Helsinki Blood

by James Thompson

  “So then I’m basically a drug-addicted zombie who still has a wasted knee.”

  “It’s not quite as bad as you describe it, but, yeah, it’s a lot of drugs. Option two. I shoot your knee and jaw full of cortisone. It will deaden the pain for a few weeks. I’ve spoken to your doctors. It’s not likely, but possible, that another prosthesis might work in your knee. It would give you a greater range of motion eventually, after a long bout of physical therapy, during which your body might reject the prosthesis and leave you back where you are now. I’m hesitant to treat your knee with cortisone, since you refuse to take care of it properly.”

  “I’m a nurse,” Mirjami reminded him. “I can wrap it tightly enough so he can’t move it much but won’t cut off his circulation, then put a knee brace over top so he’s not able to damage himself further without working really hard at it.”

  Jari nodded assent. “Are you going to be around for a while to do that?”

  She looked at me, inquiring. I didn’t let my expression answer her.

  “If I’m needed and Kari wants me here,” she said.

  Obviously, Jari was curious about my relationship with her, but he’s good at keeping his thoughts to himself.

  “About your jaw,” he said. “I think a surgeon needs to get in there and repair as much damage as possible. It might leave you with partial paralysis of the right side of your face and mouth.”

  “Every word I utter hurts like hell. I don’t think I have much choice. Shoot me up.”

  “We need ample bandages and the brace.”

  Mirjami got her purse. “There’s a pharmacy just a few minutes’ walk from here. I’ll be right back.” She walked out.

  “Things clearly suck for you in a multitude of ways,” Jari said. “Anything you want to talk about while we have privacy?”

  I shook my head. “Thanks, but no.”

  “Then let’s take off your pants,” Jari said. He knelt in front of me and helped me wriggle out of them, so I didn’t have to move too much. “This is going to hurt,” he said.

  It already hurt. “Proceed.”

  He jammed a needle like a railroad spike into my left knee. I gritted my teeth. He wasn’t exaggerating about the pain. He pulled it out, stuck it in again. Repeated the process a couple more times. Then took out a smaller needle. After finding out how much it hurt, I had a hard time not anticipating, wincing and keeping my head still. He injected more cortisone in my face, then told me to open wide, pushed the syringe deep into my mouth and jabbed the thing into my gum.

  “There,” he said, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “Let me stick you with the goddamned needles and you tell me.”

  He laughed. “I always say that. It’s a little doctor’s joke. I know it hurt like screaming hell. I could have given you an anesthetic first, but I figured you’re a big boy. Also, about what you can expect: Your injuries will hurt worse for a couple days, then improve. This isn’t a miracle drug, especially not for your knee. The cortisone will help some aspects of your wounds, others it won’t. You’ll still be in pain, but hopefully less of it.”

  I noticed the fucking noises from the bedroom had stopped.

  “Don’t stop taking the drugs,” Jari said. “Cut down slowly if you don’t need them as badly, but don’t stop cold turkey or you’ll have vicious withdrawal that will make those needles I stuck in you feel like a vacation.”

  Mirjami returned. He watched her wrap and brace my knee to make sure she did it to his satisfaction.

  “Nice job,” he said.

  She smiled. “I practice.”

  Jari finished off his beer, took his bag and went to the foyer to put his shoes on. “If you have any problems,” he said, “or just want to talk, call me.”

  “Thank you for this,” I said.

  “De nada.” He shut the door behind him.

  7

  Next step, locate my wife. Sweetness and Jenna came back from the bedroom. “Thanks for everything,” I said, “but I’ll be OK now. You don’t have to hang around.”

  Anu was awake, Mirjami was feeding her, sitting beside me again. “You don’t need to stay either,” I said. “If you can stop by every day or two so you can rewrap my knee after I shower, I would be grateful.”

