Death Spiral

by Leena Lehtolainen

  At the coffee shop I kicked off my shoes because despite the cool weather, my feet were swollen. Maybe no one would show up at the ice rink and I would get to go home. The coffee was bitter, so I added some sugar cubes, but I still couldn’t get it down. It seemed like the baby didn’t like it either, because it turned from side to side as if offended by the horrible taste being passed through the umbilical cord. I had to drink a big glass of buttermilk to wash away the coffee. We didn’t make it to the ice arena until six thirty. Koivu’s cell phone started ringing at the door, so he stayed outside to talk.

  The rink was almost dark without a single light on in the stands. The floodlights focused on the ice. As I walked toward the light, music suddenly started playing: “Aquarius” from Hair, the opening of Noora and Janne’s free skate.

  Janne came speeding out onto the ice. I had seen their routine enough times that I knew to expect a combination jump. This time Janne landed it upright, with just the slightest stutter coming down out of a double toe loop when the bottom toe pick of one blade grabbed the ice.

  Watching Janne skate the routine alone was eerie; he seemed to be constantly looking at an invisible partner. During the first lift, he was clearly bearing someone’s weight, and in the side-by-side solo pirouette, he checked to make sure he was in sync with her. The tune changed to “Hair,” and Janne touched his own free-flowing locks, which really were unusually long for a male skater. He grinned mischievously at the place in the program that had reportedly offended some of the conservative judges at the World Championships. I remembered how Noora had looked during that part, her brown ponytail swinging around her spinning head. Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair . . . Next would have come a double-axel throw, but Janne just glided with arms outstretched until launching off to meet his shadow partner for a series of steps and the transition to the next song. The pain on his face during the death spiral was part of the program, but now it was so genuine that I almost ran out onto the ice to stop him.

  “Don’t interrupt him,” a voice whispered behind me. I could barely make out Rami Luoto’s silhouette and thought I saw his hand move as if wiping away a tear. With my eyes glued back on Janne, I could almost see Noora’s skates glinting during the star lift. Janne’s arms lowered the emptiness they held calmly and surely, and then the tempo of the music increased toward the finale, “Let the Sunshine In.” I had seen Miloš Forman’s film at least four times over the years, and the end always made me bawl. That was probably why I blubbered when I saw Noora and Janne skating to it in competition. Janne’s double axel was flawless, a long glide, a dramatic plunge on the ice like a dying soldier, and then a rise into the vaunted final death spiral, which I only saw as dim motion in the wavering light.

  Rami Luoto shifted behind me and then almost ran to the edge of the ice. I wished someone would turn on the lights to break the ethereal mood. I wiped my face on my sleeve, since I didn’t have a handkerchief in my pocket. Then the rink brightened. I saw Koivu weaving through the rows of seats toward me.

  “A red Nissan Micra, license plate starting with an A, and a white Renault Clio!” Koivu said loudly as he approached, but for a second I didn’t have any idea what he meant.

  “Lähde found a guy who was on the upper level of the parking garage at seven forty-five and actually knows something about cars. Those were the ones that were there besides Järvenperä’s!”

  “Really? Great! Let’s get to work,” I said, feigning excitement. I would prefer to do anything but see Janne Kivi right now. Even though their relationship had been stormy, after seeing Janne skate, there was no doubt he was out of his mind with grief over Noora’s death.

  Janne sat with his head between his hands in the player’s box. He hadn’t even bothered putting guards on his skates, their blades slicing deep gouges in the black rubber flooring. Rami Luoto stood next to him with his hand on Janne’s shoulder, and I got the feeling that seeing us was a relief.

  “Sergeant Kallio and Senior Officer Koivu from the Espoo Police. We’ve been trying to reach both of you all day. We’re sorry we had to come and interrupt your practice.”

  “We aren’t going to be training today,” Rami said and then extended his hand. “Rami Luoto, Noora and Janne’s coach. How can I help?”

