I send the email as soon as I get home. Sitting at the kitchen table, it takes time to find the correct phraseology, because Otto Härkä had a rather florid way of expressing himself. I recall the conversations we’ve had, I hear his voice and his long-winded negotiating style with its undercurrent of total obduracy. Forty-five minutes later, I’ve drawn up an email in which Otto Härkä explains how he has come to find himself in a pretty precarious position: his business associates want to make a deal with Kuisma Lohi, and he objects to the deal. According to Härkä, the situation is potentially life-threatening. I end the email there and schedule its release for a few hours hence, adding a sentence in which Härkä explains that the message will be sent, unless he is able to deactivate it within the next twenty-four hours. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that Otto Härkä will not deactivate the message. And thus, Detective Inspector Pentti Osmala of the Helsinki organised-crime and fraud units will receive the message before long.
I operate the way Juhani once taught me and send the message via the dark web. This way, the sender and IP address remain anonymous.
This is the most speculative part of my plan, I must admit. Not just because, right now, Otto Härkä has rowed his canoe into uncharted waters, but because the message must lead to direct action. In this regard, with a probability of almost one hundred percent, I can rely on the remaining owners of Toy of Finland for help. In this equation, Sauvonen and Liitokangas are the variables whose values I know to the greatest degree of certainty; in their case, x can only be the multiplier.
Hannes Tolkki calls at eight a.m. and wakes me in my armchair.
All night, Tolkki has been changing cars and lookout positions, and he tells me his back is feeling much better too. But none of this is the main news item. The headline is that Sauvonen and Liitokangas have arrived in Konala. The men went into the warehouse building, then came out again, looking visibly agitated. But they did not call the police.
I call Esa.
He gives me a detailed update of the night’s events, carefully and chronologically, then tells me that both Kristian and the lorry are now in the designated location and that Kristian is still working at the same pace and with the same intensity as earlier that night, explaining that now he’s even ahead of all the people who wake up at three. Esa informs me that the terrain allowed us to conduct reconnaissance operations ‘in all forms’. He stresses these last three words. Then he tells me that Kuisma Lohi is alone at his mansion in Marjaniemi, that he has just come out of the shower, where he used copious amounts of expensive shower gel, then prepared himself a breakfast of eggs Benedict on brioche with crispy bacon and hollandaise sauce. I don’t ask Esa how he knows all this, but I thank him for his excellent work.
I sit down at the computer again. This time the message is from Kuisma Lohi to Toy of Finland. Lohi informs them that the offer is now only a tenth of what it was before. Kuisma Lohi speaks down to Toy of Finland like a manager to a subordinate. I have first-hand experience of this, I remember our conversation word for word. I write the message quickly and press send. Then I wait for Hannes Tolkki’s next phone call. This happens seventeen minutes later.
Sauvonen and Liitokangas have left Konala.
Until now, all communications have gone through a phone that I will soon dispose of. And now, I pick up my own phone and call Osmala.
What happens next, I learn from Esa. Liitokangas and Sauvonen arrive at Marjaniemi. They gain entry to the property. A struggle ensues. Before long, Kuisma Lohi is being dangled by his feet from the balcony facing out towards the sea. They ask him where the Moose Chute has gone. Kuisma Lohi hurls insults at them, even though he is hanging upside down in the bracing morning breeze. Meanwhile, Osmala arrives at the property. The door is open. Osmala walks in through the front door, the noises are coming from the back of the property. Sauvonen notices Osmala, leaves Liitokangas holding Lohi by the ankles, dashes into the living room and grabs a large southern-European steel sculpture (the piece is called ‘The Scabbard’), holds it aloft and charges right at Osmala. Osmala raises his weapon and fires. Neither man hits his intended target. Sauvonen trips on the leg of an armchair, Osmala’s bullet hits a painting depicting a Finnish rural idyll. Still carrying ‘The Scabbard’, Sauvonen falls to the floor on his stomach, regrettably sticking the tapered point of the sculpture right into a power socket as he does so. All the lights in the house go off at once. Osmala sees both Sauvonen, thrashing on the floor, and Liitokangas, who is still dangling Lohi from the balcony, and reads Liitokangas’s intentions. Liitokangas lets go of Kuisma Lohi. Kuisma Lohi calls Liitokangas an imbecile, then disappears from view. Osmala points his weapon at Liitokangas.
Esa retreats from his lookout point.