Tweety tried to keep on imagining that Reino’s van was like an elephant. True, it was the wrong colour – it was dark blue – but the headlights were like an elephant’s eyes, small and tearful, and he knew it was an elephant because if it had left its droppings on the street it would have left a pile exactly the same as the one he’d seen at the Mission Museum. As a child it had always fascinated him: E
LEPHANT
E
XCREMENT
. He’d always wondered how it had been brought back from Africa – in a priest’s knapsack?
An elephant – he tried to hold on to the thought, but it had passed and in his head he immediately heard the sharp tata-ta-tum of the
watchman
elf’s drum.
Reino was driving. Tweety sat in the middle and Lasse in the
passenger
seat; he wanted to sit there so he could look in the wing mirror to see whether they were being tailed. Reino had followed his instructions and driven back and forth through the city centre, pulling over every now and then, but now they were cruising down Museokatu, which spread out in front of them like a dreamy gulf between the houses. The street lights had blue eyes and the cars’ sleep was nothing but a tin-covered bluff.
‘There’s nobody following us.’
‘No. And did you notice? Only one police car all this time, and that was back at Hakaniemi.’
‘They’ll be around here somewhere.’
‘Somewhere’s fine by me. I’ll pull over on Temppelikatu. Check the park to see if there are any drunks hanging about. Doubt it at this hour.’
Tata-ta-tum! went the watchman elf’s snare drum, its sound piercing. Tweety jumped as though he’d sat on something sharp. He wanted to grab the steering wheel and shout:
Stop! Let’s leave it tonight, let’s go back!
But he didn’t dare. Lasse would have agreed straight away, he was so wound up that his fingers were twisted with cramp, but Reino wouldn’t have given in to them. He was fired up in a happy, mischievous mood and he’d forced them to go through with the plan. Lasse was unable to work under too much pressure. He was supposed to carry out the actual switchover and he’d have bungled it up somehow and that would be the end of things.
There were no people in the park, but there were hidden dwarves, not even knee-high, with fur like moles and green curly hats, burying the toys the children had left lying around deep in the sand. Soon they were on Cygnaeuksenkatu and Tweety peered at the house on the corner: in the bank’s window glowed a squirrel fashioned from a blue neon light-strip. Inside the bank it was dark, but from the outside he couldn’t tell whether it was good or bad dark. Reino turned the car again and Temppelikatu rose up the hill in front of them. There was an empty parking space further up the hill; Reino steered the elephant into the space, and when he switched the motor off everything fell eerily silent; it was as though the whole world had pricked up its ears to listen.
‘Right then, you pricks,’ Reino said eventually, the mock cheerfulness in his voice filling the car. ‘As soon as we get into the courtyard we’ll check the windows in the outer wing of the building. If that woman’s there we just walk past the rubbish bins minding our own business, make our way into the neighbouring yard and leave that way. Then we’ll come back an hour later. She’s hardly likely to be there, though…’
Tata-ta-tum! Tata-tum-tum-tum! Reino was stroking his chin. There was no need to go through the plan again; they all knew what to do. Unless he had to go through it for himself. Tata-ta-tum!
‘And if she’s not there then we go straight over to the doorway, Asko opens the door, then we go through to the door with the squirrel. Once we’re inside the bank we make sure the tarred boards are in place and get the meters ready. Then we switch the alarms. Once we’ve pulled out the cable, the clock starts ticking… As soon as we’re done, we get out. And remember: even if there’s someone in the yard or you hear sirens in the distance, walk calmly across the yard and back to the car. Don’t run. Don’t look around. Calmly, OK?’
He looked at them firmly, his stare forcing its way deep into their minds, and Tweety thought he could almost see the watchman elf
marching
back and forth banging his drum, about to blame Tweety for not telling them… But Reino hadn’t noticed anything; his eyes were like the balls in bottles of deodorant and Tweety decided not to say anything. Then there was the other thing, and at some point he’d have to tell them, but maybe this wasn’t the right moment. Reino wouldn’t start making a racket once they were inside the bank.
‘OK?’
