COPYRIGHT

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016

Originally published in Sweden as Mördar-Anders och hans vänner

(samt en och annan ovän) by Piratförlaget in 2015

Copyright © Jonas Jonasson 2015

Translation copyright © Rachel Wilson-Broyles 2016

Jonas Jonasson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

‘I rörelse’ by Karin Boye, translated by Rachel Wilson-Broyles

Apart from the exceptions noted below, scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

The scripture quotation ‘No longer drink only water, but take a little wine for the sake of your stomach’ is from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), published by HarperCollins © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The scripture quotation ‘Drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered. The cup of the Lord’s right hand shall be turned unto thee’ is from the authorised King James Version.

Cover design by Jonathan Pelham

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Source ISBN 9780008152079

Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008152086

Version: 2018-06-18

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

PART TWO

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

PART THREE

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Epilogue

Author’s Thanks

Also by Jonas Jonasson

Exclusive sample chapter

About the Publisher

DEDICATION

You would have liked this one, Dad.

So it’s for you.

PART ONE

An unusual business strategy

CHAPTER 1

Daydreaming in the reception area of one of Sweden’s most wretched hotels stood a man whose life would soon come to be filled with death and bodily harm, thieves and bandits.

The only grandchild of horse-dealer Henrik Bergman was, as always, channelling his paternal grandfather’s shortcomings. The old man had been foremost in his field in southern Sweden; he never sold fewer than seven thousand animals per year, and each was first-class.

But from 1955, the traitorous farmers began to exchange Grandfather’s cold- and warmbloods for tractors at a rate that Grandfather refused to comprehend. Seven thousand transactions became seven hundred, which became seventy, which became seven. Within five years, the family’s multi-million-krona fortune had gone up in a cloud of diesel smoke. In 1960, the as-yet-unborn grandson’s dad tried to save what he could by travelling around to all the farmers in the region and preaching on the curse of mechanization. After all, there were so many rumours flying about. Such as how diesel fuel would cause cancer if it got on your skin and, of course, get on your skin it did.

And then Dad added that studies showed diesel could cause sterility in men. But he really shouldn’t have mentioned that. For one thing, it wasn’t true, and for another, it sounded perfectly lovely to breadwinning but continuously horny farmers with three to eight children each. It was embarrassing to try to get your hands on condoms, not so for a Massey Ferguson or John Deere.

His grandfather had died not only destitute but kicked to death by his last horse. His grieving, horseless son took up the reins, completed some sort of course, and was soon employed by Facit AB, one of the world’s leading companies in the production of typewriters and mechanical calculators. Thus he succeeded in being trampled by the future not once but twice in his lifetime, because suddenly the electronic calculator popped up on the market. As if to poke fun at Facit’s brick of a product, the Japanese version fitted the inner pocket of a jacket.

The Facit group’s machines didn’t shrink (at least, not fast enough), but the firm itself did, until it shrivelled up into absolutely nothing.

The son of the horse dealer was laid off. To repress the fact that he had been twice cheated by life, he took to the bottle. Unemployed, bitter, always unbathed and never sober, he soon lost all his power of attraction in the eyes of his twenty-years-younger wife, who managed to stick it out for a little while, then another little while. But eventually it occurred to the patient young woman that the mistake of marrying the wrong man was possible to undo. ‘I want a divorce,’ she said one morning, to her husband, as he walked around their apartment, looking for something while clad in white underpants covered with dark stains.

‘Have you seen the bottle of cognac?’ said her husband.

‘No. But I want a divorce.’

‘I put it on the counter last night. You must have moved it.’

‘It’s possible it ended up in the drinks cabinet when I was cleaning the kitchen, I don’t remember, but I’m trying to tell you I want a divorce.’

‘In the drinks cabinet? Of course, I should have looked there first. How silly of me. So are you moving out? And you’re going to take the thing that just craps its pants with you, right?’

Yes, she took the baby. A boy with pale blond hair and kind blue eyes. The boy who would, much later, be a receptionist.

For her part, the boy’s mother had imagined a career as a language teacher, but the baby happened to arrive fifteen minutes before her final exam. Now she moved to Stockholm with her little one, plus her belongings and the signed divorce papers. She went back to using her maiden name, Persson, without reflecting upon the consequences for the boy, who had already been given the name Per (not that it’s impossible to be named Per Persson or, for that matter, Jonas Jonasson, but some might find it monotonous).

Awaiting her in the capital city was a job as a traffic warden. Per Persson’s mom walked up one street and down the next, receiving near-daily harangues from illegally parked men, primarily those who could easily afford the fines they had just been saddled with. Her dream of being a teacher – of imparting the knowledge of which German prepositions governed the accusative or dative to students who couldn’t care less – was interrupted.

But after his mom had spent half an eternity in a career that was meant to be temporary, it so happened that one of the many haranguing illegally parked men lost his train of thought in the midst of his complaint when he discovered that the person inside the traffic warden’s uniform was a woman. One thing led to another, and they found themselves having dinner at a fancy restaurant, where the parking ticket was ripped in two around the time they partook of their coffee with a little something on the side. By the time the second thing had led to a third, the illegal parker had proposed to Per Persson’s mom.

The suitor happened to be an Icelandic banker about to move home to Reykjavik. He promised his wife-to-be the moon and the stars if she followed him there. He would offer an Icelandic arm to welcome her son as well. But time had passed to such an extent that the little blond boy had become a legal adult and could make his own decisions. He counted on a brighter future in Sweden, and since no one can compare what happened after that with what might have happened instead, it is impossible to determine how right or wrong the son was in his calculations.

At just sixteen years old, Per Persson got himself a job alongside the studies he wasn’t very engaged in. He never told his mother in detail what his work consisted of. And for that he had his reasons.

‘Where you going now, boy?’ his mom might ask.

‘To work, Mom.’

‘So late?’

‘Yes, we’re open for business most of the time.’

‘What is it you do again?’

‘I’ve told you a thousand times. I’m an assistant in … the entertainment industry. Where people have meetings and stuff like that.’

‘What kind of assistant? And what is the name of—’

‘Have to run now, Mom. See you later.’

Per Persson slipped away yet again. Of course he didn’t want to share any details, such as the fact that his employer packaged and sold temporary love in a large shabby yellow wooden building in Huddinge, south of Stockholm. Or that the establishment went by the name Club Amore. Or that the boy’s work involved handling logistics as well as acting as an attendant and inspector. It was important that each individual visitor find his way to the right room for the right sort of love for the right amount of time. The boy made up the schedule, timed the visits and listened through the doors (and let his imagination run free). If something seemed about to go awry, he sounded the alarm.

Around the time his mom emigrated and Per Persson finished his studies – in the formal sense as well – his employer chose to start a new line of business. Club Amore became Pensionat Sjöudden: the Sea Point Hotel. It was not by the sea, or on any point. But as the owner of the hotel said, ‘I gotta call this shithole something.’

Fourteen rooms. Two hundred and twenty-five kronor per night. Shared toilet and shower. New sheets and towels once a week, but only if the used ones looked used enough. Going from running a love nest to running a third-class hotel was not something the hotel owner truly desired. He had earned significantly more money when the guests had had company in their beds. And if any free time popped up in the girls’ schedules, he himself could cuddle up with one for a while.

The only advantage of the Sea Point Hotel was that it was less illegal. The former sex-club owner had spent eight months in the slammer; he thought that was more than enough.

Per Persson, who had demonstrated his talent for logistics, was offered the job of receptionist, and he thought things could be worse (even if the salary couldn’t). He was to check people in and out, make sure the guests paid, and keep an eye on bookings and cancellations. He was even permitted to be a bit pleasant, as long as his attitude didn’t have a negative influence on the results.

It was a new business under a new name, and Per Persson’s duties were different and more laden with responsibility than before. This prompted him to approach the boss and humbly suggest an adjustment to his salary.

‘Up or down?’ the boss wondered.

Per Persson responded that up would be preferable. The conversation had not taken the turn he desired. Now he was hoping at least to keep what he already had.

And so he did. The boss had, however, been generous enough to make a suggestion: ‘Hell, move into the room behind the reception desk, and you won’t have to pay rent on the apartment you took over after your mom left.’

Well, Per Persson agreed that this was one way to save a little money. And since his salary was paid under the table, he could also try to get social-welfare and unemployment benefits on the side.

Thus it happened that the young receptionist became one with his work. He roomed and lived in his reception area. One year passed, two years passed, five years passed and, to all intents and purposes, things did not go better for the boy than they had for his dad and grandfather before him. And the blame lay squarely with his late grandfather. The old man had been a millionaire several times over. Now the third generation of his own flesh and blood was standing at a reception desk, welcoming foul-smelling hotel guests, who answered to names like Hitman Anders and other horrid things.

This very Hitman Anders happened to be one of the long-term residents of Sea Point Hotel. His real name was Johan Andersson, and he had spent his entire adult life inside. He had never had an easy time with words or expressions, but early on in life he had realized that you could be very convincing by walloping anyone who disagreed with you, or appeared to be considering doing so. And walloping them again if necessary.

In time, this sort of conversation led to young Johan ending up in bad company. His new acquaintances urged him to blend his already violent argumentation techniques with alcohol and pills, and with that he was more or less done for. The alcohol and pills brought him twelve years in prison at the age of twenty, after he was unable to explain how his axe had ended up in the back of the region’s leading distributor of amphetamines.

Eight years later, Hitman Anders was out again, and he celebrated his release with such fervour that he’d barely had time to sober up before he received fourteen more years on top of his previous eight. This time a shotgun had been involved. At close range. Right into the face of the person who had taken over from the guy with the axe in his back. An extraordinarily unpleasant sight for those who were called in to clean up.

In court, Hitman Anders maintained that he hadn’t meant to do it. He didn’t think he had, anyway. He didn’t remember very much of the incident. Which was pretty much like his next stay in jail, after he’d cut the throat of a third pill entrepreneur because said entrepreneur happened to accuse him of being in a bad mood. The man with the soon-to-be-cut throat had essentially been correct, but this was of no help to him.

At the age of fifty-six, Hitman Anders was free again. In contrast to the earlier times, this was not a question of a temporary visit to the outside: this time it was permanent. That was the plan. He just had to avoid alcohol. And pills. And everything and everyone who had anything to do with alcohol and pills.

Beer wasn’t so bad; it mostly made him happy. Or semi-happy. Or, at least, not crazy.

He had found his way to the Sea Point Hotel in the belief that the place still offered experiences of the sort one might have found lacking during a decade or three in prison. Once he’d got over his disappointment that this was not the case, he decided to check in instead. He needed somewhere to stay, after all, and just over two hundred kronor per night was nothing to argue about, especially given what arguing had often led to in the past.

