Lucifer's Tears (32 page)

Maybe he’s right about that. My cell phone rings. It’s Kate. “Kari,” she says, “I’m in labor. Could you come home and take me to the hospital?”

My heart thumps in my chest from both fear and joy. “Are you sure? You’re not due for nine days.”

She laughs, lighthearted. “The baby disagrees. My water broke.”

“I can be there in half an hour. Is that too long?”

The panic in my voice makes her chuckle. “It’s fine, dear. I’ll see you soon.” She hangs up.

“I’m sorry, I’ve got a baby on the way, and I have to take my wife to the hospital. That means you have to go to jail now.”

He reaches over and pats my arm. “Congratulations, son. And please do call me Ukki. I like it. If you were really my grandson, I would be proud.” He takes his pistol out of his coat pocket and lays it on the table between us. “You better take that.”

I put it in my own pocket and call for a cruiser.

I drive home as fast as road conditions will allow, pull up in front of our door, call Kate and tell her I’m here. She says I don’t need to come upstairs and get her. John and Mary will bring her down. For once, I’m glad for their presence. Kate didn’t have to be alone while she waited for me.

They pile into the Saab, and we set out for the hospital together. Kate is calm and smiling. I’m a nervous wreck. The car skitters and shimmies. I picture having an accident, and Kate giving birth in a freezing car by the side of the road.

But we arrive at Katiloopisto hospital without incident. I help Kate inside. We get her checked in. John carries Kate’s hospital travel bag. Kate packed it weeks ago, just in case. It has everything she thought she might possibly need to make herself comfortable. Massage aids: tennis balls, a rolling pin, frozen juice cans. Comfort aids: a heat pillow, aromatherapy, socks for cold feet. Clothes and toiletries for after the baby is born. She brought extra, in case there are complications because of her preeclampsia and her stay is longer than the normal two days.

We opted to not bring a camera. Kate said our memories would suffice. She would prefer to maintain a bit of decorum and not have her sweating and grunting recorded for all time to come. I offered to attend childbirth classes with her and be her coach, but she declined. She said she couldn’t picture me huffing and puffing along with her, and holding her hand would be enough.

An orderly and I situate her in a bed in a private room in the maternity ward. John and Mary don’t try to intrude, and they go to the waiting room, for which I’m grateful. I sit in a chair beside Kate’s bed and try to maintain an air of composure I don’t feel. Over the next few hours, Kate’s contractions come harder and faster. At first, they had come about once every fifteen or twenty minutes and lasted for about thirty seconds, and they’ve gradually accelerated to every three or four minutes and last sixty seconds. Kate doesn’t complain, seems to take it in stride, says she doesn’t even need the comfort aids she brought with her. I ask her occasionally if the pain is bearable, and she answers that it isn’t that bad at all.

To take her mind off her contractions, I do something uncharacteristic and tell her stories. I begin with the cases I’ve been working and tell her in exquisite detail about the Filippov affair and how it ended with Arvid shooting Filippov to death in a restaurant she manages. I pause the tale when the midwife comes in to check on her, then tell Kate about how Arvid helped Ritva die, and then he managed to save me and himself, and punish the guilty. Strange childbirth talk, but the tale is so morbid and bizarre that it holds her rapt attention. I leave out the possibility of heading up a black-ops unit for the moment.

A day ago, Kate wanted to hear stories about my childhood, so I tell her some, but pleasant ones. About how, when I was a kid, Dad and his friends would get together, drink and sing waltz and tango songs accompanied by an accordion. I tell her about how we went to a dog show once. My brother Timo looked around and said, “It’s been raining cats and dogs,” even though the ground was bone-dry. “Look,” Timo said, “there are poodles everywhere.” Kate hee-haws despite a tough contraction.

The doctor comes in to check on Kate occasionally, and finally says it’s time to get down to business. The baby’s head is crowning. He tells Kate to start pushing. She says she wants this over soon and pushes like hell. It works. After only about an hour, our child, a girl, is out and into this world. The doctor gives her a slap. She sucks air and squeals, and he cuts the umbilical cord. Kate flops back against her pillows, exhausted. From her first contraction at home until now, her labor lasted sixteen hours.

