Caroline Åberg - Stockholm Noir

I want to see this particular bitch die.

Indeed — I plan on relishing it, giving it special attention. She’s a piggy, soft-handed and pink like a female Goran. And after all: this is on my home court, quite rare in this business.

The Iranian or Libyan or Afghan interloper bangs that scoop-like device they use to make this dago coffee on a railing, knocking the packed grounds out in a puck. These machines, these hyperactive faux-retro contraptions, always with Italian logotypes, Fabrizio, etc., it’s all bullshit, likely constructed in China.

This coffee joint, which really is a piece of shit and to which I hope to never return, does have the advantage of being smack in the middle of Norrmalmstorg, with plenty of glass through which to observe the goings-on.

I tap out a blend. I ask you: what in God’s name was wrong with the coffee of my youth, the coffee of the Konditori, that lovely poison that only seemed to get better the longer it cooked on its burner? The stuff of the farmer, the factory worker, the Swede. That is, was, and forever will be Swedish coffee.

This fantasy dago coffee trend. It will pass, like so many other trends before it.

Yes. This current job is personal. And very local.

Fire up the cigarette, despite the General Snus parked under my lip. I like to double up.

They just banned smoking in bars in New York City if you can imagine that, a horrible trendy pandemic that no doubt the faggots in our parliament will line up in enthusiastic favor of... so we’d better smoke while we fucking can, living as we are in not just a nanny state, but a nanny world.

Trans fats. Sodium. All the components of a traditional diet. They’re trying to legislate, to politicize our diet. Herald loud the death of traditional Swedish food.

Toll the bells for Swedish tradition, period.

Making this current job all the more pressing, all the more essential .

Stockholm. Sure, it’s been a cesspool as long as I can recall, but today? Hardly recognize it. Dark skin everywhere you turn. Dark eyes. I saw the blackest imaginable African and a full-blooded Swede, as white as purest snow, traipsing down fucking Kungsgatan, hand in fucking hand like it was the most natural thing in the world and we are supposed to simply accept the fact of them . It was all I could do to not vomit.

Sushi and Korean “BBQ” — in the same fucking joint.

All the expected American fast-food garbage.

Fucking mosques !

“ So varsågod ...” The immigrant materializes again.

I’ve worn a Hugo Boss suit I bought at the airport in Frankfurt, faintly patterned white shirt, prissy Germanic metal-framed glasses — the northern European business uniform that makes you absolutely impossible to describe to the cops. He had a blue suit... loafers... a checked shirt... You see? Useless.

The darkie girl drifts away. I glance toward the blonde, who is watching a wall-mounted TV, arms folded. Fucking hell, at least she could pay attention, I’m nearly the only motherfucker in this place.

“And I’ll go ahead and settle up, please.” I don’t know if anyone hears me.

Here’s the situation.

The target is a female, middle-aged.

The target is with a friend, a female civilian, also middle-aged and quite well off.

They’re having a lovely day, two cows getting older, shopping, Fika, etc.

Over the last several months we have observed three other such jaunts, and they generally follow the same pattern — the ladies meet up, work their way to Stureplan by taxi or car, and if the hour is right they lunch at the Oyster Bar.

After this the pair tends to stroll down Biblioteksgatan to Norrmalmstorg (where I am currently situated), where they will visit the Acne, Marimekko, Filippa K, and the Noa Noa stores before proceeding east down Hamngatan to the NK.

And this is where we will take her.

The hope is that they will not go to the outsized Åhlens, which they have been noted to do on one occasion, as the operation would prove much more difficult in that environment. Too many people, very close quarters, less space to work.

The significance of the date, September 10... it’s the most ridiculous thing, but if you can believe it, the client is convinced this will somehow act as a misdirect and point toward Islamists. Incredibly sophomoric, like an unimaginative spy novel, but nonetheless. The client gets what the client wants, within reason, and any day is as good as the next.

More to the point is that this evening, apparently, there is some sort of debate regarding the adoption of the euro, which the bitch supports of course, so eager to join the “Union” is she that all other concerns are swept aside.

Not a political animal, no way. But Swedish money should stay in Sweden. Not to support these fucking aliens (another matter entirely) with their babushkas and hordes of filthy children, but just on principle.

The Norwegians have the right idea with all that oil money. Keep it close. Spend it to make your country great. How can anyone refute this logic?

The client: politician too. Boringly. Perhaps the most unengaging, least charismatic man one can imagine. From our one brief, furtive meeting I can recall his stale breath, his dandruff, cheap suit, his compulsive jiggling of the knee. His stiff, high-pitched speech. Just useless. Muttering about deniability, this being most important did I understand that there must be no direct communication, that discretion is paramount, that he knows no details, droning on and on, as if this were my first rodeo. I had to bite my tongue. The very fucking nerve. Talking to me like I’m new to this.

Somehow this man, I’ll call him Johan, believes he is the true successor to the throne. Old friend of fat-fuck Goran. Been waiting in the wings for a decade and figures it’s his turn, and the only barrier between prime ministership and yet more years on the periphery is this bitch who has inexplicably and rather swiftly positioned herself as the next choice for the goddamn Social Democrats... It’s become, apparently, an obsession. His drug problem certainly hasn’t helped him think straight. And his taste for underage hookers (which I am not ashamed to say I helped provide, it’s sort of something we do on the side, so many eager boys and girls from Latvia, Estonia... what they’ll do for a passport and the promise of a shit job, say, in this shit café I now find myself in, who am I to deny them this life?), well, this information gives me leverage and a bit of control, and the client knows it.

The rub, and I chuckle now thinking about it as I grind out my smoke, the upshot though... there’s not a chance in hell the client could win any election. Not a chance in hell. He’s like a flat cardboard cutout, stiff, awkward, and barely there. He doesn’t have the stuff.

If he had the stuff, he’d do it himself. I’d walk him through it. Throttle the bitch on the floor of Parliament.

But his lack of political future is beautiful. Cos it opens up the field for the true Swedes, friends in the Christian Democrats and the Farmers Party... citizens with the correct ideas, those who will carry us into the future and away from the failure that is Europe. The dirge that has been the Social Democrat era, seemingly endless, will come to an abrupt (and most welcome) halt. The time is now, you can smell it, you can taste it, ripe fruit.

Enough politics. I’ve got a focused pain behind my eye, no doubt brought on by all this political tripe... I take three Alvedon, down the capsules with the last sip of coffee, now cold.

Waiting on the word from Carl-Erik via the radio in my ear. The client wants it nasty. Fair enough... I can accommodate such requests.

“You’re on. No escort,” says Carl-Erik in my earpiece. Meaning the ladies are headed my direction.