Blend in. Be normal. Probably the most important concept for an infiltrator. Never stick out, be a person with no smell to them. That was how he’d always worked. When you rent a car get the most common—which in Sweden these days was a silver Volvo V70. Peter Haraldsson’s shirts should be blue, his shoes black, and when it was cold outside, his scarves should be tied in a plastron knot—a simple knot that skipped the last step and just hung freely instead of sliding through the final loop.

“I need to hire someone to take care of my company’s general security needs.”

Normal. Especially when trying to fake a meeting in order to get closer, like now. As the owner of his own security company, he was very familiar with the usual questions. A) I’m feeling threatened—can you look into them? B) Goods are going missing from my company—can you help me find out who’s stealing? C) I need to review my company’s security setup—can you do that? He had chosen C. Even though he’d learned it was never about external security, always about internal insecurity.

“And I want to know how much it will cost. I need a quote.”

He looked back and forth between the two men. They weren’t paying much attention. They cared about him as little as he did about them. Stressed. Worried. Hoffmann thought he knew why. This morning no one had turned on the lights in the house they were guarding. No boys had headed off to school with their backpacks, no mother had gone for a walk with a stroller. Probably just a couple of hours ago they snuck out of their cars and into the Hoffmanns’ garden, peeping through the windows, listening, maybe they even rang the doorbell, which no one answered. They knew now that the family that made their blackmailing possible had disappeared. That their mission was about to go to hell.

“A quote?”

“Yes.”

“Um—where is your office located?”

“Västertorp.”

“So in the suburbs. And how big is it? In square meters.”

“A hundred, maybe a little more.”

“With just one entrance?”

“Yes.”

“It’s hard to give exact numbers before we . . .”

The security guard fell abruptly silent, started to examine his potential customer. It was as if he were looking past the pasted-on bags beneath his eyes and through his brown contact lenses. Into a person who was someone else.

“. . . visit you. But you can expect installations to be . . .”

Then he fell silent again, just as abruptly, and sought out his colleague’s eyes. It was clear that they were communicating. Hoffmann could feel the two weapons holstered against his shoulder blades, gun on the left, knife on the right, and prepared to act.

“. . . well, I’m guessing somewhere around seventy-five thousand kronor. Plus a monthly service fee of eight hundred.”