“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
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 shut. 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
