I go downstairs. Anni is up and in good spirits. “Should I make everyone breakfast? Help kill their hangovers?”
I have a feeling their hangovers are beyond redemption. “Thanks, but we don’t have time. I have to meet someone in Helsinki.”
I make the rounds. Moreau made a pillow out of his coat and slept on the floor. He’s already waking. I go outside and hear laughter in the Muumin house. Jenna speaking in a soft voice. Sweetness whistling. Kissing slurps. He got his cherry busted with his true love. Nice. Maybe the life affirmation will give him some perspective, he’ll come to terms with the death of his brother and stop staying drunk morning, noon and night.
Milo and Mirjami are sleeping head to foot, clothed, on a cot in the washing room in the sauna. I wake them. They’re not sick yet because they’re still drunk. The hangover will come soon enough. I get everyone roused and in the vehicles. I don’t get a chance to say good-bye to Timo. He’s still passed out. I have a feeling we’ll talk again soon, though.
I DRIVE THE AUDI, and Moreau drives the SUV. The others snooze along the way. We drop them at their homes and take the Audi to Veikko Saukko’s mansion.
His foundation museum is near the road. His mansion sits near the rear of the sprawling grounds of his property, the sea not far behind it.
A man resembling a two-hundred-eighty-pound bullfrog, in a tight black turtleneck with a thick gold chain hung around his neck, opens the door. Bodyguard chic. He checks his visitor’s list on an iPod and asks us to wait.
Veikko Saukko comes to the door to greet us. He pumps my hand and tells me it’s an honor to meet a law enforcement officer of my caliber. He hugs Moreau, pats his back and calls him “old friend.”
He ushers us into his study. It calls to mind a Victorian gentlemen’s club. Dark wood paneling and deep leather chairs. A Parnian desk with only an Aurora Diamante pen on it. The diamonds, platinum and gold sparkle. He insists, despite the hour, that we join him in a Richard Hennessy cognac and a La Gloria Cubana Reserva figurado. He sits with us in a circle of three chairs around a small table rather than behind his desk, to create an air of intimacy. He asks how he can help me.
“I’m investigating the murder of Lisbet S?derlund,” I say, “and I believe it may be related to the kidnap-murder your family suffered last year, for which I offer my condolences.”
He takes a deep draught of cognac, just poured a couple hundred euros down his throat. “I’m glad the bitch is dead, but if you convince me of some connection to my family…well, let’s just say I’ll hear you out.”
“You’ve created some enmity with Finland’s extreme right. I’m told you promised them a million-euro campaign contribution but reneged. It created antipathy, and may have led to the crimes perpetrated against your family. These same factions also despised Lisbet S?derlund and openly discussed killing her. Only a limited number of people in our little country are capable of such crimes, both in psychological profile and technical skill, and so the natural train of thought is that the murderer or group of killers is one and the same.”
“You killed a nigger, didn’t you, Inspector?”
I assume he refers to the Sufia Elmi case, in which her father died ablaze, doused in gasoline.
“It would be more accurate to say that I sat and watched him burn to death.” I was unable to reach him in time because of my bad knee. I test Saukko’s limits to see how crazy he is. “I shot the head off an Estonian, odds are good he had Slavic blood. Does that earn me points?”