A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman Page B

stamps his foot down so hard that it backs off.
    “That thing should be kept on a leash inside the residential area,” says Ove steadily.
    She tosses her dyed hair and snorts so hard that Ove half-expects a bit of snot to come flying out.
    “And what about that thing?!” she rages at the cat.
    “Never you bloody mind,” Ove answers.
    She looks at him in that particular way of people who feel both utterly superior and deeply insulted.
    Mutt bares its teeth in a silent growl.
    “You think you own this street or what, you bloody lunatic?” she says.
    Ove calmly points at Mutt again.
    “The next time that thing pisses on my paving,” he says coolly, “I’ll electrify the stone.”
    “Prince hasn’t bloody pissed on your disgusting paving,” she splutters, and takes two steps forward with her fists raised.
    Ove doesn’t move. She stops. Looks as if she’s hyperventilating.
    Then she seems to summon what highly negligible amount of common sense she has at her disposal.
    “Come on, Prince,” she says with a wave.
    Then raises her index finger at Ove.
    “I’m going to tell Anders about this, and then you’ll regret it.”
    “Tell your Anders from me that he should stop stretching his groin outside my window.”
    “Crazy old muppet,” she spits out and heads off towards the parking area.
    “And his car’s crap, you tell him that!” Ove adds for good measure.
    She makes a gesture at him that he hasn’t seen before, although he can guess what it means. Then she and her wretched little dog make off towards Anders’s house.
    Ove turns off by his shed. Sees the wet splashes of piss on the paving by the corner of the flowerbed. If he weren’t busy with more important things this afternoon he would have gone off to make a doormat of that mutt right away. But he has other things to occupy him. He goes to his toolshed, gets out his hammer-action drill and his box of drill bits.
    When he comes out again the cat is sitting there looking at him.
    “You can clear off now,” says Ove.
    It doesn’t move. Ove shakes his head resignedly.
    “Hey! I’m not your friend.”
    The cat stays where it is. Ove throws out his arms.
    “Christ, you bloody cat, me backing you up when that stupid bag threw stones at you only means I dislike you less than that weedy nutter across the street. And that’s not much of an achievement; you should be absolutely clear about that.”
    The cat seems to give this some careful thought. Ove points at the footpath.
    “Clear off!”
    Not at all concerned by this, the cat licks its bloodstained fur. It looks at Ove as if this has been a round of negotiation and it’s considering a proposal. Then slowly gets up and pads off, disappearing around the corner of the shed. Ove doesn’t even look at it. He goes right into his house and slams the door.
    Because it’s enough now. Now Ove is going to die.

7

    A MAN CALLED OVE DRILLS A HOLE FOR A HOOK
    O ve has put on his best trousers and his going-out shirt. Carefully he covers the floor with a protective sheet of plastic, as if protecting a valuable work of art. Not that the floor is particularly new (although he did sand it less than two years ago). He’s fairly sure that you don’t lose much blood when you hang yourself, and it isn’t because of worries about the dust or the drilling. Or the marks when he kicks away the stool. In fact he’s glued some plastic pads to the bottoms of its legs, so there shouldn’t be any marks at all. No, the heavy-duty sheets of plastic which Ove so carefully unfolds, covering the entire hall, living room, and a good part of the kitchen, are not for Ove’s own sake at all.
    He imagines there’ll be a hell of a lot of running about in here, with eager, jumped-up real estate agents trying to get into the house before the ambulance men have so much as got the corpse out. And those bastards are not coming in here, scratching up Ove’s floor with their shoes. Whether over Ove’s dead body or not. They had