Osmala’s steps are slow and heavy. I walk alongside him. Osmala looks over at the Komodo Locomotive, which is about to leave the station.
‘No, not as far as I know,’ he says. ‘Should we?’
We arrive in front of the Frankenthaler wall and stop to admire it. I think to myself how I both do and do not know the person who painted it. Once again, I have a chance to be exactly what I am: a concerned adventure-park proprietor.
‘I couldn’t possibly know about that,’ I say. ‘But does one of the park’s employees have a connection to this Koponen?’
Osmala turns slightly. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant, have you noticed anything suspicious regarding this particular employee?’
‘No.’ I shake my head, relieved at this information. I don’t know how I would have reacted to the knowledge that the big man and Laura had some form of contact. ‘There’s one thing I must ask. Off the record, if that’s alright. I own this place and I’m trying to make sure everything works as smoothly as…’
‘You’re worried. I understand.’
‘Naturally.’
‘The police turn up here asking all sorts, opening up the freezers, and so on.’
‘Right.’
Osmala looks at me, clearly taking stock, then starts walking towards the next wall, the Krasner. I follow him.
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘But at this stage in the investigation, I can’t go into details. I’m sure you’ll appreciate that we’ve looked into all kinds of connections.’
‘But you just said—’
‘And you’ll appreciate too,’ Osmala continues as though he hasn’t heard my protestations, ‘that I’d be here in a different capacity if we’d found any sort of connection between the two of them.’
We come to a stop.
‘I’ll be honest,’ he says. ‘The same goes for you and this painter.’
Osmala nods at the Krasner wall.
‘This isn’t anything you wouldn’t have been able to deduce for yourself,’ he continues. ‘But there’s something very interesting about the set-up.’
‘What set-up?’
‘An inexperienced adventure-park owner turns up from outside the industry. Waiting here is an employee who probably learned a thing or two as the partner of a skilful fraudster and who – rather unjustly, if you ask me – was convicted alongside him. Of course, she did sign those documents, but she was up against a master manipulator. As you can guess, we looked into this connection right away: was this employee trying to trick you or was she in cahoots with Koponen?’
I look at the mural. The colours seem to have become more vivid throughout Osmala’s explanation, and they are brightening still. Osmala shrugs his shoulders.
‘Like you said, you haven’t noticed anything – because there wasn’t any contact or connection. Personally…’ Osmala takes a deep breath. ‘I’m very happy. I think it’s great to see people survive, change direction, turn a page. Just look at these murals.’
Krasner, Tanning, de Lempicka, Frankenthaler, O’Keeffe and Jansson. It’s as though I am seeing them for the first time. Osmala reaches for his jacket pocket and glances at his phone.
‘I have to go,’ he says.
‘Of course,’ I say without looking at him. The murals gleam, now dazzlingly bright.
‘Behind a success like this,’ he says, ‘there’s always so much more dedication than we can see with the naked eye.’
My senses are heightened, and, more importantly, for the first time in a long while I can calculate things the way I last did when I worked for the insurance company – so that I know with absolute certainty all the variables in the equation.
‘That’s true,’ I admit.
‘I’ll be back at the weekend with the missus so we can look at these,’ he says, and takes his first emphatic step towards the entrance.
‘The door is always open,’ I hear myself say.
35
I continue my calculations in my office. I open up the park’s consumer-credit loan-management system. At first glance, there is nothing especially noteworthy. Then I move all the information regarding the loans into my own, parallel Excel spreadsheet and begin going through the loans one at a time, and before long I begin to see the tiny discrepancies.
The balance in the consumer-credit account is decreasing faster than the value of the loans ought to entail. At first the discrepancy is small, then significant, and eventually, once the direction of travel becomes clear, the balance all but falls off a cliff. Once I have added the total amount of money loaned and subtracted it from the opening balance, I see that around half of the bank’s money, just shy of 125,000 euros, has essentially disappeared into thin air.
But the money hasn’t disappeared. It has been neatly transferred out of the account, after which the details of the transfer have been erased from the book-keeping and the balance adjusted accordingly. This is a simple procedure, just a few strokes of the keyboard, a few clicks of the mouse. On the surface it’s hard to notice the operation, not least because there are so many loans to itemise and some of them are so small, some as small as fifty euros, that the sheer length and scope of the list tricks the eye, like a rug covering a gaping hole in the floor. From the bank’s loan-management system, it is very hard to see where and when these ghost transfers took place.
However, they are relatively easy to spot in the bank’s actual bank account, where it is impossible to play with smoke and mirrors, and I can see exactly what has happened to the money: apparently it has been spent on consultancy services. The message field tells me as much. The recipient’s account number is always the same too, which helps identify these out-payments.
One hundred and twenty-five thousand euros’ worth of consultancy services.
I lean back in my chair.
Someone knew about it. Maybe right from the start, or at least very soon thereafter.
The situations come to my mind in a series of images, as though I have taken ancient photographs and am now looking at them in a frame. The first encounter with Lizard Man, in this very room, the way the employees came into the room one by one, as if to save me, the way glances were exchanged, that moment of recognition. Then, soon after that, my announcement about the opening of the bank, the sudden appearance of the initial invested capital, the money that I disguised as increased sales revenue. Which, naturally, didn’t fool the one person who always took care of the daily sales reports. Then: how I quickly organised training for all staff members on how to use the operating system designed to make awarding loans as quick and easy as possible, and how a certain person with previous experience of living in financial grey areas, if only following from the side lines, might see something interesting in my all-too-simple programme. Then, how the decidedly unofficial aspect of my operations would become clear at the very latest upon the discovery of something in the café’s freezer that didn’t belong there.
At this point, someone who has been closely following events must have drawn the right conclusions. That person knew I wouldn’t be calling Osmala in a hurry. That person also knew I would eventually have to quietly wind down the bank’s operations, write things off in a creative manner, probably using some form of double-entry book-keeping, something this person also understands very well. And even if she didn’t, she must have suspected something along these lines was going on. But ultimately, she knew she was stealing money that had been acquired dishonestly, money that didn’t officially exist, and for this reason alone she knew I would keep things to myself later on – even when I finally joined the dots between the missing 125,000 euros and her being gone for good.