The Bodyguard (8 page)

When I was twelve, Uncle Jari met Kirsi on one of his construction gigs. She’d been providing meals for the men and had been so interested in my uncle that she’d even come to Hevonpersiinsaari for a visit. I gave her exactly one glance and took off in my rowboat, and didn’t return until her gray Lada was gone from our yard. That was the last we saw of or mentioned her, but about six months later, we got a postcard from the Canary Islands. It was from Kirsi and some guy named Jomppe; they were on their honeymoon. Uncle studied the card for a moment before throwing it in the fire. As far as I knew, he hadn’t dated anyone even after I moved out.

I ate an apple and decided to take advantage of the cloudy, dry morning, and went for a run. I spent the time thinking about possible combinations for the lock. I only had company when a male elk with large antlers was startled near the cliffs—he ran off quicker than I ever could have. After the run I went back to check on the deer carcass. The lynx had had a feast; it had eaten all the best parts. Now it was lying somewhere in a hole waiting for the darkness, when it could continue eating. It might even go back a fourth time, but after that the meat would get too old and the lynx would leave it to the birds, ants, and flies.

After a substantial breakfast, I turned on all my phone lines. The prepaid one displayed two voice mails: one from Cecilia Nuutinen-Kekki all the way from Hong Kong, the other from Chief Constable Laitio. I didn’t feel I needed to get back to either one of them—instead, I began to work on the safe. Anita had originally given it to me so that I’d put it in my own safety deposit box at the bank, but I had brought it here to the cabin. Anita hadn’t known about the cabin, and she hadn’t needed to. I tried all the new combinations I had come up with during my run, but still nothing worked. The safe’s gray, dented steel reflected back a hideous image of my face, as if to mock me. I was pissed off and when I saw Laitio calling me again, I figured I might as well answer—I was already in the proper mood for it.

“So, where’s Ilveskero been hiding? My boys went to your place to bring you in for questioning, but they couldn’t even get a whiff of you.

“I’m at my girlfriend’s. I thought Anita Nuutinen’s case was closed.”

“We found some interesting contacts in her phone records. Apparently she’d been in tough competition over some shore properties near Kotka with her former business partner, Valentin Paskevich. Did you just forget to mention this to me?”

It was better to stay quiet now. Maybe Laitio would tell me how far the police had gotten in finding Paskevich.

“He’s a former KGB agent. You know what that means, don’t you?” Laitio continued. “Or were you in on this plan? Did Paskevich pay you? He and Nuutinen had both made offers on the same property in Kotka. Well played, Hilja-fucking-bodyguard. Did Paskevich give you a new passport? Because if he did, don’t worry—we’ll still find you.”

“I don’t need to listen to your threats. Good—”

“Don’t hang up just yet, Ilveskero. Who chose that name for you, anyway? Don’t think I don’t the reason it was changed. Wouldn’t it make sense for you to cooperate with the police?”

“I don’t think my childhood has anything to do with this case.” I couldn’t wait to get rid of Laitio and attack the safe, so I threw him a bone, as if he were a lynx starving behind the bars in a zoo. “Paskevich was not just a former KGB officer, he was also a
silovik
. I hope you at least know what that means.”

“And you decided not to tell me that before? Where does this girlfriend of yours live? We should meet. Shall I go to Jokiniemi or do you want to come to my place on Urheilu Street?”

I hung up without a response, removed the prepaid SIM card, and inserted another brand-new one. Why was Laitio still on this murder case? Had he gotten orders from the home secretary?

Anita and I had gone to Kotka, on the Gulf of Finland coast, some weeks before. This old lady, Julinin, who Anita had been hounding for months, had finally passed on at the ripe old age of a hundred and three. Apparently she’d kept her wits about her until the end, leaving in trust a seventy-four-acre plot with about a mile of oceanfront property, which would benefit her family for generations. But they wanted to sell it. Anita knew she’d have no problem in finding a buyer, so she’d made an offer. Before we left for Moscow, she’d mentioned something about a pre-agreement.

So, Paskevich had killed two enormous birds with one stone: he’d paid back Anita for duping him and managed to get rid of his competition in Kotka. Laitio seemed almost pleasant to me, now that he’d revealed all this information, but I doubted he’d done it without an ulterior motive. The Moscow militia had stopped looking into the murder, but Laitio wasn’t about to quit. He seemed to be searching for more evidence that would warrant reopening the case. What would happen to me then? If Laitio found reasonable cause to search my home, I would have to show them my gun safe, where I still kept Anita’s scarf. Why hadn’t I burned it already?

I spent the evening messing with Anita’s safe, but my code-breaking skills were severely lacking—by ten p.m. I was beating the thing with a crowbar so hard that the nearby cliffs echoed. The door hadn’t budged. Worst-case scenario, I had managed to damage the lock so badly that even if I knew the combination, it would no longer open. As a last, angry resort I tossed the small safe into the fireplace, but quickly retrieved it when the plastic in the lock began to melt.

