LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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