Death Spiral

by Leena Lehtolainen

  This was starting to sound interesting. Ulrika Weissenberg had said she was coming over but didn’t. And Tomi Liikanen had called—was it really from the gym? Hanna was sure that Tomi had been at the gym, but Grigorieva had claimed she went straight home with her husband. What reason did she have for lying about something like that?

  “But your husband was still at work? What time did he get home?”

  “I called him at work around nine because I was surprised Noora wasn’t home yet. He left work almost immediately and dropped by the rink to see if she was still there. At first I wasn’t very worried because I just thought she wanted to be alone for a little while after her fight with Ulrika. She’s gone off walking for hours in the rain before.”

  Mr. Nieminen had finished his call with Ulrika, but just as he was about to continue talking to us, his phone rang again. Apparently he was one of those people who didn’t know how to use the ignore button. He listened for a few seconds and then irritably said to us, “I’m sorry, but I have to go to the office to deal with something. They can’t do anything without me there. And I don’t think the police need my help. Arrest Teräsvuori, that’s my advice. Hanna, is my suit coat in the bedroom or on the hook in the hall?”

  “In the hall.”

  Without saying good-bye, Kauko Nieminen waddled out the door. A moment later came the sound of a car starting. I glanced out the window curiously. Ford Scorpion, dark blue. I hadn’t expected him to drive a Nissan Micra or a Renault Clio.

  “Could I see Noora’s room?”

  “Of course, if it will help with the investigation.”

  Now that her husband had left, Hanna Nieminen seemed more relaxed. I wondered whether he had blamed her for their daughter’s death right after hearing about it or whether what we’d heard was the first time. We would have to talk to Kauko Nieminen again. Maybe one of these days I would pay him a surprise visit at his office.

  Noora’s room was large and well lit, almost as big as Janne Kivi’s entire apartment. In addition to the bed, there was a desk, a couch, and a bookshelf with a complete stereo system, television, and VCR. In the corner behind the couch was even an exercise bike. This room was obviously a figure skater’s. Above the couch hung a tiny pair of skates, probably Noora’s first. Dozens of pictures and posters showed top skaters from around the world, along with Noora and Janne. Above the bed hung an enlargement of the same picture I had seen smashed at Janne’s place.

  Noora’s book collection was interesting. Anne of Green Gables, the Emily series and all the Little Women books in order, then books by Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf. Between these were a couple of figure-skating books in English, poems from Riina Katajavuori and Heidi Liehu, and a biography of Susanna Rahkamo and Petri Kokko, the Finnish ice dancers. On a shelf with a glass door there were also a couple dozen books, many with locks on them, presumably diaries.

  “It’s a bit of a mess in here, but I haven’t had time to think about cleaning,” Mrs. Nieminen said behind me.

  “Mess?” I asked, because Noora’s room was in almost perfect order. A couple of books were sitting on the table, a bottle of hairspray lay on its side next to them On the couch lay a pair of thick black tights and a dark-purple sweater. A black-and-orange sweater was crumpled on the coffee table, where there was also a stack of sheet music. Apparently Noora had stopped by home between school and skating practice. Her school bag was behind the desk chair. The bag was overflowing with books, with French and math on top.

  “I don’t know if I even want to touch her room. With it like this, it’s almost like Noora is still alive . . .” Hanna said. I glanced at her in concern, but there was no hysteria in her voice. Pihko hadn’t come in the room. He was waiting in the hall.

  “Skating was Noora’s whole life. But she still did wonderfully in school and was even taking singing lessons. Rami has always said that a figure skater has to be a bit pedantic, and that’s how Noora was. Just look at that.”

  Mrs. Nieminen motioned to a piece of paper tacked to the wall above the desk that read “Menu.” It was two weeks of meals, carefully constructed to be well balanced and nutritious, but only twelve hundred calories per day. That seemed crazy for a sixteen-year-old girl competing at the top of her sport.

  “Noora was trying to lose a few pounds. The poor thing inherited Kauko’s and my builds. All I have to do is look at a cake and I gain half a pound. Janne must have complained about lifting Noora, and Elena immediately put her on a diet.”

