Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All (22 page)

T
he priest and the receptionist had 6.9 million kronor in cash in a yellow suitcase (freshly counted). They also had an empty red one; it was available to be filled with their belongings.

Beyond that, they had a pastor who, thanks to various and sundry circumstances, had lost all his commercial value and from whom they ought, therefore, to part. In some sense, one could say that they were back in the vicinity of Chapter 16 of this story. Back then it was all about closing a hotel and vanishing with two suitcases full of money. And shaking off Hitman Anders. This time it was a church that was about to close, with the same Hitman Anders to shake off. They just had to do a slightly better job of it this time.

Just how they would accomplish this, they didn't know, but they would be able to figure it out in peace and quiet, since the pastor had no idea how screwed up everything was.

“Seven visitors last Saturday,” said the receptionist. “I'm guessing there'll be between four and five this week.”

“What I'll miss most are the Bible quotes in the praise of wine,” said the priest. “We have to hand it to Pastor Anders, he worked the crowd in the pews. We didn't even have time to make it to my absolute favorite before it was all over.”

“Your favorite?”

“‘I have become like a drunkard, like one overcome by wine, because of the Lord, and because of his holy words.'”

“Wow. Who said that?”

“Isaiah. He liked to hit the bottle. Doesn't it sound nice? God speaks, and anyone who listens gets a free buzz to boot.”

She said these words in a rather disrespectful tone. This caused the receptionist to imagine that it would probably take her another hundred years to forgive the Lord for allowing family tradition to place her in his service against her will. With a minimal amount of effort on God's part, he could have given her failing grades in college by fiddling with her impeccable exam papers. Alternatively, if that was too much trouble, he could have made sure that she was never accepted for the final semester at the Pastoral Institute. After all, without that there would never have been any priesting for the priest, no matter how many plates her father the parish priest broke when he was in a rage.

Though, of course, you could turn this on its head, just like anything else. Perhaps her dad would have started throwing the plates at his daughter instead, which meant that God had been saving her life by humoring her father. In which case one might wonder to what extent God was currently regretting his actions.

The receptionist had long been aware of his own shortcomings when it came to theological musings. He felt more at home with solid figures, like 6.9 million kronor, two blown-up gangsters, one slightly infelicitously, but on the whole felicitously, shot-to-death churchwarden and, previously, all those fractured arms and legs with occasional faces thrown in. What he and the priest ought to hope above anything else, the receptionist thought, was that Heaven didn't exist. Otherwise the two of them would find themselves in deep shit.

“Hello and good morning!” Hitman Anders sailed into the sacristy in what bordered on a stupidly good mood. “I have a couple of alcohol-free beginnings to the week's sermon that I want to test out
on the priest, now that everything has turned out as it has. Just have to pee first!”

He vanished as quickly as he'd come, out through the double doors Jerry the Knife had installed as an extra escape route. Not because he was on the run, but to do his business on God's green earth.

Neither the priest nor the receptionist had had time to comment upon the hitman's appearance and disappearance before they heard another voice, this time from the doorstep of the sacristy.

“Good day,” said a little man in a suit. “My name is Olof Klarinder. I am from the Tax Authority and I would like to go through your accounts, if you don't mind.”

In Tax Authority language, this meant that Olof Klarinder intended to go through the accounts whether the potential delinquent minded or not.

The receptionist and the priest looked at the man. Neither of them knew how they should respond but, as always, the priest was the quickest to improvise. “I'm sure that will be fine,” she said. “But you've shown up a bit abruptly, Mr. Klarinder. Pastor Anders isn't here today, and we are merely his humble servants. What would you say to coming back tomorrow at ten o'clock and I will inform the pastor that he should be here? With all his binders, of course. Will that be okay?”

The woman in the clerical collar had spoken with authority and in such an innocent voice that it crossed Olof Klarinder's mind that perhaps there were no tax-related inconsistencies in this congregation, after all. The disadvantage of anonymous tips was that they often had a basis in acrimony rather than truth.

That there were binders to page through was good news. Nothing was more satisfying to Olof Klarinder than paging through a binder. “Well, the whole point of this sort of visit is that it's meant to happen unannounced,” he said. “At the same time, it is not the aim of the Authority to be rigidly inflexible. Ten o'clock tomorrow will do, given that the pastor responsible for the finances is present at that time, with his . . . Did you say binders?”

