Available Dark: A Crime Novel (Cass Neary) (7 page)

He named a figure that was double what I would have imagined. Anton was willing to pay 1990s art-world money, considerably adjusted for inflation. “A cash transaction,” Ilkka added.

Again, I kicked myself for not demanding more money from Anton.

We reached the main floor with its long white corridor like a tunnel in a dream. The handwoven rugs muffled our footsteps. Downstairs, surrounded by the familiar clutter of camera equipment, I’d almost forgotten where I was.

Now I felt unpleasantly aware that I was in a foreign land where I knew no one, trapped in a silent house where photos of the dead radiated power, and the living drifted side by side without speaking.

Finally we reached his office. Ilkka spoke to Suri, and I waited in the hall until he returned.

“Suri will help you find something for lunch,” he said. “I’ll let her know when I expect to be back for dinner and if Anton will join us. We can talk more then. I am looking forward to it.”

Unexpectedly, Ilkka rested his hand upon my shoulder. For an instant I saw my own face reflected in his wire-rimmed glasses. “Thank you, Cassandra. It is easier for me to let them go, knowing that you have seen them. It is our gaze that keeps them alive. But it is terrible, sometimes, to have that as a gift.”

He squeezed my arm and left.

8

“Come in, please.” Suri smiled and waved me into Ilkka’s office. “It’ll take me just a minute to finish up, then we can get something to eat.”

I looked around while she fiddled with her computer. Wooden filing cabinets covered one wall, beneath framed copies of magazine covers and pictures of Ilkka with people like Isabella Blow and Franca Sozzani. Covers from
Vogue Italia, Elle, Women’s Wear Daily;
plaques for the Iconique Societas Award and Kontakt Award. A painted antique cupboard held odd ephemera on its upper shelves, high enough that small children couldn’t reach them: old pop-up books showing Red Riding Hood being swallowed by the wolf; hand-colored pictures of Bluebeard from a Victorian toy theater. A fragile copy of
Der Struwwelpeter
opened to a lurid illustration of a girl in flames. Had this guy ever seen the Disney version of anything?

I picked up a stack of vintage postcards—some sort of macabre Christmas cards, dating to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Every one featured a leering devil doing something unpleasant to a child—stuffing a boy into a burlap sack, brandishing a handful of sticks at a shrieking girl. In some pictures, the devil’s feet were cloven; in others he wore stylish shoes or hobnailed boots. Saint Nicholas accompanied him in a few images, but more often the devil cavorted alone. The same greeting was printed on every card.
GRUSS VOM KRAMPUS!
I fanned them out as though they were a fortune-telling deck.

“What are these?”

“Ah, you found Ilkka’s collection.” Suri laughed. “Those are old Krampus cards. He buys them on eBay.”

I held up a picture of a devil riding a broomstick, his long tongue coiled suggestively. “But what
is
that?”

“You don’t know Krampus? He travels with St. Nicholas and beats bad children. You know, to make them behave.” She laughed again. “I think it must have worked; he’s very scary.”

“Finland must have a lot of traumatized kids.”

“Oh, he’s not Finnish. German—no, Austrian. Maybe both. Here we have Father Christmas with his reindeer because, you know, this is where he lives, on Korvatunturi Mountain in Lapland. The Finns invented Father Christmas—all of it, with the reindeer and the little elves and the snow.”

I pointed at the cards. “But not this?”

“No, not Krampus. That is Ilkka’s taste.”

“It’s a little strange.”

“Ilkka is interested in old things, especially rituals about the dead.”

“Like the bog boy?”

“Yes. And Pyhäinpäivä, what we used to call Kekri—All Saints’ Day—the end of harvest, before winter comes. People would visit the cemeteries, because that is when the dead come back. I don’t know why he likes to study these things, but he does. Old religions, old legends. I’ll shut down now. I’m hungry.”

She turned, and I noticed a framed photo in one corner of the desk: Ilkka and a beautiful blond woman on the deck of a sailboat, their arms around two young children. A towheaded girl, barely a toddler, and a boy a few years older. He was completely bald, with his father’s thin mouth and narrow eyes. No eyebrows or eyelashes. I thought of the mummified boy in the Windeby bog.