  Four ounces grilled chicken breast and one tomato. One half-cup plain yogurt and one piece of whole-grain crisp bread without butter—I hoped Noora hadn’t spent her final days alive starving.

  “Are those Noora’s diaries?” I asked, indicating the locked books.

  Mrs. Nieminen nodded. When I asked whether I could read them, she hesitated.

  “She never let anyone touch them . . . I don’t even know where the keys are.”

  “I’m sure I can get them open without breaking the locks. They may contain something important, like entries about someone following her or something she didn’t tell her parents or coaches.”

  “OK, take them, but bring them back! The current one won’t be on the shelf. She always kept it with her.”

  Then it would be in the equipment bag, which had hopefully come back from the lab and was sitting in the evidence room. I would have to check.

  Mrs. Nieminen brought a plastic bag for the diaries. Each book was identical, black with a number written in gold marker. The highest number was XV, so sixteen should be in her sports bag. I checked her school bag to be sure, but there was no diary there.

  I hadn’t kept a diary since I was a teenager. My last, sporadic entries were probably from the police academy. Antti, who was a faithful journal keeper, had started a pregnancy diary, in which we were writing down our feelings and what was happening in the world. Maybe the Creature would have fun reading it twenty years from now.

  Hanna Nieminen seemed calmer now, and I thought I might take advantage of the opportunity to ask more questions, but then I noticed my phone display blinking. It was Mononen from Patrol, who said he was sitting in Vesku Teräsvuori’s apartment.

  “Bring him to the station, and please get us an interrogation room if you wouldn’t mind,” I told him. “Number two would be best.” That was the least cramped room, and the interviewer looked at a painting of a nice lake scene instead of a blank wall.

  “We’ve found Vesku Teräsvuori,” I told Mrs. Nieminen.

  “Has he confessed?” There was agony in Hanna’s expression; the guilt must have been unbearable. I hoped she had a good therapist. Or a therapist at all. Even a good friend would help.

  “I’m going to question him right now,” I said, just as the baby kicked me in the bladder. I had to find the nearest toilet fast, so I asked Mrs. Nieminen. As a mother of two, she understood my distress.

  Pihko started the car in the driveway. We’d had to take the department’s dreaded Saab that had a habit of dying in the most surprising places. This time it complied after a little coaxing.

  It was 12:23 and my stomach had already told me we were past lunchtime.

  “Let’s hit Mickey D’s on the way. I’m not going to be able to handle a murder suspect without a Big Mac,” I said as I shoehorned myself into the car. The car had lower seats than normal, and the seat belt dug into my neck.

  Koivu called as I was shoving my mouth full of French fries.

  “How is your parking garage witness doing?” I asked.

  “You aren’t going to like this . . . he’s a hick from Savo!”

  “What do you have against people from Savo? That’s the Finnish heartland, pal. I’m one-fourth Savo myself.”

  “Yeah, but this guy was really Savo. He couldn’t commit to anything. The Micra he saw might have been Janne’s, ‘but gee, I dunno, maybe it wasn’t.’ In other words, we got nothing. I sent the car to the lab.”

  “OK.” I was about to hang up but Koivu continued. “Um .
. . I wrote up the interview with Silja Taskinen. I still have time to go get her signature today. Apparently she liked us. Taskinen said that Silja couldn’t imagine any nicer cops to have talked to her.” From Koivu’s voice I could tell he was blushing.

  “Did Silja also say the policeman who interviewed her was the most handsome at the station?” I asked. Koivu was cute when he had a crush. Of course his infatuation with Silja was probably hopeless, but I was the last person to say that to him.

  The fast food perked me up, and by the time we arrived at the station I felt fighting fit. Vesku Teräsvuori was waiting for us in Interrogation Room 2. I would have a couple of hours to interview him before Kati Järvenperä, the woman who’d found the body, showed up. And Teräsvuori could always wait. My attitude toward him was already negative, and I wasn’t anticipating an easy interrogation.

  Pihko, who had tried to drive while eating a salad and chicken nuggets, followed me into the interrogation room. Teräsvuori sat there with Mononen as if he owned the place. When he saw me he stood up and approached with his hand outstretched, a friendly look on his face.

