James Thompson - Helsinki Blood

I open a second beer. He continues.

“I continue on toward Turku and Malinen’s cottage. About this time, you kill Pitkanen. We dress Malinen in the fatigues I wore and leave the stolen guns lying around. We force him through threats to his family to commit his gunshot suicide, then spread the video you just took and the manifesto I’m writing all over the Internet. Plus your skank photo collection of Ivalo and the minister, which places them at two murder scenes and casts, as they say, aspersions on their character. Then Sweetness and I sail to my summer cottage. My car will be parked there. We celebrate having destroyed all our enemies, have a good sauna, and when we feel so inclined, come back to Helsinki.”

“Then what?”

“Then, as I said, we pretend like none of it ever happened and go back to our lives. I want to go back to being a cop. Sweetness will get his education, and you do whatever the spirit moves you to do. I hope you choose to keep being a cop. I’d like to keep working with you.”

“I see a couple problems. I collected skank at the behest of the prime minister, when he wanted to placate Saukko by starting a hate rag. If you fly it as if it came from Malinen, the trail will come straight to me. Wait a couple days, then if it seems necessary to paint them black, fly the pix on the Net. The other is, I can’t drive. Kate wouldn’t take it well if I asked her to take me to Helsinki so I can gun down a SUPO captain.”

“Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that,” he says. “When we set the date, make up something to tell Kate, an excuse to take a bus to Helsinki.”

A wave of relief goes through me. If I can’t bring myself to do it, I can use the public transportation excuse to not kill Pitkanen. Or I can go, but say I couldn’t keep up with him, am too crippled up and lost the opportunity, which would likely prove true. Other than these, I can find no holes in Milo’s plan. But the best-laid plans go awry, and if there is even the smallest fuckup or hint that it was a frame-up, the investigation of this multiple murder will be long and thorough, and we, I believe with absolute certainty, will be caught.

We make an early visit to see Ai. Sweetness was right to recommend him. He has his shit together. He’s showered, dressed, made coffee and has pulla -sweetbread-frozen, not fresh, but hot from the oven in case we haven’t eaten yet. He sits in his throne and chain-smokes. We supplicants pull up chairs near to him. We accept coffee and pulla . I notice the coffee is some expensive special blend.

“Everything has been done as per your requests,” he says to me, “and since those methods failed, we’ve gone a step further.

“Cars were tailed to all seventeen houses of prostitution,” he says. “All license numbers were taken from the cars, but I realized that the plates could be switched at will, so all the cars were keyed.”

I don’t know the term. “Keyed?”

“A key was raked just over the gas tank of each car, an inch or two of paint scraped off, to make the vehicles easily identifiable. In addition, although each supposed diplomat was photographed, he was also mugged.” He hands me a big pile of wallets and passports. “To make the people you seek even more recognizable, each was assaulted and damage done to his face.”

“You’re quite thorough,” I say.

“The amount you paid us buys thoroughness. Lastly, each and every house of prostitution was searched. The girl you’re looking for isn’t in any of them. I’m sorry to have failed you. No effort was spared.”

I believe him. “You did a good job,” I say. “I may call upon you again. Or, if you want or need something, feel free to call me.”

“Our business is concluded,” he says, and stands, signaling that we’re dismissed.

• • •

IT SEEMS like a long time since Milo and I pulled a B amp;E together, although it was really only two or three months ago. We haven’t lost the knack. We’re in the Russian trade delegation office by six thirty a.m. and out by seven. All my hopes are fulfilled. A cardboard box in the supply room is full of passports in no order, just tossed into it helter-skelter as girls were taken in. We’ll take them with us when we leave.

They bother to neither shut down nor password-protect the one computer in the office, I assume because the protection of diplomatic immunity has made the Russians involved lax and careless. It contains names, addresses and phone numbers. I thought a hundred seventy-nine women and only seventeen apartments didn’t match up. The records in Sasha’s iPad were incomplete because he was only privy to information about their prostitutes in Helsinki, whereas this is a regional office. The network extends to Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, and other cities as well.

The names of which people are responsible for which women are in a list, by country. The Finns who work for the organized-crime group in the Russian diplomatic corps are also listed, along with bookkeeping records of their pay. I ask Milo to do a search and look for any information about Loviise. I hope that they have a record of her, including her current location. If so, we could go and get her right now. There’s nothing, my hopes are dashed. Milo just boots it down and takes it with us, power cord and all. The ring can be rolled up at any time now. I’m just waiting on Milo’s assassination Go Day to release the info.

The discord between Milo and me is gone, or at least gone to the wayside for the time being. The productive morning pleased him as much as it did me. I spend most of the day reading Ed McBain. Kate bought an e-reader so she can download books. Rather than wait weeks and pay exorbitant shipping rates from the U.S. or UK to Finland, she can have them within minutes at a lower cost. She spends most of the day on the davenport, reading a book about post-traumatic stress disorder. She tells me she doesn’t want me to accompany her to therapy today. She feels good, confident enough to travel alone.

This trip really has become a summer vacation, and when I put the coming massacre out of my mind, I feel relaxed and peaceful. It’s not hard to do. I can’t bring myself to care about the coming demise of the bastards who set out to hurt my family. My main role, it’s becoming clear, is that of chief cook and bottle washer. I look at cookbooks, plan a braised rabbit for the evening meal. That night, Kate and I make tentative, rather bungling love, like a couple of shy and inexperienced teenagers.

Quiet living, sans a houseful of cops and talk of crime, death and mayhem, brings us together. We quickly develop a pleasant daily routine. I’m wealthy. I start to consider retiring, think about spending my life raising my daughter, start thinking I would like a second child. This is one of the few times in my life that I’ve felt a sense of harmony.

Then Tuesday comes and blots all this out. Kate leaves for therapy. I play with Anu, and Milo knocks on the door. I won’t have to take a bus to Helsinki to murder Jan Pitkanen. Judging by the GPS tracker on his car, he’s coming to me.

I ask a stupid question. “How did he find us?”

“Duh. You’re on record as owning this house, and my boat has a GPS. He is a fucking secret police detective, after all.”

Maybe this was inevitable. It makes me especially angry because I have no choice but to put Anu to bed and leave her alone. I’ve never done that before. I change clothes fast. Put on my bulletproof vest and a shirt and jacket over it. Milo’s not looking. I slip the quarter of a million I borrowed from Sweetness into one jacket pocket in case there’s the slightest chance to end this without blood, and my silenced Colt into a holster under it. Milo can follow Pitkanen’s car with his iPad. It’s synced with his computer.