had a morning beer. “Continue.”
“I go to his cottage as well, to trade boats. He has a Baha Cruisers Fisherman. It’s newer, looks different from mine and is bigger and better, plus, you never know who’s taking pictures or shooting videos in passing boats. Somebody’s waving and saying ‘Hi Mom,’ and then through bad luck, they capture the serial number on the side of the boat I’m piloting, which obviously isn’t his. So I go down the coast to Saukko’s in Malinen’s boat and set up from half a kilometer or a little more, like I’m fishing. He comes out to smack golf balls and I blow him away. Even if I miss the first time, sea wind will probably muffle the noise enough that he won’t recognize the sound. I can get him.”
I finish the beer, crush the can in my hand. “Good so far.”
“Then it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to the Vuosaari Golf Club. I lined the bottom of Jyri Ivalo’s golf bag with Semtex and embedded a cell phone in a way he’ll never notice unless he empties the bag completely, and even then, he would have to look close. When I call the phone, it completes the electrical circuit and sets off the plastique. I put an expensive, long-life battery in the phone to make sure it stays charged. The ninth hole is in line of sight, so I can look for innocent bystanders and avoid accidental deaths. The club’s docks are just below it. If I have to wait, I can moor there with twenty or thirty other boats and go unnoticed, or if I time it well enough, I can just detonate it as I cruise by and kill Jyri and the minister without even slowing down. They’ll be reduced to molecules near the putting green.”
I open a second beer. He continues.
“I continue on toward Turku and Malinen’s cottage. About this time, you kill Pitkänen. We dress Malinen in the fatigues I wore and leave the stolen guns lying around. We force him through threats to his family to commit his gunshot suicide, then spread the video you just took and the manifesto I’m writing all over the Internet. Plus your skank photo collection of Ivalo and the minister, which places them at two murder scenes and casts, as they say, aspersions on their character. Then Sweetness and I sail to my summer cottage. My car will be parked there. We celebrate having destroyed all our enemies, have a good sauna, and when we feel so inclined, come back to Helsinki.”
“Then what?”
“Then, as I said, we pretend like none of it ever happened and go back to our lives. I want to go back to being a cop. Sweetness will get his education, and you do whatever the spirit moves you to do. I hope you choose to keep being a cop. I’d like to keep working with you.”
“I see a couple problems. I collected skank at the behest of the prime minister, when he wanted to placate Saukko by starting a hate rag. If you fly it as if it came from Malinen, the trail will come straight to me. Wait a couple days, then if it seems necessary to paint them black, fly the pix on the Net. The other is, I can’t drive. Kate wouldn’t take it well if I asked her to take me to Helsinki so I can gun down a SUPO captain.”
“Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that,” he says. “When we set the date, make up something to tell Kate, an excuse to take a bus to Helsinki.”
A wave of relief goes through me. If I can’t bring myself to do it, I can use the public transportation excuse to not kill Pitkänen. Or I can go, but say I couldn’t keep up with him, am too crippled up and lost the opportunity, which would likely prove true. Other than these, I can find no holes in Milo’s plan. But the best-laid plans go awry, and if there is even the smallest fuckup or hint that it was a frame-up, the investigation of this multiple murder will be long and thorough, and we, I believe with absolute certainty, will be caught.
39
We make an early visit to see Ai. Sweetness was right to recommend him. He has his shit together. He’s showered, dressed, made coffee and has pulla—sweetbread—frozen, not fresh, but hot from the oven in case we haven’t eaten yet. He sits in his throne