Even before he collected his room key for the first time, Hitman Anders had managed to tell his life story to the receptionist who happened to land in his path. It included his childhood, even though the murderer didn’t think it had any bearing on what had followed. His early years had mostly involved his dad getting drunk after work in order to tolerate his job, and his mom doing the same in order to tolerate his dad. This led to his dad being unable to tolerate his mom, which he demonstrated by beating her up at regular intervals, usually while their son watched.

After hearing the whole story, the receptionist didn’t dare to do anything but welcome Hitman Anders with a handshake and an introduction. ‘Per Persson,’ he said.

‘Johan Andersson,’ said the murderer, promising to try to commit murder as little as possible in the future. Then he asked the receptionist whether he might have a pilsner to spare. After seventeen years without, it was no wonder his throat was a bit dry.

Per Persson had no intention of beginning his relationship with Hitman Anders by refusing him a beer. But as he poured it, he asked if Mr Andersson might consider keeping away from alcohol and pills.

‘That would probably lead to the least trouble,’ said Johan Andersson. ‘But listen, call me Hitman Anders. Everyone else does.’

CHAPTER 2

It’s good to find happiness in little things. Such as the fact that months went by and Hitman Anders murdered neither the receptionist nor anyone else in the immediate vicinity of the hotel. And the fact that the boss allowed Per Persson to close the reception desk and take a few hours off every Sunday. As long as the weather – unlike most other things – was on his side, he took the chance to leave the premises. Not to kick up his heels: he never had enough money for that. Sitting still and thinking on a park bench, though, was always free.

That was where he was sitting, with the four ham sandwiches and bottle of raspberry cordial he’d brought with him, when he was unexpectedly addressed: ‘How are you, my son?’

Before him stood a woman not many years older than Per himself. She looked dirty and worn out, and a white clerical collar gleamed around her neck, though there was a grimy stain on it.

Per Persson had never put much effort into being religious, but a priest was a priest, and he thought she deserved just as much respect as the murderers, drug addicts and plain old trash he saw at work. Or maybe even more. ‘Thanks for asking,’ he said. ‘I suppose I’ve been better. Or maybe not, come to think of it. I suppose you could say my life is relatively not great.’

My goodness, he’d been too honest, he thought. Better put things right. ‘Though I don’t mean to burden the priest with my health and well-being. Just as long as I get something in my stomach I’ll be fine,’ he said, signalling the end of the conversation by opening the lid of his lunchbox.

The priest, however, did not register the signal. Instead she said she would certainly not be burdened by being of service – a lot or a little – if it would make his existence more tolerable. A personal prayer was the least she could do.

A prayer? Per Persson wondered what good the grimy priest thought a prayer might do. Did she think the heavens would rain money? Or bread and potatoes? Although … why not? He was loath to reject a person who only meant well. ‘Thank you, priest. If you think that a prayer directed toward Heaven might make it easier for me to live my life, I won’t put up any fuss.’

The priest smiled and made room for herself on the park bench next to the receptionist, who was enjoying his Sunday off. And then she began her work.

‘God, see your child … What’s your name, by the way?’

‘My name is Per,’ said Per Persson, wondering what God would do with that information.

‘God, see your child Per, see how he suffers …’

‘Well, I don’t know that I’m suffering, exactly.’

The priest lost her stride and said she might as well start again from the beginning, as the prayer would do most good if she wasn’t interrupted too much.

Per Persson apologized and promised to let her finish in peace and quiet.

‘Thanks,’ said the priest. ‘God, see your child, see how he feels that his life could be better, even if he’s not exactly suffering. Lord, give him security, teach him to love the world and the world shall love him. O Jesus, bear your cross by his side, thy kingdom come, and so on.’

And so on? Per Persson thought, but he dared not say a word.

‘God bless you, my son, with strength and vigour and … strength. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.’

Per Persson didn’t know how a personal prayer should sound, but what he’d just heard sounded like a rush job. He was about to speak up when the priest beat him to it: ‘Twenty kronor, please.’

Twenty kronor? For that?

‘I’m supposed to pay for the prayer?’ said Per Persson.

The priest nodded. Prayers were not something you just reeled off. They demanded concentration and devotion, they took strength – and even a priest, after all, had to live on this Earth as long as it was here, rather than in the Heaven she would eventually hang around in.

What Per Persson had just heard sounded neither devoted nor concentrated, and he was far from certain that Heaven awaited the priest when the time came.

‘Ten kronor, then?’ the priest tried.

Had she just lowered the price from not much to practically nothing? Per Persson looked at her more closely and saw something … else. Something pitiful? He made up his mind that she was a tragic case rather than a swindler. ‘Would you like a sandwich?’ he asked.

She lit up. ‘Oh, thank you. That would be lovely. God bless you!’

Per Persson said that, from a historical perspective, pretty much everything indicated that the Lord was too busy to bless him in particular. And that the prayer He had just received as nourishment was unlikely to change that.

The priest appeared to be about to respond, but the receptionist was quick to hand over his lunchbox. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Best fed, least said.’

‘God leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way. Psalm Twenty-five,’ said the priest, her mouth full of sandwich.

‘What did I just say?’ said Per Persson.

She really was a priest. As she gobbled up the receptionist’s four ham sandwiches, she told him that she’d had her own congregation until the past Sunday, when she was interrupted in the middle of the sermon and asked by the president of the congregation council to step down from the pulpit, pack her belongings and leave.

Per Persson thought that was terrible. Was there no such thing as job security in the realm of the heavenly?

Certainly there was, but the president was of the opinion that he had grounds for his action. And it so happened that the entire congregation agreed with him. Incidentally, that included the priest herself. What was more, at least two of its members had thrown copies of the hymnal after her as she departed.

‘As one might guess, there is a longer version. Would you like to hear it? I must say, my life has not exactly been a bed of roses.’

Per Persson considered this. Did he want to hear what the priest had spent her life sleeping in, if not a bed of roses, or did he have enough misery of his own to lug around without her help? ‘I’m not sure that my existence will be made any brighter by hearing about others who live in darkness,’ he said. ‘But I suppose I could listen to the gist of it as long the story doesn’t get too long-winded.’

The gist of it? The gist was that she had been wandering around for seven days now, from Sunday to Sunday. Sleeping in basement storage areas and God knows where else, eating anything she happened upon …

‘Like four out of four ham sandwiches,’ said Per Persson. ‘Perhaps the last of my raspberry cordial would be good for washing down my only food.’

The priest wouldn’t say no to that. And once she’d quenched her thirst, she said: ‘The long and the short of it is that I don’t believe in God. Much less in Jesus. Dad was the one who forced me to follow in his footsteps – Dad’s footsteps, that is, not Jesus’s – when, as luck would have it, he never had a son, only a daughter. Though Dad, in turn, had been forced into the priesthood by my grandfather. Or maybe they were sent by the devil, both of them – it’s tough to say. In any case, priesting runs in the family.’

When it came to the part about being a victim in the shadow of Dad or Grandfather, Per Persson felt an immediate kinship. If only children could be free of all the crap previous generations had gathered up for them, he said, perhaps it would bring some clarity to their lives.

The priest refrained from pointing out the necessity of previous generations for their own existence. Instead she asked what had led him all the way to … this park bench.

Oh, this park bench. And the depressing hotel lobby where he lived and worked. And gave beers to Hitman Anders.

‘Hitman Anders?’ said the priest.

‘Yes,’ said the receptionist. ‘He lives in number seven.’

Per Persson thought he might as well waste a few minutes on the priest, since she’d asked. So he told her about his grandfather, who had frittered away his millions. And Dad, who’d just thrown in the towel. About his mom, who’d hooked up with an Icelandic banker and left the country. How he himself had ended up in a whorehouse at the age of sixteen. And how he currently worked as a receptionist at the hotel the whorehouse had turned into.

‘And now that I happen to have twenty minutes off and can sit down on a bench at a safe distance from all the thieves and bandits I have to deal with at work, I run into a priest who doesn’t believe in God, who first tries to trick me out of my last few coins and then eats all my food. That’s my life in a nutshell, assuming I don’t go back to find that the old whorehouse has transformed into the Grand Hôtel, thanks to that prayer.’

The dirty priest, with breadcrumbs on her lips, looked ashamed. She said it was unlikely that her prayer would have such immediate results, especially since it had been a rush job and its addressee didn’t exist. She now regretted asking to be paid for shoddy work, not least since the receptionist had been so generous with his sandwiches. ‘Please tell me more about the hotel,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s an extra room available at … the friends-and-family discount?’

‘Friends-and-family?’ said Per Persson. ‘Exactly when did we become friends, the two of us?’

‘Well,’ said the priest. ‘It’s not too late.’

CHAPTER 3

The priest was assigned room eight, which shared a wall with Hitman Anders’s room. But unlike the murderer, whom Per Persson never dared to ask for payment, the new guest was required to pay a week up front. At the regular price.

‘Up front? But that’s the last of my money.’

‘Then it’s extra important it doesn’t go astray. I could whip up a prayer for you, absolutely free of charge, and maybe it will all work out,’ said the receptionist.

At that instant, a man with a leather jacket, sunglasses and stubble appeared. He looked like a parody of the gangster he presumably was, and skipped the greeting to ask where he could find Johan Andersson.

The receptionist stood up straighter and replied that who was or was not staying at the Sea Point Hotel was not information he could share with just anyone. Here it was considered a duty of honour to protect the guests’ identities.

‘Answer the question before I shoot your dick off,’ said the man in the leather jacket. ‘Where’s Hitman Anders?’

‘Room seven,’ said Per Persson.

The menace vanished into the hallway. The priest watched him go and wondered if there was about to be trouble. Did the receptionist think there was anything she could do to help, as a priest?

Per Persson thought nothing of the sort, but he didn’t have time to say so before the man in the leather jacket was back.

‘The hitman is out cold on his bed. I know how he can be – it’s best if he’s allowed to stay like that for the time being. Take this envelope and give it to him when he wakes up. Tell him the count says hello.’

‘That’s it?’ said Per Persson.

‘Yes. No, tell him there’s five thousand in the envelope, not ten thousand, since he only did half the job.’

The man in the leather jacket went on his way. Five thousand? Five thousand that apparently ought to have been ten. And now it was up to the receptionist to explain the deficit to Sweden’s potentially most dangerous person. Unless he delegated the task to the priest, who had just offered her services.

‘Hitman Anders,’ she said. ‘So he really exists. That wasn’t just something you made up?’

‘A lost soul,’ said the receptionist. ‘Extremely lost, in fact.’

