Death Spiral

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “Tomi took me and Irina to the store and then home. Then I guess he stopped by the gym, but he wasn’t long. Half an hour, maybe an hour. When he came back, the fish solyanka was already done.”

  Elena’s eyes followed Silja, as did Koivu’s, who I doubted was even hearing what I was saying to Grigorieva.

  “Did your husband drive to the gym?”

  Grigorieva just nodded. Apparently she thought she had already said enough to us, because she started briskly walking away. And what else did she have to say to us? Elena Grigorieva had been at home making soup when Noora was killed. I would have to ask Tomi Liikanen about his movements himself.

  Elena turned off the Queen song. For a moment the only sound under the dome of the arena was the hissing of skates cutting the ice, but then a new tune started echoing from the speakers. Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat Minor. They weren’t going to make Silja skate to that old rag, were they?

  But this was just more warm-ups. And Janne was getting into the rhythm now too. Sometimes skating alone called attention to the angularity of some of his movements, and he looked too big for a figure skater, an impression that was only strengthened when he stopped next to Rami to ask something. If Rami looked like a former ballet dancer, beside him Janne was like a sprinter. When he skated with his partner, you didn’t notice the awkwardness because quick, temperamental Noora had been the half of the pair who drew the attention, even though Janne was more than enough eye candy for anyone with a taste for masculinity. Alone, Janne was unlikely to be anything but part of the anonymous mass that was cut from the big competitions after the short program.

  As Elena stepped out onto the ice to speak with Silja, Rami circled over to us. Janne followed, looking reluctant. Fortunately I wasn’t twenty anymore; back then I was powerless against men with Janne’s brand of morose charisma. Now I could just admire without my heart lurching.

  “Do you still need me and Janne?” Rami Luoto clearly wanted us to see he was treating the police with respect. Maybe he believed we were doing our best to catch Noora’s murderer. Or at least I hoped he thought so. Next to Silja, Rami seemed to be the most sensible of the figure skaters. He could be useful in profiling Noora, although we had to remember he was one of the suspects.

  “You’ll probably get your car back tomorrow,” I told Janne.

  “So you haven’t found anything in it you can use to convict me of Noora’s murder?” Janne said.

  “It’s too early to say, so don’t start celebrating.” Koivu’s voice was too brusque, and I almost had to laugh. We were veritable paragons of objectivity in law enforcement: one of us was jealous of a suspect, and the other kept confusing suspicion with likeability.

  “We don’t want to disturb your practice too much,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned, Janne, you can return to the ice. We’ll contact you when the forensic investigators are finished with your car.”

  Janne pushed back out onto the ice, seeming relieved. Silja had just begun practicing a combination jump. First came a Lutz: Silja slid backward in a wide arc then sort of squatted on her right leg and pulled her left leg and arm back. The tip of her left skate struck the ice, and she took off.

  “Left shoulder down,” Rami said just before Silja came down, not quite making three revolutions in the air and collapsing nastily on the ice. She slid for a long way on her rear end before standing up.

  “That must have hurt,” Koivu whispered next to me.

  I knew a few people who didn’t dare watch figure skating or ski jumping because they were always afraid someone would fall. To me, the attraction of skating was precisely that the tiniest mistake could ruin a whole jump: the wrong arm position, a head held down, poor timing of the takeoff. Even when it looked like skaters threw triple axels as if they were child’s play, every jump was preceded by years of relentless work.

  Silja stood up, shook out her legs, skated around for a moment, and then started again. Again the preparation: weight on the outside edge of the skate, free leg back, and up! Now she took off in a completely different way than before, flying high and long, and Silja even followed it up with a double toe loop.

  “She’ll get the third one soon,” I heard Rami say to himself. Then he noticed Koivu’s expression. “She’s good, isn’t she? Good technique and fantastic lines. Once she learns to really get everything out in terms of her expression, she’ll be in medal contention, at least in Europe. Although Silja could use some of Noora’s drama. Noora never held back her feelings. Her problem was keeping them in check.”

