‘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.