Free Against the Wall by Jarkko Sipila Page B

parents this morning—both of them are in their fifties. His father, Eero, is an IT salesman, and his mother is a nurse at the university hospital. Neither of them has a record. In addition, he has a younger brother who’s a junior in Matinkylä High School.”
    “Okay. Let’s not notify the parents yet,” Takamäki said, then turned towards Kulta. “What about the pad in Kannelmäki?”
    “Well, judging from the apartment, Eriksson hasn’t exactly been scraping by. He lived alone and had nice furniture—or at least nicer than my place. Didn’t find much concrete info, but Forensics is currently turning the place upside down. I did a quick search and found this photo,” Kulta said, handing out copies of the Log Chute snapshot with the blond girl in front and Eriksson behind her. His arms were wrapped around the girl.
    The detectives examined the photo.
    “So far, we have no idea who the girl is, I’m still working on it. From the picture, we can assume that the girl might know something about Eriksson and his circle of friends. I didn’t find anything that would directly explain why he was killed. Hopefully we’ll get plenty of information from his computer: when he last used it, what websites he’s been browsing and so on.”
    Google maintained records of all searches for the past year and a half. Their log tracked search terms, the date, time, and the computer’s IP address. In addition, Google cookies tracked information about the computer, the browser, and the operating system. This information could also be hoovered from the computer itself.
    “You didn’t come across any bank statements or anything like that?” Joutsamo asked.
    “Not that I saw.”
    “Maybe we’ll find some on the computer.”
    Takamäki nodded. “Good. At least we have a couple leads. The girl and the computer. Kohonen?”
    “Kind of quiet on my end,” answered Kirsi Kohonen, who had canvassed the houses near the crime scene. “Not a very curious crowd in the neighborhood. Several people noticed the police cars, but that doesn’t do us much good. The house has been vacant for several years, and there are plans to build some kind of community center on the site, which the neighbors of course have opposed. The construction project has been frozen due to the complaints. Occasionally, some people related to the project have been running in and out of the house, but the neighbors didn’t pay much attention. In other words, I don’t have much. Nobody saw anything, heard anything, or said anything.”
    “Said anything?” Takamäki looked skeptical. “Should we have another go at it?”
    “It was a figure of speech,” Kohonen said, though she didn’t have anything against another go-around. It had occasionally paid off in the past.
    “Anything else?”
    “That’s it for now.”
    Joutsamo interjected. “We’ve obtained a permit to search the records for the cellphone towers in the area surrounding the crime scene. That should give us some idea of whose phones have been in the area.”
    “Good,” Takamäki said. “Before we get into forensics, I’ll talk about my trip to Customs… They didn’t know anything about Eriksson. In other words, we don’t know whether the murder had anything to do with Customs. But they’re going take a closer look.”
    Takamäki waited for a moment. No questions, so he continued around the table.
    “Kannas?”
    The imposing, fifty-something-man’s hair was a bit tousled, and his heavy blue sweater seemed awkwardly warm for the stuffy office. Takamäki and Kannas had been friends since their academy days. They had also patrolled together around the Presidential Palace in the eighties.
    “Ahem! Sorry, getting over a cold. We did find something at the crime scene... The body.”
    Nobody laughed.
    Kannas decided to cut to the chase. “First off, your assumptions about the body were correct. We ran the fingerprints, and were able to verify that the victim is, in fact, Jerry Eriksson. He