Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All (24 page)

T
he priest and—above all—the receptionist continued to search for the meaning of life. After six days, they were more in agreement than ever that it was not to be found in the Riddarholm Suite at the Hilton.

It wasn't until they decided to find somewhere to live that it occurred to them how expensive housing was. A three-room apartment in Stockholm would mean using the entire contents of the suitcase, and what would be the point in having fun without bankrupting themselves if they started off by bankrupting themselves? And it was pretty senseless to enter the housing queue for a reasonable rental property unless you aimed to live to nine hundred and fifty, as we know only one person, so far, has managed to do.

Neither the receptionist nor the priest had any experience with the workings of the housing market. Per Persson had spent his entire adult life sleeping behind a hotel lobby or in a camper. Johanna Kjellander's knowledge of the same matter encompassed little more than her dad's parsonage, a student-housing corridor in Uppsala, and her dad's parsonage again (as a new graduate she'd had to commute between her childhood bedroom and her job, twelve miles away; this was the most freedom her dad would allow).

But now they knew, and they made a joint decision that they were far too enamored of the contents of the yellow suitcase to use it just for living.

The most economically sustainable option they discovered was a fishing shack on an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea. They had discovered this pearl of Gotland online and were attracted to the price (slightly more than free), in conjunction with the distance (just over a hundred nautical miles) from those Stockholm criminals who had not yet blown one another up.

There were reasons for the low price. One was not allowed to live in the shack on a permanent basis, one was not allowed to insulate the walls or roof, and one was not allowed to install a toilet.

“I'm sure we can make uninsulated work if we just build a big enough fire in the stove,” said the priest, “but I'm feeling so-so about the prospect of sitting in a snowbank in freezing temperatures to do you-know-what.”

“I think we should take it, then start a test fire in the stove first thing, using the authorities' rulebook as kindling. After that, we can insulate the walls and build a bathroom in all our ignorance.”

“What if someone catches us?” The priest still had a fear of authority after all those years under her father's thumb.

“If someone catches us? Who would catch us? The special toilet inspector of the Gotland region? The man or woman who goes from door to door to make sure that people poop where they're supposed to?”

In addition to the aforementioned rules, it was hardly permitted to walk around outside, or that was how the shack's seller made it sound as he prattled on, over the phone, about protected beaches, protected waters, protected animals, protected biotopes, and a handful of other protections that not even the priest, in the end, could tolerate listening to. But at last he got to the point, which was that he couldn't imagine handing his cultural treasure to just anyone. But now he felt confident: a servant of the Lord wished to take over its care.

“Glad to hear it,” said the priest. “If you could send us the documents right away, I'm quite eager to do the taking over.”

The seller preferred that they meet in person: they could seal the deal over a bowl of seaweed soup. But the eavesdropping receptionist heard this, decided enough was enough, took the receiver, introduced himself as the assistant of parish priest Kjellander, and said that he and the priest were currently at a conference at the Hilton in Stockholm but that in just two days they were to leave for Sierra Leone to take part in a humanitarian project aiding leper colonies; it would be best for the seller to sign the documents and forward them to the hotel. They would be countersigned and sent back by return.

“Wow,” said the man who had wanted to give them soup, then immediately promised to do as he'd been asked.

When the phone call was over, the priest informed her receptionist that leper colonies didn't really exist nowadays, and the illness was treated with antibiotics rather than by the laying on of hands of former parish priests.

“But in general, well done,” she praised him. “Sierra Leone—what made you think of that?”

“I don't know,” said the receptionist. “But if they don't have leprosy there, I'm sure they have something else.”

* * *

Time to pack their bag. Singular. Thanks to the cost of the Hilton, their store of money had dwindled enough to allow their negligible personal belongings to fit in along with the remaining millions.

The couple and the yellow suitcase checked out one last time. The red one remained in the room, empty. Their aim was to walk to Central Station and continue their journey by bus to Nynäshamn, where the ferry to Gotland awaited them.

But none of that came to be.

O
lofsson and Olofsson had not exactly run into bad luck when they had encountered the count and the countess some time before. Neither were they faced with it now. Altogether, their wait in the car outside the entrance to the Hilton lasted about ten minutes.

“Well, Hell's bells!” said Olofsson to his brother, who still had a comic book in hand. “There they are!”

“Where?” Olofsson said, disoriented.

“There! With a yellow suitcase! They've checked out. They're heading somewhere!”

“Yeah, to our cellar,” Olofsson's brother spat, tossing the comic book into the back seat. “Follow them, and I'll grab them as soon as I get the chance.”

The chance in question occurred just over one hundred and fifty feet later, at Södermalmstorg. Olofsson dashed out of the passenger side and forced the priest and the receptionist into the back seat with the help of a revolver that was double the size of the one he had previously boozed away outside the Church of Anders (his thinking was, the larger the revolver, the less likely he would be to repeat the mistake). With an impressive Smith & Wesson pointed at them, neither the priest nor the receptionist hesitated to follow the advice they had just received from the strange man.