Civil servant Klarinder had barely left before Hitman Anders came lumbering back from the other direction, still fumbling with his fly. “You two look weird,” he said. “Did something happen?”

“No,” the priest hastened to say. “Nothing. Nothing at all. How was peeing?”

* * *

Time for a meeting with the only bodyguard who had not yet been dismissed: Jerry the Knife. And without the pastor.

Jerry was the man who had, with advance notice of mere days, arranged a weekly delivery of Moldovan red wine in boxes for hardly any money at all. He had contacts, whereas the priest had had a sudden idea. The idea in question was no more moral than others she had entertained during recent years, or in all her adult life, depending on how you looked at it. But it was still an idea.

“Rohypnol,” she said to Jerry the Knife. “Or something along those lines. How long would it take you to get your hands on some?”

“Is it urgent?” said Jerry the Knife.

“You might say so,” said the priest.

“What is this all about?” said the receptionist, who in the rush had not been properly informed of the plan.

“Since Rohypnol is no longer sold in Sweden, I'm afraid I need some time.”

“How much?” said the priest.

“What is this all about?” the receptionist said again.

“Three hours,” said Jerry the Knife. “Two and a half if traffic isn't too bad.”

“
What is this all about
?”

T
he receptionist was soon looped into the plan, and after a certain amount of hesitation had given his blessing, so to speak.

Thus: when Hitman Anders was at his happiest, around four-thirty in the afternoon, the priest and the receptionist delivered the news that it was about time he take over leadership for real. Among other things, this meant they would sign over to him formal ownership and responsibility right away; there was no reason to wait. It also meant that the pastor would allocate the future earnings of the congregation as he pleased. The priest and the receptionist would take a step back but would remain at his side for moral support.

Pastor Anders was extremely touched. Not only had they always given him five hundred kronor per week to spend as he pleased (except towards the end, when the income from the collection had temporarily reached only three digits at best), now they were about to hand over the whole lot to him.

“Many, many thanks, dear friends,” he said. “I confess that I misjudged you at first, but I understand now that you are good people through and through. Hallelujah and Hosanna!”

Upon which he signed all the necessary papers, without even coming close to learning what they said.

When the administrative stuff was out of the way, the priest suggested that the pastor lead the meeting with the legal representative
who was expected to drop in for a routine inspection the next morning, but she supposed it was best if he were to tell it like it was, and that would be the end of that.

“How much do we have in the donation account?” Hitman Anders wondered.

“Thirty-two kronor,” said the receptionist.

* * *

They planned to meet again in the sacristy the next morning at nine o'clock. The priest and the receptionist offered to have breakfast with Hitman Anders and, no, there would nothing newfangled about it. The morning vino was the same sacrament as ever; it couldn't be replaced with coffee just because they were expecting company. There would, however, be freshly baked bread, the priest promised.

Hitman Anders understood. That is, he didn't understand the word “sacrament,” but he understood that the standing tradition of communion was under no threat. “See you tomorrow morning,” he said. “Is it okay if I take a box of the Moldovan stuff with me now? I'm frugal when it comes to myself, but I have a friend or two and we were planning to come together in the camper this evening for some Bible study. I'm guessing that you two are still living in your aunt's cellar?” he asked, looking at the receptionist, who by now had bargained his way to a discount for the Riddarholm suite at the Hilton.

“Yes, free of charge, God bless her,” said the receptionist, who had never had any aunt. “Do take a box for your friends. Or two. But at nine o'clock tomorrow morning, on the dot, we want you here, awake and sober. Or something along those lines.” At this, the receptionist smiled, all in accordance with their aims, and received an aimless smile in return.

***

Hitman Anders was not present at nine o'clock the next day. Neither was he there at a quarter past. But just before nine thirty he tumbled in. “I'm sorry I'm late,” he said. “My morning toilet took longer than expected.”

“Morning toilet?” said the priest. “The camper is just seventy yards from here, and it hasn't had a working toilet for at least a week.”

“I know,” said Hitman Anders. “Isn't that terrible?”

Anyway, there was no time to lose. The hitman was served a glass of wine, spiked with just the right amount of vodka, then a second glass. To complement the wine he was given three sandwiches with cheese and carefully powdered Rohypnol in the margarine. A milligram per sandwich ought to be just right. If a little extra got in, it wouldn't matter.

