Lucifer's tears ikv-2

by James Thompson

  He hands me a glass. “Apparently, your headache made you pass out. Drink this.”

  “What is it?”

  “An opiated painkiller dissolved in water.”

  I drink it down. “Thank you.”

  He helps me to my feet and back into the armchair. He goes to his bookcase bar, comes back with a half balloon of cognac and hands it to me. “You need this,” he says.

  I shake my head. “The painkiller was dope. I shouldn’t mix it with alcohol.”

  “I’m ninety fucking years old. Don’t lecture me about health practices. Just drink it.”

  I set it on the coffee table.

  He sighs. To him, I’m a hopeless child. “You’re not going anywhere for a while. You’re going to stay here and eat lunch with us. When you feel better, you can leave.”

  He’s ordering, not asking. I take a drink. The rush of opiates and booze is immediate. It helps.

  A woman walks in from the kitchen. “I’m Ritva,” she says. “I suffer the misfortune of being Arvid’s wife. While you were passed out, I told him to stop being mean to you.”

  She’s tiny and frail, maybe fifteen years younger than Arvid. Her face is kind, her long gray hair pulled back and rolled into a bun. Arvid’s smile exudes love for her.

  “What happened to you?” Ritva asked.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I had a bad headache and passed out. It’s never happened before.”

  “Finish your drink and come to the table. Some food will do you good.”

  Ritva starts setting the table. Arvid and I sit in silence. He studies me. I drink the cognac. Dope and booze kill the headache, and its absence leaves me ravenous. Ritva calls us to eat. We take our places.

  “It’s simple fare,” Ritva says.

  “I’m grateful,” I say. “Thank you for having me.”

  It’s some of my favorite food from childhood. Moose meatballs and brown gravy over boiled potatoes. Lingonberry jam to accompany the moose. Homemade perunapiirakka -little pies with potato filling-smoked whitefish, dark rye bread and piima -buttermilk-to drink.

  We pass dishes around and start filling our plates. I look at Arvid. “I didn’t mean to offend you earlier.”

  “I blamed the messenger,” he says. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I still have so much shrapnel in me that I set off airport metal detectors. No one has the right to question me about anything that happened during the war.”

  We dig in. Everything tastes just the same way that my grandma made it. I tell Ritva this. She looks gratified. I need to know about Ukki, and I work up my courage. “The truth is,” I say, “I couldn’t care less about what the interior minister wants or doesn’t want. I was told you served in Stalag 309 with my grandpa, and I came here to find out if it’s true.”

  I neglect to mention that said work in Stalag 309 implies Holocaust participation, and I want to know if Ukki was a war criminal.

  Arvid is a hearty eater. He swallows and chases moose with buttermilk. He points at the whitefish. “You like the eyes?” he asks me.

  “Yeah.”

  “They’re the best part,” he says and scoops them out, one for him and one for me. We chomp them. They have an initial pop and crunch, then a little juice. I think he’s stalling, preparing his answer.

  “Son,” he says, “I never served in Stalag 309. During the time that camp was open, I was stationed in Rovaniemi, not Salla. What was your grandpa’s name?”

  “Toivo Kivipuro.”

  “Sounds familiar, but I can’t picture him. It was almost seventy years ago, after all.”

  “How do you think they made the mix-up?” I ask.

  “Maybe a paperwork error. Valpo was a big organization, and a few men from the Rovaniemi station went to 309. Maybe there was another Valpo detective by the same name.”

  I can’t put my finger on why, but I’m not quite believing him. “I’m sure they’ll figure out their mistake and this will come to nothing,” I say.

  I’m lying. I think he’s banking on his hero status to pull through this, but it won’t go away. The German government won’t let it.

  We finish our meals. “Want some ice cream?” Arvid asks. Aside from his ferocious temper, he reminds me so much of Ukki that it’s uncanny. Maybe Ukki had a temper, too, but I never saw it.

  We have dessert and coffee, chat about nothing. I thank them and get up to go.

  “Are you feeling well enough to drive?” Ritva asks.

  I’m pain-free and well-fed. Relaxed. I haven’t felt this good in a long time. “I’ll be fine,” I say.

