James Thompson - Lucifer's tears

I suppress a smile. He’s treating me like I’m twelve years old. “Sure, I can do it.”

“Come in and make yourself at home when you’re done.”

He closes the door.

It’s minus eighteen, but shoveling his porch and walk only takes about twenty minutes, and I don’t mind doing it for him.

Afterward, I go inside and take off my boots and coat. He’s got a good blaze going, and I warm up in front of the fireplace. He comes downstairs and sits at the table, tells me to join him. I sit across from him.

“Got any cigarettes?” he asks.

I lay a pack and a lighter on the table in between us. “I didn’t know you smoke.”

“I don’t much, but once in a while, I get the yen.”

He goes to the kitchen, comes back with two cups of coffee and an ashtray. “Son,” he says, “I’m not up to making lunch today. If you’re hungry, I’ll make sandwiches for you.”

“That’s okay, I don’t much feel like eating.”

He gives me his appraising look. “How’s your head?”

“Hurts.”

“They know what’s causing it yet?”

“No. I’ll have some tests run soon. What’s wrong with Ritva?” I ask.

“We suffer from old people’s maladies. She’ll get past it.”

We share an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. I get the idea he has a lot on his mind and would rather be alone to sort it out. We smoke and drink coffee in silence for a while.

“Got any interesting cases?” he asks. “I mean, besides mine.”

I nod. “Some real interesting stuff. I shouldn’t talk about them, though.”

He forces a smile. “You want to hear all my secrets. You’re going to have to tell me yours if you want to get them. Let an old man vicariously relive his detective years through you.”

Much like when Arvid told me to call him Ukki, this raises my suspicions about his motivations, and I wonder if he’s looking for information to augment his blackmail strategy. Then I decide, if he is, why not let him? Let the truth prevail. Besides, I can use him for a sounding board. Sometimes articulating problems helps me solve them. I tell him about the Filippov murder, about its bizarre and aberrant circumstances, how in the end it’s come down to a blackmail scam, and that if I can make it go away, I’ll be put in charge of a special black-ops unit.

He nods approval. “A good story,” he says. “But what happens if you don’t recover and bury the evidence? You’ll have a lot of dirt on important people and have done nothing for them. They won’t like it. They’ll try to burn you somehow.”

I shrug. “What can they do?”

“It depends. What have you fucked up? You were involved in that school shooting and somebody died. Any way they could turn that around on you?”

In fact, they could. The realization startles me. “I beat the shit out of the school shooter just days before the attack. They could say I caused the incident, and they’d probably be right.”

“That’s how they’ll come at you then,” he says. “They’ll call you an abusive rogue cop, discredit you and kick you off the force.”

We light more cigarettes. “Any idea how I can get out of it?” I ask.

“I’ll put my detective cap on and think about it. I have to say, though, boy, that you’re fucking naive. It’s going to cost you one day.”

He’s not the first one to say it. “Your turn,” I say. “Tell me some good stories.”

His grin turns sly. “All right, boy, I’ll tell you how your great-grandpa, my dad and the former president of Finland became executioners and mass murderers together.”

Like Milo, he enjoys astonishing me, and he’s succeeded. He beams pleasure. “And under the auspices of Lord and Savior Marshal Mannerheim.”

He got me again. I’m riveted. “History records Kekkonen only executing one Red,” I say, “and if I remember correctly, he expressed remorse about it.”

“You ever been to the Mannerheim Museum?” he asks.

I’m itching for the story of our families, but he’s going to make me wait. “No.”

“When Mannerheim died, they turned his home into a memorial for the great man. I went there once. They have tiger-skin rugs on the floor, knickknacks and keepsakes he slogged home from all over the world. Like me, Mannerheim loved fine wine and spirits. I told the tour guide I wanted to see the wine cellar. This pretty little girl with big tits and a skinny waist told me it’s offlimits. I decided to fuck with her a little bit. I said, ‘I served under Mannerheim, and I’m a goddamn war hero, and I will look at the marshal’s booze and if I fucking feel like it, I’ll open a bottle and drink to the marshal’s goddamned health.”

It’s easy to picture Ukki doing it, makes me laugh.

“She got nervous and admitted to me in confidence that a few years ago, some workers were instructed to clean out the cellar. Like good Finns, they did what they were told. They pulled up a dumpster and smashed all those fine bottles of wine and cognac in it. Destroyed it all. It would be worth hundreds of thousands or millions today. Mannerheim would come out of his grave in a screaming rage if he knew.”

He’s digressing to increase my anticipation. Like Milo. I wait. He sees I’m only indulging him.

“Okay,” he says, “it went like this. I’ll just tell the story to you as Dad told it to me. President-to-be Urho Kaleva Kekkonen was seventeen when the Civil War broke out in 1918. At the time, he was a schoolboy in the northeast, in Kajaani. He had war in his blood. In the summer and autumn of 1917, he served in the local civil guard. At the end of 1917, he decided to go to Germany to get a military education. His plan was ruined by the German announcement that there would be no more recruiting from Finland. Kekkonen was disappointed, but then the Civil War enabled him to join the military on the side of the Whites. The civil guard in Kajaani was organized into what was known as a flying cavalry unit called the Kajaani Guerrilla Regiment.”

Arvid is telling me what I already know. Information readily available in history books. It takes me back to that gray area: can I trust him, or is he manipulating me with half-truths and lies.

“Kekkonen was an ordinary soldier, and his comrades were boys from the same school. These included my dad and your great-grandfather. First, they went to Kuopio, where the situation was already under White control. From there they went to Iisalmi where they imprisoned local Reds. Dad said they executed a Red there. Their first one. The next stop was Varkaus, a Red stronghold deep in White Finland. White troops were concentrated around Varkaus, among them the Kajaani Guerrilla Regiment. Near the end of the fighting, the Reds withdrew to a factory and finally surrendered when it caught fire. The prisoners were taken out on the ice of a nearby lake. Locals identified the worst of the Reds, and they were taken out of the line and shot. The Whites executed over a hundred people. They also picked every tenth man from the line and executed them, too.”

I’ve read, in Kekkonen’s memoirs, that he saw the bodies on the ice after the event, but he didn’t admit to taking part in the killings. “There’s no proof that Kekkonen executed anyone at Varkaus,” I say.

Arvid shrugs. “I’m just telling you what Dad told me. You want to hear it or not?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“After Varkaus, the regiment fought on the front in Savo. At the end of April, they were sent to Viipuri. The Battle of Viipuri was the last major fight of the war, and several hundred were killed in action. Some two hundred Russian inhabitants were rounded up, taken to the old city walls and executed. Machine-gunned to death. The shooting went on for almost twenty minutes, and the shooters were none other than the Kajaani Guerrilla Regiment.”