The hitman, who for several years had lived by the motto “alcohol and pills, never again,” said that the wine seemed extra delicious today, that perhaps the Lord wanted to prepare him in the best way possible for his meeting with the representative from the Tax Authority. “Although don't you imagine the worst that can happen is that he could demand twenty percent tax on those thirty-two kronor?” He didn't comment on the sandwiches, other than to ask for one more, which the priest, to be safe, spiked with another milligram of the substance chemically known as C
₁₆
H
₁₂
FN
₃
0
₃
.

The priest and the receptionist found an excuse to leave at five minutes to ten; they handed over three binders they had filled with hole-punched comic books to lend them a certain weightiness (you make do with what you have to hand; and in this case what they had was a bundle of comic books that for some inexplicable reason had been lying in a wardrobe in the sacristy; what they did not have was any documentation concerning anything other than the ownership that had so recently changed hands). And then they told Hitman
Anders to call one of them if he needed help. With this, they went on their way, turning off their phones as they left.

“As far as I can tell, that amount of booze and pills ought to be enough to knock out a horse,” the receptionist said to his priest, once they had reached a safe distance from whatever events might ensue.

“Yes, but it's an ass we're dealing with at the moment. And this ass has a previous habit. I think we can rest assured that the meeting between the ass and the tax man will be tragic enough.”

The civil servant from the Tax Authority introduced himself to Pastor Anders, who was starting to feel odd as they shook hands. There was something superior about the man's handshake. And he had said, “Nice to meet you!”

What did he mean,
Nice to meet you
? And what was with that tie? Did he think he was better than everyone else?

What was more, the tie character started asking provocative questions about cash registers, control units, models, serial numbers, record keeping, and other stuff the pastor didn't understand. Plus, he was ugly.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Hitman Anders said, as his insides began to roil.

“What's my problem?” said Olof Klarinder, a bit anxiously. “Nothing. I'm a civil servant just trying to do my job. A sound taxpayer morale is a cornerstone of any democratic nation. Don't you agree, pastor?”

The only thing that the pastor could agree with while he was undergoing a personality change was that the Tax Authority could take twenty percent of the collected assets of thirty-two kronor. Exactly how much this would amount to, the pastor couldn't say, but surely it wouldn't be more than a fifty-krona bill, would it?

Olof Klarinder had the feeling something was not quite right, yet he couldn't resist the urge to open the first and second of the
three binders. Luckily, he survived the abuse he was subjected to by the pastor, who completed his transformation back into a murderer when the civil servant offered the opinion that seventeen copies of
The Phantom
from 1979 to 1980 could not be considered a substitute for the information concerning the congregation's enterprise that the representative of the Tax Authority had requested. He survived, although he'd been thoroughly battered when Hitman Anders tried to bash into him the bookkeeping he wanted to have a look at with the help of the third, not-yet-delivered, binder.

Afterwards the pastor didn't remember what had transpired, but based on experience he admitted his guilt and was, in accordance with the third chapter, seventh paragraph of the Criminal Code, sentenced to sixteen months in prison. He received another nine months in accordance with the fourth paragraph in the Tax Offences Act. Twenty-five months in all, which, he was happy to say, was the shortest amount of time he'd ever been locked up for. Everything truly was moving in the right direction.

Immediately after the trial, he was given the opportunity to have a short talk with the priest and the receptionist. He delivered a sincere apology; he had no idea what had got into him. The priest gave him a long hug and said he shouldn't blame himself too much.

“We'll visit you,” she said, with a smile.

“We will?” said the receptionist, as they left the future prisoner behind.

“No,” said the priest.

* * *

After a thanks-for-everything dinner in honor of Jerry the Knife, all that remained was the priest, the receptionist, their suite at the Hilton, and a yellow suitcase containing nearly seven million
kronor (which included the money that had been regularly withdrawn from the bank account). These days, the church and the camper were registered in Hitman Anders's name, so they were seized by Olof Klarinder's colleagues at the Enforcement Agency, while Klarinder gave himself time to heal at Karolinska Hospital, with fractures here and there. It wasn't too boring for him, since he'd happened to bring with him two of the three accounting binders from the Church of Anders.
The Phantom
had always secretly been a Klarinderian favorite.