  Sweetness shook his head. “We’re not going anywhere. Milo and I liberated that ten million with you. That brick was a message to all of us. It’s time to circle the wagons. And speaking of Milo, you need to call and tell him what happened.”

  “The girls should leave anyway.”

  Jenna set beers, a Koskenkorva bottle and shot glasses for everyone on the dining room table. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere without Sweetness.”

  Even she calls him by the nickname Sulo hates. Kate hung it on him by accident, through a language snafu. It got a chuckle out of me. And then I realized Jenna knew about the ten million euros. Mirjami didn’t flinch at its mention, so she knew too, which meant she’d been talking to Jenna, which meant they had become good enough friends to share secrets. They just met three months ago. I wondered if Mirjami had cultivated their friendship as a way of staying close to me. I’d noticed her calculating and devious side before. She knew how to get what she wanted.

  “Hurting the girls is a potential way of getting at us,” Sweetness said. “They’re safer here.”

  He was right, it hadn’t occurred to me. My fear because of Kate’s absence multiplied.

  “And have you looked in the mirror lately?” Mirjami asked. “You need care. And help with Anu.”

  “Don’t you have a job?” I asked her.

  “Haven’t you read about the shortage of health care workers? I can quit my job tomorrow and have a new one within a week when I want to go back to work. In fact, I think I’ll do just that.”

  I didn’t have the strength or will to argue. I grabbed my cell phone and pushed myself out of my chair. “I need to make some phone calls.”

  I noticed that Jari forgot the empty hypodermics. They struck me as something that might be useful. For what, I didn’t know. I took my phone and laptop, went to the kitchen for quiet and privacy, then put the needles in the cupboard and sat at a little table for two that we usually use to prep food on.

  Jenna called out, “Come and have a kossu with us.”

  “Later,” I answered.

  The stereo fired up. Portishead came on. I yelled for them to turn it down.

  I called Hotel Kämp and asked for Kate’s room. The receptionist informed me that she had checked out. I asked for Aino, Kate’s assistant and acting hotel manager while Kate was on maternity leave. Good luck. Aino was working late. Bad luck. She hadn’t seen Kate for a couple days, and didn’t even know she was no longer staying at the hotel.

  For a second, I was stymied, then told myself to be a cop. Kate and I share a bank account as well as having private ones. We have separate credit cards, but also one that accesses a shared account, and we have copies of each other’s online banking codes, in case one of us should misplace them. I had all the financial stuff in the bookcase. I grabbed it, went back to the kitchen and got online.

  It just took a few minutes for me to work it out. Kate withdrew five thousand euros from the bank. Then Mirjami walked in and laid a sealed envelope on the table. “Kari” was written on it in Kate’s handwriting. “I found this in Anu’s diaper bag,” Mirjami said. She walked away so I could read it in privacy.

  I tore open the edge of the envelope and pulled out a letter written on Hotel Kämp stationery.

  Dear Kari,

  I’m so sorry for the way I’ve treated you. I left you alone when you needed me the most. It was selfish and unconscionable. The things I’ve done have made me a failure as a wife and a human being. I’m certain that, given time, I will fail as a mother as well. I won’t be back and please don’t look for me. I promise that you and Anu will be better of
f without me. Heal, forget about me, and find someone who will make you happy and be a good mother to our daughter. I will always love you.

  She signed it as she has always signed notes to me, with a lipstick kiss.

  Everything clicked into place. Her odd behavior yesterday. The call in the middle of the night. Her uncontrolled weeping. It was because of remorse. She had been planning this. She had called on impulse, overwhelmed by guilt, to say without saying it—good-bye.

  I was calm at first, approached the situation with a cop mentality. I called MasterCard, told them I wasn’t certain if my card had been stolen or if I’d only misplaced it, and asked if they could check the latest purchases made with it. After some wrangling, I ascertained that Kate charged a flight to Finnair, bought a one-way ticket to Miami and left yesterday evening.

