The Rabbit Factor

1

Kannelmäki in September. I knew nothing more beautiful. Radiant, crimson leaves and the most competitive house prices in Helsinki.

The smell of autumn hung in the early-morning suburban air – air that had been scientifically shown to be the crispest in the city. From the surfaces of large leaves in shades of red and yellow hung beads of dew, the rising sun making them sparkle like feather-light mirrors. I stood on my fourth-floor balcony and realised once again that I was in exactly the right place, and nothing could ever make me change my mind.

The area around Kannelmäki train station was the most effective piece of town planning in Helsinki. From my door, it was a brisk two-and-a-half-minute walk to the station. The train took me to my workplace in Pasila in nine minutes and, once a month, to the cinema downtown in thirteen. Given their proximity to the city centre, apartments in Kannelmäki were very good value for money, and they were well designed with excellent functionality and no wasted floor space. There was nothing decorative, nothing superfluous.

The houses were built in the mid-1980s, a time of optimal rational thinking. Some people called this area of the city bland, depressing even, but perhaps that was because they only saw the façade, the cubic repetitiveness and general greyness of the neighbourhood, in itself a feat of astonishing uniformity. They made a mistake that people often make. They didn’t make detailed calculations.

For, as I know from experience, it is calculations that tell us what is beautiful and what is not.

Kannelmäki was beautiful.

I took another deep breath and stepped back inside. I walked into the hallway, pulled on my shoes and jacket. I did up the zip, leaving it slightly open at the top. My tie gleamed, its knot balanced and orderly. I looked at myself in the mirror and recognised the man looking back at me. And at the age of forty-two, I had only one deep-held wish.

I wanted everything to be sensible.

Actuarial mathematics is a discipline that combines mathematics and statistical analysis to assess the likelihood – or risk – of any eventuality, in order to define an insurance premium that from the insurer’s perspective is financially viable. This is the official definition. Like many other official-sounding, and therefore potentially boring, definitions, this is one that goes over the heads of most people. And even when it doesn’t go over their heads, few people pay attention to the final two words of that definition, let alone ask what, in this context, the words ‘financially viable’ actually mean.

Insurance companies exist to make a profit; in the case of insurance against accidents, to the tune of almost thirty percent. Few companies ever reach such revenue figures with a single product. But insurance companies do, because they know that people don’t have any other options. You can choose not to take out insurance – everyone can make their own decisions – but on balance most people decide to insure at least their home. Insurance companies also know that people are fragile and that human beings’ capacity to get themselves into trouble vastly exceeds that of all other living species. And so, right now insurance companies everywhere are calculating how often people will slip and fall over in their own gardens, how often they will stick objects of varying shapes and sizes into various orifices, how often they will tip smouldering barbecue coals into the rubbish bin, crash into one another on brand-new jet skis, reach up to the top shelf to find something behind a row of glass vases, drunkenly lean on a sushi knife, and how often they will send fireworks flying into their own and other people’s eyes … next year.

Insurance companies, therefore, know two things: one, that people essentially have to take out insurance policies; and two, that a certain number of people, despite advice to the contrary, will inevitably set themselves on fire. And it is between these two factors – shall we say, between the pen and the matchstick – that actuaries operate. Their job is to ensure that while the self-immolator will be reimbursed for his troubles, the insurance company still makes its predefined profit margin by insuring him and many others besides.

And there, right between the sharpened pencil and the burning flame, was I.

My workplace was in the district of Vallila. The new office block on Teollisuuskatu was completed last spring, and our company moved in while the paint was still fresh. Now, when I arrived at our open-plan office every morning, I always felt the same annoyance and disappointment, like a chunk of black ice inside me that refused to melt: I had lost my office. Instead of an office of my own, I now had a workstation.

The word ‘station’ told me everything I needed to know. My ‘station’ was nothing but a narrow, cramped slice at the end of a long desk facing the window. In front of our long desk was another, identical communal desk. Opposite me sat Miikka Lehikoinen, a junior mathematician who regularly regaled me with endless barbecuing anecdotes. On my left sat Kari Halikko, a junior risk analyst with a habit of chuckling to himself for no obvious reason. Apparently, they represented a new generation of actuarial professionals.

I didn’t like them and I didn’t like our open-plan office. It was noisy, full of distractions, interruptions, banalities. But more than anything, it was full of people. I didn’t like the things that so many others seemed to like: spontaneous conversations, the continual asking for and giving of advice, the constant cheap banter. I didn’t see what it had to do with demanding probability calculations. Before moving into our new premises, I tried to explain that our office was a risk-control department, not Disneyland, but this didn’t seem to have any impact on those making the decisions.

My productivity levels had dropped. I still never made mistakes – unlike almost everybody else. But my work was significantly hampered by the constant stream of meaningless chatter concentrated around Halikko’s workstation.

Halikko laughed at everything and seemed to spend most of his time watching videos of high-jumpers’ backsides, ridiculous singing competitions or people with strange pets. Everybody laughed, and one video led to another. Halikko sniggered and guffawed. I thought it unbecoming behaviour for a risk analyst.

The other cause of disturbance was Lehikoinen, who talked non-stop. On Mondays, he told us what had happened over the weekend, in the autumn he told us about his summer holiday, in January I learned all about his Christmas. Things seemed to happen to Lehikoinen. On top of this, he had already been married and divorced twice, which to my mind demonstrated a weak, unpromising grasp of the notion of cause and effect. A junior mathematician ought to know better.

On this particular morning, they were both sitting at their workstations before me. Halikko was scratching the short, shaven hair on his head, while Lehikoinen was pursing his lips, staring at something on the screen that made him drum his fingertips against the arm of his chair. They both looked as though they were concentrating solely on their work, which in itself was surprising. I looked at the clock on the table. It was nine o’clock exactly, the end of our flexible start time.

Since moving into the new premises, I had delayed my departure from home by approximately thirty seconds every morning in order to avoid the daily exchange of meaningless chit-chat before work, and this was the result: arriving only barely in time. This was out of character for me. I placed my briefcase next to my chair and pulled the chair out from beneath the desk. This was the first time I’d heard the sound of its hard, plastic wheels rolling against the carpet. There was something about the sound that made me shiver, like cold fingernails running along my spine.

I booted up my computer and made sure I had everything on the desk for the day’s work. I had been conducting my own research into the influence of shifts in interest frequency on pay-out optimisation in an ever-changing economical world, and I was hoping to conclude my two-week investigation today.

The silence was like water in a glass, transparent but still concrete, tangible.

I typed in my username and password to sign into the system. The boxes on the screen shuddered. A red text beneath the box told me that my username and password were invalid. I typed them again, more slowly this time, making sure the capitals were capitals, the lower-case letters were lower case, and that every letter was as it should be. Again the boxes shuddered. Beneath the box there were now two lines of red text. My username and password were invalid. Additionally – and this was written in BLOCK CAPITALS – I had only one (1) attempt left to enter them correctly. I glanced over the screen at Lehikoinen. He was still drumming the arm of his chair, gazing out of the window at the McDonald’s across the street. I stared at him as I thought through my username and password one more time. I knew them both, naturally, and I knew I’d entered them correctly on both attempts.

Lehikoinen turned his head suddenly, our eyes met. Then just as quickly he looked down at his screen again. The drumming had stopped. The office space hummed. I knew it was the air conditioning and that I could hear it because nobody was talking, but suddenly there was something about the hum that got inside my head. Maybe it was this that stopped me turning around and asking Halikko if he’d had trouble signing into the system this morning.

If there had been problems earlier on, they were long gone: Halikko was tapping his mouse as though he were giving it a thousand tiny fillips one after the other. I placed my hands on the keyboard, and the cold fingernails started scratching my back again. I moved my fingers carefully, concentrating on every key I pressed. Finally, I pressed ‘Enter’, making sure I only pressed it once and that I pressed it with an appropriate dose of briskness and determination.

I didn’t even blink, let alone close my eyes. But the pressing of that button felt significant, as though one moment I was looking at one kind of day, and the next moment I had fallen asleep or otherwise lost consciousness, and when I woke up the landscape in front of me had changed beyond recognition. The day had lost its brightness and colour, the fulcrum of the entire world had shifted. The box in the middle of the screen shuddered a third time. A blink of an eye later, it disappeared altogether.

I heard a familiar voice.

‘Koskinen, my office for a moment?’

2

‘Let’s have a little chat,’ my department manager, Tuomo Perttilä, said. ‘Bounce some ideas around.’

We were sitting in Perttilä’s office, a glass-walled cube whose unpleasant attributes included, alongside the lack of privacy, the fact that there was no table between the people sitting there. To me this was unnatural. We sat opposite each other as though we were in a doctor’s reception – I didn’t want to think which of us would be considered the patient and which the healer. The chairs had hard, uncomfortable metal frames with nowhere for me to put my hands. I placed them in my lap.

‘I want to listen,’ said Perttilä. ‘I want to hear you.’

Physical discomfort was one thing, but I found Perttilä’s new role far more difficult to swallow. I had applied for the position of department manager. I was the more suitable and experienced candidate. I didn’t know how or with what Perttilä – a former sales chief – had convinced the board of directors.

‘This way, I think we’ll understand each other better,’ he continued. ‘I believe if we open up to each other, we’ll find something we share, reach a decision. And a shared decision is the right decision. It’ll only happen once we realise that we’re just two people having a discussion, two people stripped of all excess, with no hierarchy, no forced agenda. Two people sitting round a campfire, coming together, opening up, on an emotional level, moving forward.’

I knew it was fashionable to talk like this, I knew Perttilä had taken countless courses on the subject. Naturally, I couldn’t imagine the two of us naked in the middle of the woods. But there was a bigger, more fundamental problem with his manner of speech: it didn’t impart information, it didn’t resolve anything.

‘I don’t follow,’ I said. ‘And I don’t understand why the system wouldn’t…’

Perttilä gave a friendly chuckle. His head and face were one and the same thing: he shaved all his hair off so he was completely bald, and when he smiled you could see it at the back of his head.

‘Hey, sorry, sometimes I get a bit carried away, I’m so used to opening up, I forget to give people space,’ he said in a voice that even a year ago he didn’t have. A year ago he spoke like everybody else, but after attending all those courses his tone was somewhere between reading a bedtime story and negotiating a hostage situation. It didn’t fit with what I knew about him. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I want to give you space. You talk, I listen. But before we get started, there’s something I’d like to ask you.’

I waited. Perttilä rested his elbows on his knees, leaned forwards.

‘How have you been finding our new set-up here, the teamwork, the openness, doing things together, sharing knowledge in real time, the whole community vibe?’

‘As I’ve already said, I find it slows down our work and makes it more difficult to—’

‘You know, the way we’re all in this together, we get to know one another, we can feel each other’s presence, learn from one another, bring our sleeping potential to life?’

‘Well—’

‘People say they’ve found their true selves,’ Perttilä continued. ‘They tell me they’ve reached a new level of awareness, not just as mathematicians and analysts but as human beings. And it’s all because we’ve made a point of breaking down boundaries. All boundaries, internal and external. We’ve risen to a new level.’

