The priest refrained from digging deeper into masculine wisdom and foolishness. Instead, she asked her receptionist to continue his theme of good versus bad.
Right. It was also good that all the fingerprints, personal effects and anything else that might have identified the receptionist and the priest had also gone up in smoke. The priest and the receptionist were more incognito than ever.
More or less like Hitman Anders—only the exact opposite. The newspapers, with Expressen in the lead, were repeating the story of the dangerous man and piling on very good pictures of him. There was no chance that the hitman would be allowed to leave the camper with anything less than a blanket over his head. And there was no chance that he would be allowed to leave the camper with a blanket over his head, because just think of the attention it would attract. In short, Hitman Anders was not allowed to leave the camper.
* * *
The next day, the newspapers offered a second helping in the form of further information about Sweden’s most exciting person of the moment. The rumors of his crimes had spread so far that at least a handful of the diaspora of small-time criminals called up a contact at the newspaper to earn a thousand kronor in tip money: “Yeah, listen, that bastard went and took advance payment to off people, and then he took off with the dough but didn’t do the jobs. Easy money, heh heh, but how much longer d’you think he’ll live now?”
CHAPTER 19
It would be an exaggeration to call it “roving,” but the camper headed south without overthinking its destination. Away from Greater Stockholm was one of the basic ideas. Keeping in motion was another. After two days they were in the Småland city of Växjö, heading for the more central parts of town in the hope of finding a hamburger bar for an early lunch.
Blazing from the newspaper billboards outside kiosks and stores, headlines warned that the dangerous and likely desperate hitman might be in the vicinity. By plastering a whole country with billboards of this sort, it stood to reason that the premise held true somewhere, for example in Växjö.
The priest and the receptionist didn’t have a very solid image of what their common future would be like. But the half-finished one did not include living in a smallish camper van with a moody, recently saved, alcoholic hitman who was being pursued by a large percentage of the nation’s criminal element.
The papers and front pages all over Växjö, full of giant photographs of an angrily glowering Hitman Anders, prompted the priest to mumble that it would be a while before she and the receptionist would get the chance to do some private cuddling.
“Aw,” said Hitman Anders. “Cuddle away. I can cover my ears.”
“And your eyes,” said the priest.
“My eyes too? Can’t I . . .”
At that moment, the camper passed a sight that pushed Hitman Anders’s thoughts in a different direction. He ordered the receptionist to turn around, because there was . . .
“A restaurant?” asked the receptionist.
“No, screw that. Turn around! Or go around the block—just make it snappy!” said Hitman Anders.
The receptionist shrugged and did as he was told. Soon the hitman’s suspicions were confirmed—he had seen a thrift shop owned by the Red Cross. It was a quarter past ten in the morning, and Hitman Anders was in his most loving mood, having been encouraged by the romantic conversation that had just taken place.
“Five million belongs to me, right? One of you go into that store and give them five hundred thousand kronor in Jesus’s name.”
“Are you nuts?” said the priest, although she believed she knew the answer.
“For a rich man to give money to a poor man—is that nuts? And this coming from a priest? You’re the one who suggested a few days ago at the hotel that my money could go to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army if I so desired.”
The priest responded that she had been trying to survive one situation at the time, and that now she was trying to survive a different one. And that meant the outcomes might vary. Hers and the receptionist’s unknown identities must be protected at all costs.
“Surely you realize we can’t just walk in and say, ‘Here, have some money.’ They might have security cameras, or someone might take a picture on their phone, or they might call the police, who would find us and the camper. I can give you any number of reasons if you just let me have a few seconds to—”
That was as far as the priest got. Hitman Anders opened the yellow suitcase, grabbed two large piles of money, closed the suitcase, opened the side door of the camper, and stepped out.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
With a few long strides, he was inside the store. The receptionist and the priest thought they could see a tumult through the window, but it was hard to tell . . . Was someone putting their hands up? Then there was an uproar that could be heard all the way out on the street, something smashing to pieces . . .
Within thirty seconds, the door opened again and out came Hitman Anders, but no one else. He leaped nimbly, for his age, into the camper, shut the door, and suggested the receptionist make a getaway, preferably a quick one.
Per Persson alternated between cursing and turning left, turning right, driving straight through a roundabout, driving straight through another roundabout, driving straight through yet another roundabout (that’s what it looks like in Växjö), taking the second right out of a fourth and fifth roundabout, and driving straight and for a long time out of the city, followed by a left turn onto a forest road, another left, then yet another left.
There he stopped, in a clearing in an apparently deserted Småland forest. Judging from the activity in the rear-view mirror during the journey, no one had followed them. But that didn’t mean the receptionist wasn’t angry. “Shall we take a vote of how fucking stupid that was, on a scale between one and ten?” he asked.
“How much money was in those bundles?” asked the priest.
“I don’t know,” said Hitman Anders. “But I trust that Jesus picked up the right amount for me.”
