The Preacher Read Free Page A

a nice burn in the throat.
    ‘What a fucking blast last night, eh?’ Robert laughed and blew smoke rings in the air. ‘I told you they’d have great stuff at home. He’s a director of some company in Stockholm. Thank God guys like that can afford the best.’
    Stefan didn’t answer. Unlike his big brother, he never got an adrenaline rush from the break-ins. Instead he went about for days both before and after a job with a big cold lump of fear in his stomach. But he always did as Robert said; it never occurred to him that he could do anything different.
    Yesterday’s break-in had given them the biggest payday they’d had in a long time. Most people had grown more wary of leaving expensive things in their summer houses; they used mainly their old junk that they would have otherwise thrown out, or finds from jumble sales that made them feel they’d made a coup even though the items weren’t worth a shit. But yesterday they’d got hold of a new TV, a DVD player, a Nintendo, and a bunch of jewellery belonging to the lady of the house. Robert was going to sell the stuff through his usual channels, and it would bring a pretty penny. Not that it would last them very long. Stolen money always burned a hole in their pockets, and after a couple of weeks it would be gone. They spent it on gambling, going out and treating their friends, and other necessary expenses. Stefan looked at the pricey watch he was wearing. Luckily their mother couldn’t recognize anything valuable when she saw it. If she knew what this watch cost, the nagging would never stop.
    Sometimes he felt trapped like a hamster on a wheel, going round and round as the years passed by. Nothing had really changed since he and his brother were teenagers, and he saw no possibilities now, either. The one thing that gave his life meaning was the only thing he had ever kept secret from Robert. An instinct deep inside told him that no good would come of confiding in his brother. Robert would only turn it into something dirty with his rude remarks.
    For a second Stefan allowed himself to think about how soft her hair was against his rough cheek, and how small her hand felt when he held it between his own.
    ‘Hey, don’t just sit there daydreaming. We’ve got business to take care of.’
    Robert got up with his cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and headed out the door first. As usual, Stefan followed, which was all he knew how to do.
    In the kitchen Solveig was sitting in her usual place. Ever since Stefan was a little boy, since that incident with his father, he had seen her sitting on her chair by the window as her fingers eagerly fiddled with whatever was in front of her on the table. In his earliest memories his mother was beautiful, but over the years the fat had accumulated in thicker and thicker layers on her face and body.
    Solveig looked as if she were sitting there in a trance; her fingers lived their own life, incessantly plucking at things and then smoothing them out. For almost twenty years she had messed about with those fucking photo albums, sorting and resorting them. She bought new albums and then rearranged the photos and news clippings. Better, more elegantly. He wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t understand that it was her way of holding on to happier times, but someday surely she would see that those days were long gone.
    The pictures were from the days when Solveig was beautiful. The high point of her life had been when she married Johannes Hult, the youngest son of Ephraim Hult, the noted Free Church pastor and owner of the most prosperous farm in the region. Johannes was handsome and rich. Solveig may have been poor, but she was the most beautiful girl in all of Bohuslän; that’s what everyone said at the time. And if further proof were needed, the articles she had saved from when she was crowned Queen of the May two years in a row would suffice. It was those articles, and the many black-and-white photos of herself as a young