A nurse takes our baby, who resembles a bullet-headed frog covered in blood and viscous ooze, wipes some of the mess away, wraps her in a blanket and hands her to me. I’m nervous at first, afraid I’ll make a mistake, hold her too tight, drop her. Irrational fears. But they fade within seconds, and I realize that I love this little bullet-headed frog as much as anything in the world.

The doctor tells me that Kate’s delivery was one of the easiest he’s ever seen. No complications, no vaginal tearing, no nothing. Kate didn’t even require an episiotomy. Kate begins contractions again, and within a few minutes expels the placenta and the umbilical cord. And it’s over. All my fears came to nothing.

I hand the baby to Kate, and she asks me to get John and Mary. I bring them into the room. We exchange hugs and share joy. For the first time since they arrived, I feel that they truly are part of my family, and it gratifies me.

John and Mary go back to the waiting room to give Kate, me and our bullet-headed-frog privacy. Kate and I sit in the silence for a while, bask in our moment. After about half an hour, Kate tells me she’s tired and wants to sleep. She wants me to sleep, too. I don’t want to leave, but know it’s for the best.

I talk to John and Mary. John wants to come home with me. Mary says she’s slept while waiting, and she’ll stay in case Kate needs something. Mary tells me not to worry, if anything happens, she’ll call me straightaway. For a woman who doesn’t like me, she’s working hard to be my friend.

We get back to my place. John crashes on the couch. I go to bed, and for the first time in I don’t remember how long, I have no headache and feel no anxiety, and sleep the sleep of the dead.

I wake up in the middle of the afternoon and check my cell phone. I kept it on silent while I slept. I have seventy-two missed calls. Press, police and God knows who else are trying to contact me to find out how it came about that in my presence, in the restaurant of the city’s finest hotel, a ninety-year-old Winter War hero put a bullet in the brain of a Russian businessman whose wife had recently been murdered.

I go back to the hospital to be with Kate, but she’s sound asleep. I hold our baby, enjoy the quiet and sit next to her. Finally, I decide Kate may not wake for hours, and go back home to get something to eat. Mary continues to wait, in case Kate wakes and needs something.

I find John in the kitchen, a bottle of kossu in front of him. He’s not tanked, just drinking. “I guess you know I told Kate about myself and everything you did for me,” he says.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Are you pissed off at me?”

“No.”

“Can I give you a brotherly hug to congratulate you on the birth of your child?”

It makes me laugh. “If you have to.”

He stands and gives me a hard squeeze. “Want to have a drink with me?” he asks.

I sit down with him. “Sure.”

He fetches me a glass and pours me a drink. We nurse our vodkas and share a comfortable silence, something I wouldn’t have thought him capable of.

My phone rings. It’s Jari. “Hi, little brother,” he says. “I haven’t spoken to you since we left your house in a rush. I’m sorry about that.”

It amuses me when he calls me “little brother,” since I’m almost twice his size. “It’s okay, just a little culture clash. It happens.”

“I wanted to check on you. How’s your migraine situation?”

“Better today. Kate gave me a healthy baby girl this morning, both of them are fine, and my headache went away.”

“You have a baby! Wow! Congratulations! You busy right now?”

“No. Kate’s asleep and I’m at home.”

“Then we’re going to have your varpajaiset. ”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.”

I smile and sigh. “Okay, then meet me at Hilpea Hauki and we’ll do it.”

His voice is full of glee. “I’ll meet you in an hour.”

We hang up.

“Come on, John,” I say. “We’re going out. It’s time for my var pajaiset.”

“Varpajaiset?”

“Varpaat are toes. A varpajaiset is a party. When a man becomes a father, he’s supposed to have a drink for every toe his child was born with. So I’m required to have ten drinks. I suspect you will, too. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

We tramp through the snow over to Hilpea Hauki and sit at a corner table. My phone rings, it’s Milo. “Arvid Lahtinen murdered Filippov,” he says. “That’s fucking awesome. You have to tell me the story.”

“Not now,” I say. “Kate had a baby girl, and I’m having a varpajaiset at Hauki.”

“That’s great news,” he says. “Can I come?”

His voice is so full of enthusiasm that I can’t say no. “Sure. Come over. Buy me a drink.”