  At first I was too stunned to move or speak. Then something like bats were flapping around in my head. My chest hurt and my vision went black. I stood up with my cane. I didn’t know where I was going. I started swinging the cane. I broke the cupboard doors to kindling and heard myself screaming, raging. No words, just bellowing. I kept swinging and shouting. The plates shattered, the glasses smashed.

  I reared back for another swing and the cane disappeared from my hands. I felt myself lifted off my feet and laid on the floor. Sweetness sat on my chest and pinned my arms down with his knees. Mirjami held my nose to force my mouth open. She dropped a fistful of pills in it. I tried to spit them out, but Jenna stuck the neck of the kossu bottle between my teeth, so I couldn’t close my mouth. I choked and gagged on booze, had to swallow I don’t know how many gulps.

  I felt my body floating, like an astronaut in a gravity-free atmosphere, and I knew no more.

  8

  I wasn’t hungover in the morning, I didn’t ingest enough poisons for that, but was groggy from the dope and booze they knocked me out with. I was naked. Someone had undressed me. Katt was sleeping on my chest. Mirjami wasn’t in bed with me, but she had been earlier. I smelled her scent on the pillows. The memories drifted back. My wife absconded to Florida. I destroyed much of the kitchen. I had to get Kate back. Now. But how? Kate kept her private things in the nightstand on her side of the bed or in her jewelry box.

  Jari was right, my knee and face hurt even worse than before the cortisone shots. I rolled and scooted to the other side of the bed and rifled through the little drawer in the nightstand. At the bottom of assorted papers and mementos was a packet of letters bound with a rubber band, from her brother, John. The return address was in Miami, Florida. John is human flotsam and jetsam. He destroyed his life with booze and drugs. The last I knew, he lived in New York. Best guess: he got in too deep with drug dealers, had no hope of paying them, and scarpered to the other side of the country before they killed him.

  Now Kate was there with him. Kate was emotionally ill, not in control of herself. Kate could fall under John’s drug-addled spell. Kate could take up his bad habits. I pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt. My cane was beside the bed. I tottered into the living room. Mirjami was in my armchair with Anu. Sweetness and Jenna were still in bed. I got the impression that they did little except booze, fuck and sleep.

  Mirjami had showered. Her long, dark hair was damp and hung over her shoulders. Anu pulled at it. Mirjami wore Kate’s bathrobe. It disconcerted me.

  “I looked at your web browser history,” she said.

  “I didn’t smash the computer?”

  “It’s about the only thing you didn’t destroy.”

  That was something anyway.

  “I take it Kate has abandoned you and Anu,” she said.

  “Kate isn’t well, as you know. ‘Abandon’ is too strong a word for what she’s done. I think she just panicked and ran away.”

  Mirjami kept her face blank. “Maybe. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” It came to me. I needed to speak to her therapist. And I needed to sit down. My phone was on the table next to my armchair. Mirjami brought me coffee and sat down beside me again. It’s the ultimate gigantic man’s chair, a gift to myself. The fit might be a little tight, but another person of average size could comfortably sit with us.

  I called Torsten Holmqvist. “There’s a problem with Kate,” I said. “I need your help.”

  “You know the rules about doctor-patient privilege,” he said. “However, she missed her therapy session yesterday. Would you happen to know why?”

  “Because she left the country to stay with her drug-fiend brother.”

  “Oh dear,” he said. “That is a bit of a predicament.”

  It was a fucking catastrophe. I wanted to choke him to death. “What should I do?”

  “Where is your child?”

  “With me. She dropped Anu off before she left, lied, and told me she would be back within hours.”

  “Are you in contact with Kate?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I can’t treat her if she isn’t here. Is it possible to use your child as a carrot on a stick to entice her to come home?”

  “Maybe you’re not hearing me. I—am—not—in—touch—with—her. She—abandoned—her—child.”

  “Then I suggest you find a way to get in touch with her. Given the extraordinary circumstances, I’ll tell you what I feel I can without breaking her confidence.”

