This heartens me. However, there’s also the other missing boat. He could have used it to flee considerably farther away.
Saukko says, “I also owned over a hundred islands up north in the archipelago. I created a foundation out of them but kept the hunting and fishing rights. Not even tourists go up there much. And it’s a barren area. No amenities. Nothing. I doubt he’s there. If he is, he’ll be damned hard to find. But I still don’t put much stock in this Antti-is-a-murderer-theory shit.”
I seriously doubt he’s there, either. But still. “Doesn’t cost anything to look.”
“True,” he says. “What the fuck. Take my yacht.”
“Thanks, but we can take a police boat.”
“Do police boats have fully stocked bars and come loaded with fishing gear?”
I admit that they don’t.
“Then I insist you take the yacht.” Then it dawns on him. “Fuck. I just fired the skipper.”
This boat is motorized. No sails. Doesn’t take the same level of professional skill. “First, I want to check out Saukkosaari. My partner Milo knows how to sail, he can pilot. I’ll call him now.”
Moreau says he can also handle a yacht. Moreau. Master of All. It’s starting to get on my nerves. I call Milo and Sweetness and tell them to be here in an hour.
36
Milo’s father is dead but apparently was something of a character—Milo’s mother once stabbed him for philandering—but Milo seldom mentions him. However, he taught Milo to sail. He fires up the engines, gives instructions, and we’re out on the open sea in just a few minutes. Milo can be an aggravating fuck, but his confidence with all things technical can be reassuring at times, and this is one.
He’s dog sick from pontikka overdose, pukes over the rail a few times. Sweetness is no better, even by his standards he got shitfaced and looks like death. In addition to being sick from drinking, they’re covered with cuts and bruises from fighting. Milo has a butterfly Band-Aid holding his eyebrow together. Both of them have black eyes. Milo limps. Sweetness has a fat lip, split open but short of needing stitches. Neither holds a grudge, though. Instead, they laugh about it. It was just what they needed. Men are like that sometimes. Sweetness finds the bar and hair of the dog.
After a couple hours, we find the island, tie the boat off at the dock next to an older, smaller and somewhat dilapidated vessel. We walk up a winding path to the so-called summer cottage. I would guess it’s about a hundred years old, and as Saukko said, “cottage” is a misnomer. It’s bigger than a house, too small to qualify as a mansion.
We find no one here, but someone was here, a while ago. The garbage wasn’t taken out. Dirty dishes left in the sink. And Saukko was right about the gamekeeper. His cottage is empty. His belongings are in the house proper. I guess at a certain point, maybe after some years went by, he realized that the place was forgotten, that he was employed but forgotten too, and moved into a lovely remodeled home in an idyllic setting. We take a walk around the grounds, both forest and meadows are behind the home, the ocean view in front of it.
The gamekeeper must have lived in peace and comfort, until one day a bad man or men came and ruined it all. We find four shallow graves behind the house. A little scooping and kicking away dirt with our hands and feet reveal four bodies in late decomp, consistent with about a year since death. A grown man and three children. The gamekeeper and Kosonen’s three kids. So they were kept here as blackmail to force their father to carry out the kidnapping. There’s still no solid proof that Antti was behind it, but I’d give good odds on it.