To his surprise, the priest inquired whether this extremely lost soul was so lost that it would be morally sound for a priest and a receptionist to borrow a thousand kronor from him in order to eat their fill at some pleasant establishment nearby.

Per Persson asked what kind of priest she was if she was capable of coming up with such a suggestion, but he admitted that the idea was tempting. Though there was, of course, a reason Hitman Anders was called Hitman Anders. Or three reasons, if the receptionist remembered correctly: an axe in a back, shotgun pellets to a face, and a cut throat.

The question of whether or not it was a good idea to borrow money secretly from a hitman was interrupted: the hitman in question had awakened and was now shuffling down the hallway towards them, his hair all over the place.

‘I’m thirsty,’ he said. ‘I’m getting a payment delivered today, but it hasn’t arrived yet and I have no money for beer. Or food. Can I borrow two hundred kronor from your till?’

This was a question, and yet it wasn’t. Hitman Anders was counting on getting his hands on two hundred-krona notes at once.

But the priest took half a step forward. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘My name is Johanna Kjellander and I am a former parish priest, now just a priest at large.’

‘Priests are all a bunch of crap,’ said Hitman Anders, without glancing at her. The art of conversation was in no way his forte. He continued to address the receptionist. ‘So, can I have some money?’

‘I can’t quite agree with you on that,’ said Johanna Kjellander. ‘Certainly there are a few strays here and there, even in our line of work, and unfortunately I happen to be one of them. I would be happy to discuss that sort of thing with you, Mr … Hitman Anders. Perhaps at a later date. At the moment I would rather discuss an envelope containing five thousand kronor that has just been delivered to the reception desk by a count.’

‘Five thousand?’ said Hitman Anders. ‘It’s supposed to be ten! What did you do with the rest, you goddamned priest?’ The bleary and hung-over hitman glared at Johanna Kjellander.

Per Persson, who wished to avoid a priesticide in his lobby, was quick to add anxiously that the count had asked them to mention that the five thousand was a partial payment since only half the job had been completed. He and the priest at his side were innocent messengers, he hoped Hitman Anders understood …

But Johanna Kjellander took over again. ‘Goddamned priest’ had rubbed her up the wrong way.

‘Shame on you!’ she said, so sternly that Hitman Anders nearly did feel shame. She went on to say that he must certainly realize that she and the receptionist would never dream of taking his money. ‘We’re hard up, though – we really are. And while we’re on the subject, I might as well ask, Hitman Anders, if you might consider loaning us one of those five lovely thousand-krona bills for a day or two. Or, even better, a week.’

Per Persson was astounded. First the priest had wanted to help herself to the money in Hitman Anders’s envelope without his knowledge. Then she’d had him on the verge of flushing red with shame for having accused her of that very thing. Now she was entering into a lending agreement with the hitman. Didn’t she have any survival instinct at all? Didn’t she realize that she was putting both of them in mortal danger? Curse the woman! He ought to shut her up before the hitman beat him to it with something more permanent.

But, first of all, he had to try to clear up the mess she had just made. Hitman Anders had taken a seat, possibly out of shock that the priest, who in his world presumably would simply have stolen his money, had just asked to borrow what she hadn’t had time to steal.

‘As I understand it, Hitman Anders, you feel you’ve been tricked out of five thousand kronor. Is that correct?’ said Per Persson, making an effort to sound fiscal.

Hitman Anders nodded.

‘Then I must reiterate and emphasize that it was neither I nor Sweden’s perhaps strangest priest here who took your money. But if there’s anything – anything at all – I can do to aid you in this situation, don’t hesitate to ask!’

‘If there’s anything I can do …’ is the type of thing every person in the service industry likes to say but doesn’t necessarily mean. That made it all the more unfortunate that Hitman Anders took the receptionist at his word. ‘Yes, please,’ he said, in a tired voice. ‘Please get me my missing five thousand kronor. That way I won’t have to beat you up.’

Per Persson did not have the slightest desire to track down the count, the man who had threatened to do something so unpleasant to one of Per’s dearest body parts. Merely encountering that person again would be bad enough. But to ask him for money on top of that …

The receptionist was already deeply troubled when he heard the priest say: ‘Of course!’

‘Of course?’ he repeated in terror.

‘Great!’ said Hitman Anders, who had just heard two of-courses in a row.

‘Why, certainly we’ll help Hitman Anders,’ the priest went on. ‘We here at the Sea Point Hotel are always at your service. For reasonable compensation, we are in all ways ready to make life simpler for anyone, from a murderer to a marauder. The Lord does not distinguish between people in that way. Or maybe he does, but let’s stick to the matter at hand: could we start by learning more about which “job” we’re referring to here, and in which way it seems to have been only half completed?’

At that moment, Per Persson wanted to be somewhere else. He had just heard the priest say ‘We here at the Sea Point Hotel.’ She hadn’t even checked in yet, much less paid, but that hadn’t stopped her initiating a financial transaction with a hitman in the hotel’s name.

The receptionist decided to dislike the new guest. Beyond that, he had no better idea than to stand where he was, by the wall next to the lobby refrigerator, and try to look as uninteresting as possible. The person who arouses no emotion need not be beaten to death, was his reasoning.

Hitman Anders was pretty confused himself. The priest had said so much in such a short time that he hadn’t quite followed it all (plus there was that business of her being a priest: that really mucked things up in and of itself).

She seemed to be suggesting some form of cooperation. That sort of thing usually ended poorly, but it was always worth a listen. It wasn’t necessary to start with a good thrashing in all cases. In fact, surprisingly, it was often best to do that part last.

And so it came to be that Hitman Anders told them the details of the job he had done. He hadn’t killed anyone, if that was what they were thinking.

‘No, I suppose it’s hard to half commit a murder,’ the priest mused.

Hitman Anders said that he had decided to stop murdering people because it came at too high a price: if it happened once more, he wouldn’t walk free again until he was eighty.

But the thing was, no sooner was he out in the world and had found a place to live than he had received a number of proposals from various directions. Most were from people who, for a substantial amount of money, wanted enemies and acquaintances cleared away, that is, murdered, that is, the thing Hitman Anders was no longer engaged in. Or, more accurately, never had been engaged in. Somehow it had all just ended up like that.

Aside from the proposed contract killings, he received the occasional assignment of a more reasonable nature, such as the most recent one. The object was to break both the arms of a man who had purchased a car from Hitman Anders’s employer and previous acquaintance, the count, driven away in it and, later that evening, lost all the purchase money on blackjack instead of paying off his debt.

The priest didn’t know what blackjack was – it wasn’t a pastime either of her two former congregations had spent much time on during the fellowship hour after services. Instead they had had a tradition of playing Pick Up Sticks, which could be fun now and then. Anyway, the priest was more curious to know how the purchase of the car had taken place.

‘Did he take the car without paying?’

Hitman Anders explained the legalities of Stockholm’s less legal circles. In this particular case, the car in question was a nine-year-old Saab, but the principle was the same. Arranging one or a couple of days’ credit with the count was never a problem. A predicament would arise only if the money wasn’t on the table when the time was up. And when that happened the borrower, rather than the creditor, was the one with the predicament.

‘Such as one involving a broken arm?’

‘Yes, or two, like I said. If the car had been any newer, ribs and face would probably have been included in the order.’

‘Two broken arms that became one. Did you miscount, or what went wrong?’

‘I stole a bike and paid a visit to the thief with a baseball bat on the luggage rack. When I found him, he was holding a newborn baby girl in one arm, and he asked me to have mercy or whatever it’s called. Since, deep down, I have a good heart, my mom always said I did, I broke his other arm in two places instead. And I let him put down the baby first, so she wouldn’t get hurt if he fell over while I was doing my job. And fall over he did. I’ve got a mean wind-up with a baseball bat. Though now I think about it, I might as well have broken both his arms while he was wailing on the ground. I’ve noticed I can’t always think as quickly as I’d like. And when booze and pills enter the picture, I don’t think at all. Not that I can recall.’

The priest had registered one particular detail in this story: ‘Did she really say that, your mom? That, deep down, you have a good heart?’

Per Persson was wondering the same thing, but he stuck to his strategy of blending in with the lobby wall as best he could, while remaining as quiet as possible.

‘Yes, she did,’ said Hitman Anders. ‘But that was before Dad threatened to knock out all her teeth if she didn’t stop jabbering on all the time. After that she didn’t dare say much until after Dad drank himself to death. Oh dear, oh dear.’

The priest was in possession of a few suggestions for how a family can resolve its conflicts without knocking out each other’s teeth, but there is a time and place for everything. At that moment she wanted to focus on summarizing the information Hitman Anders had given them, to see if she had understood it correctly. So, his most recent employer had demanded a fifty per cent rebate, invoking the fact that Hitman Anders had broken one and the same arm twice rather than two different arms once each?

Hitman Anders nodded. Yes, if by fifty per cent she meant half price.

Yes, that was what she’d meant. And she added that the count seemed to be a finicky sort. Nevertheless, both priest and receptionist were ready to help.

Since the receptionist was unwilling to contradict her, the priest continued: ‘For a twenty per cent commission, we will seek out the count in question with the intention of changing his mind. But that’s a minor detail. Our cooperation will not become truly interesting until phase two!’

Hitman Anders tried to digest what the priest had just said. There had been a lot of words, and a strange percentage. But before he got to his question about what ‘phase two’ might be, the priest was a step ahead of him:

The second phase involved further developing Hitman Anders’s little operation under the guidance of the receptionist and the priest. A discreet PR job to broaden his customer base, a price list to avoid wasting time on people who couldn’t pay, and a clear-cut ethics policy.

The priest noticed that the receptionist’s face had gone as white as the refrigerator beside the wall he was pressing himself against, and that Hitman Anders had lost track of what was going on. She decided to stop talking so that the former could take in fresh oxygen and so the latter wouldn’t get the bright idea of starting to fight instead of trying to understand.

‘Incidentally, I must say I admire Hitman Anders for his good heart,’ she said. ‘Just think, that baby got away without a scratch! The kingdom of Heaven belongs to the children. We find testimony of this even back in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter nineteen.’

‘It does? We do?’ said Hitman Anders, forgetting that just thirty seconds before he had decided to give a good slap at least to the guy who wasn’t saying anything.

The priest nodded piously and refrained from adding that, only a few lines later, the very same Gospel happened to say that you shall not murder, that you shall love your neighbour as yourself, and – apropos of the knocked-out teeth – you shall honour your mother, and, for that matter, your father.

