My sergeant in Kittila accidentally shot me before blowing his own brains out. I was trying to talk him down. When his pistol went off, the bullet passed through my open mouth, took out two back teeth, and went out through my right cheek. Bad luck. The exit wound left a ragged, puckered scar. “Like you,” I say, “I had my reasons.”
“Probably good for business. I bet it intimidates the hell out of bad guys.”
I sit down in the chair for visitors beside my desk and say nothing.
“What you went through was traumatizing,” he says. “I wanted you to have a chance to decompress, and I thought a healthy dose of therapy would be good for you before beginning a new and stressful position.”
He pulls out a cigarette. I take an ashtray from a desk drawer. We both light up. Smoking is forbidden in the station. Except for the prisoners. They can smoke in their cells.
“In the future,” I say, “trust me to look after my own emotional well-being.”
“I had the good of the team to consider, and that’s a little more important to me than hurting your feelings. Helsinki homicide employs some of the most efficient police in the world. Maybe as a group, the world’s best. A murder hasn’t gone unsolved in Helsinki since 1993. A perfect track record for going on two decades. That’s a lot of pressure. Nobody in the unit wants that perfect track record ruined, and I wasn’t about to let you come in here and fuck it up because you’re fucked up. And besides, Helsinki’s murharyhma is my pride and joy.”
Jyri has a way of getting under my skin. I change the subject. “What’s with the tux?”
He leans back in the chair and props patent-leather oxfords up on my desk. He must know it pisses me off. Big dog/little dog again. “I attended a black-tie affair,” he says. “The interior minister was there. He asked me to come here this evening and have a chat with you.”
I assume this has something to do with the way the Finnish police marketed me to the public as a hero cop after the Sufia Elmi case. “I didn’t know the higher echelons have an interest in me.”
“They don’t. You came to their attention because of your grandfather.”
Now I’m baffled. “Nice intro. Why don’t you tell me about it after you take your feet off my desk.”
He smiles at me and does it. “Bear with me. It’s a bit of a long story. You know much about Finnish-German relations in the Second World War?” Jyri asks.
“I read history books,” I say.
“Until a short time ago, this wasn’t in any history books. In September 2008, a historian named Pasi Tervomaa published his Ph. D. dissertation, ‘Einsatzkommando Finnland and Stalag 309: Secret Finnish and German Security Police Collusion in the Second World War.’
“He claims that in 1941, our security police, Valpo, and their Gestapo set up a special unit, Einsatzkommando Finnland, to destroy ideological and racial enemies on the far north of the German Eastern Front.”
“So what? Finns volunteering to fight for Germany on the Eastern Front is well-documented. The SS Freewill Nordic Battalion. SS Viking. Others. It made sense. For Finland and Germany, Soviet Russia was a common enemy. And it wasn’t just Finland. The SS took in soldiers from all over the Nordic area.”
“This is different,” Jyri says. “Germany opened a prisoner-of war camp-Stalag 309-in Salla. It’s in Russia now, but at the time it was part of northern Finland. Tervomaa claims Valpo and Einsatzkommando Finnland collaborated in the liquidation of Communists and Jews. Lined them up and shot them and buried them in mass graves. If his accusations are true, Finnish actions constitute war crimes.”
“What does this have to do with my grandfather?”
“Apparently, your mother’s father worked in Stalag 309.”
“How would you know if a guy who worked in a stalag was my grandfather?”
Jyri sighs. “Me. The interior minister. We’re plugged into the intelligence community. We learn things. We know things.”