After stretching out, I continued lounging for a while, even though the thermometer read 195 degrees. I took my time showering and dressing, and was just putting my shoes on when suddenly the lights went off.
The darkness was intense. The only points of light I could make out were the phosphorescent hands of my watch. I thought for a moment before groping for the light switch, which I assumed was next to the dressing room door. Finding it was difficult, and I banged my elbow on the drinking fountain and my knee on something else before I found it. I flipped the switch, but the lights didn’t come on.
Probably a power outage. If I just waited for a couple of minutes, the lights would come back on. Maybe someone out in the weight room would know. I opened the door and found the same darkness.
“Tomi?” I yelled.
No answer, as if the place was empty. Maybe they were all in the men’s dressing room. Now what was the layout of this place again? The door to the men’s dressing room would be a few yards to the left. Setting off tracing the wall toward it, I tripped on a dumbbell some goddamn idiot had left on the floor and lost my balance, hitting my forehead on a bar on the leg press machine and almost ending up on the floor. I felt my forehead, which luckily wasn’t bleeding, but I’d have one hell of a lump in the morning.
Finally I found the door to the other dressing room and opened it without hesitation. Even if there were a whole troop of naked men in there, I wouldn’t see anything in the dark.
“Tomi?” I yelled. “Is anyone here?”
No answer, no other light than from the clock on the wall, which ticked off its monotonous song in the silence. What the hell had happened? Where had everyone gone? And why wasn’t the power outage over yet?
I guessed it would be best to open the front door—it was only eight o’clock, so enough light would shine in from outside that I would be able to collect my things. The route to the stairs was relatively clear, and now I even managed to avoid the devious dumbbell. Holding fast to the railing, I stepped up and pushed on the door handle. It moved easily, and I expected the door to open, but nothing happened.
I pressed again, leaning my hips against the door and pushing. It didn’t budge. Feeling for the lock, I rotated it, to no effect. The door was locked up tight. A key card opened it from outside, but from inside the door should have opened just by pressing on the handle. Apparently someone had activated the security system that prevented anyone from entering or leaving between midnight and six. Maybe the same system automatically turned off the lights.
But who—Tomi Liikanen? Why hadn’t he checked to make sure the gym was really empty? Wouldn’t that be a normal part of his routine? And why would he close up when the gym should still be open for another four hours?
The situation was ludicrous. I tried the lock one more time, now more calmly and carefully, but nothing helped. The door had a keypad on the inside, but no slot I could have tried my card in. For a while I pounded and kicked the door with my tired legs, but it was no use. Although Tommy’s Gym was in the basement of an apartment building, the door faced a forest, so few people just walked by. My only hope was that someone out for a smoke on their balcony despite the chilly weather would hear my pounding.
But I didn’t have to hang around waiting. We did have something called a telephone. Damn, I’d left my cell phone at home. It was in my work bag, which was probably still sitting there in the entryway in the middle of Antti’s mess. But there would be a phone in the gym. At the reception desk or somewhere nearby. I headed back down to look.
Descending the stairs was frightening, given the way my belly affected my balance. I groped my way along slowly, one step at a time, feeling for possible traps, trying to feel the vibrations of my surroundings like the blind did. Fresh air was coming from somewhere. Was a fan blowing? Was someone else moving around downstairs? It almost sounded like a weight moved on the floor—maybe the same one I’d tripped on. I had to stay alert.
The darkness was complete except for a green strip glowing on one of the switches. It cast a narrow band of light along the wall, creating a point of reference to use in navigating. I found the reception desk and ran my hand along the top. I was sure I had seen a phone.
My hand hit a stack of paper. It fell to the floor, taking with it something glass, which shattered. Instinctively I closed my eyes to protect them from the shards, but apparently whatever it was fell on the other side of the desk. I continued searching the desktop more carefully but systematically—nothing. Circling to the other side, I began feeling around—paper and pieces of glass scratched under my shoes. Boxes, pens, rubber bands, Velcro wrist weights.
