Lucifer's Tears by James Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t intend to handle the media at all. I’ll leave it to Arto and the police PR folks.”
    “Good thinking. Media relations isn’t your strong suit. And the discussion we had last night about Arvid Lahtinen. You on that yet?”
    “I’ve been working for twenty hours straight. Of course I’m not on it yet.”
    “You can sleep when you’re dead. Get on it.” He rings off.
    I’ve always felt that Jyri is excellent at his job but a real fuckwad as a human being. Every interaction I have with him confirms it. I’ll handle both the investigation and Arvid as I see fit.
    We drop Pastor Oksanen off at his house and drive back to the police garage. I tell Milo I want him to get some sleep, ask him to look at the tape Filippov gave him, check out evidence from forensics and write the initial report in the morning.

7
    It’s two thirty P.M. I don’t have much time, but want to check on Kate. We thought her pregnancy was going well, but found out a couple weeks ago that she’s suffering from hypertension and preeclampsia. Placental abruption is a danger, and with it, a risk of maternal mortality. I could lose not only another child but Kate along with her. It scares the shit out of me.
    I find a parking space a couple blocks from our apartment on Vaasankatu and walk the rest of the distance home. The snow has stopped, the wind died down. The street is quiet. A white snowscape, lovely and hushed.
    Vaasankatu, here in the district of Kallio, is nicknamed Puukkobulevardi -Hunting Knife Boulevard. Years ago, this was a dangerous place, and it still has a bad reputation, although largely undeserved these days. The area has its bars and drunks, some Thai massage parlors, but many of them were recently shut down. Prostitution in itself isn’t a crime, but various moralistic lobbies raised a stink, so the police cited illegal residency by workers, pimping-which is a crime-whatever they could come up with, to get rid of the parlors and stop the debate. The street is fairly gentrified now, many residents are upscale professionals.
    Kate had misgivings about moving to Kallio, but it’s the only area in Helsinki that, to my mind, has a feeling of genuine community. And besides, even in this modest area, our nine-hundred-and ninety-square-foot apartment, which I have to admit is gorgeous, cost us a cool three hundred and fifty thousand euros. A similar place in another part of town could run a million and a half. As general manager of Kamp, Helsinki’s only five-star hotel, Kate earns good money, and for a cop, I make a fair wage as an inspector, but not enough for a seven-figure apartment. In the north, a million and a half would buy us a palace. Helsinki is one of the most expensive cities on the planet.
    I find Kate lying on the couch, reading a book about childrearing. I give her a kiss hello. She sits up, rubs her back. At this late stage of her pregnancy, she’s having a hard time staying comfortable. “I can’t wait to get this child out of me,” she says.
    I sit beside her, put an arm around her. She looks at me, scrutinizing. “I don’t know how you can function without sleep.”
    It’s not like I have a choice. “It doesn’t bother me much.”
    “How is your headache?” she asks.
    “It’s been worse.”
    “Your eyes wander when it’s bad,” she says, “and they’re doing it now. You need to go to the doctor again.”
    “There’s no point. The stuff she gave me makes me too dopey. I won’t take it.”
    “Then go see your brother. He’ll help you.”
    Jari is a neurologist here in Helsinki. I haven’t seen him since we moved. I guess it’s about time to pay him a visit, and anyway, Kate isn’t going to let me wriggle out of it. I hate doctors. They’ll put me through a series of tests. I don’t want to take them, just to find out they don’t know what’s wrong with me. “I’ll call Jari,” I say. “Have you given any more thought to staying home with the baby?”
    She snuggles up close, I