Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All

Per Persson considered this. Did he want to hear what the priest had spent her life sleeping in, if not a bed of roses, or did he have enough misery of his own to lug around without her help? ‘I’m not sure that my existence will be made any brighter by hearing about others who live in darkness,’ he said. ‘But I suppose I could listen to the gist of it as long the story doesn’t get too long-winded.’

The gist of it? The gist was that she had been wandering around for seven days now, from Sunday to Sunday. Sleeping in basement storage areas and God knows where else, eating anything she happened upon …

‘Like four out of four ham sandwiches,’ said Per Persson. ‘Perhaps the last of my raspberry cordial would be good for washing down my only food.’

The priest wouldn’t say no to that. And once she’d quenched her thirst, she said: ‘The long and the short of it is that I don’t believe in God. Much less in Jesus. Dad was the one who forced me to follow in his footsteps – Dad’s footsteps, that is, not Jesus’s – when, as luck would have it, he never had a son, only a daughter. Though Dad, in turn, had been forced into the priesthood by my grandfather. Or maybe they were sent by the devil, both of them – it’s tough to say. In any case, priesting runs in the family.’

When it came to the part about being a victim in the shadow of Dad or Grandfather, Per Persson felt an immediate kinship. If only children could be free of all the crap previous generations had gathered up for them, he said, perhaps it would bring some clarity to their lives.

The priest refrained from pointing out the necessity of previous generations for their own existence. Instead she asked what had led him all the way to … this park bench.

Oh, this park bench. And the depressing hotel lobby where he lived and worked. And gave beers to Hitman Anders.

‘Hitman Anders?’ said the priest.

‘Yes,’ said the receptionist. ‘He lives in number seven.’

Per Persson thought he might as well waste a few minutes on the priest, since she’d asked. So he told her about his grandfather, who had frittered away his millions. And Dad, who’d just thrown in the towel. About his mom, who’d hooked up with an Icelandic banker and left the country. How he himself had ended up in a whorehouse at the age of sixteen. And how he currently worked as a receptionist at the hotel the whorehouse had turned into.

‘And now that I happen to have twenty minutes off and can sit down on a bench at a safe distance from all the thieves and bandits I have to deal with at work, I run into a priest who doesn’t believe in God, who first tries to trick me out of my last few coins and then eats all my food. That’s my life in a nutshell, assuming I don’t go back to find that the old whorehouse has transformed into the Grand Hôtel, thanks to that prayer.’

The dirty priest, with breadcrumbs on her lips, looked ashamed. She said it was unlikely that her prayer would have such immediate results, especially since it had been a rush job and its addressee didn’t exist. She now regretted asking to be paid for shoddy work, not least since the receptionist had been so generous with his sandwiches. ‘Please tell me more about the hotel,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s an extra room available at … the friends-and-family discount?’

‘Friends-and-family?’ said Per Persson. ‘Exactly when did we become friends, the two of us?’

‘Well,’ said the priest. ‘It’s not too late.’

CHAPTER 3 (#ua20fc219-b733-54d2-8ed0-ba3d24cec6ce)

The priest was assigned room eight, which shared a wall with Hitman Anders’s room. But unlike the murderer, whom Per Persson never dared to ask for payment, the new guest was required to pay a week up front. At the regular price.

‘Up front? But that’s the last of my money.’

‘Then it’s extra important it doesn’t go astray. I could whip up a prayer for you, absolutely free of charge, and maybe it will all work out,’ said the receptionist.

At that instant, a man with a leather jacket, sunglasses and stubble appeared. He looked like a parody of the gangster he presumably was, and skipped the greeting to ask where he could find Johan Andersson.

The receptionist stood up straighter and replied that who was or was not staying at the Sea Point Hotel was not information he could share with just anyone. Here it was considered a duty of honour to protect the guests’ identities.

‘Answer the question before I shoot your dick off,’ said the man in the leather jacket. ‘Where’s Hitman Anders?’

‘Room seven,’ said Per Persson.

The menace vanished into the hallway. The priest watched him go and wondered if there was about to be trouble. Did the receptionist think there was anything she could do to help, as a priest?

Per Persson thought nothing of the sort, but he didn’t have time to say so before the man in the leather jacket was back.

‘The hitman is out cold on his bed. I know how he can be – it’s best if he’s allowed to stay like that for the time being. Take this envelope and give it to him when he wakes up. Tell him the count says hello.’

‘That’s it?’ said Per Persson.

‘Yes. No, tell him there’s five thousand in the envelope, not ten thousand, since he only did half the job.’

The man in the leather jacket went on his way. Five thousand? Five thousand that apparently ought to have been ten. And now it was up to the receptionist to explain the deficit to Sweden’s potentially most dangerous person. Unless he delegated the task to the priest, who had just offered her services.

‘Hitman Anders,’ she said. ‘So he really exists. That wasn’t just something you made up?’

‘A lost soul,’ said the receptionist. ‘Extremely lost, in fact.’

To his surprise, the priest inquired whether this extremely lost soul was so lost that it would be morally sound for a priest and a receptionist to borrow a thousand kronor from him in order to eat their fill at some pleasant establishment nearby.

Per Persson asked what kind of priest she was if she was capable of coming up with such a suggestion, but he admitted that the idea was tempting. Though there was, of course, a reason Hitman Anders was called Hitman Anders. Or three reasons, if the receptionist remembered correctly: an axe in a back, shotgun pellets to a face, and a cut throat.

The question of whether or not it was a good idea to borrow money secretly from a hitman was interrupted: the hitman in question had awakened and was now shuffling down the hallway towards them, his hair all over the place.

‘I’m thirsty,’ he said. ‘I’m getting a payment delivered today, but it hasn’t arrived yet and I have no money for beer. Or food. Can I borrow two hundred kronor from your till?’

This was a question, and yet it wasn’t. Hitman Anders was counting on getting his hands on two hundred-krona notes at once.

But the priest took half a step forward. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘My name is Johanna Kjellander and I am a former parish priest, now just a priest at large.’

‘Priests are all a bunch of crap,’ said Hitman Anders, without glancing at her. The art of conversation was in no way his forte. He continued to address the receptionist. ‘So, can I have some money?’

‘I can’t quite agree with you on that,’ said Johanna Kjellander. ‘Certainly there are a few strays here and there, even in our line of work, and unfortunately I happen to be one of them. I would be happy to discuss that sort of thing with you, Mr … Hitman Anders. Perhaps at a later date. At the moment I would rather discuss an envelope containing five thousand kronor that has just been delivered to the reception 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!’