That left the suitcase. Olofsson considered leaving it on the street,
but in the end he decided to throw it onto the laps of the abductees. After all, it might contain clues leading in one direction or another, if the two people he had seized were stupid enough to keep their mouths shut about where all the money was.

* * *

The priest, the receptionist, and the yellow suitcase stood in a row in the gathering place of Greater Stockholm's underworld: the cellar beneath one of the city's pubs that was least inclined to pay taxes. To the priest's surprise, no one in the group took any immediate notice of the suitcase.

“Welcome,” said the unofficial leader of the fifteen hoodlums. “We promise you'll get out of here. In body bags, or some other way.” Then he stated that the priest and the other guy owed the group at least thirteen million kronor.

“Well, that probably depends on how you count it,” the priest said bravely. “Thirteen sounds like a rather high amount to start with.”

“To start with?” said the head hoodlum.

“
Per Persson
,” said the receptionist, who didn't like being called “the other guy.”

“I don't give a shit what your name is,” said the head hoodlum, turning back to the priest. “What do you mean, ‘to start with' and ‘how you count it'?”

The priest was not sure where and how this had started and how one should count it, but the ball was rolling. And it was important to keep her eyes on it. Talk first and think later was her style in this type of situation. “Well, as a rough estimate, I think just over ten million would be plenty,” she said, as she realized she had just been stupid enough to name an amount that far exceeded what they actually had to buy their way to freedom.

The head hoodlum countered with a question of his own: “Hypothetically, if we decided to settle for the priest's rough estimate, where might that ten million kronor be?”

Per Persson was definitely not the best at improvising in situations such as this. He searched for a thought that could be transformed to words that might turn things around to their advantage, but the priest beat him to it. “First and foremost, I would like to discuss the amount,” she said.

“The amount?” said the head hoodlum. “Didn't you just fucking say ten million?”

“There there, no need to swear,” said the priest. “The man upstairs sees and hears everything.”

She's on a roll now
, thought the receptionist.

“I said that, by a rough estimate, ten million was a more reasonable amount. But, without being too indiscreet, I must point out that at least three of those ten million can be traced back either to what the count and countess ordered from us to get several of you out of the way, or to what several of you ordered from us to do just the opposite, and a few other minor bits of mischief.”

An anxious murmur rose among the hoodlums in the cellar. She wasn't about to say more about who had ordered what, was she?

“If I may continue,” the priest continued, “I'll allow myself the opinion that it would be immoral of you to take money from Hitman Anders just because he didn't murder any of you.”

The receptionist was barely following the priest's reckoning. No one else in the cellar was even close. She had lost most of them at the word “immoral.”

“What's more, I think that further rebates might be in order, considering the final results in the case of the count and the countess. If they hadn't been aiming a gun at the man who had been paid to kill them, they would never have died. Isn't that right?”

Further murmuring.

“What are you getting at?” the head hoodlum asked peevishly.

“That we have a red suitcase,” said the priest, placing her hand on the yellow one beside her.

“A
red
suitcase?”

“Containing exactly six million kronor. Our combined assets. I imagine that at least a few of you were confirmed into the Church once upon a time. Perhaps one or two of you still believe that there is a life after this one and that it doesn't necessarily have to end in meeting the count and countess again. Mightn't six million kronor be a fairly good substitute to avoid having to kill a priest?”

“And a Per Persson,” the receptionist rushed to say.

“And a Per Persson, of course,” the priest added.

The head hoodlum repeated that he was not interested in Per Persson's name. Meanwhile, another round of murmurs rose among the rest of the hoodlums. The priest attempted to interpret the tones. There seemed to be differing opinions. So she added a bit more: “The suitcase is hidden in a secure place. Only I know where it is, and I can imagine that I would readily tell you, but only if I were subjected to torture. And again—torturing a priest! Could that really be the best way to appease the Lord? Plus there's the fact that, as far as I know, Hitman Anders' being locked up doesn't mean he has lost the ability to speak.”

That made several people in the group shudder.

“Thus my suggestion is that this guy here, whose name you don't want to know, and I will hand over six million kronor to you in the very near future, and in return you will swear on your honor as thieves that you will allow us to live in good health.”

“Or three million,” said the receptionist, who was relatively heartbroken at the thought of becoming a pauper once again. “And then maybe we'll all end up in Heaven together when the time comes.”

But Per Persson's relationship with the hoodlums had definitely gone awry.

“Not only do I not give a shit what your name is, I also don't care where you'd end up in the event that I cut you open from navel
to chin,” said the head hoodlum, and it appeared that he wished to launch into a second tirade when he was interrupted by the priest.

“Or six million, like I said,” said the priest, who'd had time to perform an analysis and found that they wouldn't get away with sacrificing any less.

