Reino had parked the elephant right in front of the workshop and Tweety could see it clearly through the open door. He was on his knees on the oil-stained floor, leaning against a bench, and he was laughing because Lasse had attached large, yellow stickers on to the elephant’s side that read Helsinki Emergency Plumbing Services Ltd. The signs even gave a telephone number and an address at Vaasankatu 5. That was the funny part; if somebody’s pipes sprung a leak and they tried to call this company for help, the phone would ring and ring and nobody would ever pick up, and if they went to the address on Vaasankatu they’d find themselves in a clothes shop. Water would be pouring everywhere and the crack in the pipes would just get worse.
The fact that the elephant had another car’s registration number made him laugh too. Apart from bluffing for them, in a few hours’ time the elephant would help them carry home sackloads of money and gold and diamonds. He was especially amused at the realisation that Mother Gold was really a witch. She was a wicked witch who had laid a curse on him, magicked him in two, Tweety and Asko, and turned his life into a meat grinder from which she wouldn’t let him escape.
The thought of the corridor in the bank’s basement was suddenly in his mind. Its walls were like flesh, red meat caught on the surface of the grinder, and something moved in his stomach and a thin trace of sweat tickled his upper lip.
Outside Reino said something to Sisko. Night had fallen, enveloping the world in soft folds of cloth. Tweety’s sniggers made Reino nervous, and every now and then he sent Sisko to keep an eye on him. Reino was nervous anyway; his voice sounded like frayed barbed wire. He shouldn’t have been like that; someone should have said something to him. Because when someone is nervous, he attracts failure like a magnet. Sisko understood his giggles; she’d explained that laughter is fear’s backside, and when it turned to face you, fear itself was looking elsewhere and didn’t notice you.
Sisko came indoors; she was wearing the same clothes she always wore and could easily be mistaken for a plumber. She’d been helping Reino and Lasse carry the tools and gas cylinders outside, and on Reino’s orders she’d been keeping a checklist, the kind that pilots keep, making a tick beside each item as they loaded it into the van. She was going with them, specifically to help Tweety. She helped him by holding her hand on his neck; she was his guardian angel, and with her hand on his neck he wasn’t afraid of the pouch or the picks or the locks. They’d done it all before. They’d even practised; he’d been able to open every lock Reino had given him, though none of those had been a grooved Abloy lock.
‘Tweety,’ said Sisko and looked at him, her head to one side. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. He looked down at his hands and his voice seemed to thicken. ‘Yes…’
‘And you’re still thinking about the lock on the squirrel door?’
‘Yes. It’s singing very quietly, and I can see lots of shades of brown.’
‘Good… We’re nearly ready to go.’
Reino and Lasse walked in, bringing with them the smell of tobacco and sweat and nervousness. The night had left tiny messages on Lasse’s clothes, so small that he hadn’t noticed them. Tweety inhaled them deep into his lungs and tried to read them, but stopped immediately; they were bad messages. They were shining with a trembling, blue light that licked through his brain, through the city, through the whole world even, and he began to feel as though he’d been out in the rain and his clothes were soaking wet. He started to giggle; he had to. Giggling was a tent peg too, just as words had been earlier that day.
‘Right,’ said Reino and looked at the others, and with that the Chancellor came to life, it was real: Museokatu was somewhere in the distance, sleepy cars parked along the street, and the bank with the blue squirrel glowing in its window. The gate leading through to the yard was real, the flesh-coloured corridor and the squirrel door. Then inside the bank they were met by the smell of paper, the smell of plate-metal lockers and the toilet that hissed to itself; then there was the alarm that couldn’t raise the alarm and the thick door that Reino would have to cut through. Minutes going past agonisingly slowly, the fear that somebody might come, that they’d be caught. But then there was the money, the gold, the diamonds.
‘Or what?’ he added. He shouldn’t have. Those words and his expression meant: shall we postpone it until tomorrow, or shall we call the whole thing off? It made everyone uneasy; they shuffled their feet, and perhaps it occurred to them that this might be the last time they’d all be together like this for years. What would it feel like to be cross-examined, put in a cell, sent to prison? Lasse held his hand to his waist and kept it there, his fingers touching the thick handle of his Smith & Wesson, and in a moment his lips had turned white.
‘What are we standing around here yacking for?’ said Sisko as though someone had tooted a horn. ‘Let’s get in the van and get going.’
‘Right,’ Lasse muttered, his voice hoarse. ‘The sooner we get going…’
‘I still wish we had that bloody police radio. At least then we’d know how many patrols there are in the area, and whether they’re planning a raid, so we don’t walk right into a trap.’
‘But we haven’t got it,’ said Sisko. ‘We’ll be fine without it.’
‘And you’re sure Mum’s asleep?’
‘Yes. She won’t wake up until tomorrow morning now.’
‘And you’ve packed Asko’s…?’
‘Let’s go.’
‘Right, let’s go…’
Sisko came round to Tweety’s left and Lasse to his right. They held him under the arms and helped him stand up. From there he made his own way to the van, stiffly, as though he were learning to walk for the first time, and now all sense of nostalgia was gone; they were filled with action and a sense of assurance. It was in their every movement, encouraging one another: we can do it! And very slowly they began to believe in it themselves, they had no choice, and as that belief set in so the night smelled suddenly much better. It smelled of magic, of a life that was about to take a turn for the better.