James Thompson: Helsinki Blood

Jenna set beers, a Koskenkorva bottle and shot glasses for everyone on the dining room table. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere without Sweetness.”

Even she calls him by the nickname Sulo hates. Kate hung it on him by accident, through a language snafu. It got a chuckle out of me. And then I realized Jenna knew about the ten million euros. Mirjami didn’t flinch at its mention, so she knew too, which meant she’d been talking to Jenna, which meant they had become good enough friends to share secrets. They just met three months ago. I wondered if Mirjami had cultivated their friendship as a way of staying close to me. I’d noticed her calculating and devious side before. She knew how to get what she wanted.

“Hurting the girls is a potential way of getting at us,” Sweetness said. “They’re safer here.”

He was right, it hadn’t occurred to me. My fear because of Kate’s absence multiplied.

“And have you looked in the mirror lately?” Mirjami asked. “You need care. And help with Anu.”

“Don’t you have a job?” I asked her.

“Haven’t you read about the shortage of health care workers? I can quit my job tomorrow and have a new one within a week when I want to go back to work. In fact, I think I’ll do just that.”

I didn’t have the strength or will to argue. I grabbed my cell phone and pushed myself out of my chair. “I need to make some phone calls.”

I noticed that Jari forgot the empty hypodermics. They struck me as something that might be useful. For what, I didn’t know. I took my phone and laptop, went to the kitchen for quiet and privacy, then put the needles in the cupboard and sat at a little table for two that we usually use to prep food on.

Jenna called out, “Come and have a kossu with us.”

“Later,” I answered.

The stereo fired up. Portishead came on. I yelled for them to turn it down.

I called Hotel Kamp and asked for Kate’s room. The receptionist informed me that she had checked out. I asked for Aino, Kate’s assistant and acting hotel manager while Kate was on maternity leave. Good luck. Aino was working late. Bad luck. She hadn’t seen Kate for a couple days, and didn’t even know she was no longer staying at the hotel.

For a second, I was stymied, then told myself to be a cop. Kate and I share a bank account as well as having private ones. We have separate credit cards, but also one that accesses a shared account, and we have copies of each other’s online banking codes, in case one of us should misplace them. I had all the financial stuff in the bookcase. I grabbed it, went back to the kitchen and got online.

It just took a few minutes for me to work it out. Kate withdrew five thousand euros from the bank. Then Mirjami walked in and laid a sealed envelope on the table. “Kari” was written on it in Kate’s handwriting. “I found this in Anu’s diaper bag,” Mirjami said. She walked away so I could read it in privacy.

I tore open the edge of the envelope and pulled out a letter written on Hotel Kamp stationery.

Dear Kari,

I’m so sorry for the way I’ve treated you. I left you alone when you needed me the most. It was selfish and unconscionable. The things I’ve done have made me a failure as a wife and a human being. I’m certain that, given time, I will fail as a mother as well. I won’t be back and please don’t look for me. I promise that you and Anu will be better off without me. Heal, forget about me, and find someone who will make you happy and be a good mother to our daughter. I will always love you.

She signed it as she has always signed notes to me, with a lipstick kiss.

Everything clicked into place. Her odd behavior yesterday. The call in the middle of the night. Her uncontrolled weeping. It was because of remorse. She had been planning this. She had called on impulse, overwhelmed by guilt, to say without saying it-good-bye.

I was calm at first, approached the situation with a cop mentality. I called MasterCard, told them I wasn’t certain if my card had been stolen or if I’d only misplaced it, and asked if they could check the latest purchases made with it. After some wrangling, I ascertained that Kate charged a flight to Finnair, bought a one-way ticket to Miami and left yesterday evening.

At first I was too stunned to move or speak. Then something like bats were flapping around in my head. My chest hurt and my vision went black. I stood up with my cane. I didn’t know where I was going. I started swinging the cane. I broke the cupboard doors to kindling and heard myself screaming, raging. No words, just bellowing. I kept swinging and shouting. The plates shattered, the glasses smashed.

I reared back for another swing and the cane disappeared from my hands. I felt myself lifted off my feet and laid on the floor. Sweetness sat on my chest and pinned my arms down with his knees. Mirjami held my nose to force my mouth open. She dropped a fistful of pills in it. I tried to spit them out, but Jenna stuck the neck of the kossu bottle between my teeth, so I couldn’t close my mouth. I choked and gagged on booze, had to swallow I don’t know how many gulps.

I felt my body floating, like an astronaut in a gravity-free atmosphere, and I knew no more.

I wasn’t hungover in the morning, I didn’t ingest enough poisons for that, but was groggy from the dope and booze they knocked me out with. I was naked. Someone had undressed me. Katt was sleeping on my chest. Mirjami wasn’t in bed with me, but she had been earlier. I smelled her scent on the pillows. The memories drifted back. My wife absconded to Florida. I destroyed much of the kitchen. I had to get Kate back. Now. But how? Kate kept her private things in the nightstand on her side of the bed or in her jewelry box.

Jari was right, my knee and face hurt even worse than before the cortisone shots. I rolled and scooted to the other side of the bed and rifled through the little drawer in the nightstand. At the bottom of assorted papers and mementos was a packet of letters bound with a rubber band, from her brother, John. The return address was in Miami, Florida. John is human flotsam and jetsam. He destroyed his life with booze and drugs. The last I knew, he lived in New York. Best guess: he got in too deep with drug dealers, had no hope of paying them, and scarpered to the other side of the country before they killed him.

Now Kate was there with him. Kate was emotionally ill, not in control of herself. Kate could fall under John’s drug-addled spell. Kate could take up his bad habits. I pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt. My cane was beside the bed. I tottered into the living room. Mirjami was in my armchair with Anu. Sweetness and Jenna were still in bed. I got the impression that they did little except booze, fuck and sleep.

Mirjami had showered. Her long, dark hair was damp and hung over her shoulders. Anu pulled at it. Mirjami wore Kate’s bathrobe. It disconcerted me.

“I looked at your web browser history,” she said.

“I didn’t smash the computer?”

“It’s about the only thing you didn’t destroy.”

That was something anyway.

“I take it Kate has abandoned you and Anu,” she said.

“Kate isn’t well, as you know. ‘Abandon’ is too strong a word for what she’s done. I think she just panicked and ran away.”

Mirjami kept her face blank. “Maybe. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” It came to me. I needed to speak to her therapist. And I needed to sit down. My phone was on the table next to my armchair. Mirjami brought me coffee and sat down beside me again. It’s the ultimate gigantic man’s chair, a gift to myself. The fit might be a little tight, but another person of average size could comfortably sit with us.