Death Spiral (30 page)

Silja is telling me to turn off the lights and go to sleep, but one more thing. Janne’s kisses after the program weren’t just for show. I didn’t even bother scolding him for that axel because WE’RE SO DAMN GOOD TOGETHER!

Tuesday, March 20

Or, actually, it’s Wednesday and Silja needs to get to sleep, but I just have to write a little so I’m sitting in our bathroom in our room.

WE CAME IN NINTH! Actually in the free skate we were eighth! The mood is fantastic, like we had gold medals around our necks or something. Rami was crying when the results came in, and we were all just screaming and kissing each other.

Apparently the whole competition has been full of mistakes. Nobody has skated a clean program, so the fact that Janne fell on his triple toe loop combination was pretty small. One of the Eurosport announcers said that our death spiral was the best the whole week, so maybe that will become our trademark. And everyone’s been talking about my knees, saying I’m just as flexible as any of the Russians.

Why am I supposed to go to sleep? I’m sure Janne and Rami are sitting in a restaurant somewhere. They just tricked me to get me to go to my room. Why can’t I spend the night with Janne? Everything we achieved we did together. I was hugging and kissing him all night and he was hugging and kissing me back.

I’ve never been this happy. Never. I never want to go to sleep. I don’t want this day to end. Ever.

16

Monday morning was just as cold and gray as the rest of the spring had been, even though the calendar said it was June. I woke up to a wet blanket. My breasts had leaked during the night, leaving a puddle of sour milk. When I looked at the sheets more carefully, I noticed several stiff, dried stains. Laughing, I told Antti now I knew how boys felt going through puberty.

Trudging to the bus through the muddy forest, I had to watch my step. My visit to the maternity clinic was a relief, since my blood pressure had fallen to normal. The police station was deserted, and the duty officer said he thought about half the force had stretched Pihko’s going away party all the way to Sunday evening. Koivu had made it to his office, but he bore all the signs of a rough weekend. Sunglasses shielded his eyes, and he had tried to cover the smell of old booze with a double dose of aftershave. Sprawled in his chair behind his desk, he rested his head against the wall. His chest rose and fell steadily. Sleeping.

“Are you alive or dead?”

Koivu awoke with a start and lifted his sunglasses, but then he lowered them again. I wondered aloud why he needed glasses when the sun wasn’t shining.

“Right now I wish I was dead,” he muttered. “I can’t do any driving today. There’s no way I’m legal yet. And Maria, I made the worst mistake of my life!”

“That’s been going around. What did you do?”

“Puupponen and me got totally wasted Saturday. At midnight when we started moving to another restaurant, I had already had at least ten pints. I ended up in the coat room next to Taskinen and started jabbering . . . Oh my God!”

Koivu buried his face in his hands, and his shoe kicked the leg of the desk.

“You started telling him what a fine daughter he has? Is that it?”

“Yep, that’s it. How could I be such an idiot! And I even asked him if I could ask her out on a date . . .”

“Yeah, that was pretty stupid. Girls these days make those decisions themselves. Don’t worry, though. Taskinen is a smart guy. He won’t tell Silja. By the way, have you seen him today?”

“No, he isn’t here. Thank God. The chief called in all the unit commanders for a Monday meeting. They’re probably settling all the promotions.”

“Interesting. I’m sorry for bothering you with work on such a bad morning, but where is Liikanen right now? Is he in a cell or on the street?”

“Narcotics started questioning him Saturday night, but I don’t know what they decided. Oh, man, I feel like shit! We kept going all day yesterday since we had such bad hangovers in the morning.”

I left Koivu to recover and returned to my office to figure out Tomi Liikanen’s whereabouts. The Narcotics Division had detained him for questioning, but they were releasing him on bail. He would be out by afternoon.

I reserved Interrogation Room 2 and dragged Koivu’s stinking corpse over there, promising a pepperoni pizza and a big glass of milk as soon as he could eat. Escorted by two uniformed officers, Liikanen looked at least as miserable as Koivu. His tanning-bed skin was yellowish, and his two days of stubble grew in funny tufts with small hairless patches. The tufts of hair continued onto the backs of his hands. The hair on his head, however, was an even one-inch crew cut.

“Hi again, Tomi. I hear you’ve been pretty talkative lately. Teräsvuori’s death have you all shook up?”

Liikanen didn’t answer, just stared at the worn tips of his deck shoes. His short thighs stretched the legs of his sweatpants, and when he rubbed his hands on them, they left dark marks.

