Lucifer's Tears

44

I drive back to Helsinki at a crawl. The migraine snaps on sudden and bad. The white of the snow hurts my eyes. It’s hard to see. I think about poor Arvid, alone after all those years with Ritva. I picture her pretty, dead face. Then a procession of dead faces from childhood forward.

My sister, Suvi, her panicked dying eyes looking up at me through a sheet of ice on a frozen lake. A slew of murder victims from over the course of my career as a policeman stare at me, judging. Then Sufia Elmi, but she can’t look at me because her eyes are gouged out. My ex-wife, Heli, who can’t look at me because her eyes are burned out. My ex-sergeant, Valtteri, his eyes fishdead, his brain blown out. His son, Heikki, hanging from a basement rafter, his eyes bugged out. Sufia’s father in flames, eyes open wide and angry. Iisa Filippov, if it is Iisa, her face destroyed by cigarette burns and lashings, glares at me with her one remaining eye and demands justice. Legion, his eyes at peace. I see starving and helpless prisoners of war looking up from inside a bomb crater, their eyes imploring. Arvid and my grandpa machine-gun them to death, and a tractor covers the pit with dirt.

My cell phone rings and breaks my unholy reverie. It’s Milo. I don’t want to answer but do it anyway. “Guess where I am,” he says.

“No guessing games today. Where are you?”

“I’m at Meilahti hospital. Guess why.”

My mood is foul. “What the fuck did I just say?”

“Jesus, don’t have a cow. Sulo Polvinen’s father took matters into his own hands. He came here and stabbed the bouncers to death in their hospital beds.”

I can hear the glee in Milo’s voice.

“He plugged them in their chests with a hunting knife and didn’t even try to escape, just sat down in a chair after he killed the second one and waited to be arrested. He confessed to the attack at the Silver Dollar, too.”

“He didn’t attack them at the club. Sulo did. I’m sure of it. He confessed to keep Sulo out of prison so he wouldn’t lose a second son.”

“So? Taisto Polvinen got some justice, after all.”

I resist the urge to scream at Milo. “Has it occurred to you that Sulo has now lost his brother and his father? His mother lost a son and a husband. He’s going to rot in a cell for ten years for avenging his child.”

Remorse isn’t Milo’s strong suit. “Well, no, I hadn’t really thought about it, but still…”

I hang up on him, can’t stand to listen to unadulterated stupidity at the moment. I’m ten minutes away from downtown Helsinki and Hotel Kamp, and I still don’t have a fucking clue how I’m going to deal with Ivan Filippov.