“A sword?”
“Long story.”
“Saukko is a master of façade. He has terrible psychological problems but is very good at masking them.”
“Enjoy retirement,” I say.
“I promise you I will. Take my advice, lad. Help yourself while you can. There are other men with the same set of skills as myself, and when Saukko gets himself a roguish one, it’ll be time to say good-bye to your family.”
I start to say that the last time a man with his skill sets tangled with us, he was so careless that my wife killed him, but too late. He rang off.
“What did Moore want?” Milo asks.
I consider the subtext of his call. He didn’t call me for his stated reasons. He called to get a job done. “Because he wants us to kill Saukko.”
Saying it out loud sparks other truths. Saukko talked about waiting years to take his vengeance on me, yet tried to kill my family within days. He fears death. He reads people. He knows I’ll stop at nothing to protect my family. He fears me. He called the tune. Play for blood.
Moore killed the Corsicans but let Saukko live. Especially after the kidnap and following murder of his daughter, then the drama of the death of his son, the murder of Saukko will generate the biggest manhunt in Finnish history. Moore foresaw this. If Saukko were murdered and Moore disappeared, the investigation would focus on him from day one and he would be apprehended. So he spared Saukko and left us to clean up the mess.
But we have more than just Saukko to deal with. Through some twisted logic, Jan Pitkänen hates both Milo and me for the cards life has dealt him. Jan Pitkänen arranged the car bomb, ultimately murdering Mirjami, proof of said hatred. Jan Pitkänen works for the minister of the interior. Thus, Pitkänen had Ahtiainen’s implicit or explicit blessing before acting. Ahtiainen almost certainly discussed it with his best friend, Jyri Ivalo, before giving the green light. Thus, they are all complicit in the murder of a sweet and innocent young woman. I have too much dirt on both of them. Ivalo fears me. Ivalo will find a way to either kill me or put me behind bars. I have no doubt the pair of them have put as much time and energy into collecting dirt on me as I have on them.
The value of all these lives is reduced to a kind of balance sheet. Either me, my family, Milo, Sweetness or maybe even Jenna must die. Or Saukko, the minister, the chief, the murderer and the patsy hate-monger must die. There are no smaller, neater options. There’s no room for negotiation. There’s no way everyone can live. It’s a terrible decision to have to make, but only one choice is possible.
I pat Milo on the knee. He looks at me, quizzical.
“When we get back to my house,” I say, “I have a present for you.”
32
We arrive at Kämp. I ask Milo to wait in the car. It makes him unhappy, so I explain that I would bring him but the invitation was extended only to me. He accepts it.
The doorman recognizes and greets me. I limp down the long carpet into the lobby, pass by the marble pillars, under the chandelier and rotunda, then take a left to the elevators. Sasha was no more careful with his hotel security than he was with his finances. The key card is in the hotel’s paper holder with the room number on it. I take the elevator to the fourth floor.
Kämp has gone through various renovations. About half of the hotel has security cameras mounted in the hallways. The other half doesn’t. It also has a security staff of one. He mostly attends to preparations for visiting political dignitaries, rock stars, people of that ilk.
I let myself into Yelena’s suite. To the left of the door, Yelena used her blood to write on the wall in big letters. Blood dribbled down the wall as she wrote, I suppose finger painting. “My husband killed me.” I use my cell phone to take pictures. I follow the blood trail to the bathroom, Yelena stills wears the clothes she had on when we met, minus shoes.
What happened seems obvious. She slashed her wrists, wrote her message, then came in here to avoid making a mess, and I think to maintain dignity in death. She knelt over the tub. Eastern Orthodox prayer beads are laced around her fingers and her hands are folded. She prayed as she bled out. A green rubber duck sits on the edge of the tub, as does one in every room. It seems to make light of the scene, a kind of accidental mockery, and I’m tempted to move it, but don’t.
I take my shoes off and walk around her suite, looking for anything that might indicate that her husband truly did play a part in her death. I find a letter addressed to me on the nightstand beside the bed, written in impeccable English.
Dear Inspector Vaara,
As you see, I’ve provided you with ammunition against my husband. You seek that urchin. He knows her whereabouts. My husband is a lapdog to his masters. He will not part with that information easily. I have no doubt you will have to torture it out of him. Then, as a favor to me, to reciprocate the favor I have done for you, please photograph both my writings on the wall and myself. Send them to my father (note his e-mail address at the bottom of this note). I promise you that any and all problems concerning my husband will come to an abrupt end, as will he.
With Warm Regards,
Yelena Merkulova
The logic of her note is faulty. It expresses the frantic and desperate state of mind of a woman about to end her own life. There’s no need to torture him if I have photos that guarantee his death. I can offer to give him his life back, use them for barter, trade them for Loviise Tamm. Her less than lucid reasoning probably caused her to think she was covering all the bases, and perhaps the idea of her husband being tortured pleased her so much that she thought, What the hell, can’t hurt to try. Such pure hatred is seldom seen.
Yelena said she was still “Daddy’s little girl,” that her father was a rich and powerful man, and her husband was charged with her care. When her husband discovers what’s happened here, he’ll try to cover it up, to save his own life. I take copious photos to ensure that doesn’t happen. She’ll have her dying revenge for being reduced to “chattel,” in a way no different from the poor girls bought, sold and traded by men like her lover and, I feel certain, under the direction of her husband. I also feel certain that within a day or two, her father will have her husband recalled to Russia and murdered. This, I believe, was the purpose of Yelena’s suicide.
I have the ambassador’s number in my phone. I send him a couple of poignant images. He calls me immediately. As much as I would like to honor Yelena’s final wishes, I won’t torture her husband. I do, however, offer to suppress the images in trade for the return to me of Loviise Tamm. He says he would if he could, but he doesn’t know where she is. He offers me a quarter of a million dollars to suppress the pictures. His voice trembles with fear. I tell him money won’t cut it and hang up on him.
I call Milo, tell him to come up, and to bring protective gear to prevent us from contaminating the crime scene. I then call Helsinki Homicide to report the death. Milo arrives and we suit up. He sees nothing I’ve overlooked. The ambassador text messages me, asks me again to please not release the images. He writes that the last time Loviise was seen, she was in the company of Yelena as they left the embassy on foot.
Inka and Ilari from Helsinki Homicide come in. I assume they’re competent detectives, but they’re annoying. They’ve had an affair going on behind the backs of their families for years, I’m told, but bicker and treat each other like dogs when they’re around other people. I suppose they think it maintains their charade. They sometimes forget themselves and talk to their colleagues in a similar way, and it makes them unlikable.
“Vaara,” Ilari says. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Milo and I were out in our patrol car and caught the squeal. We were nearby and first on the scene.” It was a joke intended as a little display of my disrespect for his attitude. We use cell phones, not police radios, and we never use a patrol car.
“Well, get the hell out. This is a potential international incident. It is
n’t—and it’s not going to be—your goddamned case.”
“Fuckin’ A right,” Inka says. “You’re on leave and have no right to be here. Out.”
I have what I came for, and it’s only going to be their case for about two and a half seconds. “No problem, and good luck.”
Milo and I walk out of the room and find the Russian ambassador, surrounded by an entourage of five men. The forensics team has also just arrived. The ambassador is raising hell, demanding to see his wife, demanding Finnish police leave the scene, invoking various articles about diplomatic privilege. No one is interested. Until Moscow intervenes, it’s a potential crime scene that belongs to the Finnish police.
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&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 Pitkänen, 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.”
“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.
“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.”
Helsinki Blood Page 20