The rising rage in Hitman Anders’s face subsided. This was not lost on Per Persson, who finally dared to believe in a life after this (that is, he believed that both he and the priest would survive their current conversation with the guest in room seven). Not only did the receptionist start breathing again, he also regained the ability to speak and was able to contribute to the overall situation by managing reasonably well to explain to Hitman Anders what twenty per cent of something meant. The hitman apologized, saying he had become quite a wizard at counting years while in the slammer, but all he knew about percentages was that there were about forty of them in vodka and sometimes even more in the kind of stuff that was produced in random basements without any oversight. In some of the earlier police investigations, it had come to light that he washed down his pills with 38 per cent shop-bought hooch and 70 per cent home-brew. Now, police reports were not always to be trusted, but if they were right in that instance it’s no surprise things went the way they did – with 108 per cent alcohol in his blood and the pills on top of that.

Inspired by the merry atmosphere that would soon prevail, the priest promised that Hitman Anders’s business revenues were about to be doubled – at least! – as long as she and the receptionist were given free rein to act as his representatives.

At the same time, cleverly enough, Per Persson took two beers from the lobby refrigerator. Hitman Anders swallowed the first, started on the second, and decided that he had understood enough of what had been explained to him. ‘Well, hell, let’s do it, then.’ The hitman terminated the second beer in a few rapid gulps, burped, excused himself and, as a kind gesture, handed over two of the five available thousand-krona notes with ‘Twenty per cent it is!’

He stuck the three remaining notes in the breast pocket of his shirt and announced that it was time for a combination of breakfast and lunch at his usual place around the corner, which meant he didn’t have time to discuss business further.

‘Good luck with the count!’ he said from the doorway before he vanished.

CHAPTER 4

The man who was called the count could not be looked up in the book of noble families. The fact was, he couldn’t be looked up anywhere. He owed nearly seven hundred thousand kronor in unpaid taxes to the Tax Authority, but no matter how often the Authority pointed this out in letters mailed to his last known address on Mabini Street in the Philippines capital city of Manila, it never received any money in return. Or anything else. After all, how could the Tax Authority know that the address had been chosen at random, and that the notices ended up at the home of a local fishmonger, who opened them and used them to wrap tiger prawns and octopus? Meanwhile, the count actually lived in Stockholm with his girlfriend, who was called the countess and was a high-level distributor of various narcotics. Under her name, he ran five dealerships that sold used cars in the southern suburbs of the capital city.

He had been in the business since analogue days, when it was possible to dismantle and rebuild a car with a monkey wrench rather than a degree in computer science. But he had had an easier time than most in surviving the transition to digital, which was how one single dealership had become five in the span of a few years. In the wake of this growth there arose financial discord between the count on the one hand and the Tax Authority on the other, bringing both joy and a certain amount of irritation to an industrious fishmonger on the other side of the globe.

The count was the sort of person who saw moments of change as opportunities rather than threats. Throughout Europe and the rest of the world, people were building cars that might cost a million kronor to buy, but only fifty to steal with the help of electronics and five-step instructions you could get on the internet. For some time, the count’s speciality had been locating the whereabouts of Swedish-registered BMW X5s: his partner in Gdansk would send two men to fetch them and bring them to Poland, supplying them with a new history, then importing them again himself.

For a while this had brought in a net profit of a quarter-million kronor per car. But then BMW wised up and installed GPS trackers in every new vehicle, and the nicer used ones. They had no sense of fair play: they didn’t even inform the car thieves in advance. Suddenly the police were standing in a middleman’s warehouse in Ängelholm, gathering up both cars and Poles.

The count, however, made it through. Not because he was listed as living with a fishmonger in Manila, but because the seized Poles were far too enamoured of life to squeal.

Incidentally, the count had received his nickname many years earlier from his elegant manner of threatening customers who didn’t pay up. He might use words such as ‘I would truly appreciate it if Mr Hansson were to settle up his pecuniary accounts with me within twenty-four hours, after which I promise not to chop him into bits.’ Hansson, or whatever the customer’s name might have been, always found it preferable to pay. No one wanted to be chopped into bits, no matter how many. Two would be bad enough.

As the years passed, the count (with the help of the countess) developed a more vulgar style. This was the one that befell the receptionist, but the name had already stuck.

Per Persson and Johanna Kjellander set off to see the count to demand five thousand kronor on behalf of Hitman Anders. If they were to succeed, the murderer in room seven would be a future potential source of income for them. If they failed … No, they must not fail.

The priest’s suggestion of how they should handle the count was to fight fire with fire. Humility didn’t work in those circles, was Johanna Kjellander’s reasoning.

Per Persson protested, and protested some more. He was a receptionist with a certain talent for spreadsheets and structure, not a violent criminal. And even if he were to transform himself into a violent criminal, he would absolutely not start by practising on one of the region’s foremost players in the field. Anyway, what sort of experience did the priest have with the circles she was referring to? How could she be so sure that a hug or two wasn’t just the ticket?

A hug? Surely even a child could figure out that they would get nowhere if they tracked down the count and apologized for existing.

‘Let me handle the sermonizing and everything will be fine,’ said the priest, once they had arrived at the count’s office, which was, as always, open on Sunday. ‘And don’t hug anyone in the meantime!’

Per Persson reflected that he was the only one of the two who was at risk of having a sexual organ cut off, but he was resigned in the face of the priest’s courage. She was acting as if she had Jesus by her side rather than a receptionist. Nevertheless, he wanted to know what the literal meaning of fighting fire with fire might be, but it was too late to ask.

The count looked up from his desk when the doorbell rang. In stepped two people he recognized but, at first, couldn’t quite place. They weren’t from the Tax Authority, though – he could tell by the collar on one.

‘Good day again, Mr Count. My name is Johanna Kjellander and I’m a priest with the Church of Sweden and, until very recently, the parish priest of a congregation we can leave out of this conversation. The man by my side is a long-standing friend and colleague …’

In that instant, Johanna Kjellander realized that she didn’t know the receptionist’s name. He had been nice to her on the park bench, a bit stingier when it came to negotiations over the price of her room, relatively anonymous in the effort to bowl over Hitman Anders with words, yet sufficiently brave to come along and rip the missing five thousand kronor out of the hands of the count, who stood before them now. He had probably mentioned his name as she was trying to trick him out of twenty kronor for a prayer, but it had all happened so quickly.

‘My long-standing friend and colleague … and he has a name too, of course. We all tend to be in possession of such a thing …’

‘Per Persson,’ said Per Persson.

‘As I was saying,’ Johanna Kjellander continued, ‘we have come here in our capacity as representatives of—’

‘Aren’t you the people I gave the envelope with five thousand kronor to a few hours ago, at the Sea Point Hotel?’ The count was certain he was right. Surely there couldn’t be that many female priests with dirty collars in the southern reaches of Stockholm. At least, not at the same time.

‘That’s exactly it,’ said the priest. ‘Only five thousand. Five thousand is missing. Our client, Johan Andersson, has asked us to come here to pick up the rest. He sends word that it would be best for everyone involved if his wishes were met. Because the alternative, according to Mr Andersson, is that the count will lose his life in an unpleasant manner, while Mr Andersson himself, as a result, will likely be locked up for another twenty years in addition to those he has already amassed for similar reasons. Or, as it says in scripture, “Whoever is steadfast in righteousness gives life, but whoever pursues evil will die.” Proverbs, 11:19.’

The count pondered this. Coming here to threaten him? He ought to twist that collar around the priest’s neck and cut off her oxygen. On the other hand, according to what the priest had just explained, doing so would turn the useful idiot Hitman Anders into a regular old idiot. The count would be forced to off the hitman before the hitman offed him, and that, in turn, meant that his favourite bone-breaker would no longer be available. He couldn’t have cared less what the Bible did or didn’t say on the matter.

‘Hmm,’ he allowed.

The priest kept the dialogue moving: she didn’t want any to risk ending up in some sort of deadlock. So she explained Hitman Anders’s reasoning when he had broken one and the same arm twice and allowed the other to remain in working order. In doing so, he had been acting in accordance with the ethical guidelines he had worked out jointly with his agents – the priest herself and her friend Per Jansson by her side.

‘Per Persson,’ said Per Persson.

According to these guidelines, it was out of the question to allow children to come to harm in the execution of his duties, and that was just what would have happened if Hitman Anders hadn’t acted so resourcefully in a situation that had arisen without warning. Or, as the Lord commands in 2 Chronicles 25:4, ‘The parents shall not be put to death for the children, or the children be put to death for the parents; but all shall be put to death for their own sins.’

The count said that the priest was good at talking nonsense. It remained to be seen how she planned to handle the matter in question, it being that the intended victim was currently driving around in and steering the very same damned car he hadn’t paid for, with one arm but not the other encased in plaster.

‘That is a conundrum we have considered in great detail,’ said the priest, of the problem she had just been made aware of.

‘And?’ said the count.

‘Well, we suggest the following,’ said the priest, in the very instant she thought of the solution. ‘You pay Hitman Anders the five thousand kronor you owe him from his previous assignment. At some later date, as we know, considering your line of business, you will need his help again. At that time, if those of us in upper management consider the job worthy of him, and I’m sure we will, we will accept the assignment according to the applicable price list, and we will also return to Object A: make sure that no babies are in the vicinity and break his arms. Both the one that has just healed and the other, which so infelicitously survived unscathed last time. And all this at no extra cost!’

It felt strange to negotiate with a priest and a – whatever the other person was – about this sort of thing, but the count found what he heard acceptable. He paid the five thousand, shook hands with the priest and the other man, and promised to get in touch when it was time to teach a lesson to whoever it might be for whatever it might be.

‘And I suppose I ought to apologize to you, Per Jansson, for that bit about your dick,’ he said, as a farewell.

‘By all means,’ said Per Persson.

‘A limb for a limb …’ the priest happened to say, out of sheer momentum, but she stopped herself before she got to an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, all in accordance with Leviticus 24.

‘Huh?’ said the count, who suspected that he had just been threatened, and threatening the count twice in the span of a few minutes was at least one and a half times too many.

‘Nothing,’ Per Persson said quickly, grabbing the priest by the arm. ‘My little Johanna just happened to get lost in the Bible on our way out. My goodness, it’s warm. Come along, sweetheart. Here’s the door.’

CHAPTER 5

The priest and the receptionist didn’t speak as they strolled away from their visit to the count. They were each gathering their thoughts from different directions.

The receptionist suspected that misfortune was headed their way. And so was money. And even more misfortune. And money. He was used to the misfortune part. Surely he would hardly notice more of the same. But he had never laid eyes on considerable amounts of money, other than in his nightmares about Grandfather. And yet he had to consult with the priest … Having people beaten up to order?

