4

The meeting was in Konala.

I arrived six minutes ahead of the appointed time, so I sat waiting in the van used to transport the park’s equipment; the second-hand Renault Kangoo had lots of space and excellent capacity, its fuel consumption was reasonable and its appearance suitably unattractive, which lowered the risk of its being stolen, which in turn ensured that the vehicle’s insurance premium and excess remained untouched.

The sun was shining horizontally into my eyes, so I lowered the sun visor and allowed the beams to warm my chest. Most of the traffic passing by consisted of vans and lorries bearing a variety of familiar and unfamiliar brands and logos. Most of the brands and logos overtook me, driving slightly over the speed limit, at a cautious estimate. Having spent my entire adult life immersing myself in statistics and probability, I accepted this did not mean that most of the residents of Konala were habitual speeders. This was the first time I’d ever visited this area of the city, and therefore my data set was deceptively small. It was considerably more likely that most Konala residents were responsible motorists and that traffic through Konala was, on the whole, very balanced and drivers dutifully adhered to the general rules of the Highway Code, and it would be wrong to generalise based on the rather lax behaviour of one or two or three Konala motorists and to extrapolate that to apply to all Konala motorists…

I shook my head and faced facts.

I was trying not to think about Laura or our encounter, so I was prepared to come up with almost anything to take my mind off it. I adjusted my tie and tried to shake Laura Helanto temporarily from my mind.

The offices and warehouses of Toy of Finland Ltd were ahead of me to the left, at one corner of the triangular plot. The company was a long-term supplier of adventure-park equipment, and YouMeFun was tied to a long-term contract with them. The contract was valid for at least the next three years. The existence of this contract had come as a complete surprise to me, as had almost everything else to do with the park.

Nonetheless, the contract, which had been signed two years earlier and which appeared to have been drawn up by Hannes Tolkki, owner and CEO of Toy of Finland, was very reasonable and beneficial to both parties. My own calculations confirmed that cooperation with Toy of Finland was profitable to both of us, particularly in the long term. What made this contract even more unique were the so-called exclusivity clauses that bound both parties, including Toy of Finland. As per these clauses, Toy of Finland was not allowed to supply adventure-park equipment to anybody except us within the boundaries of Greater Helsinki.

And therein lay the reason for my visit to Konala. Because I didn’t understand the company’s most recent messages and offers.

And because everything seemed to come back to the Moose Chute.

The Moose Chute was a unique piece of equipment, and I wanted it. Or, more specifically, I needed it.

The Moose Chute stood taller than any of our other pieces of equipment, and in every respect it was gigantic. This single device offered up to ten different activities. The most hair-raising of these was the possibility to leap from the tip of the moose’s antlers right into a forest of trampolines positioned at its front. The other activities included various ways of climbing up to the tips of the aforementioned antlers and a giant slide ending at the bottom of the animal’s back-left hoof. On the moose’s back there was a balancing circuit with two parallel tracks, allowing the most competitive of our customers the opportunity to test their agility against one another. But most magnificent of all was the fact that the entire moose could be turned into one enormous rollercoaster. The circuit running through the inside and along the back could support several carriages, and the moose itself moved them along with the help of a powerful and fully carbon-neutral electric motor. Only one Moose Chute was manufactured every year; it was the crown jewel of the entire French and, indeed, the whole European adventure-park industry.

For YouMeFun, the Moose Chute would provide a much-needed competitive edge. The truth of the matter was, we were the underdogs. Our nearest competitor was expanding and had secured a whole slew of big acquisitions. We needed something to differentiate us from them, but all within the constraints of our current financial predicament. The Moose Chute was one such acquisition – if, indeed, we were able to acquire it. But the messages I’d recently received hadn’t brought that acquisition any closer. After many attempts, I’d finally managed to arrange a meeting to discuss the matter.

I looked at the clock on the dashboard, checked my tie in the rear-view mirror, picked up my briefcase and stepped out of the car.

The office building was made of white-painted, roughcast concrete, it was on one level and clearly much older than the tall, grey, steel-and-aluminium construction behind it. I walked up to the dark-brown wood-panelled door and pressed a round buzzer on the wall. There were large windows on both sides of the door, their Venetian blinds open a fraction. They had been pulled so that you could only see into the room if you lay on the ground and looked up, meaning you would probably only see the ceiling.

The buzzer sounded, and I heard the door’s lock give a click. I pulled the door open and stepped inside.

I found myself standing at the end of a lengthy corridor, which meant that the office building was significantly deeper than it looked from the outside. Otherwise the impression was a neutral one. The interior was white, very brightly lit and office-like. The corridor was dotted with doors, most of which stood open. Just as I was about to call out and ask which direction to go in, I heard the sound of conversation and saw half a man’s face in a doorway on the left of the corridor.

‘This way.’

