We drive along a quiet, winding paved road. I can’t hear the whoosh of any passing cars; my bodyweight shifts from one side to the other, and we move through the night almost silently. I feel our speed slowing, gravel starts to crunch beneath the tyres. Shortly afterwards we stop, and the motor is switched off. AK lets go of my hand. His grip was so comprehensive that it feels like I’m finally getting my arm back after lending it to someone else for a while. Car doors open and close, then someone opens the door on my left.
‘Out,’ says Lizard Man.
I step out of the SUV. AK pulls me out, gripping me by the shoulder. For a while there is gravel under my shoes, then something firm. We take a few sharp turns then come to a halt. I’m not sure what it is I can smell. AK tears the blindfold from my eyes.
We are in an old barn.
I open and close my eyes as they adjust to the light. Both Lizard Man and AK are now standing behind me. The building is large and tall; there is a concrete floor under our feet and walls made of wooden slats around us. The lights are attached to long, sturdy beams across the ceiling. There is an array of machinery, everything from tractors to snow ploughs. There is lots of assorted junk too, but the contours of the objects fade into the dim, making any closer examination impossible. My attention is drawn to my nine o’clock and a man making a series of choked, sputtering sounds.
The rope looks tight. It runs from the man’s neck right up to one of the beams, then descends, taut as a violin string, at a diagonal, where it is attached to the back of a quadbike parked about ten metres away. The man is balancing on top of a rickety log propped on end. Keeping his balance is visibly difficult, for which there are at least three reasons. The noose is tightening around his neck, the floor and the thin end of the log are not properly aligned, and the man’s hands are tied behind his back. He looks older than me, average build, blond hair. He is wearing a light-blue piqué polo shirt, light-brown trousers and a pair of brown leather shoes. Understandably, his face is bright red. To say the situation doesn’t look good for him is something of an understatement.
And it dawns on me that I’m not sure how advantageous it is for me either. I’m the one who asked for this meeting, and I realised from the start that we would be meeting on their terms – whoever they are. But if these are the terms…
I hear footsteps. A moment later I see through the dim a large pair of dark-green Wellington boots moving towards us with heavy, purposeful strides. A figure appears out of the dark at the other end of the barn. The boots must be at least a size fifty. Then I see a pair of black overalls and an enormous red-and-black flannel shirt. Then the face. Even and angular at the top and sharp at the bottom, like a good old-fashioned spade with skin stretched across it. On the surface of the spade is a set of eyes. The face doesn’t look especially happy. And the face doesn’t so much as glance at the man balancing on the log as he walks past. As the big man comes to a stop in front of me, I find myself thinking that he makes even me feel short. The man teetering on the log gives another muffled cry, making the big man turn his big head. But only a little. Then he turns his attention to me.
‘We were in the middle of a negotiation,’ he says. His voice is low and calm.
‘Right,’ I say.
‘Don’t let him bother you.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You have a proposal.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’ve been doing some calculations…’
Just then I hear the log creak ominously against the concrete floor.
‘How long do I have?’ I ask. ‘This matter requires a certain amount of background.’
The big man is listening. At least, that’s how I interpret his expressionless face.
‘Good,’ I say. ‘It appears I have inherited not only a very indebted company but all my brother’s debts to you too. And it also appears that you largely operate within a cash-only economy, yet you still expect interest on your deposits. These four matters – the adventure park’s debts and tax arrears; my brother’s unofficial debts; the problems of cash; and your growth expectation on that money – can all be solved by combining them into one.’
It seems the big man is still listening. I look at him, but the whimpering, wobbling man to the left of his head makes me want to look somewhere else, anywhere else instead. I note that I can’t hear any sounds from outside. Any sounds would surely penetrate the slatted walls. We are far away from any traffic, any houses. We are isolated.
‘YouMeFun is the solution,’ I say.
The big man turns to look at Lizard Man. Then he turns his attention to me again.
‘Money laundering?’
‘I don’t like to think of it in those terms,’ I say. ‘Besides, Mr, erm … what you might consider money laundering—’
‘No need to stand on ceremony,’ he interrupts. ‘Call me Jouni.’
‘I’m Henri.’
‘I know.’
Of course he knows.
‘What you, Jouni, think of as money laundering is, in my proposal, just a matter of sales. And that’s just the start. The first stage is, I sell you tickets.’
‘Tickets?’
‘Entrance tickets, to the adventure park. Initially fifty thousand of them.’
I hear Lizard Man laugh. His laugh is curt, scornful, disdainful. A laugh like that only has one purpose: to show up someone else’s stupidity. I note that the big man isn’t laughing.
‘This one’s a real fucking joker…’ I hear Lizard Man begin, but the big man, Jouni – if that really is his name – glares at him, and I don’t hear another peep out of him.
‘I will sell you entrance tickets at a substantial discount, ten euros each. That includes the Doughnut of the Day at our cafeteria.’
I intend this to lighten the mood, but nobody seems remotely amused. I continue.
‘In any case, these tickets represent a cash injection of five hundred thousand euros into the park’s balance sheet. This means the park will be able to pay off its debts, which in turn means financial solvency, which will enable the park to take out a new loan because it will be operationally viable and profitable. Interest rates – the official ones, that is – are very low at the moment; money is essentially free. We will use this new loan to set up a subsidiary company; we will establish a company that will operate within the adventure park and—’
‘The money will go to the bank?’
‘In the first phase, yes,’ I say. ‘Obviously.’
‘That’s your proposal?’ asks the big man.
‘No,’ I say. ‘My proposal is that money will come out of the bank.’
The big man looks at me. His spade face is pure, cold steel. I say what I have come here to say, what I think will save not only my brother’s estate but my own life too.
‘We will become a bank.’
The sound of wood cracking. The man with the noose round his neck loses his balance. Either he falls or the log falls. He lets out a sound, somewhere between a dog’s yelp and the cry of an Arctic loon, but it is abruptly cut short. The man twitches as though a bolt of lightning were striking him over and over again. The quadbike does not move, the rope does not slacken; it creaks against the ceiling beam.
I turn my eyes away.
My heart is racing, I can’t breathe. The seconds pass heavily, each one requiring momentum of its own to pass to the next. At this point, I can say the evening hasn’t gone quite as I’d planned. Naturally, I don’t know everything there is to know about starting a company, but I can’t believe that all this is an elaborate overture to something else. An unbearably long time passes. Eventually silence descends on the barn.