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have my artistic integrity to thank for what little respect I still get. I wouldn’t even know how to begin writing something like that.’
    Lundin got up, pushed some papers aside with his foot and got onto his rowing machine.
    ‘I’m not so sure you wouldn’t know how to do it.’
    Humlin always had trouble concentrating on the conversation when Lundin started rowing.
    ‘I don’t like crime fiction. I think whodunnits are boring. I couldn’t care less about reading a book where the only point is to guess who the murderer is before the book is over.’
    ‘That’s fine. That’s just what I had expected.’
    ‘Do you have to do that right now?’
    ‘I have to take responsibility for my high blood pressure. My doctor tells me I’ll be dead in four and a half years if I don’t exercise regularly.’
    ‘How can he be so exact?’
    ‘He retires in four and a half years. He’s planning to move to the Azores Islands.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Supposedly they have the healthiest population on the planet.’
    ‘I’m not writing a crime novel.’
    Lundin paused the machine.
    ‘That’s the spirit.’
    ‘What do you mean, that’s the spirit? I thought you wanted me to write one?’
    ‘I believe I’ve made it as far as Möja.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I row back and forth to Finland about once a month.’
    Humlin felt exhausted.
    ‘I just want to make myself understood. I don’t write crime fiction. What do oil executives know about good literature?’
    Lundin resumed his rowing.
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘I’ll be turning in my usual book of poetry.’
    ‘A crime novel, you mean?’
    ‘No, no crime novel. How many times do I have to say it?’
    ‘It will be a sensation. A renowned poet who neither cares to nor knows how to write one does so anyway. It will be completely different from what others are writing. But excellent. Perhaps it will be a very philosophical crime novel?’
    ‘If you no longer want my poem there are other publishing companies. Ones that are not owned by oilmen.’
    Lundin dropped the oars and stood up. He lit a cigarette then placed the blood-pressure cuff around his arm.
    ‘Aren’t you supposed to rest before doing that?’
    ‘I’m just checking my pulse. Of course I want your poems.’
    ‘They don’t sell fifty thousand copies.’
    ‘But your crime novel will.’
    ‘I don’t write whodunits. I am a poet.’
    ‘You will continue to write poetry. Just as you always have. The crime novel comes in between.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘My pulse is at ninety-eight.’
    ‘I don’t care about your pulse right now. I want to know what you mean.’
    ‘It’s very simple. You write a crime novel where the poem at the start of each chapter gives the reader some clues.’
    ‘What kind of clues?’
    ‘Most likely the kind that it will take some literary knowledge to decipher. I am convinced it will be a sensation. A philosophical thriller. Jesper Humlin is treading a new path. It will be wonderful. I think it will go to sixty-two thousand copies.’
    ‘Why not sixty-one?’
    ‘My instinct tells me this one will go to sixty-two thousand.’
    Humlin looked at the time and got up. He felt a need to escapefrom this room that was starting to look more and more like a battlefield.
    ‘I have a reading in Gothenburg tonight. I have to go.’
    ‘When can I expect the manuscript?’
    ‘I’m not writing a thriller. That’s it.’
    ‘If I get it in April we can have it out by September. The title should be something along the lines of “Deathly Rhyme”.’
    Humlin left the building and took a few deep breaths when he got out onto the street. The conversation had both unsettled and angered him. Usually these conversations only left him exhausted. As he collected himself he realised that Lundin was serious about this. Viktor Leander was not the only one who was convinced that crime novels were the way of the future.
    While he walked to the Central station he thought about the cover design of