LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

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

Скачать книгу