Helsinki Blood

27

My phone rings at nine a.m. It’s the National Bureau of Investigation forensic mechanic.

“I got fascinated by the explosion in your Audi and pulled an all-nighter,” he says.

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

“You may not thank me when you hear the findings. First, there was a hot fuel mix in the gas tank. Enough to start the car, but not enough to keep it running long. There was ether both in front of the fuel injectors’ carbonized nozzles and under the driver’s seat. I’m pretty sure a hole had been drilled so that it aimed up under the driver’s seat and squirted fuel. When the line lost pressure, fire shot backward up the line, ignited the ether under the seat and also set off the gas tank.”

“So it was a pro job.”

I hear him suck hard on a cigarette and gulp what I assume, from the blowing then slurping sound, is hot coffee. “And very slick. Here’s how pro it was. Ether eats through plastic, so the ether was poured into plastic bags, probably freezer bags or something, and those bags were placed in thin, watertight balsa wood boxes, so that a portion of the ether leaked into them. The flame coming out of the carbonized nozzles set the balsa wood, which is absorbent, on fire, which in turn ignited the ether and started the process. It was hard to spot the remains of the burned-up boxes, because balsa doesn’t leave much and there was already carbon all over the place. I picked up traces of acetone from the balsa leftovers, so I’m pretty sure that was the scenario. Somebody wants you dead, or at least burned to a crisp.”

“What do you preferably drink?” I ask.

“Good single-malt scotch. Why?”

“I’ll bring a bottle by for you by way of thanks.”

I can almost hear his smile. His job doesn’t garner much appreciation. “Stay safe,” he says.

• • •

KATE AND I take a taxi to see Torsten Holmqvist. I met Torsten not long after moving to Helsinki. I had broken the Sufia Elmi case, one might say by attrition, because so many people under suspicion died. I was shot in the face. I had been promised a slot in Helsinki Homicide, but the department decided I needed my psyche delved into before starting in my new position.

I never liked Torsten. He’s a Swedish-speaking Finn, wealthy, and I got the impression that like many rich Swedish-speaking Finns, he believes he’s battre folk, as I’ve heard them call themselves, a cut above the rest of us commoners. I find everything from his expensive preppy clothing to the apple-scented tobacco he smokes in his briarwood pipe pretentious, and he thought I couldn’t see through him when he tried to manipulate me. I interrogate people for a living. He never seemed to understand that he and I are, in a sense, in the same business, and it annoyed me. It wasn’t that he’s bad at his job, quite the opposite. He was just the wrong therapist for me.

I think, though, that he truly cares about his patients. Seeing Kate today, on short notice, because she’s in crisis, serves as proof of that. His office is in a beautiful home in the district of Eira, near embassy row, and worth millions. A bay window looks out on the sea. It’s a perfect day, warm enough for T-shirts and shorts, the sea dotted with pleasure craft under a cobalt-blue sky.

When I woke Kate and told her we were coming here, she didn’t resist. She must know she needs this. She looks bad, haggard and worn. It took more than booze and jet lag to do this to her, more like something that gnaws at her soul.

“Do you mind if Kari joins us in our session today?” he asks Kate.

She shakes her head no.

“I thought,” Torsten says, “as an outside observer and as a witness to the trials you’ve been through, he might be able to shed some light on how I might best help you. If at any time you feel uncomfortable with his presence, if you feel it inhibits you or prevents you from sharing a confidence with me, I’ll ask him to take a seat in the waiting room until we’re done here. Is this acceptable to you?”

His English is excellent. She nods her head yes.

Torsten offers us coffee or tea. I take the coffee. Kate takes some herbal tea blend. I sit on the couch, a little away from them, and Kate takes a chair, separated from him by a small table. He provides me with an ashtray, fills his pipe and lights it.

“Would you like to begin, or shall I?” he asks.

She starts trembling. “You.”

“Very well. I thought we were making progress here. What prompted you to run away?”

Tears appear in the corners of her eyes. “I couldn’t remember things. I was afraid that I was unable to care for Anu. I wasn’t getting better, I was getting worse. I killed someone. Killers aren’t supposed to be mothers. Mothers aren’t supposed to be killers. I don’t deserve her.”

“So you left her to punish yourself?”

She pauses, wipes her eyes. “At least in part.”

He crosses his legs, sits back, puffs. “I smell alcohol on you, on your breath, and so much that you’re sweating it out. Why?”

She nods. “I was drinking more and more, and that’s another reason I thought Anu was better off without me.” She sobs, starts to cry.

“May I ask why you’ve been drinking so heavily?”

“I’m self-medicating. It’s the family way. My father was a drunk. My brother is a drug addict. We can’t cope with life.”

“Your brother. Is that why you went to him?”

She nods. “I knew he would understand.”

“Do you crave alcohol and feel you’re an alcoholic?”

She shakes her head no.

“I don’t think so either. Before you leave, I’ll give you a prescription for something that should make you feel better than alcohol.”

Silence.

“Even before you left for the U.S.,” Torsten says, “you were reluctant to see Kari. Why?”

“Look at him. He’s a wreck, and it’s my fault. He did wrong things, but he asked me first. I told him to do them. Even Adrien, the man I killed. I told Kari to take him into his confidence, to work with him. And then he shot Kari and Milo and a woman close to giving birth. She and the baby both died.”

She stops and looks at me, shame-faced. “And I’m not always sure who he is. I get confused about where I am and who people are. Not all the time, but sometimes. And then all that goes through my head is that day on the island when I killed Adrien Moreau.”

She bites her nails. I’ve never seen her do that.