Suddenly a dragging sound came from somewhere in the direction of the green light.
“Hi! Is someone here?”
No answer, and the sound stopped. An unpleasant feeling came over me that I might not be alone in the dark after all. But why would someone play games with me? I thought, just as my hand hit something hard and metal in a drawer. A pistol. A revolver. The shape was unmistakable, and I was able to confirm that it wasn’t loaded. Even so, leaving a gun lying around like that was incredibly irresponsible! Did Tomi Liikanen even have a permit?
Setting the revolver on the desk, I continued my search, but I couldn’t find the phone. It had to be here somewhere! I didn’t intend to spend the whole damn night in a pitch-black weight room. Antti knew where I had gone, and he’d start worrying by midnight at the latest if he didn’t hear from me—or would he? He was used to work unexpectedly messing up my plans. Usually I let him know if I was going to be late, but I wasn’t always able to. I couldn’t count on Antti’s help.
I felt the wall behind the counter and my fingers found a door handle. I remembered that behind the desk was a small office. That was probably where the phone was. I practically ripped the door open and rushed in.
I was completely unprepared for the blow that landed between my shoulder blades. The force of it sent me flying forward, into a desk, which my chest and shoulders hit painfully. The air above me was in motion, and I could tell that something heavy was swinging over me. My upper stomach hurt, along with the back of my shoulders, and there was just as much fear as pain in my tears.
“Who the hell is in here?” I screamed at the darkness, to no reply. I crouched to take the next blow, wrapping one arm around to protect my belly while I fumbled on the table for something heavy—and found a box of matches.
Without time to fear my silent attacker, I grabbed the box and lit a match. I had just enough time to perceive the outlines of a telephone on the desk and the punching bag above me before the flame went out. Lighting another, I stood up. Apparently the bottom of the bag had been rigged to the door so it would swing down violently when someone walked in. Was Tomi serious?
The third match burned long enough to dial our home number. Fortunately Antti was home. I asked him to call Tomi Liikanen and the duty officer at the police station and explain the situation. Only two matches were left in the box, and I hadn’t found anything in the room I could safely burn.
Antti didn’t waste any time on pointless questions and kept the call short, promising to get help. I collapsed in the chair behind Liikanen’s desk and tried to figure out if anything felt strange about my body. My head hurt where I had hit the bar on the leg press, and I would probably have quite the bruise between my shoulders. But my belly didn’t hurt anymore. I felt the skin at the top, which didn’t feel broken. Oh, please, whatever gods were listening, let my little Creature be OK . . .
The sound of the telephone ringing broke the silence, and I fumbled for the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Tomi! Is someone stuck in the gym?”
“Yes, yes! The doors are locked and the lights won’t come on!”
“Oh, shit. I’ll be right there. The janitor doesn’t even have a key. Hang on for five minutes.”
I spent that five minutes letting my thoughts wander in the darkness, with images of both Noora and my own baby
drifting through my mind. The strength of my relief when I heard the front door open took me by surprise. When the lights flipped on, I had to close my eyes for a second and then squint while they adjusted to the brightness.
Tomi Liikanen was appalled by what had happened and couldn’t stop apologizing. Apparently there had been a malfunction in the security system. He would give me a year’s membership free to make up for the incident. Oh, I’d broken the banana vase on the front desk in the dark. Not to worry. The important thing was I was safe.
Antti arrived on his bike at the same time the patrol from the police station showed up, and I was almost ashamed of all the ruckus I had caused. And yet: What if the punching bag had hit my head instead of my shoulders? I would have lost consciousness and could have hit my head even worse when I fell. What if . . . I didn’t want to think about that, and I also didn’t want to think about whether my confinement in the gym was really an accident. I wanted to go home and crawl under the covers on my bed.
