“This isn’t my home,” Kate said, “it’s a gangster hangout. Has it occurred to you that I might like to have people over, like Aino, friends from the hotel, but I can’t because Milo might slip and mention who’s been killed or body dumped? I don’t even know where Anu and I fit in your life. You’ve changed. You’re colder, more distant. I don’t know if it’s because of your job or your surgery or both.”
I sat down in my armchair and considered which truths to tell her and which not to. I didn’t even know what the truth was. I still couldn’t tell her that I was nearly without emotion and felt little or nothing for her or our child.
“I’m disillusioned,” I said. “I was misled, turned into Jyri’s cat’s-paw. I’m no more than a bagman and an enforcer for corrupt and criminal politicians. Sooner or later I’ll outlive my usefulness and they’ll find a way to dispose of me. I have to find a way to destroy them first. I’ll get money and passports. When the day comes, we’ll disappear.”
“This is insane,” she said, “and can only end badly. We should leave now, take the money you’ve got and go to Aspen. You can use your stolen money and pursue hobbies: take nature photos, collect stamps, whatever.”
“I gave you that opportunity,” I said, “and you declined. I know it wasn’t fair because you felt like you might be granting the last wish of a dying man, but now things are what they are, and I’ll see this job through. I took the job because I wanted to do some good. And before I quit, I will. We may have to leave, but not yet. I’m sorry.”
The news started on television, and we both almost missed it. The main story:
“Winter War hero Arvid Lahtinen committed suicide this morning…”
We were both dumbstruck. Our argument ceased and I turned up the volume. He shot himself outside his house, probably because he didn’t want to decomp for God knows how long before someone found him. He put on a suit, carried a chair outside, and sat while he put the gun to his head. I suppose he thought it would be more dignified than being found in a heap on the wet ground. The reporter speculated on the reasons behind his suicide, discussed the murder charges against him, both domestic and international, and his achievements as a national hero.
Kate cried. “Why?” she asked me.
I thought what sparked his action was his time here, the remembrance of what it was like to be part of a family, the realization that he would be old and alone now, had nothing to look forward to but a slow death in an aged, soon-to-be-failing body. Before long, illness, the loss of his home and independence. And he would have to do it alone, without his beloved wife of half a century.
“Because he didn’t enjoy life without his wife. Because he knew he had had a good run, but his time was over, and if he left now, he could die with his dignity intact.”
“He was my friend,” Kate said.
“Mine too. He told me that he was leaving everything to me. I should have known then.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. House. Money. Everything.”
Kate sat down next to me in the oversized chair. We were silent together for a while.
“Work with Moreau,” she said. “You fucked up a lot of things because you didn’t have the experience to know better. He does. If you learn, you can achieve some of the good that for some mystifying reason is driving you, and we can stop all this.”
“OK,” I said.
I was Arvid’s heir and so responsible for his funeral arrangements. The service was held in Helsinki’s magnificent and most prestigious church, Tuomiokirkko. It sits atop Senate Square and looks down upon both the city and the sea. The church was full, and the man and what he represented were truly mourned. I acted as a pallbearer. It seemed, after he was laid to rest, that nothing was ever the same again. Especially for Kate. I don’t know if the suicide of a man she called friend awakened something inside her, or killed it.
23
Vappu—May Day, the heaviest drinking holiday of the year. In Helsinki, a good day to stay at home. It’s amateur night, normal people reduce themselves to the level of dumb beasts. Children as young as ten or twelve pass out on the streets of downtown. May Day Eve fell on a Friday, so festivities would begin as soon as people got off work and continue for three days.
When I was a young man, the drinking culture was much different. People still got shitfaced, but with style. Men wore suits to bars, and doormen wore them also. The madding crowds didn’t shriek about whose turn it was. They waited in line, humble. Patrons were required to sit at tables. They couldn’t switch tables at will. If they wanted to move, they had to ask a server to move their drink to another table for them. Bartenders didn’t sling drinks, they administered communion, and were frequently addressed as
Vappu, too, has changed. In a time that doesn’t seem that far distant, Vappu had been a drinking day, especially for university students, but also a family day. People donned their high school graduation caps—still the tradition—but took their kids out with them, had family picnics. It lacked the tone of complete debauchery now attached to it.
It’s a different world now. Banks would also carry more cash than usual, as people prepared to pour their bank accounts down their necks. A good day for a robbery.
Every year, the great hope is that Vappu will be warm, and the nation can sit on sidewalk patios, drink, and celebrate the rite of spring. This year was a disappointment. The temperature was just above freezing and rain drizzled. No matter, spring would be celebrated nonetheless.
At ten thirty a.m. on that dreary May Day Eve, with the tellers’ cash drawers freshly filled, two men entered the branch of Sampo Bank in Itakeskus, in East Helsinki. They wore black military-style clothing, ski masks, and carried AK-47-type rifles. Each had two banana clips fastened end to end with black electrical tape, so that when one clip was shot empty, the two-clip rig would only have to be flipped to re-load, eliminating the need to reach for another clip.
They fired off bursts into the air to make their presences known and began screaming in thick, grammatically poor English. One shot an unarmed bank guard dead. They didn’t have to order people to lay prone on the floor. The few early customers flung themselves down in the hope of staying out of harm’s way. No alarm was triggered. The robbers ordered the tellers to fill black plastic grocery bags with money. One teller, an older woman, too terrified to move, was also executed.
The robbery was over in less than three minutes. Before they left, one robber bellowed, “We strike against the enemies of God.” The other laughed and shouted, “Lock your daughters up, you motherfuckers, we comin’ to get you.”
I was called within minutes of the robbery and told to come to the crime scene because, as with the young soldier whose throat had been cut, it was felt that the robbery was related to the murder of Lisbet Soderlund.
Milo living so close to me was a convenience. I called him, picked him up, and we were at the bank within half an hour. It wouldn’t be my case, it would go to Saska Lindgren. Apparently, a race war was in progress, he would be given the cases related to it, and I would consult because of the presidential mandate concerning Lisbet Soderlund. We questioned all present. We looked at the videotapes. Although we couldn’t be certain because the only exposed skin we had to go by was the area around their eyes, all agreed that the perps were black.
Milo rolled a tape back and forth a few times. “The rifles they used,” he said, “are Rk 95 Tps, the type stolen from the training camp. An unlikely coincidence.”
According to the rules of battle as set forth by the white combatants in this race war, the original decree was “For every crime committed by black men, we will kill a nigger in retribution.”
That hadn’t proven accurate. A number of crimes had been committed by blacks since then without retribution. My gut told me, though, that they had realized the difficulties behind killing a black person for
Later that evening, Milo called me. He’d picked up something interesting on a cell phone tap. Helsinki was