  Rami Luoto was about forty-five, and a bit of gray tinged his carefully trimmed black hair and the sideburns that curled beneath surprisingly small ears. He was short, barely five foot seven, and he still had the lithe, muscular frame of a ballet dancer. Once, Rami had been Finland’s top skater, but he never quite managed to win a medal in one of the majors. His skating style had emphasized dance over acrobatics—the speed of his pirouettes was amazing, but he had trouble on the jumping side. My sister Helena, our family’s most enthusiastic skating fan, had a serious crush on Rami back in the day. I’d always thought he was effeminate and not very handsome, but age had narrowed his face, seeming to draw his eyes closer together and adding a nice softness to his lips.

  “The police have reason to believe that Noora was killed soon after she left here yesterday. We’re trying to retrace her movements as precisely as possible. Elena Grigorieva said that you two were the last at the rink.”

  Rami Luoto listened to me quietly, but then nodded to Janne.

  “I don’t think you should try to talk to Janne right now. He should really go home. He just heard about Noora’s death. When no one was here at the rink, he called the Nieminens to see what was going on.”

  I remembered that Elena Grigorieva had said something about a ballet class and wondered if Janne was supposed to attend that too, but I didn’t say anything about it now.

  “Can you drive home, Janne, or should I drop you off?” Luoto asked. The young man didn’t answer, just sat with his face in his hands. The shoulders under his black T-shirt heaved, but it was hard to tell whether he was crying or breathing heavily after skating.

  “Could you still answer a few questions?” I asked. “Did you see Noora leave the rink?”

  Luoto nodded.

  “I did . . . Let me think . . . It’s the same every day, so remembering what happened when is hard. But yesterday was an unusually difficult training session. I was probably the last one to go because I talked with the custodian. The ice hasn’t been quite how we like it the past few days. I saw Noora go out, though. Didn’t you leave together, Janne?”

  No answer.

  “Were you driving or walking?” I asked Luoto.

  “Me? Walking. I live right near here. The rain started almost immediately, so I had to run the whole way. I still got soaked, though.”

  “You said practice yesterday was unusually difficult. Would you mind if we recorded this conversation? You’ll have to repeat the answers you just gave, maybe a little more specifically, and tell us whatever else you remember about yesterday and Noora.”

  Luoto nodded and suggested that we go sit in the dressing room because it was warmer. On the outside he appeared calm, but when he touched Janne on the shoulder again, I noticed his hand tremble. Rami Luoto was used to soothing his athletes’ emotional turmoil; maybe taking care of other people forced him to forget his own feelings.

  “Janne, let’s go. It’s cold in here.”

  Luoto’s voice was quiet, but his words still echoed strangely in the empty arena. Even though people complained about how small the facility was, I felt strangely small and alone surrounded by the rows of empty seats.

  “If you want to take Janne home, we can meet tomorrow at the police station,” I suggested. Actually I was wondering whether we should take Janne to a doctor. But then he raised his head just enough to hiss at Luoto.

  “Leave me alone, Rami! I’m fine.”

  Still not looking at us, Janne started unlacing his skates.

  Apparently Rami Luoto took this as a sign that Janne was in good enough shape to leave alone, because he started walking down the hall toward the locker room. Koivu and I followed, but when the hallway turned, I glanced back. Janne’s han
ds were frozen over his skates, and he was staring out at the ice again as if he could still see Noora there, in motion and alive.

  Luoto opened the door into a small dressing room where a single red towel hung on a hook, looking forgotten.

  “We can talk in here. Janne will probably join us when he can.”

  Koivu set up the recorder again, and I rattled off information into the microphone as if I were a recording too. Luoto answered the questions I posed. He hadn’t seen anything or anyone outside either, and when he left, Weissenberg’s car had been gone, as had Tomi Liikanen’s. Noora and Janne were already gone too.

  “You said practice yesterday was unusually difficult. Why? Was it because of Noora and Ulrika Weissenberg’s disagreement?”

  Luoto nodded.

