He forces a smile. “You want to hear all my secrets. You’re going to have to tell me yours if you want to get them. Let an old man vicariously relive his detective years through you.”
Much like when Arvid told me to call him Ukki, this raises my suspicions about his motivations, and I wonder if he’s looking for information to augment his blackmail strategy. Then I decide, if he is, why not let him? Let the truth prevail. Besides, I can use him for a sounding board. Sometimes articulating problems helps me solve them. I tell him about the Filippov murder, about its bizarre and aberrant circumstances, how in the end it’s come down to a blackmail scam, and that if I can make it go away, I’ll be put in charge of a special black-ops unit.
He nods approval. “A good story,” he says. “But what happens if you don’t recover and bury the evidence? You’ll have a lot of dirt on important people and have done nothing for them. They won’t like it. They’ll try to burn you somehow.”
I shrug. “What can they do?”
“It depends. What have you fucked up? You were involved in that school shooting and somebody died. Any way they could turn that around on you?”
In fact, they could. The realization startles me. “I beat the shit out of the school shooter just days before the attack. They could say I caused the incident, and they’d probably be right.”
“That’s how they’ll come at you then,” he says. “They’ll call you an abusive rogue cop, discredit you and kick you off the force.”
We light more cigarettes. “Any idea how I can get out of it?” I ask.
“I’ll put my detective cap on and think about it. I have to say, though, boy, that you’re fucking naive. It’s going to cost you one day.”
He’s not the first one to say it. “Your turn,” I say. “Tell me some good stories.”
His grin turns sly. “All right, boy, I’ll tell you how your great-grandpa, my dad and the former president of Finland became executioners and mass murderers together.”
Like Milo, he enjoys astonishing me, and he’s succeeded. He beams pleasure. “And under the auspices of Lord and Savior Marshal Mannerheim.”
He got me again. I’m riveted. “History records Kekkonen only executing one Red,” I say, “and if I remember correctly, he expressed remorse about it.”
“You ever been to the Mannerheim Museum?” he asks.
I’m itching for the story of our families, but he’s going to make me wait. “No.”
“When Mannerheim died, they turned his home into a memorial for the great man. I went there once. They have tiger-skin rugs on the floor, knickknacks and keepsakes he slogged home from all over the world. Like me, Mannerheim loved fine wine and spirits. I told the tour guide I wanted to see the wine cellar. This pretty little girl with big tits and a skinny waist told me it’s offlimits. I decided to fuck with her a little bit. I said, ‘I served under Mannerheim, and I’m a goddamn war hero, and I will look at the marshal’s booze and if I fucking feel like it, I’ll open a bottle and drink to the marshal’s goddamned health.”
It’s easy to picture Ukki doing it, makes me laugh.
“She got nervous and admitted to me in confidence that a few years ago, some workers were instructed to clean out the cellar. Like good Finns, they did what they were told. They pulled up a dumpster and smashed all those fine bottles of wine and cognac in it. Destroyed it all. It would be worth hundreds of thousands or millions today. Mannerheim would come out of his grave in a screaming rage if he knew.”