Chapter one
I was working on a case. I couldn’t afford a desk.
Outside, the rain was coming down like so many condensed drops of water that had reached critical mass in the earth’s atmosphere.
In walks trouble. A blond. They always were. After all, the offices were in Stockholm. She asks if I could help her out. I wasn’t sure – I was pretty busy. I’d been working round the clock. Stupid place to put that big old thing, right there in the middle of the office, but there was no time for regrets now.
“I need you to follow my husband”, she says. I said I’d be happy to, on the proviso he wasn’t one of those solo arctic explorers. “I’m sure he’s having an affair, but I need you to catch him in flagrante delicto.”
Now, my German wasn’t so hot, but I figured this guy had his infidelity-shaped hand in an evocatively-shaped cookie jar. “Spending sordid nights showing a brazen disregard for trust and self respect through desperate, dispassionate acts of pitiful lust, ” I offered, but she wasn’t interested in how I passed my weekends.
“Can you help me?” she implored. I wasn’t sure. After all, this was a post office, and I was just the guy who licked the stamps, but already I felt too involved…