“Come here,” I say. He crawls over, looks like he’s about to go into shock himself. I give him the keys to the handcuffs and my car. “Unlock yourself and open my trunk. There’s an emergency first-aid kit. It has morphine in it and I need it.”
While he’s gone, I call Antti, tell him where I am and that I’m shot, that there are two dead bodies here. I tell him to get me help. He tries to ask questions, but I hang up and drop the phone on the ice.
Seppo brings me the kit and I inject myself. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I never meant for all this to happen.”
“Valtteri was right,” I say. “Your affair with Sufia started all this. You used her and brought all this misery on us with your selfishness, your childishness. If he’d killed you, it might not have been justice, but not far from it. If you weren’t the worthless piece of shit that you are, all these people would still be alive.”
Then I don’t see Seppo anymore. I see Suvi. The ice is three feet thick, but I look through it like a window and see her swimming beneath me. She’s been there all these years, alive under the surface, waiting for me to find her.
Then I feel Kate behind me, her arms around me. I feel her pregnant belly, big and round, pressed against my back. Suvi isn’t under the ice anymore, she’s here with me. I hold her hand and we skate through the darkness across the lake. We stop and Mom and Dad join us. They’re young again and happy. Dad’s not drunk and they’re having one of their good days.
Abdi gets up, pats out the flames and stops smoldering. He stands tall and proud in a dress police uniform, medals on his chest. He has his arm around his daughter. Sufia, gorgeous as always, in a cocktail dress, looks up at her dad and smiles. I notice Heli is here. She’s thirteen, laughing like she did when she was a kid, and I know she’s okay too. I feel warm and safe. Valtteri looks up at me and winks. I lie down on the ice, use his body for a pillow and go to sleep.
35
“I kept my promise. I’m home on Christmas Eve.”
Kate shakes her head, laughs a little. “Yes you did. And I’ll keep mine and help you put yourself back together again.”
By some miracle, the bullet passed through my mouth without breaking my jaw. It shattered the next to last two teeth on the upper right side and passed out through my cheek without further damage. I asked the doctor how bad the scar will be.
“You’ll look like a tough guy.”
“People already say I look like a tough guy.”
He laughed. “Well, now you’ll look like a tough guy who got shot in the face.”
“That’s great,” I said, “just what I need.”
Kate called Dad. When she explained what happened, Mom offered to come over and help make Christmas dinner. Dad said he’d come if I put the sauna on. Christmas isn’t Christmas without sauna, he said. It’s sweet that Mom is cooking. She’s doing it for Kate. I can’t eat solid food and will be living on soup for a few weeks.
I start building a fire for the sauna. I can’t go with the bandages on my face. It disappoints me almost as much as not being able to eat Christmas dinner. The phone rings. Even with heavy painkillers, my face and broken teeth hurt like hell. It’s the national chief of police and I want to find out if I’m fired, so I answer anyway.
“How’s your face?” he asks.
“Hurts.”
“Fair enough, it’s been hurting the rest of us for a long time.” He laughs at his own joke. “You’re a jackass,” he says.
“I know.”
“I don’t know whether to prosecute you or promote you.”
“Me neither.”
“When your officers processed the scene, they found the video camera and tape recorder. The whole thing is documented.”
I didn’t know Valtteri left them running and captured his own suicide. “It was a tragedy. I wish it could be forgotten.”
“It can’t. I’m putting it on the evening news. To save your ass.”
I don’t say anything.
“I’m a man of my word and a deal’s a deal,” he says. “You solved both murders. What job do you want?”
“You serious?”
“What do you think?”
I tell him to wait a second and start to ask Kate what she wants to do, then think better of it. She’s been under enough pressure lately. It can wait until after Christmas.
“Can you give me some time to consider it?” I ask.
“I’ll give you a week,” he says. “You’re a jackass, but I guess I’m going to have to decorate you for bravery again anyway, to put the right spin on things. What the hell, it will get me some face time on television.” He hangs up.
I tell Kate what he said.
“You were right about the case,” she says. “Maybe you’re right about staying here too. Then again, Helsinki sounds nice. Let’s take some time and think about it.”
I wasn’t right about everything, and wish I’d been wrong about the rest of it.
Mom and Dad arrive. Mom hugs me, looks like she’s going to cry. “You okay son?” Dad asks.
“Yeah.”
He hands me two wrapped gifts. One is obviously a bottle. “Open them,” he says.
The bottle is Koskenkorva vodka. The other package contains two plastic straws. “They’re symbolic,” he says. “We’re gonna drink it together.”
“I shouldn’t drink on top of the painkillers,” I say.
Mom doesn’t speak any English, but Dad’s is passable. He looks at Kate. “Do you mind if your husband gets drunk with his father?”
“A little,” she says. She looks at me-I shrug. She gives Dad a Christmas hug. “But go ahead anyway.”
He looks happy, cracks the top off the bottle, takes a drink and hands it to me. I take a sip.
The doorbell rings again. I’m surprised to find Seppo on my front porch. “Merry Christmas,” he says.
He’s the last person on earth I want to see. “What do you want?”
He looks sheepish. “If I had done what you told me, left here and never come back, Heli would still be alive. Now I’m leaving for good and I want you to have this.”
He hands me a manila envelope. “What is it?” I ask.
“The deed to my winter cottage. I don’t want it anymore. I thought it might make up for things a little bit.”
Five people are dead and he thinks he can just buy goodwill, fix everything with an expensive gift. I hand it back. “I don’t want it.”
He doesn’t take it. “It’s worth eight hundred thousand euros.”
I grab his hand and press the envelope into it. “I still don’t want it. Go away.”
He looks like a sad little kid. “Sorry I bothered you.”
Then I realize. “Wait,” I say. “Give it to me.”
He hands it back. “Why the change of heart?”
“Valtteri left a widow and a bunch of kids, and Sufia’s mother is alone now. I’m not sure if she’s capable of providing for herself. Selling your winter dacha can take care of them all for a long time.”
“Good,” he says, “I’m glad.”
I shut the door, and for the first time I realize how much better off we all were when Heli left me for him. She got what she wanted-a stupid rich man she could manipulate. He had a woman who stayed with him despite the fact that he’s a philandering drunk, and besides, I think he really loved her. Heli wasn’t who I thought she was when I married her. Maybe, like Sufia, no one really knew her. I was allowed to go on with my life and find someone I could make happy, someone who makes me happy.
Dad asks me who was at the door. I tell him it was nobody.
Mom takes Kate to the kitchen to teach her the fine art of making rosolli. The way they manage to communicate despite not having a common language, mostly with hand gestures, amuses me. People always seem to find a way.
Dad and I sit in front of the television, pass the bottle back and forth. The combination of drugs and alcohol allows me to screw up my nerve and ask the unspoken question. “Dad, do you ever think about Suvi?”