This way seemed to mean a conference room, a large table and the chairs around it. It might also have meant the men sitting around that table. There were three of them: two older gentlemen and one considerably younger. None of them was the CEO, Hannes Tolkki.

‘Take a seat,’ said one of the older men, and showed me to a chair. This was the same man whose face I had half seen a moment earlier. ‘The park’s chugging along nicely, isn’t it?’

‘Will Hannes Tolkki be joining us?’ I asked. I was standing on the same side of the table as the man who had offered me a chair. The other older man was standing across the table alongside the younger man.

‘He’s retired,’ I heard from beside me. ‘I’m Kari Liitokangas.’

‘Otto Härkä,’ the other man introduced himself.

‘Jeppe,’ said the younger man, held a two-second pause, then added, ‘Sauvonen.’

Kari Liitokangas, who was still offering me a chair, was a man of around fifty and of average height, and beneath his flannel shirt his prominent chest and shoulders seemed to dominate the rest of his torso, as though he had only succeeded in growing a few strategic muscles at the gym, but all the more thoroughly. His facial features were similarly curious: his broad chin and high cheekbones were almost cinematic, but the sections under his chin and above his nose revealed a penchant for beer. To sum up, one might say that it was hard to look at him only once; there was something about him that forced you to look again and check what you thought you’d seen the first time. Otto Härkä must have been in his fifties too; he was slender though still with something of a beer belly, and he sported a particularly impressive moustache. I’d seen topiary of the garden-brush variety a lot in recent years, though mostly on younger men who, I had been told, considered it an ironical fashion statement. And then there was Jeppe–pause–Sauvonen. He was tapping the table-top with his right hand, his left hidden somewhere deep under it. He had a serious, statuesque appearance, a dark monobrow and beneath it brown, smouldering eyes. He was wearing a black sweatshirt with the words FUN MACHINE in large white letters.

‘Let’s sit down, shall we?’ said Kari Liitokangas. His words had immediate effect: we all sat down.

‘I didn’t know Hannes Tolkki was about to retire,’ I said.

‘It all happened very quickly,’ said Liitokangas. ‘But he left us detailed instructions. We want to continue along the same lines and respect the terms of our contract.’

‘Good,’ I nodded. ‘That’s what I was hoping.’

‘Excellent,’ said Liitokangas with a smile. Otto Härkä and Jeppe Sauvonen smiled too. I looked at them each in turn and began to feel distinctly ill at ease.

‘Indeed,’ I said eventually. ‘Speaking of our contract—’

‘I have it here,’ said Liitokangas, and opened a plastic folder in front of him. ‘Along with our catalogue.’

He slid the stapled pile of papers he called their catalogue across the table. I leafed through the bundle to find the product I was looking for, the one I wanted to discuss. As I turned the pages, my attention was drawn to the price of the devices and equipment. The prices had all risen, most of them quite dramatically. I reached the final page and turned it too. Then I looked up at the three men. They were all still smiling.

‘I don’t see the Moose Chute,’ I said.

‘There are plenty of other good items,’ said Otto Härkä.

‘Might I suggest the Crocodile Canyon?’ said Liitokangas.

‘That one’s really great,’ said Otto Härkä. The way he spoke the words ‘really great’ did little to convince me this was what he actually thought.

I looked at both men. ‘The children don’t like it,’ I said. ‘I’ve examined the data from adventure parks across Central Europe and the Nordic countries. A brief analysis and some rudimentary calculations are enough to tell you what works and what doesn’t. Nowhere does the Crocodile Canyon reach even the top forty most popular rides, and most of the parks in my study have already got rid of it. It’s an old piece of equipment, of bad quality, and simply too rough for the children.’

‘Then get stronger kids,’ said Jeppe Sauvonen.

‘Excuse me?’

‘What Jeppe means,’ Liitokangas interjected, and somehow moved a little closer to me, ‘is that this is a question of perspective, and perspective is a bit like sight in general: people see better with better glasses on.’

‘I don’t follow,’ was my honest response.

‘Let’s look at the catalogue once again, shall we?’ said Liitokangas, shook the pile of papers before us and opened it at the page showing the Crocodile Canyon. ‘Here it is, and if we round this down a bit like so, there’s our final offer.’

As he spoke, Liitokangas took out a ball-point pen, scored out the highly inflated price of the Crocodile Canyon and wrote a new price underneath it. I looked at it and began to understand.

‘You’ve written the same price again,’ I said, and looked up at the trifecta of smiles in front of me.

‘That’s today’s price,’ said Otto Härkä. ‘It’s up to the minute.’

I shook my head. ‘This is not … Our contract doesn’t…’

‘Precisely, dare I say, our exclusive contract,’ I heard a voice right next to me say. Liitokangas was so close he was almost touching me. He slid another sheet of paper in front of me. ‘There.’