“Jesus?” said the receptionist, still upset. “If he can turn water into wine, surely he can conjure up money without having to steal it from us. You tell him I said—”
“There, there,” said the priest. “Everything seems fine. But I do agree that the world’s almost unparalleledly stupid former hitman could have acted differently from start to finish. Now tell us what happened in the store.”
“Unparalleledly?” said Hitman Anders.
He didn’t like it when he didn’t understand something, but he let it go in favor of the new—to him—information that Jesus had made wine out of water. Will I ever get that far in my own faith? he wondered.
CHAPTER 20
After the ordeal at the Red Cross shop, the only option was to drive a left-hand circuit around Lake Helga and continue south without coming too close to the same town again. Their early lunch ended up consisting of gas-station hot dogs and instant mashed potatoes. After lunch, there was no trouble until they reached the outskirts of Hässleholm in northern Skåne. There, Hitman Anders signaled a stop at Systembolaget, the state-controlled liquor outlet, as he was beginning to suffer withdrawal from the wine that maintained contact between himself and Jesus. He had also failed thus far to transform the bottle of spring water he had found in the vehicle into anything potable. But practice made perfect, as the saying went.
The priest, who had taken over driving duties, was not happy with the hitman’s demands. She would have preferred to put more distance between them and the debacle in Växjö before taking on another city center, but she did as he said, since one of the few things worse than Hitman Anders was a sober Hitman Anders.
The receptionist made no protest either, for approximately the same reasons. The hitman was assigned the task of hiding in the very back of the little camper (where, for reasons unknown, he had been chatting with a bottle of water for some time), while the receptionist undertook a short stroll into the shopping center that housed this particular liquor o
utlet. And a short stroll it was indeed, for the priest had been lucky enough to get the best parking spot, right outside.
“I’ll be right back,” said the receptionist, “and, you there, don’t leave the camper! What kind of wine do you want, by the way?”
“Anything, as long as it’s red and has a bit of a kick. Jesus and I aren’t too picky. We don’t like to waste money on communion if we don’t have to. It’s better to think of those who—”
“Yeah, yeah,” the receptionist said, and walked away.
Not much time had passed since Hitman Anders had learned from the priest that the ways of the Lord were unfathomable. Now he could see, through the curtain that covered the rear side window of the camper, how true that was. For who did he see, not five yards away, but a Salvationist, strategically placed outside the much-frequented Systembolaget. She stood there with a collection box in her hand, scraping together an occasional few kronor.
The priest, sitting behind the wheel, her thoughts elsewhere, did not foresee the danger. Hitman Anders silently gathered a pile of money of a similar size to last time, placed it in the plastic bag from the gas station, and opened the door quietly so he didn’t alert her. Then he waved his hands until the Salvationist noticed him, without, as luck would have it, recognizing the most dangerous man in the country. She took the necessary steps up to the camper once she realized that she was the target of this man and his sign language. When she was right next to him, Hitman Anders whispered to her through the half-open door, thanking the Salvationist for her work in the service of the Lord. And then he handed her the bag of money.
Hitman Anders thought the Salvationist looked worn out. She could probably use a word of comfort while he was at it.
“Rest in peace,” he said kindly, but a bit too loudly, then closed the door.
Rest in peace? The priest behind the wheel had time only to be shocked by what she saw, shocked again by the image of an elderly Salvationist staggering backwards after she, in turn, saw what she had just received as a gift, and shocked a third time as the Salvationist in question bumped into the receptionist with two bags of communion wine in his hands.
The bottles survived. The receptionist apologized to the Salvationist. But what was the matter? Was the lady feeling unwell?
Then he heard the priest’s voice from the front side window of the camper. “Forget the old bag! Get in the van right now! The idiot’s done it again!”
CHAPTER 21
Exactly three hundred and ten miles northeast of Hässleholm, a businessman in car sales was having a discussion with his girlfriend. Both of them—like the majority of the nation—had had the chance to read the articles about the hitman who had cheated the underworld out of money.
The car salesman and his lawfully unwedded were among those cheated. And possibly among the least forgiving. Partly because forgiving was not in their nature, and partly because, in addition to all the money they’d lost, they’d been robbed of a camper.
“What do you say we cut him up into pieces, a little at a time, starting from the bottom and working our way up?” said the man who, in criminal circles, was called the count.
“You mean we’ll, like, carve him up, just slowly enough, while he’s still alive?” said his countess.
“More or less.”
“Sounds good. As long I can do some of the carving.”
“Of course, my darling,” said the count. “All we have to do is find him.”
PART 2
Another Unusual Business Strategy
CHAPTER 22
After the incidents with the Red Cross and the Salvationist, the priest drove northwards again. After Växjö and Hässleholm, Malmö was the next logical landing point for anyone who might be looking for them. For this reason, the priest, the receptionist, and the hitman were on their way in the opposite direction.
Hitman Anders was snoring on a mattress on top of the two suitcases at the very back of the vehicle when the priest turned off at a rest stop by a lake somewhere around the border between Halland and Västergötland. She stopped, turned off the engine, and pointed at a grill site down by the water.
