Jonas Jonasson - Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All

4th Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thEstate.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2016

Originally published in Sweden as Mördar-Anders och hans vänner

(samt en och annan ovän) by Piratförlaget in 2015

Copyright © Jonas Jonasson 2015

Translation copyright © Rachel Wilson-Broyles 2016

Jonas Jonasson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

‘I rörelse’ by Karin Boye, translated by Rachel Wilson-Broyles

Apart from the exceptions noted below, scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

The scripture quotation ‘No longer drink only water, but take a little wine for the sake of your stomach’ is from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), published by HarperCollins © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The scripture quotation ‘Drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered. The cup of the Lord’s right hand shall be turned unto thee’ is from the authorised King James Version.

Cover design by Jonathan Pelham

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Source ISBN 9780008152079

Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008152086

Version: 2018-06-18

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

PART ONE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

PART TWO

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

PART THREE

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Epilogue

Author’s Thanks

Also by Jonas Jonasson

Exclusive sample chapter

About the Publisher

You would have liked this one, Dad.

So it’s for you.

An unusual business strategy

Daydreaming in the reception area of one of Sweden’s most wretched hotels stood a man whose life would soon come to be filled with death and bodily harm, thieves and bandits.

The only grandchild of horse-dealer Henrik Bergman was, as always, channelling his paternal grandfather’s shortcomings. The old man had been foremost in his field in southern Sweden; he never sold fewer than seven thousand animals per year, and each was first-class.

But from 1955, the traitorous farmers began to exchange Grandfather’s cold- and warmbloods for tractors at a rate that Grandfather refused to comprehend. Seven thousand transactions became seven hundred, which became seventy, which became seven. Within five years, the family’s multi-million-krona fortune had gone up in a cloud of diesel smoke. In 1960, the as-yet-unborn grandson’s dad tried to save what he could by travelling around to all the farmers in the region and preaching on the curse of mechanization. After all, there were so many rumours flying about. Such as how diesel fuel would cause cancer if it got on your skin and, of course, get on your skin it did.

And then Dad added that studies showed diesel could cause sterility in men. But he really shouldn’t have mentioned that. For one thing, it wasn’t true, and for another, it sounded perfectly lovely to breadwinning but continuously horny farmers with three to eight children each. It was embarrassing to try to get your hands on condoms, not so for a Massey Ferguson or John Deere.

His grandfather had died not only destitute but kicked to death by his last horse. His grieving, horseless son took up the reins, completed some sort of course, and was soon employed by Facit AB, one of the world’s leading companies in the production of typewriters and mechanical calculators. Thus he succeeded in being trampled by the future not once but twice in his lifetime, because suddenly the electronic calculator popped up on the market. As if to poke fun at Facit’s brick of a product, the Japanese version fitted the inner pocket of a jacket.

The Facit group’s machines didn’t shrink (at least, not fast enough), but the firm itself did, until it shrivelled up into absolutely nothing.

The son of the horse dealer was laid off. To repress the fact that he had been twice cheated by life, he took to the bottle. Unemployed, bitter, always unbathed and never sober, he soon lost all his power of attraction in the eyes of his twenty-years-younger wife, who managed to stick it out for a little while, then another little while. But eventually it occurred to the patient young woman that the mistake of marrying the wrong man was possible to undo. ‘I want a divorce,’ she said one morning, to her husband, as he walked around their apartment, looking for something while clad in white underpants covered with dark stains.

‘Have you seen the bottle of cognac?’ said her husband.

‘No. But I want a divorce.’

‘I put it on the counter last night. You must have moved it.’

‘It’s possible it ended up in the drinks cabinet when I was cleaning the kitchen, I don’t remember, but I’m trying to tell you I want a divorce.’

‘In the drinks cabinet? Of course, I should have looked there first. How silly of me. So are you moving out? And you’re going to take the thing that just craps its pants with you, right?’

Yes, she took the baby. A boy with pale blond hair and kind blue eyes. The boy who would, much later, be a receptionist.