The Lion of Justice (The Bodyguard series Book 2), page 23
“I’m an architect and an artist, not a bodyguard. My days of carrying guns and roofies around are over. I’m an honest man now, and I don’t want anyone else to lie, either.” The gun was shaking in Trankov’s hand. The Glock hadn’t been loaded—only an idiot would walk around with a loaded gun in her purse—but I couldn’t tell whether Trankov had put bullets in it or not.
“Why were you digging in my purse anyway? How dare you talk about trust!”
Trankov blushed. “I wasn’t really going through it. I was just going to drop in a surprise that you’d find later.”
“Give me the gun. The butt facing me.” I stood up slowly. In physical conflict whoever has the most strength doesn’t necessarily have the upper hand; it’s the person who has the most guts. Mike Virtue had stressed this to us time and again. Trankov had been careless. He’d shown me his soft, vulnerable belly, and now I would dig my claws and teeth into it if I had to.
“I trusted you,” Trankov said quietly, his gaze with less anger now. He shook his head. “I don’t trust people that easily, either. I did trust you, though.” When he handed me my gun, I saw that it wasn’t loaded. I placed it beside me on the bed. I saw my purse next to the restroom door; Trankov had wanted to go through it in another room. I was mad at how careless I’d been.
The room smelled of coffee, and now I saw a couple of sandwiches, cups of yogurt, and some juice on the kitchen table near the coffeemaker. Trankov made sure I never went hungry. I began to dress, and I would leave as soon as I’d had breakfast. Trankov could keep his painting.
He turned his back to me and walked into the dressing room. I rinsed the cup I’d used the day before and poured some coffee into it with a splash of milk from an unopened container I had found in the fridge. I grabbed the blueberry yogurt and an open-faced rye sandwich with cheese and shoved the bedding away from the couch so I could sit on it without getting bread crumbs everywhere.
Trankov took a while in the dressing room, and when he came back he wore a dark-purple suede suit with a matching tie and an off-white shirt. He looked like some Russian czar who had escaped a painting from the 1800s. I almost couldn’t stop myself from reaching out to him. If I really needed pretty boys like him, I’d find them in bars.
Trankov didn’t eat; he just had a cup of coffee and didn’t speak. I looked outside, where the weather had turned cold, but not cold enough for the trees and grass to be covered in frost. I wouldn’t need to worry about starting a frozen van.
When I was finished with breakfast, I washed my face and brushed my teeth. When I came back Trankov was standing in front of the painting.
“I can’t hand this over yet. It’s not finished,” he said.
“No rush. I live in a furnished apartment, and I wouldn’t have room for it anyway.”
“I suppose you don’t want to give me your phone number?” He wasn’t looking at me. He still had his eyes on the painting, his face like a grumpy little boy.
“No, I don’t. And what would you do with it anyway? You’ll always find me at Sans Nom. You can call there.” I pushed my way between him and the painting. “Yuri, don’t be so childish. Don’t take it personally if I’m carrying a gun. I always do that.”
“Even with Stahl?” he asked.
“I already told you, we need to stop talking about Stahl! I have to go now. Thanks for everything.” I kissed him on his cheeks and touched his hair. Then I was gone.
I heard nothing from Trankov for the rest of November. Syrjänen’s dreams about boating all year round didn’t come true; the weather cooled down dramatically and snow covered most of the ground by late November. I went to check out the conditions in Kopparnäs on a day off. In some places there was enough snow to ski on, and I saw some people on their kicksleds. I dragged my feet in the snow along the seashore and looked at the tracks that accompanied mine where a fox had run. There were a lot of deer tracks, and when I followed them into the forest, I saw familiar paw prints: a lynx had been after the deer. The snowbanks weren’t strong enough for me to walk over to see whether the lynx had caught its prey. I needed a pair of skis or snowshoes.
