Helsinki Blood iv-4

by James Thompson

  Milo and I strip out of our protective suits. The ambassador realizes it’s me. “Hi, Sergey,” I say. “Sorry for your loss.”

  He points a trembling finger at me. Surging adrenaline turns him to raging jelly. “You.”

  “Me,” I say, and we take the elevator to the lobby.

  Aino is Kate’s assistant restaurant manager and replacement while Kate is on maternity leave. She’s a pleasant young woman. I want to reassure her. We find her in her office. She’s been crying. “Everything is fine,” I say. “Finnish authorities are in control. There’s nothing for you to do. If something is needed from you, you’ll be asked. So don’t worry. Call me if you need anything.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “I’ve never been through anything like this, and I lost my nerves.”

  If I cited statistics about deaths in hotels, she would likely leave right now, never return, and find a job in another line of work. “Hopefully, this is your first and last time,” I say.

  33

  Back in my apartment, I hand Milo my phone. Like so many things right now, I don’t want to do this, because it’s disrespectful of the dead. It’s a necessity. “Can you plaster the photos of Yelena Merkulova all over the Internet without them being traced back here?” I ask him.

  He doesn’t bother to speak, boots up my computer, connects the cable from my phone into it and logs in to his own computer through our network. He bumps the photos from the phone over to my computer and says, “Going viral in thirty seconds.”

  The Russian embassy, out of fear, will delay informing Yelena’s father of her death until the ambassador can find a way to weasel out of the culpability she ingeniously hung on him by writing on the wall in blood. In the interest of survival, the ambassador will try to have it scrubbed off the walls and have the fact that it existed suppressed. He’ll then claim it was an attempt to frame him. I’ll preempt that. Her father will learn of her death through these photos rather than through an e-mail. It’s mean. It’s ugly. It serves a purpose that justifies it. Her father will kill Merkulov because it will make him appear weak in front of the world if he doesn’t. The ambassador is neutralized, one less enemy to deal with.

  I sentenced him to death. I feel remorse. Guilt is the overarching emotion that has defined my life. After having the tumor removed from my brain, I felt no remorse about anything. I knew it was a symptom of post-surgery illness, but I was glad of it. Of the many negative changes the surgery wrought in me, freedom from guilt was one I was glad of. I’m not sure if I should feel relieved that I’m healing, that the hole the tumor removal left in my brain is filling in with tissue and returning me to who I was before, or anger that unwanted emotions are rearing their ugly heads. I suppose I feel both.

  “Going, going, gone,” Milo says. “Where’s my present?”

  I look around. I hear Sweetness and Jenna in the kitchen and smell frying bacon. Part of their carb-free health diet. Kate must be in the bedroom.

  In the foyer, over the coat rack, is a shelf for scarves, gloves and hats. Over the rack is a small storage compartment filled with junk. I point at it. “In there, on the left, in the very back corner, in a Stockmann gift bag.”

  He takes a dining room chair, stands on it, finds the bag and gets down. He looks inside and pulls out something square, wrapped in brown paper. He starts to tear the wrapping off.

  “Don’t,” I say. “I don’t want anyone else to see it.”

  He grins, giddy with anticipation. “Then it must be extra-special good. What did you get me?”

  “I didn’t get you anything. I hid it from you. I found it when we B amp;Eed a dope dealer and stashed it in the bag of cash that was in the same closet. It’s two bricks of Semtex.”

  He cradles it like a baby and mimics Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. “Oh my precious. My sweet sweet precious. You’ve come home to me.”

  His impression is so good that it’s eerie, and since his “precious” is plastic explosives, sounds psycho and a little scary.

  “Semtex plastic explosive,” he says. “A Russian classic. And enough to take down a building. You really do love me, don’t you?”

  I snap open the lion’s mouth on the handle of my cane and wonder what in the name of God I’ve just done. “With all my heart.”

  “Can I kiss you?” He steps toward me. “Give me some tongue.”

  I raise a hand to keep him at bay. “Down, boy. Down,” I say, as I would to a dog.