“That’s Oskari,” said Suri in a soft voice. She picked up the picture and studied it. “Their son. He has a very rare cancer, leukemia that goes to the brain. He was in remission, but a few months ago it came back. The care here is very good, but he is not responding to it anymore. That’s why Ilkka is so upset when he gets sick. They want to take him overseas for an experimental treatment, but it’s very expensive.”

“I bet.”

His son’s cancer treatment might explain Ilkka’s decision to sell the Yuleboy photos. Or maybe something else was going on and this was just a good excuse to finally unload them. Either way, I decided I’d give a big thumbs-up to Bredahl, maybe even invent another interested party to jack up the price.

We walked to the front door. Suri stopped to retrieve a pair of boots, then tugged a brightly knitted cap over her hair. “Have you seen any of the city yet? No? We can walk down to the harbor market. If you don’t mind walking.”

“Nah, I don’t mind.”

I grabbed my leather jacket and followed her outside. What I really wanted was a drink, but I didn’t feel like pulling out my private stash of whiskey in front of this girl. We were almost to the sidewalk when there was a noise behind us, a sound like tumbling dice. I looked back to see the raven perched on the lintel, clacking its beak as it stared at me with one baleful yellow eye.

“Hyvää iltaa,”
it croaked, and flew above the barren treetops.

9

Gray haze clouded the air as we walked to the harbor. It took me a few minutes to realize this wasn’t fog or pollution, but the light, or lack of it. Everything looked dingy and slightly out of focus, like staring at the world through a dirty window screen. Suri walked briskly beside me, head down against the wind. “Why haven’t you visited the harbor?”

“I just got here. I took a cab from the train station straight to Ilkka’s place.”

“You could have walked. I hope the taxi driver didn’t charge you much.”

The streets were surprisingly crowded for such a miserable day, though for all I knew, this qualified as balmy weather in Finland. No one met my eyes. The Finns seemed far more animated when talking on their cell phones than to one another. Suri wore fingerless gloves that enabled her to text faster than I thought humanly possible. It made me feel even more adrift in a sunless dream, surrounded by ghosts that didn’t know they were dead. The only sounds were the slapping of waves against the docks and the shriek of gulls wheeling overhead.

“Do you eat meat?” Suri stopped texting long enough to glance at me, and I nodded. “Excellent. There’s a good hot dog kiosk here.”

We walked to a small cart beneath a faded awning. The hot dog was good. I hadn’t realized how famished I was—I hadn’t eaten for almost two days. I wolfed it down along with a Jaffa soda and got another, heaped with onions. I needed some vegetables.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Suri held her hot dog delicately, then took a bite.

“It’s great.” I looked around in vain for a napkin, finally wiped my greasy hands on my jacket. “What would be even greater is if there was someplace we could get a drink.”

“Yeah, sure.” She gestured to where people milled in front of a brightly lit entryway. “We’ll go there, if you like.”

“How about someplace not so touristy?”

“But you are a tourist.” She smiled. “Yeah, I know a place. It takes a few minutes, but it’s nice to walk outside.”

That was questionable. I tried to reconfigure my scarf so my ears didn’t freeze, and hurried to keep up with her. “How long you been working for Ilkka?”

“As his assistant? About ten years, since I was twenty. Before that I was one of his models. He worked with me since I was fourteen, then when I got too old, he hired me to help him on shoots. Now I mostly just do office work.”

“Were you in any of the famous pictures?”

“Several. The one for
Vogue Italia
with the reindeer—that was my first big job, up in Lapland. I froze my ass off. But I didn’t get sick. Some of the other girls did, but they weren’t Finns.”

“Were you involved with him?”

“Ilkka? No. He never went with the girls. His wife, Kati—she’s very beautiful. And he loves his children. Even back then, before he was married, he was always about work. He loves very cold places, and I don’t think too many models wanted to spend time on the ice in Lapland. So he used me a lot.”

“In his music videos? Were you in those?”

Suri made a face. “Ugh! No, never! Those people scared me. Ilkka hung out with them for a while, but once he met Kati he stopped.”

“You mean the Oslo club scene?”

“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “Well, okay, yes. All that black metal—he used to play it when we were shooting. I hated it. That was a very bad time; bad things happened to people then.” She took in my leather jacket and steel-tipped boots, the scar beside my eye. “But maybe you like that.”

