Death Spiral Read online

  Maybe I should check the Nieminens’ alibis.

  Antti was waiting in our Fiat in the parking lot outside. A rip had formed in the gray sky, exposing blue with fluffy white clouds racing by. It was like peeking into an alternate reality. But then a gust of wind sprayed my eyes with grit from the asphalt. Taking refuge in the car, where it was actually too warm, I threw myself into Antti’s arms.

  “Where should we go?” he finally asked after I had burrowed long enough into his old leather jacket.

  “Away. Somewhere I can calm down.”

  Antti drove to a cafe overlooking the sea. I ate so much ham-and-onion quiche that felt like I might burst. The Creature seemed to like the food and finally quieted down. My single glass of white wine felt utterly sinful, and I was sure the other patrons in the restaurant were staring at me disapprovingly.

  “When are you going to hear about all that promotion business?” Antti asked with his mouth full of raspberry mousse.

  “If only I knew. First they have to choose the new police chief. Right now the current captain of the Criminal Division is the strongest candidate. If they do tap him, then they need a new boss for Criminal. If they choose someone other than Taskinen for that, then the whole thing ends there. Nothing’s going to be final before I go on maternity leave, though.”

  “And what if they do make you unit commander?”

  “Detective Lieutenant Maria Kallio . . . it does have a nice ring to it. But of course, then work will be even worse than it has been so far. The changeover would probably happen around the first of the year, so I’d have to either find a substitute at first or not take the parental leave part of my maternity leave.”

  “I can take that leave, can’t I?” Antti looked almost excited. A month earlier the math department had named a new assistant professor who had been opposed by almost everyone working in the department. The mood there was even tenser than at my workplace, and Antti, who had been toiling like a slave the five years I had known him, was starting to want out. A couple of years earlier he had done a postdoc in Chicago, and we were toying with the idea of going abroad again for my maternity leave, this time to England. But I had a hard time imagining myself sitting around in Oxford alone with a baby.

  “That would be a good solution,” I said delightedly. We hadn’t planned for me to get pregnant yet—my IUD had failed. While Antti had been instantly excited about the baby, I had taken a couple of weeks to warm up to the idea. Before Antti I had never even imagined getting married. Life seemed to be tossing me from one new situation to another, but at least I didn’t have time to get bored.

  After eating we walked out onto Seurasaari Island and strolled around the museum made up of relocated farm buildings. We admired the budding leaves of the trees and watched the squirrels, which were clearly disappointed we didn’t have any nuts to offer them. When we returned to the car, I glanced at my cell phone. There was another message from Ulrika Weissenberg.

  “Hello, this is Ulrika Weissenberg.” The voice was as cold as the blade of a skate just lifted from the ice. “Could you please call me as soon as possible, Sergeant Kallio?”

  “I’m off duty right now,” I groused at the phone, but then I called back anyway. Ulrika didn’t sound the slightest bit pleased to hear from me.

  “The Nieminens told me you let Vesku Teräsvuori go,” she said, getting straight to the point.

  “How could they even know?” I asked.

  “Teräsvuori brought them flowers to express his condolences about Noora’s death. Can’t the police do anything about that man? Can he just murder one of the most promising figure skaters in the country and then go around gloating about it like that?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Weissenberg, but Teräsvuori has a solid alibi for the time Noora was killed.”

  “So who do I have to call to get that man arrested, the chief of police?”

  For a moment I considered siccing Weissenberg and the police chief on each other. It would serve both of them right. Instead, I behaved like a responsible adult and asked whether Weissenberg had spoken with Lieutenant Taskinen.

  “Yes, I have, but he said you were in charge of the investigation. As Silja’s father he can’t be too involved.”

  The phone connection crackled threateningly as we reentered Espoo from Helsinki. Janne Kivi popped into my mind as we passed his neighborhood. How was he doing? As if in answer to my thought, Weissenberg started chewing me out for arresting him.

  “Are you home now?” I asked once the yelling had finally subsided. “Could I come speak with you informally? Maybe we can clear some of this up.”

