Death Spiral (23 page)

In order to get my mind off things, I turned on the radio, and fortunately Die Toten Hosen’s “Bonnie und Clyde” was playing. Immediately I felt better. Apparently the Christian Conservatives were right when they said punk music was corrupting the youth or our country, because I instantly felt like having a whiskey in a smoky dive bar. According to the baby books, expectant mothers were supposed to listen to Mozart and Vivaldi.

I was just crossing an overpass when I noticed a car below me on the Turku Highway speeding wildly, a Black Maria with lights flashing in hot pursuit. At the same time my police radio crackled into life: “Red Nissan Micra, license number AZG-577.”

The number sounded familiar, but it took me a few seconds to realize it was Janne Kivi’s car. What had the boy gone and done now?

Even though charging after my colleagues down the Turku Highway wasn’t even a little bit smart, I did a U-turn just before the road that branched off to the police station and took the on-ramp. Janne and his pursuers would already be a mile ahead of me. Even so I managed to make contact with the patrol, Haikala and Akkila.

“This driver’s out of his mind!” Akkila yelled. “He hasn’t gone below a hundred and forty the whole time. Must be a stolen car, or he’s drunk. OK, we’ve got a straightaway. We’re pulling up alongside. Haikala, give me the megaphone!”

The connection went dead as I passed a Lada and two vans crawling along. I tried not to press on the gas too hard, even though a feeling of panic had overtaken me. Maybe Janne was trying to kill himself. Maybe he was flooring his little Nissan hoping it would go out of control under a logging truck or into a rock wall. I didn’t quite trust Akkila and Haikala’s ability to handle the situation. I could easily imagine them chasing Janne, thinking they were on the heels of a dangerous drug dealer in Los Angeles. Both of them were new to the force and far too enthusiastic about using force—Akkila carried a pistol constantly. Haikala was a kickboxing expert and more than happy to demonstrate his skills during arrests even when it wasn’t necessary. Keeping them together was a mistake in my opinion; both of them needed someone older and calmer to partner with.

I realized I was driving dangerously fast myself, but I didn’t bother braking or moving out of the left lane. I had to find out what had happened to Janne.

I had just reached the hill before the downtown Espoo exit when Akkila announced that they had managed to make the stop. From the top of the hill I could see the police van pulled over on the shoulder, almost concealing the smaller red car. Moving into the right lane, to the irritation of everyone behind me, I braked and pulled up behind the other two vehicles. Even while I was concentrating on parking, I saw Haikala roughly drag Janne out of the Nissan. Janne resisted as much as he could. When Akkila slammed him against the hood, Janne tried to kick Akkila in the groin, but he dodged. Haikala leaned all his weight on Janne’s back and started handcuffing him.

“What the hell is going on here?” I yelled, levering myself out of the car.

“Hey, Kallio,” Akkila said, looking irritated. “We’ve got this. OK, kid, let’s see your ID.”

Haikala turned his head toward me, showing off the red scrape on his jaw. Had Janne punched him? That would explain why they were being so heavy handed.

“Show us your driver’s license—or do you even have one?” Akkila said. “And your registration. Or isn’t this your car?”

Haikala pulled out a Breathalyzer and roughly shoved it between Janne’s lips. “Blow in this. So where is that driver’s license? Come on, blow!”

They were obviously disappointed when the needle didn’t move. Janne lifted his head off of the hood just enough to notice me. I didn’t quite know how to interpret his expression, which changed quickly from anger to relief, then to embarrassment and finally back to moroseness.

“I must have left my wallet at home,” Janne said, straightening up.

“Don’t bullshit me! Left it at home, my ass! You don’t have a license, and this definitely isn’t your car,” Akkila said.

Janne’s eyes flashed, and a look of satisfaction appeared on his face. “Ask her. Detective Kallio knows me.”

Akkila and Haikala turned to me, so I nodded.

“His name is Janne Kivi, he has a valid driver’s license, and this is his car.” The situation was almost amusing. “So what happened here? I heard the license plate on the radio and followed because I recognized it.”

“We were just coming through the Ring I intersection when we saw this dude zig-zagging in and out of traffic like a kamikaze at ninety in an fifty zone. Of course we were going to stop him,” Akkila said.

