I arrive at the waterfall, slip between the ropes into a space where there is a door leading to the warehouse. I pull the keys from my trouser pocket. The key turns in the lock, but the door won’t open. I yank the handle until I realise what has happened. The locks have all been reserialised. But why have they been changed today, and why wasn’t I told about it?
I return to the waterfall and walk through it. I see the man on the platform opposite, pulling a piece of carpet from the bottom of his shoe. I do what I can. I run and jump. I’m diving through the air. I crash down onto the tin slide, the pain is so agonising that I let out a yelp. I start sliding. The slide turns and twists. Throughout the slide, the wound on my arm seems only to exaggerate the fluctuations in the force of gravity. The slide and the pain seem such an impossible combination, like a bike without a saddle: you’ll get to the end one way or another, but sitting down is out of the question.
I flop off the slide onto the soft mat at the bottom, stand up, and I’m taken aback. I don’t hear a sound from the slide. The man can’t be inside it. I can’t see the upper platform, but I assume he must be back there.
I walk all the way round Caper Castle one more time, then run to get back to the rabbit and the front door behind it. It takes time, but I don’t have any other options. My keys won’t open the other doors either, only the front door can be opened from the inside without a key. At the final corner I stop, peer round the corner and listen. I can’t see or hear anything.
I dash into a sprint, run straight for the rabbit. I run and run, and I’m about to reach the rabbit, when the big, broad-shouldered man steps out from behind it. It takes a split second to understand what I’m seeing. There’s a good explanation for the man’s quick and silent appearance: either by design or by accident, the soles of his feet are covered in small squares of sponge. He jumped down from the platform, and the padding made his steps silent.
Anger boils inside me.
I play by the rules. Again.
I carry on running. All I can think of is the rabbit. I slam into it and it topples over on top of the man. We all fall down, all end up on the concrete floor. The man sees me beside him, and at the same moment I see him too. He is the first to act. I only manage to free part of myself before he lashes out with the knife. The blade cuts my thigh and strikes the laminate flooring beneath us. In doing so it pins my trousers to the floor. I’m stuck. I shout out, and, with my arms flailing, I grip the first thing I can reach.
The rabbit’s ear.
It’s come loose again.
I grab the giant ear and hit out in the man’s direction. I strike something. I stand up, my trousers rip. The man reaches into his jacket pocket. A third knife, I wonder? No, that would be too much. I act before he has the chance to throw it or stab me. I hit, hit, hit again.
Then I let go of the ear. The entrance hall is empty and silent. All I can hear is my own panting. I peer around.
The hall looks different.
An adventure park for all the family.
Suddenly it’s hard to remember everything that has led to all this being my responsibility. This and much more besides – everything is suddenly uncontrollable, unpredictable.
I am an actuary.
As a rule, I don’t run adventure parks, and I certainly don’t batter people to death with giant, plastic rabbit ears.
But as I said, my life hasn’t been following the probability calculus for some time now.
THREE WEEKS AND FIVE DAYS EARLIER
1
Kannelmäki in September. I knew nothing more beautiful. Radiant, crimson leaves and the most competitive house prices in Helsinki.
The smell of autumn hung in the early-morning suburban air – air that had been scientifically shown to be the crispest in the city. From the surfaces of large leaves in shades of red and yellow hung beads of dew, the rising sun making them sparkle like feather-light mirrors. I stood on my fourth-floor balcony and realised once again that I was in exactly the right place, and nothing could ever make me change my mind.
The area around Kannelmäki train station was the most effective piece of town planning in Helsinki. From my door, it was a brisk two-and-a-half-minute walk to the station. The train took me to my workplace in Pasila in nine minutes and, once a month, to the cinema downtown in thirteen. Given their proximity to the city centre, apartments in Kannelmäki were very good value for money, and they were well designed with excellent functionality and no wasted floor space. There was nothing decorative, nothing superfluous.
The houses were built in the mid-1980s, a time of optimal rational thinking. Some people called this area of the city bland, depressing even, but perhaps that was because they only saw the façade, the cubic repetitiveness and general greyness of the neighbourhood, in itself a feat of astonishing uniformity. They made a mistake that people often make. They didn’t make detailed calculations.
For, as I know from experience, it is calculations that tell us what is beautiful and what is not.
Kannelmäki was beautiful.
I took another deep breath and stepped back inside. I walked into the hallway, pulled on my shoes and jacket. I did up the zip, leaving it slightly open at the top. My tie gleamed, its knot balanced and orderly. I looked at myself in the mirror and recognised the man looking back at me. And at the age of forty-two, I had only one deep-held wish.
I wanted everything to be sensible.
Actuarial mathematics is a discipline that combines mathematics and statistical analysis to assess the likelihood – or risk – of any eventuality, in order to define an insurance premium that from the insurer’s perspective is financially viable. This is the official definition. Like many other official-sounding, and therefore potentially boring, definitions, this is one that goes over the heads of most people. And even when it doesn’t go over their heads, few people pay attention to the final two words of that definition, let alone ask what, in this context, the words ‘financially viable’ actually mean.
Insurance companies exist to make a profit; in the case of insurance against accidents, to the tune of almost thirty percent. Few companies ever reach such revenue figures with a single product. But insurance companies do, because they know that people don’t have any other options. You can choose not to take out insurance – everyone can make their own decisions – but on balance most people decide to insure at least their home. Insurance companies also know that people are fragile and that human beings’ capacity to get themselves into trouble vastly exceeds that of all other living species. And so, right now insurance companies everywhere are calculating how often people will slip and fall over in their own gardens, how often they will stick objects of varying shapes and sizes into various orifices, how often they will tip smouldering barbecue coals into the rubbish bin, crash into one another on brand-new jet skis, reach up to the top shelf to find something behind a row of glass vases, drunkenly lean on a sushi knife, and how often they will send fireworks flying into their own and other people’s eyes … next year.
Insurance companies, therefore, know two things: one, that people essentially have to take out insurance policies; and two, that a certain number of people, despite advice to the contrary, will inevitably set themselves on fire. And it is between these two factors – shall we say, between the pen and the matchstick – that actuaries operate. Their job is to ensure that while the self-immolator will be reimbursed for his troubles, the insurance company still makes its predefined profit margin by insuring him and many others besides.