The condition will probably last from two days to four weeks. He prescribes eighty milligrams of the tranquilizer Diazepam per day, spread out over four doses, for a few days, during which she’ll sleep most of the time, and then, depending on how things go, cut it back to sixty milligrams. He’ll check on her in a few days and tells me to let him know if anything requires his attention.
Within the day, I expect everyone from Heinrich Himmler/Saukko to Jyri Ivalo are going to call or pound on my door and tell me to give them that ten million euros. Even if it were true, they wouldn’t accept that I don’t have it. They want it too badly to allow themselves to believe it’s lost.
I think about calling Saukko myself. He would want to know about his son. Then I think, Fuck him, he’s a pig. And he never even bothered to call me to ask how his son died.
I decide I want to proceed with the investigation now, whether I can directly participate or not. I call Sweetness and ask him to go to Turku, to B&E the houses and business of the two former Legionnaires and find their heroin and the rifles used in the murders. I call Milo and tell him what we’re up to, and he wants to go too, shattered hand be damned. Unless they’ve been cleaned, the rifles used in the murders should be the only ones with gunpowder residue. They get to Turku and find both men in Marcel’s home, both dead.
Sweetness calls me over our encrypted phones. They ODed. One had a needle in his arm, the other a needle in his dick. As Moreau said, they died badly. Vomit everywhere. Face and bodies twisted from convulsions. Strychnine. They weren’t users. They bore other needle track marks, though, to give the impression that they were users, undoubtedly created by empty syringes, possibly after they were dead. Moreau murdered his old friends in one of the most painful ways imaginable. I say to leave them there for now to decomp. Mostly so I can rest for a couple of days before the denouement.
I tell Sweetness to find the rifles used in the race murders and leave them somewhere not too hard to find. To locate the .308 Winchester used to murder Kaarina Saukko, go to Malinen’s summer cottage, use print transparencies from his possessions and transfer his fingerprints to the rifle, then plant it somewhere semi-hidden in the cottage, along with a quantity of heroin. He orchestrated murder, he can pay for it. Morally, I can see no difference if he pays for the murder of Lisbet S?derlund, which he caused, or that of Kaarina Saukko, for which the weapon was used. I ask Milo if he’s capable of cleaning out Jyri’s bank account. He says consider it done. I tell him to wait until I give the word.
Mirjami does a good job. She’s attentive and, I discover, quite intelligent as well. Kate remains in a state resembling catatonia. Mirjami’s attention doesn’t waver from her, Anu and their needs. She also changes the bandages and cleans the wounds on my reconstructed knee, now deconstructed, and the wounds in my mouth and face. She sleeps in the spare bed in Anu’s room.
That first night at home, I’m doped up and exhausted. I fall into a deep sleep. I have a sex dream about Kate. It’s vivid, intense. It wakes me, but it’s not a dream. Mirjami has my dick in her mouth. The beautiful girl. The rush of pleasure amidst pain. The dope. I close my eyes and sigh. Then I hear Kate stirring in her sleep in the living room. It’s hard to remember what I would have done when I felt emotion, but I dig deep and try.
I twist Mirjami’s hair in my hand and pull her away from me. “No. Please.” My strength is sapped. I can muster only those two words.
She says nothing, makes her way up the bed. Her body is near mine, but not pressed against me. She puts an arm around me. It means nothing to me. I let it rest there and drift off to sleep again. When I wake, she’s gone from the bed, spoon-feeding Kate. I ask myself if it really happened. We don’t speak of it.