Perttilä’s eyes were deep-set, the dark eyebrows above them made it hard to read his expression. But I could imagine that, deep behind his eyes, a fire roared fervently. Uncertainty scratched its nails down my back again.

‘I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘I find it hard to assess these … levels.’

‘Hard to assess…’ Perttilä repeated and leaned back in his chair. ‘Okay. What kinds of tasks do you feel ready to take on?’

The question blindsided me. I could hardly keep my hands in my lap.

‘The tasks I already have,’ I said. ‘I am a mathematician and—’

‘How do you see yourself fitting into the team?’ Perttilä interrupted. ‘What do you bring to the team, the community, the family? What’s your gift to us?’

Was this a trick question? I opted for full honesty.

‘A mathematical—’

‘Let’s forget the maths for a minute,’ he said and raised his right hand as if to stop an invisible current running through the room.

‘Forget mathematics?’ I asked, dumbfounded. ‘This job is based on the principles of—’

‘I know what it’s based on,’ Perttilä nodded. ‘But we need a shared path that we all walk along together, whether it’s with maths in our arms or something else.’

‘Our arms? That’s the wrong body part, I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘This is about logic. We need a clear head.’

Again Perttilä inched forwards, placed his elbows on his knees, leaned first to the side, then struck a pose. He held a long pause, then finally spoke.

‘This department was stuck in the mud when I took the helm. You remember, everyone shut away in their own little rooms, working on whatever, and nobody knew what anybody else was doing. It wasn’t productive, and there was no sense of community. I wanted to bring this group of pen-pushers and astrophysicists into the twenty-first century. Now it’s happened. We’re flying, flying up towards the sun.’

‘That’s inadvisable,’ I said. ‘Under any circumstances. Besides, even metaphorically speaking, it’s—’

‘You see? That’s exactly what I mean. There’s one guy always pushing back against everything we do. One guy still sitting in his own little corner calculating away like fucking Einstein’s long-lost cousin. Guess who?’

‘I just want things to be rational, sensible,’ I said. ‘And that’s what mathematics gives us. It’s concrete, it’s knowledge. I don’t know why we need all these internal children, these … mood charts. As far as I can see, we don’t. We need reason and logic. That’s what I bring.’

‘Brought.’

That one word hurt me more than the thousand previous words. I knew my professional calibre. I could feel my pulse rising, my heart racing. This was wholly inappropriate. The uncertainty passed and was now replaced with irritation and annoyance.

‘My professional skills are second to none, and they have improved with experience…’

‘Not all of them, apparently.’

‘What we need nowadays—’

‘What we need nowadays is something different from what people needed in the seventies,’ said Perttilä, now agitated. ‘And I mean the nineteen-seventies. Or shall we go even further back?’

I realised that the shuddering of the password box was only the beginning. And I knew this side of Perttilä. This was his real voice now.

‘Now listen up. As senior actuary, you can have exactly what you want,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to be a team player. You don’t have to use the intranet. You can sit and calculate things all by yourself. You can have your own room too.’

Perttilä sat up straight. He was sitting right on the edge of his seat.

‘Everything’s been taken care of,’ he continued. ‘Your office is on the ground floor, the little room behind the janitors’ desk. You can even shut the door. There’s a notebook and a calculator. You don’t need the intranet. Your task is to assess the impact of inflation from 2011 on insurance premiums in 2012. The material is all on your desk. If I remember, there are about sixty folders.’

‘That’s not at all sensible,’ I said. ‘It’s 2020. Besides, that was already calculated when we defined the insurance premiums for that year…’

‘Then calculate it again, check everything was as it should be. You like that kind of thing. You like mathematics.’

‘Of course I like mathematics…’

‘But you don’t like our team, our openness, our dialogue, the way we communicate, open ourselves up, explore our emotions. You don’t want to let go of yourself, you don’t trust the moment, you don’t trust us. You don’t like what I’m offering.’

‘I don’t…’

‘Exactly. You don’t. So…’ Perttilä reached over to his desk ‘…there is another option.’

He handed me a piece of paper. I quickly read it. Now I was no longer irritated or annoyed. I was flabbergasted. I was furious. I looked up at Perttilä.

‘You want me to hand in my notice?’

He smiled again. The smile was almost the same as at the beginning of our conversation, only now it lacked even the faint, distant warmth I might have detected only moments ago.

‘It’s a question of what you want,’ he said. ‘I want to help offer you different paths.’

‘So, either I conduct meaningless calculations or I take part in amateurish therapy sessions that jeopardise our attention to serious mathematical thinking of the highest order? The former is pointless, the latter leads only to disorganisation, chaos and perdition.’

‘There’s always the third option,’ said Perttilä and nodded in the direction of the sheet of paper.

‘Precision requires precision,’ I said, and I could hear my voice quavering, the blood bubbling inside me. ‘You can’t achieve inscrutable exactitude in correlation matrices with the KonMari Method. I cannot be part of a team whose highest ambition is going on a sushi-making weekend.’

‘There’s a small room for you downstairs…’

I shook my head.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just not sensible. I want things to be sensible, I want to act sensibly. This agreement is … More to the point, it says I would have to give up the six-month severance pay to which I am entitled and that my resignation would be effective immediately.’

‘That’s because this would be a voluntary decision,’ said Perttilä, now in that soft voice again, as though he very much enjoyed the sound of it. ‘If you want to stay with us on this floor, tomorrow morning there’s a compulsory, three-hour seminar on transcendental meditation, which will be led by a really excellent—’

‘Can I have a pen, please?’

From their faces, I could tell the others already knew. I had just one personal belonging at my workstation: a picture of my cat, Schopenhauer. I emptied my leather briefcase of work-related papers and dropped Schopenhauer’s picture into the now-empty case. I took the lift down to the ground floor and didn’t so much as glance at the janitors or the door behind them. I stepped out into the street and stopped as though I had walked right into something, as though my feet had stuck to the ground.

I was unemployed.

The thought seemed impossible – impossible for me at least. I’d never imagined I could be in the situation of not knowing where to go first thing in the morning. It felt as though a great mechanism keeping the world in order had suddenly broken. I glanced at the watch on my wrist, but it was just as useless as I’d imagined it to be. It told me the time, but all of a sudden time didn’t have any meaning. It was 10:18 a.m.

It seemed only a moment ago that I was pondering the difference between conditional probability and original probability and was trying to find a way to define mathematical independence in complementary events.

Now I was standing by the side of a busy road, unemployed, with nothing but a picture of my cat in my briefcase.

I forced myself into motion. The sunshine warmed my back, and I began to feel slightly better. As Pasila train station came into view, I was able to see my situation more pragmatically, applying logic and reason. I was an experienced mathematician and I knew more about the insurance industry than Perttilä’s team of functionally innumerate psychobabblers combined. I began to relax. Before long I would be calculating for his competitors.

How difficult could it be to find an insurance company that took both itself and mathematics seriously?

It can’t be that hard, I thought. Soon everything will look much clearer.

Quite simply, everything would be better.

3

‘Your brother has died.’

The light-blue shirt and dark-blue jacket only enhanced the third shade of blue in the man’s eyes. His thinning, wheat-blond hair combed over to the left looked tired too, somehow wilted. The man’s face was pale, all except for the bright red of his cheeks. He had introduced himself and told me he was a lawyer, but his name seemed to have disappeared with the news.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said in all honesty.

The taste of the morning’s first cup of coffee still lingered in my mouth, and now it took on something new, a tinny, almost rusty aftertaste.

‘Your brother has died,’ the lawyer repeated, trying perhaps to find a more comfortable sitting position on my couch. At least, that’s what his movements seemed to suggest. The autumnal morning behind the windows was cool and sunny. I knew this because I’d let Schopenhauer out to sit in his favourite observation spot right after breakfast and walked straight to the door as soon as the bell rang. Eventually the lawyer leaned forwards slightly, propped his elbows on his knees. His jacket tightened around the shoulders, its fabric gleaming.

‘He left you his amusement park.’

I spoke without even thinking. ‘Adventure park,’ I corrected him.

‘Excuse me?’

‘An amusement park is like Linnanmäki, like Alton Towers. Rollercoasters and carousels, machines that you sit in and let them toss you around. An adventure park, on the other hand, is a place where people have to move by themselves. They climb and run, jump and slide. There are climbing walls, ropes, slides, labyrinths, that kind of thing.’

‘I think I understand,’ said the man. ‘Amusement parks have that catapult with bright flashing lights that throws people into the air, but an adventure park has … I can’t think of anything…’

‘A Caper Castle,’ I remembered.

‘A Caper Castle, right,’ the lawyer nodded again. He was about to continue but looked suddenly pensive. ‘Well, an amusement park could have a Caper Castle too, I suppose. Like the old Vekkula in Linnanmäki. You had to climb in and keep your balance, and by the time you came out at the other end you were drenched in sweat. But it’s hard to imagine a simple catapult in an adventure park, all you do is sit down and experience a momentary shift in gravity … I think I understand the difference, but it’s hard to find a clear dividing line…’

‘My brother is dead,’ I said.

The lawyer looked down at his hands, quickly clasped them together.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My condolences.’

‘How did he die?’

‘In his car,’ said the lawyer. ‘A Volvo V70.’

‘I mean, what was the cause of death?’

‘Right, yes,’ the lawyer stammered. ‘A heart attack.’

‘A heart attack in his car?’

‘At the traffic lights on Munkkiniemi Boulevard. The traffic wasn’t moving, someone knocked on the driver’s window. He was adjusting the radio.’

‘Dead?’

‘No, of course not.’ The lawyer shook his head. ‘He died while he was adjusting it. A classical channel, I believe.’

‘And he’d made a will?’ I asked.

To put it nicely, Juhani was a spontaneous, impulsive person. He lived in the moment. The kind of forward-planning required to draw up a will didn’t sound like him at all. He used to joke, saying I would die of stiffness. I told him I was very much alive and not at all stiff, I just wanted things to occur in a good, logical order and that I based all my actions on rational thinking. For some reason, he found this amusing. Still, it should be said that though we were the diametric opposite of each other, we were also brothers, and I didn’t quite know how to take the news of his passing.

The lawyer reached for his light-brown leather briefcase, pulled out a thin black folder and flicked open the bands at the corners. There didn’t seem to be very many papers inside. The lawyer examined the uppermost document for a long while before speaking again.

‘This will was drawn up six months ago. That’s when your brother became my client. His final wish was very clear: you are to receive everything. The only other person mentioned by name is your brother’s former wife, whom he explicitly disinherits. There are no other relatives; at least, he doesn’t mention any.’

‘There are no others.’

‘Then everything is yours.’

‘Everything?’ I asked.

Again the lawyer consulted his paperwork.

‘The amusement park,’ he stated again.

‘Adventure park,’ I corrected him.

‘I’m still having difficulty appreciating the difference.’

