Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All - Jonas Jonasson

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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.’

      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?

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