DEAD CINCH

BY TUOMAS LIUS

Central Train Station

Translated by Douglas Robinson

I

I hate Helsinki. I hate the piss-drenched cobblestone streets, and those fucking tweens that hawk their yellow gobs of spit on every disgusting inch of space around stores, bus stops, and train stations. I hate that shit-for-brains look-how-important-I-am rushing from place to place on buses, trams, and metro trains, and god how I hate those swaggering self-centered pricks who are always putting some fucking bar in Sörnäinen up on a pedestal, or going on and on about how only an asshole would ever say Hesa for Helsinki instead of stadi. These jerkoffs think they live in some kinda fucking metropolis even though you could throw a rock from here and hit one of the five million people who live in St. Petersburg, which is really what this half-chewed cough drop some truck driver spat on the map would so dearly love to be . . . Yeah, okay, fine,” he added after a pause, “not everybody who lives here’s a prick. The worst loudmouths are the ones who moved here from somewhere else and became born-again Helsinkians. Those dumbasses have the gall to shoot their mouths off about somebody else’s dialect or whatever even though they were scraping cowshit off the soles of their rubber boots like a month ago.”

His rant was followed by silence. Probably some of those who had been listening to it had dissenting opinions, but the speaker’s views were not open for discussion or comment. None of those present were there to challenge other folks’ opinions or views anyway. Each of them had his or her own pain, about which he or she was waiting to speak without challenge from others—with only the warmest support and open-minded acceptance.

Jari-Pekka Laukia took a deep breath and let his eyes rove over the faces in the group. “I have never felt so miserable. My wife claims that we live in a nice neighborhood, but the neighbors all treat each other like lepers. I’m not saying we should be hugging everybody we meet on the street, but wouldn’t it be nice if every now and then a guy could feel welcomed by the assholes up in the VIP stands?”

Laukia stared off into the distance for a moment. “I know I shouldn’t point fingers at others,” he whispered, in a voice that broke with every word. “I know that I should just talk about my drinking, and not harangue you with the same problem every fucking week . . .”

The ponytailed guy sitting on Laukia’s right touched him on the shoulder and nodded. “Let ’er rip,” he said. “Whatever you need to say, man.”

Laukia’s face didn’t change. His breathing rasped as if he had a piece of paper caught in his throat and the air blowing past was flapping it around. “I just can’t get past the thought that it’s all my old lady’s fault,” he whispered finally. As he heard the words coming out of his mouth, he gave a sad little laugh and glanced around at the others with an almost imperceptible look of apology in his eyes. “But no. I made that bed, I have to lie in it. You know what they say, there are no evil women, just spineless men.” Laukia cleared his throat with a quick little harrumph and focused his gaze on the man who had given him the floor. “I’m J.P. and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi, J.P.” The response came in unison as from a chamber choir.

Laukia nodded and said the words that would end his testimony: “I haven’t taken a drink in three weeks.”

Although confession was an integral part of AA meeting discourse, the applause that followed sounded sincere and deserved. For whatever the words preceding the confession were, whatever they dealt with, every person present knew that they came from the heart.

Laukia walked back over and took his seat again, fished his pack of nicotine gum out of his pocket, and slipped two mint-flavored pillows into his mouth. Then his eyes landed on a guy sitting across the room, against the wall. The man didn’t turn away when their eyes met; he smiled and gave an encouraging nod.

Laukia responded to this stranger’s gesture with a touch of embarrassment. He was nearsighted, couldn’t see the faces on the other side of the circle clearly, but he was certain he’d never met this man before. Laukia turned to watch the next speaker, but felt the stranger still staring at him. He leaned just a bit to his left, into his nearest neighbor’s space. The man kept staring. He was wearing a flannel shirt and corduroys.

“Who’s that guy over by the door?” Laukia whispered.

The man gave Laukia an amused look, as if about to remind him what the second A in AA stood for.

“I mean, have you seen him here before?” Laukia hissed, looking back across the room. The stranger was now intently focused on the group leader’s speech—or at least pretending to be.

“No. Why?” the man whispered back.

“Just wondering,” Laukia whispered one last time, and straightened his back.

* * *

The meeting ended at seven thirty. The drizzle that had started coming down earlier in the evening was now being whipped around by a stiff wind into a minor storm. Laukia walked up the stone steps from the apartment building’s basement into the courtyard.

He raised the collar on his jacket and jammed his fists deep into his pockets. He hadn’t sat behind the wheel of a car in a year and a half, ever since his wife had managed to get his license revoked. Laukia strode across the courtyard, stepped out into the intersection of Bulevardi and Annankatu, and checked his watch. The next local train to Kirkkonummi was leaving in seven minutes. Two decades and fifteen kilos ago he might have made it by a hair. In his current state, at age fifty-two, after two knee operations, he decided to wait for the one leaving in half an hour. And what hurry was he in to get home anyway? No more tonight than any other night.

Laukia cut through Ruttopuisto—Plague Park—toward Mannerheimintie, the main drag. The old church park made memories from twenty years ago spring into full-blooded life. Memories that were among the very few happy ones that Laukia had of Helsinki. The park had been the favorite place for him and his only daughter, Kaisa, to go when she was still preschool age. Jari-Pekka and Kaisa had had countless picnics there.