Johanna Kjellander appeared to be searching for a good answer, but the best she could come up with was that those who fear the Lord will be taught how they should choose.

‘Psalm Twenty-five,’ she added, without conviction.

The receptionist said that was one of the stupidest things he’d ever heard and suggested she start using her head instead of reciting quotes from the Bible as if they were in her very marrow. Especially considering that the marrow in question belonged to someone who believed in neither God nor the Bible. Not to mention that, in Per Persson’s opinion, neither of the last two quotes had hit their mark. By the last one, had she meant that she and he had been dispatched by God to guide those with questionable morals to the correct path via Hitman Anders? In which case, why had God chosen a priest who didn’t believe in him to lead the project? Along with a receptionist who had never even considered cracking open a Bible.

Slightly wounded, the priest replied that it wasn’t always so gosh-damned easy to navigate through life. From her birth until about a week ago, she had been locked into a family tradition. She now found herself in a new role, in upper management over an assassin, but she couldn’t say for sure whether that was the correct way to take revenge upon the God who didn’t exist. She would have to feel her way forward, and maybe she’d come across a krona or two in proceeds during this trial period. Speaking of which, she wanted to thank Per Jansson or Persson for his resourceful intervention when her Biblical autopilot happened to reel off that bit about a limb for a limb in front of the count at the worst possible moment.

‘By all means,’ said the receptionist, not without pride.

He didn’t comment on the rest. But it seemed likely that the priest and the receptionist had a few things in common.

They were back at the hotel. Per Persson handed over the key to room eight and said that he and the priest could discuss the room rate another time. Quite a bit had happened for just one Sunday, and he was hoping to turn in early.

The priest thanked him in as worldly a fashion as she could manage. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Thanks for a nice day. I expect I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night to you, Per. Good night.’

* * *

On the night following the day he had met, first, a priest, then a count, and subsequently become a consultant to the hitman he already knew far too well, Per Persson lay on his mattress in the room behind the reception desk and stared up at the ceiling. A broken arm here and there probably wouldn’t be the end of the world, especially when they were dealing with people who deserved nothing better, and when it also enriched both the executor and his management.

The priest was one of the strangest people he had ever encountered. The receptionist was able to say this, even though he had encountered a lot of strange things in his years at the Sea Point Hotel – the hotel God had forgotten.

But she moved things forward, and she did so in a financially ingenious manner (even if she might have prepared her prayer on the park bench a little better – she had lost herself twenty kronor back there).

‘I think I’ll hitch my wagon to your train for a while, Johanna Kjellander,’ Per Persson said to himself. ‘I think I just will. You smell like money. And money smells nice.’

He turned off the bare lightbulb next to his mattress and was asleep in only a few minutes.

And he slept better than he had in a very long time.

CHAPTER 6

A company specializing in the field of assault and battery has more to deal with than you might expect. The allocation of income, of course, was originally set at eighty per cent to Hitman Anders and twenty per cent for the receptionist and the priest to divide between them. But one had to consider the cost of doing business as well. For example, Hitman Anders would need new work clothes when the old ones had become too bloody to salvage. There was no controversy there. But he also argued that the cost of the beer he consumed before each shift ought to be divided between the parties. He claimed he was unable to beat anyone to a pulp while sober.

The receptionist and the priest responded that, with a little practice, it would certainly be possible to commit assault while sober; it was just that Hitman Anders had never tried. They maintained their position that he ought instead to decrease his consumption of alcohol on days he was supposed to work.

Hitman Anders lost the beer negotiation. He did, however, convince the group that it was unreasonable to expect him to take public transport to work, or to make use of a stolen bicycle with a baseball bat on the luggage rack. It was unanimously decided that the firm would cover the cost of a taxi. The receptionist negotiated a fixed price with Taxi Torsten, a former regular at Club Amore. The girls had called him the Taxi Trick, which was the only reason the receptionist even remembered him. Per Persson looked up the former purchaser of sex and got straight to the point. ‘What would it cost for you to act as a private chauffeur in the Greater Stockholm area for one or two hours on one or two afternoons a week?’

‘Six thousand kronor per fare,’ said Taxi Torsten.

‘I’ll give you nine hundred.’

‘Done!’

‘And you have to keep your mouth shut about anything you see or hear.’

‘Done, I said.’

The group felt their way forward, with follow-up meetings every Monday. The original price list was constantly adjusted, based on Hitman Anders’s stories of how troublesome various types of task had been to execute. The prices also varied based on the combinations ordered. A broken right leg cost five thousand kronor, for example, same as a broken right arm. But the combination right leg/left arm cost forty thousand rather than thirty. That had come to be after Hitman Anders had given a vivid description of how a person who had just had his right leg smashed to bits with the baseball bat flailed around on the ground, which meant it was a hell of a job to get at his left arm. Especially for the perpetrator in question, who had a hard time telling right from left (as well as right from wrong).

They were also particular with the ethical guidelines. The first and most important one was that children must never come to harm, either directly or indirectly, by being forced to watch as Mommy or (for the most part) Daddy got a kicking.

The second rule was that any injuries that arose should, as far as possible, be of the sort that healed with time: one who had paid for his crime shouldn’t have to limp his way through the rest of his life. This involved, to name one example, being judicious about a broken kneecap because it was well-nigh impossible to put back together again. One lopped-off finger, however, was acceptable. So were two. Per hand. But no more.

The most common order was for plain old broken arms and legs, with the help of the baseball bat. But sometimes the client wanted it to be clear, when looking at a person’s face, that he hadn’t minded his Ps and Qs, and then it was time for fists and brass knuckles, which led to just the right amount of fractured jawbones, nasal bones and zygomatic bones, preferably accompanied by a black eye and a split eyebrow (the last, incidentally, usually appeared all on its own).

Per Persson and Johanna Kjellander convinced one another that anyone who got a thrashing by way of their agency had had it coming. After all, each buyer had to argue his case carefully. So far, the only one they had refused was a recently freed heroin addict who, during psychodynamic therapy in prison, had come to realize that his ninety-two-year-old nursery-school teacher was to blame for everything. Hitman Anders thought there might be something in that, but Per Persson and Johanna Kjellander said the proof was lacking.

The heroin addict slouched helplessly away. To top it all, the old woman died of pneumonia two days later, thereby killing off every possibility for revenge.

* * *

The division of labour was such that Per Persson, who had to man the reception desk anyway, accepted incoming orders, named the price, and promised a decision within twenty-four hours. Thereafter he called Johanna Kjellander and Hitman Anders to a management meeting. The latter attended only occasionally, but each individual order could still be accepted by a vote of 2–0.

When payment in cash had been made, the assignment was carried out as stipulated, usually within a few days, always within a week. Although left sometimes turned into right and vice versa, the customer never had reason to complain about the quality of implementation.

‘Your left arm is the one you wear your watch on,’ the priest tried.

‘Watch?’ said Hitman Anders, who, since his first murder, had learned to tell the time in years and decades rather than hours and minutes.

‘Or the hand you hold your fork in when you eat.’

‘In the slammer I mostly ate with a spoon.’

CHAPTER 7

Life would have been good at the Sea Point Hotel if it weren’t for the fact that the business hadn’t really taken off. Rumours of Hitman Anders’s excellence weren’t spreading quickly enough to the right circles.

The only person in the group who had no problem working just a few hours a week was the protagonist. Hitman Anders, though he had sampled alcohol in all its forms, could not be accused of being a workaholic.

The receptionist and the priest regularly discussed how best to market his skills. Their conversations went so well that, one Friday evening, the priest went ahead and suggested they round things off with a bottle of wine in the receptionist’s room (which essentially consisted of a chair, a wardrobe, and a mattress on the floor). It was a tempting idea, but Per Persson remembered their first encounter, when she had tried to trick him out of his money, far too vividly. He would go along with sharing a bottle of wine, but it would be best to continue holding their meetings where they usually held them, then go their separate ways.

The priest was disappointed. There was something harsh and lovely about the receptionist. She should never have put a price on the prayer back on that park bench. Now that – to her own surprise – she was fishing for a little bit of love, that first encounter put her at a disadvantage.

But a shared bottle of wine there was, and maybe it was thanks to that bottle that they were able to agree that media attention would be an admittedly risky yet effective method of reaching their stated goals. It was decided that the hitman would give an exclusive interview to some suitable Swedish medium, and his unusual talent would become evident.

The receptionist read morning papers, evening papers, weekly papers, and magazines; he watched all sorts of programmes on various TV channels, listened to the radio – and decided that the best and most immediate results could be obtained from one of the two national tabloids. His final decision was The Express, because it sounded faster than The Evening Post.

Meanwhile, the priest explained the plan to Hitman Anders and practised patiently with him for his coming interview. He was fed information about the message they were reaching out with, what must be said, and what absolutely could not be said. The long and the short of it was that he would appear, in the newspaper, to be

1 for sale

2 dangerous, and

3 insane.

‘Dangerous and insane … I think I can manage that,’ said Hitman Anders, without sounding totally sure of himself.

‘You have all the prerequisites,’ the priest said encouragingly.

Once all the preparations had been made, the receptionist contacted the news editor at the chosen paper and said he was able to offer them an exclusive interview with the mass-murderer Johan Andersson, better known as Hitman Anders.

The news editor had never heard of any mass-murderer by that name, but she knew a good headline when she heard one. ‘Hitman Anders’ fitted the bill. She asked to hear more.

Well, Per Persson explained, the thing was, Johan Andersson had spent his entire adult life behind bars for recurrent murders. Perhaps it was an exaggeration to call him a mass-murderer, but Per Persson didn’t dare to guess how many skeletons Hitman Anders had in his cupboard, beyond the ones he had gone to prison for.

In any case, these days the living murder machine was free, out in the world, and sent word via Per Persson that he would be happy to meet The Express to say he had become a better person. Or not.

‘Or not?’ said the news editor.

It didn’t take more than a few minutes for the newspaper to look up Johan Andersson’s pathetic history. Hitman Anders was not a name that had been used in the media previously, so the receptionist had prepared an exhaustive argument about how the name had come about and stuck during the man’s most recent sojourn in prison, but his worry in this case was unwarranted. The Express’s reasoning was that if your name is Hitman Anders, then your name is Hitman Anders. This was brilliant! The paper had its very own mass-murderer on the hook. That was better than any old sensational murder story.

A reporter and a photographer met Hitman Anders and his friends in the slightly pimped lobby of the Sea Point Hotel the very next day. His friends began by taking the reporter to one side to explain that the two of them must not figure in the piece because such exposure might jeopardize their lives. Did they have the reporter’s word on this?

