Helsinki White

29

It’s a little after six p.m. when we start the drive home from the yacht club. Kate is drunker than I thought. She’s got that female drunk thing going on, by turns giggly and weepy. She’s been drinking three days running. I’m not sure if this is just her first exposure to hanging out with a hard-drinking female crowd, keeping up with them drink for drink without paying attention and realizing how much she’s consuming, or if something is troubling her and causing this uncharacteristic behavior. For me, it was a workday that entailed socializing. I had only two beers.

I stop and pick up some baby formula. Her breast milk is alcohol toxic. It unsettles me that she didn’t take that into consideration before getting smashed. Again. Kate waits in the car while I shop. I get a text message. “Tomorrow, Roope Malinen will be at his summer cottage on the island of Nauvo, near Turku.” The message includes the GPS coordinates for the cottage.

Kate has never been to Turku. I get back in the car. “Kate, how would you like to go on a road trip tomorrow, to Turku? It’s about two hours east of Helsinki.”

“Just us?” She sounds hopeful.

“No, I have to do some cop stuff, but Milo and Sweetness will come with me, so I thought maybe Mirjami and Jenna could go with you. You can give your new Audi a good breaking-in. My brother Timo has a farm near there. After we do our business and you do your sightseeing, if he’s available, we could pay him a visit.”

She’s in happy-drunk mode at the moment. “Sounds fun,” she says.

We go home. I thank Jyri’s aunt, give her a fifty, pre-pay a taxi for her, send her home and get on the horn. Kate passes out on the couch.

I promised Moreau he could accompany me while I conduct interviews. He promised to teach Milo how to use the advanced weaponry he bought, doesn’t need, and doesn’t know how to use. Sweetness has never fired a gun. We’re searching for, I believe, military trained killers, perhaps mercenaries. He needs to learn to shoot. I’d like to kill all these birds with one stone.

“I have business in Turku anyway,” Moreau says. “It suits me.”

I tell him to meet me here at eight a.m.

Step two. Call my brother. This is harder. “Jesus, Kari,” he says, “I haven’t heard from you in two years, seen you in four. To what do I owe the honor?”

“I have some business in Turku and thought I’d drop by, if that’s OK with you.”

“It’s more than OK. It would be great. I hear you have a baby now. You gonna bring her?”

“Actually, I may bring a few people. Cops and their women. And we’d like to do a little weapons training while we’re there. Is that all right with you?”

Anger creeps into his voice. “For a minute there, I thought you wanted to see me. In fact, you want something from me. That’s it. Right?”

The truth is, I don’t give damn if I see him or anyone else, because of my lack of emotions. But I’m trying to do what I view as my duty toward my family, and I neglected my duty toward him when I felt emotions because of those emotions. It’s easier now. “No, I want to see you. I can shoot guns anywhere. I’m a fucking cop, if you recall. We have practice ranges. I can come see you and not shoot, if you prefer. Or I can go to a practice range and not see you, if you prefer that.”

He goes quiet for a minute. “Just tell me why you haven’t come to see me.”

I tell the truth. “I don’t know. Why haven’t you come to see me?”

He’s quiet again. “It’s complicated. Just fucking come visit. Take target practice with a panzer if you want. And you’re all welcome to stay the night. We have lots of room.”

“It’s good to hear your voice, big brother,” I say.

“Yours too.” He rings off.

Next, Milo. “We’re going on a road trip tomorrow. Bring that nuclear arsenal or whatever it is you bought. Moreau is going to teach you to use it.”

“Cool! Where are we going?”

“Different places around the Turku area. We’ll probably stay the night, maybe at my brother’s place. And Mirjami is invited.”

“I don’t know if she can come. She might have to work.”

I recall that Mirjami told Milo she loves me. She pays me no undue attention. I find this strange. “Tell her if her love for me is true, to trade out shifts or something. Kate is coming in a separate car, and it will suck for her if she’s alone. In fact, she probably wouldn’t come and be disappointed.”

Milo says he’ll try. I tell him to be here at eight.

