Free Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All by Jonas Jonasson

something wrong at the dinner table. Heard the wrong words. Given the wrong answer. Done the wrong thing. Or just was wrong.
    Now Johanna Kjellander wondered how many plates it had been over the years. Fifty?
    Hitman Anders listened to her with great concentration, because you never knew when there might be something worth taking in. The story about her dad didn’t count: it had been clear to the hitman from the start that the old man needed a good thrashing, and thatwould probably take care of that. Or he could have a second thrashing, if necessary.
    In the end, Hitman Anders was forced to say so, in order to put a stop to the priest’s complaints. After an eternity she had got no further than her seventeenth birthday, when her dad had spat at her and said, “O God, how much must you hate me to give me a daughter, to give me this daughter. You have truly punished me, Lord.”Her dad didn’t believe in God any more than she did, but he did believe in tormenting others with God’s help.
    â€œPlease, priest, can I have the old man’s address so I can go over there with the brännboll bat and preach some manners to him? Or a lot of manners, it sounds like. Should we say both right and left? Arms or legs, that’s up to you.”
    â€œThank you for the offer,” said the priest, “but it comes too late. Dad died almost two years ago, on the fourth Sunday after Trinity.
When I got the news, I was up in the pulpit giving a sermon on forgiveness and not judging. But it turned out a bit different. I stood there and thanked the devil for taking my father home. It was not well received, you might say. I don’t remember everything but I’m pretty sure I called my dad a word that relates to the female genitals . . .”
    â€œCunt?”
    â€œWe don’t need to get into the details, but they interrupted me, pulled me down from the pulpit, and showed me the exit. Although I already knew where it was, of course.”
    Hitman Anders really wanted to know which dirty word it had been, but he had to content himself with learning that the priest’s choice had unleashed a sensational moment in which two of the congregation’s most devoted lambs had thrown their hymnals at her.
    â€œThen it must have been . . .”
    â€œNow, now!” said the priest, and continued her story. “I took my leave and wandered around until the next Sunday, and that was when I found our mutual friend Per Persson on a park bench. And then Imet you. And one thing led to the next and now we’re sitting here, you and I.”
    â€œYes, we are,” said Hitman Anders. “Now can we get back to what the Bible says about stuff so that this conversation goes somewhere?”
    â€œBut you were the one who wanted . . . you wanted me to tell you about my”
    â€œYeah, yeah, but not a whole novel.”

CHAPTER 11
    J ohanna Kjellander’s need to share with someone—anyone at all!—the essential facts about her upbringing caused her to remind Hitman Anders that he had come to her and must act accordingly. In short, he was to zip his lips until she had finished.
    Hitman Anders was not a person one could boss around, but since she put a beer out for him while she said this, he let her have her way. “Thanks,” he said.
    â€œI told you to be quiet.”
    Johanna had been abused since the very first day of her life in every way except physically. She weighed seven pounds and five ounces when her father had touched his daughter for the first and last time. He had lifted her up, held her slightly more firmly than was necessary, brought her face to his, and hissed into her ear, “What are you doing here? I don’t want you. Do you hear me? I don’t want you .”
    â€œHow could you, Gustav?” said Johanna’s exhausted mother.
    â€œI am the one who decides what I can and cannot do, do you hear me? You will never contradict me again,”