  Antti glanced at me in surprise. Weissenberg was silent for a moment, but then she agreed. I got off the phone and gave Antti directions. He started to say something, but then changed his mind.

  “You probably want this case solved before you go on leave,” he said as we pulled up to Weissenberg’s house. I nodded in reply and left the phone with Antti, who said he would head to the nearby community garden and read while I was busy, assuming the drizzle that had just started didn’t get any worse.

  The tranquil beauty of the Weissenbergs’ neighborhood still amazed me. No case had brought me here before. Since the Bandidos motorcycle gang had moved their headquarters nearby, we spent plenty of time in the area, but that was still a good mile away. Espoo was full of these quiet little corners, small forests and clusters of homes where you would never end up by accident.

  Ulrika Weissenberg opened the door so quickly she must have been waiting behind it. Today’s suit was violet, and her perfume was classic Chanel No. 5—the only perfume I could actually name by smell. Once again I felt sweaty and disheveled next to Weissenberg’s flawless elegance. Apparently she dressed and did her makeup carefully even when she was home.

  She led me to her office. The poodle was in the yard on the end of a leash, yapping at a thin black cat sneaking through the bushes.

  “There’s that horrid animal in our yard again! Can’t the police do something? The city ordinances forbid letting cats run free.”

  “You have the right to catch it and kill it,” I said. Our Einstein broke that ordinance constantly too. There simply wasn’t any practical way to keep a cat in your own yard.

  “Well, I wouldn’t expect the police to do anything about cats, since they can’t even solve murders. I hear you arrested Janne Kivi. Why on earth?”

  “Have you seen Janne since his arrest?” I asked, avoiding the question.

  “He was here last night for dinner. The poor boy. He barely touched his food. How could you think he would kill Noora? They had the same common goal, a world championship.”

  I wondered how old Ulrika Weissenberg really was. Beyond laugh lines, she didn’t have a single wrinkle, and her makeup made her skin much clearer than my own. The black of her hair was definitely enhanced, her body that of a former gymnast or skater. Only her hands betrayed that Ulrika had already celebrated her fiftieth birthday. I wondered how she could do anything with such long fingernails. Or maybe she didn’t have to do housework. Imagining Ulrika Weissenberg cleaning a toilet was next to impossible.

  “What state of mind was Janne in?”

  Weissenberg’s eyes narrowed. She clearly hadn’t expected me to ask that.

  “Janne? Tired and very sad. I offered to let him stay here, but he said he wanted to go home. I’ve been like a foster mother to him for years, since his parents divorced. His mother lives in Paris with her new family, and Janne’s father doesn’t care about figure skating. He thinks it isn’t manly.”

  “Who was paying for Janne’s skating, then?”

  “His mother has helped, and of course the figure-skating association has done what we can, but he’s had to scrape and scrounge. Last year he made some money modeling, even though he didn’t like it.”

  Compared to the tone Weissenberg had used when talking about Noora, her attachment to Janne was more than obvious. Janne didn’t have any money to spare . . . cancellation of the co
mmercial deal because of Noora’s capriciousness would have been a setback.

  “The night of Noora’s death, you called the Nieminens and said you were going to come over to try to convince Noora to agree to the commercial. But you never made it. Did you run into Noora on the way?”

  “What are you talking about?” Weissenberg’s cold exterior was not easy to crack. “Why are you harassing innocent people and letting the real murderer walk around free? What is this supposed alibi of Teräsvuori’s? Are you sure he didn’t pay off some disgusting animals like himself to lie for him?”

  “Then he would have had to pay a whole restaurant of people for his alibi. Now let’s talk about your movements, Mrs. Weissenberg. Do you deny going out Wednesday night to see Noora?”

  “I never left home!”

  “But your car was seen just before seven thirty in Noora’s neighborhood. A gold BMW,” I lied.