I tried to sleep for a couple of hours, but woke up at around five a.m. Someone was moving outside the cabin. I peered out to see if a pair of gleaming eyes would betray a lynx in the darkness, but all I could see was pitch black. When I stepped outside to the porch I could only hear the steady rhythm of the ocean from a few hundred yards away. I put on my rain gear and inhaled a cup of coffee, then immediately brushed my teeth—I can’t stand the aftertaste of coffee. I set out into the darkness. Although I wore my headlamp, I didn’t want to turn it on just yet. The wind was coming from the southeast, so I could approach the deer carcass without any animals smelling me.

Something was moving in the forest near the carcass. I lowered myself down slowly behind a rock, until I was hard against it and motionless. It was almost daybreak now.

The mass near the carcass was certainly not an elk. It was moving too carefully, placing its feet between mounds of moss, doing its best not to step on any large branches, which would make too much noise. It was too large to be a lynx; I could see branches moving about six feet off the ground. Although a lynx could climb a tree, it wouldn’t hop from one tree to another. I held my breath when the figure stepped out onto the road.

It was a man, about six foot five, with a shaved head. His camo pants, jacket, and boots reminded me of a soldier. The sun was climbing higher now behind the cliff, just as the man appeared in my sights. I rose slightly to see his face in the sunlight, and I immediately knew who he was and in whose private army he was serving.

I’d seen him twice at Chez Monique, when Anita didn’t need protection yet, when she was still Paskevich’s sweetheart. He never sat at the Paskevich table—they wouldn’t allow bodyguards to join them—but instead, he’s positioned himself a few tables away, always on the lookout for something. It had been clear he was Paskevich’s bodyguard. I had asked a waiter to give me his name from the credit card he’d use to pay his bill, just in case I’d need the information someday. I didn’t think that really was his name, but I still remembered it. The man who had just moved his revolver from his belt to the holster under his arm was David Stahl.

8

Despite my rain gear, I felt moisture seep into my skin through my clothes. Or maybe I was sweating. What the hell was this Paskevich minion doing near my cabin? Where had I made a mistake? Had they bugged me or my phone? I wished I’d brought a gun to the forest. Just one shot and David Stahl would have been history. I could use the wheelbarrow at the cabin to cart his body to the rowboat and in the dead of night drop it in the middle of the lake. He wouldn’t be found until spring, if then.

But I didn’t have a gun on me, or any real desire to start murdering people, either, although I’d do my best to defend myself. Stahl was now wiping his bald head and put on a small cap with a brim that hid his face. Had he been wearing it a moment ago, I would not have recognized him.

Stahl looked around, as if planning his next move. Then he started walking along the road toward my cabin. I had forgotten to turn on the burglar alarm when I left, but I did lock the door. The sauna was always unlocked, but there was nothing inside that would reveal my identity to anyone.

After waiting a few minutes I started to follow him, not on the road but in the forest. I hoped he wouldn’t turn around and see me. After a bend in the road, I climbed a cliff, which gave me an aerial view of the cabin. As soon as I had signed the rental agreement, I’d figured out all of the best observation spots near the cabin; now I was trying to reach the pile of rocks that I knew would hide me but not my view of the building.

I had to tread carefully to avoid stepping on branches that could crack and stones that might roll; I hoped that any sounds I made could be attributed to wild animals. I had no idea how comfortable Stahl was in the forest, how well he knew his way around. By the time I got to my hiding place, I saw that he was standing in the yard. He walked around the cabin but didn’t step on the porch. After a moment’s hesitation, he started walking back on the road toward the campground.

It was broad daylight by the time I dared to get up from my rocky hideout—it took me a while to stretch my limbs so they’d work again. Stahl could have still been waiting for me around the corner, so I didn’t walk straight to the cabin, but instead I went back to where I had first spotted him. I saw his boot tracks and began to follow them. They disappeared in thinner sand, but would surely appear again. It was as if Stahl was communicating with me, telling me I should follow him.

His steps led from Talludden Road to the boat docks. The same steps were visible from the opposite direction, too. When I got to the muddy parking lot, his boot prints showed up clearly, along with the spot where he had parked his car. He’d headed north from the parking lot, but as soon as the car reached the gravel road, the tracks mixed with those of other cars. Following them would be useless.

I walked back to the cabin for a hot shower and an omelette. There wasn’t too much left in the pantry, so I would have to go to the Degerby Deli to buy some food. I oiled my gun and left it in my coat pocket, near the door. I wouldn’t leave the cabin without it, not even for a quick stop at the Deli.

