James Thompson - Lucifer's tears

“What else do you know about Linda?” Milo asks.

“Not much. Iisa didn’t talk a lot about her personal life. Really, our relationship just revolved around fucking.”

“Tell me more about Iisa’s games and other lovers,” Milo says.

“I don’t know much more. She kept a diary, though. She kept it in her purse sometimes. Maybe you could find out something from there.”

“You texted Iisa and asked her to meet you at seven thirty in the morning. Why?”

“I hooked up with a girl. She was going to come home with me, but she got too drunk and tired and took a rain check. Iisa was going to watch us fuck.”

“You lead an exciting life,” Milo says.

Saar manages a wan grin. “I try.”

He looks at me. “Are you going to charge me with murder?”

I remember Jyri’s demand to that effect. “Not today,” I say.

I set my pack of cigarettes on his table. We leave him in peace.

BACK IN MY OFFICE, given the interview, I ask Milo what he thinks.

“Same as I have since the beginning. That motherfucker Filippov killed his wife and framed Saar. I turned that apartment inside out, and there’s no taser in it. The killer took it with him.”

“Exactly,” I say. “The taser burn lends veracity to his story, and the taser is conspicuous by its absence. It’s possible that Iisa tased him, he recovered enough to fight and was angry enough to torture her to death, then dumped the taser and called the police himself. But given his head wound, it’s too much of a stretch. A third party took the taser out of the apartment.”

Milo starts to shake his head and laugh.

“What?” I ask.

“I just can’t picture one guy getting so much pussy. The only dates I’ve had lately are with Rosy Palm and Five Fingers.”

This makes me laugh, too.

Our boss, Arto, walks in behind Milo. “It always pleases me to see detectives enjoy their work,” Arto says. “Want to let me in on the joke?”

“Sure,” Milo says. “What do you call epileptic lettuce?”

“What?”

“Seizure salad.”

Milo howls at his own joke, which makes me laugh more than the joke. Arto giggles and says, “Jesus, that was awful.”

When Milo stops cackling, Arto asks, “You two have time to investigate a death?”

“No,” I say, “but we can make time.”

“Head over to the Silver Dollar nightclub. The bouncers there killed some guy.”

“Sounds good,” Milo says.

The problem is that when Milo says it sounds good, I think he means it.

Milo and I sign a car out of the police garage at seven thirty p.m. Today we get a 2007 Toyota Yaris. It’s dark out now. Snow still falls, and our headlights illuminate it. Helsinki is a lovely city in winter when it’s not hammered by sleet and covered in filthy slush.

I drive. Milo jabbers. “So you have an American wife,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“What language do you speak at home?”

“Mostly English. Kate has been here for going on three years. She’s learning, tries to at least use some Finnish words and phrases.”

“Well,” he says, “Finnish is a tough language. It takes time.”

“Yeah.”

“English is a moronic language.”

This seems to be my week to have strong and unsupported opinions thrust upon me. “And why might that be?”

“The letter C is unnecessary. It makes the same sounds as K and S. That’s a lot of waste. They should get rid of it. They don’t need B either. P is almost the same, does just as well.”

I make conversation, since I was so hard on him earlier. “Kate thinks A and O with the dots over them are pointless. English gets on just fine without them.”

Milo takes a pack of unfiltered North State cigarettes out of his coat pocket, cracks the window and lights one. My dad smokes the same brand. Tough-guy cigarettes. “So during this car ride,” he says, “we’ve managed to take two letters out of the English language, and two out of Finnish. We changed the world.”

Inane chatter. He’s trying to kiss and make up because he pissed me off earlier. “So you started smoking again,” I say.

He takes a drag and nods. “You really are a good detective.”

“How long did you stay off them?”

“Four years.”

His new job in murharyhma must be getting to him. We sit in silence for a few moments.

“Did you know Ilari and Inka are fucking?” he asks.

“Is this deduction another product of your people-person skills and extreme powers of empathy?”

“It’s the product of hearing them fuck in the bathroom after everybody got drunk at my ‘welcome to the new guy’ party.”

They both have spouses and children, and even though they’re partners, act as if they hate each other. I thought their vicious invective toward each other seemed forced.

At seven forty-five p.m., we pull up in front of the Silver Dollar and park next to an ambulance. To call the place a nightclub is a bit of a misnomer. It’s multifunctional, soaks up money in different ways. It opens at four p.m. to accommodate after-work drinkers. A couple nights a week, it offers line dancing. Finnish countrymusic fans don cowboy boots, hats, bolos and collar tips, and giddyup, pardner. Its biggest cash cow, though, is its four a.m. liquor license. Every other bar in the neighborhood closes at two, so when shit-drunk people get kicked out at closing time, they come here to this shithole to get shit-drunker for another couple hours. The place is packed most nights.

Milo and I walk inside. Two uniform cops are here. I introduce myself. They explain the situation. I tell them Milo and I will take it from here.

Music blares. People slurp beer. I look around. Plastic cups sit on beat-up dirty tables. The floor is filthy, the bar grimy. Dim blueand-red pseudo-nightclub lighting is intended to mask these things, but it doesn’t work. A prostrate body lies face-up in a corner. Two crime-scene techs and a pathologist crouch around it.

The dead man isn’t fat, but maybe two hundred and sixty pounds, well over six feet tall. He’s a baby-faced corpse, not much more than a kid, and appears as if he’s sleeping. Two bouncers and two rent-a-cops in police-style coveralls and boots stand around the massive corpse, hands in their pockets, shift their weight back and forth on their feet like they’re guilty of something.

I flash my police card. Milo pushes past the bouncers and rent-a-cops, bends down and talks to the pathologist.

A bouncer starts to shout in my ear, over the sound system. I yell, too, and cut him off. “Shut down the music. Turn up the houselights. Close the bar. Lock the door. Nobody leaves. The club is closed for the night.”

He tries to argue. The law doesn’t require that an establishment that serves alcohol be closed in the event of a death. His boss will be pissed off.

I shake my head. “We’re operating under my law. Do it now.”

Bouncer number one scurries off to follow instructions. Milo comes over. “Dead as a bag of hammers. Most likely because his hyoid bone is broken.”

The music dies and the house goes quiet, except for a lone sobbing. A heavyset young guy, another giant, sits on a barstool, holds his face in his hands and cries. I ask Milo to take photos and witness statements from customers while I question the bouncers and rent-a-cops. Milo uses the camera in his cell phone to snap pics of the corpse and the club. Apparently, he doesn’t mind deferring to me in matters that don’t require his overwhelming intellectual prowess.

Bouncer number two stands near me. He has big muscles encased in a layer of fat. He wears jeans and a tight black T-shirt.

I take out a notepad and pen. “What’s your name?” I ask.

“Timo Sipila.”