I have shorts on. Moreau examines my knee, puts his pistol to the exact point of entry from when I was shot before, and fires. The bullet passes through the old exit scar. The pain is awful and I grunt, but won’t allow him the satisfaction of a scream. Good-bye, reconstructed knee.
“The patsy collected the ransom money, Antti killed him, betrayed my colleagues and disappeared. He left them the paintings, I suppose as recompense, without considering that they have provenance and are worthless without a pre-heist buyer for a private collection. Apparently, he came here, to this island, to meet his girlfriend.”
She nods and confirms this.
“As punishment for betrayal, they shot Kaarina. They assassinated her with a .308 Winchester, which they, arrogantly enough, kept rather than disposed of. Find it. You’ll have your murder weapon and no doubt solve the crime in short order. Then they set about looking for Antti, with no luck. They surveilled the police for a year, kept up with their progress. The police couldn’t find him. If they could follow the police but jump one step ahead, as police act cautiously while they build cases, they could take their ten million. Too much time passed. Afraid police interest in the case would wane, they called me, offered me a split, and used their connections to convince Veikko Saukko to have me brought in. I contacted you to convince you that the Saukko kidnap-murder and the S?derlund assassination were likely related, to keep the Saukko case a police top priority while I remained informed of developments. Then I could kill Antti and take the money back. To aid in this effort, Marcel and Thierry committed the robberies posing as Islamic fundamentalists—they wore charcoal camo stick to disguise themselves as blacks and spouted some rhetoric in ridiculous accents—and also committed the racial murders, simply to make it appear they were related to the S?derlund assassination, to keep your enthusiasm high.”
He examines me with a speculative eye. “Open your mouth.”
I refuse.
“Well,” he says, “it’s either my way or I shoot you through both jaws.”
Wisdom dictates I open my mouth. He sticks the barrel in it, blows out the bridgework from where my own teeth were shot out, and creates a wound that will leave a scar just like the one I had removed. The pain is awful. I feel woozy. He reaches in his pocket and hands me something. “It’s a bindle of heroin. Sniff only a tiny bit. You are what is called opiate na?ve. If you use too much, you will overdose, or at least pass out. I want you aware.”
He moves to Antti’s girlfriend. “If you do not tell me where the money is, I will kill your baby.”
She screams and covers her belly with her hands. “I don’t know, he never told me.”
“You have ten seconds,” he says.
She cries, begs, pleads. He counts. I open the bindle, pour some heroin on my thumbnail and snort it. The pain melts away. Relief makes me sigh. I’m not opiate na?ve. I used narcotics to combat my headaches. I remain coherent.
He counts to zero and fires at an angle through the side of her belly. The bullet exits the other side of her stomach. The baby, if not dead, soon will die. She only moans and weeps silent tears. Her man, her dream, her child. She’s lost everything.
“We now have a time constraint,” Moreau says. “If she does not receive medical attention, she will die of internal bleeding.”
Kate makes not a sound, but on her face she wears a scream of terror and clutches Anu tight.