She has a king hell case of morkkis. I cut her off. “Everything is fine. Anu is fine. You didn’t do anything embarrassing. You just got sick, passed out, and I put you to bed. You didn’t even drink half as much as the others. It just hit you wrong because you’re not used to it. We can talk about it later if you want.”
I go downstairs. Anni is up and in good spirits. “Should I make everyone breakfast? Help kill their hangovers?”
I have a feeling their hangovers are beyond redemption. “Thanks, but we don’t have time. I have to meet someone in Helsinki.”
I make the rounds. Moreau made a pillow out of his coat and slept on the floor. He’s already waking. I go outside and hear laughter in the Muumin house. Jenna speaking in a soft voice. Sweetness whistling. Kissing slurps. He got his cherry busted with his true love. Nice. Maybe the life affirmation will give him some perspective, he’ll come to terms with the death of his brother and stop staying drunk morning, noon and night.
Milo and Mirjami are sleeping head to foot, clothed, on a cot in the washing room in the sauna. I wake them. They’re not sick yet because they’re still drunk. The hangover will come soon enough. I get everyone roused and in the vehicles. I don’t get a chance to say good-bye to Timo. He’s still passed out. I have a feeling we’ll talk again soon, though.
I drive the Audi, and Moreau drives the SUV. The others snooze along the way. We drop them at their homes and take the Audi to Veikko Saukko’s mansion.
His foundation museum is near the road. His mansion sits near the rear of the sprawling grounds of his property, the sea not far behind it.
A man resembling a two-hundred-eighty-pound bullfrog, in a tight black turtleneck with a thick gold chain hung around his neck, opens the door. Bodyguard chic. He checks his visitor’s list on an iPod and asks us to wait.
Veikko Saukko comes to the door to greet us. He pumps my hand and tells me it’s an honor to meet a law enforcement officer of my caliber. He hugs Moreau, pats his back and calls him “old friend.”
He ushers us into his study. It calls to mind a Victorian gentlemen’s club. Dark wood paneling and deep leather chairs. A Parnian desk with only an Aurora Diamante pen on it. The diamonds, platinum and gold sparkle. He insists, despite the hour, that we join him in a Richard Hennessy cognac and a La Gloria Cubana Reserva figurado. He sits with us in a circle of three chairs around a small table rather than behind his desk, to create an air of intimacy. He asks how he can help me.
“I’m investigating the murder of Lisbet Soderlund,” I say, “and I believe it may be related to the kidnap-murder your family suffered last year, for which I offer my condolences.”
He takes a deep draught of cognac, just poured a couple hundred euros down his throat. “I’m glad the bitch is dead, but if you convince me of some connection to my family…well, let’s just say I’ll hear you out.”
“You’ve created some enmity with Finland’s extreme right. I’m told you promised them a million-euro campaign contribution but reneged. It created antipathy, and may have led to the crimes perpetrated against your family. These same factions also despised Lisbet Soderlund and openly discussed killing her. Only a limited number of people in our little country are capable of such crimes, both in psychological profile and technical skill, and so the natural train of thought is that the murderer or group of killers is one and the same.”
“You killed a nigger, didn’t you, Inspector?”
I assume he refers to the Sufia Elmi case, in which her father died ablaze, doused in gasoline.
“It would be more accurate to say that I sat and watched him burn to death.” I was unable to reach him in time because of my bad knee. I test Saukko’s limits to see how crazy he is. “I shot the head off an Estonian, odds are good he had Slavic blood. Does that earn me points?”
He laughs haw haw and slaps his knee. “Adrien here has killed many niggers. That’s why I like him. How many niggers do you think you’ve killed, Adrien?”
Moreau exhales a long plume of smoke. He knows how to play this game and manipulate Saukko. I think Moreau kills many but hates no one. “Do you want to count Africans only, or Hispanics such as Mexicans? Beaners are just little brown niggers. And Arabs such as Afghans, sand niggers. And do you want to count killing by including the calling in of artillery fire and air strikes, or long-range killings, or only killings committed while close enough to look in the men’s faces?”
“Wow,” Saukko says, “so many options. Let’s include all the minorities, but count two ways, faceless and face-to-face.”
“Faceless, some thousands. I wouldn’t hazard to guess. Face-to-face, some hundreds.” Moreau’s smile spoke of indulgence. “Veikko, you’ve heard all of this before. Do you enjoy it so much?”
“Can niggers dance?”
“I thought that the French Foreign Legion has been primarily involved in peacekeeping missions over the past couple decades,” I said.
“Many people require a demonstration that it is to their benefit to be peaceful,” Moreau said, “and I haven’t been in the Legion for some time. My missions have had a wide variety of objectives since then.”
I say to Saukko, “May I ask you some questions?”
“Fire away.”
“Why did you change your mind about your donation to Real Finns?”
“All the patriots are connected. Real Finns. Neo-Nazis. Others. There are several groups populated by many of the same members. I wanted a demonstration of intent from them, not just talk. And I didn’t ask them to kill anyone, just be more up front about the contagion of non-white immigration.”
“What form of demonstration?”
He hesitates, considers the ramifications of his answer. “Are you a real white man? Is our conversation off the record?”
“Yes.”
“Finland was a white man’s paradise. Now good Finnish blood is soiled by poisonous nigger bacterial infection. We’re overrun by mud people. Zionist vampires. Jewish cancer. It’s time to take our country back. Sacrifices must be made. Blood spilled.”
He starts to ramble. I put on my practiced smile that shows agreement. At the moment, it’s good that I feel no emotion. If so, I might have given him the beating of a lifetime. I listen.
“Mud babies. Filthy white girls with no self-esteem desecrate themselves with filthier septic black men-tar people-and make mud babies. Certain parties sell the niggers heroin to sedate them. They should contaminate the heroin with strychnine to reduce the numbers of tar people and slow the contamination of pure Finnish blood. The whites that use it are flawed, of no use to society. Good riddance to bad rubbish. But these men who supposedly are ready to lay down their lives for the cause refuse to poison tar people because they’re afraid of prison, as if they would be common criminals rather than patriots and political prisoners. Cowardice. Pure cowardice. Yet, they come to me with their grubby hands out.”
I neglect to point out that his own daughter was a heroin addict, and now a methadone addict, or that, although I don’t know the statistics, Muslims aren’t inclined toward the use of narcotics. On the other hand, I’ve noticed that quite a few Muslims here have taken up drinking. Maybe a significant number use narcotics as well.
“Have you considered that the murder of Lisbet Soderlund may have been just the sort of demonstration you sought?” I say.
“I have considered it, and would reward it, if I knew who did it.”
I sip cognac I don’t want and force a sound of satisfaction. “Excellent.”
“Indeed.” He tosses his off, gets up, pours a triple, sits down again.
“I understand that you and your son Antti had a falling-out before his kidnapping.”
He smirks. “We had many falling-outs. He always came groveling back, and I rewarded his cringing monetarily.”
“What if this time he didn’t come groveling back? What if this time he teamed up with the extremists who felt betrayed by you-I understand they were all well acquainted-and together, they faked the kidnapping? It does appear, after all, that Jussi Kosonen was a patsy. Upon examining the man, it even seems ridiculous that he could have pulled off such a crime.”