“Hubba bubba, Henke,” said one of them.
He was wearing big sunglasses. It should have looked comical, but this was not a person to be laughed at. He had long red marks on his cheeks and chin, as if someone had scratched him.
“How’s it goin’?”
“Okay, I guess,” said Henrik slowly. “Who are you?”
“Tommy and Freddy. The Serelius brothers. Hell, you must have heard of us, Henrik… You must know who we are?”
Tommy adjusted his glasses and scratched his cheek with long, raking strokes. Henrik realized where the marks on his face had come from-he hadn’t been in a fight, he had caused them himself.
Then the brothers had taken a quick tour of his one-bedroom apartment and slumped down on the sofa in front of the TV.
“Got any chips?” said Freddy.
He rested his boots on Henrik’s glass table. When he unbuttoned his padded jacket, his beer belly protruded in a pale blue T-shirt with the slogan SOLDIER OF FORTUNE FOREVER.
“Your pal Mogge says hi,” said big brother Tommy, removing the sunglasses. He was slightly slimmer than Freddy and was staring at Henrik with a little smile playing at the corners of his mouth and a black leather bag in his hand. “It was Mogge who thought we should come here.”
“To Siberia,” said Freddy, pulling the bowl of chips Henrik had provided toward him.
“Mogge? Morgan Berglund?”
“Sure thing,” said Tommy, sitting down on the sofa next to his brother. “You’re pals, right?”
“We were,” said Henrik. “Mogge’s moved away.”
“We know, he’s in Denmark. He was working in a casino in Copenhagen, illegally.”
“Dirty dealing,” said Freddy.
“We’ve been in Europe,” said Tommy. “For almost a year. Makes you realize how fucking small Sweden is.”
“Fucking backwater,” said Freddy.
“First of all we were in Germany-Hamburg and Düsseldorf, that was fucking brilliant. Then we went to Copenhagen, and that was pretty cool too.” Tommy looked around again. “And now we’re here.”
He nodded and put a cigarette in the corner of his mouth.
“Don’t smoke in here,” said Henrik.
He had been wondering why the Serelius brothers had left the big cities of Europe-if things had indeed been going so bloody well down there-and traveled up to the isolation of small-town Sweden. Had they quarreled with the wrong people? Probably.
“You can’t stay here,” said Henrik, looking around his one-bedroom apartment. “I haven’t got room. You can see that.”
Tommy had put the cigarette away. He didn’t appear to be listening.
“We’re Satanists,” he said. “Did we mention that?”
“Satanists?” said Henrik.
Tommy and Freddy nodded.
“You mean devil worshippers?” said Henrik with a smile.
Tommy wasn’t smiling.
“We don’t worship anyone,” he said. “Satan stands for the strength within human beings, that’s what we believe in.”
“The force,” said Freddy, finishing off the chips.
“Exactly,” said Tommy. “‘Might makes right’-that’s our motto. We take what we want. Have you heard of Aleister Crowley?”
“No.”
“A great philosopher,” said Tommy. “Crowley saw life as a constant battle between the strong and the weak. Between the clever and the stupid. Where the strongest and cleverest always win.”
“Well, that’s logical,” said Henrik, who had never been religious. He had no intention of becoming religious now, either.
Tommy carried on looking around the apartment.
“When did she cut and run?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Your girl. The one who put up curtains and dried flowers and all that crap. You didn’t do it, did you?”
“She moved out last spring,” said Henrik.
A memory of Camilla sprang unbidden into his mind, lying reading on the sofa where the Serelius brothers were now sitting. He realized that Tommy was a bit smarter than he looked-he noticed details.
“What was her name?”
“Camilla.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Like dog shit,” he said quickly. “Anyway, like I said, you can’t stay…”
“Chill out, we’re staying in Kalmar,” said Tommy. “That’s all sorted, but we’re thinking of working here on Öland. So we need a bit of help.”
“With what?”
“Mogge told us what you and he used to do in the winter. He told us about the summer cottages…”
“I see.”
“He said you’d be happy to start up again.”
Thanks for that, Mogge, thought Henrik. They had quarreled about the division of the money before Morgan left-perhaps this was his revenge.
“That was a long time ago,” he said. “Four years… and we only did it for two winters, really.”
“And? Mogge said it went well.”
“It went okay,” said Henrik.
Virtually all the break-ins had been problem free, but a couple of times he and Mogge had been spotted by the people next door and had to make their escape over stone walls, like kids stealing apples. They had always worked out at least two escape routes in advance, one on foot and one in the car.
He went on: “Sometimes there wasn’t anything of value… but once we found a cupboard, it was really old. A seventeenth-century German cabinet, we got thirty-five thousand kronor for that in Kalmar.”
Henrik had become more animated as he was talking, almost nostalgic. He had actually had quite a talent for getting in through locked veranda doors and windows without smashing them. His grandfather had been a carpenter in Marnäs and had been equally proud of his expertise.
But he also remembered how stressful it had been, driving around northern Öland night after night. It was bitterly cold up there in the winter, both in the wind outdoors and inside the closed-up houses. And the holiday villages were empty and silent.
“Old houses are real treasure troves,” said Tommy. “So you’re in? We need you to find our way around up there.”
Henrik didn’t say anything. He was thinking that a person who has a miserable, predictable life must be miserable and predictable themselves. He didn’t want to be like that.
“So we’re agreed, then,” said Tommy. “Okay?”
“Maybe,” said Henrik.
“That sounds like a yes.”
“Maybe.”
“Hubba bubba,” said Tommy.
Henrik nodded, hesitantly.
He wanted to be exciting, to have an exciting life. Now that Camilla had moved out, the evenings were miserable and the nights were empty, but still he hesitated. It wasn’t the risk of being caught that had made Henrik give up the break-ins before, it was a different kind of fear.
“It’s dark out in the country,” he said.
“Sounds good,” said Tommy.
“It’s bloody dark,” said Henrik. “There are no streetlights in the villages, and the power in the cottages is usually switched off. You can hardly see a thing.”
“No problem,” said Tommy. “We pocketed some flashlights at a gas station yesterday.”
Henrik nodded slowly. Flashlights got rid of the darkness, of course, but only to a certain extent.
“I’ve got a boathouse we can use,” he said. “For storage, until we find the right buyer.”
“Great,” said Tommy. “Then all we have to do is find the right houses. Mogge said you know some good places.”
“Some,” said Henrik. “It goes with the job.”
“Give us the addresses, then we can check if they’re safe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’ll ask Aleister.”
“What?”
“We usually chat with Aleister Crowley,” said Tommy, placing his bag on the table. He opened it and took out a narrow, flat box, made of dark wood. “We contact him using this.”