Even then he’d sensed the depths into which an unhappy marriage was dragging him, and those fleeting moments when he could just listen to his little daughter laughing were the pillars on which he built the crumbling ruins of his life.

The last time father and daughter had sat in Plague Park—well, the last time so far—was when Kaisa graduated from high school. A few months after that day the Laukias got their first postcard from Berlin, where their daughter had moved.

The main Helsinki train station was less than a kilometer away. As he walked toward it, Laukia kept his eyes on the tips of his shoes. Whenever he lifted his gaze to the faces moving toward him, he imagined them judging him, criticizing him—as if his testimony had blared out over the streets of the city through loudspeakers. And so Laukia felt like even more of a loser tonight than he usually did when returning from an AA meeting. It was like he was a pariah, an outcast, someone who had betrayed his community and would be driven onto the rooftops by angry villagers with torches and pitchforks. It was no effort at all to see in his mind’s eye the lynch mob led by his wife, or especially his father-in-law: There goes the lousy bum! To which some friend from the city would add: The drunk’s ducking for the station! Grab him!

* * *

Laukia slouched into the train station building through the main entrance, the one guarded by the statues of the lantern bearers. The hall was only quiet at random times of the day, since alongside the main entrance there were not only ticket windows and doors out onto the platforms but the gateway down into the Station Square metro station.

Now, too, the hall was filled with sounds and smells the likes of which at rush hour would have tightened Laukia’s spiritual screws to the breaking point, but for some strange reason he felt relieved to become part of this larger group of nameless strangers than his anonymous alcoholics. Here he didn’t even have to talk. Here he could disappear for a moment, briefly be one nameless person among hundreds and hundreds of others.

Laukia set a course through the crowds toward Eliel, the station restaurant, where outside of rush hour it was hardly ever a problem to find a seat.

He snagged a tray and loaded it with a slice of chocolate cake, a coffee, and a glass of water. There was no line to the cashier. Laukia slid his hand into his inside coat pocket, but to his surprise didn’t feel the fake leather surface of his wallet on the tips of his fingers. In dismay he stepped back from the counter and scanned the floor back the way he’d come. Had his wallet dropped out while he was taking a tray? The situation unnerved him to the point where he paid no attention to the man standing behind him, patiently waiting his turn in line. Laukia was studying the floor in front of the glass case when he noticed the person in line behind him putting something on his tray. A wallet. Astonished, he turned his eyes up to the man standing there, a short, plumpish, balding sort who despite the sadness in his eyes was smiling with his whole round face. The fiftyish man looked remarkably like an American actor whom Laukia had seen in countless films: like Paul Giamatti, most famous for his role in Sideways.

“Guess this must be yours,” the man said.

Laukia nodded and instinctively checked it for his money.

“Don’t worry, it’s all there,” the man laughed, and raised his palm in a gesture of innocence.

Laukia realized that, instead of being grateful to this man, he had insulted him by automatically suspecting him of dishonesty. He stuffed the wallet back into his pocket with a little embarrassed smile on his lips.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Always good to help a fellow sufferer.”

Laukia wrinkled his brow, and now realized that this was the same man he had been wondering about at the AA meeting.

“You ain’t seen me . . . right?” the man said in English, imitating a sketch from the popular British comedy series The Fast Show.

The pop culture allusion went right over Laukia’s head, but he tried to cover his confusion with a forced smile. “Can I buy you a coffee as thanks?”

“Come on,” the man said, waving his hand and moving to turn away, “it’s no big deal.”

“No, I mean it,” Laukia pressed, and put another cup on his tray. “With or without milk?”

“Well, with milk, if you insist, but there’s really no need.”

Laukia nodded. “But you didn’t need to help me either.”

“After that round condemnation of Helsinki of yours, I thought maybe you’d appreciate a gesture of friendship from a local,” the man laughed.

Laukia smiled. “I do appreciate it. What’ll you have with the coffee?”

“Thanks, just the feeling of having done a good deed,” the man replied, giving himself a smack to his bulging belly. “A corner table okay with you?”

“Yep,” Laukia said, and followed the man to the back of the restaurant.

“You left the meeting like a bat out of hell,” the man said, dabbing at his high forehead with a hankie. Despite the chill outside air, it was glistening with sweat. “It took all I had to keep up with you.”

The men sat down at a table and studied each other. Both seemed to be thinking the same thing: This is the moment when a normal guy introduces himself.

“Uh,” Laukia began, sticking his hand across the table, “J.P.” His voice had an uncertain note in it, as if wanting to ask whether a handle consisting entirely of initials was okay outside of AA.

The man shook Laukia’s hand. “Tapsa.”

“Thanks again. My wife would have thrown a hissy fit if I’d lost my money.”

“I have to ask,” Tapsa began, then sipped his coffee. “If you hate Helsinki so passionately, why do you live here?”

“Short answer: my wife’s from here.”

“I understand,” Tapsa nodded.

“I can’t stress the shortness of that answer enough,” Laukia added, rolling his eyes at his coffee companion.

“My sympathies,” Tapsa laughed. “How long have you two been married?”

“Twenty-five years.”

“Kids?”

“A daughter.”

Tapsa heaved a deep sigh and shook his head. “And the situation is really that bad?”

