Death Spiral (17 page)

In the mirror I could also see Silja placing a bar on her back with maybe thirty pounds of plates. Then she started squatting and jumping with the barbell on her shoulders, apparently working on gaining more thrusting force in her slender legs. Tomi Liikanen watched for a while and then came over and with expert movements corrected Silja’s grip on the bar. Next to slim Silja, Liikanen looked like a refrigerator. He was only about five foot nine but must have weighed 220 pounds with only a little extra in his stomach. A dragon tattoo snaked around Liikanen’s upper arm. His tobacco-brown hair was short and very curly, and the curls continued in his mat of chest hair, which he undoubtedly had to shave before bodybuilding competitions. His ears protruded a little, and the hair on them glistened.

Elena appeared next to Silja and her husband, told them something, and then she and Tomi started walking toward me.

“Here’s my husband. Now you can ask him yourself whether I went home the night of Silja’s accident,” Elena Grigorieva said belligerently.

“You’ve been here before. I remember you. It’s Maria, right?” Tomi Liikanen said curiously. “I didn’t know you were a cop. What do you want to know? I’d be glad to help.”

Apparently Liikanen belonged to the ever-growing mass of humanity that felt no need for formality with the police.

I didn’t stop pedaling, but turned to Tomi. “When I first talked to your wife, she remembered leaving the ice rink with you Wednesday night, going to the store, and then going home together to make food. She claimed you were together the whole time and that neither of you left your apartment all night. But then Noora’s mother said you called her that night a little before seven. You wanted to tell her you had found a piece of jewelry Noora lost. So where exactly were you and when did you get home that night?”

“What night are you talking about?” Tomi’s neckless face looked genuinely confused.

“Last Wednesday. Don’t you remember? I got angry at practice that night because of the argument over that commercial!” Elena interjected.

I would have far preferred to talk to Liikanen without Elena there, but there was no good alternative.

“Wednesday . . . this guy named Lindroos called when we were leaving the store. Don’t you remember, Elena? He wanted to buy some Trioxin Power, and I promised to drop some by. It’s an energy drink. I run a nutritional supplements importing business along with the gym,” Tomi added, even though I already knew that. The gym walls were decorated with advertisements for all kinds of protein drinks and supplements I had never bothered with. “I dropped you off at home and came here, and while I was messing around behind the counter, I found Noora’s necklace. I remembered her looking for it one night when she was leaving the gym. That’s why I called. Noora’s mom told me to give the necklace to you, since you guys were supposed to have practice on Thursday.”

So Tomi Liikanen had visited the gym and wasn’t trying to conceal it. When I asked how long he was away from home, he said about half an hour. Theoretically that was also enough time to make a detour through Noora’s neighborhood.

“Could I have that customer’s phone number? You said his name was Lindroos?” I asked as innocently as I was able given my panting. I had been pedaling the whole time we were talking, which somehow felt more natural.

“What do you mean? I didn’t do anything!”

“Just give it to her,” Elena said testily. “I remembered a little wrong. Does that matter so much? I was making food at home. Irina can testify. She was in her room doing homework. She’s over there stretching. You can ask her right now.”

“Forget about it,” I said quickly. I knew their family had two cars, a van registered to Tommy’s Gym and Elena’s old Saab. Elena also would have had time to drive to Noora’s neighborhood and back in half an hour. But because there wasn’t any evidence against her, I didn’t want to needlessly interview eleven-year-old Irina, who was bending herself into improbable positions on a ballet bar on the wall near the reception desk. The ballet bar looked out of place in the weight room and had probably only been installed at Elena’s insistence.

I rode my last five minutes at a higher resistance setting and worked up a proper sweat. I had to wipe my face on the hem of my shirt. When the timer finally beeped and I was free, I was ready for some water from the fountain in the women’s restroom. As I turned toward the door, I saw Rami Luoto and Janne Kivi coming down the stairs. My first reaction was to beat a hasty retreat. But instead I lifted my head, straightened my back, and marched off to get my water as if I owned the world. Rami said a proper hello, and Janne moved his head just enough that it could be interpreted as a nod. I understood his antipathy. Every time he saw me, I reminded him of Noora’s violent death, something that would haunt Janne and everyone else involved for the rest of their lives.