  Arvid walks me to the door. He’s one of the few people I’ve met over the past year who have neither stared at nor inquired about the scar on my face. He’s sharp, seen a lot of scars like it and didn’t need to ask. He knows I got shot in the face. He offers his hand. We shake. I thank him for his hospitality. He says it was good to meet me. I have the feeling we’ll meet again.

  15

  I drive back to Helsinki. My next stop is the library. I take out Einsatzkommando Finnland and Stalag 309, the book that Jyri told me implicates Arvid Lahtinen as a collaborator in Nazi war crimes. I don’t have much time before meeting Milo, but I want to check on Kate. Besides, I need to look at the book and want a few minutes of peace and quiet.

  Kate sits at the dining-room table with Mary. Kate is wearing a T-shirt that reads PROPERTY OF JESUS.

  When we decided to move to Helsinki, we also decided to get all new furnishings. The things in our house in Kittila were acquired by me and predated our relationship, had the traditional Nordic blond-wood look, which Kate doesn’t care for, and so we made a clean start in that way as well. Our new apartment has a big living room, decorated with dark leather couches and chairs, a walnut coffee table and a big entertainment center with a flatscreen TV. The interior wall is lined with built-in shelves that hold hundreds of books and CDs.

  It’s a corner flat, and two sides of the room are lined with windows looking out onto Harjukatu and Vaasankatu. At the corner, where those two sides meet, a door opens onto a small balcony. I don’t smoke inside our home, so I insisted that we find a place with one, so I can have a cigarette without leaving the apartment.

  At the rear of the living room, a low dais next to the kitchen serves as a dining area. We bought a big table for it that can seat ten, so we can have dinner parties. The kitchen has brushed-stainlesssteel fixtures. The refrigerator and induction oven are the ultimate in functionality and look like something designed in a space program. The bathroom is on the small side, but like maybe half the apartments in Helsinki, has a sauna in it, which I also insisted on. It’s electric instead of wood-burning, and because of it, the heat it throws off is too dry for my taste, but it serves its purpose. We have two bedrooms, one for us and one for the child on the way.

  I kiss Kate hello, exchange pleasantries with Mary. They seem to be having a serious conversation, so I leave them in peace. John has gone out to explore the city. I’m tired and want to rest and read for a while. I take Einsatzkommando Finnland and Stalag 309 and lie down on the sofa.

  I open the book and go to the index, look up Ukki, and, to my disappointment, find his name. There’s only one listing. I turn to the appropriate page. Toivo Kivipuro is mentioned as one of seven Valpo detectives working in Stalag 309, along with five Finnish interpreters fluent in Russian and German. I find no account of Ukki’s actions there. Details concerning Arvid are more extensive. A prisoner in the camp recounts that Arvid and other detectives took part in executions. Only one particular instance is cited in explicit detail, but the implication is that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

  I skim through the book and learn a few things. The Finnish security police, Valpo, was founded in 1919 to protect the new Finnish Republic from Communists in both Finland and Soviet Russia. Professional links to German secret police were established during the 1920s and maintained after the Nazi rise to power. Finland and Germany cooperated in the fight against both domestic and intern
ational Communism, an acute concern in Finland because of her shared border with the Soviet Union. Their common enemy unified Valpo and the Gestapo.

  Valpo and Gestapo leaders developed personal friendships and cemented the relationship. Racial hatred seeped out of Germany into the Valpo consciousness, and into the Finnish mind-set at large. Racial slurs for Jews began to appear in Valpo documents. Valpo sniffed out ideological enemies on Finnish soil. They surveilled and detained them. They traded information with the SS leadership. The SS had a say in the fate of detainees.

  I skip around the book and hit the high points.

  Stalag 309 opened in July 1941. It was a normal German prisonerof-war camp. In other words, an abattoir. Twelve Finns and between fifteen and thirty members of Einsatzkommando Finnland worked together there. It was huge, held several thousand inmates, had special sections for “dangerous prisoners.” Bolsheviks, both military and civilian. Jews. Commissars. Russian officers and maybe also noncoms. Details remain fuzzy. The German army destroyed most of its records when it dismantled the camp in 1944.