  He grins and calms himself. The permanent pools of black around his eyes from self-imposed sleep deprivation glisten like oil. “Why did you keep it and hide it?”

  “I couldn’t think of a way to dispose of it, stuck it there and forgot about it. I hid it because I was afraid you’d blow up a building with it.”

  “So now you’re supporting my plan?”

  I gesture toward the balcony. We go outside, close the door so no one can hear us and light cigarettes.

  “So now you like my plan,” Milo says. “That makes me happy.”

  I stare at the parking space where the Audi blew up. “No, I don’t approve. Not in the least. I just can’t find another solution and don’t want you to get caught. That’s why I gave you the Semtex. Not having to steal plastique is one less risk you have to take. What’s your timetable? Phillip Moore said we have a couple weeks.”

  “Then we have a lot to do in a short amount of time. I have to burn the midnight oil and finish writing a crazed mass-murder manifesto, surveil the targets and figure out the most economical way to take them all out in one day. And most importantly, we have to learn to shoot. You can’t shoot for shit, and I have to learn to shoot left-handed. You’re still taking out Jan Pitkanen, right?”

  I sigh and nod.

  “I’ll GPS tag his car so you can find him when you’re ready, but he’ll kill you in a heartbeat if you don’t improve your shooting skills.”

  So he will. We both light another cigarette and stand side by side in silence. My eyes keep drifting to the blackened spot where the Audi burned. “I forgot to tell you,” I say, “Moore said that ‘driving’ means that Saukko goes out in his yard and knocks golf balls into the sea.”

  Milo flips his cigarette end down to the street. “I’m leaving now. The day is getting on. I’ll see you at Arvid’s-I mean your house in Porvoo-tomorrow.”

  I make the sign of the cross in the air. “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Go with God, my son.”

  “Forgive me, Father, for I am about to sin oh so grievously.” He laughs. “See ya.”

  I let him show himself out and stay on the balcony. I turn what we’re doing over and over in my head, searching for a way out. It occurs to me that I haven’t called ace pseudo-journalist and collector of filth, dreck and skank Jaakko Pahkala, Helsinki’s king of reputation destruction via its scandal sheets. He’s on my payroll, supposedly collecting skank on politicians of all stripes for a planned hate rag. The plan for the hate rag went to the wayside, but I told him to keep working, collecting blackmail material for my own use should the need arise. The need has arisen. I sit in my armchair, rest my throbbing knee and call him.

  “Hello, Inspector,” he says. “I’m surprised to hear from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Haven’t you heard? I’m in Copenhagen.”

  “Your line isn’t secure. Call me back from a pay phone or bar phone or something.” I hang up and wait.

  Ten minutes later, he calls back. “I just spent money I don’t have on a disposable phone,” he says. “It doesn’t have much time on it.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “SUPO agents came to my house. I told them I work for you, thinking they would go away. Instead, they beat me up, confiscated just about everything I own and told me to get out of the country. Do you know how much time and expense I put into my literature collection?”

  Meaning he collected hate. Pre-war anti-Jewish propaganda and what he considered the best Finnish skank, his specialties.

&nb
sp; “What about the stuff you collected for me? Have you acquired anything new and valuable over the past weeks that I haven’t seen?”

  “Quite a bit.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s the digital age. All the photos were in my computer, which they confiscated.”

  “You have no backup?”

  “Of course I do, in cloudspace, at a different address than the one I gave you before. But you can’t have it unless you pay me real money for it. You’ve cost me enough as it is. Do you have any idea how hard a time I’m having finding work here? My Danish-language skills are somewhat lacking.”

  His whiny, pathetic voice has always grated on me and he’s a duplicitous prick. And I paid him a generous salary to collect the skank, so technically it already belongs to me. But he has a valid complaint, so I don’t point this out or make any demands of him. “How much?” I ask.

  “Fifty thousand.”

  “Do you really have anything I can use?”