“How long are you going to keep me here?”

“That depends on what you have for me. I’m only interested in Vesku Teräsvuori’s part in your steroid business. As for Anton Grigoriev’s death, I only want to know whether Elena knew how her husband died.”

Expressing himself verbally clearly wasn’t Liikanen’s strong point. He just rubbed his thighs and didn’t say anything. Koivu leaned against the wall, his eyes still concealed behind his sunglasses. I wasn’t going to get any help from him.

“Tomi, did Elena know the truth about Anton’s death?”

His head turned slowly back and forth on his thick neck. A voice that was too reedy for such a massive frame answered reluctantly. “No, she didn’t know. I never told her. But she knew I was out with Anton that night, and she never told the police. Maybe she guessed something.”

“What was Anton’s role in your business?”

“He organized my first contact, like I’ve already said a dozen times,” Liikanen said with a sigh. “There was a lot of doping going on over there. Like in a lot of other countries. Some just had better drugs. Anton asked me once whether Finland needed something a little stronger than protein supplements. I’d had people ask me at the gym.”

“So Grigoriev drew you into the drug trade? Was he the only Russian who knew what you were up to?”

Tomi shrugged, the movement taking longer than normal. Apparently explosive speed wasn’t one of his strengths either. “I wasn’t concerned as long as distribution worked.”

“And it kept working after Grigoriev’s death?”

When Liikanen nodded, I asked about Teräsvuori’s part in the scheme. Stammering, Tomi said that after the Soviet Union switched over to a free-market economy, his steroid source started selling much more expensive stuff, mostly marijuana and heroin. Moving stuff was easy these days, and the same couriers that brought Tomi’s relatively innocent drugs over the border also brought harder things.

Coincidentally, it was the same Mattinen gang I’d nabbed during a murder investigation about four years earlier that handled Liikanen’s trafficking. When the gang broke up, the dealers had to look for new importers, and that was how Liikanen met Teräsvuori. He didn’t handle any big deals either, mostly just marijuana for bored kids out in the countryside.

“They tried to push heroin on me and Vesku too, but we didn’t dare take it. Or I didn’t anyway. I don’t see anything wrong with trying to grow your muscles a little. You can’t get addicted to it like real drugs, and no one forces you to do it,” Liikanen said in his own defense.

“Do you think it’s morally right to give doping drugs to a sixteen-year-old? You were also Noora’s dealer. And don’t deny it. I read all about it in her diary. Were you afraid of her talking? Is that why you killed her?”

“I didn’t kill her! I didn’t even see her that night!”

“Your friend did back up your story about delivering the energy drinks, but you still could have had time to go beat Noora to death, and you have the muscles for it.”

“But I didn’t do it!”

“But you know who did, don’t you?”

That sentence made Koivu stand up straight and Liikanen rub his thighs in agitation.

“How should I know who killed her?”

“Last Tuesday behind the Fishmaid Restaurant, Teräsvuori said you both knew who killed Noora and why. Don’t you remember?”

Liikanen stared at me, dumbfounded. I wondered whether I might have made a mistake. Maybe the person on the loading dock with Teräsvuori hadn’t been him.

“How you do you know what we were talking about?” he finally asked.

“Teräsvuori was under surveillance,” I said, lying. “So tell me what Vesku meant.”

“What do I get if I do?” Liikanen asked greedily.

I sighed. I didn’t have the desire or the authority to cut a deal with Liikanen—Narcotics was handling him. And since Teräsvuori wasn’t around to contradict him, Liikanen could give us any name he wanted.

I wasn’t surprised when Tomi said, “I thought Vesku was talking about himself. He wanted revenge on Hanna. The police know that.”

There was no way I could prove Teräsvuori meant anyone else. But was there anyone other than Elena Grigorieva that Liikanen might want to protect? I moved on.

“How did Noora know she could get diet pills from you?”

Tomi Liikanen stood up and started pacing around the room.

Ten feet from wall to wall, only three steps in either direction, even with Liikanen’s short legs. Of course sitting hunched in a cell with nothing to do was difficult for a man who was used to training hard six times a week. What kind of pills did Liikanen take to maintain his physique? Was it possible to get addicted to them?

“She just guessed! This one day she just came up and asked about supplements for appetite control. She said she wanted to lose the fat on her ass without dropping any muscle. Me the idiot suggested Mirapront, since I was having a hard time selling them otherwise.”

