to her. Finally, I decide Kate may not wake for hours, and go back home to get something to eat. Mary continues to wait, in case Kate wakes and needs something.
I find John in the kitchen, a bottle of kossu in front of him. He’s not tanked, just drinking. “I guess you know I told Kate about myself and everything you did for me,” he says.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Are you pissed off at me?”
“No.”
“Can I give you a brotherly hug to congratulate you on the birth of your child?”
It makes me laugh. “If you have to.”
He stands and gives me a hard squeeze. “Want to have a drink with me?” he asks.
I sit down with him. “Sure.”
He fetches me a glass and pours me a drink. We nurse our vodkas and share a comfortable silence, something I wouldn’t have thought him capable of.
My phone rings. It’s Jari. “Hi, little brother,” he says. “I haven’t spoken to you since we left your house in a rush. I’m sorry about that.”
It amuses me when he calls me “little brother,” since I’m almost twice his size. “It’s okay, just a little culture clash. It happens.”
“I wanted to check on you. How’s your migraine situation?”
“Better today. Kate gave me a healthy baby girl this morning, both of them are fine, and my headache went away.”
“You have a baby! Wow! Congratulations! You busy right now?”
“No. Kate’s asleep and I’m at home.”
“Then we’re going to have your varpajaiset. ”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
I smile and sigh. “Okay, then meet me at Hilpea Hauki and we’ll do it.”
His voice is full of glee. “I’ll meet you in an hour.”
We hang up.
“Come on, John,” I say. “We’re going out. It’s time for my var pajaiset.”
“Varpajaiset?”
“Varpaat are toes. A varpajaiset is a party. When a man becomes a father, he’s supposed to have a drink for every toe his child was born with. So I’m required to have ten drinks. I suspect you will, too. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”
We tramp through the snow over to Hilpea Hauki and sit at a corner table. My phone rings, it’s Milo. “Arvid Lahtinen murdered Filippov,” he says. “That’s fucking awesome. You have to tell me the story.”
“Not now,” I say. “Kate had a baby girl, and I’m having a varpajaiset at Hauki.”
“That’s great news,” he says. “Can I come?”
His voice is so full of enthusiasm that I can’t say no. “Sure. Come over. Buy me a drink.”
Within a few minutes, Jari and Milo are sitting with us, and our table is covered with beers and shots. Apparently, I’m expected to exceed the ten-drink quota. The mood is gregarious, the jokes are silly.
“All right, Milo,” I say, “now I’m ready. Tell me the story behind your Hitler Youth dagger.”
He beams, thrilled that I asked him to tell a story. “My great-grandpa took it off a Russian soldier in the war. Which means he must have taken it off a German soldier.”
He pauses, once again attempting to build anticipation.
“That’s vaguely interesting,” I say, “but I was expecting something more.”
“I wanted to make you ask. I’m coming to the good part. Great-Grandpa gave it to Grandpa, who gave it to Dad, who had a weakness for women. One day, Mom decided she had enough and stabbed Dad with it.”
Milo grins. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh or not. “Did she kill him?”
“No, she stuck it through his leg and ripped a seven-inch gouge in it. He nearly lost the leg, missed weeks of work. Mom got her point across. He quit cheating on her after that.”
A good story. It gets a laugh out of me. We toast to Kate, and all of us knock back another kossu.
My phone rings again. It’s Jyri Ivalo. He also wants to hear about Arvid capping Filippov, and he wants to know if I’ve got my hands on the evidence against him and certain prominent others. I tell him I’m celebrating the birth of my child, and if he wants to talk to me, he has to come to Hauki and buy me drinks to earn the privilege. I hang up on him, as he’s so often done to me.
Milo slams his shot glass onto the table to get our attention. He doesn’t have enough body weight to have a good head for alcohol, and his eyes glisten. He claps a hand on my shoulder. He raises his voice, as drunks tend to. “I admire this guy,” he says. “I killed a man this week, and it’s eating me up. I feel fucking awful. Kari, you don’t seem to feel anything about it. You tough motherfucker.”
I don’t have words of wisdom for him. I shrug. “It’s something that happened. You did the right thing. Time will make it better.”
“You killed a man once,” he says. “How did you live with it? Did time make it better for you?”
We’ve been drinking hard and fast, and the booze has gone to my head, too. I feel like I owe him the truth. “When I blew that gangster’s head off, I felt nothing but relief that it was him instead of me. I didn’t feel guilt, or anything at all. Never have. The only reason I went to therapy for it was because I thought my lack of guilt meant something was wrong with me.”
The others look at me for a long minute and try to decide if I’m joking or not. Jari decides that I am and starts laughing, so the others do, too. I’m pleased that Milo feels remorse. It lessens my worry that he’s disturbed beyond repair.
Jyri walks in and comes up behind me. “A word, Inspector.”
He’s disconcerted, uncomfortable. I feel like toying with him. “When you bring a round of beers and shots for the table, we can chat.” My voice turns sarcastic. “We’ll use veiled and secretive language to keep the others in the dark.”
He has no choice, does as he’s told. When he comes back, I ask, “What do you want to know?”
My phone rings again. I don’t see the caller on the display, but answer to interrupt and further disconcert Jyri.
“Inspector, this is Sulo Polvinen. Can I talk to you?”
I give him my stock drunken answer for the evening. “I’m celebrating the birth of my daughter at Hilpea Hauki. The address is Vaasankatu 7. Come here if you want to talk to me.” I hang up on him, too.
“What happened at Kamp?” Jyri asks.
He’s brought a round of kossu. I insist we drink it and toast to Kate again before I answer. Then I give him a most succinct account.
“Arvid Lahtinen murdered Filippov, because if he stands trial for murder in Finland, he won’t be extradited to Germany. He also did it as a favor to me, so you and your buddies won’t fuck me later. Filippov believed he was murdering his wife, but Iisa tricked him into murdering Linda, the woman he loved. I let Iisa go. She’s going to embezzle the funds from Filippov Construction, disappear and live out her life-I believe-as Linda Pohjola, probably in another country.”
“Did you retrieve the things we discussed?”
“I know where they are and will retrieve them in due course.”
He looks like he wants to reach across the table and choke me. “I want those things.”
“No, Jyri,” I say, “I think I’ll hang on to them for a while. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
He doesn’t know how to answer and scowls at me.
I have pity on him. “You’re safe now. Everything has been resolved to your satisfaction. You have my word. And about the job you offered me. I’ll take it.”
He brightens. “You will?”
“Yes. And now that we’re partners in crime, I’ll regard you as just that, a partner, rather than my boss.”