  Germans looked for informers in the camp and used them to collect data. Valpo assisted in setting up these networks. On page 218, I find a set of eleven criteria used to determine eligibility for execution. The rules were written in such a way that the Gestapo could execute anyone they chose at their discretion: political organizers, administrators, Red Army officers, intelligentsia. And, of course, all Jews.

  Each day, individuals were selected, their names called out. They were driven outside the camp. Their clothes were taken away. They were dressed in sacks and forced to climb down into bomb craters. A bomb crater could hold a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred people. They were machine-gunned to death. When the craters were full, the victims were covered over with dirt.

  I read enough to get a good sense of what happened there. Pure evil. A little piece of the Holocaust. I also see that, while not much is written about Arvid, it’s enough to get him extradited, maybe convicted. I need to find out if he lied to me. If he told the truth, I want to help him. Even if he lied, I consider whether I want to help him wriggle out of this mess. I don’t know yet. If Ukki were alive, I would still love him. I wouldn’t condemn him for past sins and ancient history, so how can I do it to Arvid? I check my watch. It’s time to go back to work.

  16

  I drive to Pasila. Two detectives, Ilari and Inka, are sitting in the common room. They glance up at me. Ilari nods. Inka ignores me. Ilari is in early middle age, has a bad haircut-he parts it too far over on the side and rakes thinning hair over his scalp to cover his bald spot-a mild dandruff problem, and a paunch. He does, however, wear expensive suits to work. Inka is middle-aged, has a short, shapeless haircut that renders her sexless, as do her frumpy clothes. She also has a paunch. Our two other team members, Tuomas and Ilpo, are working a kidnap murder and are seldom seen lately.

  Ilari and Inka are reading today’s Helsingin Sanomat, the nation’s largest-circulation newspaper. They quarrel over who gets the sports section. I pick up the local news section. Murders rarely make the front page of Sanomat. The Filippov murder gets an eighth of a page, says nothing of interest. The press has left me alone about it. Arto and the PR folks are fielding the calls, an advantage of working for a major metropolitan police force.

  One pastry sits in a box on the table. Ilari takes it.

  “I wanted that,” Inka says.

  Ilari shrugs. “You snooze, you lose.”

  She calls him a bastard. He tells her to go fuck herself. I go to my office.

  I log on to my computer and check e-mails. Without knocking, Milo jerks my door open and shouts, “Boo!”

  It makes me jump in my chair.

  “See,” he says, “you don’t like it, either.”

  Milo is strange and antagonistic. It makes me laugh. “At least I wasn’t building weapons of mass destruction in secret,” I say. “Did you turn up anything at Saar’s apartment?”

  “The only thing of interest was in his laptop. He has a collection of photos and videos of himself having sex with Iisa and other women in his bedroom. Judging by the camera angle, that’s the purpose of the hole in his closet door.”

  “Doesn’t make him a murderer. Have a seat. The Filippov autopsy results are here.”

  Normally, autopsy transcriptions aren’t delivered until months after the event, but I asked nicely, so the coroner sent me a summary.

  Milo pulls up a chair next to mine so he can see my monitor screen. The autopsy painted a portrait of the crime much as we imagined it: Iisa’s broken bones, torture with a riding crop, cigarette burns, and cause of death-suffocation. But it turns up a major surprise. Several of the burns were inflicted not with a cigarette but are consistent with wounds caused by a drive-stun taser. This suggests that the killer first used the taser to incapacitate Iisa, then enlisted it as a pain compliance tool by inflicting multiple and prolonged shocks.

  Time of death was somewhere between six and eight a.m.

  “If Iisa was tased,” Milo asks, “then what was the point of hitting her with the frying pan?”

  “Maybe to cover up the tasing,” I say, “to make it seem like a crime of passion rather than premeditated. The murderer might have thought the taser burns would go unnoticed because of the multiple cigarette burns.”

  Milo looks thoughtful.

