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them out to her, and she was just about to take them when he pulled back his hand and smiled. He waited a bit then held them out again, and just when she was about to take them, he pulled back his hand, again.
        "For fuck's sake, she's earned them!"
        Hoffmann snatched the tickets from him and gave them to her. "We'll be in touch. When we need your help again."
        The anger, the frustration, the dread.
        They were finally alone in the flat that functioned as an office for one of Stockholm's security firms.
        "This was my operation."
        Piet Hoffmann took a step closer to the man who had shot and killed a person that morning.
    "I am the one who speaks the language and I am the one who gives the orders in this country."
        It was more than anger. It was rage. He had contained it since the shooting. First they had to take care of the mules, empty them, secure the delivery. Now he could release it.
        "If anyone is going to shoot, it's on my order and only my order."
        He wasn't sure where it was coming from, why it was so intense. Whether it was disappointment that a business partner had not materialized. Whether it was frustration because a person who probably had the same brief as he did had been killed without reason.
        "And the gun, where the fuck is it?"
        Mariusz pointed at his chest, to the inner pocket of his jacket.
        "You murdered someone. You can get life for that. And you're so fucking stupid that you've still got the gun in your pocket?"
        Rage and something else tearing at him. You should have been reporting back to Poland. He blocked out the feeling that might equally be fear, took a step toward the man who was smiling, pointing at his inner pocket, and stopped when they were face to face. Play your role. That was all that mattered, power and respect, taking and never letting go. Play your role or die.
        "He was a policeman."
        "And how the fuck d'you know that?"
        "He said so."
        "And since when did you speak Swedish?"
        Piet Hoffmann took measured breaths. He realized that he was irritated and tired as he walked over to the round kitchen table and the metal bowl that contained 2,749 regurgitated and cleaned capsules: a good twenty-seven kilos of pure amphetamine.
        "He said police. I heard it. You heard it."
        Hoffmann didn't turn around when he replied.
        "You were at the same meeting as me in Warsaw. You know the rules. Until we're done here, it's me, and only me, who decides."
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         He had been uncomfortable during the short journey from Kronoberg to Vasastan. Or rather, he'd been sitting on something. When Hermansson swung into Västmannagatan and pulled up outside number 79, he lifted his heavy body a touch while he felt around on the seat with his hand. Two cassettes. Siw mixes. He held the hard plastic cases in his hand and looked at the music that should have been packed away, and then at the passenger seat and glove compartment. There were two more cassettes in there. He bent down and pushed them as far under the seat as possible. He was as scared of being near them as he was of forgetting to take them with him, the last four remnants of another life that would remain packed away in a cardboard box sealed with tape.
        Ewen Grens preferred sitting here in the back.
        He no longer had any music to play and he had no desire to listen to or answer the frequent calls on the radio. And anyway, Hermansson drove considerably better than both Sven and he did in the busy city traffic.
        There wasn't much room on the street; three police cars and forensics' dark-blue Volkswagen bus double-parked alongside a tight row of residents' cars. Mariana Hermansson slowed down, drove up onto the pavement and stopped in front of the main door, which was guarded by two uniformed policemen. They were both young and pale and the one