Death Spiral (16 page)

“Wait . . . I think she had her hair in two silly pigtails on either side of her head. That’s the fashion right now apparently.”

The piece of fingernail had caught about three inches back from her hairline on the left side, so if Noora had her hair in pigtails, the nail could have caught at the ice rink. Maybe Noora and Ulrika’s fight had been so heated that they’d laid hands on each other. I looked at the fingers on Ulrika’s right hand. The nail of her index finger looked a bit narrower than the others. Of course there were fake nails. Maybe Ulrika couldn’t condone any faults in her appearance and had put an artificial nail over the broken one. I pulled the piece of fingernail out of my desk so that Weissenberg couldn’t see. The color appeared to be the same as that of Weissenberg’s nails.

“As I just mentioned, the analysis of Noora’s body is complete. We found a piece of fingernail in her hair. Does this color of polish look familiar to you?”

I lifted the small plastic bag with the piece of fingernail inside. Weissenberg looked for a second, and then suddenly a hand with long fingernails like the crooked foot of a bird of prey shot out to grab the bag. A scraping sound came from Pihko’s direction as he shot up, expecting Weissenberg to attack me.

“How did your fingernail end up in Noora Nieminen’s hair?” I asked.

Ulrika Weissenberg’s face contorted in rage, but I thought I also saw fear peering out from deep within her dark-brown eyes.

“I didn’t kill Noora!” she hissed. “Noora just used such offensive language that I slapped her on the cheek. My nail broke. It felt beastly.”

“Did this happen at the ice rink or later?”

“At the ice rink, of course! I’ve told you a dozen times I didn’t see Noora any more that night.”

“What did Noora say that made you lose your temper to the point that you struck her?”

“That’s none of your business! It doesn’t have anything to do with her death.”

“I think I’ll be the judge of that,” I said tiredly. I detested dragging people down to the station to bully them, but apparently that was the only approach that would get Ulrika Weissenberg talking. What hole in her life was she trying to fill by running the figure-skating association? Did she receive some sort of pay for her position or did she do it just to make herself feel important?

“She said I was a bossy old witch,” Weissenberg blurted. “And I had done so much work to get that commercial deal. I thought her behavior was extremely ungrateful. Are you satisfied now, Sergeant Kallio?”

This time my title came out right. Maybe it was a tactical move. However, the most important thing was that Weissenberg had been able to provide a credible explanation for how a piece of her fingernail ended up in Noora’s hair. I didn’t have anything else to ask, so I just reminded her again to not reveal to the media the means of Noora’s death.

Once Weissenberg and Pihko were gone, I grabbed Noora’s diary again. An entry from a month back caught my eye almost immediately.

Ulrika is HILARIOUS. How can she drool over Janne like she’s in love with him or something? She could be his mother. Or actually she’s almost too old for that. She’s over fifty! Everyone knows what she’s doing whenever she touches him, as if she were just fixing his hair and clothes. It’s a wonder she doesn’t grab his crotch!

Isn’t Ulrika’s own husband enough for her? Or does this happen to everyone? Even my own mom fell for that stupid crap karaoke singer. If I can’t have Janne, I’m not just going to settle, though.

Today Ulrika really outdid herself. In Edmonton she promised to put on a fancy dinner for Silja, Janne, and me to celebrate. We went to her house, supposedly because we could drink wine there, even though Silja and me are underage. Ulrika thinks a glass of wine never hurt anyone, but Elena would have killed us if she’d seen that Silja and I had two and Janne drank at least three. Janne is just like that. He’s always trying to get away with things. Skating isn’t as serious for him as me.

Ulrika had bought all of us jewelry, these really nice silver Kalevala crosses for me and Silja. I’d love it if it had come from anyone but Ulrika. She could have got Janne a cross too—boys wear them too—but Ulrika didn’t think it suited him. She’s always complaining, saying his hair is too long too. Well, she had bought Janne this tie clip with diamonds and emeralds—Ulrika said the emeralds were the same color as Janne’s eyes. That thing must have cost thousands! She hugged us all and gave us the jewelry—wow, her perfume was so strong! She held Janne for a long time and kept kissing him on the cheek, and when her husband came home she put a record on and wanted to dance. Her husband danced with me and Silja. We weren’t really into it, but Ulrika just latched on to Janne. In the end Silja said she had to go because we had school in the morning. Ulrika said Janne didn’t need to hurry, but he managed to get away in the same taxi as us. He didn’t say anything but he hid the tie clip in his pocket as soon as we got in the car. Poor Janne. It must be horrible having a harpy like that practically molesting him. But I LOVE JANNE!

