Osmala suggests we meet somewhere other than the adventure park. The reason, he says, is that he doesn’t want to see Laura Helanto’s new works before they are ready. This may well be true, I think, though at the same time I expect that ‘somewhere else’ might very quickly turn into the police station. For a moment there is perfect silence at the other end of the phone. Then Osmala suggests a place, and I note that it is suitably far away from the police station in Pasila.
In the six days that have passed since I called Osmala and alerted him to the situation in Marjaniemi, winter has arrived.
In that phone call almost a week ago, I told him – honestly – that the owners of Toy of Finland have been threatening me and are most likely threatening Kuisma Lohi too. Osmala was particularly brief in that phone call but said he would go to Marjaniemi to take a look.
Now he’s waiting for me on the shores of a certain small pond.
The daylight and the thin, pure-white layer of the first snow make the landscape look rather different from how I’m used to seeing it. There are three vehicles on the shore, one of them an unmarked van belonging to the police. I pull up at the end of the line in the adventure park’s Renault and step out of the van. It is a cold, bright, windless day. The first snow won’t last long; in places, it has already melted into puddles, making the ground black and shining. My shoes are wholly inappropriate for the shore, but on the other hand their very inappropriateness is essential. I don’t want to give the impression that I know this area or how muddy the banks and pathways are around here, how cold and wet everything is. I squelch my way over to Osmala, who is standing almost at the waterline, and I notice that, as he greets me, he very quickly glances down at my feet. I know what I have to ask.
‘Is there a reason we’re meeting out here?’
Osmala looks as though he is weighing things up. I’ve learnt a lot about the ways in which he tries to create an imbalance between himself and his interlocutor, and this is one of them. It’s as though he were suddenly embarking upon an exceptionally strenuous bout of thinking and pondering, the kind he’s never tried before.
‘Perhaps you remember I told you about the guy we fished out of here,’ he says with a nod towards the pond. ‘The one with a ticket to your park in his pocket.’
I do indeed remember.
‘Though, of course, you don’t have anything to do with the matter,’ he continues, ‘but it suddenly occurred to me that because there’s a connection between this pond and your park, you and I could come out here and brainstorm a little.’
Osmala looks at me, and I look back and consider that it was only six days ago that he fired his weapon at a Finnish pastoral landscape and I abducted the largest moose in Europe, and that these two events are linked in a not insignificant way. Still, I don’t see the need for any mutual brainstorming. For a variety of reasons.
‘Let me tell you a bit about what we’re doing here today.’ Osmala nods once again, then points towards the cottage. The same cottage whose pontoon bridge Juhani and I borrowed a short while ago. ‘We’re conducting a little investigation over by that cottage. We’re not going to get anything definitive, DNA or anything like that, but we’ve concluded that the guy that ended up at the bottom of the pond must have been transported from that jetty over there. We’re trying to reconstruct the storyline, you’ll appreciate. Maybe that will help us make some progress.’
‘Quite,’ I say, keen to change the subject. This is only natural; given the connection between the victim and my park, it would be strange if I weren’t at least at little interested in the matter. ‘What about Marjaniemi? I gather there was some kind of … altercation.’
Osmala doesn’t seem at all perturbed by my change of direction. He takes a deep breath, gazes out across the pond.
‘You were right. Toy of Finland were in no mood for playing silly buggers. We’ve got two men in intensive care. One fell from the balcony, the other stuck a piece of contemporary artwork into the power socket. A very nice piece, I might add. The former is in an induced coma, the latter ended up unconscious all by himself. Doctors suspect both will end up with lasting brain damage. There was a third man there too, but he’s not talking. And one of the men from Toy of Finland seems to have disappeared into thin air.’
Osmala returns his grey eyes to me. The pond behind him gleams a dark blue.
‘And when I say all this out loud,’ he continues, ‘and think for a moment and look at it from different angles, it’s hard to avoid the thought that behind the apparent chaos there must be something planned, something more logical. People sometimes talk about the domino effect, one piece knocks the next piece over, and so on. What if everything that’s happened wasn’t a coincidence after all? What if, perhaps, there’s a little mathematical thinking involved?’
I say nothing.
‘Well, this is just me semi-officially thinking out loud,’ says Osmala. ‘Fishing, if you will. Unless there’s something you’d like to tell me.’
I shake my head. ‘I don’t know what I could possibly add,’ I say, perfectly honestly.
Osmala remains silent for a moment.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve seen your brother in the last few days?’
‘No, I have not.’
‘And you don’t know where he is?’
‘No.’
All this is true. I have not seen Juhani, I have not heard from him and I don’t know where he is.
‘Pity,’ says Osmala after a beat. ‘I was really looking forward to our next meeting.’
Again I say nothing. I recall the story Minttu K told me. And I get the distinct impression our conversation is reaching an end. I start to turn, the wet ground spatters under my feet.
‘This was just my little way of helping to jog your memory,’ says Osmala halfway through my turn. ‘In case you remember anything or notice anything. Just in case this place has some particular significance for you. But we’ll have plenty of opportunities to return to this subject. I’ll be seeing you again very soon.’
Osmala looks me right in the eyes.
‘As soon as that artist of yours finishes her new project,’ he adds.