Trafika Europe 2 - Polish Nocturne

often so I’d be ready for action when I needed to be quick. I slipped the gun and spare cartridge under my left arm, between the fat suit and the Santa coat. I opened a seam and attached it with Velcro. I was used to do-it-yourself repairs and sewing from a childhood spent on the remote island of Hevonpersiinsaari, a backwoods locale whose very name means Horse’s Ass Island, far removed from department stores like Stockmann. I pulled on thin red mittens edged with fur, because my bare hands looked feminine even though I kept the nails short and unpolished. I entered the elevator on the lowest level of the parking garage. Bruun and I had agreed that I would get into costume in the secret room. That way I could best hide my identity. “When the employees leave the building, they have to exit through this well-lit corridor,” Bruun had explained to me after the department store closed. The security measures appeared sound: employees carrying anything from the store would have to show a receipt. No system was 100 percent sure, but Bruun and the guards had been checking the exits for over a month now and no one would have been able to smuggle through the large amounts of expensive goods that had been disappearing from the store: cameras, phones, PDAs, expensive jewelry, as well as cosmetics worth hundreds of euros. Design cutlery had been taken from the housewares department. All together, the losses had already climbed to nearly 30,000 euros.

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