LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

for foreigners. “You Australians aren’t too good with . . . ” he can’t find the word and reverts to Finnish. “Maantiede. Drive that way for one day and you reach the Barents Sea, the end of the world.” He’s pointing west.

      “Some Finns aren’t too good with geography either,” I say. “That way is toward Sweden.” I turn ninety degrees. “The North Pole is that way.” I point east. “Russia is over there. We’re a hundred miles inside the Arctic Circle.”

      “Inspector Vaara and I went to high school together,” Jaska says. “He got better grades than me.”

      “Thanks for the lesson,” the Aussie says. “It’s hard to get oriented when it’s dark all the time. You’re a policeman?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Have one on me officer. What are you drinking?”

      “Lapin Kulta.”

      “What’s that?”

      “Beer. We had a gold rush in the Arctic a little over a hundred years ago, and the brand name means ‘The Gold of Lapland.’ ”

      Jaska makes drinks for the tourists and chats about skiing conditions. It’s supposed to warm up to minus fifteen tomorrow, still bitter cold, but safe enough so that with proper clothing skiers can hit the slopes again.

      It’s good for me to make my presence felt here, to discourage locals whose idea of a good time is to get drunk and beat up or otherwise harass tourists. I look to the other side of the room. The Virtanen brothers are here, prime candidates for such behavior. By the end of the night, like as not, they’ll pull knives on each other. One of these days one will kill the other, and the survivor will die of loneliness.

      Jaska hands me my beer. “Jotain muuta?” Anything else?

      “A ginger ale for Kate.”

      While Jaska gets it for her, I go over to the Virtanen brothers’ table. “Kimmo, Esa, how’s it going?”

      The brothers look sheepish. My presence makes them nervous. “Fine Kari,” Esa says. “How’s your gorgeous American wife?”

      My marriage to a foreigner causes suspicion and consternation among the less progressive thinkers of our small community, but also envy, because of Kate’s success and good looks.

      “She’s good. How are your mom and dad?”

      “Mom can’t speak since the stroke, and—you know how he is—Dad is Dad,” Esa says, and Kimmo nods drunken agreement.

      Esa and Kimmo and I grew up in the same neighborhood. Esa means their father has been drunk for weeks. Every winter he stays tanked on cheap Russian medical alcohol through kaamos, the dark time, until spring, and even then his sobriety is measured only in relation to his alcohol-induced winter coma. I wonder if their mother can’t speak, or if she’s so worn out that she has nothing left to say. “Give them my best. You two stay out of trouble tonight.”

      Kate comes out from the back room. I get our drinks and we go to a table in the nonsmoking section.

      I set her ginger ale on the table in front of her.

      “Kiitos.” Thank you. She can’t speak Finnish yet, but she tries to use the few words and phrases she knows. “I could use a beer right now,” she says, “but I guess I’m going to have to wait seven months for my next one.”

      Kate is pregnant with our first child. She told me two weeks ago while we celebrated our birthdays. We were born two days shy of eleven years apart, on opposite sides of the world.

      Kate has put away her tough facade. She’s trembling. “Tuuli,” she says, “is not a pleasant person.”

      “She’s a thief. Why didn’t you have me arrest her?”

      “Recovering the small amount she stole doesn’t balance against the bad press associated with theft by an employee. Word will get around. That’s why I fired her in front of Jaska. If anyone else is stealing, they’ll stop.”

      “You have the day off tomorrow?” I ask. “You could use one.”

      Kate manages a coquettish smile. “I’m going skiing.”

      I don’t want her to, but can’t think of a reasonable objection. “Do you think you should?”

      She takes my hand. Before I met Kate, I didn’t like public displays of affection, but now I can’t remember why. “I’m pregnant,” she says, “not crippled.”

      In fact, we’re both slightly crippled. Me from a gun shot, Kate from a skiing accident that shattered her hip. We both limp. “Okay, I’ll go ice fishing.”

      She closes her eyes for a second, stops smiling and rubs her temples.

      “You feeling all right?” I ask.

      She sighs. “When I first came to Finland to interview for my job, it was summer. The sun was up twenty-four hours a day. Everyone here seemed so happy. I met you. They offered me a lot of money to run Levi, a great career opportunity. The Arctic Circle seemed exotic, an exciting place to live.”

      She looks down at the table. Kate isn’t given to complaining. I want to know what’s on her mind, so I prod her. “What changed?”

      “This winter, I feel like the cold and dark will never end. I get it now that people weren’t happy, just drunk. It makes me depressed. It’s terrible. Being pregnant in Finland seems scary, makes me homesick for the States. I don’t know why.”

      It’s two thirty P.M. on December sixteenth. We won’t see daylight again until Christmas day, and then only a glimmer. She’s right. That’s the way things are here in winter. A bunch of depressed hard drinkers freezing in an endless night. Kaamos is tough on everyone. I can see how being pregnant here would make her feel vulnerable and frightened.

      My cell phone rings. “Vaara.”

      “It’s Valtteri. Where are you?”

      “In Hullu Poro with Kate. What’s up?”

      He doesn’t speak.

      “Valtteri?”

      “There’s been a murder, and I’m looking at the body.”

      “Tell me who and where.”

      “I’m pretty sure it’s Sufia Elmi, that black movie star. It’s bad. She’s in a field on Aslak’s place, about thirty yards off the road.”

      “Anybody there with you?”

      “Antti and Jussi. They were the responding officers.”

      “Anything that requires immediate attention, like a suspect?”

      “No, I don’t think so.”

      “Then seal off the crime scene and wait for me.” I hang up.

      “Problem?” Kate asks.

      “You could say that. Somebody’s been murdered in a snowfield on Aslak Haltta’s reindeer farm.”

      “You mean where we met?”

      “Yeah.”

      She looks at me and I read pain in her eyes. “I wish you didn’t have to go,” she says.

      I didn’t realize how much she needs me right now, and I don’t want to leave her. “Me too. Can we talk about this later?”

      She nods but looks sad as I kiss her good-bye.

      Chapter 2

      I STEP OUTSIDE INTO the dark, and the cold makes my face burn. I take a deep breath to clear my mind, feel the hair in my nostrils freeze, check my watch. It’s two fifty-two P.M. I call Esko Laine, the provincial medical examiner, tell him there’s been a murder and to meet me at the crime scene. He’s getting ready to go to sauna,

Скачать книгу