Death Spiral

by Leena Lehtolainen

  But late summer still felt so far away as this foray into spring spattered my cheeks with rain—nearly sleet—as I turned onto our road. Our yellow one-and-a-half-story house crouched on the hillside. Einstein was on the steps, meowing to be let in out of the rain.

  I opened the front door to chaos. Apparently Antti was searching for something in the upper closets.

  “What’s missing?”

  “My spare bicycle chain. I put it up here somewhere last fall, didn’t I?”

  “I have no idea. Let me through.”

  Instead Antti scooped me into his arms. He had chain grease on his face, and he stank of it. The Creature decided to start kicking Antti through my stomach, and we both laughed. Ultimately we ended up making love on top of the mess of clothing on the floor, my round belly forcing a more traditional choice of position.

  “Do you know what your sister’s husband said he was afraid of when Eeva was pregnant and they had sex?” Antti asked suddenly, grinning and stopping the rocking of our motion.

  “What?” I asked, wanting to get back to business.

  Antti laughed. “That the baby was watching!”

  “Well, of course, it’s been doing that the whole time! Is that the kind of thing you and Jarmo talk about when there aren’t any women around?”

  Then Antti’s laughing lips met mine, and his tongue entered my mouth, his stomach arching back against my roundness, and three became one.

  Almost nothing could have torn me from Antti’s arms, but I had already decided to go back out and pay a visit to Tommy’s Gym. In addition to getting a workout, I could have a chat with Tomi Liikanen.

  “Wasn’t that enough exercise for you just now?” Antti asked, looking up from oiling his bike, which was upturned in the middle of the living room.

  “Oh, yeah, you totally wore me out, baby. But I’m still going to drag myself over there with my last shreds of strength,” I replied.

  Because of the rain, I did something I almost never did: I took the car and drove to the gym.

  Tommy’s Gym was only about ten minutes away, in the basement of a six-story apartment building. The entrance wasn’t particularly inviting, and the door was locked up tight. I pulled my keycard out of my bag. It was still good for another month. The gym was open from six in the morning to midnight, so it was a good fit for someone with a schedule like mine. Theoretically a staff member was only on duty at the gym from eleven to three, but the owner was often around. A couple of times I had been the only person there, and the place was so rambling you didn’t necessarily see the other people who were there. Right now there were only a few people around, but one of them was Tomi Liikanen. His undivided attention was on his right bicep, which he stared at in the mirror as he worked a forty-five-pound dumbbell up and down. I said hi and headed for the modest dressing room, which smelled of cleaning chemicals. I was just pulling my tank top on when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

  “Hi, Maria. What are you doing here?”

  Silja Taskinen stood behind me, drinking from a water bottle. I hadn’t noticed her in the gym, so maybe she had been on one of the leg machines hidden around a corner.

  “I came for a workout,” I said a little embarrassed, as if I were doing something I shouldn’t be. “I come here sometimes because it’s the closest place to our house.”

  “Of course. The figure-skating association uses this gym because Tomi gives us such a good discount. Actually I’m a little surprised I haven’t seen anyone else here today. At least Rami and Janne should have come.”

  “They were at the police station a couple of hours ago picking up Janne’s car. Listen, Silja, you remember that night you were with Noora and Janne at the Weissenbergs’ for dinner, don’t you?” I asked as I tied my shoes. This was a little harder than usual because the Creature was in a strange sideways position.

  “Of course I remember. I thought it was weird Ulrika didn’t invite Rami and Elena too. Our coaches are such an important part of the team.”

  “And Ulrika gave you all nice pieces of jewelry . . .”

  “Yeah, it was so strange!”

  Silja told how she was more embarrassed than flattered by the evening. Dressed in a long cyclamen-red evening gown, Ulrika had served them a four-course meal with wine, presented them the jewelry with an oddly formal speech, and then wanted to dance. Paul Weissenberg, Noora, and Silja all watched awkwardly as Ulrika glued herself to Janne.