I’d brought the files David had left for me, and once again I was comparing my surroundings with the plans on the map. Syrjänen wanted to own Kopparnäs, but why would David be so interested in it? There had to be more than their connection from the Hiidenniemi case before. Maybe it had to do with Syrjänen’s new, influential business partners that Trankov had hinted at. Or perhaps it was all about that storage for the military; it was completely out of place in the middle of a recreational area. Who knows what was hiding behind the chain-link fence and the warning signs? If there had been plans for a new nuclear power plant in the seventies, they would’ve strictly investigated its environmental impact. This place couldn’t hold hazards from the Soviet-era rental times, could it? I had no opinion on nuclear power, but I also didn’t quite trust something humans had come up with. Mike Virtue had once told me over coffee that nuclear power had been a genius invention—as long as the power plants and uranium stayed in the right hands. I could see that Mike wasn’t sure who had the right hands, and I wanted to know that, too.
Three deer darted off as I returned to the path they’d made to the shore. I slipped on the cliff and hurt my ankle and slowly hobbled back to the Kestikievari inn for a hot chocolate and a sandwich. Nothing had changed since the last time I was there. I felt like an alcoholic, forcing myself to appear at her regular haunts to drink only juice. This inn was strongly connected with David, and that’s why I had to be there. I had to cauterize the memory from my mind, make the man irrelevant to me. It probably couldn’t be done with just one visit.
I didn’t realize I was covered in sweat until I was back in the van, turning the ignition. The radio played the same Bach piece that the violinist had played at the Turku book fair. By the time I reached the Hanko Road intersection, I had to pull over. My tears were blinding me, and the music slipped into my soul like medicine, and this time the tears cleansed me. Damn you, Bach. Listening to him made me suspect that there may be a god somewhere.
The Sans Nom staff had been informed that Veikko’s heart surgery had gone well. Jouni and Monika took some time off to see him at the hospital, but I couldn’t get over my fear of hospitals to see him, although Mike Virtue’s voice in my head reminded me how bodyguards couldn’t have phobias about places. I squealed back at him, I’m no longer a bodyguard. I was just a dishwasher and vegetable-peeling-machine operator. People like that were allowed to have weaknesses.
The police returned to the restaurant in early December. This time they weren’t just cops on the beat; they were from the Bureau and were investigating the death of Risto Antero Haapala. They arrived on a Thursday an hour before we opened and wanted to talk to the entire staff.
“You are not accused of anything. We just need to find out how Haapala obtained a mixture of alcohol and windshield wiper fluid that contained methanol. Do you have any idea who usually supplied him?” the officer asked.
“How should we know? Talk to his friend, Veikko Vuorinen. They bought their drinks together,” Monika said.
“Vuorinen claims he has no clue. When he and Haapala went to sleep, neither one of them was carrying any alcohol. They’d run out of beer by nine,” the older officer told us. He wore a beard and looked bored with death.
Monika looked through her planner. “So he passed away during the night between November 3 and 4. Our kitchen closed at eleven that evening, and by one we had the place cleared out and closed. Does anyone here remember anything out of the ordinary about that night?” Monika asked the staff.
Of course nobody did. Except me, who had seen a pant leg and a shoe in the security camera footage. The police hadn’t asked for the tapes, but the officers from the Bureau were more thorough. The younger officer, Chief Constable Sutinen, asked where the cameras were located. Everyone looked at me.
“I deal with the surveillance here, not that there has been much to deal with.” I told them where the cameras were and complained how I stupidly deleted events older than a week. The police were of course free to double-check. The USB stick I’d used to save the images from the evening Ripa had died was safely locked away on Yrjö Street with my gun and the items I’d found in David’s drawers.
“Do you recall seeing anything suspicious on the tapes from that night?” Sutinen asked me, and Jouni took that as permission to get back to work. He took off, trailed by curse words and the rest of the staff. Only Monika and I remained.