  “Hi, I’m Vesku Teräsvuori. Do I have the honor of speaking with the lead investigator on this case?”

  “Yes. I’m Sergeant Maria Kallio. We spoke on the phone yester-day. Please sit. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Thank you, I’d love some. May I ask why I was dragged down to the police station after an exhausting business trip?”

  I could see how some people might think Teräsvuori was handsome. His broad shoulders were straight out of an old Finnish movie, and the blond highlights in his hair might have been radical sometime back in the eighties. His face wore an easy smile, and a narrow black mustache framed his upper lip. He had a husky tenor, although everything he sang sounded the same.

  “Noora Nieminen was killed. You can hardly be surprised we’d want to talk to you.”

  “Yes, I am surprised. Why would you?” Emotions ran across Teräsvuori’s face, and I didn’t know whether he was searching for an appropriate reaction or whether this was a real conflict of emotions. “Noora dead . . . Hanna’s daughter! What is Hanna going to do?”

  “Where were you the night before last?”

  “Maria, wait, can I make a call? I have to send Hanna flowers. This is horrible!”

  “As soon as we’re done here, Mr. Teräsvuori. Let’s get to the questions.”

  “Maria, Maria, Maria! Call me Vesku, you beautiful, fecund woman!”

  Pihko started coughing over in his corner, trying not to laugh out loud, I assumed. I felt both amusement and revulsion at Teräsvuori’s theatrical posturing. To top it all off, he started singing “Maria” from West Side Story.

  “Shut up,” I snapped as if to a dog. “I’m not a musical. You’ve been harassing the Nieminen family for the last year and a half. I know the case. I’ve read your hate mail. You’re under arrest as the prime suspect in Noora Nieminen’s murder.”

  Teräsvuori spread his arms like an operatic diva.

  “Why would I kill Noora? She was such a lovely girl. And such a talented skater. Did you ever see her perform, Maria? When—”

  “Where were you the night before last, Wednesday night?” I asked coldly. The man disgusted me. For once I missed having Ström along to play the bad cop. He would have flattened this character.

  “Wednesday? Is that when little Noora was murdered? Hmm . . . Wednesday night I was DJing and leading karaoke at the Fishmaid. The gig started at six and went ’til one. I was there the whole night.”

  Ice cubes tumbled down my spine, and for a moment I was speechless. Of course. Vesku Teräsvuori had a bulletproof alibi for the time of the murder. I immediately sent Pihko out to check. Teräsvuori could be lying to my face.

  “Is this why you dragged me in here?” Teräsvuori continued, his tone confident.

  “We’ll see how your alibi holds up.”

  “Don’t you believe me, baby?”

  “In homicide cases we always check everything. And I would advise you to leave the Nieminen family alone once and for all. They have enough troubles right now without you. The fact that you’ve been fined once for harassment doesn’t mean we can’t reopen the case.”

  “Harassment? Come one, can’t a guy send letters and flowers to the woman of his dreams? I can’t understand why Hanna went back to that fat oaf. Hanna is so sensitive and feminine. She’ll wither away in an environment like that! The place reeks of diesel fumes, and every night it’s just hockey on TV.”

  I was having a hard time not laughing. I had to stand up and turn my back on Teräsvuori. Maybe Hanna really had sought food for her sensitive soul in Vesku Teräsvuori’s karaoke ballads. Apparently his ridiculous brand of smooth talk had worked on her.

  Pihko came back and pulled me outside.

  “The restaurant just opened, and I got the bartender who worked Wednesday. He confirmed Teräsvuori’s alibi.”

  “Go do some interviews anyway. It’s less than ten minutes from that restaurant to where Noora was killed,” I said hopefully. “We’re probably going to have to cut Teräsvuori loose, though.”

  Kauko Nieminen wouldn’t be happy to hear that.

  But the interrogation wasn’t over yet. Vesku Teräsvuori had tracked the Nieminen family’s life closely for more than a year. He might know something about Noora that could help us solve the crime.

