“You’re my best infiltrator. You’ve survived longer than anyone. And when you’ve been forced to break the law, I’ve cleaned up after you—every time. Because it’s in the interest of the police authorities to keep you out of there. But this, my friend . . . you’ve gone too far!”

“I don’t intend to kill fifty people, Erik, I just want them to KNOW I can do it. IF I end up in that situation.”

“It’s too much, too far—for some incomprehensible reason, I let you go too far!”

“If anything is incomprehensible it’s that no one else has realized how easy it would be to change the balance of power. Take over somebody’s territory. What a catastrophe it would be for any gang if some other fucking gang was sitting on a high-precision weapon of this caliber. Just take, for example, this fucking biker club I infiltrated—it’s common knowledge that they have a weekly meeting in their head office on Wednesdays at three. Not behind bulletproof walls—but in a fucking metal shack that I could destroy with a homemade bomb in seconds! Hells Angels have weekly meetings and Southside has one too. And we’re in fucking Sweden! I can pop into the town hall in any city, look at the drawings and plans for these clubs’ buildings because it’s public information. Everything is available—ceiling, wall thicknesses—anyone can do it. I’ve done it time and time again. You cops should do it too. Have a little fun, Erik, go in and take a look at Bandido’s new premises or Evil Crew and one thing is for sure—none of them have any reinforcements. They’re too lazy. And it’s never been a problem. Plus it’s expensive. And where do you even get a hold of it. I’ll say it again—if I wanted to go to war for real with any of the big criminal organizations, I’d knock them out in one blow. On my own. Park my homemade device, watch the clock, knowing that they’re having their little weekly meeting, that they’re all sitting down inside. Light that shit up with nothing more than an internet camera and a remote control.”

Piet Hoffmann remembered those days, that meeting. Those doubled emotions. Tangible panic, palpable fear, and adrenaline burning inside him so clear and clean. But reading it now so long afterward, line by line, felt like meeting those faded school photos he’d shown Rasmus and Hugo of himself at their age, which made them laugh so hard. A stranger, that’s what he saw. The very young man he’d once been, whom he could barely understand or relate to now. A gaze he didn’t dare meet, because the school-age version of himself would also see the same stranger.