Even more murmuring. In the end, the hoodlums agreed that six million kronor would be an acceptable payoff to be spared the trouble of killing the goddamned priest and the man who insisted that he had a name. Sure, it would have been simpler just to kill them, but murder was murder and the police were the police. Plus there was that nuisance Hitman Anders and his big trap.

“Okay,” said the head hoodlum. “You lead us to your red suitcase with the six million, we'll count it down here in the cellar to double check the contents, and if it contains the correct amount you can leave and we won't bother you again. After that, as far as we're concerned, you'll no longer exist.”

“But we'll exist as far as
we
're
concerned?” the receptionist wished to clarify.

“It's up to you whether or not you want to jump off the Väster Bridge, but you won't be on our list any longer. Assuming you hand over the red suitcase and it contains what you say it does.”

The priest lowered her gaze a notch and said that the Lord had always been understanding of lies as long as they were white as snow.

“What do you mean?”

“The red suitcase . . . is actually yellow.”

“The one you're leaning against?”

“Speedy delivery, right?” The priest smiled. “Is it okay if my friend and I take with us a couple of toothbrushes, some underwear, and a few other things that are in there with the money when we go?”

And she made sure to open the suitcase to show off its magnificent contents before the head hoodlum and his under-hoodlums could change their minds.

A
s the collective personification of greed stuck nose and hands into the suitcase full of money, the priest grabbed underwear, a toothbrush, a dress, a pair of trousers, and something else, then whispered to her receptionist that their best opportunity to disappear happened to be this very second.

Not even the head hoodlum noticed when the prisoners vanished, for he was no less greedy than anyone else in the room. He did, however, roar that everyone must stop snatching money. They had to divide it among themselves in an organized fashion.

His roar resulted in most, but not all, of the bills being returned to the suitcase. Hoodlum number two had clearly seen hoodlum number four shove a whole bundle of cash into his left front pocket, and now number two was in the process of proving it.

But hoodlum number four was not the sort who let people grope him, especially not so close to his personal machinery and definitely not while others were watching. Thus, to retain his place in the hierarchy, he struck number two with a fist. Number two collapsed to the floor and, happily enough, passed out when his head hit the concrete, or the whole situation would have gone off the rails then and there. Instead, it held off for four more minutes.

The head hoodlum was temporarily able to restore order in his classroom. The task they were faced with was to divide six million
kronor among fifteen people, or maybe fourteen, depending on whether the guy on the floor was planning to wake up or not.

But how did you divide six by fifteen? Even this was too much for any of them to work out. When, in addition, voices rose to say that the Olofsson brothers should be given a smaller share, since they'd already received payment, plus their share should count as one—not two—because they had the same name, the angrier of the brothers became angrier than usual. So angry that he happened to inform hoodlum number seven (the one who went by the name Ox) that he regretted Hitman Anders hadn't cut his throat as agreed.

“Aha, you bastard,” said Ox, “you had a contract out on me!” And he took out a knife to do to Olofsson what Olofsson had wanted Hitman Anders to do to Ox.

This, in turn, caused the other Olofsson to attempt a half-panicked diversionary measure. All he could think to do in his haste was fire a shot from his enormous Smith & Wesson 500, straight into the suitcase of money, at point-blank range. But, of course, he was handling one of the world's largest revolvers, the sort that could take down a real ox if necessary, so it was no wonder that the fireworks sparked a small fire among the bills.

This achieved the intended effect, insofar as Ox and the rest (except the guy on the floor) first lost their hearing for a few seconds, thanks to the report, then immediately redirected their attention. As many feet as could fit stomped simultaneously on the burning five-hundred-krona bills and, sure enough, the fire was just about to give up the ghost when hoodlum number eight came up with the bright idea of sacrificing a fifth of one-hundred-eighty-proof moonshine to put out what few flames remained.

Both Olofsson and Olofsson had, for survival purposes, left the cellar just seconds before it started burning in earnest. The rest of the hoodlums soon had to do the same (except for the guy still lying on the floor, who, if he hadn't already done so when the back of his head struck the floor, died): One-hundred-eighty-proof liquor does
not have—nor has it ever had—any sort of mitigating effect on fire.

The next night, four men paid Olofsson and Olofsson at visit at home. They didn't ring the doorbell; they didn't even knock at the door. Instead, they chopped their way through with an axe until the door was in splinters and all they had to do was step inside. But, no matter how hard they looked, they found neither Olofsson nor his brother, just a frightened hamster named Clark, after a famous bank robber from the past. Olofsson had forced his brother to leave Clark in the apartment to which they would never return. Instead, immediately following the debacle in the pub cellar, they had taken a train to Malmö, three hundred and seventy miles away from what might have been the angriest clientele anywhere in the world at that particular moment.

Malmö was a nice city; in fact, it was even one of Sweden's cities most encumbered by criminals. No one would notice another crime or two per week in the statistics, as Olofsson philosophized while he and his brother robbed a gas station of all its money, plus four Kexchoklad bars, then helped themselves to the manager's car by force.