Death Spiral (18 page)

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.

“Did Teräsvuori ever act violently toward you?” I asked as I rummaged in my desk. As I had guessed, the box was empty. Koivu had taken the last one a few days earlier after cutting his middle finger with a pocketknife while trying to peel an unusually hard orange.

“Not exactly. It was the eighteen-year-olds calling in the middle of the night that got me to go back home. One woman was never enough for Vesku. There was a high school girl in Karis he had promised to make a singer, and there was another one in Hamina. That one was married too. He kept visiting them, even though he said he was working. He told me I was the woman of his dreams. What a joke. I kept finding new sides of him I didn’t like. He had all kinds of debts, so I don’t know where he got the money to buy me all those presents and flowers. Kauko might not be handsome or the most exciting man in the world, but at least he takes care of our finances. His company makes honest money.”

A red droplet fell onto Hanna’s black dress. Maybe Pihko should have a closer look at Vesku Teräsvuori’s activities, since he had already checked his alibi. Teräsvuori didn’t have a rap sheet beyond a few speeding tickets and some overdue taxes, but his little brother had done a couple of stretches for fraud. Maybe Teräsvuori had hired some muscle through him.

“It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Vesku was trying to harass me by having someone beat up Noora. That wouldn’t take much imagination; they did the same thing to Nancy Kerrigan in the States. Stupid me, I told Vesku about how I wanted to be a figure skater when I was little, but there weren’t any opportunities for that in the sixties in a place like I was from.”

Hanna’s eyes had turned to the wall, where I was sure she was seeing something completely different than the images that actually hung there.

“Dad froze the front yard for a skating rink. It was small and bumpy, but it was enough for us kids. I dragged our old record player to the window and skated to my parents’ tango songs. My brother had a Beatles record too, but he wouldn’t let me play it. I wanted a real skating costume, one with fur and everything, like Marja in my class had, but Mom didn’t want to make it. That was when I decided if I ever had a daughter, she would be a figure skater.”

I had heard the same sort of story far too many times, and it usually ended badly. But apparently Noora had accepted her role of living out her mother’s dreams, adopting them as her own.

Hanna was sure that Teräsvuori was responsible for Noora’s death in one way or another, and she was trying to convince me too. It made me suspicious. Laying the blame on Vesku or some imaginary thugs was easy, but what if the truth was something else entirely?

“We will definitely look into the possibility that Teräsvuori could have hired someone else to attack Noora. Did he ever threaten to do something like that?”

Hanna shook her head, but then immediately told me about someone named Karttunen who had owed Vesku five grand and claimed he didn’t have the money to pay him back. That same night someone jumped Karttunen, and the next day he showed up at the door with a broken nose and the five thousand marks. Hanna had been home alone and wondered at the fat, grubby envelope shoved in her hands.

“I didn’t dare ask about it, especially since I knew Vesku needed the money to cover his debts. It made me realize that Vesku wasn’t a safe person to be with, and besides—”

A knock at the door interrupted Hanna—of course I had forgotten to turn the red light back on. Puupponen was bringing me the latest results from the door-to-door canvassing of Noora’s neighborhood.

“When will you be free?” he asked, looking as if he had something important.

“I was just leaving,” Hanna said quickly. Blood oozed from her left thumb.

“Let’s go get Noora’s things,” I said, thinking of the torn, bloody clothing waiting downstairs. Would it be better for Hanna not to see them? And what was I going to do with the diaries? Not that it was any of my business, but I doubted Hanna and Kauko would want to see the disgust and anger toward her parents they would find in Noora’s diary entries.

Hanna walked in front of me down the hall. She was having trouble managing her four-inch heels. I opened the elevator door for her, then the door to the evidence room without either of us saying a word. When Hanna saw Noora’s sports bag, now vacuumed clean, she took a deep breath but didn’t say anything. But when I asked whether she also wanted Noora’s clothes, she almost shouted.

“No! Keep them here.”

“The bag has everything in it except for the skates and her latest diary,” I said to Hanna, who was holding the duffel bag by the handle as if weighing it.

“Yes, her skates. That’s why this feels so light,” Hanna said, absentminded and focused on something far away. Then tears began flooding down her face as she desperately tried to wipe them away. Her fingers smeared streaks of blood in with her makeup.