‘So there’s nothing in there except the adventure park?’ I asked.

‘The will doesn’t mention anything else,’ said the lawyer. ‘After a brief investigation, it seems your brother didn’t own anything else.’

I had to repeat his last statement in my head to fully grasp its contents.

‘To my knowledge, he was a wealthy and successful entrepreneur,’ I said.

‘According to the information here, he was living in a rented apartment and drove a part-owned car – both of which have been in arrears for several months. And he ran this … park.’

My first thought, of course, was that none of this made any sense – because it simply didn’t. Juhani was dead and essentially penniless. Both statements seemed like misunderstandings of the highest order. Besides…

‘Why am I only hearing about his death now?’

‘Because he wanted it that way. He wanted me to be informed if anything happened, then I was only to tell the next of kin once everything was sorted out. That goes for the will too, once the assessment and inventory of his estate was complete.’

‘Was he ill? I mean, did Juhani know that he…?’

The lawyer leaned forwards an inch or two. He no longer looked tired; he almost seemed a touch enthusiastic.

‘Do you mean, are there grounds to believe someone might have … murdered him?’

The lawyer looked at me as though we were doing something terribly exciting together, solving a mystery or competing to win a quiz.

‘Yes, or rather—’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head, and no longer looked at all enthusiastic. ‘Nothing like that, I’m afraid. Heart problems. Something inoperable. He explained it all to me. There was always a risk it could happen, then one day it happened. His heart just gave up. The death of a middle-aged man is generally pretty uneventful stuff. No material for a blockbuster, I’m afraid.’

I turned and looked out at the autumnal morning. Two crows darted past the window.

‘But look at it this way,’ I heard the lawyer saying. ‘This is a great business opportunity. Your brother’s … park.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not an adventure-park kind of man. I am an actuary.’

‘Where do you work?’

The blue of the lawyer’s eyes was so exactly between that of his shirt and his jacket that there was an almost mathematical symmetry to it. In other circumstances it might have felt like an interesting feature. Now it didn’t. This morning at 7:32 a.m., after only a week and a half of diligent job searching, the final actuarial door had slammed shut in my face. Without delay, I had sent my CV and an application to every respected insurance company and stressed that I took traditional mathematics very seriously indeed and said upfront that I had no time for buzzwords and parlour games. When I heard nothing from these companies, I contacted them myself and listened to their banalities in stunned silence. One wanted to create a soft-flowing team dynamic, another wanted to shift towards a newer form of algorithm-based calculation. Each of them took pains to explain that there were no current vacancies. This I was able to correct. I told them I knew their companies had been recruiting. Time and again, this led to a hum of silence at the other end of the phone before the call was abruptly rounded off by wishing me a pleasant autumn.

‘I’m looking around at the moment,’ I said.

‘And how’s that going?’

It was a good question. How were things going? This morning’s balance sheet was clearly in the red. I wasn’t going to find work in my own field, my brother had died, and it seemed I now owned an adventure park.

‘I’m sure things will work out sensibly,’ I said.

The answer seemed to satisfy the lawyer. An expression crossed his face that seemed to suggest he had just remembered something important. Again he leafed through the folder. An envelope.

‘Your brother left you a message. A letter, just in case. It was my idea. I told him that once the will was ready, due to his diagnosis there were two things he should take care of right away: my bill and this greeting to you.’

‘Greeting?’

‘That’s what he called it. I don’t know what’s in it. As you can see, the envelope is still sealed.’

This was true. My full name was written across the C5-sized envelope: Henri Pekka Olavi Koskinen. It was Juhani’s handwriting. When was the last time I’d seen him?

We’d had a quick lunch together in Vallila about three months ago. I paid for the pepperoni pizzas because Juhani had left his wallet in the car. Of course, now I wondered whether there were more problems with his wallet than its simply being left behind. What did we talk about? Juhani told me about some new acquisitions at the adventure park, I mentioned Kolmogorov’s foundational principles of probability theory in explaining why he should make big investments one at a time, once he’d been able to see and assess how many people each new acquisition brought to the park. Juhani didn’t look as though he was about to drop dead any second. And he didn’t look like he had just drawn up a will either. What do people usually look like after writing a will? I’m sure there’s no quintessential mien, though such people are on the cusp of the impossible: trying to influence life after death.

I opened the envelope, slid out the folded sheet of paper inside.

HI HENRI

I’m not dead after all! Hahaha – I know you’re not laughing, but I want to laugh. I can’t think of anything else. No, seriously, if you’re reading this, I probably amdead. The doctors told me this heart defect was so bad that my time might be up much sooner than planned. Anyway, I guess by now you’ll have heard what’s going on. I’m dead and the adventure park is all yours. I’ve got one last wish for the place. I’ve never had much luck with money, and the park’s finances aren’t in very good shape, not to mention my own finances. I’ve never had the patience to count things properly, dot the Is, cross the Ts, that sort of thing. But you’re a mathematical genius! Do you think you could keep things ticking over for me? That’s my final wish. In fact, it’s my only wish. I don’t think I’ve ever said this out loud, but of all my business ventures – and you know there have been plenty of them over the years – the park is the most important. I want it to be a success. I suppose you’re asking yourself why. There are as many reasons as there are debtors, I’m afraid. I want to be good at something, to leave something behind. And there’s another reason you’ll discover once you’ve successfully completed your mission. Remember how we used to spend the summers at Grandma’s place, and how we were allowed to be away from home, where everything was always screwed up? I think of those summers now. You would always sit inside counting things, and I was outside playing. But we always went fishing together. If I’m dead, sit inside for a while, count things up and save the park, then go fishing. I’ll bring the worms. (Compulsory joke, sorry, couldn’t resist. Everything else is deadly serious.)

JUHANI

I felt annoyance verging on rage. This was typical of Juhani, a complete and utter lack of responsibility. The letter was clearly written in haste, drawn up on the spur of the moment. It lacked all rational thought and argumentation. Detailed analysis and clear conclusions were conspicuous by their absence. For the thousandth time in my life, I wanted to tell him there simply wasn’t any sense to this.

But Juhani was dead.

And I was sad, angry, confused, frustrated and, in a peculiarly intangible way, exhausted. Combined, these emotions burned my lungs, clawed at my chest. Everything pointed to the fact that I did, indeed, now own an adventure park.

‘So, this is everything?’ I sighed.

‘Not quite,’ the lawyer responded, quickly rummaged in his briefcase and, in a considerably more practised gesture, produced a slightly larger envelope. ‘My bill.’

He placed the envelope with his bill next to the envelope with Juhani’s letter. I noted that both of them bore my name. The lawyer checked the papers one last time, then slid the folder to my side of the table.

‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘My condolences.’

4

YouMeFun sprawled through the autumnal landscape in technicolour, almost genetically modified splendour. A box of tin and steel, painted in garish red, orange and yellow, and almost 200 metres across, it was an eyesore, no matter which colour of tinted spectacles you used to look at it. Presumably the point of the brash colours and enormous lettering was to spread the joyous gospel of sweaty fun and games for all the family to everyone who entered its gates. It was hard to gauge the height of the adventure-park box, fifteen metres maybe. There was enough space inside for a sports ground and an air hangar, a few schools and a truck park. YouMeFun was situated just beyond the Helsinki city limits.

Two days and two rather sleepless nights had passed since the lawyer’s visit.

I accidentally got off the bus one stop too soon. The closer I got, the harder walking became. It wasn’t because of the slight incline or the faint headwind, or the fact that I wanted to enjoy the cobalt-blue sky and almost white afternoon sun. It was more a question of disbelief, disgust and despair that I felt welling within me the closer I got to the park. As though something was forcing me to turn around, walk in the opposite direction and never look back. This must have been the voice of reason, I thought. But at the same time, I heard Juhani’s voice: It’s my only wish.

I knew very little about the adventure park’s operations. I knew that Juhani had nothing to do with its day-to-day running. The doors opened and closed without him. He had an office in the building, but he was away a lot, vaguely ‘on business’, as they say. As to who did take care of the day-to-day running of the park, I knew nothing at all. The car park, a field of concrete the size of three football pitches, was half full. Most cars were family-sized, most of them a few years old. I looked at the lettering on the roof of the building.

YouMeFun

The letters looked bigger than on my previous visit – which was also my only visit to date. To my surprise, they looked almost threatening. I found myself thinking I’d need to be careful not to be struck by the sharp prongs of the Y or caught in the fluttering flag of the F. Where had the thought come from? I could only assume that recent events had been more than enough to foster such irrational trains of thought. I walked towards the entrance and glanced up at the roof one more time.

Once inside, I queued at the ticket desk. The foyer seemed to give a clue as to what was in store: children bursting with energy, wild cries and high-pitched shrieks, and the lower, rather less enthusiastic conversation of the mums and dads. The semi-circular counter, around ten metres in length, was painted in the same colours as the rest of the park. Along the length of the red-orange-and-yellow counter, a large dome curved through the air. Between the counter and the dome, as though caught inside an enormous, psychedelic space helmet, stood a man in an adventure-park uniform.

The man was young, twenty-five perhaps, and had a name badge on his shirt. In large white letters was the word ‘YouMeFun’ and in smaller black letters the word ‘Kristian’. Kristian was brown-eyed and muscular. Judging by the toolkit hanging from his belt, I assumed he was responsible for park maintenance. Standing behind the counter he looked half at home and half very out of place.

When it was my turn, I stopped.

Why was I here? My original idea had been to inform the staff of Juhani’s passing and the park’s transferring into my ownership, but now that felt terribly insufficient. I hadn’t considered Kristian or the other members of staff. And I hadn’t considered the customers at all, crowds of whom seemed to be gathering, even at this hour of the morning.

It looked very much as though there was literally nothing in the world that could prepare a person to inherit an adventure park.

I told Kristian who I was and asked to speak to someone responsible for the park’s operations. He asked why I didn’t just talk to my brother. I told him I couldn’t do that because Juhani had died unexpectedly and now I owned the park. Kristian’s smile disappeared, and he told me a woman by the name of Laura Helanto was in charge of things. I asked if I could meet Laura Helanto. Kristian held the phone against his ear and turned away from me before I managed to say I’d rather tell Helanto the news in person. Right then I heard Kristian saying into the phone that Juhani is dead and there’s someone here who says he’s his brother, he doesn’t look like Juhani, should I check his ID to make sure this isn’t some kind of Nigerian inheritance scam … Baltic, then … well … okay, bye. Kristian ended the call and turned to face me again. We stood silently on either side of the counter and waited. Eventually he spoke.

‘Juhani was a really good boss, gave us free rein. He was chilled out, he wasn’t always looking over your shoulder and counting every penny.’

You’re not wrong, I thought. Then I remembered why I’d thought there was something strange about the sight of Kristian behind the counter.

‘Why exactly are you in the ticket office?’ I asked and nodded at the tools dangling from his belt. ‘It looks like you do a rather different job here.’

‘Venla hasn’t come in today.’

