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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.’