Young and plainly nervous, he had to ponder this for a moment. It would never do for outsiders to dictate the conditions of the paper’s journalism. On the other hand, Johan Andersson was the subject of the interview. It seemed reasonable to leave out the tipsters. But it was tougher for him to comply with their demand for still images only, no audio or video recordings. Here, too, the receptionist invoked his own security and that of the priest, if on somewhat murkier grounds. The reporter and the photographer’s faces clouded, but they accepted.

Hitman Anders described in detail all the ways he had killed people over the years. But, according to the prevailing PR strategy, he said nothing about being under the influence of drink or pills; instead he was supposed to list the things that might make him fly off the handle, that might make him turn violent again.

‘I hate injustice,’ he told The Express’s reporter, because he remembered the priest talking about that.

‘I suppose pretty much everyone does,’ said the still-nervous reporter. ‘Is there any specific type of injustice you had in mind?’

Hitman Anders had gone through them with the priest, but his brain was at a standstill. Should he have had a breakfast beer to get himself into proper shape? Or had he already had one too many?

There was nothing he could do about the former, but the latter seemed unlikely. He snapped his fingers and got the receptionist to fetch him a fresh pilsner from the fridge. The hitman had it in his hand and open within fifteen seconds, and by the time half a minute had passed it was empty.

‘Now, where were we?’ said Hitman Anders, licking the beer foam off his lips.

‘We were talking about injustice,’ said the reporter, who had never before seen anyone down a bottle of beer so fast.

‘Oh, right, and how I hate it, right?’

‘Yes … but what kinds?’

During all of their practising, the priest had learned that the hitman’s sense of reason came and went of its own accord. Right now it was likely out for a stroll, all on its own.

And she was right about that. Hitman Anders could not for the life of him remember what it was he was supposed to hate. Plus, that last beer had really hit the spot. He was very close to just sitting there and loving the whole world instead. But, of course, he couldn’t say so. All he could do was improvise.

‘Yes, I hate … poverty. And terrible diseases. They always get the good people in a society.’

‘Do they?’

‘Yes, the good people get cancer and stuff. Not the bad people. I hate that. And I hate people who exploit ordinary folk.’

‘Who are you thinking of?’

Yes: who was Hitman Anders thinking of? What was he thinking? Why was it so terribly difficult for him to recall what he was supposed to say? Just take that part about killing. Was he supposed to claim that he didn’t kill people any more, or was it the other way around?

‘I don’t kill people any more,’ he heard himself saying. ‘Or maybe I do. Everyone on my hate-list should probably watch out.’

Hate-list? he asked himself. What hate-list? Oh, please, don’t let the reporter ask a follow-up question about …

‘Hate-list?’ said the reporter. ‘Who’s on it?’

Dammit! Hitman Anders’s brain was spinning fast and slow all at once. Have to gather my thoughts … What was it again? He was supposed to appear … insane and dangerous. What else?

The priest and the receptionist did not pray to any higher power for their hitman to find his way: they considered themselves to have far too poor a relationship with the power in question. They did, however, stand there hoping. Hoping that Hitman Anders would land on his feet somehow.

Over the shoulder of the Express’s reporter and through the window, Hitman Anders could make out the neon logo of the Swedish Property Agency on a building a hundred yards down and across the street. Next to it was a small suburban branch of Handelsbanken. He could hardly see it from where he sat, but he knew it was there, because how many times had he stood there smoking in the bus shelter outside, waiting for the bus that would take him to the nearest den of iniquity?

In the absence of sufficient order inside his head, Hitman Anders allowed himself to be inspired by what he saw before his eyes.

Estate agent, bank, bus stop, smoker …

He had never owned a rifle, or a revolver, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t shoot from the hip. ‘Who’s on my hate-list? Are you sure you want to know?’ he said, lowering his voice, speaking a little more slowly.

The reporter nodded, his expression grave.

‘I don’t like estate agents,’ said Hitman Anders. ‘Or bank people. People who smoke. Commuters …’

With that, he had included everything he’d seen and remembered across the street.

‘Commuters?’ the reporter said in surprise.

‘Yes – do you feel the same?’

‘No. I mean, how can you hate commuters?’

Hitman Anders seemed to settle into playing the role of himself, and he made the most of what he’d happened to say. He lowered his voice a bit more and spoke even more slowly: ‘Are you a commuter-lover?’

By now, the reporter from The Express was truly scared. He assured the man that he did not love commuters: he and his girlfriend both biked to and from work and, beyond that, he hadn’t given a lot of thought to what sort of attitude he ought to have towards commuters.

‘I don’t like cyclists either,’ said Hitman Anders. ‘But commuters are worse. And hospital workers. And gardeners.’

Hitman Anders was on a roll. The priest thought it best to break in before the reporter and his photographer realized he was messing with them, or that he had no idea what he was saying, or a little of both.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse us, but Hitman Anders, I mean Johan here, needs his afternoon rest, with one yellow and one orange pill. It’s important to make sure that nothing goes wrong later this evening.’

The interview hadn’t gone as planned, but with a little luck they could still make it work in their favour. The priest was just sorry that the most important part hadn’t been said, the part she had repeated twenty times to her hitman. The advertisement, so to speak.

And then a miracle happened. He remembered! The photographer was already sitting behind the wheel in the Express car and the reporter had one foot in the car, but Hitman Anders hailed them: ‘You know where to find me if you need a kneecap broken! I’m not expensive. But I’m good.’

The Express reporter’s eyes widened. He thanked him for the information, pulled his other leg into the car, rubbed his right hand across his uninjured kneecap, closed the door, and said to his photographer: ‘Let’s go.’

* * *

The Express’s posters the next day read:

Sweden’s most dangerous man?

HITMAN

ANDERS

In an exclusive interview:

‘I WANT

TO KILL AGAIN’

The quote was not an exact reproduction, but when people couldn’t express themselves in a manner that worked on a poster, the paper had no choice but to write what the interviewee had probably meant instead of what he or she had actually said. That’s called creative journalism.

In the four-page spread, the newspaper’s readers discovered what a horrid person Hitman Anders was. All the atrocities he had confessed to in the story but, above all, his potentially psychopathic tendencies: the way he hated everyone from estate agents to hospital workers to … commuters.

The hatred Hitman Anders harbours for large parts of humanity seems to know no bounds. In the end, it turns out that no one, absolutely no one, is safe. For Hitman Anders’s services are for sale. He offers to break a kneecap, any kneecap at all, on behalf of The Express’s reporter, for a reasonable fee.

Besides the main article about the meeting between the brave reporter and the hitman in question, the newspaper included a supplementary interview with a psychiatrist who devoted half of the discussion to emphasizing that he could speak only in general terms, and the other half to explaining that it was not possible to lock Hitman Anders up because, from a medical perspective, he was not documented to be a danger to himself or others. Certainly he had committed crimes but, from a legal perspective, he had atoned for them. It was not enough just to talk about the further atrocities one could imagine committing in the hypothetical future.

From the psychiatrist’s argument, the newspaper inferred that society’s hands were tied until Hitman Anders struck again. And it was probably just a matter of time.

By way of conclusion, there was an emotional column by one of the paper’s best-known faces. She began: ‘I am a mother. I am a commuter. And I am scared.’

After the attention from The Express, requests for interviews streamed in from all imaginable quarters of Scandinavia, and the rest of Europe. The receptionist accepted a handful of international papers (Bild Zeitung, Corriere della Sera, the Daily Telegraph, El Periódico and Le Monde) but nothing more. The questions were posed in English, Spanish or French, and went through the linguistically gifted priest, who didn’t bother to respond with what Hitman Anders had said but with what he ought to have said. Letting him loose in front of a TV camera or a journalist who understood what he was saying was out of the question. The trio would never be able to recreate the luck they had had with The Express. Instead, by allowing other Scandinavian media outlets to reproduce quotes from Le Monde, for example (formulated by the hitman, distorted and refined by the priest), the right material got out.

‘There certainly isn’t anything wrong with your talent for PR,’ said Johanna Kjellander to Per Persson.

‘It would never have worked without your gift for languages,’ Per Persson offered in return.

CHAPTER 8

The man who had now become Hitman Anders to a whole people and half a continent woke up at around eleven each morning. He would get dressed, in the event he had undressed at bedtime, and walk down the hallway for breakfast, which consisted of the receptionist’s cheese sandwiches with beer.

After that he would rest for a while before he started to feel true hunger around three in the afternoon. Then he would make his way to the local pub for Swedish home-cooking and more beer.

This was assuming it wasn’t a workday, and workdays had become more and more frequent since all the media attention. The business he ran with the receptionist and the priest was going as well as could be expected. There were jobs on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; Hitman Anders had no desire to work any more than that. In fact, he didn’t really have any desire to work as much as he did, especially since there ended up being so many more broken kneecaps than planned. Of course, that was what he’d accidentally offered in the newspaper, and it seemed that most of those who ordered sundry limb-maimings had imaginations too limited to come up with something of their own.

The hitman tried to arrange his assignments to take place immediately after the home-cooking but before he had got tanked up for the evening. With the taxi ride there and back, a job was often completed within about an hour. It was important to keep the balance of drunkenness steady. If he had too many beers before work, things would go awry. A few beers more, and he risked a mess of a more dramatic nature. Though not as dramatic as it would have been if he had added spirits and pills to the menu. He could tolerate the idea of eighteen additional months in prison. But not eighteen additional years.

The hours between breakfast at eleven and lunch at three were best in the event that the priest and the receptionist had something to tell their business partner. Around that time, Hitman Anders had recovered from the troublesome hangover, while the current day’s excesses had not yet taken hold.

The meetings might occur spontaneously, but they kept a regular appointment on Mondays at eleven thirty in the hotel’s small lobby, which happened to have a table with three chairs in one corner. Anyway, Hitman Anders would appear at the Monday meeting as long as he hadn’t passed out in some strange place in the city and therefore couldn’t make it.

The meetings all followed the same routine. The receptionist would serve a beer to Hitman Anders and a cup of coffee each to himself and the priest. Thereupon followed a conversation about newly scheduled orders, upcoming activities, financial development, and other such matters.

The only real problem with their business was that the hitman, despite all the good advice he had received, was seldom correct about which was left or right when it came to broken arms and legs. The priest tried new tips, such as: right was the side you used to shake hands. To this, however, the hitman responded that he wasn’t very used to shaking hands. He was apt to raise a glass if the atmosphere was friendly and find both of his hands busy at the same time if it wasn’t.

Then it occurred to the priest that they could write a big L on Hitman Anders’s left fist. Surely that would solve the problem. The hitman nodded in approval, but he thought that to be on the safe side they might as well follow up with an R on the other.