  “Who says they saw me? That’s impossible! I already told you I wasn’t there. I was here at home! Who do you think you are going around accusing innocent people? Are you even competent to be leading this investigation?” Weissenberg glanced dubiously at my round belly and my shirt, which had wrinkled over the course of the day.

  “You’ve known the Nieminen family for a long time. What did Noora think about her mother moving in with Vesku Teräsvuori?”

  This question surprised Weissenberg, who had to stop to remember and search for the right words.

  “That whole episode was strange,” she finally said. “Before, Hanna was the model skater’s mother. She took care of everything and was ready to make all the sacrifices necessary for Noora’s career. It was a huge surprise when she took off like that with another man. Although Kauko Nieminen isn’t what you’d call romantic. Actually he’s quite vulgar . . .”

  This case was turning into such a soap opera that I had to smile. But Weissenberg was surprisingly in the know about the Nieminens’ family life, which was helpful.

  Hanna’s wild infatuation with the King of Karaoke had been a shock to her husband and children. At first Sami responded by isolating himself, while Noora vented the anger and confusion over her mother’s departure by throwing herself into her skating.

  “I had to help to keep Noora’s affairs in order while her mother was away. Figure skating demands great sacrifices, so a skater’s support network has to be rock solid. I thought Hanna was terribly irresponsible leaving like that. And I told her as much.”

  Weissenberg seemed to be deeply mixed up in Nieminen family business. She had sent her own cleaning lady to take care of the house while Hanna was away, and she claimed to be the one who eventually convinced Hanna to leave Teräsvuori and move back home.

  “Of course it was a difficult time for Kauko. The trucking company’s revenue tripled when the border with Russia opened. Expecting him to drive Noora to practices would have been unreasonable. He doesn’t understand much about skating anyway. His support has always been more financial than moral.”

  Weissenberg seemed to enjoy talking about how much influence she had over other people. I let her run at the mouth, listening as she criticized Elena Grigorieva as a person even while she clearly respected her as a coach. Rami Luoto in turn was good at dealing with young people but simply didn’t have the qualifications to take skaters of Noora’s, Janne’s, and Silja’s caliber to the top. Apparently Weissenberg had decided it was time for Rami to step back and only train junior-level skaters.

  But when I tried to move back to Weissenberg’s movements the night of Noora’s murder, I hit a brick wall. She flatly denied ever leaving home.

  “I decided it was best to wait until the next day when Noora would have had time to calm down and think things over,” Weissenberg said.

  And that was where I had to leave it. No one had really seen a gold BMW near the scene of the crime.

  I called Antti to tell him I was finished and walked to a gas station to wait for him. The wind bit at me through my jacket. I was definitely going to have a sauna before bed so I could finally get warm. I had assumed I’d be too hot as my body grew, but in fact I had spent most of the pregnancy feeling cold.

  I asked Antti to drive to the industrial park where Noora’s father’s business was located. I wanted to test how long it took to drive from there to Noora’s house. The trucking company office was easy to find with showy gold letters placed prominently atop the service building. I thought it was strange how Ulrika Weissenberg called Kauko Nieminen “vulgar” but also seemed to admire him. Apparently in Weissenberg’s mind, a person’s value correlated with their tax bracket.

  Even though the drive required winding along surface streets to get under the freeway, the trip still barely took ten minutes. Had there been anyone at the trucking company office the night of the murder who could confirm Kauko Nieminen’s alibi?

  Antti didn’t ask why I wanted to drive this route in particular. When I asked him to stop in the parking lot next to the forest where Noora was murdered, he frowned.

  “Are you expecting me to play chauffeur for the rest of the day?”

  “Sorry. I was just thinking about how to get a dead body out of those woods and into a car without anyone noticing.”

  “You’re always thinking about the cheeriest things,” Antti said with a snort. He was less interested in my work than its effects on me and our relationship. We had both accepted that there would be times when competing with the other’s work obligations was pointless. But Antti wasn’t my coworker. I shouldn’t make him participate in an investigation.

