Mikael Eino: Bank robbery

Mikael Eino: Bank robbery

The branch on Hämeentie had been hit at 09:12. Two men, masks, one sawn-off that never fired. They took the counter cash and a single safety-deposit box the manager swore was empty. No shots. They were gone in four minutes. Cameras caught a van with plates that belonged to a car crushed in Vantaa the week before.

Eino stood in the lobby after the uniforms left. The floor was still wet from the night cleaners. He asked who had booked the box. A woman, paid cash, gave a name that matched no registry. She had visited once, three days earlier, and stayed eleven minutes.

He walked the block in the sleet. A kiosk owner remembered the woman because she bought a stamp and asked, in careful Finnish, whether the post office still took parcels for Germany. Eino checked the afternoon collections. One parcel, posted at 14:40 the day before the robbery, addressed to a freight forwarder in Hamburg, sender name the same false one on the box.

The robbery had been the noise. The box had held documents, not cash. By the time the van was found burnt in a quarry past Espoo, the parcel was already on a ferry.

Eino wrote the freight company’s name in the notebook and closed it. The local men would be caught or not. The woman was already somewhere the sleet did not reach. He stood a while under the bank’s awning, listening to the traffic, then went home without turning the radio on.