Lucifer's Tears

by James Thompson

  “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.

  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 standardissue 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 nineteenthcentury 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 smiles at me and does it. “Bear with me. It’s a bit of a long story. You know much about Finnish-German relations in the Second World War?” Jyri asks.

  “I read history books,” I say.

  “Until a short time ago, this wasn’t in any history books. In September 2008, a historian named Pasi Tervomaa published his Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Einsatzkommando Finnland and Stalag 309: Secret Finnish and German Security Police Collusion in the Second World War.’

  “He claims that in 1941, our security police, Valpo, and their Gestapo set up a special unit, Einsatzkommando Finnland, to destroy ideological and racial enemies on the far north of the German Eastern Front.”

  “So what? Finns volunteering to fight for Germany on the Eastern Front is well-documented. The SS Freewill Nordic Battalion. SS Viking. Others. It made sense. For Finland and Germany, Soviet Russia was a common enemy. And it wasn’t just Finland. The SS took in soldiers from all over the Nordic area.”

  “This is different,” Jyri says. “Germany opened a prisoner-of war camp—Stalag 309—in Salla. It’s in Russia now, but at the time it was part of northern Finland. Tervomaa claims Valpo and Einsatzkommando Finnland collaborated in the liquidation of Communists and Jews. Lined them up and shot them and buried them in mass graves. If his accusations are true, Finnish actions constitute war crimes.”

  “What does this have to do with my grandfather?”

  “Apparently, your mother’s father worked in Stalag 309.”

  “How would you know if a guy who worked in a stalag was my grandfather?”

  Jyri sighs. “Me. The interior minister. We’re plugged into the intelligence community. We learn things. We know things.”

  “Even if he was, again, so what? He’s dead.”

  “As are all the other Finns who worked in it, except for one. Arvid Lahtinen, age ninety. Eyewitness testimony states that he, among other
Finns, personally took part in executions. The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent a formal request that Finland investigate the matter, which we haven’t done to their satisfaction, and now Germany has requested extradition. They want to charge Lahtinen with accessory to murder.”

  “How the fuck can Germany charge him with anything? The claim is that he worked for them.”

  “Ah. But you see, therein lies the rub. Germany granted general amnesty for war crimes to its own citizens in 1969, so it has to expiate its sins by punishing others. They recently filed similar charges against another old man, accused him of being a guard at Sobibor and involved in the killing of twenty-nine thousand Jews. They extradited him from the U.S.”

  “How can the world not have realized that Finland had a stalag on its soil until sixty-five years after the war ended?”

  “Potential Finnish culpability has been largely ignored because of language lockout. We don’t want to talk about it, and very few people in this world besides us can read our documentation. It seems someone at the Wiesenthal Center learned to read Finnish and noticed Tervomaa’s book.”

  “I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

  “Finland and Germany have an extradition treaty. The Interior Ministry has to at least investigate the matter. The minister wants you to interview Arvid Lahtinen.”

  Now it all becomes clear. “Because if I find the old man took part in the Holocaust, it means my grandfather did, too. I’ll give you credit, that’s conniving.”

  “I liked it. Lahtinen is notoriously irascible and has a habit of telling people to fuck off. We need him to cooperate. You charm him, tell him your grandfather served with him, get him to talk to you. Either come back with proof that he’s not guilty, or the two of you concoct a convincing enough lie to get the Germans off Finland’s back.”

  “If he’s guilty, why lie?”

  “Arvid Lahtinen is a Finnish hero. Every December sixth, on Independence Day, he’s invited to the gala at the Presidential Palace. The president shakes his hand and thanks him for his service to his country. Lahtinen was in the Winter War in 1939 and 1940. He took out six Soviet tanks, charged them and destroyed them with Molotov cocktails. He fought in almost minus-fifty-degree weather and personally shot and killed hundreds of Russians. He slaughtered Communists at the Battle of Raate Road and helped save this country. Finland needs its heroes. Pay the man a visit, and keep that in mind while you interview him.”

  Jyri sucks down a last sip from his flask, stands up, takes a sheet of notepaper from his pocket and lays it on my desk. “Here’s his contact information. I’ll report to the interior minister that you promise full cooperation. Keep me informed. I’m going back to the party. Some grade-A pussy was there, and I’m dying to stick my dick in it. Welcome to murharyhmä.”

  He gives me a grin and a wink on his way out the door.

  4

  AS IF I DON’T HAVE enough to think about, Jyri, never the bearer of glad tidings, has forced me to consider the possibility that my ukki—grandpa—was a mass murderer. I loved him dearly. Before he retired, he was a blacksmith. He gave me ice cream when we visited in the summers, and always let me sit on his lap. He used to put salt in his beer. He never mentioned the war. I remember somebody asking him about it once—I guess hoping Ukki would share some heroic tales—but Ukki kept mum.

  I don’t give a damn about political agendas, but Jyri did a good job of manipulating me. Desire for the truth about Ukki will force me to talk to Arvid Lahtinen.

  No doubt there are corpses to be examined. I turned my phone off while talking to Jyri. I wander down the hall to Milo’s office to see if the dispatcher has called, but can’t stop thinking about Ukki. The throb of the migraine renews itself. I open Milo’s door. He’s got a look on his face like I caught him jerking off.

