He’d tried to sleep, but hadn’t been able to keep his eyes closed for more than thirty seconds at a time. And that was after wolfing down a big steak with French fries and Béarnaise sauce and two large glasses of Coke across the street at Sam’s Bar. After that, he’d completed a gruelling workout session in his flat and followed it up with an hour’s meditation in the bath.

But nothing had helped. Even though it would soon be twenty-four hours since his little trip to ICA Maxi in Hyllinge, he was still so wired he couldn’t sit still.

But then again, he had never experienced anything like it. Nothing else compared. That feeling of knowing no one else had any idea, of just standing there, holding his queue number and waiting for the right moment. My God, they must have been so shocked. They hadn’t even screamed. Or maybe he’d been so focused he hadn’t heard them. Either way, no one had even tried to intervene.

Lennart ‘Beefsteak’ Andersson, on the other hand, had been exactly as physically fit as he’d feared and had, consequently, offered a good deal of resistance. But in hindsight, he counted that as a plus. Instead of the whole thing being over in seconds, he’d been forced to go at it for well over a minute before the old man gave up and he could escape through the staff entrance and cycle home.

In a few minutes, the day would be six hours old and even though he’d originally intended to wait for a few more hours, his fingers were itching for it already. He needed his next fix, and he needed it now.

He took out the icosahedron, which with its twenty sides would decide when his next assignment would take place, unless he rolled a one. If that happened, he would simply have to give it up for good. Or maybe not so simply. The risk of there not being a next time made his stomach knot.

He shook the dice, released it on to the felt and didn’t know if he could believe what he was seeing.

A two.

He’d only had two days to prepare last time. And now it was a two again. On the other hand, this was what he wanted, and he preferred being pressed for time to being forced to twiddle his thumbs for twenty days.

He took out the tin with the six-sided precision dice, which were going to decide where his next victim would be found and who they were going to be. After a number of throws, chance had homed in on Helsingborg, specifically Kärngränd 4, second floor, whoever lived behind the far-left window.

Then he moved on to how it would happen, this time selecting from the category Ways to die.