Before going out I did one more search for any possible tracking devices on my body or inside my cell phone, but I came up empty. It was a good idea to get rid of the cell phone; I decided to dump it when I met with Helena Lehmusvuo. I made a few attempts to open the safe again. It was a pleasant if boring way to pass the time, and after a sudden rainstorm was over, I put the gun in my underarm holster, hopped on my bike, and started pedaling toward Degerby village.

Kisu, a household name in the Finnish rock scene since the ’70s, had owned the village store for a few years, and on my first visit to the Deli, I hadn’t believed my eyes when I saw him behind the counter, selling sausages and beer. Today, people were sitting at tables outside despite the weather. The tabloids informed me that the Estonian president, Ilves, was extremely concerned about how Estonia’s large neighbor was conducting business in Georgia. I picked up both the Finnish and Swedish newspapers, as well as eggs, cheese, tomatoes, and some milk for my coffee. In the bread aisle, I did a double take: had I started seeing lynx everywhere, or was there really a lynx staring back at me from the rye bread packaging? Kisu noticed me grabbing the bread.

“Pretty cool, huh? Better buy it now while you can—it’s a seasonal product.”

Eating a lynx felt like cannibalism to me, but I assured myself that this was just a specialty bread from a local bakery, and that there had to be a reason why this particular bread had ended up in my hands. If I waited patiently, I would find out the reason later. I added two loaves of the lynx bread, a few dark lagers, and a couple of chocolate bars to my shopping cart. After paying for my groceries, I went outside to eavesdrop on the locals while I sipped hot cocoa, but all they talked about was the local elections, which were coming up in the fall.

I had just reached the corner of the petting zoo when a car driving by came to an abrupt halt right next to me. The driver rolled down his window and raindrops dotted his bald head. A familiar face turned toward me.

“Hi there. Do you know where the Kopparnäs campground is?” asked David Stahl in Swedish. I felt the weight of the gun under my arm.

“You took a wrong turn,” I replied, also in Swedish. “Turn around and drive back to Hangontie, toward Helsinki. The first intersection you see is for Kopparnäs—there’s an unmanned gas station on the other side of the road.”

Mike Virtue would have been proud of me. My voice wasn’t shaking. I looked at Stahl as if I were one of the locals, curious about a complete stranger. His car was dark gray, a small Mercedes with Finnish plates. There were no markings from a rental agency. I memorized the license plate number.

“Thank you. I must’ve not paid enough attention to the map. I hear there are some good mushroom hunting grounds there.” With that, Stahl turned his car around in the nearest driveway and gave me a wave as he drove away.

The shaking began only after I was back at the cabin. What kind of a game was this Stahl playing? Or was he truly so thick that he’d think I wouldn’t remember him? Then again, I had never sat at the tables at Monika’s restaurant; instead, I’d kept an eye on Anita and Paskevich through the kitchen surveillance monitors. So Stahl wouldn’t have known that I’d seen him before. That was to my advantage.

I cracked open a beer and tore open the pack of lynx bread I’d bought. It had been sliced in two: the top of the bread had an image of a lynx face, while the bottom part was shaped to look like the back of a lynx head. I decided to eat the bottom part first, breaking off a piece and inserting it carefully into my mouth, like a communion wafer. Thy body and blood shall strengthen me in battles against my enemies. Even the beer was an appropriate shade of ruby red.

The phone rang after I’d finished my snack. It was Cecilia Nuutinen-Kekki, Anita’s daughter. I picked it up, even though I knew our conversation would put me in an even worse mood. We had never actually met—I had only seen pictures of this thirty-year-old woman who looked like her mother and wore well-tailored clothes, but I knew the talk wouldn’t be pleasant. Cecilia introduced herself bluntly.

“The Finnish police called me a few days ago, telling me that Mom had died in Moscow. It has taken me days to get ahold of you. Weren’t you her bodyguard? What happened over there?”

“I don’t know much more than you do. I wasn’t working for her anymore.” Cecilia tried to interrupt me, but I continued. “The police say she was found near the Frunzenskaya subway station.”

“Well, I know that, but why?” She was getting agitated. “Who did it?”

“Didn’t the police tell you? Some drunkard, who then went ahead and drank himself to death with the money he stole from Anita.”

“That’s bullshit! Mom’s ex-boyfriend arranged it all, didn’t he? That’s why she had hired you. And what do you mean you weren’t working for her anymore?”

“Exactly that. I resigned before she died.”

“And she was killed right after you resigned. That doesn’t sound right. I’ll be in Finland next week to deal with Mom’s estate. Can we meet?”

If I played my cards right, Cecilia Nuutinen-Kekki would grant me access to the treasures hidden in the safety deposit box. This was an opportunity I couldn’t miss. Since it looked like my cabin wasn’t that safe anymore, I might as well go back to Helsinki now, where I could put Riikka, Jenni, and the lovely Mrs. Voutilainen in danger. Great idea.