  “I did a good job, as promised. People across the political spectrum in the most compromising positions. Most of them sexual in nature. A few involving money.”

  “Get on something secure. Buy another throwaway phone or something. Send the cloudspace web address and passwords, along with your bank account number. I’ll give you thirty K, not for the skank, because I already paid you for it, but for the loss of your stuff, job, and the beating you took. Fair enough?”

  His phone runs out of time and the line goes dead.

  I make one more call. Mirjami’s autopsy should have been performed by now. I couldn’t bring myself to attend and so didn’t ask about its scheduling. One of the coroners gets furious when detectives don’t attend and then call him for results. He believes cops should be present in every step of an investigation. Getting transcriptions takes forever. I call the stenographer, ask him if he’ll do me a favor, just listen to the end of the recording and tell me the cause of death. He’s nice about it, says he’ll call me back.

  It doesn’t take long. “She died of morphine overdose,” he says.

  I start to ask how such a thing might be possible, then remember he’s a stenographer, not a doctor, thank him and figure it out for myself. She had a morphine pump. She could barely negotiate it with her bandaged hand, and I don’t think it’s even possible to OD with one. Someone went to her room and finished the job of murdering her.

  I remember Moore’s reference to her being my mistress. The two bikers spying on us for Jan Pitkanen must have come to that conclusion because they saw her entering my bedroom at night. I check my received calls and count them down to one identified only by number, not by name. That’s the doctor’s number. I call. He doesn’t answer. I send him a text message and ask if he can check with the staff on duty and ask if a man with a scarred face visited Mirjami. A few minutes later, he answers. He doesn’t have to ask, he saw a man fitting that description himself. I thank him and ring off. So Pitkanen killed my friend.

  Pitkanen. I said I would kill him, and a big part of me wants to. Mirjami’s murder deserves to be avenged. But I’m hedging again. Blood, as often as not, brings more blood, and another part of me wants to hurt no one. So much blood has already been spilled. I ask myself what Mirjami would want. She was a gentle spirit, a healer, would likely want nothing done. I could try to make a deal. After Milo kills his boss, Pitkanen will have lost his sponsor, will be acting alone. I could offer him a cash settlement, compensation for his face and a truce. But revenge, like a funeral, is for the living, not the dead. Will I really kill him? I don’t think I’ll know until the moment I’m forced to make the decision.

  Sweetness comes out of the kitchen and belches. “We moving today?”

  “Yeah. Get your stuff together and we’ll leave in an hour or two.”

  I check on Kate. She’s showered, dressed, and has her makeup and hair done. She’s also breast-feeding Anu.

  “Hello, husband,” she says. “How are things?”

  I’ve come to suspect from our interactions since she left me that, when she ran away from home, first to the hotel and then to Florida, her hateful attitude wasn’t really directed at me, but a facade designed to mask that she knew I played some part in her life, but wasn’t sure what it was or who I was, whether I was friend or foe.

  On rare occasions, she would snap to reality enough to comprehend that I’m Anu’s father and would bring her here for visits, but remained confused about the state of our relationship when she saw me. She probably thought she left me for a reason, but couldn’t fathom what it was, so her natural assumption was that she had a reason or she wouldn’t have left. So she treated me as an enemy. I was really just an unknown quantity, and as such, frightening. She’s getting past that now.

  I get a text from Jaakko. Cloudspace user name and password and banking info.

  “Things are fine,” I say. “Can I hold Anu?”

  “As soon as she’s done here.”

  How to do this without causing upset and trauma? I’m not a psychologist, I have to feel my way through these situations. Kate must have felt the same dealing with me after my brain surgery. “I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t be breast-feeding her while you’re taking anti-depressants.”

  She takes Anu away from her breast and shakes her head. “I don’t know where my mind is. I knew that and I just forgot.”

  A reasonable response. Her medication must be kicking in. This makes me so happy I could burst. I sit down on the bed.

  “You said we’re leaving for Porvoo today,” she says. “What should I bring?”