This idea turned out to be both brilliant and stupid: what was L for Hitman Anders, of course, was R for the person who had the great misfortune to be standing in front of him. So the plan didn’t work until the hitman’s left fist was misleadingly marked with an R and vice versa.

The receptionist was pleased to be able to say that their client network was broadening, that client complaints had nearly ceased since left and right fists switched places, and that they had received orders from Germany, France, Spain and England. Not Italy, however: they seemed capable of handling things on their own down there.

The question was whether they should expand their operations. Was it time for the company to enlist some new recruits? Might Hitman Anders know of a suitable candidate, someone who could break arms and legs but knew where to draw the line? Assuming the hitman himself planned to stand firm on his decision not to work more than one or two hours per day, three days a week.

Hitman Anders perceived a tone of criticism in those words and responded that it was possible he was not as interested in accumulating piles of money as the receptionist and priest were, and that he had the good sense to value meaningful free time. Working three days a week was plenty, and he absolutely did not want any rowdy youngster going around windmilling his arms and disgracing Hitman Anders’s good name while the hitman enjoyed time off.

And speaking of all those countries they had just rattled off, he had just one thing to say: not on your life! Hitman Anders was no xenophobe, that wasn’t the problem – he firmly believed in the equal worth of all people: he wanted to be able to say ‘hi’ and ‘good morning’ and behave politely in front of whomever he was about to beat to a pulp. After all, wasn’t that the very least a fellow human being could expect?

‘That’s called respect,’ Hitman Anders said sulkily. ‘But maybe you two have never heard of it.’

The receptionist made no comment on the hitman’s view of the amount of respect it took to exchange pleasantries with someone you were about to beat half to death. Instead he said acidly that he was aware that Hitman Anders was not amassing piles of money. After all, a few nights ago a jukebox had ended up flying through the window of the hitman’s favourite pub just because it happened to be playing the wrong music. ‘How much did that meaningful free time cost you? Twenty-five thousand? Thirty?’ Per Persson asked, feeling a degree of satisfaction in daring to pose the question.

Hitman Anders said that thirty was pretty close to the truth and that that had not been the most meaningful incident of his life. ‘But what kind of person puts money into a machine to listen to Julio Iglesias?’

CHAPTER 9

To Per Persson, it was an objective truth that he had been cheated by life. Since he didn’t believe in a higher power and since his grandfather was long dead, he had no one and nothing specific at whom or which to direct his frustration. So, early on, from behind his reception desk, he had decided to dislike the entire world, everything it stood for, and everything it contained – including its seven billion inhabitants.

He had no immediate reason to make an exception for Johanna Kjellander, the priest who had initiated their relationship by trying to cheat him. But there was something about her misery that reminded him of his own. And before their first day together was over, they had hastily broken bread (that is, the priest had eaten all of the receptionist’s sandwiches) and on top of that had had time to become partners in the torpedo industry.

They’d shared an affinity from day one, even if the receptionist had had a harder time seeing it than the priest did. Or maybe he’d just needed more time.

When they had been in business for close to a year, the receptionist and the priest had earned about seven hundred thousand kronor, while the hitman had made four times that. The receptionist and the priest had eaten and drunk well together now and then, yet just over half their earnings remained, neatly hidden in a pair of shoeboxes in the room behind the reception desk.

The rather squarely inclined Per Persson complemented the daring, creative Johanna Kjellander, and vice versa. She liked his aversion to his existence; she saw herself in it. And in the end he, a man who had never loved anyone, including himself, could not defend himself against the insight that another person on Mother Earth had realized that the rest of humanity was completely useless.

After a visit to Södermalm to celebrate the advance payment for contract number 100 – an extra-lucrative one, for a double leg-and-arm fracture, an unspecified number of cracked ribs, and a rearranged face – the duo returned to the hotel. The mood was such that Per Persson found himself asking whether Johanna remembered the time a number of months earlier when she’d suggested they round off the evening in his room.

The priest remembered her question and his negative response.

‘I don’t suppose you’d consider re-asking the question, here and now?’

Johanna Kjellander smiled and asked in return whether it would be possible to receive an advance ruling before doing so. After all, no woman wanted to be told, ‘No,’ twice in a row.

‘No,’ said Per Persson.

‘No what?’ said Johanna Kjellander.

‘No, you won’t get a “no” if you ask again.’

The summit on the mattress between two of the nation’s potentially most bitter people turned out to be a sheer delight. When it was over, the priest gave a short and, for the first time, sincere sermon on the themes of faith, hope and love, where Paul had considered love to be the greatest of them all.

‘He seems to have had the right idea,’ said the receptionist, who was perfectly giddy over the realization that it was possible to feel as he felt, whatever the feeling was.

‘Well,’ said the priest, drawing out the rest, ‘Paul uttered a lot of nonsense too. Like woman was created for man and shouldn’t speak unless spoken to, and that men shouldn’t lie with other men.’

The receptionist skipped the part about who had been created for whom but said he could only recall a single instance, two at the most, in which it would have been best for the priest to remain silent rather than speak. Regarding who should lie with whom, he preferred the female priest over their male hitman by a long shot, but he couldn’t see what Paul had to do with it.

‘For my part, I’d rather sleep with a bike rack than with Hitman Anders,’ said the priest. ‘But otherwise I’m in complete agreement with you.’

When the receptionist wondered what the Bible had to say about a sexual relationship between a woman and a bike rack, the priest reminded him that bicycles hadn’t been invented in Paul’s time. Neither, probably, had the bike rack.

And no one had anything more to add to that. Instead they began another summit that was just as non-hateful as the one they’d just archived.

* * *

For a while, everything seemed to be heading in the right direction. The priest and the receptionist joyfully and contentedly shared their genuine dislike of the world, including the entirety of the Earth’s population. The burden was now only half as great, since each of them could take on three and a half billion people rather than seven billion alone. Plus (of course) a considerable number of individuals who no longer existed. Among them: the receptionist’s grandfather, the priest’s entire family tree, and – not least! – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and everyone else in the book that had persecuted (and continued to persecute) Johanna Kjellander.

While the currently newly in-love couple had earned their seven hundred thousand kronor, Hitman Anders had, according to the contract, brought in 2.8 million. But since he could keep a whole pub going for half the night all by himself, he never had more than a few thousand-krona notes in savings. He burned through what came in at approximately the same rate it came in. If his money ever happened to grow into a pile of cash worthy of the name, it tended to be an extra-lively time at the pub, such as when the jukebox had gone through the window.

‘Couldn’t you just have pulled the plug out of the wall?’ the pub owner said, a bit cautiously, to his ashamed regular the next day.

‘Yes,’ Hitman Anders admitted. ‘That would have been a reasonable alternative.’

This sort of incident actually suited the receptionist and the priest quite well, because as long as Hitman Anders didn’t do what they did – that is, fill boxes with money – he would need to dispense justice on behalf of those who could afford to have justice dispensed according to their own definition of the concept.

What the receptionist and the priest didn’t know was that, during the past year, Hitman Anders had been experiencing an increasing sense that life was hopeless. Incidentally, he was barely aware of it. He had spent his whole life reasoning with other people via his fists. It wasn’t easy to talk to oneself in the same fashion. So he sought out alcohol earlier in the day and with greater emphasis than before.

It had helped. But it took constant replenishing. And his situation was not improved by the way the priest and the receptionist had started walking around side by side, smiling happily. What the hell was so damn funny? That it was only a matter of time before he ended up back where he belonged?

Perhaps it was just as well to put himself out of his misery, hasten the process, off the first prize idiot he saw, and move into the slammer for another twenty or thirty years – the exact fate he had resolved to avoid. One advantage would be that the priest and the receptionist would probably have grinned their last grins before he got out again. New love was seldom as new and loving two decades later.

One morning, in an unfamiliar and awkward attempt to gain insight, the hitman asked himself what it was all about. What, for example, had the jukebox incident really been about?

Of course he could have pulled the plug. And then Julio Iglesias would have gone silent while his jukebox fans went on a rampage. Four men and four women around a table: in the best case it would have been enough to slug the mouthiest of the men; in the worst case, he would have had to bring down all eight. With even a tiny amount of bad luck, one wouldn’t have got up again, and there would have been those twenty additional years in prison just waiting for him, plus or minus ten.

A more practical solution might have been to allow the eight fools to choose the music they liked. Unless it was an indisputable truth that a line had to be drawn at Julio Iglesias.

For Hitman Anders, lifting the jukebox and heaving it out of the window, thus bringing the evening to an end for him and everyone else, had allowed his destructive self to take control of his extremely destructive self. It had worked. It had been expensive, but – crucially – it had allowed him to wake up in his own bed, rather than in a jail cell awaiting transport to somewhere more permanent.

The jukebox had saved his life. Or he had saved it himself, using the jukebox as a weapon. Did this mean that the road back to prison was not as inevitable as his inner voice had started harping on about? What if there was life beyond violence, and, for that matter, life with no jukeboxes flying through the air?

In which case – how could he find it, and where would it lead?

He thought. And opened his first beer of the day. And soon the second. And he forgot what he’d just been thinking, but the knot in his stomach was gone, and cheers to that!

Beer was the water of life. The third in succession was almost always the most delicious.

Whoopty-ding!

He thought.

CHAPTER 10

Then came the day when it was time for the group to make good on their debt to the count. The victim this time was a customer who had test-driven a Lexus RX 450h over the weekend and managed to get it stolen.

So he said.

In reality, he had hidden it in Dalarna, at the home of his sister who, instead of thinking carefully, took a photograph of herself behind the wheel and posted it to Facebook. Since everyone on the site knows someone who knows someone who knows someone, it didn’t take the count many hours to learn the truth. The deceitful customer didn’t even have time to work out that he’d been exposed before his face had been ruined and every more or less accessible tooth knocked out. Thanks to the age of the car and its intended price tag (it was new and expensive), one kneecap and one shin were goners as well.

It was one routine job among many but, according to the agreement made nineteen months earlier, the price was to include two broken arms for the guy who had played blackjack too poorly for his own good and half got away with it, thanks to a baby.

Hitman Anders carried out this job, too, with precision (both arms were always easier than just one, since he didn’t have to pick the correct one). And that would probably have been the end of it, had it not occurred to him to consider the kind thing the priest had said the first time they met. It was something about how nice it had been for Hitman Anders to respect a small child.

The priest had referred to the Bible, of all things. What if there was more of the same inside that book? After all, it was fatter than the devil. Stories that could make him … feel good? Become someone different? Because there was something that came and went inside his head, something he had thus far done his best to drink away.