“Ninety miles an hour? Pretty good for a Nissan this size,” I said, trying to make a joke of it.

Janne didn’t answer, but Akkila continued. “And then he wouldn’t stop until we pulled up next to him. Said he couldn’t hear the sirens because he had the music up so loud.”

“And then he wouldn’t come out of the car until we dragged him out, and then he hit me,” Haikala added like a six-year-old tattling on a playmate. I was just glad Janne was still in one piece. I felt like laughing. Even though I bit my lip, I couldn’t help letting out a little giggle, which made Janne’s eyes flash again.

“So you’re sure this car is his?” Akkila asked suspiciously.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“You can understand how we thought it was stolen. But in any case, we’ve got him at least for aggravated reckless driving and resisting arrest,” Akkila said. He still wanted excitement and action. He hadn’t learned yet that for a cop, the best days were the boring, uneventful ones.

Theoretically Janne’s little escapade was none of my business. The smartest thing would have been to leave him to Haikala and Akkila and scram. But I was sure the incident was a result of Noora’s death. And besides, I had something I needed to talk to Janne about.

Janne had been at Tommy’s Gym the night I got trapped. Maybe he’d wanted to teach me a little lesson for snooping around.

“Does he have a record?” Akkila asked curiously. Even though I understood his desire to learn where I knew Janne from, the assumption that he must be a criminal annoyed me. In Akkila’s world the police were “us” and everyone we arrested was “them.”

“His figure-skating partner was murdered last week,” I said in a tone I hoped would curb Akkila. “I’m investigating the case. Actually, I have a few questions to ask him on that theme, so I can take him to the station if one of you can bring my car. Then I can hand him over to Traffic for questioning.

“If I were you, I’d forget about the resisting arrest,” I told Haikala. “The force I just saw you using wasn’t exactly by the book.”

Haikala avoided my eyes, but it was easy to see he was peeved.

“Just go back to whatever you were doing before,” I said in my most authoritative voice. “And take those bracelets off. I can handle him.”

Akkila glowered at me and then roughly jerked Janne up off the hood of the car and took off the handcuffs.

A telephone ringing in the patrol van saved all of us from an embarrassing situation as the guys were called to the other side of town. Akkila threw the Nissan keys at my feet. I thought I caught the words “fucking bitch” on Haikala’s lips as he was climbing into the van.

Janne rubbed his wrists, where the overly tight handcuffs had left red marks.

“You’re probably going to end up in traffic court over this speeding ticket. Pretty stupid. What’s got into you that you have to go speeding around like a maniac?”

“What the hell does it matter?”

“You’re the only one who can answer that.” Bending down I picked up the Nissan keys and handed them to Janne. “Can I trust you? Will you follow me to the police station if I let you drive alone?”

Janne nodded, looking taciturn. He obviously understood that running away didn’t make any sense. Still I carefully watched the little red car in my rearview mirror, and the tension in my shoulders didn’t release until we met again at the front doors of the station.

I led Janne to my office and after grabbing a couple of coffees, I dug my emergency chocolate cookies out of my desk drawer. Janne had collapsed on the couch. Exhaustion replaced his expression of defiance, and the milk I had brought didn’t quite hit his cup and some splashed on the table. Instead of sitting behind the desk, I pulled a chair over next to the couch and started playing kaffeeklatch.

“So, what’s bugging you?” I asked as if addressing a friend.

Janne snorted. “That’s a stupid question. Maybe I’m bugged because my whole life has gone to shit and everything I’ve worked for is gone!”

Sounded logical. Everyone agreed that Janne had no future as a skater without a talented partner, and finding another partner wouldn’t be easy, at least not in Finland. But I was sure something else was going on. Since I didn’t know how to get him to open up, I started talking about other people.

“How well do you know Tomi Liikanen?”

“Tomi? I don’t really know him at all. I just go to his gym, which you already know.”

At least Janne wasn’t refusing to talk today. Maybe my maternal solicitude was finally starting to work.

“I think you also know Vesku Teräsvuori, the man Noora’s mother was dating for a while. Have you ever seen Teräsvuori at Tommy’s Gym?”

“I think he stopped by there a couple of times after they split up, but Tomi banned him. He was bothering Noora, so he was blacklisted.”