‘Hasn’t come in? Why not?’

‘She can’t get up.’

‘Is she ill?’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Kristian, and this time he sounded genuinely worried. ‘Have you heard something about her?’

I was about to open my mouth, but just then I heard a woman’s voice behind me. The voice said hello. I turned and gripped her outstretched hand.

Laura Helanto had dark-rimmed glasses and brown hair that curled and spread out like a bush until it touched her shoulders. Her eyes were blue-green and had an inquisitive alertness about them. She was around forty, perhaps a year or two over, just like me. She was approximately twenty-five centimetres shorter than me, about average height for a Finnish woman. I was rather adept at estimating people’s height because I was a tall man myself, one hundred and ninety-two centimetres, so I was used to continuous, meaningless questions on the subject.

Laura Helanto gave me a quick glance, quite literally looked me up and down from head to toe, and gave me her condolences. I wasn’t sure how it was customary to respond to this, and from her expression it was hard to tell whether she was genuinely sorry or just simply continuing to scrutinise my appearance.

Then we marched off apace.

‘The Doughnut,’ said Laura Helanto and pointed at an enormous, transparent plastic tube where a few children were bumping into one another and knocking against the padded walls. ‘Our first acquisition, still one of the park’s firm favourites. You can run in a circle and defy the force of gravity. Just say if you’ve heard all this before.’

‘I haven’t heard anything at all,’ I said. It was the truth.

The air was heavy with an indistinctly sweet smell, a combination of the aroma of the cafeteria, disinfectant and something human. There were shrieks, squeals and high-pitched cries on all sides. I kept a constant watch on my feet and realised I was worried I might accidentally step on one of the shorter clients.

‘Just ask anything that comes to mind,’ said Laura Helanto. As we took a sharp turn to the right, she glanced at me. There was something about that glance; it had the same curious, inquisitive shimmer as before. As her head turned, her bushy hair bounced as though caught in the wind. ‘It’s your park now. That over there is Caper Castle, one enormous climbing frame. There are a couple of alternative routes through it. In each area of the castle, you have to climb a little differently and the obstacles are different too. From a maintenance perspective, this is one of the most critical places in the park. There’s always something broken. Caper Castle is affectionately known as Spare Part Castle. There’s a lot of wear and tear. You wouldn’t think a child weighing only thirty kilos could be such a terminator, but that’s how it is.’

‘Indeed,’ I said, feeling a growing sense of horror. ‘And the repairs are carried out by…?’

‘Kristian,’ Laura nodded. ‘Who you’ve already met. He’s a good kid, skilled, but…’ Laura seemed to be looking for the right words. ‘Sometimes getting information through to him can be a bit of a challenge, but he’s conscientious and hard-working. Unlike…’

‘Venla,’ I said.

Laura looked surprised. Just then our pace slowed slightly, giving me a chance to look somewhere other than at my feet.

‘Kristian informed me that Venla was having difficulty getting out of bed this morning.’

‘This morning,’ Laura scoffed and sounded as though she meant something else altogether. She brushed the hair away from her glasses. ‘Right. This is where the Turtle Trucks set off. We have thirty trucks in total. The route runs almost right the way round the building. As the name suggests, this isn’t exactly Formula One. This ride is a good way to calm down the rowdier kids. You sit them in the cart, let them career round the hall a few times, and gradually things cool off. As you know, I’m sure. Do you have children? A child? Sorry, it’s none of my—’

‘None at all,’ I interrupted her. ‘I live by myself, alone. Given all the stochastic variables, it’s by far the most sensible option. Do you mean Venla has difficulty getting out of bed on other mornings too? Why does she work here then? What exactly is she paid for?’

We had come to a stop. One of the dark-green Turtle Trucks jolted into motion, the number 13 on its bonnet. Sitting in the truck was a driver about three years of age, who was looking at us instead of at the course ahead. In the truck behind sat the child’s father, who looked as though he might nod off at the next chicane. Nothing terrible would happen: the trucks were travelling slower than average walking speed.

‘Did you and Juhani ever speak about…’ Laura hesitated. ‘About our … I mean, the park’s business affairs?’

‘Not in so many words,’ I said. ‘He sometimes told me about new acquisitions, the Trombone Cannons, the Komodo Locomotive, maybe the Doughnut, perhaps some other investments. But otherwise…’ I shook my head. ‘No, we didn’t.’

‘Okay,’ said Laura. ‘I’m sorry. I assumed you’d be up to speed on things – at least vaguely. I suppose I’d better start by explaining who I am and what I do. My official title is park manager. That means I’m responsible for the day-to-day running of operations in the park, making sure everything is working and that our staff are in the right place at the right time. I’ve been park manager for two and a half years now. I’ll admit straight away, I wasn’t planning on a career in adventure-park management. I’m an artist by profession, a painter, but then … life got in the way. You know how it is.’

‘I’m not at all sure I do,’ I replied honestly. ‘In my experience, automatic assumptions regarding the proportionality of things often lead us astray.’

Now Laura Helanto was openly looking me up and down. Her gaze was studious, her expression somewhat concerned. Perhaps not so much concerned as suspicious.

‘A messy divorce … and I have a daughter, Tuuli, who needs very expensive treatments for her allergies,’ Laura said eventually. ‘But you asked about Venla. Juhani hired her.’

Both the subject and her tone of voice seemed to have changed in a flash. I assumed the vaguely defined concept of life getting in the way had now been dealt with. That suited me.

‘Given what I’ve learned about her behaviour, it doesn’t seem a very sensible appointment,’ I said.

Laura looked over at the gleaming steel of the slides.

‘Your brother always wanted to give people a chance.’

A group of little people scurried past us. The decibel levels reached rock-concert proportions. Once the shouting had died down a little, I dared to speak again.

‘I understand,’ I said, though I didn’t fully understand. ‘How many members of staff are there in total?’

We were on the move again. Laura Helanto led the way; I was following her though we were walking side by side. She was wearing a pair of running shoes, colourful and with thick soles. Her gait was that of someone used to walking. Her hair gave off a most pleasant fragrance. But my attention was drawn to the way her eyes moved. She had a unique way of scrutinising me while avoiding eye contact altogether.

‘We have seven full-time members of staff,’ she said. ‘I’ll introduce you to the others shortly. Then there are the seasonal workers. Mostly in the café, the Curly Cake. The number of seasonal workers is constantly changing, depending on the day or week it can be anything from zero to fifteen. The half-term holidays in September and February are our peak season. Summer holidays aren’t quite as full, though they certainly keep us busy. Each and every one of us. Sometimes I bring Tuuli along with me. She quickly makes friends – like most kids. I’m sure you remember.’

I remembered, but in the opposite way. As a child, I always enjoyed my own company. My early experiences reinforced the fundamental truth that the more people there are, the more problems there are – and the bigger the problems are too.

‘Was Juhani often on site?’

‘No, to be honest. In the time I’ve worked here, he visited less and less. He seemed content with the way I run the park – if I say so myself. He said there was no use for him here, seeing as I take care of everything.’

‘Did he ever talk to you about the park’s financial situation?’

‘Yes,’ Laura replied quickly. ‘Our visitor numbers have been steadily increasingly. Juhani kept saying things are great, just great. Recently, in particular. He would clap his hands and shout funny words of encouragement. A while ago he said he would pay us all a bonus.’

‘A bonus?’

Her hair bounced again, her head turned towards me. Now there was something more than just caution in those blue-green eyes.

‘Once we meet our footfall target and the results of the customer-satisfaction surveys are up to scratch. Things are looking quite promising. The bonus will be paid at the end of the year, as a Christmas present.’

‘This Christmas?’

‘It’s only eighty-seven days till Christmas,’ said Laura. ‘I know this because I have a Facebook friend who posts every week about how many days it is till Christmas. God knows, I need that bonus, otherwise it’ll be a grim festive season for me and Tuuli.’

In my mind’s eye, I could see and hear the side of Juhani that lived in a completely different reality and who said and did whatever popped into his mind. We stopped. Laura pointed at various activities and explained what they were, she spoke quickly and enthusiastically. The size and scale of the park caused me physical sensations – and they were far from pleasant. Laura pointed at the slides.

‘Do you want to try?’

I looked at her. She smiled.

‘Just joking,’ she said, now serious. ‘Sorry. You’re not in the right frame of mind. When someone close suddenly…’

‘It seems we weren’t all that close after all,’ I said before I’d even noticed I’d opened my mouth. ‘There’s so much I didn’t know about Juhani. Well, everything, it seems. I knew he had this…’ I said and swirled my right hand through the air, like stirring an upside-down porridge pot. ‘But I must admit, it turns out I didn’t know the first thing about the place. It is a … surprise. In so many ways.’

Laura Helanto looked at me, now somewhat tense and expectant. At least, that’s how I read her expression. I heard the clatter of dishes from the café. A child cried out for its mother. And didn’t stop.

‘How does this feel?’

‘How does what feel?’ I asked. It was a genuine question.

‘YouMeFun,’ said Laura. There was almost a hint of pride in her voice.

I quickly looked around. What could I say? That every single detail I had seen and heard here was each perhaps the most grotesque thing I had ever encountered? Pygmies dashing here and there, an unbearable lack of organisation, staggering maintenance bills, unproductive use of man hours, economical recklessness, promises nobody could keep, carts that quite literally moved at tortoise speed? I raised my fingers to my throat and checked the position of my tie. It was impeccable.

‘Okay,’ said Laura. ‘This must be a lot to take in, bringing so much happiness to so many people. Let’s go and meet the others, shall we?’

Samppa was a thirty-something former nursery teacher. He had earrings in both ears, an eclectic collection of tattoos across his arms and a thick red scarf round his neck. A group of children was beating a set of jungle drums as Laura told Samppa who I was and why I’d come. Samppa raised a hand across his mouth, perhaps to smother the gasp the news had elicited. He spoke for a moment about the healing, holistic impact of play. We left him and moved on to the café.

Johanna was in charge of the Curly Cake Café: red hair, slightly older than me, and she was extremely thin – she looked like she was preparing for an Ironman competition or had recently completed one. There was something steely about her face, something endlessly resilient. She offered to mix me a smoothie that would boost my ferritin levels, because apparently I looked exhausted. I told her I’d just lost my job and my brother, and inherited an adventure park. The explanation didn’t seem to convince her.

We headed towards a metallic door between the Trombone Cannons and the Ghost Tunnel. On the door was a plastic yellow sticker bearing the text CONTROL ROOM. Laura opened the door with her master key, and at the end of a short corridor we arrived at a small room with two more doors. The first room looked like it contained the electrical switchboard. In the second room, a broad-shouldered man in his fifties sat in an office chair with an adjustable head rest. In front of him was a wall full of monitors, which revealed that the adventure park had many more security cameras than I’d noticed during our walk around. The man’s name was Esa. He was the park’s head of security. His college sweater bore the text US Marine – and Proud. I found it hard to believe that he really was a trained soldier in the US army. Still, if I was now the owner of an adventure park, who knows what Esa had done before ending up in the control room. Around his mouth was a thin, black square of beard, trimmed with millimetre precision. He had a broad, short nose and blue eyes, red round the edges. We introduced ourselves. That was the extent of our conversation.

