Seppo starts to snivel and swear his innocence.
“Shut up,” Ibrahim Hassan Daud or Abdi or whatever-his-real-name-is snaps, “or you will be dealt with sooner rather than later.”
Seppo shuts up.
“You must be cold Inspector. Please come and sit by the fire.”
I do it. Now I’m getting scared, but I think of Valtteri in the forest with the rifle, maybe fifty yards away, an easy shot.
Abdi keeps the pistol trained on me with one hand, sets the tire upright and starts pouring gasoline into the inner ring with the other.
I’m so scared now that I’m shaking, wondering why Valtteri hasn’t done something, if he’s really out there at all. Kate was right, and I was wrong about everything, and like she said, this is going to end badly. “Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“It is the only solution to my dilemma. It will appear that Seppo Niemi murdered you, as he did his wife, and then committed suicide. My wife and I will be safe, and my daughter will be avenged.”
“I have a wife too, she’s pregnant with twins. They need me as much as Hudow needs you.”
He sighs. “I am sorry for your family. Blame yourself. You have placed yourself and them in a situation of your own making.”
I try to stand, to at least make him shoot me instead of burn me, but my bad knee is locked and I can’t get up.
“You are also incorrect in believing that I murdered your ex-wife,” he says. “As I told you at our first meeting, I expected you to be my surrogate in seeing justice done on Sufia’s behalf. Now you must reap the consequences of your incompetence.”
“If you didn’t kill Heli,” I ask, “how did you know she was murdered here?”
“Your local newspaper published the name of the lake. Ice blackened by fire gave me the exact location. Had wind not swept the new-fallen snow away, I might not have been able to find it.”
He has no reason to lie. I’ve gotten it all wrong. I’m frightened and bewildered. I’m going to die without ever learning the truth. I’m going to die for nothing. Because of my stupidity, Kate will be left alone to raise two children. The children will grow up without a father. It took me almost forty years to find Kate and happiness, and now I’m going to have my life cut short, lose everything, because I’m a fool. I sit on the ice and await my execution. He lifts up the tire to hang it around my neck.
A rifle booms. The bullet whines past my head and strikes Ibrahim in the shoulder. He lurches sideways and falls, still holding the tire, onto the campfire. The gasoline ignites and he bursts into flame. He tries to stand, but wobbles and collapses, a ball of fire screaming and writhing on the ice. It doesn’t last long. He lays still and burns. It happens so fast that I can’t even try to help him.
Valtteri runs out of the forest onto the lake. In his winter camouflage, he looks like a white wraith streaking out of the darkness. He reaches me in a few seconds. “Oh Kari,” he says, “please tell me you’re not hurt.”
He helps me up onto shaking feet, hugs me and starts crying. I promise him I’m okay, tell him to calm down.
He pulls away from me and nods. A few feet away, Seppo is still on his knees. Valtteri walks over to him and draws his pistol, presses the muzzle to Seppo’s forehead.
I’m confused, don’t know what to do. “Valtteri,” I say, “please stop. Talk to me.”
Seppo doesn’t move, his mouth opens and closes like he’s searching for words but can’t find them.
“I’ve got to kill him,” Valtteri says. “Like you said, this ends today.”
He keeps the pistol pressed to Seppo’s forehead, bends down on one knee to look in his eyes. “Because of you,” Valtteri says, “two women are dead. Because of you, my son committed murder and suicide and burns in hell. You’re as guilty of his death as if you’d hung him yourself.”
Seppo stammers. “I didn’t kill anybody. I barely knew your son. Please don’t shoot me, I’m not guilty of anything.”
I try to talk Valtteri down. “This isn’t the way and you know it. Give me your gun before you do something you can’t take back.”
He screams at me. “This is the way! This stupid bastard didn’t kill anybody, but they’re all dead because of his lechery, his selfishness and stupidity. His affair with Sufia Elmi, his sins, set all this in motion. His sins resulted in all this death and misery.”
“Valtteri, what you say is true, but setting a series of events in motion isn’t the same as being guilty of murder.”
I step toward him and hold out my hand. “Please give it to me.”
He looks indecisive, then frantic, and swings the pistol toward me, I guess trying to keep me away from him.
I start to speak. “Give me the…”
The pistol goes off. My head recoils. I feel a burning in my face, put my hand to my right cheek. Something is very wrong. When I pull my hand away, it’s bloody. I roll my tongue around. There are hard things in my mouth. I spit out chunks of teeth.
I can talk, but it’s hard. “Valtteri, what have you done?”
He looks at me and goes to pieces, screaming and crying and saying he’s sorry and he raised Heikki wrong and now he’s hurt me and everything is his fault. He goes on and on and I want to console him but I’m dizzy and pain is starting to spread through my head. I roll my tongue around some more and come to the realization that I opened my mouth to speak and he accidentally fired the pistol. The bullet passed through my mouth, blew out my back teeth and exited through my cheek. I think I’m going to vomit.
Valtteri keeps talking, rambling something incomprehensible and saying he’s sorry, waving the gun around. He’s so upset I’m afraid he’ll shoot me by mistake again. Seppo stands up and starts apologizing to Valtteri for his part in events. I manage to punch him in the face to shut him up, knock him off his feet onto the ice.
All of a sudden, Valtteri lowers the pistol to his side. His face sags and he goes calm. “It was me,” he says.
Gunshot trauma has caused endorphin release, and my body’s natural painkillers are protecting me for the moment, but the agony will start soon. I’ve got to get Valtteri under control before it begins. “What do you mean?”
“I killed Heli.”
This is more than I can take in. “What?”
“That night, after Heli and Heikki killed Sufia, he came to me and told me what they had done. It was just like you thought. Heli seduced him and made him fall in love with her. She told him the girl was a sinner, not even a human being, and she had to die. She said it was God’s will, like missionary work, and told him what to do. He said she talked about it all the time, and after a while, he thought it wouldn’t be any harder than gutting a deer. Heli sat in the car and watched while he murdered Sufia. He said when he did it, at first it didn’t seem real, like a dream. When he was cutting her belly she woke up and screamed. It scared him so he cut her throat and it was like he woke up. When he understood he’d killed another human being for no reason, he started to cry. He told Heli they’d done wrong and she laughed and told him she never wanted to see him again.”
Valtteri starts to sob. “Heikki cried and cried and begged me to forgive him. He wanted to confess, for me to arrest him. I wouldn’t let him and told him I would protect him. He was a good boy who made a mistake. He promised to never do it again.”
“For God’s sake Valtteri.”
“It’s your fault. You’re the detective. You were supposed to fix everything and prove Seppo innocent. The murder could go unsolved. No one else would be hurt and Heikki could pretend like it never happened. But you didn’t. And then Heikki hanged himself. He died because of that bitch Heli, and she was going to get away with it. She was going to go on with her life and be rich and happy. I couldn’t let that happen. Could you have? My boy is burning in hell and she needed to burn in hell too. Heikki suffered the torments of hell before he died, out of guilt. I wanted her to taste the flames of hell on earth before she spent eternity there, so I burned her alive. It was justice as the Bible teaches. ‘If she profanes herself by harlotry, she shall be burned with fire.’ ”
The words Heikki wrote in his computer. Now that I know most of the truth, I want all of it. “Where did you get the idea to use a burning tire?”
