The three men wore dark clothes and their soft trainers made practically no sound in the gravel. They clearly knew exactly what they were doing; they fanned out and surrounded the facility, each carrying a jerry can.

As though psychically linked, the three of them undid the caps of their cans almost simultaneously and started dousing the wooden façade, which had only received a simple primer coat. The glistening petrol ran down the wooden cladding and either dripped on to the gravel or was absorbed by the concrete plinths.

The window sills were given an extra dousing, and with the help of nail guns equipped with silencers, the front door was bolted to the frame with seven-inch nails. Then the three men each took out a lighter.

The entire operation took no more than three minutes.

The rest was chemistry.

12

It was over two hundred years old, made of white marble in the shape of an icosahedron with a surface consisting of twenty equilateral triangles. Twenty sides, each with an engraved number, apart from the number ten, which had been inscribed with an X.

Since the gilding of the numbers had long since worn off, a stranger would have to touch the grooves or hold the dice up to the light to see the result. He, by contrast, had long since learned to recognize the different sides from the patterns in the marble.

It was by far his most valuable dice and as always when he picked it up from its bed of cotton wool, he was struck by how heavy it felt in his hand. But then, that seemed fitting for the dice he used for the first roll, which set everything else in motion. Without it, nothing.

He cupped his hands around it and began to shake it.

Two or higher. That was all he needed to be allowed to take on a new mission. Which of the nineteen sides ended up face-up determined the number of days, counting from today.

The only number he mustn’t roll was one. If, against all odds, that side faced up, he would have to abort the whole thing and none of what he had prepared and looked forward to would happen. The fun would be over before it had really begun.

The police hadn’t even found the body from his mission in Klippan yet, the first in what he hoped would be a long, beautiful string of missions.

It had been several weeks already, and so far there had been no reports of the dead old man. Apparently, no one missed him. And then there was the fact that the body was in a long, hermetically sealed plastic tent and therefore didn’t emit the foul reek of death.