  According to the DMV, Rami Luoto didn’t own a car or motorcycle. I hadn’t checked whether he had a license or not. What if he had rushed out into the rain after Janne and Noora, let them have their fight, and then went to comfort Noora, killing her instead? But how would Luoto have transported Noora’s body to the parking garage? I didn’t have a clue.

  Rami had heard about Teräsvuori going free and expressed his surprise that the King of Karaoke wasn’t guilty.

  “If Noora hated anyone, it was that man. I could definitely imagine Noora attacking him and him hitting back too hard in self-defense. Hanna moving out was a hard time for Noora, even though she tried not to let it show. All of us had to pitch in to make sure Noora could keep up with skating and with school. There aren’t many girls who could have done that, but Noora—Noora was a skater!”

  I didn’t have anything else to ask Rami. His story about leaving the ice rink and going home had been simple enough. I nudged Koivu to signal that we should leave, but he just kept staring at Silja. Rami suddenly grinned at me conspiratorially; he must have realized where Koivu’s surprising interest in the finer points of the triple Lutz–triple toe loop combination was really coming from. He looked Koivu up and down curiously, registering the wide shoulders, dimples, and general appearance of a tame teddy bear. A dark-blue police uniform actually suited Koivu, but he didn’t look so bad in jeans either.

  “Good-looking fellow,” Rami said sotto voce.

  “Good guy too,” I replied. We had switched from the roles of suspect and police investigator to friends again. There was something about Rami Luoto that invited me to confide in him. That was probably why he did so well with teenagers—he never gave the impression that he was trying to show off or boss the skaters around.

  Once I finally managed to drag Koivu out of the ice arena, we drove back to the station. I picked up Noora’s diaries to take home. Maybe I’d find some sort of hint about what had really happened the night of her death.

  Koivu dropped me off at home, and on the way he asked shyly, “Maria, do you think I could ask Silja out after this case is over?”

  “I guess it’s nice there are two of us who want to wrap this thing up quickly,” I said and laughed. “But she’s only seventeen. If I remember right, she doesn’t turn eighteen until sometime in July.”

  “Oh, so you’re saying she’ll think I’m hopelessly old?”

  “Well, maybe not hopelessly . . . It’s always a complete mystery what attracts people to each other, so there’s no point trying to predict it,” I said in my best advice-columnist voice. Koivu blushed disarmingly again and then didn’t say another word the rest of the way to my house.

  That night I skimmed Noora’s diaries. The first six were the notes of a little girl about school and skating practice, with nothing significant about them other than the handwriting, which was incredibly meticulous for a girl under ten. She had carefully recorded her test scores, as well as tracking her practice time and her scores in her first figure-skating competitions. The tone of the diaries also conveyed that Noora hadn’t had very many friends. The pages even recorded a few adolescent girl dramas. Noora thought her heart would break when someone name Tinja didn’t want to be her BFF anymore. Tinja said Noora thought too much about skating and not enough about horses.

  I think horses are totally stupid. I don’t get what Tinja and all the others see in sitting on some big nag like a sack of potatoes. You only get to do
jumps after like a year of riding. I can already do double jumps on my skates.

  The next two diaries were devoted entirely to skating and a few schoolgirl crushes, which Noora had taken to with a passion.

  In the ninth diary, Noora turned twelve, and the entries took on a more contemplative and searching tone. Noora questioned why she went to school, why she skated, why she was in love again, now with a boy one grade older than her. Rami had returned from Canada and taken over as Noora’s coach, and Noora felt as if she had learned more from him in a month than from every trainer up to that point. Other familiar characters also appeared on the pages of the diary.

  Ulrika Weissenberg is totally disgusting. She’s always bossing all the skaters around, even though she’s probably never even tied on a pair. Mom thinks Ulrika is sooo beautiful and sophisticated, but I think she looks like an old witch with too much makeup. Like the stepmother in Snow White.