“It really is,” Laukia said with a weary smile. “Every single fight goes unresolved because my wife doesn’t give a shit about any attempt I make to make up, or to talk about the problems in our relationship, let alone my feelings. She has never once admitted she was wrong, or that she’d harmed anyone else with her actions. It’s always someone else’s fault—usually mine.”

Tapsa wiped the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin and leaned back in his chair.

“Finally, she broke my spirit and I started drinking,” Laukia said, washing the last crumbs of cake down his throat. “You can imagine what kinda torque a wife can get out of a weakness like that.”

“A patient suffering from narcissistic personality disorder does not feel he is sick, and the best treatment for a narcissist’s victim is to leave the narcissist.”

Tapsa’s words surprised Laukia. He had thought the conversation was over; instead, he noticed that the expression on the man’s face had deepened, as if he had actually started to reflect on his anonymous acquaintance’s marital problems.

“No hope of a divorce, either,” Laukia lamented, and dropped his spoon on the edge of the ceramic plate.

“Why not? No prenup?”

“Every cent I’ve ever earned in my life has come through her family’s business,” Laukia replied. “You’d understand if I told you the family’s name. So if I give her the boot, they’ll give me the boot, and haul me out with the trash. I’ll be paying court costs for the rest of my life.”

Tapsa wrinkled his brow. In every possible way he looked like someone who listens to people’s troubles for a living: a psychologist, a therapist, something like that. Among AA members one could find top doctors whom the bottle had enslaved just as effectively as it had some temp who’d gone years between jobs. Whatever he was, the man who’d introduced himself as Tapsa was someone Laukia felt comfortable talking to.

“I’m too old to make a new start, especially since I never made it past the ninth grade. I’ve basically let my whole life get played on a single card, so if I pull the plug on my marriage, I pull the plug on my whole life.”

Tapsa sat there for a moment digesting Laukia’s words, his elbows resting on the edge of the table. “Why doesn’t she want a divorce?”

“She . . .” Laukia began, managing to make even that first word drip with scorn, “is not a nice person. She enjoys the power she has over me.”

“Interesting.”

Yep, Laukia thought, this guy is definitely a shrink on the skids. “But also,” he added, “her family is right-wing and fanatically religious. Divorce isn’t in their vocabulary. It’s till-death-do-us-part, the whole bit.”

“At least you have your child,” Tapsa said comfortingly. “I hate to say it, but it seems that in way too many marriages the younger generation is the only thing holding them together.”

“That’s what she was for us too,” Laukia nodded with a wistful smile. “Kaisa isn’t at all like her mother.”

Tapsa sipped his coffee and waited patiently for Laukia to continue.

“But she’s grown up now. Thirty, living abroad. I hardly ever see her. And I certainly can’t blame her for never coming home. She isn’t on the best terms with her mother, which is completely understandable.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tapsa smirked.

“So what’s your story?” Laukia laughed sarcastically.

“Let’s not go into that now,” Tapsa said, shaking his head with a sad look in his eyes.

“Come on, spill. It can’t be a wife at least.”

Something flashed in Tapsa’s eyes. “Why not?”

“I don’t see a ring.”

“Very observant,” Tapsa laughed. “I’ve been married fourteen years.” He pulled the collar of his sweater down and revealed the pendant hanging on top of his undershirt. It was a gold ring strung onto a thin silver chain. “Here’s my wedding ring. I’ve never been one for jewelry.”

“After fourteen years you call it jewelry instead of a shackle,” Laukia chuckled heartily. “That’s a good sign.”

“Well, yes . . . My nightmare has nothing to do with family.” He opened his wallet and showed Laukia a photo in a plastic pocket.

“Good-looking kids,” Laukia said, and shifted his gaze from the kids to the blond woman standing behind them. “Good-looking wife.”

“Thanks,” Tapsa said, nodding and taking another look at the photo himself. The smile that warmed his face as he did so spoke volumes.

“So, fourteen years,” Laukia sighed, shaking his head.

“Yep,” Tapsa nodded. “I can honestly say that I’ve worked my ass off to keep them, uh, happy.”

“Sounds nice.”

“And mostly it is.” A tender smile flickered on Tapsa’s lips. The man looked like the guy next door. For the life of him, Laukia could not make out what might have driven him to alcoholism.

Laukia glanced at his watch and realized that he was going to have to split. “Damn,” he grunted, jumping up, “train’s in two minutes.”

“Nice chatting,” Tapsa said, looking Laukia straight in the eyes.

“Ditto.”

“Can I ask one more thing?”

“Do it fast.”

“Tonight at the meeting, why’d you ask the guy sitting next to you who I was?”

Laukia stopped to gaze back at him.

“I didn’t get my nose out of joint or anything,” Tapsa rushed to explain.

“My wife,” Laukia laughed, pulling his jacket on.

Tapsa looked understandably confused.

“A couple of times she’s sent her friends to follow me, to make sure I am actually going to a meeting,” Laukia explained.

“Sick.”

“What’re you gonna do?” Laukia shrugged his shoulders. “But as the program teaches us, one day at a time and this too will pass.”

Tapsa snorted at the familiar platitudes. “You know . . . if you want to talk about this stuff again, I’d be happy to listen. Anonymously, of course.”

“That wouldn’t be such a terrible idea.”

“Next week, same time, same place?”

“Why not?”

