The Invoice Read Online Free Page A

matter how I tried I couldn’t get anywhere close to the amount required. 5,700,150 kronor was more money than I could even imagine.
    I toyed with the idea of simply running away. Leaving the country. How many resources would they devote to tracking down someone like me?
    I could take the bus to Nynäshamn, then the ferry to Gotland, and hide out there on some pebbly beach. Or get the train to Copenhagen, then hitchhike down to Germany…What then, though? I could get all my money out of the bank, buy a plane ticket to the USA, and stroll about Manhattan drinking milkshakes and eating pastrami sandwiches. In a way, the thought of just taking off like that was quite tempting. But what would I do once I’d actually got there? And the thought of never coming back…No, I was happy here, after all. I had my friends here. All my memories. I liked my apartment, the changing seasons. I liked lying on the sofa…But of course if there was no other option…
    I picked up my phone and held it in my hand for a while. If Mum was still alive I would have called her. That would have cheered her up, something as simple as that, even if she’d have been worried about the size of the debt. Maybe she’d have been able to come up with a solution. She usually could. I stood for a while tossing my phone from hand to hand. In the end I rang the only number I could think of.

Maud answered on the second ring. She sounded much calmer now. It felt odd, after the long wait in the queue the previous evening, suddenly to get through to her straightaway this time. It made me feel a bit special.
    “What would you do if I just disappeared?” I asked.
    “Disappeared?” she said.
    “Yes.”
    “In principle it doesn’t really matter where you are. This applies to everyone. Top-up payments, or in your case the whole amount, can be made from anywhere. And in whatever currency you choose. You can live wherever you like, as long as you don’t try to avoid your duty to pay.”
    I thought for a moment.
    “And if I did, what then?”
    “Well,” she said, “we’d put out an alert for you. Your bank accounts, driver’s license, passport, credit cards would all be frozen or revoked. You’d be a marked man. You’d never be able to get a loan, for instance. It would be—how can I put it?—difficult. Why, are you thinking about it?”
    “No,” I said, and sighed. “I don’t think I am.”
    “Good,” Maud said, “because I’m under orders to report any suspicions about potential absconders. It would be nice not to have to do that.”
    I thought I could detect a hint of a west-coast accent, and tried to work out where she was from. She was doing her best to speak a sort of standard Swedish, but every now and then a trace of a chirpy, rounded intonation crept into the end of her sentences. It sounded rather cute, somehow.
    “So how are you getting on with the money?” she said.
    I rubbed my face and tried to sound like I was on the case. Like I’d done nothing but play with numbers and call people for help since we last spoke.
    “Not great,” I said.
    “You don’t have any investments or shares?”
    “No.”
    “Jewelry? Gold?”
    “I’ve got a few rings, that’s all…a couple of candlesticks. But that doesn’t…”
    I sat down on the sofa and was about to lie back again when it occurred to me that she’d probably be able to tell from my voice that I was lying down. That wouldn’t make a very good impression.
    “Can’t I just work off the debt, bit by bit?” I said.
    Maud took a deep breath. Once again I had the feeling that this wasn’t the first time she’d had to explain this. She sounded rather mechanical when she replied.
    “Assuming that you have a normal capacity to work, naturally we’ll conduct an evaluation of your abilities, relative to the amount owing. But there are a lot of people to be investigated and of course that involves a great deal of administration—it’s not at all certain that will even be