Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund; Börge Hellström

  The color of Jacobson's face had changed from white to ashen gray and great drops of sweat were running from his hairline.

  The doctor moved over to the bed.

  "He can't deal with much more. Just one more question. Then I'll have to ask you to leave."

  Sven nodded. The final question.

  "Throughout the entire hostage drama, Hoffmann is silent. No communication. Except for right at the end. He's a dead man. We don't understand why. I want to know if you saw him communicating at any point? Or anything that might resemble communication? We don't understand his silence."

  The warden who was lying in a hospital bed with a wounded ashen-gray face took a while to answer. Sven got the feeling that he was drifting off, and the doctor had indicated that he should stop when Jacobson raised an arm, he wanted to continue, he wanted to answer.

  "He used the phone."

  Jacobson looked at Sven, at Ewert.

  "He used the phone. In the office at the back of the workshop. Twice."

  Ewert Grens was driving to Aspsås and the large prison for the second time that morning.

  They had paid for a cup of bitter tea and a white bread sandwich with meatballs and something purplish that Sven claimed was beetroot salad. They had sat in the cafe by the hospital entrance and eaten in silence, with Jacobson's answers to keep them company. According to the injured warden, Hoffmann had left the hostages on two occasions and gone into the workshop office. He kept them in full view through the glass partition wall while he lifted the receiver of the phone that sat on the desk and talked for about fifteen seconds each time. Once right at the start, Hoffmann had warned them not to move and had walked backward toward the office with the gun pointing at them, the other time just before the explosion. From his position behind the partition wall, the naked and bound guard had clearly seen him phoning again and saw that he was now very nervous, only a few seconds, but Jacobson was sure of it; a few moments of doubt and fear, maybe the only ones throughout the whole drama.

  There were no empty spaces in the parking lot that had been peaceful only a few hours ago. Morning had woken one of Sweden's maximum security prisons. Ewert Grens parked on some grass near the wall and, while he waited for Sven Sundkvist, made a phone call to Hermansson, who for the third day was working on a report of the murder at Vdstmannagatan 79, which was to be delivered to the prosecutor that afternoon. He would then decide whether to downgrade the investigation.

  "I want you to put it to one side for the moment."

  "Ågestam was here yesterday. He wants it this afternoon." "Hermansson?"

  "Yes?"

  "Ågestam will get the report when you've finished it. Put it to one side. I want you to make a list of all outgoing calls from Aspsås prison between eight forty-five and nine forty-five in the morning and one-thirty and two-thirty in the afternoon. Then I want you to check them. I want to know which ones we can forget and which ones might have been made from the workshop office."

  He had expected her to protest.

  She didn't.

  "Hoffmann?"

  "Hoffmann."

  The prison yard was full of inmates-it was the morning break with spring sun and they sat in groups and looked up at the sky with cheeks that turned rosy. Grens had no wish to listen to sarcastic remarks from anyone he had previously investigated and questioned and so chose to go underground, via a concrete passageway that reminded him of another investigation. Neither Ewert Grens nor Sven Sundkvist said anything, but they were thinking about the same case, how they had walked side by side five years ago, a father who had killed his daughter's murderer and then been given a long sentence himself, a case that often returned and niggled, with images that they had tried to forget for a long time. Some investigations did that.

  They came out of the passage and were struck by the silence, even in the stairwell of Block B. The annoying banging had stopped. They passed solitary confinement in B1 and the normal units in B2, which were all empty as the prisoners had been evacuated to Block K and would remain there as long as the building that still echoed from the explosion was a cordoned off crime scene and part of an investigation.

  Four forensic technicians were creeping around in different parts of the charred workshop and soot-licked walls that had once been white. The smell of diesel oil stuck to everything, a thick and sharp smell that reminded those there of how poisonous each breath had been only a day earlier. Nils Krantz left the remains of death, concentrated and determined. Neither Ewert nor Sven had ever seen him laugh; he was simply someone who functioned far better with a microscope than a cocktail glass.