“Don’t forget your wallet.”

Laukia laughed. Yep, that sealed it: my new friend’s a shrink.

 

II

The next week Tapsa met Laukia in the station restaurant, at the same table where they had launched their anonymous acquaintance. Laukia had two empty beer steins in front of him, and after a few swigs they were joined by a third.

Tapsa held a mug of tea when he sat down across from his backsliding friend. It wasn’t long before Laukia was venting about an argument with his wife that had lasted days, and in which his in-laws had participated. Tapsa said he’d heard about marriages in which the wife indulged knowingly in emotional violence, taking great pleasure in the results of her actions, but that the Laukias’ case sounded like something else altogether, completely unique.

“Have you considered the possibility that middle age has blown things completely out of proportion?” Tapsa began in a conciliatory tone, sipping on his tea. “Maybe this will pass?”

“I’ve been waiting for it to pass for twenty-five years. I can’t wait any longer. I don’t have the strength for it.” Laukia folded his hands and looked the man across from him in the eyes. “The truth is that I’m trapped with a mean-spirited shrew of a wife.”

Tapsa scratched at the stubble on his cheek and knitted his brow. “Listen, J.P.,” he sighed, “I have an idea, and I’m just going to blurt it out.”

“Go for it.”

“Once you’ve heard it you may want to storm out of here, or maybe have another beer. Hell, you may want to deck me. Do you still want to hear what I have to say?”

“How could I refuse after that introduction?”

Tapsa pushed his tea aside and leaned toward a confused-looking Laukia. “In my work I’ve had to travel a great deal, both here in Finland and out there in the world. I’ve gotten to know people that a dad from Eiranranta wouldn’t necessarily get to know.” He paused, as if to see what kind of reaction he had awakened in his listener so far. Laukia was curious, that was for sure. “I’ve seen many kinds of couples and witnessed how a few doomed marriages were saved by extramarital—projects . . .”

Laukia rubbed his forehead and motioned for Tapsa to continue. The latter laid a business card in the middle of the table, text side down, and left his finger on it until he’d said his bit. “There’s a phone number on this card. It belongs to a certain person who is extremely capable at what she does, and very discreet. She might be willing to meet you, if you so choose.”

Laukia swallowed and cleared his throat. “Is she a . . . whore?”

“No, of course not,” Tapsa laughed with affectionate sarcasm, “she’s a Sunday school teacher.”

Laukia smirked and glanced over at the table next to them. The young couple sitting there were obviously doing Europe on an InterRail pass. They did not represent a significant risk of getting caught.

“I would recommend, however,” Tapsa added, giving Laukia a long look from under his brows, “that you not use that particular job title in her presence.”

Laukia slid the card toward himself and turned it over. “Madame Kismet,” he sneered. “My my . . . peel off your outer layer and what do we find but a closet perv—”

“I’ve never cheated on my wife,” Tapsa interrupted with a calm look. “Nor, needless to say, am I pressuring you to do anything you don’t want to do. But if you feel that a little adventure might loosen a knot or two in your relationship, reset the counter to zero . . .” He could see in Laukia’s eyes that he had made up his mind. “She has a room in the Vaakuna Hotel.” Tapsa nodded in the direction of the hotel in question, which stood maybe a hundred paces from where they were sitting.

Laukia slipped the card into his shirt pocket, wiped the corners of his mouth, and stood up.

“Not going to finish that beer?”

“I don’t seem to be thirsty anymore,” Laukia said with a sly smile.

“In that case,” Tapsa laughed, “I seem to have helped you more than AA.”

“I’ll tell you how much it helped next week.” Laukia smiled and tapped himself on the chest.

“Spare me the details.”

Laukia winked at Tapsa and clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Tapsa replied. “The pleasure is all mine.”

 

III

Rarely had a week passed so quickly in Jari-Pekka Laukia’s life. He had arranged to meet Madame Kismet the night of the next AA meeting, and as he moved through his week he noticed himself feeling sensations in his body that he’d thought had been numbed years before. The last time Laukia had been so keyed up was back when he was a teenager, when his easily excited imagination had aroused him at the most inappropriate times.

During those seven days nothing affected Laukia but the thought of his approaching date, which began to swell in his overheated thoughts beyond all proportion. Laukia began to believe that this would be no sordid quickie with some anonymous sex worker but a kind of catharsis that would burst his invisible but oppressive shackles.

Laukia had been galvanized—and he owed it all to Tapsa. Now there’s an alcoholic who has truly earned his whiskey bottle.

The only thought that troubled Laukia was how close he had come to not experiencing any of this: if he hadn’t lost his wallet, this would never have happened.

* * *

Laukia stepped a bit unsteadily out through the Vaakuna’s main entrance onto Postikatu. He stopped to look at the traffic at the Station Square while his breathing calmed. Whenever he left an AA meeting he was always sure that people could see right through him, see his weakness. Now he was sure that he reeked of sex, and that he would find his debauchery in a dark hotel room projected onto billboards throughout the city center. Laukia knew he was grinning like an idiot, but felt he had a right. At last he felt like a man, in the sexual-identity sense, and if that feeling bubbled up over the rim a little, so what? Now it’s my turn.

* * *

Tapsa sat at the men’s regular table at the back of the almost empty restaurant.