The water tasted like dirt, which Antti said was a sign of spring in Espoo. Something about the water system. I took my plastic cup with me into the gym and headed for the hip adductor machine. Movements that had to be completed lying on my stomach had become impossible several weeks before, so now I was focusing on strengthening the parts of my body that were being taxed the most, such as my thighs, back, and my horribly stretched abdominals. I could see Janne in the mirror. He was warming up on the bike I had just vacated. Rami was using a treadmill. Even with his active career over, he kept himself in good shape, which was obvious from the muscularity of his frame and the ease of his movements. Snooping on them using the mirror amused me. I felt like a secret agent who was cleverly spying on her suspects using an improvised periscope system. With the way my thigh muscles were performing, I was almost in a good mood again.

Silja seemed to be having a lower body day, since after she finished her jumping she came over next to me on the abductor machine. Thankfully she started talking about something besides Noora’s murder.

“That guy Pekka must be new in your unit. I haven’t seen him before,” she said. It was funny hearing her talk about Koivu as Pekka. At work no one used his first name. In a male-dominated organization, it was par for the course that everyone was referred to by last names. Around the station I was always Kallio instead of Maria.

“Yeah, he joined us a couple of months ago. I’ve known him for years, though, since we worked together in Helsinki.” As I related Koivu’s history, I tried to put my best matchmaker’s spin on it. The girl was clearly interested. We traded machines and continued talking until I felt my abductors screaming. I assumed those were some of the muscles needed during childbirth, since you could end up with your legs spread for hours if things didn’t go well.

The endorphin high that working out caused sent me flying like a kite, and I ended up spending much longer at the gym than I’d intended. The place was pleasantly empty, just the skating group and a couple of people who left after about an hour, at the same time the Grigorieva women did. Two men stopped to buy some supplements from Tomi, and both of them looked as though they could have held their own in a car-lifting contest. Now and then I found myself glancing at Janne as he trained. He really was pretty delicious to look at, and I didn’t wonder in the slightest how he had stolen Noora and Ulrika Weissenberg’s hearts. A sleeveless muscle shirt allowed light to sparkle on the beads of perspiration on his shoulder muscles, which I found myself staring at an embarrassingly long time before I forced myself to get back to working my obliques. Rami Luoto appeared at my side, and it was his turn to stare as I panted away.

“Isn’t that bad for the baby?” he finally asked uncertainly. As I remembered, Luoto didn’t have a family, so maybe what you could and couldn’t do during pregnancy was a mystery for him.

“No. I’m trying to prevent my muscles from turning into a hammock after the birth,” I explained. Luoto laughed at the metaphor, which was straight out of one of the more sensible baby books I had read.

“Um . . . there was something I didn’t say at the police station,” Luoto said. “I did several test lacings of Noora’s boots last Wednesday, so they’re going to be covered with my fingerprints.”

“Of course,” I grunted. The top of my left obliques had just started hurting, but I didn’t want to stop prematurely while Luoto was watching. I suffered through the set, and Luoto just kept staring.

Since it felt unnatural to keep silent, I asked him, “Did you coaches know that Noora was taking appetite suppressants with an ingredient on the doping list? Phentermine. Where could she have gotten that?” I stood up, wiping the sweat from my face. I could still feel the stitch in my side. Should I be worried?

“Appetite suppressants? Doping?” Luoto exclaimed, and then lowered his voice to a whisper. “I didn’t know, but I was worried about something like that. When I asked Noora, she denied it. I don’t know where she got it. Certainly no self-respecting doctor would prescribe that for a growing girl of normal weight.”

Luoto and I had sat down side by side on a weight bench. He was careful not to touch me. To anyone else our conversation would have looked chummy, but even though the physical distance between us was only a dozen inches, there was a wall as high as my police rank.

“I don’t know what kind of things she might have been able to get from Tomi,” Luoto continued in a whisper. “He has connections in Russia, and who knows what’s available there. I highly doubt Tomi’s own body was built on oatmeal.”