I started to frame another question, but she shook her head vehemently. “
Ei.
It’s bad luck to talk of the Devil. Here, this way…”

We turned onto a narrow road. Nothing that would appeal to anyone just off a Nordic cruise ship—buildings with steel mesh in the windows, empty containers that reeked of gasoline. From the loading dock of a fish processing plant came a smell so foul I held my breath till we passed it.

Suri walked lightly, glossy hair streaming from beneath her cap. At the end of the street we turned into an alley where a neon sign washed the pavement an ugly, blistered pink. A ratty-looking mongrel was tied to a pole beside the door of a corrugated shack. It was the last place I’d expect someone like Suri to hang out, but she walked straight past the dog and went inside.

The place was dim and smelled of spilled beer and fried fish. Several men sat drinking in a cloud of smoke, despite warning signs that showed a cigarette with a red X through it. Behind the bar, a woman greeted Suri. She was even taller than I was, and built like a set of Marshall stacks.

Suri turned to me. “Beer okay?”

I nodded and found a table against the far wall. Suri joined me and set down two brimming glasses.

“I’ll have to get back soon,” she said. “Ilkka left me some paperwork.”

My beer tasted as though it had been salted. The men turned to stare at us; at Suri, actually. As she removed her parka and knit cap and shook her hair out, the grimy bar suddenly looked like the louche backdrop for a fashion shoot.

“
Kippis—
cheers.” Suri lifted her glass to me and made an impressive dent in her beer. “How do you know Ilkka? Are you old friends?”

“I wouldn’t call us that.”

“He took you into his workroom downstairs. His
temppeli,
his ‘sanctum’—that’s what I call it. I’ve known him all these years, but he’s never let me see it. He doesn’t even allow Kati down there. So I thought the two of you must be very close.”

“We have a mutual friend. Well, a mutual acquaintance, anyway. Guy named Anton Bredahl.”

“Ugh.” Suri grimaced. “You know him?”

“We’ve never actually met, just talked online. Why?”

“He’s creepy. He was into death metal, then black metal. Mayhem and Viðar and Darkthrone, bands like that. He had a club in Oslo; I went twice with Ilkka. I hated it. I couldn’t hear for two days. The people there freaked me out. He had a bouncer at that club, really scary guy.” She shuddered.

“All bouncers are scary. That’s what they pay them for.”

“Not like this one.” She lowered her voice and leaned across the table. “He cut people up—dead people, people Anton had killed for business. There was a girl, a prostitute from Estonia; she disappeared. And another guy, too, a drug dealer. This guy took the bodies and cut them up and buried the pieces. Someone I know saw him, he was with his girlfriend one night; she was carrying a bag, and there was a head in it.”

I laughed. “A head? How’d they know it was a head if it was in a bag?”

Suri stared moodily at her beer. “I don’t like to talk about those people.”

“Like Anton?”

“Like I said—creepy.”

“Old creepy or young creepy?”

“Not that old. Ilkka’s age. He lived for a while in Berlin and sold black-market stuff, before the Wall came down. Then he came back to Oslo and started Forsvar—his club. All the dark metal bands play there. He has a back room where they hang out, a private room.”

“Did you go into it?”

“No. Ilkka did, but he told me I wouldn’t like it.” She rubbed her arms, shivering. “Those guys were into bad stuff.”

“Drugs?”

“Yes, drugs, though mostly they liked beer. But there were other things. Anton is
kiero
—‘warped.’ He collects photos of dead people.”

“Well, there’re photographers like that; lots of people collect their work. They get a ton of money for shooting dead people.”

“Yes, I know that kind of stuff. But that’s not what I mean. Anton buys pictures by murderers, also drawings and paintings. American murderers, some Germans, Indonesian, whatever he can find. Serial killers.”

“You mean like John Wayne Gacy? Those clown paintings? What an idiot. They were terrible.”

“Some people don’t think so. Musicians in some of those bands, they collect them. Anton sells them photos, and other things. Anton collects these things himself, and he knows people who would pay a lot of money for them. That’s how Ilkka met him—Ilkka used to be a crime photographer, did you know? Before the Internet these collectors would meet at a hotel room in Berlin or New York or Oslo. Now they do business online.”

“Or in Anton’s club.”

“That’s why I didn’t get too close. And you know, the head.”