I spent the rest of the day messing around with the safe without any luck. The rain was coming down hard, so I was happy to work indoors. Before nightfall I paid a visit to the deer carcass and discovered that it was now missing a hind leg. The lynx would probably not return anymore because the meat had started to smell.

My phone rang around seven p.m. and I answered, although I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello, Hilja,” said a male voice, but then went silent. I had to wait for twenty seconds for the voice to start again. “This is Keijo Kurkimäki—I mean, formerly Suurluoto. How are you?”

I paused for a moment and then blurted, “I’ve told you a hundred times, I don’t want anything to do with you!”

“Hilja, let me explain—”

I hung up. My heart was beating fast and my mouth was dry; the powdered soup I’d made for lunch was threatening to come back up. I definitely needed to change all my phone numbers. Keijo Kurkimäki had tried to reach me over the years, but none of our calls had lasted more than a minute. After his first call, he’d left me alone for two years, but after that the calls came every six months.

I hated very few people in this world, but Keijo Kurkimäki was one of them. Most of the time, luckily, I forgot that he even existed, and I didn’t remember what he sounded like. I had no idea what he looked like now, either, but most likely he’d be an ugly beast with burning eyes. That’s how I remembered him, and that memory had stuck with me, despite the hypnosis therapy I’d tried in New York.

Sleep wouldn’t come that night, not even after downing the rest of the tequila. I lay awake, staring into the darkness with my gun by my side. I didn’t know whether Keijo Kurkimäki had been let loose. Had the president granted him a pardon from his lifetime in prison? I hoped not.

It was bad enough that Kurkimäki had found out my current name. I had no idea how he’d done that, as he should not have had access to that information. And now David Stahl knew where I was staying in Torbacka. I suddenly felt insecure; even stroking the metallic sheen of the gun didn’t make me feel better. I was trapped like Frida’s mother, who men had hunted and slaughtered mercilessly. Why hadn’t Stahl just shot me on the road when we met? Did he want to play with me like a cat with its prey?

I finally gave up trying to sleep and got out of bed. I left all the lights turned off and stared into the drizzly darkness outside. They were all waiting for me outside the cabin: Paskevich, Stahl, Laitio, and Keijo Kurkimäki. I made sure the door was still locked and all the windows were latched. I usually slept in the small main room of the cabin, but now I climbed up to the loft, placing pots and pans behind me on the stairs. They’d wake me up if anyone disturbed them.

When I awoke it was already past noon, and the weather wasn’t letting up. The misty humidity made it hard to see. I was hungry and definitely tired of eating eggs. I finished my seltzer and then quickly stuffed myself with a couple of slices of bread before I hopped on my bike to get some lunch at the Kopparnäs Inn. I didn’t feel like taking the longer way through Hanko Road, and dragging my bike through the forest didn’t seem like such a good idea, so I decided to take the ten-minute route along the Torbacka shore to Kopparnäs. Whoever owned the shore property had tried to block the service road from car and foot traffic, but when no one was there, everyone just walked across the property. At least that’s what my neighbors had told me. On the shore I stopped for a moment to look at a flock of cranes splitting the sky with their flight from west to east. A smaller group broke away from the flock, honked for a while as an independent unit, and then rejoined the main group, as if they were in an air ballet.

The Kopparnäs Inn could have been used as a setting for some of the more eclectic Kaurismäki movies. I would have loved to see Mike Virtue and a few others from my New York days in the bright-green hall with the walls covered in multicolored paintings, right there in the middle of the woods. I ordered some herring fillets, mashed potatoes, and a lager. The fillets arrived with a side of pickles and pickled beets. I was definitely in Finland.

The meal and the beginning of the bike ride back gave me a second wind. I had found a mushroom knife in my jacket pocket, and when I happened to see a broken orange plastic bucket someone had tossed to the side of the road, I had all I needed to check out the Kopparnäs mushroom situation. I biked toward the former campgrounds for employees at Fortum, the energy company. About a third of a mile before the campgrounds, I got off the bike and walked into the forest. Good thing I had worn my hiking boots instead of sneakers; the moss was slippery and the rocky cliffs were slick after the rain.

I found a lot of yellow foot and gypsy mushrooms, which prompted me to walk over the cliffs toward the shore, where I found even more gypsy mushrooms. Their purple- and chamois-colored caps had a strange, ancient look about them. Had I not been familiar with this variety, I would have left them there; they looked too much like poisonous mushrooms.

The broken bucket was a chore to carry around, so I snapped off a few willow branches and sat down on a tree stump to make a new handle. The branches were wet and twisted easily. Uncle Jari had been handy at makeshift devices. On one trip to the forest, he’d shown me how to make a cup out of tree bark, and the brook water I had from it tasted better than any other water I’d ever had.