“No, thank you,” I say.
A waiter takes my drink order. I take kossu and beer.
“So,” Filippov says, “you have a proposition for me. What is it?”
I aim for middle ground, just to see if it will work. Jyri was right, I should promise him anything he wants to buy time, but if I seem soft, he’ll smell the lie.
“The murder goes unsolved,” I say. “You and Linda walk. You get the contracts you felt you were promised. We get the videos.”
The waiter brings my drinks, and a dozen raw oysters for Filippov and Linda. He takes a break from speaking to chow down, slurps an oyster, dabs his mouth with a linen napkin. “Unacceptable. My wife was brutally murdered. The culprit is Rein Saar. He has to serve a lengthy prison sentence.”
Strike one. Filippov is negotiating from a position of strength. He won’t compromise.
“Be reasonable,” I say. “You and Linda murdered your wife, but you’ll go unpunished, and the matter will be forgotten. Saar is innocent. Leave him be.”
He sticks a finger in my face. “You’re wrong. Saar is guilty. He fucked my wife for two years.” He raises his voice. “My wife! Mine! He deserves prison. He deserves worse. He’s getting off easy.”
Filippov pauses, slides another oyster down his throat. “As you pointed out last night,” he says, “my wife was a miserable slut. I can’t punish everyone who fucked my wife, but I can punish him. If he and others like him had respected my marriage and kept their hands off my wife, Iisa would still be alive, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The value of punishing Saar is symbolic to me. His incarceration is nonnegotiable.”
I have to admit, he makes an extreme but compelling argument. I look at Linda, hoping for help, but she only winks at me and chases an oyster with champagne.
The waiter brings their main courses. We halt our conversation while he sets their plates in front of them. Arvid walks in. My bewilderment mounts. The waiter leaves.
Arvid walks over to the table and stands beside Filippov.
“How did you get here?” I ask Arvid.
“By taxi. Cost me two hundred euros. Is this that Russian bastard?” he asks.
“That’s him. What are you doing here?”
He pulls a chair over from the next table and sits next to Filippov. Arvid has on a long overcoat. He shoots the sleeves and shows us the little Sauer suicide pistol that sat on the mantel over his fireplace, only now it has a silencer attached to it. He pulls his sleeve down again to hide it, and jams it against Filippov’s ribs. “As I said earlier,” Arvid says, “fixing our problems.”
Filippov blinks and licks his lips, confused. He knows something has gone wrong. I do, too, but haven’t the vaguest idea what it is.
“Old man,” Filippov says, “who the hell are you and what do you want?”
“Admit that you killed your wife,” Arvid says.
Filippov shrugs his shoulders. “Okay, I admit it.”
“Don’t move a goddamned muscle,” Arvid says.
Filippov senses that Arvid isn’t fucking around. He sits stockupright in his chair and stares straight ahead.