Milo came over with two gym bags stuffed inside a third. I helped him pack it all up except for a hundred thousand, which I kept for emergencies. It was a heavy load, and I asked him if he wanted me to help him carry it home. He understood that I needed to talk to Kate, and staggered out the door, weighted down with guns, dope and nearly half a million euros.
Kate had gone to our bedroom to be alone. She wasn’t angry anymore. She just looked wretchedly sad. I said I had some things to tell her about my meeting with Jyri and asked if we could talk. I suppose because of the way she had spoken to me, because she’d tried so hard to be kind to me and finally lost control of her emotions, she looked contrite. She needn’t have. Almost anybody would have done the same under so much pressure. She nodded and patted the bed. I propped up a couple pillows and lay down in a semi-recline.
“I’m leaving Helsinki Homicide, and so is Milo. This little black-ops unit of ours is moving to the National Bureau of Investigation.”
“Which is?” she asked.
“The NBI is a national police unit that fights the most serious organized and professional crime. It provides a lot of specialized technical services—forensics, technical intelligence, operational analyses. Assists local police forces in their more difficult cases. It offers more expert services. Financial and money laundering crime. IT crime. More difficult homicide cases and more complicated cases in general. It also takes care of international police co-operation and exchange of information, a big help to me, since I want to focus on cross-border transportation of girls forced into slavery and prostitution. You can think of it as being like your American FBI.”
“So it’s a step up for you? A promotion?”
“In a manner of speaking. It’s less public. I’m well-known, and it keeps me out of the public eye. And I’m fighting high-level organized crime, so our project fits in with the NBI mandate. Plus, they don’t have educational requirements, only areas of expertise, so Sulo can get an official job there, too.” This was before Kate hung Sulo with his nickname, Sweetness.
Kate laughed. “And his area of expertise is what?”
“Whatever we invent. The minister will rubber-stamp it.”
I didn’t say that my role was to be similar to Hoover’s uglier machinations. It appeared to me that, although during our meeting it went unsaid, the subtext was that I was to be used for heists and shakedowns, extortion and instilling fear, probably collecting dirt on perceived enemies of the establishment. I was now Jyri’s enforcer, and before I had even begun, I had to find a way to extricate myself from this situation. It occurred to me that Jyri didn’t even wish me luck with my surgery. If I died, he wouldn’t mourn my loss, just find someone else to do the job.
“Congratulations,” Kate said. “I shouldn’t have complained about the things in the closet. You were up front about what you were going to do and asked my permission. I had a chance to say no.”
Guilt renewed itself. She wanted to say no, but acquiesced because I might be dead soon, and she would deny me nothing. I squeezed her hand. “It doesn’t matter. And all this isn’t as good as it sounds. Jyri presented this operation as if we would steal from criminals out of need for funding. For the good of the public. It was a lie. We’ve been moved to the NBI in part because it’s headed by the minister of the interior, and he and Jyri have some kind of illicit partnership. Not all of the money we’ve stolen goes to funding the unit. Jyri gets a cut, the minister gets a cut, and they insist that I take a percentage as well.”
Kate’s jaw dropped. “That makes you a dirty cop.”
I nod. “Yep, it does. I said I didn’t want it. He said I had to take it because if I didn’t, I wasn’t complicit, and if I wasn’t complicit, I couldn’t be trusted.”
“You can’t do it,” Kate said.
I sighed. “You can’t imagine how disillusioned I am. I’m so fucking stupid and na?ve. Maybe I should just resign.”
“No,” she said, “not yet. Remember, you have evidence on the national chief of police that would end his career. He’s at your mercy and he knows it. He can’t force you to do anything.”