He put the phone back on the passenger seat and headed back toward the inner city and Södermalm. The salon where they dyed his hair and eyebrows dark was on Skåne Street. The optician who helped him try out brown contacts, had a small shop on a corner near Göta Street. And at Hornstull close to where Långholms Street met Högalids Street, there was a small studio that was key to the next step in his plan.

•   •   •

The cast that lay over his face, a membrane covering everything except his nostrils, was a pinkish color and just as cool on his skin as usual. The first time he did this, seven or eight years ago, the process made him feel trapped, even claustrophobic, when darkness concealed both his eyes. But now he trusted this woman, who usually worked with film or theater productions. She knew what she was doing, was the best he’d ever worked with. And she never asked why.

A bit messy, slightly runny, and about one centimeter thick. Alginate, which dentists used for dental imprints, and it solidified in ten minutes. Thinly spread and time-sensitive, so that her nimble fingers danced and danced across his face getting it into every nook and cranny. She had cut the plaster strips in advance—now she dipped them in water and draped them over the alginate mask, letting them be sucked into it. The burn. That’s what she called it. And the plaster strips did burn for real, got hot on the outside. She occasionally touched them, knocked them hard with her knuckles to check if it was done. Then she gently lifted off his provisional mask.

Piet Hoffmann could see again. And there it was suspended in front of him in her hands. The first version of his face.

“Do you need . . .”

He’d risen halfway out of his chair, nodding at the small studio’s exit.

“. . . me anymore?”

She’d a wonderful smile, he’d noticed it before, genuine, the opposite of the broker’s, and that’s how she answered his question. Not indulgently, but kind and patient.

“You know that.”

“Right now, I mean.”

The cement that was poured into the mask to make it even harder also needed to burn, for another half hour or so, then the alginate and plaster strips would be torn away and the next version of his face cast in the worktop. He knew that, just like she said. She preferred he stayed until the first cast was absolutely hard, until she was sure she had everything she needed to complete her work without him.

“You seem stressed today, Piet. Even more than usual. I mean, you usually are when you show up here. I guess that’s why you come, but today . . . you seem almost hunted.”

She worked with people’s exteriors, transforming them.

But in order to do that she needed to know their interiors as well.