  After our sauna, I collapsed in front of the TV and turned on Sports Update. They were covering a rally car race, which I couldn’t have cared less about, and I was about to change the channel to look for a cop show when the reporter’s expression turned grave.

  “Figure skater Noora Nieminen died on Wednesday of this week. Police are investigating the incident as a homicide. Noora Nieminen and her partner, Janne Kivi, placed tenth at this year’s European Championships and ninth at the World Championships. To end the show and in memory of Noora, we’re going to watch a clip of the two skating.”

  Noora’s face appeared on the screen. Her expression before her double Lutz was determined, her eyes focused. A smile flashed on Janne’s lips when they landed the jump, but Noora’s expression didn’t change, keeping the mood of the program’s serious music. Then the music changed to the exuberance of “Hair,” and Noora began to sparkle. Her performance would have been a credit to any professional actor. The final freeze frame zoomed in on Noora’s face, her deep round eyes laughing as Janne lifted her toward the sky. I watched those eyes on my television screen and vowed I would find the person who took her life.

  7

  Sunday morning I opened my office door, wishing I were anywhere else. The thought of interviewing Jaana Markkanen gave me no joy, but I wanted to get it done as quickly as possible. Minni had visited my dreams during the night: I had dreamed I was giving birth, and the baby girl who squeezed out between my legs wasn’t breathing. In the dream I knew the child was Minni, and someone had beaten her to death with a figure skate. Antti woke up to my screaming and shook me awake, and it had taken me a long time to get back to sleep again.

  Koivu was going to help me with the interview because both Puupponen and Pihko were off duty. Besides, I intended to spend the afternoon at the skating rink where Rami and Elena would be training with Silja. Of course Koivu wanted to come along. I felt like an old auntie with nothing to do but meddle at matchmaking.

  When we’d met four years before, Koivu had tried to hit on me, but then he fell in love with a bossy nurse who in the end left him for a neo-Nazi. That had been followed by a couple of short-term romances that were doomed from the start, first a lady who was almost forty and was using Koivu to get revenge on her husband for an affair, and then an economist, who had disappeared to Brussels a month ago. I had watched all this, simultaneously concerned and amused, and hoping that my adopted little brother would finally find a g
ood woman.

  I was prepared for a tough interrogation, but Jaana Markkanen was in even worse shape than I had expected. According to the duty officer, after recovering from her stupor sometime early that morning she had just howled, refusing any sleeping aids or sedatives. Now, as she sat in the interrogation room across from me, her eyes looked as if they had dozens of sleepless nights behind them.

  Markkanen was easy to interview in the sense that she admitted to smothering her child, although she didn’t remember the chain of events terribly clearly. She had spent the night at the Fishmaid, the same restaurant where Vesku Teräsvuori led karaoke. Over the course of the evening she had thrown back at least seven salmiakki vodkas and a few highballs. Jaana didn’t quite remember how she got home, and her memory of smothering the baby was fuzzy. Her internal clock had woken her up in the morning expecting Minni to demand her morning milk. But the girl just lay there, and when Jaana bent down to listen to her breathing, she realized Minni was dead.

  “She was all blue and wasn’t breathing. I didn’t know what to do. But on the phone there was this sticker that said to dial one-one-two,” Jaana said, stuttering. “Do you get that I’ve done the worst thing anyone can do? I killed my own baby! I want to die! Why wouldn’t you let me jump off the balcony?”

  Jaana Markkanen desperately needed to talk, to explain to the police and to herself why she had killed her daughter. She was only twenty. Minni’s father had been a one-night stand, but Jaana had wanted to keep the baby anyway. Because she was pregnant, she’d received an apartment from the city and could move out of her expensive studio apartment. But motherhood hadn’t been the sweet symbiosis she’d hoped for.

  “For the first few months she was on my tits all the time. I could barely go to the bathroom without her screaming for more. But when she was asleep she was so cute. Just like a little angel. I got her weaned when she was five months, and I could finally get out again sometimes. I couldn’t just sit in that gerbil cage all the time, and the old lady next door liked watching her.”