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been enough to slug the mouthiest of the men; in the worst case, he would have had to bring down all eight. With even a tiny amount of bad luck, one wouldn’t have got up again, and there would have been those twenty additional years in prison just waiting for him, plus or minus ten.
    A more practical solution might have been to allow the eight fools to choose the music they liked. Unless it was an indisputable truth that a line had to be drawn at Julio Iglesias.
    For Hitman Anders, lifting the jukebox and heaving it out of the window, thus bringing the evening to an end for him and everyone else, had allowed his destructive self to take control of his extremely destructive self. It had worked. It had been expensive, but—crucially—it had allowed him to wake up in his own bed, rather than in a jail cell awaiting transport to somewhere more permanent.
    The jukebox had saved his life. Or he had saved it himself, using the jukebox as a weapon. Did this mean that the road back to prison was not as inevitable as his inner voice had started harping on about? What if there was life beyond violence, and, for that matter, life with no jukeboxes flying through the air?
    In which case—how could he find it, and where would it lead?
    He thought. And opened his first beer of the day. And soon the second. And he forgot what he’d just been thinking, but the knot in his stomach was gone, and cheers to that!
    Beer was the water of life. The third in succession was almost always the most delicious.
    Whoopty-ding!
    He thought.

CHAPTER 10
    T hen came the day when it was time for the group to make good on their debt to the count. The victim this time was a customer who had test-driven a Lexus RX 450h over the weekend and managed to get it stolen.
    So he said.
    In reality, he had hidden it in Dalarna, at the home of his sister who, instead of thinking carefully, took a photograph of herself behind the wheel and posted it to Facebook. Since everyone on the site knows someone who knows someone who knows someone, it didn’t take the count many hours to learn the truth. The deceitful customer didn’t even have time to figure out that he’d been exposed before his face had been ruined and every more or less accessible tooth knocked out. Thanks to the age of the car and its intended price tag (it was new and expensive), one kneecap and one shin were goners as well.
    It was one routine job among many but, according to the agreement made nineteen months earlier, the price was to include two broken arms for the guy who had played blackjack too poorly for his own good and half got away with it, thanks to a baby.
    Hitman Anders carried out this job, too, with precision (both arms were always easier than just one, since he didn’t have to pick the correct one). And that would probably have been the end of it, had it not occurred to him to consider the kind thing the priest had said thefirst time they met. It was something about how nice it had been forHitman Anders to respect a small child.
    The priest had referred to the Bible, of all things. What if there was more of the same inside that book? After all, it was fatter than the devil. Stories that could make him . . . feel good? Become someone different? Because there was something that came and went inside his head, something he had thus far done his best to drink away.
    He would talk to the priest the very next day, and she could tell him. The next day. First the pub. It was already four thirty in the afternoon.
    Unless . . .
    What if he were to drop by the hotel after all and ask the priest to explain this and that about this and that first, then drink away the eternal knot in his stomach? He wouldn’t have to say much while she talked: he could just listen. And a person could always drink at the same time.
    * * *
    â€œListen up, priest, I need to talk to you.”
    â€œDo you need to borrow some money?”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œIs the beer in the