“Meeting,” she said quietly, so as not to wake Hitman Anders.
The receptionist nodded. He and the priest walked down to the lake and each sat on a rock by the grill site. Both felt that this might have been a pleasant moment if only everything weren’t so unpleasant.
“I hereby declare this meeting open,” said the priest, still quietly, so that the newly saved hitman in the camper definitely wouldn’t hear her.
“Then I declare it duly announced,” the receptionist whispered back. “And I regret that not everyone obeyed the summons. What do we have on the agenda?”
“There’s only one issue,” said the priest. “How will we get rid of that sleeping nuisance in the camper, without losing our own lives in the process? And preferably while our money continues to belong solely to us. Not to Hitman Anders. Or to the Salvation Army. Or to Save the Children. Or to whomever or whatever we might encounter moving forward.”
The first idea that seemed like it might take hold was to hire a contract killer and assign him or her the task of doing away with their own version of the same. The problem was that there were a few too many people in those circles who might find out that they had just been cheated by the priest and the receptionist in Hitman Anders’s name.
No, it was too risky to get a murderer to murder their murderer. Not to mention verging on immoral. Instead, the priest thought of the simplest possible solution. What would happen if they just drove off as soon as Hitman Anders had left the vehicle to take a leak on some tree or another?
“Well,” said the receptionist. “What would happen is probably . . . that we would be rid of him?”
“And we would still have all our money,” the priest added.
It was as simple as that! Why, they should have thought of this back at the Växjö Red Cross. “Be right back!” Hitman Anders had said as he exited the camper. The priest and the receptionist had had an entire thirty seconds to gather their thoughts, come to the proper conclusions—and drive away.
An entire thirty seconds! they realized, nine hours later.
The meeting was over. The decision was unanimous: they would not be too hasty; they would wait and see what happened. Lie low for three days, take in what the media was reporting about the incidents in Växjö and Hässleholm, and gather details about how badly Hitman Anders had managed to frighten the nation, whether their identities remained protected, and how much effort was being put into pursuing them.
And after that: take action, using the knowledge they had gained as a foundation. All with the clear goal of separating themselves and their suitcases from the man who was currently snoring in the camper.
They had parked in such a way that it was not visible from the road. Provisions could be obtained at a gas station a mile away. The receptionist offered to walk there and back while the priest guarded Hitman Anders; her primary task was to prevent him from darting into the woods to give away a million or two if someone happened by.
CHAPTER 23
The two financial gifts in Växjö and Hässleholm were initially treated as criminal acts, high-priority ones at that, given that they had been committed by a person who was said to be the most dangerous man in Sweden: 475,000 kronor was seized from the Red Cross in Växjö, and 560,000 from the Salvation Army in Hässleholm. The police in the two southern Swedish towns were cooperating with each other.
The establishment in Växjö was the type of store where people donate things, others purchase them, and the profits are sent to one of the world’s most miserable corners. On the day in question, there were two employees and just as many customers in the shop when the door opened and the nationally famous so-called Hitman Anders stepped in with a threatening expression. At least, his expression was considered threatening by at least one of the two customers, who screamed and ran smack into a shelf full of porcelain. The two employees
threw their hands into the air to signal their surrender and their preference to stay alive, while the remaining customer, one long-since-retired Lieutenant Henriksson from the eighth company of the former Kronoberg Regiment, armed himself with a broom that cost forty-nine kronor.
Hitman Anders began by wishing “God’s peace upon this house,” while his sudden presence caused the exact opposite. Then he placed a large stack of bills on the counter before the two employees, whose hands were still in the air, and said he wished they would use their arms, and more specifically their four hands, to accept and attend to this money in Jesus’s name. By way of conclusion, he wished them a pleasant day and left as suddenly as he had arrived. He might have said, “Hosanna,” as he walked out the door, but the employees were not in agreement about that; one was sure that it had been a sneeze instead. After that he jumped into a white van or a similar vehicle, but only the second of the two employees thought he had seen it happen. The rest of those present were looking at the woman under the pile of broken porcelain. She had started to crawl out, begging “Don’t kill me, don’t kill me . . .” of the man who, at that point, was no longer on the premises.
The incident in Växjö was over so fast that no one could testify to the presence of any camper van. All four people in the store, however, had recognized Hitman Anders. Lieutenant Henriksson assured anyone who would listen that he would have attacked the assailant if necessary, but the party in question had likely suspected that and beaten a hasty retreat without completing his mission, except for the part about the money he’d left behind.
The other customer, the woman who’d ended up under a shelf of porcelain, could not be questioned by the police or the media. As far as she was concerned, she had survived an attempted homicide by Sweden’s foremost mass murderer. Currently in hospital, her whole body trembling, she did manage to say, “Catch that monster!” to the reporter from the Småland Post, who then found himself lost and wandering the ward, before being gently turned away by the charge nurse.