Free Death Spiral by Leena Lehtolainen

athletes’ emotional turmoil; maybe taking care of other people forced him to forget his own feelings.
    “Janne, let’s go. It’s cold in here.”
    Luoto’s voice was quiet, but his words still echoed strangely in the empty arena. Even though people complained about how small the facility was, I felt strangely small and alone surrounded by the rows of empty seats.
    “If you want to take Janne home, we can meet tomorrow at the police station,” I suggested. Actually I was wondering whether we should take Janne to a doctor. But then he raised his head just enough to hiss at Luoto.
    “Leave me alone, Rami! I’m fine.”
    Still not looking at us, Janne started unlacing his skates.
    Apparently Rami Luoto took this as a sign that Janne was in good enough shape to leave alone, because he started walking down the hall toward the locker room. Koivu and I followed, but when the hallway turned, I glanced back. Janne’s hands were frozen over his skates, and he was staring out at the ice again as if he could still see Noora there, in motion and alive.
    Luoto opened the door into a small dressing room where a single red towel hung on a hook, looking forgotten.
    “We can talk in here. Janne will probably join us when he can.”
    Koivu set up the recorder again, and I rattled off information into the microphone as if I were a recording too. Luoto answered the questions I posed. He hadn’t seen anything or anyone outside either, and when he left, Weissenberg’s car had been gone, as had Tomi Liikanen’s. Noora and Janne were already gone too.
    “You said practice yesterday was unusually difficult. Why? Was it because of Noora and Ulrika Weissenberg’s disagreement?”
    Luoto nodded.
    “Noora was sort of . . . strong willed. If she had a bad day, that day was bad for everyone else too. As a coach, you really had to work to keep her emotions in check. And besides, the commercial idea was pretty stupid. I told Ulrika as much. I knew Noora wasn’t going to approve it, but no one believed me. And when Noora heard that I had known about it but didn’t make a bigger stink, she got angry at me too. She was furious at Janne, though, because he was fine with the idea.”
    “And Janne was furious back, right? What about you?”
    “A coach’s job isn’t to get angry, it’s to smooth things over. I tried to calm the situation so we could have practice, and in the end it worked.”
    “So Noora was difficult to coach?”
    I was a little surprised when Luoto burst out laughing, but he quickly stopped.
    “Terribly difficult and also perfectly lovely! She was so talented and extremely disciplined. Skating was her life. She had a really hard time when puberty started messing with her body, though. She had serious problems with her jumps and her endurance. We had to tell her she probably wasn’t going to be competitive as a singles skater.”
    “Why? Because of her jumps?”
    “Among other things. Skating mechanics are complicated. But she was so incredibly talented every other way, and when Janne had the same kinds of problems—he’s too tall for some of the hard jumps, like a triple axel—I had the idea to try turning them into a couple. And that turned out to be the right decision. I’m still proud of it.”
    “So you coached them for a couple of years and then Elena Grigorieva came last winter?”
    “Right.”
    “I’ve heard claims that Noora might have only wanted one coach,” I said directly, even though I didn’t believe that Luoto would have murdered Noora just because he didn’t want to stop coaching her. But Luoto went silent for a few moments before answering.
    “It isn’t any secret that Noora wanted Elena to take over all their training. And it’s true that the most progress has come since Elena joined the team. But I think I was still needed. Elena’s and Noora’s temperaments are too similar. They can’t calm each other down. Without me between them, there would be bodies.” Luoto started to grin at