I make a similar call to Sweetness, and invite Jenna. It’s no problem for her, she doesn’t go to school and she’s unemployed. The girls are too young and immature to become close friends with Kate, but she seems to enjoy their company, at least on a superficial level.

I save the worst for last and call Jaakko Pahkala. I have a love-hate relationship with him. I love hating him. His little rat face, his squeaky voice, his attitude-everything about him annoys me. Pre-brain op, I would have gotten an adrenaline hate surge just by picking up the phone to call him. He refers to himself as a journalist, and is employed as such on a freelance basis by our most yellow skank rags. He loves skank. Lives and breathes skank. The uglier and more loathsome, the more he reveres it. Also, he’s petty and malicious. He once tried to have me fired because I refused him an interview.

Jaakko is like vile medicine. Sometimes it’s required, and in the same vein, at times he has his uses. This is one of them.

He answers his phone. “Inspector Vaara, this is an unexpected pleasure. How may I be of service to you?”

“I’m starting a new publication,” I say, “and I’d like you to be editor.”

“I’m intrigued.”

“‘Editor’ is euphemistic. You’re the sole employee, the publication date is uncertain, and you’re not to let anyone know the publication exists until I authorize you to do so.”

“And the nature of this publication?”

“We’re going to revamp the classic Be Happy.”

“The best magazine ever made in Finland,” he says. “I’m honored.”

I describe it as the minister defined it to me, but with my own spin on it. “It’s to be a hate rag under the guise of a scandal sheet. For instance, Lisbet Soderlund. You’ll paint her black, invent vicious details concerning her private life, and leave the reader feeling she was a traitorous slut who deserved to die.”

“My, my, Inspector. That is the skankiest skank that ever skanked a skank.”

“You’ll go after blacks, Jews and Muslims. Blame all our social ills on them. Picture 1920s American KKK hate materials, or pre-war German and French hate propaganda. I assume you’re familiar with those styles. As with the old Be Happy, do some career destruction. It’s OK if we get sued, but stay just on the side of the line where we don’t have criminal charges pressed against us for incitement of racial violence.”

“My familiarity with those styles would be better termed expertise,” he says. “I have a large personal collection of the literature.”

“In your first mock-up issue, go after the leading center and left political figures, as well as celebs. A lot of drug-and-alcohol-problem material, nympho and fag accusations, with the requisite images.”

“I have the latest version of Photoshop,” Jaakko says.

“At the same time, however, you’ll be collecting an equal amount of dirt on the right wing, Kokoomus, and Real Finns. You’ll keep these files secret for now. And of course you’ll have copies of everything for me. Everything.”

“Inspector, are you our new minister of propaganda?”

“You may consider me so.”

“And my compensation?”

“Two thousand euros a month.”

“Make it three.”

“Two and half, and don’t try to bargain.”

“Very well. May I ask your sudden interest in the collection of blackmail material?”

“No. You have a duplicitous nature. You receive no unnecessary information.”

He snickers. “We all have our flaws.”

“In this instance, you’ll suppress them, or you’ll pay a high price.”

He snickers again. “Will you have me shot?”

“No, but given the choice, you might prefer it. You’ll be fired by all of your employers. You’ll find your bank account emptied. You’ll lose your home. You’ll receive bills for loans you never took out. You’ll be convicted for crimes you didn’t commit, and I’m pretty sure they would make you the jailhouse sissy.”

“Inspector, you seem to have become a man of importance. I’m impressed.”

“I’m so pleased. It’s important to me that you hold me in high regard.”

“I’ll do a good job. And I’ll be your lapdog. No duplicity.”

“I’m glad we understand one another,” I say, and ring off.

The skank dreck sheet will never be published. It will, however, be written and prepared, and the mock-up will be in the possession of the minister of the interior in the event that I need to entrap and extort him. My own version of the slander skank rag, featuring such gems as a round-heeled slattern giving him skull in the alley behind a bar, might just possibly make it to print.

I received messages while I talked to Jaakko. Mirjami and Jenna will be coming with us tomorrow. Kate is coming to on the sofa. I tell her all the arrangements have been made for the trip to Turku.

“What trip?” she asks.