“Hey there!” Laukia called out cockily, as if he owned the world.

“Hello,” Tapsa said in his polite, restrained style. “How are things?”

“Right now things are unusually good,” Laukia smirked.

“So,” Tapsa said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He took his glasses off, folded them neatly, and laid them carefully on top of the book he’d been reading. “What happens next?”

The strange question stumped Laukia. “In what sense?”

“Did your meeting with Madame Kismet produce the desired result?”

“One of them, at least,” Laukia said.

Tapsa allowed this crude allusion a joyless laugh. “I didn’t mean that, exactly.”

“Nothing else matters a good goddamn,” Laukia said, stretching his arms luxuriously.

“But of course it does,” Tapsa said sternly, folding his hands on the table.

Laukia wrinkled his brow. What the hell’s going on here?

“Are you planning to give your marriage another chance?” Tapsa enunciated his words with exaggerated care.

“How the hell would I know?” Laukia burst out. “Not fifteen minutes ago I had the goddamn wildest orgasm of my life. I want to recover from it in peace, not rain on that particularly wonderful parade by thinking about my marriage.”

“But that was precisely why you did it,” Tapsa noted. “In order to decide whether you want to continue with your current life.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Laukia snapped with such intensity that Tapsa fell back in surprise. “What bug crawled up your ass? And what fucking business is it of yours what happens to my marriage?”

The man who called himself Tapsa scratched his nose, let his gaze fall to the book on the table, and took a deep breath. “Have you ever heard of the study,” he asked with a toneless, almost whispering voice, “that found that 3 or 4 percent of men and 1 percent of women are born killers?”

“Can’t say I have,” Laukia responded irritably.

“They write of individuals who can take another person’s life without the tiniest shred of remorse,” Tapsa said, raising his eyes to meet Laukia’s.

“Fascinating. Has all this trivia driven you back to drink?”

“Consider,” Tapsa continued as if Laukia had not sneered, “three or four men in a hundred can kill without remorse, but of those, one in a thousand is even more exclusive: he isn’t just capable of it, he’s addicted to it.”

Laukia and Tapsa glared at each other. They were like two schoolboys in a staring contest.

“Do you mean to say . . .” Laukia wheezed, his pure disbelief withering his voice down to nothing, “that you . . .”

Tapsa said nothing.

“This is bullshit,” Laukia hissed.

The empathetic look in Tapsa’s sad eyes had grown cold. “Thirty-seven,” he said slowly, easily. “Or thirty-eight if you count the woman who choked on her own vomit while I was cutting her husband’s head off with a bread knife.” Tapsa scratched an ear.

Laukia sat there silent, listening. Even though he didn’t believe a word this guy was saying, he began to feel an uncomfortable rumbling in the pit of his stomach.

“I have succeeded in restricting my appetite to a single victim per year. That way I can keep everything under control, and I’m able to promise myself to let my will manage my desire and not the other way around.”

Tapsa had not taken his hollow gaze off Laukia’s eyes throughout this little speech. Sheer astonishment had let Laukia’s mouth fall open. He could only sit and stare at the stranger across the table from him.

“Jesus F. Christ,” Laukia sighed at last. “Are you insane?”

“That’s certainly one diagnosis,” Tapsa nodded, raising his eyebrows.

Laukia burst out laughing. This had to be a big joke—a sick one, to be sure, black humor of the rarest sort, perfectly executed. “Okay, you got me! Why the hell would you confess something like that to me if it was true?”

Tapsa watched Laukia as he writhed helplessly in the throes of anxious giggles. “You asked me to tell you about my own problem.”

“Yeah, but my problem was that I’m sick of my marriage,” Laukia said with sudden heat, spit flying from his mouth. “Walk around the train station tapping men on the shoulder and you’ll find a hundred of them that will confess the exact same problem without the tiniest hesitation. But you—you reveal that you’re a serial killer! What’s gonna stop me from calling the cops right this instant?”

“Good luck proving it,” Tapsa replied calmly, without raising his voice.

“But the tiniest hint of a thing like that would be enough to ruin your reputation, your life,” Laukia insisted. He wanted to see where Tapsa’s sick mind game was leading them.

“If you want to talk about ruining someone’s life, what if I were to feel obliged to bring up your sick behavior in the Vaakuna Hotel?”

Laukia felt a lump rising to his throat and sticking there. “What?”

“The webcam video is a bit grainy, but it’s clear enough to make out who’s doing what to whom. I was especially taken with that intriguing moment when you were choking your partner, then rammed into her ass and shouted a man’s name. Am I wrong in surmising that to be your father-in-law’s name?” As he spoke, Tapsa tipped his head to one side, like a scientist studying a rat in a cage.

Laukia was breathing hard. His heart seemed to be pounding in his head, harder and harder with every beat. “You little shit,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “What, are you blackmailing me?”

“Of course not!” Tapsa laughed. “I mean you no harm. You can consider the knowledge that such a recording even exists a safety net.”

“A safety net?”

Tapsa nodded. “I’ve learned the hard way that when friendship reaches a certain level of trust, certain individuals seem to feel a temptation to abuse that trust.”

Laukia buried his face in his hands and leaned forward on the table. “What the hell do you want?”