Torsten leans forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. “Kate, would you like some time to rest? There is a facility called Aurora, and occasionally, when life becomes too hard to bear, people go there for a little while. You don’t have to do anything. Your every need will be cared for. Would you like that?”

Her face blanches from terror. “You mean a mental institution?”

He puts on his consoling face. “Yes, it is. But of a benign nature. It’s nothing you should be afraid of. The workers there are very kind.”

She shakes her head so hard I think it will turn a circle, twist off, and fall to the floor. “No no no no no no. .”

I’m tempted to ask him if, since she doesn’t want to go, I can go there and have people be nice to me, I can rest and have my every need cared for. I hold my tongue.

He pats her knee to reassure her. “It was just a question. You don’t have to go there. Your other option is to go home. You can go there and be with your husband and daughter.”

She looks at me, expression flat. “He doesn’t need me. I’ve been replaced by a twenty-three-year-old beauty queen.”

Torsten raises one eyebrow. It calls to mind bad soap opera acting. “Replaced?”

Kate says, “By a girl I thought was my friend. The bed reeks of her soap and perfume.”

Torsten’s glance asks me to explain.

“Kate, I haven’t cheated on you. Ever.” Which is true, but the exact circumstances will still distress her, so I tell a white lie. “When you left, I was in bad condition, unable to take care of Anu. Mirjami, Jenna and Sweetness came to stay with me and help out. I gave Mirjami our bed and I slept in my chair. I suppose I should tell you now. Mirjami borrowed your car and there was an accident. She was very badly burned and will be in the hospital for some time.”

This leaves her speechless.

“I’ve done things you found questionable,” I say. “Those things weren’t your fault. They were my choices. And you blame yourself for approving my actions. You believed you were granting the wishes of a man dying of brain cancer. It was unfair of me to place you in that position. You blame yourself for killing Adrien Moreau. He gave you no choice. He would have killed the rest of us, and you saved our lives. He brought his death on himself. Your action wasn’t criminal, it was heroic.”

“I hated the way you lived, the way you changed. Committing criminal acts. Stealing. Dissolving people in acid.”

Torsten gawks at me.

“I didn’t kill them,” I say. “I made two bodies disappear to avoid a mafia gang war.”

I light a cigarette to buy a few seconds and consider my words, then return my attention to Kate. “Brain surgery impacted me more than I knew. My recovery isn’t over yet, but I’m much improved. However, some of the things I’ve done upset important people, mostly because I no longer want to do questionable things on their behalf. If you come home, we’re going to stay in Arvid’s house for a while. You’ll like it. It’s pretty and spacious. On the river. A good place to rest. Jenna, Sweetness and Milo will come, too. Jenna was in the accident with Mirjami. She was pregnant and lost the baby. She needs a change of scenery. It’s sort of a vacation for all of us.”

“You still do questionable things,” Kate says. “You more or less had me abducted and forced me back here.”

Torsten helps me out. “I told Kari he had to get you back here in order for me to treat you. Your illness had become a life-threatening situation. I didn’t say it to Kari, but I was afraid you might harm yourself.” His smile is gentle. “You were abducted on doctor’s orders.”

She doesn’t find it humorous and scowls at me. “You think you’re the fucking Godfather. I’m married to Michael Corleone.”

A penetrating observation. Especially since Milo and Sweetness want the next step in our illustrious careers to be much like the end of The Godfather.

“If Kate goes with you,” Torsten asks, “will she be safe?”

A half-truth. “Of course she’ll be safe. She’ll be surrounded by law enforcement officers around the clock.” Followed by a truth, as without me, Milo and Sweetness to protect her, she’s in dire peril. “There’s no safer place she could be.”

“Tell us, Kate,” Torsten asks, “what do you feel would be best for you?”

“I want to sleep for ten thousand years with my baby in my arms.”

“Are you comfortable living with Kari?”

“I don’t know who he is or wants to be. I don’t know if we should be married anymore. I avoided him for weeks and kept his baby from him. That wasn’t fair. And it wasn’t right for me to leave him alone when he was so weak and sick and then to dump Anu on him out of the blue. I will try to be comfortable with Kari, one day at a time.”

“You aren’t well enough to live on your own. Do you see that now?”

She hesitates, doesn’t want to admit it. “Yes.”

“If you run away again or if your condition deteriorates, Kari is to call me, and you’ll have to take that rest we talked about. Do you both understand this?”

We nod.

“And Kari,” Torsten says, “you must understand that Kate isn’t well, and that living with her will sometimes be uncomfortable. You’re obviously in poor condition yourself. Are you prepared for that?”

“Of course.”

He writes a prescription for Kate. “This is for Valdoxan, an anti-depressant. It’s a relatively new drug, but results with it have been very good. The side effects are minimal, it will help you sleep, and stopping it when the time comes is much easier than with other anti-depressants.”

He hands it to her. “Kari, this is a safe place for Kate. If you have something you want to say or anything you would like to ask her, now would be a good time.”

I look at my wife and barely recognize her. The changes wrought by her suffering fill me with sadness. “Why did you leave?” I ask. “When you came out of your dissociative stupor, you left within hours. I don’t understand. You were in a safe place, loved and cared for.”

“Except for Anu, I wished we had all died on that island. I wish we had never come to Helsinki. I wish you could have been content to be a good and honest policeman, even if you didn’t make a difference. I just couldn’t stand the sight of you. It made me think of all that ugliness.”

“And now?”

“I still wish we were all dead, and I can look at you, but it’s hard.”

Question asked and answered. I should have known better. Never ask a question if the answer may destroy you. I say nothing else.

“Let’s call it a day,” Torsten says.