The last person I was due to meet was located – yet again – at the other side of the complex. Minttu K was sitting in her office, the Venetian blinds on the windows tightly shut. She was the marketing and sales manager. At least, that’s how she introduced herself.

Minttu K was slightly younger than me, she had cropped fair hair, a heavy tan, and she was wearing a dark-blue blazer at least one or two sizes too small for her. She gave me a very friendly smile and boasted that she could sell anything to anybody. By the end of our fifteen-second acquaintance, I believed this was highly probable. I was also almost certain I caught a faint hint of grapefruit and alcohol in the air. Minttu K made her apologies and said she had to make a phone call. She winked at me, pulled a cigarette from the pack of menthol Pall Malls on the table and placed it between her fingers. ‘Just some little prick that needs his arse handed to him,’ she said, then in a gentler voice: ‘Hey, sorry about your bruv.’

We walked back into the corridor, turned right and arrived at Juhani’s office. On the door was a plaque bearing his name. Seeing it elicited the same sense of confusion I’d experienced during the lawyer’s visit. The name was left hanging in the air, as if waiting for someone to appear and bring it to life.

The office looked like it belonged to a man with more than simply running an adventure park on his mind: the desk sagged under piles of papers, the coffee table was covered in illustrated leaflets and a colourful miniature model showing some kind of play castle complete with towers. From one of the towers, a springboard extended into the air. Without a swimming pool underneath, I thought, the design might soon run into problems.

‘I just realised I haven’t asked what you do for a living.’

Laura’s words brought me back to the office.

‘I am an actuary,’ I said. ‘Well, I gave my notice two weeks ago.’

‘Because of YouMeFun?’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t know about this park at the time. I resigned because I couldn’t stand watching my workplace turn into a playground. Then I inherited one.’

Was Laura Helanto smiling? I didn’t think I’d said anything amusing. She had raised a hand in front of her mouth. When she lowered it again, her expression was neutral.

‘You probably want to take your time to explore everything.’

I certainly did not. But again I heard Juhani’s words in my ears: my only wish. I looked at the desk, the towering piles of papers.

Just then, the phone in Laura’s hand started to ring. I noted that the ringtone was that of a normal telephone, not an inane jingle or the sound of a flushing toilet that was supposed to titillate everyone around her. An eminently sensible choice, I thought. She looked at the phone.

‘Esa,’ she said before answering.

Then she turned, and after saying her name into the phone she disappeared round the corner. Her scent lingered in the air.

Herbs and meadow flowers.

5

Minus sixty-three thousand, five hundred and forty-one euros and eighty cents.

The sun had set. I’d only waded through a fraction of the papers, but already there was a pile of unpaid bills and final demands as thick as my forefinger. It was a considerable sum of money.

At some point I’d switched on Juhani’s computer, but without the password I hadn’t got very far. The machine was nothing but a gently humming box of light metallic components and a plastic shell. I’d switched it off and continued clearing the desk.

I was sitting in the office chair Juhani had left me, trying to decide whether to set everything alight or sink with the park like the captain on the Titanic.

At first I’d thought this would be the last time I would ever be in this room, this chair. I had done my duty. I had assessed the situation, accepted the facts, and been forced to draw a painful but unavoidable decision. At least, that’s what I tried to think. But I couldn’t keep my thoughts in check. They were restlessly ricocheting from one place and time to another.

At times I was engaged in renewed discussion with Perttilä over my resignation, at others trying to talk sense to Juhani. The former was an idiot, the latter dead.

Juhani – did you really know what you were doing when you decided to adjust the car radio? Was the road you took, at least to some extent, your own choice? The intense greenery of the park boulevard in August, perhaps some Brahms coming from the speakers? It was certainly a more appealing proposition than trying to make sense of the wholesale orders for the Curly Cake Café or sourcing a new, even bendier replacement for the broken Banana Mirror.

Death.

I knew a lot about death.

Not from first-hand experience, but from my work as an actuary. Insurance companies and their feel-good advertising never tell you this, but they know that some of the people they insure will stop their monthly payments in a heartbeat, as it were, and take a one-way trip somewhere their insurance payout will never reach them. I could have tried doing the same: running out of the office and throwing myself under the Komodo Locomotive.

But no.

I wasn’t that kind of man. I was more of the belief that we don’t have to go out of our way to find difficulties in this life; before long, they will find us.

My hand reached up to loosen my tie, but I’d already loosened it hours ago. The sense of claustrophobia was coming from somewhere else. While looking at the figures, it had dawned on me that with the park came every last object in this building. It was a terrifying, overwhelming thought. The chair beneath me, the pen on the desk, the trapeze swings, the slowest go-carts in the known universe, the jacket with the chocolate-bar sponsor logo hanging in the doorway.

Everything.

Juhani was dead, so his belongings were now my belongings. Death wasn’t abstract, empty and silent; it was a thousand and one objects of different shapes and sizes, each of which took up space and made a noise when it was thrown in the bin or placed in apparently temporary storage boxes.

I wasn’t planning on setting everything ablaze. Again, I wasn’t that kind of man. I knew there were men who set buildings alight then masturbated in the nearby woods as they admired the flames, but I didn’t imagine such actions would achieve the results I needed.

More importantly, there was another pile of papers too, this one almost a centimetre thick. And this pile disconcerted me far more than the pile of bills and final demands.

The park’s business activities were sustainable, almost profitable.

But still Juhani had neglected to pay almost all the bills and taken out an extra loan in the park’s name.

I didn’t understand the equation.

Through the course of my studies, I’d learned the basics of accounting. So far, I hadn’t needed these skills for my own work, but accounting employed the same principles that I so loved in mathematics. The pursuit of perfect clarity, precision, impeccable balance, water-tight presentation, flawlessness. I liked that. Of course, the material in front of me was wholly inadequate and full of errors, but it gave the impression of a park whose business operations were satisfactory or even rather good. I located the financial statement drawn up by the park’s accountant, but in the other pile was the same accountant’s notification of termination of contract and a bill, dated earlier this year, which had already been forwarded to a debt-collection agency. I couldn’t find anything to suggest a new accountancy firm had been hired. Perhaps there was no new accountancy firm.

If the park’s operations were indeed profitable, why had Juhani taken out another loan to keep it running? What was the extra money for? It can’t have been for the park’s latest acquisition, the Crazy Coil, a twisting, turning slide, shaped like a corkscrew, attached to the Big Dipper. For this Juhani had only paid the initial down payment – in cash – and the first instalment. Looking at the timeline, the bills had started to pile up around the same time the accountancy firm had terminated its contract. After that, almost everything was in arrears. Something had happened. With one exception, all the bank loans had been taken out after that point in time. Adding up the loans and unpaid bills on the table, it seemed that just shy of two hundred thousand euros had disappeared into thin air.

Two hundred thousand euros. In just under a year. One would expect there to be evidence of the existence of such a sum of money. But where was it?

Juhani had been driving an old, part-owned Volvo for the better part of two years and was living in the same one-bedroom apartment, fitted out with MDF furniture, where he had been living since his divorce. His clothes were from Dressmann and he ate at a cheap local Chinese buffet. The Juhani I knew – badly, I admit – barely knew what Versace and the Savoy meant. I couldn’t imagine the money being squandered on skin treatments, manicures or extravagant trips abroad. Juhani had visited Tallinn, spent one night at the Viru Hotel, then returned to Finland. On the surface, he looked like a very average middle-aged Finnish man who didn’t like anything excessively, didn’t have any particular hobbies, and certainly nothing for which you might say he had a passion. Men like that got by with less money than most sparrows. But all that money had to have gone somewhere.

I was again about to ask myself where, when there was a knock at the door.

6

I hadn’t closed the door at any point. Then I remembered the steps I’d heard first getting closer, then moving away again. Someone else had closed the door. Why? Another knock. I had to say something.

‘I’m here,’ I said, then, ‘Come in.’

The handle turned, the door cautiously swung open. Had the park already closed for the day? I looked at my watch. Yes, half an hour ago. I could have been alone in the building – well, of course I wasn’t alone because someone had knocked at the door. Still nobody ventured into the office. Then I caught a glimpse of a shoulder, a shirt, then half a face.

‘What?’ asked Kristian.

‘Yes, I’m … here. I tried to say so.’

‘I didn’t hear,’ he said, still in the doorway. Kristian didn’t move.

‘Come in,’ I said, this time almost a shout.

‘Okay,’ said Kristian and stepped into the room.

He stopped across the desk from me. I gestured to the chair and he sat down, the tools on his belt rattling against the plastic seat. His brown eyes were like almonds. His pectoral muscles tested the seams of his YouMeFun shirt.

‘Were you at the ticket office all day?’ I asked.

Kristian nodded. ‘Brilliant sales today,’ he said. ‘I sold loads of Newt Bracelets.’

‘I take it Venla didn’t come to work.’

Kristian lowered his eyes. ‘No, she’s probably still ill.’

I thought of the missing two hundred thousand euros and what Laura had told me: Juhani had taken on Venla at least in part for reasons that had nothing to do with her ability to sell Newt Bracelets. Was there a connection between the two? I had to talk to this Venla – assuming she ever turned up for the full-time job for which we paid her wages. The thought was both absurd and infuriating.

‘Did she call you?’ I asked. ‘Do you talk to her often?’

Kristian looked even more confused, then I saw the blood rushing to his cheeks.

‘Yes. I mean, no.’

I waited.

‘Not really,’ he corrected himself. He was bright red. ‘Well, not at all.’

‘So the two of you don’t talk?’

‘No.’

‘But you’re filling in for her.’

‘Yes.’

‘And yet you’re the maintenance man.’

‘Yes.’

‘Shouldn’t Venla take care of her own job?’

Kristian looked as though he’d swallowed something he couldn’t get down but was either unable or unwilling to show it.

‘It’s no trouble.’

‘Why don’t you do the others’ jobs too?’

‘Why?’

‘If it’s no trouble.’

‘Everyone else’s jobs? Where are they going?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe the same place as Venla.’

Kristian’s expression showed that, at least to some extent, the thought was excruciating.

‘Has someone suggested that?’

‘No,’ I sighed. ‘Not that I know of. The original question was rhetorical. My intention was to demonstrate that your chosen course of action is profoundly illogical.’

Kristian looked like he was scaling a particularly steep hill.

‘You had something on your mind,’ I said eventually. ‘When you knocked at the door.’

‘Right, yes,’ he said, visibly relieved at the change of subject. ‘I know this is your first day and everything. But out there we were talking – I mean, the others were talking and I was listening. Anyway, since there’s a new owner here now, you’re the new owner and you’re responsible for…’

‘It certainly looks that way,’ I nodded.

