LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘After they got drunk, they bitched about you. The team doesn’t trust you because you got a job in an elite unit for political reasons. That’s not supposed to happen. You shot one man and have been shot twice yourself. That speaks of carelessness. You got medals for both those fuckups. That pisses them off. As an inspector, your pay grade is higher than the rest of us detective-sergeants. You make more money than we do. That pisses them off even more. They don’t want to work with you. I remember hearing the phrase “dangerous Lapland redneck reindeer-fucker.” ’

      I thought they were just standoffish because I’m new and haven’t proven myself yet, that it will pass when I do prove myself. Maybe I was wrong.

      ‘Actually,’ Milo says, ‘Saska Lindgren said some good things about you. He told the others he thought they should give you a chance.’

      Saska is half Gypsy. An outsider by race. It stands to reason he would be more receptive to someone like me. According to many, including my boss, he’s one of Finland’s best homicide cops. He’s served as a UN peacekeeper in Palestine, worked for the ICTY – the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia – investigating war crimes, executions and mass graves in Bosnia, and identified bodies in Thailand after the tsunami of 2004 that devastated the region. The numerous certificates of achievement lining the walls of his office attest to the many educational police conferences he’s attended worldwide. He’s also one of Finland’s leading experts in bloodstain-pattern analysis. Additionally, he’s involved in many works that benefit the community. He’s such a do-gooder that, up to now, I found him annoying. Maybe I’ll try to readjust my opinion.

      ‘Since we’re the black sheep,’ Milo says, ‘by default, we may find ourselves working together a lot.’

      The guys from Mononen show up for Rauha Anttila’s body. We watch them scrape up her corpse – then we move on.

      Chapter 3

      We drive back to the Pasila station through a torrent of snow, get there at eleven thirty p.m.

      Milo and I walk down the long corridor. I open the door to my office. The national chief of police, Jyri Ivalo, is sitting at my desk, in my chair. Milo gives me a look of quizzical respect and meanders down the hall toward his own office.

      Jyri and I have spoken on the phone several times, but I haven’t seen him in person since 1996, when he decorated and promoted me for bravery after I was shot in the line of duty.

      I was a beat cop in Helsinki and answered an armed robbery call at Tillander, the most expensive jewelry store in the city, on Aleksanterinkatu, in the heart of the downtown shopping district, in the middle of June. My partner and I arrived as two thieves exited the store carrying backpacks weighted down with jewelry. They pulled guns. One of them fired a shot at us, then they separated and ran. I chased the shooter down a street crowded with shoppers and tourists. The thief stopped, turned and fired. My pistol was in my hand, but he surprised me. I was running when the bullet hit me and blew out my left knee, which I had already wrecked playing hockey in high school. I fell hard to the pavement. The thief decided to kill me, but I got a shot off first and the bullet hit him in the side. He went down, but raised his pistol to fire again. I told him to lower his arm. He didn’t. I blew his head off.

      Jyri looks snazzy in a tuxedo, holds an open flask in his hand. He’s mid-fiftyish and handsome, maybe a bit drunk. Judging by the scent, he’s sipping cognac. ‘Inspector Vaara,’ he says. ‘Please come in.’

      ‘How kind of you,’ I say and enter.

      ‘How’s your lovely American wife?’ he asks. ‘I understand she’s pregnant.’

      I know Jyri well enough to doubt he gives a damn, and I don’t want his false pleasantries. ‘Kate is fine. What brings you here?’

      ‘We have business.’ He looks around. ‘Your office furnishings are nonstandard. I’m not sure they comply with regulations. What did Arto say about it?’

      He means my boss, Arto Tikkanen. The atmosphere of standard-issue office junk suffocates me. I decorated with my own stuff, most of it from my office in Kittilä, up in Lapland, from when I headed the police department there. A polished oak desk. A Persian rug. A reproduction of the painting December Day, by the nineteenth-century Finnish artist Albert Edelfelt. A photo I took myself, of an ahma, an Arctic wolverine facing extinction, on the back of a reindeer, trying to get at its throat.

      ‘I didn’t ask Arto,’ I say, ‘so he didn’t have a chance to say no.’

      Jyri doesn’t give a damn about office furniture. He’s just playing big dog/little dog, establishing his authority. He lets it go. ‘Go easy on Arto,’ he says. ‘You and he share the same rank. Technically, that’s not supposed to happen. He may find it disconcerting.’

      ‘Arto is a good guy. I don’t think my position here is a problem for him.’ I’m less than certain about that.

      He takes a sip from his flask. ‘I promised you this job in homicide. How’s it treating you?’

      His tone implies I should thank him. He promised me this job a year ago, so Kate and I moved to Helsinki last March, and I expected to start in homicide right away. He stuck me in personnel and I pushed papers for all that time because, he said, I needed to wait until a position opened up. That was a lie. The Helsinki homicide team – murharyhmä – was undermanned, they could have used me. ‘You fucked me on that deal,’ I say. ‘You made me sit on my ass for eleven months.’

      ‘I had reasons, some of them for your benefit. That’s an ugly scar on your jaw, by the way. Why didn’t you get it fixed?’

      My sergeant in Kittilä accidentally shot me before blowing his own brains out. I was trying to talk him down. When his pistol went off, the bullet passed through my open mouth, took out two back teeth, and went out through my right cheek. Bad luck. The exit wound left a ragged, puckered scar. ‘Like you,’ I say, ‘I had my reasons.’

      ‘Probably good for business. I bet it intimidates the hell out of bad guys.’

      I sit down in the chair for visitors beside my desk and say nothing.

      ‘What you went through was traumatizing,’ he says. ‘I wanted you to have a chance to decompress, and I thought a healthy dose of therapy would be good for you before beginning a new and stressful position.’

      He pulls out a cigarette. I take an ashtray from a desk drawer. We both light up. Smoking is forbidden in the station. Except for the prisoners. They can smoke in their cells.

      ‘In the future,’ I say, ‘trust me to look after my own emotional well-being.’

      ‘I had the good of the team to consider, and that’s a little more important to me than hurting your feelings. Helsinki homicide employs some of the most efficient police in the world. Maybe as a group, the world’s best. A murder hasn’t gone unsolved in Helsinki since 1993. A perfect track record for going on two decades. That’s a lot of pressure. Nobody in the unit wants that perfect track record ruined, and I wasn’t about to let you come in here and fuck it up because you’re fucked up. And besides, Helsinki’s murharyhmä is my pride and joy.’

      Jyri has a way of getting under my skin. I change the subject. ‘What’s with the tux?’

      He leans back in the chair and props patent-leather oxfords up on my desk. He must know it pisses me off. Big dog/little dog again. ‘I attended a black-tie affair,’ he says. ‘The interior minister was there. He asked me to come here this evening and have a chat with you.’

      I assume this has something to do with the way the Finnish police marketed me to the public as a hero cop after the Sufia Elmi case. ‘I didn’t know the higher echelons have an interest in me.’

      ‘They don’t. You came to their attention because of your grandfather.’

      Now I’m baffled. ‘Nice intro. Why don’t you tell me about it after you take your feet off my desk.’

      He

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