“The way I see things, we can help each other.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You have something blocking your path in life, and to start over you need to clear it out of the way. And I—” Tapsa broke off for a moment. “Well, there is a gigantic pit in the path of my life, and I have to keep on filling it in order to proceed.”

Laukia looked Tapsa straight in the eye, hoping against hope that this would be the moment at which he would stop the charade, reveal that he was just kidding. In his heart, however, Laukia knew that this was not going to happen. “Monster,” he huffed.

“Don’t try to tell me you never toyed with the idea yourself.”

“What?” Laukia whispered with a quiver in his voice. “The idea of killing my wife?”

“I hope you’ll see this as the only window that will ever open up in the stone wall of your suffering,” Tapsa said. “You do understand, don’t you, the unique nature of this offer? The only thing left for you to do is make sure you have an airtight alibi.”

Laukia could feel himself freezing inside. “Did . . . did you really cut off a man’s head with a bread knife?”

“A person has seven neck vertebrae,” Tapsa said, bending his head and pointing to his neck, “the thinnest of which are up here at the top. Severing them with a bread knife is not an easy task, and quite distasteful. It’s mostly hard work, sawing away for a very, very long time. Well, I was young then, and impatient.”

Laukia gulped. His heart was beating almost intolerably hard.

“You’d be surprised at how much junk there is in a neck. Muscles, and especially the ligaments that tie the vertebrae together, plus a bunch of other stuff that requires a lot of energy to cut through quickly. You have to insert the knife at the intervertebral disc. It simply won’t go through the bone. To cut or crush that you need something a lot more powerful. In fact, your ordinary household knife is in every possible way a bad choice if you’re trying to cut off a man’s head. You’re much better off with a broadaxe for that job.”

Laukia closed his eyes. He could feel the cold sweat popping out on his temples. This cannot be happening.

“Nor should we forget the bleeding,” Tapsa continued with a dry laugh and a snap of his fingers. “Just how much blood you get depends on the target’s physical attributes, of course, but let me tell you right now that when you start chopping through the arteries and other blood vessels in the neck, the mess is incredible.”

Laukia rubbed his face. He felt nauseous. He pressed his palm to his mouth and forced the rising vomit back down his throat.

Tapsa ordered two glasses of water and two coffee liqueurs. For ten minutes the two men just sat there in silence. Laukia stared at the table and Tapsa went back to reading his book. He was in no hurry, and he knew that Laukia would pick up the thread of the conversation again once he had gotten over his quite understandable initial shock and horror.

“It would never work,” Laukia finally whispered. “Not in a million years. The cops would be all over me.”

“You don’t know me, ” Tapsa said, without bothering to raise his eyes from the pages of his book. “You don’t know my name, you haven’t offered me any money or services in return, nothing. You didn’t hire me to kill your wife. As far as you know, you just spilled your guts at the AA meeting—a group whose whole reason for being is that you can talk about anything you like with people you don’t know. You’ve talked about your fears, your nightmares, your anxieties, precisely as you’ve been encouraged to do. You can’t be held responsible for what your listeners do with what you tell them. Maybe one of them followed you, and acted on his own sick fantasies.”

“That is how this looks,” Laukia growled.

“As we’ve agreed, each of us has his own demons,” Tapsa shrugged. “Don’t you want to be rid of your own?”

Laukia sighed deeply. He could not believe he was having this conversation.

“You’ve told me that you never truly loved your wife. That there are no feelings between the two of you—”

“That’s not the problem!” Laukia snapped, trying to keep his agitated voice down to a whisper. “I hate her, and promise you that the feeling is mutual—but we’re talking about murder!”

“You’ve criticized your wife’s family for their religious fanaticism.” Tapsa gazed across at Laukia over the top of his glasses. “You’ve called it empty moralism. Aren’t you doing the same now?”

“We aren’t talking about throwing Jesus at gay marriage. This is a crime, and a fucking serious one!”

“Sure, from one point of view,” Tapsa smiled. “And yet at the same time, somewhere in this modern world of ours a Muslim dad kills his daughter because she’s seeing the wrong guy. In some Iranian village a woman is stoned, or burned, because she got raped, or because she is seen as shaming her husband’s family. In those cases murder is seen as the only option. As merciful and justified, as a liberation for everyone involved.”

“What a pity we didn’t meet in Iran,” Laukia laughed contemptuously.

“Isn’t it true, though, that laws and religions are all human inventions? They were created to serve a worldly purpose, and the number of purposes the world has to offer is surprisingly large. Civilization is a sleight-of-hand. If human beings truly were superior beings solemnly charged by God to dominate all other creatures, this primitive desire wouldn’t drive me.”

Laukia shook his head. “I couldn’t do it to my daughter. How could I live with myself afterward?”

Tapsa sipped his tea and gave Laukia a moment to gather his thoughts. “Time heals all wounds,” he finally said with an understanding smile. “Your shared grief would bring the two of you closer.”

Laukia stuffed a piece of nicotine gum in his mouth, then hid his violently trembling hands in his lap. “What if I say no?”

“Then you say no.”

Laukia gulped. He couldn’t look Tapsa in the eye. “Would you kill me?”

“No. I’d just disappear from your life. Even if you changed your mind, and later wanted to take me up on my offer, that option would never be on the table again.”

Laukia sighed with relief and nodded his head. “Maybe it’s not . . . such a terrible thing.”