  The adolescent angst grew worse with Noora criticizing her parents more and more rudely. It was like looking at my own journals. In them my parents almost appeared like monsters during the teenage sections. Was that how it had to be? In ten or so years would the Creature, who was currently playing soccer inside my uterus, hate me and Antti for being fossil dictators?

  Mom and Dad had this stupid work party here. Mom was all nervous for like three days cleaning and cooking and trying to lose weight so her ass would fit in some old dress. Dad doesn’t care how he looks, though. All he ever does is sit on the couch drinking beer and eating chips and watching car racing. He usually doesn’t even notice Mom or what she’s wearing, except sometimes when he touches her boobs or ass even in the grocery store like she is some piece of meat or something. They’re both totally gross.

  At the party Dad got drunk and Mom was screaming at him for ruining the whole party. I don’t know what happened, though, because I was in my room all night watching tape from Albertville. Viktor Petrenko is amazing. Nancy Kerrigan smiles like a monster. Susanna and Petri were really awesome. Sixth place was good, but they deserved better. There’s only a year until Lillehammer. In five years the Olympics are in Nagano, Japan. I’m going to skate there.

  I closed Noora’s tenth diary, since I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open. The Creature was still in the second half of its soccer match, and my pubic symphysis shuddered as it practiced heading the ball. Had Noora’s parents read her diaries, or did they have the self-control to leave them alone? I remembered my attempts to conceal my scribblings from my two curious little sisters. During junior high, one of my precautionary measures had been indecipherable handwriting. Noora’s letters were clear, though, the lines flowing evenly. The first arch of her m was much higher than the next; I had read that indicated self-centeredness. The density of the handwriting varied, and the gradual shift from the rounded lettering of a little girl to the intense script of a teenager was apparent in a few of the diaries.

  Something bothered me, though. How had Noora reacted to the suggestion she move into pairs skating? Maybe the eleventh diary would have the answer. Skimming rapidly, I soon found a page dated to November two-and-a-half years earlier. The crosses on the t’s plunged furiously downward.

  Today Rami said I don’t know how to jump. Or he didn’t say exactly that, but he said I might be a better pairs skater than a single. Supposedly my expressiveness and fluidity would be expressed best skating with some boy, and I wouldn’t have to stress about triple jumps anymore because in pairs all you need are toe loops and Salchows.

  He said he already found me a good partner and asked how I like Janne Kivi. That pompous hack! I can’t stand how he thinks he’s sooo handsome! I know all the girls drool over his green eyes, but he can’t skate. That’s for sure.

  The irritation was short lived, though; by January Noora had changed her mind.

  Janne is so nice! Becoming partners was the best thing that ever happened to me. Maybe Rami wanted to sort of make things up to me. The girls are all so jealous, since I get to skate with Janne and we have our very own training sessions and programs. Of course we have problems with timing, and Janne is slow sometimes, but he’s really strong. I was superafraid the first time he lifted me. I weigh way too much these days, almost a hundred pounds. I should probably lose some weight so Janne doesn’t think I’m a fat cow.

  After that the entries were more about Janne than anything else. Janne and skating intertwined, with Noora interpreting the hugs after their first successful competition as something more than a friendly gesture. The five-year age gap didn’t seem to bother her one bit, but who was interested in their own classmates at fourteen anyway? I thought of my own first love, Johnny, the dashing guitarist, and could relate perfectly to Noora’s infatuation.

  Janne was also important during the period when Hanna announced she was moving out.

  I can’t understand it! Mom says she’s found some new guy and she’s going to divorce Dad and move in with him. She says she’s sick of working for free at Dad’s company and as a servant for me and Sami. The guy is some sort of karaoke singer, so what does he see in my ancient, fat, boring mom?

  Janne dropped me off at school and asked why I’d been so down at practice, and I told him. He said he knew what it was like because his parents got a divorce when he was twelve and they’re both married again now. No one understands me like Janne does. Rami tried to say something, but what right does he have to talk to me about anything?

