“I didn’t do it, so they can’t prove it. They can write what they want.”
“You can’t be that naive.”
“I guess I am.”
He yells into the phone, hurts my ear. “Fuck you! Do you have any idea how much fucking flack I’m taking over this goddamned murder? I’m trying to help you and you won’t let me. When you took this case, against my better judgment, I told you it was on your head. Now I want you to pull yourself together and do your goddamned job.”
I don’t know what to do. I try to think.
He lowers his voice. “It’s three days before Christmas. It would be hard as hell for me to get a homicide team up there, and even if I could, it would take a couple days for you to get them up to speed. You know the statistics. Every minute that goes by lessens our chance of solving this murder. The case will lose momentum, it might even slip through our fingers and go unsolved. Are you willing to let that happen?”
He’s pushing my buttons, trying to manipulate me, but what he said is true and I’m not willing to let it happen. “No.”
“I realize this is hard for you, but when you told me you wanted this case, you mentioned your career. You solve the murders, both of Sufia Elmi and your ex-wife, and I’ll show my gratitude. You can have the job of your choice.”
I think about how unhappy Kate is in Kittila. “Tell me how you think I should continue.”
“It’s obvious. Everybody else in this case is dead. Seppo Niemi is in custody. Arrest the Eklund boy too. Charge them both with conspiracy to murder. Neither one of them is tough enough to face double-homicide charges. One of them will talk.”
“What about Eklund’s father?”
“He and I play golf together. I’ll deal with him, and I’ll get the arrest warrant for you and smooth things over.”
He’s right about everything. “Jyri, I want to thank you for your faith in me and the support you’ve given me.”
“Thank me by solving the case.” He hangs up.
Kate listened to my end of the conversation and understood enough to get the idea. She shakes her head like I’m a child she can’t reason with. “It’s almost Christmas,” she says. “Stay here with me where it’s warm and safe.”
I shake my head no.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“It’s what I’ve got to do.”
“I didn’t tell you because you were already so upset. I saw a report on BBC World about the murder. They’re making you out to be a corrupt policeman abusing his authority. They raised the question of whether you’re really a hero decorated for bravery, or a cop that got away with murder once before. You’re risking everything.”
“He offered me any job I want if I do this. You wanted to get away from Kittila, I’m doing it for you too.”
“Don’t do it for me, I don’t want you to.”
“I have to.”
Kate turns her back on me. Her voice radiates anger and disappointment. “This will end badly,” she says.
30
In downtown Kittila, what passes for our shopping district is decked out for Christmas. The main square has a tall tree, over-decorated with gaudy blinking lights and laden with thick snow. Store window banners say Hyvaa Joulua, Merry Christmas, or some variation on the theme, and advertise special holiday offers. I hate the commercialization of Christmas. Maybe because when I was a kid, we were poor and couldn’t afford expensive gifts, maybe because it just sucks.
Last year, Kate and I spent our first Christmas together. I made a traditional Finnish Christmas Eve dinner: rosolli (a salad with pickles, beets, onions and herring), a fifteen-pound ham and three different casseroles made out of potatoes, turnips and carrots. She said we’d never eat it all, but it was gone in four days. It comes to me that Heikki was supposed to help out Kate, but he’s dead, and I don’t even know if she has anything to eat at home. This case has made me a negligent husband.
I feel like shit from the hangover, and whatever I do is wrong, damned if I do and damned if I don’t. I haven’t even considered how my insistence in pursuing my ex-wife’s murderer makes Kate feel. Judging by her reaction, I’ve already ruined her holidays. I don’t want to further destroy them by having nothing to eat but takeout pizza on Christmas. Luckily, I bought Kate’s gifts weeks ago, but on the way to work, I stop at the grocery and buy all the food for the holidays. I’m afraid if I don’t do it now, I’ll forget later.
I leave the supermarket and look around. Almost every small Finnish town has the same eight or ten chain stores, and Kittila looks like all the rest, as if it had been stamped out of a sheet with a cookie cutter. Standing in the cold and dark, looking at my hometown done up in fake Christmas bullshit, I wonder what the fuck I’m doing, why I’m not at home with my wife. Finnish people are obedient, we do what we’re told. Maybe I’m as faceless as this community.
It’s too late now. I’ve made my choice. Like the chief said, in for a dime, in for a dollar.
No media vultures hover outside the police station. I guess since I wouldn’t talk to them, they gave up and went home for Christmas. I park in the police garage and leave my groceries in the trunk of the car. They’ll stay cold enough there without freezing.
Inside, I find Valtteri slumped over his desk, his head in his hands. “What the hell are you doing here?” I ask.
He’s a wreck. His appearance is so bad that I think he hasn’t eaten or slept, hasn’t done very much but cry, since he found his son dead in his basement a couple days ago. He fires my question back at me, his tone is sharp. “What the hell are you doing here?”
In seven years of working together, I’ve never heard Valtteri use a swear word before, even a mild one. “You heard about Heli?” I ask.
“I heard. Antti told me.”
“I’m not criticizing you. I just think you burying your son one day and coming back to work the next is too much. You should be at home.”
“To do what, sit on the couch with my wife and cry?”
That’s exactly what I think. “You should stay home with Maria for a few days. She needs you.”
“I can’t help her and she can’t help me. You told me to come back to work and here I am.”
I pull up a chair, sit down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m trying to be your friend. Have you looked in the mirror today?”
He brushes my hand away. “You should take a look in the mirror yourself. You look like a bucket of shit without the bucket. You saw Heli, a woman you spent years with, burned to death last night, and you’re here at work. If I shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t either. We both stay or we both go home.”
His behavior is strange but his argument is logical. Maybe work is the therapy he needs.
“Did Antti go home to sleep?” I ask.
“Yeah, and Jussi went out on a call, a car wreck. It’s just us for now.”
“You talk to Seppo yet?”
“No.”
“I’ll see if he wants to confess. If he doesn’t, we’re going to arrest Peter Eklund.”
Valtteri nods and stares down at the top of his desk again.
I go downstairs and open the port in the door of Seppo’s cell. He stares through it at me. “I guess you think you’re pretty goddamned funny,” he says, “having me dragged out of my house in the middle of the night and arrested again.”
“Stick your hands out so I can cuff you.”
He’s learned the drill, lets me put handcuffs on him and steps away as I enter. He’s wearing his own clothes, looks like less of a buffoon than the last time we met in this cell. “Why did you do this to me?” he asks. “I thought we’d settled things between us.”
“Me too, but that was before you killed your wife.”
He tilts his head, appears uncomprehending. “What are you talking about?”
I’ve still never figured out if Seppo is a good actor, smarter than he seems, or if he really is the complete dolt I take him for. I try to bait him into a confession. “Stupid to kill your wife five days after you murder your girlfriend. Even more stupid to use the same vehicle. You might just as well have hung a sign around your neck saying, ‘Send me to prison and throw away the key, I’m guilty of double murder.’ ”