“I would’ve brought them to the police if I’d seen someone offering a drink to Ripa. He’d fallen over where the cameras couldn’t see him, so his death wasn’t recorded.” I acted shocked, although my mind was blinded with rage. Why weren’t the police wondering why they hadn’t found a bottle of poisoned alcohol anywhere near Ripa? Had Rytkönen just coolly watched while Ripa drank enough to kill himself and then taken the bottle with him, leaving the man to choke on his own vomit? The pant leg and the shoe weren’t enough evidence against a police officer of his status, and besides, I couldn’t think of a reason why Rytkönen would’ve wanted Ripa dead. That’s what his colleagues would wonder, too, so I kept my mouth shut and didn’t volunteer to help the police. The bearded man was smart enough to ask whether any of us had found the bottle, and my answer in the negative wasn’t a lie.
The police visit gave me another excuse to chat with the staff about Ripa’s death, but no one had any information. Veikko and Ripa had been part of the restaurant, acting as a sort of a human compost, helping with our leftovers, and now we grieved for them. Jouni guessed that come spring, the newspaper-recycling container would host new tenants. I wondered what would be the best time to reveal to Rytkönen that I knew he was a killer. I decided to remain calm; this information could be valuable one day. I copied the security camera tape onto two more USB sticks and hid them in different locations in our apartment. Monika’s cousin was about to come back home, and I needed to find another place to stay. If I had a car, I could move back to Torbacka, if that cabin was available. I’d be close enough to Kopparnäs, the area Usko Syrjänen coveted.
A tabloid headline caught my eye on my way to work the next day: “Usko Syrjänen and Beautiful Julia: Engaged!” I pulled the paper from the display and leafed through it. Syrjänen smiled sweetly in the image, whereas Julia pouted. The paper wrote that Julia Gerbolt, twenty-eight, had been married once before. Syrjänen had left his current wife for Julia, although he wasn’t technically divorced yet. Now Syrjänen’s wife was demanding half of his fortune. No wonder he was renting at Långvik. The story didn’t mention anything else about Syrjänen’s business background except that he owned construction and shopping-center companies that had been expanding rapidly and that he was a good friend to many important politicians. The story mentioned how Syrjänen had become friends with a slightly shady Russian businessman Boris Vasiliev, who had died when Syrjänen’s boat exploded.
Julia Gerbolt was from Moscow and had been a model in Russia. Her first husband was over thirty years older, an oil kingpin who had died of a heart attack the year before. Julia and Syrjänen had met in St. Petersburg at a party hosted by mutual friends. The future Mrs. Syrjänen seemed to be one of those people who could sniff out money. I got a whiff of blood from the money she had inherited from her rich, dead husband. I didn’t know whether I’d be able to say no if Syrjänen offered me a job as Julia’s bodyguard. That would be my shot at the inner circle, where David had once been.
On the Friday before Independence Day, I was just about to head out to the tram stop when a pile of envelopes fell through the mail slot. One of the envelopes was for me. I’d already gotten a few Christmas cards from former classmates across the Atlantic, thanks to the secured e-mail list. This envelope had a stamp: “Forwarded Mail.” Inside was another envelope. I opened it to reveal a Christmas card. It wasn’t just an ordinary card, either; it depicted two lynx curled together. I’d seen these cards in Huelva, Spain. My name had been marked on the envelope under “c/o Mrs. Voutilainen.” The sender was someone named A. Lusis. There was no writing on the card, but the envelope contained a piece of paper folded in half twice.
Merry Christmas, Hilja my dear. I knew I could count on you to secure the contents of the locked drawer. Have you already figured out the meaning of that ring? I had it made for you and would have slipped it on your finger, but I had to escape. I trusted you would take care of yourself, and I was right. Remember to keep on taking care of yourself and the contents of the drawer.
I still cannot tell you where I am. It’s too risky, and I don’t want you in danger because of me. I’ll return when I can, if I can. I wanted you to know that I’m innocent. Things just didn’t go as I had planned. I couldn’t do anything else. I don’t expect you to wait for me, but I still hope for it. I pray for it. I don’t care if you have others in your life.
There was no signature, but David’s wobbly handwriting was easy to recognize, and the name Lusis referred to him, of course.
