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just off the kitchen … it’s some kind of office.”
    Henrik followed Tommy’s voice through the narrowkitchen. He was standing by the wall in a windowless room, pointing with his gloved right hand.
    “What do you think about this?”
    He wasn’t smiling—Tommy hardly ever smiled—but he was looking up at the wall with the expression of someone who might have made a real find. A large wall clock was hanging there, made of dark wood with Roman numerals behind the glass covering the clock face.
    Henrik nodded. “Yes … could be worth something. Is it old?”
    “I think so,” said Tommy, opening the glass door. “If we’re lucky, it’ll be an antique. German or French.”
    “It’s not ticking.”
    “Probably needs winding up.” He closed the door and shouted, “Freddy!”
    After a few seconds the younger brother came clomping into the kitchen.
    “What?”
    “Give me a hand with this,” said Tommy.
    Freddy had the longest arms of the three of them. He unhooked the clock and lifted it down. Then Henrik helped to carry it.
    “Come on, let’s get it outside,” said Tommy.
    The van was parked close to the house, in the shadows at the back.
    It had kalmar pipes & welding on the sides. Tommy had bought plastic letters and stuck them on himself. There was no such welding company in Kalmar, but driving around in a company van at night looked less suspicious than some anonymous old delivery van.
    “They’re opening a police station in Marnäs next week,” said Henrik as they were lifting the clock out through the veranda window.
    There was almost no wind tonight, but the air was fresh and cold.
    “How do you know?” said Tommy.
    “It was in the paper this morning.”
    He heard Freddy’s hoarse laugh in the darkness.
    “Oh, well, that’s it then,” said Tommy. “You might as well ring them and rat the two of us out, then you might get a reduced sentence.”
    He dropped his lower lip, showing his teeth; that was his way of smiling.
    Henrik smiled back in the darkness. There were thousands of summer cottages for the police to keep an eye on all over the island, besides which they usually worked only during the day.
    They placed the clock in the back of the van, alongside the collapsible exercise bike, two large vases made of polished limestone, a video player, a small outboard motor, a computer and printer, and a television with stereo speakers that were already in there.
    “Shall we call it a night?” said Tommy when he had closed the back door of the van.
    “Yes … I don’t think there’s anything else.”
    Henrik went back to the house briefly anyway, to close the window. He picked up a couple of small pieces of shale from the ground and pushed them into the gaps in the wooden frame to hold the window in place.
    “Come on,” shouted Tommy behind him.
    The brothers thought it was a waste of time, closing the place up after a break-in. But Henrik knew it could be months before anyone came to the cottage, and with the window open the rain and snow would destroy the décor.
    Tommy started the engine as Henrik climbed into the passenger seat. Then he lifted off a section of the door panel and reached inside. Wrapped in small pieces of paper towels was ice—crystal meth.
    “Want another?” said Tommy.
    “No. I’ve had enough.”
    The brothers had brought the ice with them from the Continent, both to sell and for personal use. The crystals were like a kick up the backside, but if Henrik took more than one hit per night, he started quivering like a flagpole, and found it difficult to think logically. The thoughts thudded around in his head, and he couldn’t get to sleep.
    He wasn’t a junkie, after all—but nor was he boring. One hit was fine.
    Tommy and Freddy didn’t seem to have the same problem, or else they were planning to stay awake all night when they got back to Kalmar. They stuffed the crystals in their mouths, paper and all, and washed the whole lot down with water from a plastic