  Teräsvuori was happy to talk about the Nieminens.

  “Noora was about thirteen when I met Hanna. She was just a little slip of a girl. She had been skating with that Janne kid for maybe a year, and I think they’d already won some sort of youth competitions. Right about the time Hanna moved in with me, Noora started to turn into a woman. In just a few months she grew breasts and her hips widened. Hanna was worried she was overeating because she was depressed about her mom leaving, but it was just normal development. But skaters are supposed to be thin. Like most normal men, I’m not into flat-chested chicks. A pregnant woman like you, on the other hand, is as beautiful as a woman can be, so round and fruitful . . .”

  Teräsvuori’s chatter was irritating, but I let him drivel on, inserting a question here and there.

  “You sometimes wait outside the ice rink for Hanna to pick up Noora from practice. Did Noora ever walk home alone?”

  Teräsvuori grinned, obviously understanding what I was getting at.

  “I wasn’t interested in Noora! A few times I did offer to take her home when the weather was bad and no one was coming for her. She wouldn’t go with me, though. Her dad had probably told her not to.”

  “How did Noora react when Hanna moved in with you?”

  “She didn’t like it, and neither did Sami, which was understandable. But Noora didn’t need a mother so much as someone to pay the bills and drive her around. At least that’s what Hanna said. Noora didn’t have any room in her head for anything but skating. Kauko just wanted Hanna as a secretary and gofer, and the dude was pathetic in the sack. Hanna did miss Sami sometimes, but the kid was happy because his dad bought him a new game console. Hanna still left me and went back to them, even though I was offering her so much more than those selfish monsters!”

  Insider information about the Nieminens or not, I couldn’t stand listening to Teräsvuori’s bombast anymore. I let him go, even though it irked me.

  I asked Pihko to gather everyone working Noora’s case at four. We needed a meeting to update everyone before the weekend.

  I ran into Taskinen in the hall.

  “How did it go with Teräsvuori?” he asked immediately.

  “Catch and release.”

  “What?”

  Taskinen’s expression turned contemplative when I told him about Vesku Teräsvuori’s Wednesday night. Pihko was at the restaurant trying to poke holes in Teräsvuori’s alibi, but I didn’t believe he would find any. The case was adrift again, and I was starting to think our perpetrator could just be some random psycho.

  “Meeting at four in the conference room. Can
you make it? We’re going to pull together everything we have so far.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there. At least for a little while. I’m taking Silja to a movie tonight. She’s supposed to leave for Canada in two weeks, but I don’t know what’s going to happen with that now. We don’t have the money to pay for Rami and Elena by ourselves. So far we’ve been able to scrape by, since the costs have been shared by Janne and Noora too. And of course the commercial deal is off now too. But I shouldn’t burden you with all of that.”

  I wondered whether to tell Taskinen about the contradictory information I’d received about Elena Grigorieva’s and Tomi Liikanen’s movements on the night of the murder, but I decided it could wait for the meeting. It bothered me that he was obviously dissatisfied with the progress of the investigation. I knew I couldn’t make any screwups if I wanted to beat out Ström for Taskinen’s position.

  Kati Järvenperä arrived at three as arranged. She was a short woman, with tousled brown hair pulled back in a hasty ponytail. She wore black jeans and a loose black jacket, apparently trying to conceal several extra pounds. I began the interview carefully, as I assumed Järvenperä would still be upset about discovering the body. Although she did seem to struggle to keep herself calm, she was a very precise witness.

  “When I drove in, there were only three cars besides mine on the top floor of the garage. One was a gray van and one was a red station wagon. I don’t remember the third, so it was probably pretty small. Our Mercedes is pretty old and stiff on turns, so I always try to park it somewhere easy. Because there was so much free space, I backed in against the wall. I thought that would make it easier when we left.”

  “There were no cars right next to yours?”

  “Right. The van was a couple of spaces away, and the red station wagon was on the other side of the parking garage.”

  The red station wagon was the Volvo whose owner had told us about the Nissan Micra and Renault Clio. I asked whether Järvenperä remembered the makes and models of the cars, or maybe even their license plate numbers, but she shook her head.