‘The thing is, about a month ago me and Juhani were talking. We had an agreement, and Juhani is … well, he’s not in that chair, which I’m really sorry about, but seeing as we had an agreement and everything, I was wondering what kind of timetable we might be looking at…’

I waited for a moment. ‘What agreement?’

‘Well, we talked about…’ Kristian’s eyes roamed the room to find something to focus on, seemingly without success. ‘You see, I was supposed to become … or be made … become … whichever way you look at it…’

‘You were supposed to become something…’ I tried to prompt him.

‘The general manager,’ he finally blurted out.

I was sure I’d misheard.

‘Excuse me?’

‘The boss. The CEO. The big cheese.’

I finally understood. Of course. Juhani had been planning to make Kristian the general manager, the kind of general manager who … might not pay attention to every detail, every signature. Someone who would be a general manager only on paper. Of course, it was always possible that Kristian had a vast array of hidden managerial talents. I looked at him and thought about what I’d just heard. I couldn’t help thinking that, if he did possess hidden managerial talents, they were hidden with the precision of a stealth bomber.

‘Kristian,’ I said. ‘That isn’t … going to happen.’

Kristian’s brown eyes suddenly stopped roaming. He looked directly ahead.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘No. You—’

‘Yes. Me. Manager.’

‘You know, Kristian—’

‘I don’t want to know anything,’ he said emphatically. ‘I want to be the general manager.’

We sat in silence for a moment.

‘We have an agreement,’ said Kristian. His voice had lowered an octave.

I glanced at the piles of papers on the desk, the ones I had already gone through. It now looked as though Juhani was caught up in the middle of something – something besides an economic catastrophe. If what Kristian said was true – and I had no reason to doubt him, he seemed very sincere indeed – then only a month ago, Juhani had found himself in a situation in which he needed to erase himself from the company’s board.

‘Kristian,’ I said cautiously. ‘Let’s talk about this later.’

Kristian bolted up from his chair and reached a firm hand across the desk. I stood up and took it. Kristian shook my hand – literally. I could feel the force of his grip. The power seemed to flow through his whole body, as though even the tectonic pectoral muscles rippling across his chest had played their part in sealing our conversation.

‘It’s a deal,’ he said.

I was about to open my mouth but stopped myself at the last moment. I repeated what I’d said: we’d talk about it later. This seemed to satisfy Kristian and he released my hand. He turned, stepped towards the open door. Just before reaching the doorway he stopped, turned again and stretched out his arm. He raised his thumb and forefinger like a pistol going off, then tried to wink at me, but succeeded in blinking both his eyes.

‘Cool,’ he said.

7

The man was waving a handful of documents in my face. Lalla-lalla-laa, he taunted me. He walked backwards, and I pursued him. I tried to grab the bundle of papers, but my arms felt heavy and my movements hopelessly slow. The man continued tormenting me. I couldn’t make out his features. The parts of his face – the mouth, nose, cheeks, forehead – all kept changing place, never settling in one position. Those documents contained the information I needed, they explained where the money had gone. Finally I wrenched myself into motion, dived and grabbed the…

I woke up just before I hit the ground, but nonetheless hit it I did, with a thump. I fell on my left side, bashed my right fist against the bedside rug as I reached for the papers. The pain from the fall arrived with a slight delay. I was already staggering to my feet when I realised I’d hit my head too. It had struck the laminate floor beside the rug. The left side of my forehead started to throb. I managed to stand up and assess the situation.

The digital clock on the bedside table showed the time in blood-red numbers: 03:58.

The commotion had woken Schopenhauer, and he watched my movements from the end of the bed. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t want to argue over his night-time snacks. I pulled on my dressing gown and a pair of woolly socks. I walked into the kitchen, drank a glass of water and opened the balcony door. The concrete floor felt cold under my feet, but the air was fresh and light. The silence was absolute.

I had arrived home exhausted. I’d eaten quickly – a few cold sausages and a tart apple – and gone straight to bed. My first day at the adventure park had had the same effect on me as it did on all our visitors. At least, that’s what Laura Helanto said. When you’ve been running around the park all day, come the evening you’re out like a light. There was no arguing with that.

The cold no longer felt bad. My forehead was still throbbing, the dull sensation beginning to subside. Many things Laura Helanto had said kept popping into my mind, like someone casting a stone at regular intervals into a still, nocturnal pond. She had expressed surprise at how soon I’d visited the park after my brother’s death. I hadn’t understood the question. She said I needed time to grieve properly. Wasn’t I planning on taking some time for myself? At this point, we had just arrived at the broken Banana Mirror when something urgent came up, so I never got to answer her. But right now, just like every day in the early hours, I was having conversations with people who weren’t there.

I mentally answered her, saying I didn’t see how the situation would change or get any easier were I to sit on the sofa for a while, pondering future plans and the nature of death. My musings on the subject were neither here nor there.

And the funeral had been taken care of too. The lawyer said he would arrange everything according to Juhani’s instructions. I would choose the casket and it would be duly incinerated. After that, I would be informed when it was time to bury the urn. There wouldn’t be any formal memorial service. There was no one to invite; nobody wanted to eat dry meatballs, warm potato salad and stale cinnamon buns from a catering company. No one wanted to hear a priest giving a eulogy for the deceased, a speech full of second-hand information but without any first-hand corroboration. I assumed I would be told where to bury the urn. I assumed I would be able to borrow a rope too – to bury the urn, not to follow Juhani into the bosom of the earth. More importantly, what was a suitable period of grief for such a loss?

Juhani was my brother.

Our childhood was chaotic.

Our parents took turns losing their grip on various aspects of everyday life. The expression ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’ suited them to a tee. When they’d brought their Bohemian alcohol problems at least temporarily under control, before the week was out they would start buying things that we didn’t need and that they couldn’t afford. When the situation had reached almost catastrophic levels, they managed to stem their compulsive hoarding by moving house and starting over in a smelly commune led by a bearded man in a dirty woolly jumper that was too short for him, and who even a child could see was hopping in and out of bed with all the women in the house. When our impulsive father finally uncovered the truth, we were on the move again and, apparently in revenge for Mr Utopia, heading right into a world of capitalism: my parents became Tupperware agents for a while, until our over-priced rented apartment became filled with plastic dishes and boxes of all shapes and sizes and which my parents decided to pay for by starting up a puppet theatre. Which, even at the age of thirteen, I realised would only lead to another catastrophe of a slightly different complexion.

And so on.

There was never any sense to anything.

When I was young, I swore my life would be based on recognising facts, on reason, forward planning, control, assessing what was advantageous and what was not. Even as a child I saw mathematics as the key. People betrayed us, numbers did not. I was surrounded by chaos, but numbers represented order. After finishing my homework, I would calculate all kinds of things for pleasure. In mathematics, I was two years ahead of everyone in my class.

Our parents died when Juhani and I were in our early twenties. Their deaths weren’t at all dramatic. In a way, my parents died of old age, though they were relatively young, just shy of sixty. I assumed the reckless lifestyle must have eventually taken its toll on them, aged them; that their unfathomable antics had quite simply worn them out. At the time of their death the latest hairbrained scheme was a Bulgarian-yoghurt festival that they had, yet again, organised completely the wrong way round: by importing vast quantities of yoghurt first and storing it in the house while they waited for the festival to begin.

But what did this have to do with Juhani and grieving his death?

I supposed, as I leaned against the metal railings of my balcony, that in a way I had already grieved for him long ago, when I grieved for my parents. Juhani and our parents were very much of a kind. This didn’t seem to bother him. He had similarly slid from one desperate situation to the next, inevitably leaving smouldering ruins behind him, time and again fleeing the scenes of devastation he had caused, laughing as he went. I think this was why I was so angry at him. And, of course, the fact that he had left me an adventure park with mysterious debts to the tune of hundreds of thousands of euros.

For now I finally realised, as I gripped the cold, square railing in my hands and filled my lungs with night-chilled air, that this was the story of my family.

YouMeFun was Juhani – it was my mother and father.

YouMeFun was our family.

And that was precisely what made all this so difficult.

I hadn’t forgotten all those conversations with my family members. I’d tried to make each of them see the inconsistency of a given course of action and point out the pitfalls of the rose-tinted, laissez-faire attitude that infused everything they did. In each instance I explained the facts, how much everything was likely to cost – in contrast to what they thought things would cost – how one decision affected the next, and explained what the most probable outcome might be. These conversations always ended the same way: arguments, insults, offence, silent treatment, tensions – and fresh arguments.

Until they were all dead.

The concrete floor radiated cold, and the soles of my feet were starting to ache. The stars were like pinheads lit with bright LEDs.

The thought was like a wave born long ago, like a train gathering speed, and I knew it was heading right towards me. I knew its content long before I was able to put it into words. I knew what decision I would eventually reach, though for a fraction of a second I wanted to avoid it all: the thought, the conclusions, the implications, the responsibility I would have to bear.

8

Laura Helanto was sitting alone, eating her lunch in the yard behind the adventure park, in the delivery area, where a set of garden furniture had been laid out for the staff. I walked down the clanging metallic steps from the loading bay and headed towards her, the table and chair. Given the time of year, the day was calm and warm, the cloudless sky a deep blue. The world was bright and open and as motionless as could be.

I took a deep breath.

I had spent the previous evening and the early hours of this morning with Juhani’s paperwork. My sense of despair had, if anything, only deepened. That said, I thought I might have found a small glimmer of financial hope amid the chaos.

Laura was holding a fork in her right hand while flicking through her phone with her left. She only looked up once I was three steps away from the table. Her glasses reflected the sunshine, but I caught a fleeting look of bafflement in her eyes before a smile spread across her face.

‘Oh, hi,’ she said.

‘I see the accounting for the petty-cash register lives a life of its own,’ I said and sat down across the table from her. ‘Whose responsibility is that?’

Laura said nothing at first, instead skewering cubes of cucumber from a plastic box with her fork. Her smile had gone.

‘Juhani made it my responsibility,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Is there a problem with the accounting? I always submitted the previous day’s sales report to him, every morning, just as we agreed. And a weekly report every Monday and a monthly report at the end of the month. Hard, printed copies. On his desk. Just as he asked.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘It looks strong – the petty-cash register, I mean. I found the most recent report on the desk, and a few dozen previous reports too. But why…? Did Juhani say…? Or were things done a different way in the past?’

The cucumber cubes remained suspended in mid-air. The fork was almost diametrically halfway between her mouth and the box.

‘If I’ve understood right, everything used to go straight to the accountant in one attachment, directly from the computer,’ she said. ‘But Juhani told me he’d sacked the accountant and that he was looking for a new one, so in the meantime he asked me to look after the cash register and deliver the reports to him directly.’

Just then there was a hint of hesitation, of uncertainty, in Laura’s expression. She lowered the fork back towards the box.

‘Is there a problem?’ she asked.