“Hardly,” I said, writing a mental note to check whether Tommy’s Gym had ever been raided. The fact that Noora’s necklace had been found behind the reception desk at the gym, where a nonemployee shouldn’t have been, was bothering me.

“Did Noora undergo any doping tests last season?”

“Not a one. There hasn’t really been much talk about doping in figure skating lately. What did Noora go and do?” There was fear in Luoto’s eyes. Had he really not known about the diet pills?

“Rami, I’m done with my workout. I’m going to stretch and leave,” Silja came to say. “Maria, say hi to Pekka.”

“Absolutely. He’ll like that.” I decided to move to the rower and did ten minutes at low resistance. As I was finishing up, I saw Silja going out the door. Only Janne, Rami Luoto, Tomi Liikanen, and I were left in the gym.

It didn’t actually feel very good. One of those three easily could have been Noora Nieminen’s murderer. Although no one was likely to try to hurt me, it was probably clear to everyone that the investigation hadn’t really made any progress. Sorting through the forensic evidence and the dozens of interviews would take time. I moved to the back area and spent another half hour working on various machines until I started to feel my energy reserves flagging. I decided to head to the warmth of the sauna to stretch.

The sauna was tiny—three women would have been a crowd—but competition in the gym business was intense so Tommy’s Gym had to have a sauna too. According to Antti there was a little more room on the men’s side. He had been there with me a few times, even though he didn’t really enjoy spending time in gyms, preferring useful exercise such as riding his bike to work and chopping wood.

After stretching out, I continued lounging for a while, even though the thermometer read 195 degrees. I took my time showering and dressing, and was just putting my shoes on when suddenly the lights went off.

The darkness was intense. The only points of light I could make out were the phosphorescent hands of my watch. I thought for a moment before groping for the light switch, which I assumed was next to the dressing room door. Finding it was difficult, and I banged my elbow on the drinking fountain and my knee on something else before I found it. I flipped the switch, but the lights didn’t come on.

Probably a power outage. If I just waited for a couple of minutes, the lights would come back on. Maybe someone out in the weight room would know. I opened the door and found the same darkness.

“Tomi?” I yelled.

No answer, as if the place was empty. Maybe they were all in the men’s dressing room. Now what was the layout of this place again? The door to the men’s dressing room would be a few yards to the left. Setting off tracing the wall toward it, I tripped on a dumbbell some goddamn idiot had left on the floor and lost my balance, hitting my forehead on a bar on the leg press machine and almost ending up on the floor. I felt my forehead, which luckily wasn’t bleeding, but I’d have one hell of a lump in the morning.

Finally I found the door to the other dressing room and opened it without hesitation. Even if there were a whole troop of naked men in there, I wouldn’t see anything in the dark.

“Tomi?” I yelled. “Is anyone here?”

No answer, no other light than from the clock on the wall, which ticked off its monotonous song in the silence. What the hell had happened? Where had everyone gone? And why wasn’t the power outage over yet?

I guessed it would be best to open the front door—it was only eight o’clock, so enough light would shine in from outside that I would be able to collect my things. The route to the stairs was relatively clear, and now I even managed to avoid the devious dumbbell. Holding fast to the railing, I stepped up and pushed on the door handle. It moved easily, and I expected the door to open, but nothing happened.

I pressed again, leaning my hips against the door and pushing. It didn’t budge. Feeling for the lock, I rotated it, to no effect. The door was locked up tight. A key card opened it from outside, but from inside the door should have opened just by pressing on the handle. Apparently someone had activated the security system that prevented anyone from entering or leaving between midnight and six. Maybe the same system automatically turned off the lights.

But who—Tomi Liikanen? Why hadn’t he checked to make sure the gym was really empty? Wouldn’t that be a normal part of his routine? And why would he close up when the gym should still be open for another four hours?

The situation was ludicrous. I tried the lock one more time, now more calmly and carefully, but nothing helped. The door had a keypad on the inside, but no slot I could have tried my card in. For a while I pounded and kicked the door with my tired legs, but it was no use. Although Tommy’s Gym was in the basement of an apartment building, the door faced a forest, so few people just walked by. My only hope was that someone out for a smoke on their balcony despite the chilly weather would hear my pounding.