Feigning nonchalance, I asked Tomi Liikanen about the gun, and he assured me he had a permit. When I asked why he kept it under the front desk, he answered evasively that he was afraid someone might try to rob the cash register; apparently that had happened at another gym. Of course an unloaded gun was only a ruse.
I didn’t have the energy for more than that. Antti took the front wheel off his bike and loaded it into the backseat of our Fiat, and I sat in the passenger seat, sending thanks to an unknown god that the Creature had started wriggling again. But I still couldn’t get my mind off of what I would have to do first thing the next morning.
It was high time to take a closer look at Tomi Liikanen’s businesses.
10
An impressive bump graced my forehead the next morning. I had taken three acetaminophens, but my head was still splitting when I started digging into Tomi Liikanen and Tommy’s Gym. The results were disappointing. Both the gym and Liikanen’s import business seemed to have all their ducks in a row. And besides, Liikanen wouldn’t have shut me in his gym if I could have found something like anabolic steroids in there. I almost believed his story about the security system malfunction. Or was it Rami Luoto or Janne Kivi who was to blame? Janne was a student at the Helsinki University of Technology. Maybe he had the practical engineering experience to reprogram a timer lock.
Noora’s diaries were still stacked on my desk, so I opened number thirteen again at random, the one Noora had been writing around the time when her mom left home.
Mom flipped out again today like she always does now. She hit Sami in the face with a kitchen towel because he forgot to put his plate in the dishwasher and left it on the table. Then she yelled at me because she said I hung my workout clothes on the line in the utility room too messily. She tried to hit me too, but I grabbed her arm before she could and that seemed to snap her out of it. Dad told her straight to her face that she was being a crazy bitch.
Dad isn’t much better, though. All he does is sit around watching Eurosport, drinking beer, and getting even fatter. How am I ever going to be skinny when I inherited nothing but fat cells from both sides? If it weren’t for skating and Janne, I wouldn’t be able to stand living here and going to school. This is the most intense part of our training season, so we meet every day. Janne is so nice. I just love the way he looks at me. And his smile . . .
I don’t know if it makes me want to laugh or cry when someone like Ulrika gets on her soapbox about how important the support of our families is. Yeah, they drive me to practice, that’s true, but the “emotional environment” at home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Dad is always at work or drunk, and Mom is all neurotic about trying to seem more sophisticated than she really is. She bought the same kind of suit Ulrika wears and got mad at me when I said purple isn’t her color.
Then came pages of praise for Janne, detailed reports about what Janne had said at any given time and how he had looked at her. Reading it was annoying, so I skipped forward. Noora clearly hadn’t intended for anyone to read these diaries. Turning to the end of the book, I found references to Hanna and Vesku Teräsvuori.
Today after school I went to visit Mom and the guy she’s living with. The whole place was a mess—Mom never would have stood for anything like that at home—but maybe she really has started a new life. Mom just sat there in this gross low-cut minidress that made her big butt and thighs look even worse than normal, trying to convince us that she had to start thinking about herself for once since so far she’s just been living for Dad and us kids. “Your father has plenty of money to hire a maid. That’s what you need, not me. He’s always bragging about how much money he makes, so now’s his chance to use it, if that’s all that’s important to him.” Mom was making goo-goo eyes at Vesku, who was on the other side of the room practicing his sappy karaoke songs. It’s ridiculous seeing your own mother trying to pretend she’s young and in love—she’s thirty-four! Mom says she’s started the divorce. Dad can keep the house and everything, but she’s going to demand that he pay her for all the work she’s done for his company over the years.
When I left, she kept telling me how much she loves me and Sami, but she wants something more out of life than being a mother. They were going out to a movie and then dinner. Dad never took Mom anywhere but company parties. And Mom says Vesku buys her fresh red roses every day. I guess being pampered like that would be nice. It’s hard to imagine Mom in bed with Vesku, but I couldn’t imagine her in bed with Dad either, even though I could hear sometimes and pulled my pillow over my ears. Just thinking about it makes me want to puke.