“And Noora wanted to buy? Did Elena know Noora was taking weight-loss pills?”

“No! Elena would have blown her top if she heard I was messing with Noora.”

There was no doubt Liikanen was a little afraid of his wife. But had Elena Grigorieva known about Liikanen’s side business? Tomi denied this strenuously. Elena didn’t approve of doping. She had seen enough of its consequences during her active skating career. I wondered if she would leave Tomi after she learned about his illicit business and his role in Anton’s death. The Russians would get to decide whether to press charges for that. And really no one had any information about that fight other than Liikanen’s own account. For some reason I believed it because it was too simple to be made up.

“Why did Noora think she could get away with taking phentermine? It’s on the antidoping list.”

Liikanen shook his head. “Noora wasn’t going to take them during the competition season. She just wanted to lose a few pounds before Canada.”

Was Tomi Liikanen really as stupid as he seemed? An athlete at Noora’s level was subject to testing at any time. It was hard to imagine that Liikanen having a cool enough head to hide Noora’s body in a stranger’s trunk. But maybe that was just dumb luck.

“Were you the one who locked me in your gym?” I finally asked Liikanen, sure he would admit he had.

“No! No way! The last thing I wanted was a cop rummaging through my office. Those locks have acted up before . . .” Liikanen looked like a little boy who was trying to convince a neighbor that it wasn’t his hockey puck that just went through the window.

Now I stood up too and walked right up to Liikanen. We were probably an amusing pair, a five-foot-three pregnant woman confronting a massive body builder four inches taller. To my surprise, I realized that Liikanen was afraid of me. Poor man. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s muscles didn’t help much without the nerve to shoot any higher in life than selling pills to teenage girls.

“Who did Noora threaten to tell about the Mirapront?”

“You’ve got it all wrong. Noora didn’t threaten me. She was afraid I would tell.”

“Tell who?”

“Elena, of course . . . and the others. As if I would do that.”

Of course Liikanen was brave enough to kick around people smaller than himself.

“But you still teased Noora about her weight when you got the chance. You bastard! What right did you have to judge Noora?”

I was surprised at the rage that suddenly overcame me. Turning away from Liikanen, I walked out into the hall and kicked the wall. Luckily it worked and I was able to get myself under control before sending Liikanen back to his cell. Narcotics could do what they wanted with him, since I didn’t have any reason to throw him in jail.

Not yet, at least.

In the elevator I felt as if I might suffocate on Koivu’s cocktail of overpowering aromas. I asked him to get the records from Liikanen’s weekend interrogation and all the Noora Nieminen murder material, starting from the door-to-door canvassing. There had to be something that would shed some light on the case. Antti had spent all day Sunday trying rebuild my confidence in my policing abilities, but there was some part of me saying I would never figure out who killed Noora. In order to show the crow derisively cawing on my shoulder, I would have to solve this case before I left on maternity leave.

But I didn’t have the chance to escape to my office to theorize. In front of the duty officer’s cubicle in the little waiting area sat Kauko Nieminen and Ulrika Weissenberg.

“Maria, you have guests,” the duty officer told me needlessly, adding in hushed tones, “Taskinen wants the unit together at one in the break room.”

“Hello, Mrs. Weissenberg and Mr. Nieminen. You obviously have some business for me.”

Kauko Nieminen stood up to shake my hand. His black suit looked brand new. Maybe he had bought it last week at the big-and-tall store for Noora’s funeral. Nieminen’s mustache hung down between his round cheeks like two drooping fir tree branches, and his small eyes were watery. Ulrika Weissenberg was impeccably stylish, as usual. The only accent for her black velvet suit was a white silk scarf, and even her pearl earrings were restrained.

“We’ve been trying to see Lieutenant Taskinen, but we were told he isn’t here. Do you have a moment for us, Sergeant Kallio?” Weissenberg asked.

I invited them into my office. Nieminen collapsed onto the couch as if he didn’t quite realize where he was. Weissenberg glanced significantly at the folder I had left on my desk in haste when I left Friday and at the photos hanging on my wall before she deigned to sit next to Nieminen on the couch.

“We just came from visiting Hanna at the hospital,” said Weissenberg.

“How is she?”

“Not very well, as you might imagine. She’s still terribly upset and won’t even be able to participate in Noora’s funeral. Kauko and I have decided to proceed with the service anyway. The invitations have already gone out, the obituary is in the newspaper, and the skaters have prepared for the memorial service. Have you seen this?”