The Invoice by Jonas Karlsson Read Free Book Online Page A

older. He had thinning dark brown hair with a hint of red in it, and I wondered if he dyed it. He sat down opposite me and put a thick folder on the table.
    “Well,” he said, looking at me. “You wanted a meeting in person?”
    “Er, yes,” I said. “I’ve got a few questions.”
    He nodded and smiled.
    “Hmm,” he said. “What sort of questions?”
    I held out my hands.
    “How it can come to so much, for instance?”
    He nodded again. He was clearly used to questions of this sort.
    “Let’s see now,” he said, opening the folder. “You’ve been talking to…”
    “Maud,” I said.
    He glanced up at me, then looked back down at the folder. He adjusted a long strand of hair that had fallen across his forehead, and ran his finger along the bottom of one page.
    “Maud…Maud Andersson—yes, that’s right. One moment.”
    He went out to the young woman in reception, then came back in. He sat down and leafed through the file, apparently not bothered by my presence. He had a large pile of documents from the local council, the regional council, schools, the address register, betting companies, and so on. There was a humming sound from the ceiling, from the air conditioning or some sort of ventilation system. I noticed that there were small surveillance cameras in each corner. Simple, flat lenses, big enough to make you realize that it was no secret that every nook and cranny of the room was covered. We were probably being watched the whole time by someone sitting somewhere else. Maybe they were listening in as well.
    Through the glass walls, I eventually saw a tall, thin woman in a navy blue jacket and skirt walking between the tables. She had full lips, fair hair cut to the nape of her neck, but longer at the front to form a little arc round her cheeks. She went out into the reception area, then came over toward us, tapped on the glass, and pushed the door open when Georg indicated that she could come in.
    “Hello,” she said to me, holding out her hand.
    I stood up and was about to utter the phrase I’d thought out in advance: that she looked just like she sounded on the phone, when I realized that she didn’t sound the same at all. I looked at the eyes and hair, and those lips that seemed too full to be entirely natural. And while I was thinking that she didn’t look at all like I’d imagined, she introduced herself with a long, complicated surname that I didn’t quite catch. It sounded like the name of a bank to me. Or a firm of solicitors. I can’t remember what it was, neither her first nor last name. Neither of them was Maud, anyway.
    Georg stood up as well. He adjusted his glasses and took the chance to brush an invisible hair from his eyebrow. The woman smelled faintly of some fresh, cool perfume, and she had a small brooch on the lapel of her jacket, a flower or wreath of some sort. I wondered if it meant anything or was simply supposed to be attractive. She sat down on the chair next to Georg without leaning back in it, put a file on her lap, and glanced at the papers Georg was leafing through. Now and then the corner of her mouth twitched in an extremely professional smile.
    “Yes…” Georg said. “It’s a good life.”
    “Yes, it is.”
    The pair of them looked up at me, rather surprised, as if they hadn’t been expecting an answer. Georg quickly went back to looking through his papers, and the woman with the bank name looked at hers.
    “It’s going to be an awful lot of money,” he said.
    “Yes, I suppose you…” I began again, before I realized that he was addressing her the whole time. This was a conversation between the two of them. Clearly they were going to discuss the material before I was given the opportunity to comment on anything.
    The woman with the bank name nodded and smiled again. Slightly indulgently this time. Then she turned back to Georg.
    “Who compiled the summary?”
    “Someone called Maud,” Georg said.
    “Maud?”
    “Yes, it says Maud Andersson here,