  “Mostly summer clothes. It can get chilly in the evening on the river, so some jeans and a sweater or two as well.”

  She screws up her mouth, thinking hard. “I have to get back to Helsinki for therapy twice a week.”

  This conversation is pleasing me more than anything that’s happened since Anu was born. “It’s not that far. I promise we’ll get you back here for therapy. And if you need more clothes, we can always pick them up while we’re here.”

  “Thank you, Kari,” she says.

  I was hoping for an I love you. But one step at a time.

  34

  We get to Porvoo around eight p.m. We travel light, it doesn’t take long to get our things out of the Wrangler and inside.

  It’s called a shore house-a few stand in a row along the river-built after the great fire of 1760, and by tradition painted ocher red. They were built to house goods traded with German ships from the Hanseatic League. Given its size, picturesque location and place in history, as well as being situated in the tourist mecca of the old town, it’s worth a small fortune.

  When I told Kate it would be a kind of summer vacation, I lied. I believed she and Anu would have to be constantly guarded, unable to venture out without Milo, Sweetness or me for protection. Changes in circumstances have made a real vacation possible. The Russians have other fish to fry-trying not to die-Veikko Saukko’s killers are dead, thanks to Phillip Moore. The only immediate threat known to me is Jan Pitkanen. He’s not stupid enough to kill a cop’s family by himself. We have those most valuable of things: time and freedom. I believe this place will help Kate heal.

  I show her around. For decades, Arvid and his wife Ritva made this their home, and it’s been untouched since their passing. Their ghosts and shadows seem to be everywhere. It’s an odd feeling, but not a bad one, as they’re the ghosts of friends. It even makes the place seem more friendly, in a strange way is a source of comfort.

  I turn Katt loose out of his travel carryall. He leaps out to investigate. Arvid and Ritva had four cats. He has much to occupy him, rooting them out, until his tiny mind reaches the conclusion that they’re no longer here. They mourned for Ritva after her death. Their constant meowing was a reminder to Arvid of the death of his wife of half a century. He couldn’t bear for anyone else to have them, so he drowned them. He built a square box for a coffin and left it in the backyard. It was winter, the ground too hard to dig. It’s nailed s
hut. Kate can’t look in it. Still, I need to bury it or throw it in the sea or something.

  The downstairs is one large, almost open space. In the front of it, a davenport and three well-worn, comfortable armchairs surround a coffee table. Against the wall to the left of it, an antique bookcase with glass doors serves as a liquor cabinet. To the right, a fireplace. A big, dark oak dining room table is farther into the room. Behind it, a massive soapstone stove stands floor-to-ceiling and is the room’s only divider. Behind and to the left of it is a well-equipped kitchen with both gas and wood-burning stoves. Pots and pans hang from hooks on the ceiling. A half bath is next to the back door, which leads out to a sizable backyard surrounded by a brick wall, with an untended flower garden. It feels like a home.

  Upstairs are two bedrooms and a full bath. Kate and I put our things in the master bedroom, Arvid and Ritva’s room. Everything is antique. The bed. The wardrobe. The chest of drawers. A writing desk. They were together for fifty years. They might have bought them all new. The closets and drawers are full of their things. I make room for ours and wonder if I’ll be sleeping in here tonight.

  Everyone is hungry. For the first time in a long time I feel that I can take Kate and Anu out and they’ll be safe. I suggest Wilhem A, a restaurant just a few minutes’ walk from our house. It’s atmospheric. Its large patio extends out over the river. Moored boats are lined up in front of the patio. It’s a lovely evening, still daylight, a breeze coming off the river. We order beers, except for Kate. She orders orange juice. What Torsten said appears to be true. Valdoxan appears to have replaced alcohol as her nepenthe.

  She’s healing. I offer a silent prayer of thanks and hope that she continues. I have an inkling that her situation is like falling down a well. She can see light at the top, and it’s narrow enough for her to climb out, but the walls are slick and precarious. It would be all too easy for her to slip and hurtle back to the bottom and land with a splash, once again in the freezing water.