  “Noora was sort of . . . strong willed. If she had a bad day, that day was bad for everyone else too. As a coach, you really had to work to keep her emotions in check. And besides, the commercial idea was pretty stupid. I told Ulrika as much. I knew Noora wasn’t going to approve it, but no one believed me. And when Noora heard that I had known about it but didn’t make a bigger stink, she got angry at me too. She was furious at Janne, though, because he was fine with the idea.”

  “And Janne was furious back, right? What about you?”

  “A coach’s job isn’t to get angry, it’s to smooth things over. I tried to calm the situation so we could have practice, and in the end it worked.”

  “So Noora was difficult to coach?”

  I was a little surprised when Luoto burst out laughing, but he quickly stopped.

  “Terribly difficult and also perfectly lovely! She was so talented and extremely disciplined. Skating was her life. She had a really hard time when puberty started messing with her body, though. She had serious problems with her jumps and her endurance. We had to tell her she probably wasn’t going to be competitive as a singles skater.”

  “Why? Because of her jumps?”

  “Among other things. Skating mechanics are complicated. But she was so incredibly talented every other way, and when Janne had the same kinds of problems—he’s too tall for some of the hard jumps, like a triple axel—I had the idea to try turning them into a couple. And that turned out to be the right decision. I’m still proud of it.”

  “So you coached them for a couple of years and then Elena Grigorieva came last winter?”

  “Right.”

  “I’ve heard claims that Noora might have only wanted one coach,” I said directly, even though I didn’t believe that Luoto would have murdered Noora just because he didn’t want to stop coaching her. But Luoto went silent for a few moments before answering.

  “It isn’t any secret that Noora wanted Elena to take over all their training. And it’s true that the most progress has come since Elena joined the team. But I think I was still needed. Elena’s and Noora’s temperaments are too similar. They can’t calm each other down. Without me between them, there would be bodies.” Luoto started to grin at his own joke, but then he realized what he had said and blushed.

  “We even saw that yesterday,” he said suddenly. “It was like a contest to see who could yell the loudest. And I think Elena is too authoritarian with Noora, like she’s still back at the figure-skating academy in Moscow. There a coach is like a demigod. In terms of technique, she’s fantastic. I fully admit she’s better than me.”

  “So who was arguing with who yesterday and why?” Koivu interjected, apparently tired of hearing about the ins and outs of figure skating.

  “Well, yesterday’s practice wasn’t a very good example of either of our coaching skills. We should have taken a real vacation, but the ice show got in the way. The season was good, but it was hard on all of us,” Luoto said as if to himself, and Koivu started showing signs of impatience again.

  “So Noora was fighting with everyone here?” he said, interrupting again.

  “Not exactly everyone. For some reason she left Silja alone. And Silja left earlier while we stayed to work on some new pairs moves. Noora was able to concentrate well despite it all, but she still seemed irritated when she left. I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised if she accidentally walked into the middle of the street and got run over by a car.”

  Koivu and I stared at each other for a second in surprise, and then I remembered what Elena Grigorieva had said about Noora getting run over like her first husband. Even though I told her that wasn’t the case, in her shock Grigorieva must have misunderstood and told Rami Luoto the same thing.

  “Noora wasn’t run over,” I said, “and it wasn’t an accident. She was murdered.”

  Luoto’s face went an icy gray, and his whole body started shaking. Collapsing on the bench, he wept like a child.

  Koivu was a traditional Finnish man, and seeing other men cry irritated him. He turned his head away while I made a notation in the recording that we were taking a break. Then I let Luoto cry.

  “I’m going to find Kivi,” Koivu said, clearly trying to escape. I fetched a stack of rough paper towels from the restroom and handed them to Luoto.

  Luoto stopped crying suddenly. In a couple of minutes he was himself again and asked what had happened. I didn’t say anything about the skates, but I did say she had been beaten and found in the trunk of a car.

  “Do you have any idea who did it?” Luoto asked, but I didn’t have time to answer before Koivu returned with the janitor.

  “I can’t find Kivi anywhere.”