‘Yes,’ Lasse hissed and Tweety nodded. Lasse’s lips were moving as though he was going through the plan to himself once more, the part about walking calmly out of the building, then his expression changed to one of certainty, fragile as a mask of papier-mâché, but even that was better than nothing. He kept his hand by his side, and Tweety wondered what it felt like to touch the handle of a gun – would it be metallic or wooden? Reino had allowed Lasse to bring the revolver. He’d said he wasn’t going to use it but that it made him feel safer. Tweety wasn’t so sure.
‘Let’s double-check the equipment,’ said Reino. He lifted a thin briefcase from beside his feet and Lasse did the same. They laid the
briefcases
on their laps and flicked open the locks; Tweety didn’t have a briefcase, only the pouch in his pocket, and it made him feel useless and at that moment he wanted nothing more than to be a pigeon sleeping up on the rooftop.
Inside Lasse’s briefcase was an alarm with the lid loosened and held on by a piece of brown tape, then there were four different-sized
screwdrivers
, two slotted and two crosshead, and numerous screws of different thicknesses attached to the inside of the briefcase with a strip of tape. He pointed at each item in turn, occasionally glancing up at Reino, who looked focused and eventually gave a nod.
They then checked Reino’s briefcase. It too was sparse – he always carefully planned what they would need and didn’t allow them to take anything else, and in that respect he was absolutely right: the more they carried with them, the easier something might be left behind, and an extra screwdriver left lying beside the bank’s main vault would let the staff know that something was going on; Reino even claimed that a forgotten roll of tape could be enough evidence to secure a conviction. Tweety didn’t look at the contents of the briefcase. He stared at the rear lights of
the car parked in front of them and he didn’t like them; they were like a pair of diseased eyes watching them. Finally Reino and Lasse nodded at one another, Reino took three pairs of leather gloves from his briefcase and handed them out, then they snapped their cases shut.
‘It’s half twelve,’ said Reino. ‘Now listen, lads. By one o’clock this will all be over. Right, let’s get going…’
They got out of the car. The night was like black chamois leather and the air was fragrant with the evening rain and the trees in the park. There was also a hint of danger in the air, its smell like a blue thread drawn through the nostrils with a needle. But Reino and Lasse didn’t notice it. High above them a bird gave a shrill chirp.
They were on the move, three businessmen; they were wearing suits, white shirts and ties. It had been Reino’s idea and in its simplicity it was a good one. The first time they’d come out of the bank at night they’d bumped into a woman taking her rubbish out to the bins in the courtyard, and she’d clearly thought they worked for the bank as she’d said: ‘I suppose I should charge you for this, but you can have it for free, as long as you can make the ticket machines give out five-mark coins instead of…’
They turned at the corner. A taxi went down Museokatu and
disappeared
somewhere, and further off a drunken man staggered along, his shoulders hunched in sorrow. It wasn’t far now, only about twenty metres, and for Tweety going to the bank had never felt so agonising. He knew what would happen: the alarm buzzer would go off right in front of some copper’s eyes, then it would only be a matter of minutes until blue lights were flashing through the night, and inside the cars there would be
stern-faced
men with batons and revolvers at the ready. Tweety wet his lips; he was cold, yet strangely he was sweating at the same time and he was doing everything he could to make the blue images in his head disappear.
The worst of it was that he knew he had to do this; the Chancellor depended on him. Lasse had rearranged the wiring inside the alarm: to the people working at the bank it looked as if it worked and everything was fine, but the new alarm no longer reacted to heat or shock waves. And when they came back on Friday night for the final phase of the Chancellor, all they had to do was wrench the door open and make straight for the safety deposit boxes and nobody would know about the robbery until the women at the counter arrived for work on the Monday morning.
They stopped in front of the archway and carefully looked around one more time, but they couldn’t see anyone watching them and the
courtyard
was dark and quiet. Tweety grabbed the handle and pulled on it, and the narrow grille in the gate opened; he’d put a paper egg in place that afternoon, and even if someone had removed it, using Vaseline he would still have been able to slip his hand through the mesh in the gate and open the door that way if necessary.
