James Thompson - Lucifer's tears

“I have to think about it,” I say.

“You told me that during the Sufia Elmi investigation you felt that a suspect threatened Kate. You developed symptoms similar to a heart attack, pulled your car to the side of the road, put a gun to his head and threatened to kill him.”

“I’m not proud of it.”

“That’s immaterial. The point is that your symptoms and responses are consistent with those of severe panic attacks. This lends credence to my suggestion.”

He’s right.

He leans forward. “Has it occurred to you that Katt and Kate are almost the same name? A curious coincidence.”

I’ve had enough, can’t take such ridiculous Freudian bullshit, and resist the urge to mock him. “Let’s call it a day,” I say.

Torsten is professional and means well, but I doubt I’ll see him again. I realize that if I’m ever really going to open up to anyone, it can only be Kate.

The snow, already almost waist-high, pours down in a torrent. Lucifer doesn’t relent. Dante states that the devil resides in the ninth circle of hell, trapped in the ice like the rest of us, and I feel that he’s here, watching over us with approval. Except for the fact that the extreme cold makes my bad knee useless, I couldn’t care less. Let the snow fly.

I find Jyri Ivalo shivering on the stoop of Rein Saar’s apartment building. We nod greeting but don’t speak. We take the lift to the fourth floor. I break the crime-scene tape and unlock the door. We step inside.

“Look familiar?” I ask.

Jyri’s face sags. He fumbles with the buttons on his overcoat, but trembles so hard that he can’t open them. He’s experiencing deja vu and horror. I wait and let the truth sink in. The meanings of the veiled cryptic messages in my conversations with Filippov and Bettie Page Linda are now clear to me. They have no fear of conviction because they’ve framed Jyri for Iisa’s murder. If Rein Saar doesn’t go to prison, Jyri will take his place. He’ll never let the investigation look in their direction. Who better to protect them than the national chief of police?

Jyri wanders into the bedroom, looks around in disbelief, sits on the bloodstained bed. “Why is this happening to me?” he asks.

“Describe-exactly-what happened when you came here with Linda,” I say.

He pulls it together enough to answer. “I told you I was drunk, it’s all a bit blurry. But it happened here, in this room.”

I stand over him. “I said exactly.”

“We came into this bedroom and she wasted no time. She stripped her clothes off except for black stockings, and told me to take my clothes off. She had a dildo, as you thought, and took it out of the closet. She sucked me off and used it to masturbate.” He averts his eyes. “Then she used it on me.”

“Show me where you were and the position she was in when she blew you,” I say.

He gets up and moves to a spot beside the bed, across from the closet. “I stood here.” He moves his hands to where her head had been. “And she knelt here. The whole thing lasted for maybe ten minutes.”

“And then what?”

“Then she went to the bathroom, I guess to wash her mouth out.”

I shake my head at his stupidity and point at the hole in the closet door. “She positioned you so that she could make a video through there.” I open the door and show him the stool. “That’s where the camera was.”

He sits on the bed again and buries his face in his hands.

“You’re known to have had sex with Iisa Filippov. Linda and Iisa look alike. She placed herself so that, with her back to the camera, no one could tell the difference between them. She went to the bathroom to spit out your come and save it, to have a sample of your semen and DNA, damning proof of your affair with Iisa, should it be required.”

He looks up at me, haggard. His mouth spasms. “How do we fix this?”

I kneel down and stare into his face. I’ve seldom seen a man look so broken. “When you tell me why they framed you, maybe I can answer that question.”

He forces himself to focus. “As you said, I had sex with Iisa and Linda. Cuckolding Filippov twice must have driven him to murder and revenge.”

Jyri needs a moment to come to grips with a situation that could destroy him. “Let’s go to the kitchen,” I say.

He follows me. I find an ashtray and we sit at the table. I shake Marlboros out of my pack for both of us. We smoke and let a few moments pass in silence.

“You’re being evasive,” I say. “Stop hedging and tell me the truth. All of it. Otherwise, I can’t help you.”

He nods, steels himself. Coming in here and realizing what has been done to him was a hard jolt, but he’s a tough bastard. I watch him recover by degrees. It doesn’t take long.

“I don’t know the particulars about Filippov’s relationships with his wife and Linda,” he says, “but I can tell you about his business affairs… and a few other things.”

“Tell.”

“Filippov wanted to expand his construction business. He wanted government contracts for big projects. He spread a lot of money around in order to get them.”

“You’re saying he bribed government officials.”

“Correct.”

“Which ones?”

“At this point, their names are inconsequential. I’ll tell you later if the need arises. He spent a lot of money on bribes and was dissatisfied with the results. The reason he came to the party on the night his wife was murdered was to express that dissatisfaction in strong terms.”

“And the result was?”

“None. He was told that he’ll get what he gets, when he gets it.”

“And the ‘few other things’ you mentioned?”

“I wasn’t the only one to have sex with both Iisa and Linda. There are four of us-officeholders-that I know of. There could be more.”

“So, in addition to bribing you with money, he was pimping out his wife and mistress to get these contracts.”

“In retrospect, it appears so.”

I sit back and take a second to put the pieces together. “My guess is that Filippov and Linda set up the others the same way they did you. Filippov more than likely acquired sex videos and DNA samples from all the corrupt politicians who took his money and fucked his wife. You fucked him as well, pushed him too far.”

“But why kill his wife?” Jyri asks.

To give him the whole picture, I tell Jyri about Milo blackbagging Linda’s apartment, about the audio track of the murder and about the video he turned up. Jyri takes it all in.

“Aside from some bizarre sexual-fetish issues,” I say, “Filippov is a straitlaced guy. His wife was a whore and a constant embarrassment. She refused to have sex with him. She fucked everybody under the sun except him. He had what was apparently a gratifying affair with Linda and got what he needed from her. Iisa became an irrelevant millstone around his neck. Murdering her was both revenge on her and a way of getting what he wanted from the establishment. And also, because of the nature of his and Linda’s fetishes, it got them off.”

I’m confident that when Iisa was murdered, although he didn’t understand the particulars, Jyri knew that he and other politicians were being set up. He planned to frame Rein Saar to save himself. I’m sure he eased his conscience as Arvid claims Marshal Mannerheim did in regard to Jews. Like Mannerheim, the chief is prepared to throw innocents to the dogs for what he conveniently perceives as the good of the nation. Rein Saar is intended to be a sacrificial lamb.

We both chain cigarettes off the last ones. “Tell me how you’re going to get me and the others out of this,” Jyri says.

“The murder was videotaped. More than likely, all of you were also videotaped. And there are your DNA samples. Plus, Iisa Filippov kept a diary. It may contain information damning her husband. If all those things are recovered, it might be possible to cover this up.”