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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 (#ua20fc219-b733-54d2-8ed0-ba3d24cec6ce)
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 (#ua20fc219-b733-54d2-8ed0-ba3d24cec6ce)
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 (#ua20fc219-b733-54d2-8ed0-ba3d24cec6ce)
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?’
