Read Online The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto - Free Book Online

glanced at his watch. The guy should have been here fifteen minutes ago. Esko fetched another coffee and bought a doughnut covered in sugar to go with it. Was this a no-show? The little bastard had better not try his luck, thought Esko just as the door of the café opened. An unkempt-looking young man with long hair, wearing a denim jacket and tight trousers, stepped into the café looking around warily.
    ‘Aren’t you freezing?’ Esko asked as the man sat down at the table. He didn’t answer but blew on his nicotine-yellow fingers, now reddened with the cold. He was barely twenty-five years old, but his hands were as weather-beaten and wrinkled as those of an old man. A tough life and tinkering with a motorbike had taken its toll. Esko noticed two women staring at them from across the café, whispering to one another. What could they be thinking? A tearaway son come to ask Daddy for cash to buy more booze? That Daddy had ordered his son in for a talk, told him to pull himself together and get a job?
    The young man wasn’t Esko’s son; he was his informant, his rat, as the gangs would call him if they knew. Every decent criminal investigator had his own snitches, and this young man had been Esko’s for a few years. He was involved with the inner circle of the Hell’s Angels, got himself caught up in drug dealing and smuggling, violent crimes and God knows what else, things Esko wouldrather know nothing about. He knew that the Angels’ road captain had voted against the guy becoming a prospect member on several occasions and shagged his girlfriend at a drunken party a few years ago, though touching other members’ girls was strictly forbidden in the gang’s code of honour. The young man hadn’t made it past hang-around membership, though in his own words he’d been faithfully serving the group 24/7, the way members in his position were expected to do. He’d swept the club floors after parties, run around town on errands for the leaders, often putting his own safety at risk, demonstrating his competence, his readiness for a fight, showing his loyalty and his desire to become a fully-fledged member in every way he could, even taking a six-month sentence for a crime committed by someone else – a full member. And still he was left lagging in the lowest echelons of the group. The old dude taking his girl was the final straw. For some reason the road captain had taken a dislike to him – and now he wanted revenge.
    ‘Want something?’ asked Esko.
    ‘I’m starving,’ the man replied quietly.
    Esko stood up, fetched a cup of coffee and a baguette, took a napkin from the stand and placed everything in front of the man. He felt stupid waiting on him hand and foot, but he wanted people to fall for the father-and-son scenario. The man was risking his life coming here. Esko had no respect for a criminal ratting on his own comrades, in fact he felt a deep contempt towards the man, but the information he provided was invaluable to the police. He wanted to secure his informant’s safety as long as he could. That’s how it worked. Esko needed this man, now perhaps more acutely than ever.
    ‘Have you heard anything?’ asked Esko.
    ‘I think I know what you mean. Yes.’
    ‘Tell me.’
    The young man sheepishly looked around him. Esko had chosen this café because its bourgeois surroundings were unlikely to attract the Angels or anyone else from the criminal underworld for a cup of properly brewed Darjeeling. They were sitting at a table in thecorner so that they couldn’t be seen from the windows, Esko could keep an eye on the front door and the man could sit with his back to the other customers. And they were right next to the toilet in case they suddenly needed to hide. They didn’t meet up very often, they couldn’t, and the safety measures could never be underestimated.
    ‘A couple of guys have been hanging around. Danish. Black Cobras,’ he whispered.
    ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
    ‘They’re