  We rushed out into the hall as if it were an emergency. The janitor and Luoto yelled for Janne and checked the other dressing rooms. Finally we went out to the parking lot, but he wasn’t there either. Rami Luoto frowned.

  “Janne probably just went home. I don’t see his car anywhere, do you? It’s a little Nissan Micra.”

  4

  “Where does Janne live?” I asked Luoto, who clearly didn’t realize why we were staring at him like he was a ghost.

  “Across town in Otaniemi, by the university campus.”

  I wanted to talk to Janne Kivi. Immediately. I took off at a jog for our car, and Koivu sprinted after. Opening the door, I wedged myself into the driver’s seat. My belly was already getting in the way, and it was hard getting used to not moving as easily as usual. Luoto grabbed the car door.

  “You can’t really suspect Janne! You saw how distraught he is. If you barge in there making wild accusations, it will just make it worse. Who knows what he might do!”

  Koivu jumped into the passenger seat, and I almost slammed the door on Luoto’s fingers as I hit the gas.

  “Call the DMV and check the plate on Janne’s Nissan so we aren’t jumping to any conclusions,” I panted as I swung through an intersection onto the West Highway. I wondered whether I should turn on the siren, since we were in a blue-and-white for once, but I decided not to bother. People moved over when they saw a police car coming up behind them regardless. I scared myself a little with how fast I went through a construction zone with narrowed lanes, but we needed to hurry. I didn’t even know whether Janne had gone home. Maybe we were hot-rodding across the city for no reason.

  “Red Nissan 1994 Micra, AZG-577. Janne’s car, that is. We can ask him to drive it over to the parking garage and get that witness to take a look. And order a fiber analysis, of course.”

  “Yeah. But let’s talk to him first.”

  When we arrived at the parking lot of Janne’s apartment building, there was the bright-red Nissan. He had clearly been in a hurry, because the car was parked askew across a stall line.

  Janne lived on the third floor. Usually I could climb that many stairs without getting out of breath, but this time I started running out of oxygen by the second flight. Koivu reached the door first and rang the bell furiously. On the third set of rings, a shout came from inside.

  “Leave me alone, Rami!”

  “Open up, Janne, it’s the police!” I yelled back. Where did the manager live? How hard would it be to get a master key? But I didn’t need to pursue the thought
, because Janne opened the door.

  His forehead glistened with sweat, and his breath reeked of vomit. His skin was as white as Noora’s skates.

  “Get lost! I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  Janne didn’t have the nerve to push me out of the doorway, though, probably thanks to my belly. He disappeared into the bathroom, and a moment later we heard the sound of retching, which made my own stomach turn. I moved out of the entryway so I wouldn’t have to listen to him throwing up. On the right was a kitchen with only enough space for a small table and two chairs. It was spotless other than a flattened juice carton and half-eaten cup of yogurt on the table.

  The other room was a combined living and bedroom. The double futon was opened to the sleeping position, the sheets bunched messily under the comforter. Koivu flopped into the only armchair. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I started organizing my thoughts. Koivu fidgeted in his chair and then stood up to check whether the bathroom door was locked.

  “Did you fall in?” he yelled at Janne, who was still retching. The reply was incomprehensible muttering, but a few seconds later we heard a bang and a flush. Janne appeared in the doorway, drying his face with his T-shirt, which he had pulled off. Involuntarily my eyes wandered to his beautifully muscled upper body and washboard abs, which trembled from the vomiting. Then I started feeling like a dirty old woman and turned my eyes away.

  Janne collapsed next to me on the futon and hid his face in his shirt. I glanced at Koivu, who started the questioning.

  “Rami Luoto says you left the ice rink at the same time Noora did. Where did you leave her?”

  No answer. His face remained hidden under the black fabric, and his muscles continued shaking. Koivu met my eyes, lifting his eyebrows and shaking his head. I wondered whether this could really be Noora’s murderer huddled here.

  “Janne, this isn’t helping anything. Tell us what happened yesterday and we’ll leave you alone.”