  So Noora hadn’t exaggerated in her diary. Strange how suspicious I had become of everything I read or heard. I never believed one person’s word without corroboration. You usually thought of people being at their most naked and genuine in their diaries, at least the kind that teenage girls kept hidden away behind gilded locks. But even those were just one person’s truth, narrow and colored.

  So I asked Silja, “Do you think Ulrika Weissenberg was in love with Janne?”

  “Janne is a handsome guy,” Silja said. “And love knows no age limits, even if it seems a little crazy. Ulrika is over fifty years old and married. Her children are older than Janne.”

  “How did Janne react to it?”

  “He does his best to navigate it. He tries to be friendly but out of reach, like he was with Noora. Ulrika isn’t someone you want as an enemy.” Silja took another gulp of water, and I decided to leave the gossiping at that and head into the gym, but Silja continued talking.

  “The police took our fingerprints. Dad took me down today. If it helps at all, everyone touched Noora’s new skates, including Ulrika. And Janne drove me and Noora to school all the time after morning practice and ballet class on Thursdays.”

  I nodded, opened the door to the gym area, and almost walked right into Irina Grigorieva. Right behind her came her mother, Elena, whose eyebrows went up when she saw me. Connecting that I was the same person who was handling Noora’s murder investigation obviously took a few beats.

  I said a quick hello to Grigorieva and retreated to the exercise bikes. I hadn’t taken into account that the whole Espoo Figure-Skating Association competition team might show up. That would make talking to Tomi Liikanen much more complicated. But I didn’t feel like leaving either, having already gone to the effort to come. Adjusting the bike resistance and setting the timer for twenty minutes, I started pedaling. The mirror showed my tousled ponytail and the same muscly shoulders and arms I’d had for years, but my wide stomach peeked around either side of the handlebars. How much of that was going to be left after the baby? Would my stomach sag like on a fixed tomcat? I’d already gained thirty-five pounds during my pregnancy, but I wasn’t too worried about that; it was all part of the deal. I was simultaneously proud of and unnerved by my round belly. My body was more real than ever yet foreign, a hiding place for secret things.

  In the mirror I could also see Silja placing a bar on her back with maybe thirty pounds of plates. Then she started squatting and jumping with the barbell on her shoulders, apparently working on gaining more thrusting force in her slender legs. Tomi Liikanen watched for a while and then came over and with expert movements corrected Silja’s grip on the bar. Next to slim Silja, Liikanen looked like a refrigerator. He was only about five foot nine but must have weighed 220 pounds with only a little extra in his stomach. A dragon tattoo snaked around Liikanen’s upper arm. His tobacco-brown hair was short and very curly, and the curls continued in his mat of chest hair, which he undoubtedly had to shave before bodybuilding competitions. His ears protruded a little, and the hair on them glistened.

  Elena appeared next to Silja and her husband, told them something, and then she and Tomi started walking toward me.

  “Here’s my husband. Now you can ask him yourself whether I went home the night of Silja’s accident,” Elena Grigorieva said belligerently.

  “You’ve been here before. I remember you. It’s Maria, right?” Tomi Liikanen said curiously. “I didn’t know you were a cop. What do you want to know? I’d be glad to help.”

  Apparently Liikanen belonged to the ever
-growing mass of humanity that felt no need for formality with the police.

  I didn’t stop pedaling, but turned to Tomi. “When I first talked to your wife, she remembered leaving the ice rink with you Wednesday night, going to the store, and then going home together to make food. She claimed you were together the whole time and that neither of you left your apartment all night. But then Noora’s mother said you called her that night a little before seven. You wanted to tell her you had found a piece of jewelry Noora lost. So where exactly were you and when did you get home that night?”

  “What night are you talking about?” Tomi’s neckless face looked genuinely confused.

  “Last Wednesday. Don’t you remember? I got angry at practice that night because of the argument over that commercial!” Elena interjected.

  I would have far preferred to talk to Liikanen without Elena there, but there was no good alternative.