Within a few minutes, Jari and Milo are sitting with us, and our table is covered with beers and shots. Apparently, I’m expected to exceed the ten-drink quota. The mood is gregarious, the jokes are silly.

“All right, Milo,” I say, “now I’m ready. Tell me the story behind your Hitler Youth dagger.”

He beams, thrilled that I asked him to tell a story. “My great-grandpa took it off a Russian soldier in the war. Which means he must have taken it off a German soldier.”

He pauses, once again attempting to build anticipation.

“That’s vaguely interesting,” I say, “but I was expecting something more.”

“I wanted to make you ask. I’m coming to the good part. Great-Grandpa gave it to Grandpa, who gave it to Dad, who had a weakness for women. One day, Mom decided she had enough and stabbed Dad with it.”

Milo grins. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh or not. “Did she kill him?”

“No, she stuck it through his leg and ripped a seven-inch gouge in it. He nearly lost the leg, missed weeks of work. Mom got her point across. He quit cheating on her after that.”

A good story. It gets a laugh out of me. We toast to Kate, and all of us knock back another kossu.

My phone rings again. It’s Jyri Ivalo. He also wants to hear about Arvid capping Filippov, and he wants to know if I’ve got my hands on the evidence against him and certain prominent others. I tell him I’m celebrating the birth of my child, and if he wants to talk to me, he has to come to Hauki and buy me drinks to earn the privilege. I hang up on him, as he’s so often done to me.

Milo slams his shot glass onto the table to get our attention. He doesn’t have enough body weight to have a good head for alcohol, and his eyes glisten. He claps a hand on my shoulder. He raises his voice, as drunks tend to. “I admire this guy,” he says. “I killed a man this week, and it’s eating me up. I feel fucking awful. Kari, you don’t seem to feel anything about it. You tough motherfucker.”

I don’t have words of wisdom for him. I shrug. “It’s something that happened. You did the right thing. Time will make it better.”

“You killed a man once,” he says. “How did you live with it? Did time make it better for you?”

We’ve been drinking hard and fast, and the booze has gone to my head, too. I feel like I owe him the truth. “When I blew that gangster’s head off, I felt nothing but relief that it was him instead of me. I didn’t feel guilt, or anything at all. Never have. The only reason I went to therapy for it was because I thought my lack of guilt meant something was wrong with me.”

The others look at me for a long minute and try to decide if I’m joking or not. Jari decides that I am and starts laughing, so the others do, too. I’m pleased that Milo feels remorse. It lessens my worry that he’s disturbed beyond repair.

Jyri walks in and comes up behind me. “A word, Inspector.”

He’s disconcerted, uncomfortable. I feel like toying with him. “When you bring a round of beers and shots for the table, we can chat.” My voice turns sarcastic. “We’ll use veiled and secretive language to keep the others in the dark.”

He has no choice, does as he’s told. When he comes back, I ask, “What do you want to know?”

My phone rings again. I don’t see the caller on the display, but answer to interrupt and further disconcert Jyri.

“Inspector, this is Sulo Polvinen. Can I talk to you?”

I give him my stock drunken answer for the evening. “I’m celebrating the birth of my daughter at Hilpea Hauki. The address is Vaasankatu 7. Come here if you want to talk to me.” I hang up on him, too.

“What happened at Kamp?” Jyri asks.

He’s brought a round of kossu. I insist we drink it and toast to Kate again before I answer. Then I give him a most succinct account.

“Arvid Lahtinen murdered Filippov, because if he stands trial for murder in Finland, he won’t be extradited to Germany. He also did it as a favor to me, so you and your buddies won’t fuck me later. Filippov believed he was murdering his wife, but Iisa tricked him into murdering Linda, the woman he loved. I let Iisa go. She’s going to embezzle the funds from Filippov Construction, disappear and live out her life-I believe-as Linda Pohjola, probably in another country.”

“Did you retrieve the things we discussed?”

“I know where they are and will retrieve them in due course.”

He looks like he wants to reach across the table and choke me. “I want those things.”

“No, Jyri,” I say, “I think I’ll hang on to them for a while. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

He doesn’t know how to answer and scowls at me.