HE STUDIED THE picture of the meticulously groomed white poodle sitting on its hind legs, staring into the camera with black eyes and tilted head. As per the instructions on the website, its owner, a woman – it was almost always a woman – had placed it in front of a solid-colour backdrop.
Not that he had anything against dogs as such, but poodles were probably his least favourite breed. Their only purpose in life was to prance around looking cute, and they didn’t even manage to do that. And yet, in the pictures he received, they outnumbered every other breed by a wide margin. And he uncomplainingly cut them out and inserted them into one of the many backgrounds available on his website.
Four thousand kronor he charged for his services. Clients who wanted their picture printed out and put in a gold frame as well had to fork out at least another fifteen hundred, depending on the size. So no, he didn’t complain. Indeed, on the whole, he had very little to complain about.
Since he had first rolled the dice five weeks and one day ago, life had been one long thrill ride, which was exactly what he’d wanted. Every task the dice had set him he’d undertaken to the best of his ability, and even though some had seemed virtually impossible, he’d completed them.
On occasion, he’d felt the dice had been wrong, had wanted too much at once, had made things unnecessarily complicated or had been too mean and unfair.
Now, though, he could clearly see it had been right every time. If not for all the Xs that had added so many extra requirements, the police would probably be further along in their investigation. He might already have been under arrest.
His only failure so far was the six-year-old girl, Ester Landgren. She should have been drowned, but she was still alive. The problem was that the dice had ordered him to let someone else complete the task. If he had been trusted to do it himself, that little girl’s parents would have been planning her funeral now.
And yet, he’d found the perfect candidate in Assar Skanås, who had been wanted by the police at the time. Aided by the most improbable lucky break, with chance firmly on his side, he’d managed to find him before the police did. Up until that point, everything had been going his way.
But then, things had started to go pear-shaped. Among other things, that lady detective, Irene Lilja, the one who had called him in for an interview, had suddenly been outside his door, ringing his doorbell while Skanås was tied up on his bed, listening to the voices in his head.
He couldn’t understand how they’d found him, and after going over everything he’d done and said and not said during that interview, he’d concluded that the only reasonable explanation was Skanås’s mobile phone.
He’d overlooked it until the moment he helped Skanås out of the car in front of the building. The battery had been on its last legs, but apparently it’d had enough juice for the police to track its last known location.
He had decided to make sure the phone was fully charged and turned on when he sent Skanås off to complete his task. The idea had been for the police to locate it again and this time to find and arrest him. But only after he was done with the girl. Not mid-act. How was he supposed to know the paedo freak needed more than two hours to get things done?
Regardless, it had been an error in judgement on his part, a failure that irked him like a pebble in his shoe, which was why he’d been unable to shake the thought that it had to be put right. But there was no rule to say he could just go back in and tidy up after the fact. Besides, on a fundamental level, it hadn’t been his assignment; that was the whole point of the addition from the X notebook.
On the other hand, it could hardly hurt to ask the dice and see what it had to say, could it? After all, it was in charge, and it might agree with him that something had to be done before they could move on.
He tried to think of something else and resumed his work on the poodle, whose owner had decided to place it in front of the Palace of Versailles. But the moment the picture was done and sent off, his thoughts stubbornly returned to the incomplete assignment, and he finally accepted that only one thing would shut them up, so he took out his collection of six-sided, anodized aluminium precision dice.
One of them would tell him if he should proceed at all. A one, two or three meant yes, a four, five or six meant no. After shaking the dice for a long time, he dropped it onto the green felt.
A two.
In other words, the dice wanted to be consulted. He picked it up again, closed his eyes and shook it for a long time before making his throw. All he had to do now was open his eyes and see if it said yes or no. Not that it was trivial, he mused, his eyes still closed. For Ester Landgren, a childhood and most of a lifetime was at stake.
He was just about to open his eyes when the grating sound of the doorbell reverberated through the flat, penetrating all the way into his secret room. No one ever rang his doorbell, and even though he could easily just ignore it and carry on with what he was doing, the moment was ruined.
He needed peace and quiet to enjoy the outcome of his throws. If it was something he just rushed through, there was no point to it. He got up and walked through the bedroom to the hallway, where the doorbell was ringing aggressively.
He cautiously peeked behind the curtain blocking the door, and after making sure the person on the other side wasn’t looking through the letter box, he slipped between the curtain and the door and pressed his eye to the peephole.
As soon as the doorbell had started ringing, he’d had his suspicions. That was probably why he hadn’t been able to continue his game of dice. Now, those suspicions were confirmed, but that didn’t make him feel better in the slightest.
It was that fucking detective Irene Lilja again. For the second time today, she was standing out there ringing his doorbell, as though she were determined to carry on until he opened up. He couldn’t understand how she’d found him. Fine, she’d been by once, looking for Skanås. But he’d been arrested days ago.
The whole thing was very odd. If the police suspected him, wouldn’t they have sent several uniformed officers instead of a lone detective?
He’d considered disconnecting his doorbell after her most recent visit, but that could be taken as proof he was in the flat and risked piquing her interest further. Instead, he retreated from the hallway and lay down on the sofa to pass the time until she gave up again. If she continued to terrorize him, he would have to do something about it.
Seven minutes later, the flat was silent once more, and as soon as he had calmed down, he got up from the sofa and returned to his dice.
And there it was, its answer. Its verdict.
A one.
He chuckled softly and wiped the sweat off his forehead. The dice had given him a resounding yes. It was finally on his side again. The mistake was finally going to be rectified and order restored.
Finally.