“Well,” Tapsa said with a fleeting smile, closing his book, “you know the answer to that better than I.”

Laukia was afraid he was about to burst into tears. His mind simply could not grasp the enormity with which it had been burdened. It had all been staged, all of it, from the very beginning. His wallet hadn’t dropped out of his pocket: Tapsa had lifted it, knowing at a very early stage what Laukia had to offer him. And what did Tapsa have to offer Laukia? A ghastly service that would become a secret that would haunt Laukia for the rest of his life. But for that price, that unbelievably heavy price, he would gain the rest of his life. He would be free. Not unconditionally free, certainly, but freer than he’d been for a quarter of a century. And after hearing this offer, could he return to living in a cage? Could he look himself in the mirror and meet the eyes not only of an alcoholic who had thrown his life away, but a coward?

Laukia’s wife had been murdering her husband for twenty-five years.

Now it was Laukia’s turn.

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Let’s do it.”

“Really?” Tapsa smiled.

“Yeah,” Laukia nodded. “What do I do?”

“Nothing. As I said, all you have to do is make sure you’ve got an alibi. I’ve done this lots of times. I don’t make mistakes.”

Laukia’s head was trembling with uncertainty, but he forced it to nod.

“The less you know about what I’m going to do, the better it will be for you.”

“I believe you.”

“It’ll happen one week from today, while you’re at the AA meeting. Will your wife definitely be home alone?”

“She will.”

“Speak up at the meeting. After that, go out to eat somewhere. Talk to people, be visible. Don’t overact, but play it so that you’re seen, so you have eyewitnesses.”

“Got it.”

“It won’t be an easy week for you,” Tapsa said, giving Laukia’s arm a squeeze, “but I promise that after it’s over things will take a marked turn for the better.”

“I don’t know why I even want to say this, but . . .” Laukia found himself swallowing a sob. “Promise that you won’t hurt her too much.”

“Too much?”

“Jesus Christ!” Laukia snapped. “Promise you’ll do it quickly.”

“I’ll do it however I feel like doing it in the moment,” the man replied carelessly. “You have to understand that after this conversation is over we have a binding agreement, and if you try to break it, the consequences for you will be horrific. What you are doing in this conversation is handing her over to me. She is my property now, and I’ll do to her whatever I have to do.”

Laukia cleared his throat and dabbed at the sweat coursing down his face.

“Are we crystal-clear on that?” Tapsa insisted.

Laukia nodded in agreement. “Do you want to see her photo?”

“No,” Tapsa said sharply. “I want to see her face for the first time at the same instant she sees mine.”

“Goddamn,” Laukia muttered, turning his face away and pressing his palms against his eyes so hard that his knuckles glowed white.

“Do you have a security system in your house that I should know about?”

“No. And the nearest neighbors are a hundred meters away.”

“Then we have nothing to worry about,” Tapsa said with a sweet smile.

Laukia rested his face on his palms, breathing heavily through his mouth. Tapsa got up out of his chair and came to stand briefly next to him.

“If this all seems way too easy, believe me, it’ll get tougher,” the pleasant bureaucrat lookalike killer said, and laid a hand on Laukia’s shoulder. “But no matter how tough it gets, remember that you won’t get caught. It can be a bitch, at first, living with the guilt, but weigh that against what you’re gaining.”

Laukia looked up at Tapsa and saw on his face the same warm smile he was wearing the first time they met.

“Thanks,” Tapsa said, and stuck out his hand for Laukia to shake. Laukia noticed now for the first time how muscular it was, how inappropriate it seemed at the end of that body. He hesitated for a moment before taking the hand that would end his wife’s life.

“Thank you,” Laukia said, an exhausted smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

The anonymous alcoholic picked up his bag and his umbrella and headed through the restaurant toward the door. Then he disappeared into the faceless and nameless current of humanity coursing through the station, and Laukia never saw him again.

 

IV

If the week before his meeting with Madame Kismet had zipped by as if on fast forward, the seven days before the next AA meeting crawled by at a snail’s pace. Laukia didn’t sleep at all that week. Every night he lay in bed awake and stared at the unsuspecting person lying beside him. The wee hours of the morning were the worst. Then his subconscious came alive, tormenting him with the most lurid storms of guilt.

Could I be the one after all? What if our marital problems are my fault? Could we start over? Maybe flee together? What if he found us?

Night after night that last thought threatened to fibrillate Laukia’s heart. He saw Tapsa standing over in the corner of their darkened bedroom with a bread knife in his hand, his black eyeballs gleaming with death—and after that vision it was pointless to hope for sleep.

* * *

Laukia had “forgotten” his phone, left it lying on the bedroom floor in front of the wardrobe, when he headed out for the AA meeting a little early—deviating only slightly from his usual routine.

When he left, his wife was down in the basement drying the autumn potato harvest.

What if she hears Tapsa breaking into the house, manages to close the fire door, and call the cops? What if Tapsa is still in the house when I come home?

Laukia realized that he was facing an evening that would mercilessly try his mental stability. How on earth am I going to act normal? Tapsa had even asked him to go out for dinner after, to a restaurant! No way is that going to work! Everyone will see the guilt shining on my face like a neon sign.

