“No people, but I loved a cat, named Katt.” I laugh aloud at the maudlin idea of it. “The dumb bastard choked to death on a rubber band.”
He appears thoughtful, fills his pipe again and lights it. “May I offer a conjecture?” he asks.
“Be my guest.”
“Your father beat you when you were a child, but you say you bear him no ill will. Yet you have little contact with your immediate family. Is it possible that you don’t see them now, because you were the youngest, and none of them did anything to protect you from your father?”
“They were afraid of him, too.”
“Failure to protect is a form of betrayal. Your sister died. She left you. Another form of betrayal. Your ex-wife betrayed you in the literal sense and abandoned you. Even Katt died and left you. Your Ukki has turned out to have been a war criminal and this tarnishes your image of him. A betrayal. Is it possible that you’re overprotective of Kate because she’s the only person in your life who has loved you without betrayal, and that, deep down, you fear that if you lose her, you’ll never know love again?”
“I have to think about it,” I say.
“You told me that during the Sufia Elmi investigation you felt that a suspect threatened Kate. You developed symptoms similar to a heart attack, pulled your car to the side of the road, put a gun to his head and threatened to kill him.”
“I’m not proud of it.”
“That’s immaterial. The point is that your symptoms and responses are consistent with those of severe panic attacks. This lends credence to my suggestion.”
He’s right.
He leans forward. “Has it occurred to you that Katt and Kate are almost the same name? A curious coincidence.”
I’ve had enough, can’t take such ridiculous Freudian bullshit, and resist the urge to mock him. “Let’s call it a day,” I say.
Torsten is professional and means well, but I doubt I’ll see him again. I realize that if I’m ever really going to open up to anyone, it can only be Kate.
37
The snow, already almost waist-high, pours down in a torrent. Lucifer doesn’t relent. Dante states that the devil resides in the ninth circle of hell, trapped in the ice like the rest of us, and I feel that he’s here, watching over us with approval. Except for the fact that the extreme cold makes my bad knee useless, I couldn’t care less. Let the snow fly.
I find Jyri Ivalo shivering on the stoop of Rein Saar’s apartment building. We nod greeting but don’t speak. We take the lift to the fourth floor. I break the crime-scene tape and unlock the door. We step inside.
“Look familiar?” I ask.
Jyri’s face sags. He fumbles with the buttons on his overcoat, but trembles so hard that he can’t open them. He’s experiencing deja vu and horror. I wait and let the truth sink in. The meanings of the veiled cryptic messages in my conversations with Filippov and Bettie Page Linda are now clear to me. They have no fear of conviction because they’ve framed Jyri for Iisa’s murder. If Rein Saar doesn’t go to prison, Jyri will take his place. He’ll never let the investigation look in their direction. Who better to protect them than the national chief of police?
Jyri wanders into the bedroom, looks around in disbelief, sits on the bloodstained bed. “Why is this happening to me?” he asks.
“Describe-exactly-what happened when you came here with Linda,” I say.
He pulls it together enough to answer. “I told you I was drunk, it’s all a bit blurry. But it happened here, in this room.”
I stand over him. “I said exactly.”
“We came into this bedroom and she wasted no time. She stripped her clothes off except for black stockings, and told me to take my clothes off. She had a dildo, as you thought, and took it out of the closet. She sucked me off and used it to masturbate.” He averts his eyes. “Then she used it on me.”