I’d seen our contract before. I’d read it many times. I knew it in detail. I didn’t need to start examining it again now.

‘I know what our contract says. I want the Moose Chute. I have no intention of buying the Crocodile Canyon. And certainly not at that price.’

The men looked at one another. Then, like in a slow-motion film, they all turned to look at me.

‘Well, this is a bit of a change of mood, and not quite the one we were expecting.’

‘A change of mood?’

‘Yes,’ said Liitokangas, who, to all intents and purposes, was now right up against me. ‘It’s come to our attention that the changing of the guard between you and your brother didn’t go quite according to the rule book. Now, I’m not insinuating anything here, but I’m sure there are one or two things you’d rather keep locked in that briefcase of yours.’

The room fell eerily silent. I realised that I hadn’t heard any sounds from the other offices in the building. I hadn’t seen anyone else when I arrived. I hadn’t noticed the sounds of work, no office hubbub, no conversation or telephones, nothing. Where were all the other Toy of Finland employees?

‘My brother is not responsible for park acquisitions,’ I said. ‘And whatever he might or might not have said or promised you is—’

‘Interesting?’ said Otto Härkä. ‘Alarming?’

In one respect, Otto Härkä was right. Alarming was the word I would have used too. I began to see how everything that had happened before had led me here: the dogged attempts to sell me the Crocodile Canyon, the price that wouldn’t budge though the product was ugly and had been rejected by most children. Of course, it must be Juhani.

‘My brother…’ I began and tried to find the most apt way to describe the matter ‘…doesn’t always know what he’s talking about.’

‘We’re more than aware of that,’ said Liitokangas with a chortle. Otto Härkä chortled right after him. Jeppe Sauvonen again spent two seconds thinking things through, then he chortled too. I noticed I didn’t like the situation one bit, and I knew why. Juhani could be reckless, irresponsible, had a tendency to open his mouth before engaging his brain, he might even leave people in mortal danger and bring companies to the brink of collapse, but he was my brother. The catalogue in front of me was still open at the page showing the Crocodile Canyon. It looked even more dejected than before.

‘I want to buy the Moose Chute,’ I said.

‘It’s not for sale.’

‘I know you have it in your warehouse.’

‘And we know what we know,’ said Liitokangas. ‘And we’re offering you the Crocodile Canyon.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘No?’

Liitokangas leant away from me, and as he did so his facial features seemed to come into focus. His face was more angular than I’d thought at first.

‘Do you think everything in that briefcase would stand the light of day?’

I glanced at my briefcase. I realised he didn’t mean the literal briefcase. He meant the adventure park, the way I’d put the criminals behind me, what I’d had to do to save the park and myself. And now I was convinced that Juhani had told them something he shouldn’t have. I could tell: Kari Liitokangas’s assertiveness, Otto Härkä’s smile, and the burning coals beneath Jeppe Sauvonen’s thatched eyebrows. His sweatshirt unrelentingly shouted the words FUN MACHINE at me, but to my mind nothing about him suggested fun, mechanical or otherwise.

‘Let’s look at the facts one more time, shall we?’ said Liitokangas. ‘At the end of the day, we have a contract that is pretty straightforward. Either we work together or one of us will have to pay the other for breach of contract. The settlement will be in the region of the adventure park’s annual turnover. Give or take. We don’t want to breach this contract.’

‘Under any circumstances,’ said Otto Härkä. ‘In any way.’

Jeppe Sauvonen chimed in after a short pause: ‘Think of the children.’

Before I could ask what he meant, Liitokangas once again took charge of proceedings.

‘We suggest that you buy the Crocodile Canyon and that we, in turn, deliver it to you with exclusive rights.’

Though part of me sensed that something very unpleasant was about to happen – much like when a company holds an unannounced press briefing at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon – I continued all the same.

‘Or what?’ I asked.

‘Osmala,’ said Liitokangas, as though he were offering me condolences that he didn’t really mean. ‘Pentti Osmala. I gather you two are acquainted.’

I said nothing. Detective Inspector Pentti Osmala of the Helsinki organised-crime and fraud units. Acquainted was one way of putting it. In fact, we were so well acquainted that he probably still suspected me of something – in part justifiably. The case was complicated: I had been defending myself and my adventure park, and in doing so had resorted to some extra-mathematical tactics. Meanwhile, Osmala certainly knew a thing or two about my non-actuarial undertakings, but at the time he’d seemed content that I was merely helping him in his investigation. We’d never discussed the matter further. I imagine this putative conversation would have taken me far beyond what people called their comfort zone. But every bit as important was what the mere mention of Osmala’s name meant. The three musketeers here knew more than they should, more than should have been possible.

‘Who are you exactly?’ I asked.

‘We’re Toy of Finland,’ they replied in unison.