  “Wednesday . . . this guy named Lindroos called when we were leaving the store. Don’t you remember, Elena? He wanted to buy some Trioxin Power, and I promised to drop some by. It’s an energy drink. I run a nutritional supplements importing business along with the gym,” Tomi added, even though I already knew that. The gym walls were decorated with advertisements for all kinds of protein drinks and supplements I had never bothered with. “I dropped you off at home and came here, and while I was messing around behind the counter, I found Noora’s necklace. I remembered her looking for it one night when she was leaving the gym. That’s why I called. Noora’s mom told me to give the necklace to you, since you guys were supposed to have practice on Thursday.”

  So Tomi Liikanen had visited the gym and wasn’t trying to conceal it. When I asked how long he was away from home, he said about half an hour. Theoretically that was also enough time to make a detour through Noora’s neighborhood.

  “Could I have that customer’s phone number? You said his name was Lindroos?” I asked as innocently as I was able given my panting. I had been pedaling the whole time we were talking, which somehow felt more natural.

  “What do you mean? I didn’t do anything!”

  “Just give it to her,” Elena said testily. “I remembered a little wrong. Does that matter so much? I was making food at home. Irina can testify. She was in her room doing homework. She’s over there stretching. You can ask her right now.”

  “Forget about it,” I said quickly. I knew their family had two cars, a van registered to Tommy’s Gym and Elena’s old Saab. Elena also would have had time to drive to Noora’s neighborhood and back in half an hour. But because there wasn’t any evidence against her, I didn’t want to needlessly interview eleven-year-old Irina, who was bending herself into improbable positions on a ballet bar on the wall near the reception desk. The ballet bar looked out of place in the weight room and had probably only been installed at Elena’s insistence.

  I rode my last five minutes at a higher resistance setting and worked up a proper sweat. I had to wipe my face on the hem of my shirt. When the timer finally beeped and I was free, I was ready for some water from the fountain in the women’s restroom. As I turned toward the door, I saw Rami Luoto and Janne Kivi coming down the stairs. My first reaction was to beat a hasty retreat. But instead I lifted my head, straightened my back, and marched off to get my water as if I owned the world. Rami said a proper hello, and Janne moved his head just enough that it could be interpreted as a nod. I understood his antipathy. Every time he saw me, I reminded him of Noora’s violent death, something that would haunt Janne and everyone else involved for the rest of their lives.

  The water tasted like dirt, which Antti said was a sign of spring in Espoo. Something about the water system. I took my plastic cup with me into the gym and headed for the hip adductor machine. Movements that had to be completed lying on my stomach had become impossible several weeks before, so now I was focusing on strengthening the parts of my body that were being taxed the most, such as my thighs, back, and my horribly stretched abdominals. I could see Janne in the mirror. He was warming up on the bike I had just vacated. Rami was using a treadmill. Even with his active career over, he kept himself in good shape, which was obvious from the muscularity of his frame and the ease of his movements. Snooping on them using the mirror amused me. I felt like a secret agent who was cleverly spying on her suspects using an improvised periscope system. With the way my thigh muscles were performing, I was almost in a good mood again.

  Silja seemed to be having a lower body day, since after she finished her jumping she came over next to me on the abductor machine. Thankfully she started talking about something besides Noora’s murder.

  “That guy Pekka must be new in your unit. I haven’t seen him before,” she said. It was funny hearing her talk about Koivu as Pekka. At work no one used his first name. In a male-dominated organization, it was par for the course that everyone was referred to by last names. Around the station I was always Kallio instead of Maria.

  “Yeah, he joined us a couple of months ago. I’ve known him for years, though, since we worked together in Helsinki.” As I related Koivu’s history, I tried to put my best matchmaker’s spin on it. The girl was clearly interested. We traded machines and continued talking until I felt my abductors screaming. I assumed those were some of the muscles needed during childbirth, since you could end up with your legs spread for hours if things didn’t go well.

