Blood on Snow

Chapter 8

I went to the hotel early the next morning. Both of the rooms that faced Hoffmann’s apartment were already taken. I went and stood outside in the morning darkness, hidden behind a parked van, and looked up at his living room. Waiting. Squeezing the pistol in my coat pocket. This was the time he normally left home to go to work. But of course things weren’t normal. The lights were on, but it was impossible to see if there was anyone up there. I presumed that Hoffmann realised I wouldn’t have taken off with Corina and now be holed up in a hotel in Copenhagen or Amsterdam, say. To begin with, that wasn’t my style, and anyway, I didn’t have the money, and Hoffmann knew that. I’d had to ask for an advance to cover my expenses for this job. He’d asked why I was so broke, seeing as he’d only just paid me for two jobs. I said something about bad habits.

If Hoffmann was assuming that I was still in the city, then he would also assume that I’d try to get him before he got me. We knew each other fairly well by now. But it’s one thing to think you know something about someone, and another to know for certain, and I’ve been wrong before. Maybe he was on his own up there. And if that was the case, I’d never get a better opportunity than when he emerged from the building. I’d just have to wait until the lock clicked shut behind him so he couldn’t get back inside, run across the street, two shots to the torso from five metres, then two in the head from close range.

That was a lot to hope for.

The door opened. It was him.

And Brynhildsen and Pine. Brynhildsen with the toupee that looked like it was made from dog hair and the pencil-thin moustache that looked like a croquet hoop. Pine in the caramel-brown leather jacket he wore all year round, summer and winter alike. With his little hat, the cigarette tucked behind his ear, and a mouth that just wouldn’t stop. Random words drifted across the street. “Fucking cold” and “that bastard.”

Hoffmann stopped inside the doorway while his two attack dogs went out onto the pavement and looked up and down the street with their hands deep in their jacket pockets.

Then they waved at Hoffmann and began to walk towards the car.

I hunched my shoulders and headed in the opposite direction. Fine. It was, as I said, a lot to hope for. And now at least I knew that he had worked out how I was thinking of solving this. With him dying rather than me.

Either way, it meant I had to go back to Plan A.

The reason I had started with Plan B was that there wasn’t a single thing I liked about Plan A.