  “What are you reading?” Antti asked standing in the doorway of our bedroom holding Einstein. “Is it time for the Creature’s evening riot? I thought the cat might want to listen.”

  Antti gently set the cat on my belly where the Creature was still in high gear. Now it seemed to have moved on to basketball, because it was bouncing and pushing as if it were trying to shove a ball through my abdominal wall. Einstein tracked the movements curiously for a couple of minutes but then decided he preferred my feet. He knew from experience it would be calmer down there. Curling up in Antti’s arms, I had an odd sensation of closeness with these three beings—the man, the cat, and the gradually quieting child—and quickly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  8

  The next morning my first order of business was a trip over to the morgue to see Noora’s body and have a talk with the pathologist who performed the autopsy. Kervinen was an old acquaintance, close to me in age, who changed aftershave brands once a month at a minimum. Maybe it was a way of keeping away the smells of death that dominated the morgue despite the cold.

  I didn’t particularly like looking at bodies, but I had become used to it. I rarely knew the victims when they were alive, and even seeing them as corpses somehow made them feel more real. Bodies couldn’t talk, but they still told a lot about how these people had died. Ideally we got to see the scene of the crime because it usually provided indications of what had really happened. In Noora’s case we didn’t know where that was.

  “The report is ready. I just faxed it over,” Kervinen said casually when I met him in the hall. Today’s aftershave smelled of sandalwood and leather, and for an artificial scent, it was relatively pleasant. Kervinen enjoyed trying to guess at criminals’ MOs, although his reports themselves were always direct and matter of fact. Once in court I had heard him testify at length about how the scrapes on a victim’s back and dents in her ankles indicated that she had been dragged unconscious through a forest. Once the presentation had gone on for fifteen minutes, the judge lost his temper. But in the end, the judgment came down based significantly on Kervinen’s testimony.

  “Noora Nieminen is here. I’ve never heard of anyone being beaten to death with ice skates, even though I guess they are pretty sharp. Wasn’t there a hockey match where a skate hit a player in the neck and opened up his jugular and he almost bled out? Stupid sport. I prefer watching golf.”

  “These were figure skates.”

  “Yeah, the ones that have spikes. Now those leave a mark. Come and see.”

  Noora’s body lay naked on t
he stainless-steel table. She was covered with bruises and cuts from the blades of the skates and the pathologist’s scalpel. She had been hit with a skate so hard on the eyebrow that her left eyeball had popped partially out of the socket. There were also nasty gashes on her neck and wrists. Clothing had mostly protected her breasts and thighs, but apparently the points of the skates had torn parts of her clothes, so there were also some slashes on her chest. Noora looked so young and fragile lying there on the examination table, I felt as if I should pull a blanket over her to warm her up.

  “Those gashes would have bled quite a bit, but they weren’t enough to kill her by themselves. The hit to the back of the head was what did it. I’d say our attacker first hit her on the top of the head with a skate and then slammed her against something hard, probably a rock, which broke her skull.”

  “Was she conscious up until then?”

  “Probably, unless the blow to her forehead knocked her out momentarily.”

  “Can you say anything about the attacker from the victim’s wounds?”

  “Just that the attacker was taller than her, but that isn’t much, since she was only five foot one. Strong little thing, though, very developed musculature for a sixteen-year-old. She was some sort of star skater, right? The only sports I watch are golf and soccer. Aren’t they supposed to try to stay skinny? That would explain the phentermine in her urine, since she wasn’t overweight.”

  “What is phentermine?”

  “An appetite suppressant you find in weight-loss drugs like Mirapront. It’s a close relative of amphetamine. Judging from the phentermine content in her urine, I’d say she took it at most twenty-four hours before her death.”

  “Is it on the doping list?”

  “I’ll have to check. Hang on . . .” Kervinen took a thick tome from a shelf and flipped through it. “Yes.”