  The endorphin high that working out caused sent me flying like a kite, and I ended up spending much longer at the gym than I’d intended. The place was pleasantly empty, just the skating group and a couple of people who left after about an hour, at the same time the Grigorieva women did. Two men stopped to buy some supplements from Tomi, and both of them looked as though they could have held their own in a car-lifting contest. Now and then I found myself glancing at Janne as he trained. He really was pretty delicious to look at, and I didn’t wonder in the slightest how he had stolen Noora and Ulrika Weissenberg’s hearts. A sleeveless muscle shirt allowed light to sparkle on the beads of perspiration on his shoulder muscles, which I found myself staring at an embarrassingly long time before I forced myself to get back to working my obliques. Rami Luoto appeared at my side, and it was his turn to stare as I panted away.

  “Isn’t that bad for the baby?” he finally asked uncertainly. As I remembered, Luoto didn’t have a family, so maybe what you could and couldn’t do during pregnancy was a mystery for him.

  “No. I’m trying to prevent my muscles from turning into a hammock after the birth,” I explained. Luoto laughed at the metaphor, which was straight out of one of the more sensible baby books I had read.

  “Um . . . there was something I didn’t say at the police station,” Luoto said. “I did several test lacings of Noora’s boots last Wednesday, so they’re going to be covered with my fingerprints.”

  “Of course,” I grunted. The top of my left obliques had just started hurting, but I didn’t want to stop prematurely while Luoto was watching. I suffered through the set, and Luoto just kept staring.

  Since it felt unnatural to keep silent, I asked him, “Did you coaches know that Noora was taking appetite suppressants with an ingredient on the doping list? Phentermine. Where could she have gotten that?” I stood up, wiping the sweat from my face. I could still feel the stitch in my side. Should I be worried?

  “Appetite suppressants? Doping?” Luoto exclaimed, and then lowered his voice to a whisper. “I didn’t know, but I was worried about something like that. When I asked Noora, she denied it. I don’t know where she got it. Certainly no self-respecting doctor would prescribe that for a growing girl of normal weight.”

  Luoto and I had sat down side by side on a weight bench. He was careful not to touch me. To anyone else our conversation would have looked chummy, but even though the physical distance between us was only a dozen inches, there was a wall as high as my police rank.

  “I don’t know what kind of things she might have been able to get from Tomi,” Luoto continued in a whisper. “He has connections in
Russia, and who knows what’s available there. I highly doubt Tomi’s own body was built on oatmeal.”

  “Hardly,” I said, writing a mental note to check whether Tommy’s Gym had ever been raided. The fact that Noora’s necklace had been found behind the reception desk at the gym, where a nonemployee shouldn’t have been, was bothering me.

  “Did Noora undergo any doping tests last season?”

  “Not a one. There hasn’t really been much talk about doping in figure skating lately. What did Noora go and do?” There was fear in Luoto’s eyes. Had he really not known about the diet pills?

  “Rami, I’m done with my workout. I’m going to stretch and leave,” Silja came to say. “Maria, say hi to Pekka.”

  “Absolutely. He’ll like that.” I decided to move to the rower and did ten minutes at low resistance. As I was finishing up, I saw Silja going out the door. Only Janne, Rami Luoto, Tomi Liikanen, and I were left in the gym.

  It didn’t actually feel very good. One of those three easily could have been Noora Nieminen’s murderer. Although no one was likely to try to hurt me, it was probably clear to everyone that the investigation hadn’t really made any progress. Sorting through the forensic evidence and the dozens of interviews would take time. I moved to the back area and spent another half hour working on various machines until I started to feel my energy reserves flagging. I decided to head to the warmth of the sauna to stretch.

  The sauna was tiny—three women would have been a crowd—but competition in the gym business was intense so Tommy’s Gym had to have a sauna too. According to Antti there was a little more room on the men’s side. He had been there with me a few times, even though he didn’t really enjoy spending time in gyms, preferring useful exercise such as riding his bike to work and chopping wood.