Janne picked me up and I felt like crying, but Janne started joking about something, and I forgot about everything. He’s the best.
What had finally convinced Hanna to leave Vesku Teräsvuori? Would Noora’s diaries have the answer? The Nieminen family was at once so ordinary and so grotesque. What was so intriguing about them? Did I think I was going to find the solution to the mystery of Noora’s death deep in one of her diaries?
To my surprise, my office door buzzer rang. I hadn’t arranged a meeting with anyone, and my coworkers usually just knocked. When I pressed the button to turn on the green light, Hanna Nieminen walked in. Her face was red and swollen, and the makeup meant to hide that she had been crying couldn’t conceal the bags under her eyes. Bright-pink lipstick was clotted in the crevices of her chapped lips.
“I came to collect Noora’s things.” Her voice was hoarse and sort of thick—in a matter of only a couple of days, Hanna had lost enough weight that her black dress fit her.
“They aren’t here anymore. I think someone’s supposed to drop them off at your house today. If you can wait just a second, I’ll check. Please, have a seat.”
Hanna sat down in the armchair across from me, seeming self-conscious of every movement she made. I called the evidence room, where I had returned Noora’s belongings. They were still there. I offered to escort Hanna down, but she just sat there.
Finally, obviously uncomfortable, she asked, “Do you have a few minutes, Detective Kallio? I’ve been thinking of some things that might help you solve Noora’s murder.”
Suddenly Hanna noticed Noora’s diary on my desk. Her face froze, and her hand extended toward the book.
“That’s Noora’s, isn’t it? I feel wrong that I gave them to you to read. Noora wouldn’t have wanted that. She was so strict about making sure no one ever got to peek at what she wrote. Kauko tried once, and that was why Noora started buying ones with locks. Maybe I should take them back and . . . and burn them.”
“How about I keep them for now? We may find some crucial piece of information in them that none of us has thought of yet. But you had something you wanted to talk about, Mrs. Nieminen. I’m happy to listen.”
Hanna’s index fingers rubbed the skin around her thumbnails. It was already raw, the angry red flesh making the light pink of her nail polish look artificial. I felt like telling her to stop picking at her fingers, but I didn’t.
“Has it
occurred to you that even if Vesku didn’t kill Noora himself, he could have paid someone else to do it?” Hanna finally asked, her fingers clawing at her thumbs so hard that it made an unpleasant scratching sound. “He knows lots of people who have been in prison . . .”
I nodded. This scenario seemed absurd, but we had to take every suggestion seriously in a case that didn’t have any sensible leads—except for the red Nissan Micra that had been seen in the parking garage at the same time Noora’s body was dumped in Kati Järvenperä’s car.
“When I moved in with Vesku, Kauko was pretty threatening. He almost didn’t let me leave the house once when I went back to get more clothes. Vesku said he knew some guys who could go over and teach Kauko a little lesson if I needed. That was the first time I was frightened—I didn’t want to get mixed up in anything like that.”
“Can you give me any names of people Teräsvuori might have used?”
Hanna’s fingernails moved faster; she didn’t seem to realize what she was doing.
“I didn’t even know his friends! The weeks I lived with him it was always just the two of us. I was usually with Vesku at work. We went and put on karaoke nights in Hyvinkää, Hämeenlinna, and Kouvola. We slept in fancy hotel rooms and drank Champagne, even though it turned out Vesku didn’t have the money for that. I thought he was a completely different man than he turned out to be. You can go ahead and laugh at me, but I thought he was genuinely sensitive and romantic, not a womanizer and a petty criminal.”
Could Noora’s death have been a beating meant to be nothing more than a threat that had spun out of control? It wasn’t completely out of the question—and it would explain the body being dumped in the trunk of the car like a drug hit.
Blood had started running from Hanna’s left thumb, but she just continued digging at it regardless of the pain. I wondered if there were any Band-Aids left in the box in my desk drawer.
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