Free Raid and the Blackest Sheep by Harri Nykänen

always stopped by to drop a few jealous comments, but he only burrowed deeper into the softness of his bed. Mom always came to give him a kiss and dad smoothed his hair with his coarse hand.
         Then the two went to work at the factory.
         His father had occasionally suspected that Jansson would become an everlasting sloth, but becoming a police officer had changed him completely. Jansson had become extremely conscientious. If he were ill with a fever under 102°, he still stumbled into work. For over thirty years, he had taken care of his job without once shirking responsibility. Now, it seemed he could allow himself to take things a little easier again. He didn’t have to lie to his mother and father, nor explain to the overzealous therapist. It was enough that he said what he did and didn’t want. He wanted to sleep and listen to the wind and rain.
         A knock came at the door, and though Jansson heard it, he resolved to ignore it.
         “Wake up, it’s Huusko!”
         Jansson pulled the blanket over his head.
         Huusko just thumped harder.
         “Everything alright?”
         Jansson peeked out from beneath the blanket.
         “Yeah.”
         “You have a hangover?”
         “Let me sleep.”
         “Open the door.”
         “No.”
         “You sure everything’s alright?”
         “Yes. Go away.”
         “Come on. Let’s get some breakfast.”
         “No.”
         “What’ll I tell ’em?”
         “Whatever you want.”
         “And you’ll take the rap for it?”
         “Go away!”
         Jansson banished Huusko’s visit from his mind and sank once again to the verge of sleep.
         Over thirty years as a cop with ten more years till retirement, and he was already sick and tired of this line of work. There had been countless mornings when he would have rather stayed in the warmth and comfort of his bed, but had forced himself to get up and go in.
         Jansson opened his eyes.
         Why don’t you quit then?
         It seemed to Jansson that the question was posed by a second self hiding within—one braver than the first.
         But the first wasn’t about to cave.
         Grown-ups have to take responsibility. Adults don’t give up when it’s not fun anymore. Life ain’t no joyride. Boredom and suffering are part of the deal.
         You’ve already been dealt your share of that.
         This was not Jansson’s first such internal battle. Every time he was called to investigate a death at somebody’s home, he had fought a similar one. In a city the size of Helsinki, hundreds of deaths with no criminal involvement occurred in homes every year: a middle-aged man goes to bed after reading the newspaper, kisses his wife and rolls over, never to wake again. At least not in this place or time. As he drifts off to sleep, he’s oblivious to the fact that he’ll never again taste the fresh coffee his wife makes in the mornings, never smell the fresh ink on the daily edition of the Helsingin Sanomat . To Jansson, it didn’t seem fair. A person should get some kind of final warning, he thought, a chance to settle up with themselves and others.
         Just two weeks before coming to physical rehab, Jansson had been the on-duty lieutenant on a particularly quiet evening. To burn some time, he had gone to investigate a body found in an apartment in Töölö. The man had been dead for a couple of days. His son, a college student coming home to visit, had found the body.
         Jansson had noticed the name on the door. When he saw the deceased, he recognized him as a friend from high school.
         Suddenly he had realized that the ranks of his peers were thinning out. The following morning, he noticed that the first thing he read in the Helsingin Sanomat were the obituaries. Huusko claimed that reading the obituaries was a sign of surrender. Once it came to that, he had