  Forensics has e-mailed the results from Rein Saar’s shirt. I open up the file. The collar and shoulders were soaked in his own blood, from the blow to his head. His blood makes blood-spatter patterns from the riding-crop beating of Iisa Filippov hard to analyze, in terms of angle and velocity. It will have to be sorted out through DNA analysis and will take at least a few days. His right collar and shoulders bear some spatter, but it could be the result of his lying beside her while the beating took place. The results are inconclusive. Most interesting, though, is that the lower back of the shirt bears a scorch mark that, once again, is consistent with taser burn.

  Milo stretches, folds his hands behind his head, and sits back in his chair. “Told you Filippov did it,” he says. “He tased them to knock them out, tortured Iisa and framed Rein Saar.”

  I have to admit that, as Saar claims, it seems possible he was left alive in order to frame him. If Saar was convicted of Iisa’s murder, it would close the case and allow the true killer to avoid investigation and walk free. “Let’s go down to the lockup and talk to Saar,” I say.

  We go downstairs, walk along the long white corridor and stop at cell S408. Out of politeness, I knock before entering.

  “Might be nice if you showed your colleagues the same courtesy as you do your prisoners,” Milo says.

  Saar shouts for us to enter and I open the door.

  As jail accommodations go, ours are pretty good. The cell has a decent bed, a bench and a small writing table fixed to a wall decorated with creative inmate graffiti. Every cell has a few books in it for entertainment. The prisoners have a gym to work out in, and a canteen where they can buy snacks and smokes. They eat the same food as the staff.

  Saar is sitting on the edge of his bed. Washing the shower of blood off has done wonders for his appearance. “Mind if we have a little chat?” I ask.

  “Will it help me get out of here?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Then by all means, let’s chat.”

  “I’m going to ask you some personal questions. Would you rather talk here, off the record, or in the interrogation room and have your statement recorded?”

  “If we’re going to talk about my sex life,” he says, “let’s keep it between us for now.”

  I sit on the bed beside Saar. Milo sits on the bench. “Would you lift your shirt and let me see your back?”

  He does it, shows me a nasty burn just above his waist.

  “How did you get that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t you mention it before?”

  “To be honest, when we talked before, my head hurt so bad and I
was so drunk that I didn’t even notice it. Hurts now, though.”

  He pulls his shirt down, sits forward with his elbows on his knees.

  “Mind if I smoke?” I ask.

  “Not if you give me one.”

  “You don’t have any?”

  “I don’t have any money on me to buy them.”

  I take a twenty out of my wallet and give it to him. “You can pay me back. Tell me about you and Iisa-in more detail than before-and about your affair.”

  He folds up the bill, unfolds it, puts it in his pocket, thinks how he’s going to spin this. “Iisa was wild,” he says, “loved to party. I wasn’t the only guy she fucked behind Filippov’s back. Just the only steady one. And I had other lovers, too. Like I told you, we had fun. We were comfortable together. Enough so that I gave her a key to my place.”

  “Did Iisa use drugs?”

  “Sometimes. Coke. Ecstasy. GHB.”

  “You think Ivan Filippov killed his wife and framed you. Lots of women fuck around on their husbands. Their husbands don’t usually turn murderous. Why him?”

  He ponders, stares at the wall. “Iisa didn’t like fucking her husband. Didn’t do it, in fact. She liked fucking me. I guess his bruised ego could have driven him to it.”

  Yes, it could have. “What did you give Iisa that Filippov didn’t?”

  “Iisa liked to play games.” He hesitates. “Maybe I shouldn’t have played them.”

  “Describe these games.”

  “Iisa liked to watch me fuck other women.”

  This explains the source of the videos in his computer. “She hid in your closet and shot videos through the hole in your closet door.”

  He nods. “I would fuck a girl, she would film it. I would get the girl out of my house, then fuck Iisa while we watched it on my laptop. It got her off.”

  This explains the stool in the closet and the camcorder in Iisa’s purse. His story rings true. “How did these games begin?”

  “I made a mistake giving her the key. She made a game out of coming to my house when I wasn’t home. She would hide under the bed or in the closet or in the shower. I might be there an hour or two before she jumped out and surprised me.”