On the train ride from Kirkkonummi into downtown Helsinki, Laukia managed to calm himself just enough so that he was no longer trembling or sweating. A couple of stiff drinks would have worked wonders, but tonight of all nights it was important not to backslide and give the cops the slightest cause for suspicion.

* * *

The AA meeting seemed to last forever. Laukia could remember having spoken up every week before, but had absolutely no memory of what he’d been saying today. As the other members took their turns, said their bit, all he could think of was his house, and his wife in the basement.

How would Tapsa get in? Boldly ring the doorbell? What would he do to his victim first? Stun her and tie her up, or kill her quickly and cleanly? Would his wife realize before dying that her husband was behind the whole thing?

Will the last breath she takes be spent screaming my name?

Laukia was torn out of his thoughts when the leader adjourned the meeting and wished everybody present strength and a blessed week ahead.

Laukia headed down Bulevardi toward Stockmann’s, where he managed to kill almost half an hour. He wandered through the departments, stopped to chat with a few salesladies, and hoped they would remember him as a polite and good-natured person—someone who wasn’t acting strangely.

To his great fortune he ran into a couple who used to live near him, caught up on the news with them, and managed to get his wife into the conversation: “She’s doing fine, thanks, I’ll pass along your greetings! And please come see us around Christmas!”

Laukia began to feel relief setting in as he exited the department store.

Maybe the deed is already done. Maybe Tapsa has filled his annual quota and disappeared from my life. So has my wife. Permanently.

Laukia stopped one more time, to down a couple of nonalcoholic drinks at Casa Largo, before heading home. At the bar he chatted for a while with a Swedish businessman, offering him tips on Helsinki restaurants. The bartender put his oar in on the subject as well, and Laukia felt that he had found himself two more witnesses who would confirm his alibi.

As he left the bar, Laukia was filled with the kind of warm feeling he imagined a convict would feel upon being released from life in prison.

Remember that you won’t get caught, Tapsa had said. Now, for the first time, Laukia began to let himself believe it.

 

V

It wasn’t a long walk from the Kirkkonummi train station to the Laukias’ home. Would the cops be there already? Laukia considered this, then shook his head. No: who would have called them?

He now realized that it was his job to find the body.

What if Tapsa used a bread knife again? Laukia felt a stab of fear pierce him. Nausea roiled up in his stomach. Let’s just hope he broke a window. I can call the cops if a window’s been broken. They would tell me to stay outside in the yard, in case the intruder is still in the house. And since I left my phone at home, I’d have to go to the neighbors, and they would see too how scared I am.

The thought nearly brought a smile to Laukia’s lips, but he managed to keep a poker face. Even now a random dog-walker could ruin everything: Yeah, I saw Laukia walking home from the train station. He was smiling like he’d won the lottery!

He turned into the cul-de-sac that led to his house, and saw the blue lights flashing against the dark late-evening sky. He took a few running steps, and the house’s silhouette emerged from behind the thick firs. Then he stopped as if hitting a wall: their front yard was full of vehicles—an ambulance, police squad cars, and crime-scene investigators’ cars. The cops had cordoned off the yard, but a few neighbors had already shown up.

Laukia gulped and ran a hand through his hair. Did Tapsa blow it? Panic swept over his mind like a tidal wave. Should I turn and run?

Maybe Tapsa had killed Laukia’s wife in the yard, and someone had seen the body? That must be it.

He forced his legs to propel him forward. He slogged toward the emergency vehicles. His eyes fell on the ambulance, its rear doors gaping open. A uniform cop and two EMTs stood there talking to the figure lying on the gurney.

Laukia felt his legs growing heavier with every step. His heart was pounding like a sledgehammer. His ears were filled with a loud rushing sound.

The uniform cop turned toward the street, saw Laukia, and shouted something. Laukia didn’t hear a word.

The EMTs stepped away from the gurney, and at that instant Laukia’s eyes met his wife’s. He felt the blood drain from his head, and his consciousness crash. His legs buckled underneath him, and he dropped to the wet asphalt on his back.

Running footfalls echoed somewhere out on the peripheries of his consciousness. The EMTs kneeled beside him, bent over him. Only with great effort could he keep his eyes open.

“My wife,” Laukia whispered. “What happened?”

“Someone broke into your house,” the uniform cop said, as one of the EMTs supported Laukia’s head. “Your wife is alive, but . . .”

“But?” Laukia felt the tears running hot down his cheeks. He raised his head and saw his wife on the ambulance gurney. Her face was distorted with an unfathomable agony, and she was screaming at the top of her lungs.

An older cop bent down nearer to Laukia and looked him in the eye. “Your daughter was found murdered in the house.”

Laukia stared back at the cop in horror, his eyes like saucers. “That’s not possible,” he whispered, an invisible fist tightening its grip on his windpipe. “Kaisa . . . lives in Berlin . . .”

“Your wife wasn’t home when it happened. Your daughter had come in with her own key. Preliminary investigations suggest that the perpetrator was already inside the house, waiting . . .” The police officer’s voice faded out to nothing.

“A killer like this,” one of the EMTs said to his colleagues, “always gets caught.”

“This one won’t get caught!” Laukia’s sharp retort startled the EMTs and older police officer.

The man sitting there on the asphalt stared into his wife’s eyes, a strange, disturbed smile spreading slowly across his ash-gray face. “This was a dead cinch.”