The short answer was: yes. The fact was that quite a lot of money came into the accounts, but a far greater amount was flowing out again. And the more I put everything together – the lawyer who’d visited my apartment; Kristian with his dreams of becoming general manager; the two accounting reports, one of which was drawn up by a painter; Juhani’s recent loans; the park’s other debts – the more peculiar everything started to look. I hadn’t yet answered when Laura Helanto spoke again.

‘All I know is, the park is doing quite well and I have taken care of everything, as we agreed.’

Laura Helanto sounded genuine. This too was a problem. Kristian seemed genuine; so did the lawyer, in his own way. Everyone was genuine, but that still didn’t explain why a large sum of money was now nowhere to be found.

‘Do you have any previous experience of these matters?’ I asked.

‘What kind of matters?’

Her answer was quick, and it came with a flash, another reflection from her glasses.

‘Experience with corporate finance,’ I said. ‘YouMeFun is more a mid-sized company than a small start-up, so…’

‘Do you?’ she began. ‘Do you have that sort of experience?’

The question took me by surprise, though it was a perfectly reasonable one. Perhaps Laura noticed this.

‘No,’ I replied honestly. ‘None whatsoever.’

We looked at each other. Laura Helanto said nothing. I had nothing to add either, and I didn’t want to express any incomplete, half-baked conclusions on the subject. It befitted neither me nor the situation at hand.

‘I’m just trying to establish how everything works round here,’ I said eventually, and it was true. ‘This is all new to me. There are plenty of customers, that’s a positive. As you said, the park is doing well…’

Again, I left the end of the thought unspoken: the park is doing well all things considered. Laura looked at me for a moment, she seemed to relax. She raised her fork again, was about to pop it in her mouth.

‘Have you already had lunch?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said, and realised I hadn’t made plans for lunch or any kind of meal. By now I was hungry. ‘And I haven’t … Maybe I’ll pick up something at the Curly Cake…’

‘Here’s some falafel and hummus,’ she said, moving little plastic boxes across the table one at a time. ‘I’ve already eaten. I’ll have some more cucumber – I’ve brought so much of it.’

I looked at the boxes. They contained food, but it looked as though someone else had eaten from them. Despite my hunger, I had no desire to eat leftovers from someone I might later come to suspect of embezzlement.

‘No, thank you,’ I said.

Laura continued eating her cucumber. Her phone rang. She glanced at it, flicked it open. A colourful image appeared on the screen, and despite the reflection I realised it was a painting. Laura sighed then looked up at me.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘This guy wants to buy a painting, but he’s offering less than I spent on the materials. That’s how it is these days. People want everything for free. Nobody wants to pay for an artist’s work. Everybody thinks if they had the time and inclination, they could have painted something similar. Not even similar, but better.’

‘Can I see the painting?’ I asked before thinking the matter through.

It was the second time this had happened. The day before, I had, to my own surprise, begun telling Laura Helanto about my relationship with my brother. I didn’t know quite what was going on.

‘Sure,’ she said and angled the phone towards me.

The screen was filled with powerful reds and white. The painting must have been quite large. It didn’t seem to represent anything in particular, but I soon began to make out figures and movement in the swirls. After a while, I realised I was almost transfixed. I almost had to wrench my eyes free.

‘Impressive,’ I said instinctively and instantly felt that I’d stepped into dangerous territory. I couldn’t understand why I carried on talking. ‘Powerful. It grows on you. You can see motion, it’s alive, you’re always finding something new.’

‘Thanks,’ said Laura, took the phone and locked the screen. ‘That’s nice to hear.’

I wanted to extract myself from the situation, but I was still sitting there. I had started the conversation with purely accounting-related matters and ended up talking in blurred, spontaneous artistic metaphors. This wasn’t like me at all. I stood up, trying to avoid making eye contact with Laura Helanto.

‘So you do have an artistic side,’ she said.

‘A what?’ The question blurted out of its own volition.

‘What you said about my painting. That was very kind of you.’

What was I supposed to say: that I didn’t know where the words had come from?

‘It’s nice to hear, seeing as painting has been so difficult for me recently,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the encouragement.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I said.

Perhaps I heard another humming sound, something on a different frequency from the roar of traffic on the nearby highway. Laura leaned against the table, her shoulders rising like waves.

‘But when you arrived, you went straight to the point, no small talk, you didn’t say hello, didn’t ask how I’m doing.’

‘I never ask things like that,’ I said, and instantly felt myself relax. This was an easier subject: I knew what I was talking about.

‘Okay,’ Laura nodded.

‘I don’t need to know how other people are doing. I don’t want to know what they’re thinking, what they’ve done or how they experience things. I don’t want to know what they are planning, their hopes and aspirations. So I don’t ask.’

‘Okay.’

‘Except in extreme situations.’

‘Okay.’

I was still standing on the spot. Was Laura Helanto smiling? Her reaction was just as unexpected as mine. I hadn’t planned to say what I was thinking; it just happened. I felt a growing sense of unease. The accounting and financial discrepancies were foremost in my mind, getting to the bottom of them was my top priority. Not this kind of … what exactly? I didn’t know, specifically, generally or even vaguely. And why was I still standing there, still looking at Laura Helanto’s eyes? Again I was about to say something I had no intention of saying out loud when salvation blared out behind me.

‘Hey, Harry,’ Kristian shouted from the loading bay, waving his hand. ‘There are two guys here, said they’ve come to see you. They’re in your office. They said they know you and know where you sit.’

I took a step towards Kristian, then turned back to look at Laura.

‘Nobody calls me Harry,’ I said. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘Okay,’ said Laura Helanto, then added, ‘Henri it is.’

And yes, she was smiling.

9

The first impression was that these two men were such an odd couple that they must represent two separate, one-man outfits.

The older of the two, who was around my age, was dressed in a blue shirt and black blazer, light jeans and a pair of light-brown deck shoes. He appeared to know who I was as soon as I walked into the room. Or, more specifically, it seemed as though he had known long before I arrived.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Your brother was an interesting man.’

His face was round, his skin pock-marked, his eyes blue and small. His short, light, neatly trimmed hair was combed with a left-side parting. He was of average build, apart from the half-football protruding from his stomach. Our handshake was short and perfunctory. I gave him my name, though he already knew it. I expected to hear his.

‘Let’s have a little chat,’ he said instead. That was it.

I glanced at the other man, leaning against the wall at the other side of the room. Young, bald, broad-shouldered, his jaw munching on chewing gum. A black, XXL Adidas tracksuit. A large smartphone in his right hand, a set of white headphones over his ears. The impression was of a giant, mutant teenybopper.

‘What is this about?’

The older man closed the office door as though he were at home. Then he gestured me to my own chair behind my own desk and took a chair from the conference table for himself. I walked round to my place and sat down. The mutant stood in the corner like a statue, the headphones clamped over his ears.

‘I hear you’re a mathematician,’ the man said once he had sat down.

‘I’m an actuary. And what’s your business here today?’

The man looked at me for a moment before answering.

‘It’s your brother’s business, actually. Which, of course, is now your business.’

Of course, I thought. I leaned forwards, gripped the pile of unpaid bills and placed them on the desk in front of me.

‘What company do you represent?’ I asked.

The man’s small blue eyes slowly opened and closed. I didn’t want to think of a lizard, but I did. A reptile, an iguana.

‘When he died, Juhani’s debt was two hundred thousand euros,’ the man said. ‘Now it’s two hundred and twenty thousand. You know why?’

‘Which debt are we talking about?’ I asked.

‘Do you know why?’ he repeated.

‘First I have to know which—’

‘Because now there’s interest to pay,’ he said. ‘And the interest rate is ten percent.’

‘Over what period of time?’

‘The time since he popped his clogs. Your brother, that is.’

‘Two weeks and four days? Ten percent interest? Where did he agree to that?’

‘Right here in this room,’ the man said, opening out his arms as if to bequeath me the office I already owned. ‘We shook on it.’

‘You shook on it? Two hundred thousand?’

Now the man clasped his hands in front of him, showed them to me and nodded slowly. This bizarre performance of his had gone on long enough.

‘This is absurd,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to ask you to leave. I don’t know who you are, and you won’t tell me. And you don’t have a formal agreement or contract. There’s no sense in this. Please leave.’

The man did not move. The mutant hadn’t moved throughout the whole conversation. The older man’s small, piercing eyes closed, then slowly opened again.

‘I can increase the interest rate, if necessary,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘You come here demanding two hundred thousand euros—’

‘Two hundred and twenty thousand,’ he corrected me.

‘And as for that interest rate,’ I said. ‘Ten percent in two weeks and four days. That’s nearly six hundred percent per annum.’

‘Did you just work that out in your head?’

‘Of course. It’s a simple enough calculation:

‘Impressive,’ the man said.

‘What is?’

‘You worked that out pretty quickly. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you anything about the annual interest rate.’

‘I calculated it so that you’d see what nonsense you’re talking. The next time you try to swindle someone, at least try to make the numbers sound credible.’

‘Credible?’

‘The way Wertheimer almost conned Einstein himself, for instance. Wertheimer presented him with the following conundrum: an old car drives for two kilometres, first uphill then downhill. Because the car is old, it can’t drive the first kilometre faster than an average of fifteen kilometres per hour. The question is: how fast must the old banger drive the second kilometre – going downhill, where it can drive faster – so that the average speed for the entire journey is thirty kilometres per hour?’

The man pursed his lips a few times, then reached a conclusion.

‘That’s an easy one,’ he said. ‘Two kilometres. The first kilometre at fifteen km/h. Fine. The second has to be at forty-five. Because forty-five plus fifteen is sixty. Sixty divided by two is thirty. So forty-five on the way down and Bob’s your uncle.’

‘So one would think,’ I said. ‘But it’s a trick question. The right answer is, it’s impossible. Not even if the car shot down the hill like a space shuttle.’

The man said nothing.

‘At a speed of fifteen kilometres per hour, it takes the old car four minutes to reach the top of the hill, a journey of one kilometre,’ I said. ‘But how long does it take to drive up the hill and back again at an average speed of thirty kilometres per hour? The journey up and down is two kilometres in total. At thirty kilometres per hour, two kilometres will take four minutes. Thus, the car needs only four minutes to cover the whole journey at the faster speed. But these minutes have already been used up by the time it reaches the top of the hill.’

Again, those iguana eyes. The eyelids lowered, then rose again.

‘Einstein only realised this once he started looking at the problem in greater detail,’ I continued. ‘But not everyone is like Einstein. Not even you. No offence. I’m just saying you should look a bit more closely at things, like Wertheimer.’

‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Did you fall for it?’

‘At first,’ I replied honestly. ‘But because I calculate everything carefully and think methodically through everything I do, I noticed almost straight away what was going on. You can’t trick me. I don’t leave anything to chance that doesn’t need to be left to chance. I believe in the calculus of probability.’

‘Sounds promising.’

‘In what way?’ I asked, without really knowing why. I just wanted the men to leave.

‘With a view to understanding our situation here,’ he said and turned his head. ‘Let’s add another level of understanding, shall we? Ay-Kay.’