I was boiling inside. Who did Stahl think he was? Did he really think he could just waltz back into my life whenever it suited him, then disappear again for who knows how long? I was no Penelope who would sit around waiting for her man and decline all others. I wanted to call Trankov right then and set up a date. Instead, when I picked up the phone, I called Teppo Laitio. I had to talk to someone. No, not talk. Scream. It was snowing hard outside. The snow that had fallen in November had never melted, and old ladies slipped their way down Yrjö Street below.
“What do you know, Ilveskero! To what do I owe this pleasure?” Laitio said.
“Are you at home or at the headquarters in Jokiniemi? Is Rytkönen around?” I asked.
“Thank heavens, no. I’m in my office on Urheilu Street.”
“And you’re sure your phone isn’t bugged? We need to meet. I just received a card from Stahl, and I think Rytkönen poisoned a homeless alcoholic who had been living behind Sans Nom.”
By the sound of it, Laitio’s cigar had dropped out of his mouth. I tried to recall all the things I hadn’t shared with him, and I could imagine the fire and brimstone he’d pour on my head once I told him I had met Rytkönen while disguised as Reiska. Laitio had always been a bit unsettled by him. But I could no longer keep secrets from Laitio. I may have been a local champion in lying, but I didn’t have a chance with the pros, and I’d never have a chance to represent Finland internationally. Laitio was at least a judge on the national level.
“What are you talking about? Who did Rytkönen murder and where was the card from?”
I hadn’t even thought about looking at the stamp. The stamp was Lithuanian, and the envelope was postmarked in Kaunas. This supported Trankov’s story about Gintare’s child. David was trying to find the child that had been left at a Lithuanian orphanage.
“It was stamped in Kaunas on November 23. It was first sent to Mrs. Voutilainen on Untamo Street, because David knew the card would reach me eventually, even if he didn’t know where I was at the moment.” My voice had begun to waver, and I could’ve used a cigar or a shot of tequila.
“Get your butt over here then. I have something to tell you about my new best friend Rytkönen, too. I believe he’s capable of anything—even murder,” Laitio said.
“I can’t come now. I have to work, but I’ll try to leave before closing. Could I come after ten?”
“The missus has a bridge gathering. I could claim I have diarrhea to get out of it, but then she’ll sulk for weeks.”
We arranged to meet at his place the following morning, and I’d find someone to sub for me at work. Before leaving I read David’s message over and over. I didn’t understand why he was talking about just one locked drawer. He should’ve remembered there were two, and I had broken both. Who had gone in to check that the drawers had been broken into when the police hadn’t even noticed it at first?
Another thought came to mind. Why did David mention just the ring but nothing about the kaleidoscope or the USB stick? Maybe it was a cover in case the letter ended up in the wrong hands. I now regretted having been so careless when I’d opened it without inspecting the envelope well. Someone could have steamed the envelope open before me.
I snorted. Was I really going to believe that David had enemies among the Lithuanian and Finnish mail carriers? When it came to David, I shouldn’t have been surprised about anything anymore. He’d made his way to Finland undetected last March like a lynx to his hiding place, and reports about someone creeping around Sans Nom in the fall seemed to indicate suspicion that David was in Finland with me. I suddenly recalled the shadowlike figure on the seashore when I had visited Yuri at the studio the first time. That couldn’t have been David. Then again, it would’ve served him right to see me make love to Yuri Trankov and fall asleep next to him. Served him damned right.
I almost broke the peeler when I accidentally threw in a spoon, and I also managed to spill tomato soup on one of our regulars. I was angry at myself, letting David Stahl have such an effect on me. I could see his light-blue eyes gazing at me as if he were standing right there.
“Screw you, David Stahl. I don’t care about you one bit,” I whispered when I did my routine check of the security cameras. All I saw was an empty field of snow. I had lost my status as local lying champion when I couldn’t even fool myself anymore.
21
Only when I was sitting back in the tram did I wonder if I was a complete moron. Stahl was wanted for Dolfini’s murder, I’d been hiding information from the Helsinki Bureau officers, and Laitio was their colleague. He was surely obliged to relay the information about this fugitive who had been in Kaunas a couple of weeks earlier, or else he was guilty of misconduct. Why did I feel like someone had to protect David? He should be caught, that bastard.