Was that why Ulrika Weissenberg hit Noora? Because Noora had mocked her infatuation with Janne? I wondered. But had Ulrika been angry enough to come back later to beat Noora bloody with her skates and finally bash her brains in on a rock? Right now that theory was surprisingly believable.

9

Just as I was preparing to leave work, Ström opened my door.

“Two of those figure-skating fags are wandering around the halls looking for you. The older one shook my hand. I’ll have to go wash it now.”

“No, you should definitely go get an AIDS test immediately. Did you leave them out in the hall?”

“They ran into Taskinen. How can he let his daughter run around with people like that? ‘Could you possibly direct me to Sergeant Kallio’s office?’” Ström parroted with a clichéd gay lisp. Where did Ström get it into his head that Janne and Rami were gay? Maybe figure skaters just had that reputation, like ballet dancers. Figure skating was nearly the only sport where men had to express sensitivity as well as strength. But I had never spent much time wondering about Janne or Rami’s sexual orientations. I would have assumed Noora would have said something about it in her diaries if Janne were gay.

A moment later Rami Luoto, Janne Kivi, and Lieutenant Taskinen walked into my office. Taskinen held the door, looking as if he couldn’t quite decide whether to come in or not. Perhaps he still wasn’t sure how active he should be in the investigation.

“Hello. We came to get Janne’s car, since we heard it was ready,” Luoto said.

“So you got the message. Good. We also need your fingerprints. We already have Janne’s, since he spent that night here.”

“What do you need my fingerprints for?” Luoto asked in confusion.

“Mostly just to eliminate yours from the others we’ve found, since it’s likely we would find your prints in Janne’s car and on Noora’s skates anyway.”

Janne had been keeping quiet in the background. Now a look of horror struck his face.

“Noora’s skates? What do those have to do with anything?”

I was getting a little confused myself about how many of my suspects knew the truth about how Noora had died. At first I had tried to keep it secret, only telling Silja and the Nieminens, but Rami and Ulrika also seemed to know. Based on his expression, Janne was in the dark. On the other hand, I knew he was a relatively competent actor, even if Noora had called him a hack.

“The skates were used to beat Noora,” I said as gently as I could.

Janne collapsed on the couch and didn’t say anything for a long time. Rami Luoto and Taskinen glanced at each other, but I couldn’t interpret what the look meant.

“You probably realize not just anyone would have known Noora had skates in her bag,” Janne finally said and then for once looked straight at me, his eyes narrowed.

“Actually, quite a lot of people would have known,” Taskinen said. “You don’t know how famous you and Noora are, Janne.”

“Let’s do the fingerprint thing and get out of here,” Rami said. Through the whole discussion he had been shifting on his feet and moving his arms around as if he were somehow short on his daily dose of exercise.

Pihko had already left for home, so I took Rami and Janne downstairs to the fingerprinting room myself.

“This really makes you feel like a criminal,” Rami said, trying to joke, although rolling his fingers in the printer’s ink and then pressing them to the paper cards obviously made him uncomfortable, judging from the way his hands trembled.

Janne was leaning against the wall. “I’m the real criminal; I even got to go to jail,” he shot back. Then he pulled a dirty-looking tissue out of the pocket of his faded brown leather jacket and tossed it to Rami so he could wipe his fingers. The paper didn’t fly far enough, though, and fell at my feet, along with something else that clinked on the floor. I bent down to pick up both items, and even though my belly hit my thighs, I was still faster than Janne. Our heads collided when I started standing back up, making me topple to the floor. I swore emphatically. Janne maintained his balance but bent over to pull me up.

“Are you hurt?” Rami asked, pushing me up from behind.