He would talk to the priest the very next day, and she could tell him. The next day. First the pub. It was already four thirty in the afternoon.

Unless …

What if he were to drop in at the hotel after all and ask the priest to explain this and that about this and that first, then drink away the eternal knot in his stomach? He wouldn’t have to say much while she talked: he could just listen. And a person could always drink at the same time.

* * *

‘Listen, priest, I need to talk to you.’

‘Do you need to borrow some money?’

‘Nope.’

‘Is the beer in the refrigerator gone?’

‘Nope. I’ve just checked.’

‘Then what do you want?’

‘To talk, I just said.’

‘About what?’

‘About how God and Jesus and the Bible and all that stuff work.’

‘Huh?’ said the priest. Who perhaps, even then, should have suspected that a terrible mess was in the offing.

The priest and the hitman’s first theological discussion began with Hitman Anders saying he understood that she knew pretty much everything about religion. Maybe it would be best if she started from the beginning …

‘From the beginning? Oh, well, they say that in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth, and that it happened about six thousand years ago, but there are some people who think that—’

‘No, dammit, not that beginning. How did it begin for you?’

The priest was surprised and delighted instead of being on her guard. She and the receptionist had been in agreement for some time that they would dislike everyone and everything together, rather than each on their own. But they had never truly shared their life stories with one another, not beyond the superficial facts. When the occasion arose, they preferred to devote their time to the delightful things two people can do rather than to bitterness and its causes.

At the same time – she was learning now – Hitman Anders had been ruminating on his own. This was, of course, a potential catastrophe, because if he were to start reading books about turning the other cheek when his job was rather the opposite, breaking jaws and noses on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, well, where would that leave their business plan?

Perhaps a casual onlooker might be of the opinion that the priest ought to have grasped this from the start. And that she ought to have warned the receptionist. But, as it happened, there was no casual onlooker present, and the priest was only human (as well as a pretty dubious intermediary between man and God). If someone wanted to hear about her life, even if that someone was a half-deranged assailant and murderer, she was happy to oblige. And that was that.

So she invited Hitman Anders to hear the story of her life, the story no one but her pillow had ever heard before. She was aware that he would offer the same intellectual response as the pillow from IKEA, but this was overshadowed by the fact that someone wanted to listen to her.

‘Well, in the beginning my father created Hell on Earth,’ the priest began.

She had been forced into the trade by her father, who, naturally, opposed female priests. Not because female priests went against God’s will, that was up for debate, but because women belonged in the kitchen and also, from time to time, at the request of their husbands, in the bedroom.

What was Gustav Kjellander to do? The priesthood had been passed down from father to son in the Kjellander family since the late 1600s. It had nothing to do with belief or a calling. It was about upholding tradition, a position. That was why his daughter’s argument about not believing in God didn’t hold much sway. She would become a priest, according to her father, or he would personally see to it that she was damned.

For several years now, Johanna Kjellander had wondered how it could be that she had done as he’d said. She still didn’t know, but her dad had had her under his thumb as long as she could remember. Her earliest memory was of her father saying he was going to kill her rabbit. If she didn’t go to bed on time, if she didn’t clear up after herself, if she didn’t get the right grades at school, her rabbit would be put to death out of mercy because a rabbit needed a responsible owner, one who led by good example, not someone like her.

And mealtimes: the way Dad would reach slowly across the table, grab her plate, stand up, walk to the bin and throw her dinner into it, plate and all. Because she had said something wrong at the dinner table. Heard the wrong words. Given the wrong answer. Done the wrong thing. Or just was wrong.

Now Johanna Kjellander wondered how many plates it had been over the years. Fifty?

Hitman Anders listened to her with great concentration, because you never knew when there might be something worth taking in. The story about her dad didn’t count: it had been clear to the hitman from the start that the old man needed a good thrashing, and that would probably take care of that. Or he could have a second thrashing, if necessary.

In the end, Hitman Anders was forced to say so, in order to put a stop to the priest’s complaints. After an eternity she had got no further than her seventeenth birthday, when her dad had spat at her and said, ‘O God, how much must you hate me to give me a daughter, to give me this daughter. You have truly punished me, Lord.’ Her dad didn’t believe in God any more than she did, but he did believe in tormenting others with God’s help.

‘Please, priest, can I have the old man’s address so I can go over there with the baseball bat and preach some manners to him? Or a lot of manners, it sounds like. Should we say both right and left? Arms or legs, that’s up to you.’

‘Thank you for the offer,’ said the priest, ‘but it comes too late. Dad died almost two years ago, on the fourth Sunday after Trinity. When I got the news, I was up in the pulpit giving a sermon on forgiveness and not judging. But it turned out a bit different. I stood there and thanked the devil for taking my father home. It was not well received, you might say. I don’t remember everything but I’m pretty sure I called my dad a word that relates to the female genitals …’

‘Cunt?’

‘We don’t need to get into the details, but they interrupted me, pulled me down from the pulpit, and showed me the exit. Although I already knew where it was, of course.’

Hitman Anders really wanted to know which dirty word it had been, but he had to content himself with learning that the priest’s choice had unleashed a sensational moment in which two of the congregation’s most devoted lambs had thrown their hymnals at her.

‘Then it must have been …’

‘Now, now!’ said the priest, and continued her story. ‘I took my leave and wandered around until the next Sunday, and that was when I found our mutual friend Per Persson on a park bench. And then I met you. And one thing led to the next and now we’re sitting here, you and I.’

‘Yes, we are,’ said Hitman Anders. ‘Now can we get back to what the Bible says about stuff so that this conversation goes somewhere?’

‘But you were the one who wanted … you wanted me to tell you about my—’

‘Yeah, yeah, but not a whole novel.’

CHAPTER 11

Johanna Kjellander’s need to share with someone – anyone at all! – the essential facts about her upbringing caused her to remind Hitman Anders that he had come to her and must behave accordingly. In short, he was to zip his lips until she had finished.

Hitman Anders was not a person one could boss around, but since she put a beer out for him while she said this, he let her have her way. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘I told you to be quiet.’

Johanna had been abused since the very first day of her life in every way except physically. She weighed seven pounds and five ounces when her father had touched his daughter for the first and last time. He had lifted her up, held her slightly more firmly than was necessary, brought her face to his, and hissed into her ear: ‘What are you doing here? I don’t want you. Do you hear me? I don’t want you.’

‘How could you, Gustav?’ said Johanna’s exhausted mother.

‘I am the one who decides what I can and cannot do, do you hear me? You will never contradict me again,’ said Gustav Kjellander to his wife, handing back the baby.

His wife heard and obeyed. During the next sixteen years, she never once contradicted her husband. Instead, when she could no longer stand herself, she walked straight into the sea.

Gustav was enraged when his vanished wife’s body washed up on the shore two days later. As previously mentioned, he was never violent, but Johanna saw in his face that he could have killed her mother there and then if she hadn’t already been dead.

‘I need to take a shit soon,’ Hitman Anders interrupted her. ‘Is there much left?’

‘I already told you to zip it while I’m talking,’ said the priest. ‘Do the same with your behind, if you must, because you’re not going anywhere until I’ve finished.’

Hitman Anders had never seen her so decisive. And his visit to the bathroom wasn’t that urgent – he was just bored. He sighed and let her continue.

Three years after her mother’s death, it was time for Johanna to leave home for higher studies. Her father made sure to keep a firm grip on her, just as he’d always done, with letters and phone calls.

Priesthood is not the sort of status you can attain in a day. Johanna had to collect a substantial number of academic points in theology, exegesis, hermeneutics, religious pedagogy and other subjects just to be accepted into the final semester at the Church of Sweden’s pastoral institute in Uppsala.

The closer the daughter got to complying with her father’s demands, the more frustrated her father became about the state of things. Johanna was and remained a woman: in essence she was unworthy to carry on the family tradition. Gustav Kjellander felt trapped between the importance of upholding a centuries-old tradition on the one hand and betraying his forefathers – because Johanna was a daughter rather than a son – on the other. He pitied himself, hating God and his daughter in equal measure, just as he knew that God (if he existed) hated him, and his daughter would, too, if she dared.

The only rebellion Johanna was capable of was hardly worth the name. She devoted all her intellectual power to despising God, to not believing in Jesus, and to seeing right through all the stories in the Bible. By demeaning the pure, evangelical Protestant faith, she demeaned her father. And yet, by not telling anyone else that she was an active non-believer, she succeeded in being ordained one rainy June day. It wasn’t just rainy. It was also very windy, on the verge of a storm. It was only thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit – in June! Hadn’t there even been a little hail?

Johanna scoffed inwardly. If the weather on her ordination day was God’s way of protesting at her career choice, was that the best he could do?

Once the rain and hail had passed, she packed her bags and returned home to Sörmland. First to a congregation at arm’s length from her father and overseen by the same. Four years later, as planned, she took over the Kjellander family congregation as parish priest. Her dad retired, probably with the intention of running the show anyway, but he got stomach cancer and – just think! – it turned out he could be defeated after all! What God had spent a whole life failing to do (if he’d even tried), the cancer had taken care of in three months. Thereupon, spontaneously and straight from the pulpit, his daughter bade him welcome to Hell. When she used that word for the female sex organ, applying it to the man who had personified the congregation for thirty-three years, it was the nail in the coffin.

‘Can’t you just say once and for all whether or not it was “cunt”?’ said Hitman Anders.

The priest looked at him with a face that said, ‘Did you not receive express orders to keep your mouth shut?’

The congregation’s experiment with a woman as a parish priest was over. Her dad was dead; the daughter was free. And unemployed. And, after a week on the streets, dirty and hungry.

But four ham sandwiches and a bottle of raspberry cordial later, she had both a new home and a new job. It paid well from the start, and even after two years the money just kept improving. And, of course, she had also found love! If only the hitman sitting across from her didn’t insist that they talk about the Bible …

‘Right, the Bible,’ said Hitman Anders. ‘If you’re done blathering, maybe we could get to the point.’

The priest took offence at the hitman’s lack of interest in her story and her fate in life. And at the fact that he’d spoken at all, in violation of the rule currently in effect.

‘Would you like another beer?’ she asked.

‘Yes, please! Finally!’

‘Well, you can’t have one.’

CHAPTER 12

One of the central tenets of newly minted theology graduate Johanna Kjellander’s active non-belief had been that the four gospels were unquestionably written long after Jesus’s death. If there was a man who could walk on water, make food out of nothing, help the lame to walk, drive demons from man into pig, and even get up and walk around after having been dead for three days – if there was a man like that (or a woman, for that matter), why would it take one, two or more generations before someone bothered to write down all the things that that man had done?

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