“Really? I didn’t know that. Tell me more.”

According to Janne, Teräsvuori had started training at Tommy’s Gym the previous fall. The first time he’d showed up, the figure-skating team had just been leaving, so Noora didn’t make a big deal about it. The next time Rami and Janne had been there along with Noora. Teräsvuori hadn’t said anything to Noora, but kept getting on machines next to her. Noora complained to Tomi, who ordered Teräsvuori to beat it without any further argument.

“Did it seem to you like Teräsvuori and Tomi already knew each other?”

Janne couldn’t say, since he hadn’t given it any thought before. The whole group had met Teräsvuori after Hanna moved in with him, but Janne never liked him.

“I chased him out of the ice rink more than once after he and Noora’s mom broke things off. I’m sure Tomi and Elena would have talked some sense into him if they had known him. They definitely didn’t seem like friends at the gym, though.”

Shifting the topic of conversation away from himself had helped relax Janne. Propping his back against the arm of the couch he put his legs on the coffee table. This handsome young man was a perfect addition to the collage on my wall.

“How do you think Tomi and Elena’s relationship is?”

Janne frowned, looking as if this was the first time he had considered it.

“I don’t really know. Elena doesn’t talk about herself. She’s more of a distant kind of coach. She doesn’t hang around with us or invite us over.”

“Unlike maybe Rami Luoto?”

Exactly. According to Janne, Rami was completely different. For Janne, Rami had always been more of a friend than a coach. Ulrika thought that was Rami’s weak point, that he didn’t have enough authority. But Janne’s warm tone of voice revealed how much he liked Rami as a person. When I tried to turn the conversation to Ulrika Weissenberg, Janne’s answers were more evasive.

“Are you dating?” I finally asked, and for some reason my question made Janne flush.

“When would I have time for that?” he asked angrily but was saved from my follow-up question when a knock came at the door.

“Hi, Janne,” Jyrki Taskinen said after opening the door a crack. “Maria, do you have a second . . .”

“We’re just finishing up. Thanks, Janne. You do still need to go turn yourself in to the Traffic Division.”

First Taskinen wanted to know what Janne was doing at the police station. After I told him, he looked concerned, but hurried on to his own business.

“This morning I called my old friend Boris Harlamov in Moscow about Anton Grigoriev’s death. Boris promised to check the case file and then just called back.” Taskinen paused, intentionally baiting me, and I fell for it.

“Well?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“There isn’t a case file. It’s missing.”

“What?”

According to Boris, a missing case file wasn’t all that out of the ordinary. During the political upheaval, the Russian militia had undergone several reorganizations, and attempts had been made to conceal previous abuses of power by destroying evidence and archival records. Anton Grigoriev’s file had been in a storage facility where an explosion had occurred a couple of years ago, and it was likely that the papers disappeared then.

“But don’t they have any kind of backup copy system? And there has to be someone there who remembers the case, like the police officers who investigated it?”

Taskinen sighed. “Boris said he’d keep digging, but he was pretty skeptical about ever finding anything. Even though we’re talking about a Sports Ministry official and a European bronze medalist—or maybe precisely because of that—the investigation was limited and sloppy, so there wasn’t much material to begin with.”

“But that has to point to something big!” I said. During my years as a cop I had been involved with a few international drug investigations, but now it was looking like Noora’s murder might have connections to something even bigger. What could she have learned and about whom?

“Yes, it might, but it also might mean that they never caught the driver who hit Grigoriev because it was some big Communist Party muckety-muck or the cop in charge of the investigation was too drunk to do the investigation.” Taskinen thought my sudden excitement was amusing.

“What else can we do besides wait for information from Boris? Should we give Elena a good raking over the coals?” I asked.

“I think we should actually try Rami Luoto. He was competing at the same time as the Grigorievs, so he’s known them for more than fifteen years. And Silja has always trusted Rami as a coach. It’s possible Noora told Rami what she knew about the Grigorievs.”

I nodded. Then we talked about my maternity leave stand-in, Anu Wang, who was the first woman of Vietnamese descent who had ever graduated from the Finnish police academy. Anu would start a week before I left, so she would have a chance to get up to speed with the cases I was working on.