I burst out laughing. Apparently they thought a woman seven months pregnant was like a tottering battle tank that couldn’t right itself under its own power.

“No, I’m fine,” I said, even though my head was ringing and the jolt had woken up the Creature, who was now wriggling uncomfortably underneath my rib cage. Once I was up, I opened my hand, which held the object Janne had lunged to grab.

It was a thick gold tie pin with a line of glittering stones, diamonds and emeralds, set in a slightly winding pattern. It must have been the one Noora described that Ulrika Weissenberg had given Janne. I’m no jewelry expert, but I had to guess the piece had cost something in the five figures. And Janne was just casually carrying it around in his pocket.

I handed the pin back to him without any questions, and he shoved it in his pocket, looking embarrassed. Then I led Janne and Rami to the impound area.

“Check to make sure nothing is missing and then sign here,” I said to Janne. He looked at his car as if he’d never seen it before, stuck his head in, and then opened the trunk. Was I mistaken, or was there fear in his eyes? Inside there was nothing but a dented oilcan.

“Everything is fine,” Janne said, ignoring the fingerprint dusting powder still on the dash. “So I can take it?”

“Yeah. We’ll contact you if the analysis gives us a reason to. Don’t go far from Espoo in the next few days without notifying the police.”

“Can I go to Helsinki?” There was amusement in Janne’s voice.

“Sure, but think twice about Sipoo,” I said with a wink and then fled the stench of gasoline in the garage, which had already started making my headache worse. I decided walking home would help me feel better. The north lanes of the Turku Highway were still noisy, but once I crossed over and got into the fields and forest on the other side, things calmed down. This landscape had been the same for decades, now dominated by the green of the shoots in the fields, which were late because of the weather. Some of the other fields were brown from having just been plowed and smelled of horse manure. The grain planted in the furrows would grow with my child, and by late August both would be ripe. The thought of giving birth during harvest season was fantastic—that whole spring I’d felt more like a part of nature than I ever had. I felt the Creature’s first kicks around the same time the blackbird first trilled in the birch tree in our yard, and by the time the first coltsfoot appeared, I had learned to tell which part of my womb the baby was in at any given time. In late summer I would nourish it with strawberries and turnips, growing round like them from their nutrients. And then, like ripened grain falling from the ear, my child would begin its own life and tell us who he or she really was.

But late summer still felt so far away as this foray into spring spattered my cheeks with rain—nearly sleet—as I turned onto our road. Our yellow one-and-a-half-story house crouched on the hillside. Einstein was on the steps, meowing to be let in out of the rain.

I opened the front door to chaos. Apparently Antti was searching for something in the upper closets.

“What’s missing?”

“My spare bicycle chain. I put it up here somewhere last fall, didn’t I?”

“I have no idea. Let me through.”

Instead Antti scooped me into his arms. He had chain grease on his face, and he stank of it. The Creature decided to start kicking Antti through my stomach, and we both laughed. Ultimately we ended up making love on top of the mess of clothing on the floor, my round belly forcing a more traditional choice of position.

“Do you know what your sister’s husband said he was afraid of when Eeva was pregnant and they had sex?” Antti asked suddenly, grinning and stopping the rocking of our motion.

“What?” I asked, wanting to get back to business.

Antti laughed. “That the baby was watching!”

“Well, of course, it’s been doing that the whole time! Is that the kind of thing you and Jarmo talk about when there aren’t any women around?”

Then Antti’s laughing lips met mine, and his tongue entered my mouth, his stomach arching back against my roundness, and three became one.

Almost nothing could have torn me from Antti’s arms, but I had already decided to go back out and pay a visit to Tommy’s Gym. In addition to getting a workout, I could have a chat with Tomi Liikanen.

“Wasn’t that enough exercise for you just now?” Antti asked, looking up from oiling his bike, which was upturned in the middle of the living room.

“Oh, yeah, you totally wore me out, baby. But I’m still going to drag myself over there with my last shreds of strength,” I replied.

Because of the rain, I did something I almost never did: I took the car and drove to the gym.

