The Strawberry Maze shudders, the Turtle Trucks spin round and round on their track, the Komodo Locomotive trundles onwards, powered by its little peddlers. Children come careering down the Big Dipper, sliding and screaming. Someone stamps on the horn at the Trombone Cannons, sending little balls shooting into the air. The Curly Cake Café is still giving off the aroma of the day’s menu: Trapeze Tortellini, Magician’s Mash, Apple Bombs and Whoopsie Buns.
All this, I think to myself.
I walk through the park and try to concentrate on keeping my balance, making sure my feet carry me forwards and don’t, for instance, sink through the concrete floor into the depths of the earth or get blown away from underneath me, like ash, and cease to exist.
Laura Helanto is working on the crest of a giant wave at the de Lempicka mural.
There is about twenty metres between us.
At this moment.
I can feel some dark power pulling me away from her. The distance grows, first by only a few metres, then hundreds of metres, then an unquantifiable number of kilometres.
I’m going to lose her. I’m going to lose everything. Laura and the park are the last bolts holding everything together, and now they too have come loose.
I hurtle downwards, almost in freefall. That’s what it feels like. I remain on my feet, but something vital, some essential part of me collapses and continues falling down a bottomless abyss.
Our customer numbers are down, the park is about to be forcibly sold off for next to nothing, Toy of Finland is trying to extort me and threatening my life, Juhani is working for Osmala, it’s only a matter of time until Otto Härkä is found and the gangster from the pond is connected to me, until Osmala comes to the park and takes me away for the last time. If I’m lucky, I’ll just end up in prison. If I’m less lucky … And to crown off all my countless failures, there’s the burning question of what will happen to the park and its employees and Laura Helanto’s art project once I’m gone.
All the calculations, I think, all the probabilities I built this on, the promises I have given. The sense and mathematics I have always trusted. It seems it was all just ideals and abstractions after all, and nothing will ever come of that.
I watch Laura Helanto at work, I see her joy, her focus.
Laura notices me approaching her. She greets me warmly, then – at least, this is how I read it – she sees my expression, which I can’t seem to make even a millimetre happier, a single decimal more hopeful. I can see her face becoming more serious, her eyes more quizzical, and (this might just be my imagination) more concerned.
She doesn’t need to feel concerned for me, I tell her. I was wrong, I say, and I take responsibility for my actions, and first of all I plan to hand myself in to Detective Inspector Osmala and take what is coming to me. I tell her I’m sorry and that I’ve done everything I can.
Laura Helanto brushes a lock of hair from the side of her glasses, looks at me and asks:
‘Everything?’
I finish my story in Herttoniemi, just after midnight, once Tuuli is asleep and Laura Helanto and I are sitting at the kitchen table. She is quiet and serious, as she has been the whole time I’ve been talking. Naturally, I’ve left out any bits that might put her in an awkward position, not to mention the fact that telling her certain things could make her an accomplice. For this reason, I don’t speculate about the loose knots around the legs of the Banana Mirror or my fortunate positioning of the steel platform, and neither do I tell her where the body is buried, after a fashion. But I do give her a good overview of the situation, and I’m sure that she will be able to draw a number of conclusions from my story.
An hour ago, Laura dimmed the lamp hanging above the dining table. The light is soft now and spreads out from under the dome of the lampshade like something warm and tactile, though of course this isn’t the case. I have the evening’s third cup of tea in front of me.
‘I’m glad you told me this,’ she says. ‘There’s something I should tell you too.’
I flinch a little, and Laura notices.
‘Nothing like that,’ she smiles. ‘I just mean, I guessed things weren’t quite right. The Crocodile Canyon and the Duck Tunnel were pretty big red flags. It says a lot about the new owners of Toy of Finland and how our collaboration with them is going. Osmala has been to see what I’m working on, but I can’t imagine he was visiting the park just to see my artwork. Then there’s Juhani. I’ve known him for a long time, and to be honest I did a lot of the work around the park that he was supposed to do. I’m not exactly surprised that he’s gone and got himself into trouble or that he’s got you into trouble in the process.’
‘But if you knew about—’
‘A while ago, I said I can trust you,’ she continues. ‘And that feels wonderful. It’s different from what I’m used to. You’re different. You’re reliable, even now, in a situation like this. It feels … every bit as good as I thought it would. That’s why I asked if you’d like to move in with us. That’s why I’ve started to let Tuuli get to know you. That’s why we’re sitting here now. I can trust you. Now there isn’t a single doubt in my mind.’
What Laura Helanto says is obviously very pleasant; as she says, it feels good. But it doesn’t sound at all logical, in light of everything I’ve just told her.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say quite honestly. ‘You sound as though simply talking has resolved all our problems, but—’
‘Do you remember what you said to me on our first date?’ she asks, props her elbows on the table and leans closer to me. Her blue-green eyes glisten, her wild, bushy hair looks almost golden in the dimmed light of the lamp. ‘When we went for a beer after the exhibition. You told me about how you approach very complicated questions. You used a mathematical problem as an example, but then you said the same can apply to all kinds of questions. You said that first you break the problem into its constituent parts, see if you can solve one of the parts separately and whether that will help you move forwards.’
‘That only works when—’
‘You need the Moose Chute,’ says Laura. ‘You need a lot of other things too, that much is obvious, but to me it looks like those are problems for a later date.’
‘Later?’
Laura Helanto nods. ‘I think you need to go back to doing what you do best: counting. And go back to the beginning, find out where all this started.’
‘Everything started when Juhani came back,’ I say.
‘And what does Juhani want?’
Laura Helanto is right. When a problem is split into pieces, it often reveals its true nature. This time the effect is manifold. Something moves aside, part of my fatigue evaporates right away. I start to see the possibilities. And once again I start … to count. I look at Laura, her sparkling eyes. I know I don’t have to say anything for her sake, but I want to say it, because this is a simple calculation, yet until now it felt all-too complex. I have to hear it for myself.
‘He wants the park,’ I say.