was that it was important to him that Roni have a successful business to run, like the one he had received from his father. Roni and Lea were everything to him. Which is why he decided to stay on as CEO until it was back on its feet…”

Ethel’s self-control began to crumble, but I had to press on. The previous question had laid the foundation for the one I wanted to ask next. “What if he had been forced to fund criminal activity for the very reason that he wouldn’t have been able to manage the loans otherwise?”

“Oh, things weren’t that tight for us. And he meant to take out a new loan from a Finnish bank and pay off the old one. He said he’d had a better loan offer.”

“When?”

“A couple of weeks ago.”

“Where did the old loan come from?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t? But you worked for the company, too, didn’t you, in accounting?”

Tears were streaming down Ethel’s cheeks, and she didn’t even try to wipe them away.

“Do you know what the worst thing is, Ariel? We parted in strife. I gave him a piece of my mind this morning… But how could I have known, you never know… which is why you should always part as friends. When we started dating, we agreed that we would never go to bed until we had settled any arguments…”

I gave her a minute to calm down and repeated: “You also worked for the company. Shouldn’t you have known about the loan, too?”

“All I know is that the loan was brokered by Samuel’s friend and the money came from Estonia, but from which bank, I couldn’t tell you. The broker held on to the paperwork.”

“Why didn’t he take out a loan from a Finnish bank?”

“He said you could get a loan from Estonia at a lower interest rate. I didn’t argue, because I knew the broker. You know him pretty well yourself.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Oxbaum. He represents the Estonian bank here in Finland.”

“Max Oxbaum?”

“Yes.”

Max Oxbaum was a well-known attorney, my second cousin and my brother Eli’s business partner. Together they owned a law firm named Kafka & Oxbaum.