Ex-con Olofsson, the man who’d been knocked out by a freshly saved prison colleague at a pub in Södermalm, came to after only a few minutes. He was rude to the ambulance crew who had just arrived, swore at the poor waitress who wanted to be paid, threw the remaining glass of Cabernet Sauvignon at the wall, and staggered off. In less than half an hour he was at the home of his brother Olofsson (it is not unusual, in ex-con circles, to skip people’s first names). As soon as the little brother had explained the situation to his big brother, Olofsson and Olofsson immediately took off for the Sea Point Hotel to dispense justice.
The hotel appeared deserted. There were a couple of confused guests standing in the lobby, wondering where the receptionist might be: they couldn’t access the keys to their rooms. Another guest had been waiting to check in for at least ten minutes. He told Olofsson and Olofsson that he had rung the lobby bell to no avail, and when he had called the hotel from his cell phone, he had been the closest person available to answer the phone on the desk.
“Have you two booked a room as well?” asked the man.
“No,” said Olofsson.
“We haven’t,” said Olofsson.
And then they left, grabbed a can of gasoline from the car, walked to the back of the building, and set it alight.
To make a point.
What sort of point was unclear.
Things often turned out this way when the brothers were together. Olofsson was almost as temperamental as his brother.
One hour later, the incident commander from Huddinge fire station decided there was no point in calling for reinforcements. The property was engulfed in flames and lost, but there was no breeze and the conditions were otherwise favorable, so no nearby property was in danger. All they could do was to allow the hotel to finish burning. It was impossible to be certain at the moment, but witness statements indicated that no one had been trapped inside, and that two unknown men had purposely started the fire. Legally, this was tantamount to arson.
Given that no one seemed to have come to harm, the newsworthiness of the event should have been limited, from a national perspective . . . if an alert night-shift editor at Expressen hadn’t remembered where the interview with the guy known as Hitman Anders had been held. That must have been a year or three ago by now, but the hitman had lived there. Might he still? After some hasty but effective journalistic work, the next day’s headline was drafted:
War in the Underworld:
HITMAN
ANDERS
On the Run from
ARSON
ATTACK
Two full pages in the paper, including, among other things, a full recap of how mortally dangerous Hitman Anders was said to be, accompanied by speculation about the causes of what was presumed to be an attempted murder. Plus the assumption that the hitman, who had not died in the fire, might be somewhere out there—on the run!—looking for a new place to settle. Perhaps somewhere near you!
A frightened nation is a nation that buys evening papers.
* * *
According to the receptionist, the fact that the Sea Point Hotel had burned to the ground was perfectly wonderful for two reasons and seriously unfortunate for one. The priest and Hitman Anders asked him to elucidate.
Well, first and foremost, the hotel owner, that old porn lover and cheapskate, had lost his main source of income—which was great! If the receptionist remembered correctly, the owner had also considered it unmanly to pay several thousand kronor per year to insure the premises. Which meant he had no fire insurance: even better.
“Unmanly?” said the priest.
“Sometimes the line between manliness and sheer stupidity can be razor-thin.”
“What do you think, in this case?”
The receptionist gave an honest answer: given how things had turned out, it seemed stupidity had won the match, though manliness had been in the lead for quite some time.
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?”