The grille shut with a clunk and their footsteps echoed in the arched tunnel, raining down upon them from the ceiling. The courtyard was in front of them and they all crouched to look towards the annex at the side: on the second floor lived a grey-haired old woman who spent all day peering out of her window, and the thought of her made them nervous. It was irrational: they all but expected her to smash her windows and start screaming that she’d seen them, but her window was dark. Reino was panting and Lasse groaned, but above it all Tweety heard a third sound: tata-ta-tum! Why was he banging his drum? Though his own
premonitions
often proved wrong, he couldn’t remember a single time the
watchman
had been wrong.
The air was filled with the smell of the rubbish bins and laundry hung out to dry. A cat darted along the edge of the fence and into the adjoining courtyard. The three brothers turned left, but Reino came to a sudden stop.
‘I’ll park the car over here,’ he whispered and pointed at the spot. ‘Bonnet facing the wall. It’ll be harder to get away if I’ve got to turn around and reverse down there. But I’ll put the side of the van up here, and if I park diagonally we won’t have to carry stuff more than a couple of metres.’
‘But the sound of the motor will attract attention,’ Lasse whispered, and in his mind Tweety shouted:
Come on! Come on, why are we standing here in full view?
‘We’ll just have to take that risk. And don’t forget those signs.’
‘Unless we bring them out here earlier in the afternoon.’
‘Don’t be stupid. The whole staff will see them, and they might get suspicious.’
Tweety couldn’t stand still any longer, couldn’t take any more of their bickering. He walked into the courtyard, went up to the door, took the few descending concrete steps and there was his job: a grey, painted door leading down into the basement. He’d already picked it three times and those three times had been enough. He couldn’t stand working with
Reino and Lasse covering him from behind, watching his every move, and he’d been scared to death that someone might appear – at least three doors led out of the corridor right into the yard.
This time he didn’t reach for the pouch; from a small pocket in his suit jacket he pulled out a gleaming, brand new key: he’d cut it that afternoon while Weckman had been on his lunch break, and now he prayed he’d remembered the sequence correctly. He worked the key into the lock and turned it; it caught, but only a little bit, the way all new keys do, then the lock gave a click and the door was open. Through the gap came the smell of brick walls and cobwebs.
‘Hurry up, will you!’ Tweety hissed. Reino and Lasse left the problem of where to park the van for the time being. Tweety wanted to see Reino’s expression; it frightened him a little – how would he react? His mouth opened in disbelief, then he closed his lips again because he didn’t understand.
‘Was it open?’
‘No. I opened it.’
‘So quickly?’
‘Just get inside,’ said Tweety anxiously. He couldn’t bear it when they stood around without a care in the world; it was as though they were willing something bad to happen. He pulled the door fully open and let them pass, made sure that the door shut properly, and only then did he press the switches and the corridor was filled with flickering light. The corridor stretched out in front of them like a bowel, like a tunnel made of raw meat: the bare bricks gleamed, unplastered, and it was strange to imagine the women at the bank, their lace, their fragrances, walking through here all day.
‘Asko, for Christ’s sake,’ Reino started, but Tweety handed him the key before he could go any further. Reino and Lasse looked at the key then stared at Tweety.
‘I cut it today. But you can’t get in the other door…’
‘But you’ve known the sequence all along, right?’
‘The sequence?’
‘For the door! Don’t pretend you don’t know. You could have done it ages ago, then we wouldn’t be…’
‘Is it a sequence? To me they’re colours. The deepest one is green, that one’s light yellow… But with cylinder locks the colours are refracted, so it’s impossible to make a bump key.’
‘Get a move on!’ Lasse hurried them along and Reino realised there was no point carrying on. He gripped the key with a look of content, and Tweety wondered whether he was thinking:
We needn’t have brought you along in the first place.
And he had a hunch Reino would try and force him to cut a key for the other door too – but there he would be mistaken.
They walked along the corridor and from behind the wooden doors seeped the smell of roots and juice cartons and skis waiting for the winter, and after about thirty metres they were there. The bank door was massive, made of steel and with thick hinges. A blue squirrel had been painted in the middle. Reino could have broken his way through the door but that would give the game away, and even if he only broke in when it was time to set the Chancellor in motion it would have made far too much noise and would have taken too long, and anyone popping down to the basement would have guessed from the marks left on the door what had been going on.