He doesn’t get it. His eyes radiate alarm and bewilderment.
“Bottle to lips, drink until empty,” I say.
He’s done screaming now. Frightening learning-disabled children comes easier to him than dealing with able-bodied adults. He gets the point. “I don’t want to. Don’t make me. It’th too much.”
I pull out an old Finnish proverb that teaches the virtue of patience. “Karsi karsi, kirkkaamman kruunun saat” -“Suffering suffering, makes the crown glow brighter.”
He shakes his head no.
I let go of his neck. “Did I offer you a fucking choice?”
He understands now. Drink, or I’ll keep beating him. He’s in a bad situation. The booze is his best chance for escape. He lifts the bottle, sucks it down as fast as he can. I wait thirty seconds. Alcohol poisoning starts to hit. The bottle drops from his hand and shatters on the icy sidewalk. Another ninety seconds pass. He drops to his knees and looks at me with uncertain eyes. Another minute goes by, he falls backward. Head hits frozen pavement. Scalp splits. Blood runs in a thin trickle onto the ice.
I reach under him, into his back pocket, and find his wallet. His ID reads Vesa Korhonen, age twenty-three. I put the ID card back into his wallet and throw it onto his chest, then call for a police van to cart him off to the drunk tank. I leave him there on the sidewalk, don’t wait for them to arrive. Good afternoon and good night, Vesa Korhonen, alias Legion.
9
I’m seeing a psychiatrist named Torsten Holmqvist. I didn’t choose him. The police department assigned me to him. His office is in his home, in the fashionable district of Eira, near embassy row. The house, which he told me he inherited, looks out over the sea and must be worth at least a couple million euros. We sit in big leather chairs, on opposite sides of a glass coffee table. I’ve eschewed his couch.
Torsten is a wealthy Swedish-speaking Finn, and certain mannerisms betray his roots. A casual yet confident way of sitting, an affable comportment and easy laugh that I think feigned. A yellow pullover sweater is draped over his shoulders and loosely knotted in front of his pink button-down shirt. He’s in his fifties, his thick hair combed up and back and hair-sprayed, politician-style, a dignified gray at the temples. He smokes a briar pipe. His aromatic tobacco is apple-scented.
His manner and appearance irritate me, or maybe he’s good at his job and knows how to push my buttons, and that’s why he puts me off. Either way, I’ve been in therapy before, and I didn’t like it then either, but it helped me, so I try and work with him. Besides, I promised Kate I would do this. I’m further agitated because I have a murder to investigate, need to speak to a Finnish hero-now an accused war criminal-and I can’t do either of those things while I’m sitting here.
“So,” Torsten says, “you assaulted a mentally ill person. Do you consider that a reasonable and responsible action?”
“He terrified defenseless children-disabled children-it seems entirely reasonable and responsible.”
“You beat him up and poisoned him.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“As a police officer, you know that you can’t rationally defend appointing yourself judge and jury, no matter how reprehensible you found his actions.”
“Listen,” I say. “If it was a situation involving adults, I would agree with you. But no fucking way I’m letting him get away with ranting a frightening, insane tirade at kids. They might be traumatized. Mentally ill or not, he needed to understand that his actions have consequences.”
“You don’t seem to have considered the possibility that the young man may have screamed at the children in order to seek punishment.”
He’s right. I hadn’t considered it. “I did nothing that, under the circumstances, most men wouldn’t have done.”
“I wouldn’t have,” he says. “Do you think that reflects on my manhood?”