  I sighed. He was wasting precious time. “I would be grateful for that.”

  “Kate has related a number of experiences to me that border on the unbelievable. I’m uncertain whether they’re fact or fantasy. Should I enumerate some of them?”

  I wasn’t sure and said nothing, uncertain what to reveal and what to hold back.

  “When she first came to see me,” he said, “she believed Icarus had flown too close to the sun, his wings had melted, he fell to the earth engulfed in flame and died at her feet. Now she claims she shot him to death.”

  He needed at least some truths to do his job and help her. “She shot him.”

  “Let me assure you, if you’ve committed crimes in the past, I feel no obligation to report them, and they will stay with me. You were also my patient, and that further complicates matters. If I felt failure to report a planned crime would result in the loss of human life, my obligation would sway toward a potential victim. Is that helpful to you in speaking about these issues?”

  “The man in question was a former French Legionnaire. He had paratrooper wings tattooed on the side of his head. And yes, his clothing caught fire, so it’s understandable that she associated him with Icarus. In fact, he referred to his tattoos as the wings of Icarus. Whatever Kate told you is most likely true,” I said, “or at least based in truth. There may be some things she doesn’t know about and so filled in the gaps herself, believing the worst, when it may not have been the case. What might be most helpful for you to know is that she had no choice in killing the man.”

  “I see.”

  God, I hate when he says that.

  “Kate caused a death,” he said, “a most gruesome one, I’m given to understand, and she now accepts that she caused it. She deplores violence. Killing another person violated everything she believed in and destroyed her self-image of who she thought she was. This caused acute stress disorder, which led her to fall into her previous dissociative state. Basically, her mind was protecting itself from an event so traumatic that she was unable to process it.”

  “I understand that much,” I said.

  “Over the past few weeks, her condition has evolved, or perhaps devolved would be more accurate. Rather than re-associate and come to grips with the events of that day, she has developed full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  “Which means?”

  “That she is reliving that event over and over again in her mind, to the near exclusion of all else, and the truth of what she did torments her constantly, even in her dreams. That might be why she left.
She may have felt unable to take adequate care of your child in her present state, yet another source of guilt. Or perhaps she feels unworthy of a child, which she regards as a blessing.”

  This all made excellent sense. “Can you tell me anything more?”

  “No, I can’t. I will say only this. She sees what she views as her own mistakes and inadequacies reflected in you, like a mirror into her own soul. However, if you can return her to my care, I’ll encourage her to tell you this herself.”

  “What should I do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. As I said, I can’t treat her if she isn’t here. If she were, I believe her therapy would be short term and she would return to a semblance of emotional normality within a few months.”

  “Thank you for being so forthright,” I said.

  “Please keep me informed,” he said, and rang off.

  • • •

  I WENT out to the balcony, smoked a couple cigarettes and thought things through, then came back and sat down again. Katt took his place atop the chair, front paws to the sides of my neck. Talking hurt like hell, but I tried Milo again. This time, his phone was switched on. “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I’m fishing in a sailboat near my summer cottage, about to fire up a bowl of dope.”

  “I didn’t know you had a summer cottage, a sailboat, or that you smoked pot.”

  “Well, now you know. The cottage is on Nauvo, near Turku, has been in my family for generations, and I smoke all the pot I can get. You always comment on my bloodshot eyes and the dark circles around them. They’re bloodshot from the pot, and the dark circles are because sleeping bores me. Any other personal details you would like me to share with you?”

  “No. I need your help.” I was so upset that for a minute I couldn’t continue.

  “Care to elaborate?”

  I pulled it together. “Kate has done a runner. She’s emotionally ill, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because of what happened on the island. She left Anu here with me. I checked her accounts. She’s in Miami, Florida. Her brother, John, is there. I’m sure she’s with him. I have his address. My physical condition is too bad for me to do this myself. I need you to go to Miami and bring her home. Please.”