The last, confusing word was seemingly aimed at the mutant. He didn’t react at all, perhaps there was something more interesting coming from his headphones.

‘AY-KAY!’

The mutant flinched, removed the headphone from his right ear. I could hear a low-pitched thumping. The mutant, who I now realised answered to the initials AK, looked at the older man with renewed interest.

‘AK,’ said the older man. ‘If you would.’

After this brief instruction, everything happened very quickly.

AK replaced the headphones over his ears, slid his phone into his tracksuit pocket, took a few brisk steps that, with surprising speed and agility, brought him round the desk and right next to me. In the same series of movements, he gripped my right hand as though it were part of his own body.

I was wrenched out of the chair and under AK’s arm. I caught the thick smell of aftershave and deodorant. The pain felt like an explosion whose pressure waves rippled through my body. AK twisted my little finger upwards. With my free hand, I grabbed AK’s hands and tried to prise them from round my own. It was like trying to stop a dam bursting with your bare hands. AK twisted again. I was paralysed with pain, couldn’t breathe.

‘Right, Einstein, or whoever the fuck his friend was. AK here could pull your finger right off. I’ve seen him do it. He just yanks it off in one go. It’s impressive. I like the sound. Like pulling a leg off a roast chicken. It’s a meaty, juicy sound, only much, much louder. I don’t know if that’s what’s going to happen right now. He can’t hear me. Can you hear me, Henri?’

I nodded once, twice.

‘Good,’ said the man.

AK twisted again.

‘It looks like this has all come as a bit of a surprise to you. You see, your brother Juhani liked playing poker. He liked it a lot. We lent him money so he could keep on playing. Everything was going well. He kept playing, we lent him more money. He paid his debts, then borrowed some more. Where’s the problem? We were all happy bunnies. Then suddenly he stopped paying but carried on playing. Not such happy bunnies now. Do you follow?’

I nodded twice, this time in much quicker succession. The older man waved his hand like a football referee disallowing a goal. AK let go. My hand was on fire. AK returned to his spot near the wall, as if he had never left it. I felt my right hand with my left. I couldn’t tell if anything was broken.

‘Looks like your finger’s still attached,’ said the man, then paused. ‘Two hundred and twenty thousand euros.’

‘I don’t have—’

‘You do, and I know you do,’ he said. ‘The petty-cash register is in good shape.’

I heard these last words twice, first when he uttered them, then as I mentally repeated them to myself. He knew.

‘In case you’re thinking of calling the police,’ he continued, ‘think twice about that. In the worse scenario, the amusement park will close down and you’ll still owe us the money. Then how will you pay your debts?’

The man paused. For a few seconds, the lizard reappeared. He continued.

‘But there is an upside to all this. We are prepared to extend the repayment schedule. Naturally, the debt will accrue more interest, but what’s most important is to get things rolling, as it were. The amusement park is ticking over nicely and…’

Pain was throbbing the length of my finger. I had reached a decision.

‘No,’ I said, then added, ‘This is an adventure park.’

‘What?’

‘This is an adventure park, not an amusement park.’

I explained the difference just as I’d explained it to the lawyer: an amusement park hurls people around, but in an adventure park people hurl themselves around. And so on. I added that though both parks might feature places like Caper Castle, the difference was still important and should be duly noted. For a moment the man was silent.

‘No?’

‘That’s right,’ I nodded. ‘I am not responsible for my brother’s debts. I don’t see how I possibly could be. I won’t pay.’

For the first time, the man showed a flicker of irritation.

‘AK could have torn your finger off,’ he said. ‘I told him to stop. I did you a favour.’

I glanced up at AK; he wasn’t listening to us.

‘Now please leave.’

The lizard reappeared, and this time it remained in the man’s eyes. He slowly turned his head towards AK and was about to say something when there came a knock at the door. I said ‘come in’ before anyone had the chance to open their mouth. A second later and Laura was in the room.

‘We need to talk about the maintenance to the Turtle Trucks…’

Laura stopped. Her eyes moved from me to the older man, then to AK, and finally back to me.

‘Sorry, I didn’t realise…’ she began, but didn’t continue. From her expression, I could tell she knew she’d walked in on something very unexpected. Her gaze moved from the men to me, then to the middle of the room.

‘I didn’t realise either,’ said the older man, now more reptilian than human. ‘But if AK over here were to expand his activities, as it were, maybe we’d all realise something, yes?’

The older man shifted his lizard gaze from me to Laura. No, I thought instantly and automatically, no, no, no. You can break all the bones in my body and I still won’t pay, I was about to say, but so much as touch Laura and…

Right then I heard the sound of high heels against the laminate floor.

‘About the marketing budget,’ Minttu K said as she strode into the office. ‘Can we have a word, honey?’

Then she too came to a halt. There were now five of us in the small room.

For a moment, maybe as much as ten throbbing seconds, the office was like a wax museum where realistic dolls of living people stood frozen in position. Then the numbers, the facts, did their job. There were three of us. Even AK wouldn’t be able to snap all thirty of our fingers before the situation descended into chaos.

The wax dolls came to life.

The older man stood up from his chair, Laura stepped closer to my desk, Minttu K glanced inquisitively at both the men, particularly AK, corrected her posture and tugged down the hem of her all-too-short blazer. AK moved, following the older man towards the door. Once at the door, the older man stopped, and AK stopped too.

Laura took half a step closer to the desk, and I don’t know why noticing this seemed to warm me so much amid all the agitation. The older man turned, noticed AK in front of him, moved beside him and spoke in the friendliest voice he had used thus far.

‘Thanks again, Henri,’ said the iguana. ‘We love amusement parks. We’ll certainly be coming again.’

AK said nothing at all.

10

The following three days – Thursday, Friday, Saturday – I spent almost entirely in the adventure park. I was woken in the mornings by the gentle nudge of Schopenhauer’s paws. He sat purring beside my face, and prodding me beneath the nose. I got up and gave him some food. This always happened between five and a quarter past five in the morning. I shaved, had breakfast, tied my tie and headed to the adventure park.

I first took the commuter train, then changed to the bus. The journey took an average of forty-seven minutes, and I needed a two-zone ticket. I used the journey to calculate everything. Well, not quite everything. I didn’t take Juhani’s alleged gambling debts into account. The whole matter seemed more absurd with every day that passed: the visit of the two men, their claims and demands. My little finger was swollen and still sore to the touch, which reminded me that all this really had happened, but other than that…

What I said was exactly what I thought.

Even if Juhani had been playing poker more than he could afford, it was none of my concern, except for the fact that it had left the adventure park in something of a financial quandary. It was perfectly possible that Juhani had gambled a lot. In fact, it was highly probable, given everything that had come to light. A fanciful and unrealistic approach to the laws of probability makes people try their luck in situations that have nothing to do with luck – be it personal relationships or making a quick buck. For this reason, I didn’t gamble in any way, shape or form. To me it was like swimming in a pool half filled with sharks: though the sharks only took up half the pool, it was still their pool.

Once the man with the reptilian eyes and his not-so-little helper who only answered to the name AK had left my office, I asked Laura Helanto to show me how everything worked. Everything? she had asked. Yes, I replied, I want to know how my park functions, what goes on where, I want to master every aspect of this. I didn’t tell her I had no choice in the matter. I didn’t offer any explanations for this or for what had just happened. And I didn’t tell her about the park’s catastrophic financial situation or Juhani’s alleged gambling problems.

The next few days were packed.

I learned how to do everything in the park.

With a screwdriver in my hand, I tightened the structures beneath the slides. I acquainted myself with the most critical aspects of the park’s cleaning operation, sat with Minttu K – in the afternoons the smell of alcohol, specifically gin lonkero, was overpowering – as we went through the marketing budget, negotiated with the stony-faced Johanna about reducing the cafeteria’s acquisition budget (the answer was no), tried to coax Esa away from his screens and to expand his job description to include live interaction with the customers (this apparently wasn’t possible if maximum customer safety was to be ensured at all times), wondered when Venla might turn up for work (I still hadn’t actually met her), and, of course, all the while trying to avoid Kristian, who at every opportunity whispered various ideas about the general managership and the transition strategy, as well as asking when he could break the news to the others.

On Sunday morning I was sitting on the train once again.

The sun was rising. The streets, fields, parks and cycle paths were empty, as though they too were resting. As autumn had progressed, the gold and crimson of the trees seemed to have lost part of their previous splendour, but with each stop, as the sun slowly rose, their glow intensified, and when I arrived in Vantaa I stepped off the bus into an ocean of colour.

According to Laura Helanto, Sundays were almost as good as Saturdays in terms of footfall. I told myself that Sunday would be my last day as a trainee at the adventure park and that the last few days could be considered my induction week. As the new, full week began, I would be ready. Ready to introduce the staff to my list of changes, to our new ways of working, and especially to the new budgets for each department.

I noticed I was smiling.

‘Are you alright?’ Laura Helanto asked when we met at midday.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You look a bit … No offence, but you look a bit ill. You’re different somehow.’

I realised that this misunderstanding was probably due to my expression. I stopped smiling, and Laura didn’t ask anything else. She explained that the giant rabbit, which greeted everybody as they arrived, suffered from a loose, flapping ear. Just then, she turned and pointed at the rabbit.

‘Its ears aren’t supposed to flap around,’ she added, and now she was smiling too. I was unsure whether the smile was intended for me or the rabbit.

‘I’ll fix it myself,’ I said because I knew Kristian was currently at the entrance counter, standing in for Venla. Again. Then I remembered the other pressing matters on today’s schedule and added: ‘Once we’ve closed for the day.’

Laura looked at me again. I’d noticed that I liked her eyes. There was something about their brightness, their inquisitiveness, something that made even me realise it is possible to look at certain things and experience joy and excitement. Perhaps. And I noticed I liked her wild hair too. Its bushiness was both fun and attractive, all at once. But I didn’t want to prolong our meeting. All week Laura had been asking awkward questions about the men’s visit and why I wanted to pay greater attention to the petty-cash register and all other financial transactions.

‘Is it alright if I leave a bit early today?’ she asked.

The question took me aback. Then I realised that, naturally, I was the one who made these kinds of decisions now.

‘If everything is in order,’ I said.

Laura glanced quickly to her side.

‘I think everything is in order.’

Had her tone of voice changed?

‘Of course, I’ll go around the park once more,’ she continued, ‘and I’ll tell the others I’m leaving. And I’ll remind people to make sure they don’t accidentally do any overtime.’

Excellent, I thought. Sunday overtime pay was poison to the park’s finances and might upset our new-found financial equilibrium. If we could put Sunday overtime behind us, so much the better. And if some chores were left unfinished, they could be done on Monday, the quietest day of the week.

‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘I can close up.’

Another quick glance to the side.

‘So I can tell everyone they can leave as and when they are done?’

‘That will be fine too,’ I replied. ‘I can glue the rabbit’s ear by myself.’

Laura Helanto looked first at me, then the rabbit.

‘It can be quite an unpredictable rabbit,’ she said. ‘Be careful.’