Tommy’s Gym was only about ten minutes away, in the basement of a six-story apartment building. The entrance wasn’t particularly inviting, and the door was locked up tight. I pulled my keycard out of my bag. It was still good for another month. The gym was open from six in the morning to midnight, so it was a good fit for someone with a schedule like mine. Theoretically a staff member was only on duty at the gym from eleven to three, but the owner was often around. A couple of times I had been the only person there, and the place was so rambling you didn’t necessarily see the other people who were there. Right now there were only a few people around, but one of them was Tomi Liikanen. His undivided attention was on his right bicep, which he stared at in the mirror as he worked a forty-five-pound dumbbell up and down. I said hi and headed for the modest dressing room, which smelled of cleaning chemicals. I was just pulling my tank top on when I heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Hi, Maria. What are you doing here?”

Silja Taskinen stood behind me, drinking from a water bottle. I hadn’t noticed her in the gym, so maybe she had been on one of the leg machines hidden around a corner.

“I came for a workout,” I said a little embarrassed, as if I were doing something I shouldn’t be. “I come here sometimes because it’s the closest place to our house.”

“Of course. The figure-skating association uses this gym because Tomi gives us such a good discount. Actually I’m a little surprised I haven’t seen anyone else here today. At least Rami and Janne should have come.”

“They were at the police station a couple of hours ago picking up Janne’s car. Listen, Silja, you remember that night you were with Noora and Janne at the Weissenbergs’ for dinner, don’t you?” I asked as I tied my shoes. This was a little harder than usual because the Creature was in a strange sideways position.

“Of course I remember. I thought it was weird Ulrika didn’t invite Rami and Elena too. Our coaches are such an important part of the team.”

“And Ulrika gave you all nice pieces of jewelry . . .”

“Yeah, it was so strange!”

Silja told how she was more embarrassed than flattered by the evening. Dressed in a long cyclamen-red evening gown, Ulrika had served them a four-course meal with wine, presented them the jewelry with an oddly formal speech, and then wanted to dance. Paul Weissenberg, Noora, and Silja all watched awkwardly as Ulrika glued herself to Janne.

So Noora hadn’t exaggerated in her diary. Strange how suspicious I had become of everything I read or heard. I never believed one person’s word without corroboration. You usually thought of people being at their most naked and genuine in their diaries, at least the kind that teenage girls kept hidden away behind gilded locks. But even those were just one person’s truth, narrow and colored.

So I asked Silja, “Do you think Ulrika Weissenberg was in love with Janne?”

“Janne is a handsome guy,” Silja said. “And love knows no age limits, even if it seems a little crazy. Ulrika is over fifty years old and married. Her children are older than Janne.”

“How did Janne react to it?”

“He does his best to navigate it. He tries to be friendly but out of reach, like he was with Noora. Ulrika isn’t someone you want as an enemy.” Silja took another gulp of water, and I decided to leave the gossiping at that and head into the gym, but Silja continued talking.

“The police took our fingerprints. Dad took me down today. If it helps at all, everyone touched Noora’s new skates, including Ulrika. And Janne drove me and Noora to school all the time after morning practice and ballet class on Thursdays.”

I nodded, opened the door to the gym area, and almost walked right into Irina Grigorieva. Right behind her came her mother, Elena, whose eyebrows went up when she saw me. Connecting that I was the same person who was handling Noora’s murder investigation obviously took a few beats.

I said a quick hello to Grigorieva and retreated to the exercise bikes. I hadn’t taken into account that the whole Espoo Figure-Skating Association competition team might show up. That would make talking to Tomi Liikanen much more complicated. But I didn’t feel like leaving either, having already gone to the effort to come. Adjusting the bike resistance and setting the timer for twenty minutes, I started pedaling. The mirror showed my tousled ponytail and the same muscly shoulders and arms I’d had for years, but my wide stomach peeked around either side of the handlebars. How much of that was going to be left after the baby? Would my stomach sag like on a fixed tomcat? I’d already gained thirty-five pounds during my pregnancy, but I wasn’t too worried about that; it was all part of the deal. I was simultaneously proud of and unnerved by my round belly. My body was more real than ever yet foreign, a hiding place for secret things.