  “You could knock,” he says.

  I have no idea why I just walked in on him. It’s unlike me. “Sorry,” I say. “My mind was somewhere else.”

  His service pistol, a 9mm Glock, is fieldstripped, in pieces on his desk. Beside it are a Dremel tool and a box of ammo. A few loose semi-jacketed soft-point rounds are lined up in a row beside a little jar. A desk drawer is open. I get the impression he left it that way so if someone knocked, he could scoop the stuff into it and hide it quick.

  Milo’s scowl is justifiable. “Well, get your head out of your fucking ass,” he says.

  Milo’s shirtsleeves are rolled up, and I see that despite his small stature, he’s built out of ropey muscle.

  “What are you working on?” I ask.

  “None of your business.”

  Whatever he’s doing must be at least against police procedure, maybe against the law. His discomfiture amuses me. I suppress a grin and wait for him to tell me. We stare at each other for a while.

  “I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible to install a three-round-burst selector switch into a Glock Model 19,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “Because, as every soldier knows, three-round 9mm bursts take men down, single shots usually don’t.”

  “Three-round bursts often kill, not part of our mandate.”

  He gets a cocky look on his face. “Show me where it says that in the police handbook.”

  There is no police handbook or detailed set of rules and codes. He’s fucking with me. “Don’t be a jackass,” I say.

  He says nothing.

  “Well, can you?” I ask.

  “Can I what?”

  “Install the selector switch.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you shoot someone, they might examine your weapon. If they see the selector switch, you’ll lose your job, maybe get prosecuted.”

  “The switch can be removed and the drill tap filled with a small screw, which no one will ever notice.”

  I can’t hide my amusement any longer. I shake my head and laugh. “And what about the bullets?”

  He grimaces. This must be even worse than modifying his weapon. “I’m drilling cavities in the lead tips and filling them with glycerin. When a bullet collides with flesh, it slows down. The liquid inside retains its inertia and releases excess energy by ripping through the front of the bullet. It leaves a jagged slug, and lead fragments continue to tear up tissue. It creates a larger wound than a normal round and causes severe hydrostatic shock.”

  I’ve heard of this somewhere before. It comes to me and I tease him. “In a thriller called The Day of the Jackal, an assassin fills his bullets with mercury. Why not do the same? That way, when you shoot crooks, you can poison them, too.”

  He doesn’t see the humor. “Obviously because when they autopsied the body, I’d get caught.”

  This kid has a few screws loose. “Why not just shoot hollowpoint rounds?” I ask.

  “They expand on penetration but tend to remain intact. Glycerin is more effective.”

  “I see. Let me show you something. Give me a bullet.”

  He tosses one to me and I catch it. I take out a pocket knife, notch a cross in the soft lead tip and show it to him. “It’s called cross-hatching,” I say. “Some people call them dum-dum rounds. On impact, the bullet deforms and breaks into chunks along the cut lines. You get your big wound channels, multiple exit points, severe blood loss and trauma, and someone would have to look for it in order to detect it.”

  He looks both impressed and disappointed. “My way is more fun,” he says, “but I have to admit, yours is more practical. Where did you learn it?”

  “My grandpa showed it to me while he taught me to shoot.”

  My own words take me by surprise. My ukki, now an accused mass murderer, taught a child how to dum-dum bullets. I suppose a man from his generation—born just after the Finnish Civil War in 1918, and then later a combat veteran of the Second World War—must have thought the generation to come should be prepared for wars of its own.

  “Your grandpa must have been a cool guy.”

  “Yeah, he was.”

  I fold up the knife and
put it back in my pocket. I think about where I got it, and whatever amusement I feel at Milo’s expense disappears. Valtteri’s son used it to butcher Sufia Elmi. Valtteri said he hid the murder weapon by keeping it in his pocket, because no one would ever look for it there, and so he would have a constant reminder of his failures. After the inquest, I stole the knife from the evidence locker, and like Valtteri, I keep it in my pocket so I won’t forget my own failures.

  “Are you going to tell anyone about my hobbies?” Milo asks.

  “You realize that, even if you remain a policeman until retirement age, the odds of you having to fire your pistol in the line of duty are about a thousand to one.”

  “You did,” he says.

  Point taken. “Just stop doing it,” I say.

  He nods.

  With agile fingers, Milo reassembles the Glock in under a minute. He practices field-stripping it. “What did the head honcho want?” he asks.

  “Too much,” I say.

  The visit from the chief intrigues him. I can see he wants to press the issue, but restrains himself.

  “Any dead bodies to look at?” I ask.

  “Yeah. Some.”

  Helsinki homicide is a body factory. I check out three to four corpses during a normal shift. Always understaffed, the three teams in murharyhmä, the homicide division, a total of around twenty-five detectives, look into about thirteen hundred deaths a year. Most of them, as homicide cops call them, are grandmas and grandpas, the natural deaths of the elderly. A fair share of the remaining deaths are accidental. About a dozen of those twelve hundred will be ruled homicides and investigated, down from about three dozen murders only a decade ago, due to improved on-site trauma care and response time. It’s saved a lot of lives. Also, I figure because of the massive volume of death investigations, some of the more subtle premeditated murders go undetected.