  "Follow me."

  Krantz walked over to the part of the workshop that looked out over the prison yard, hunkered down in front of a wall with a hole about the size of a grapefruit, then turned and pointed straight across the room.

  "So, the bullet penetrated the window there. The window that you could see from the church tower, where Hoffmann chose to stand, fully exposed, for the whole drama. We're talking about fire and explosive ammunition and an initial velocity of eight hundred and thirty meters per second. That means three seconds from the shot being fired to hitting its target."

  Nils Krantz had never witnessed a crime happening, he had never been in a place when it became a crime scene. But that was precisely what his work entailed, being there, getting others to be there later, at the exact time that it happened.

  "The projectile penetrated a window and a skull with massive impact. Then it flattened and the velocity slowed until it reached here, see the big hole, and met the next wall."

  He closed his hand around a long metal pole in the middle of the hole that showed the angle of the trajectory-the shot had been fired from somewhere higher up.

  "The bullet when loaded is nearly ten centimeters long. But the part that is fired, the bit that remains if you discount the jacket, is three, maybe even three and a half centimeters, and this then hit and ripped through parts of the wall and continued out into the prison yard. And a projectile that slices through glass, human bone, and a thick concrete wall in that order will totally flatten out and look more or less like an old eighteenth-century coin."

  Grens and Sundkvist looked at the crater in the wall. They had both listened to Jacobson talking about a sound like a whiplash, the force had been unimaginable.

  "It's out there somewhere. We haven't found it yet, but we will soon. I've got several police officers from Aspsa's district on their hands and knees in the gravel looking."

  Krantz walked over to the window where Hoffmann had stood. Red and white flags on the wall, the floor, the ceiling. More than Grens could remember from his visit during the night.

  "I've had to make a kind of system. Red for bloodstains, white for remains. I've never worked with bodies that have been so totally blown apart."

  Sven studied the small flags, tried to understand what they actually signified, moved closer-he who normally avoided unmistakeable death.

  "We're talking about an explosion and fragments of dead people. But there's something I don't understand."

  This time, Sven moved even closer. He wasn't frightened, didn't feel any discomfort. This wasn't death, he couldn't see it like that.

  "Human tissue. Thousands of bits. This type of projectile rips bodies apart. Into big bits. It doesn't explode."

  People broken down into particles that were only centimeters away from Sven, they stopped being people then.

  "So we're looking for something else. Something that exploded. Something that blows things into smithereens, not big bits."

  "Such as?"

  "An explosive. I can't think of any other explanation."

  Ewert Grens saw the red and white flags, shards of glass, soot that blanketed everything.

  "Explosive. What kind?"

  Krantz made an irritation gesture with his arms.

  "TNT. Nitroglycerine. C4. Semtex. Pentyl. Octogen. Dynamex Or something else. I don't know, Grens. We're still looking. But what I do know…
it was definitely close to the bodies, maybe even directly on the skin."

  He nodded at the flags.

  "Well… you understand."

  Red for bloodstains, white for remains.

  "We also know that it was an explosive that generates extreme heat." "I see…"

  "Enough heat to ignite the diesel in the barrel."

  "I can smell it."

  The forensic scientist gave a gentle kick to the barrel standing below the hole that had been a window the day before.

  "It was the diesel that had been mixed with gas that caused all that god-awful smoke. You find barrels and cans of diesel oil in every workshop in every prison, fuel for the machines and any forklift trucks, and for cleaning the tools. But this barrel… it was standing very close to Hoffmann. And it had been moved there."

  Nils Krantz shook his head.

  "Explosives. Poisonous smoke. It was no accident that the barrel was there, Ewert. Piet Hoffmann wanted to be certain."

  "Certain?"

  "That he and one of the hostages would die."

  Grens turned off the engine and got out of the car. He waved at Sven to drive on ahead and started to walk over the fields in what was to be a fifteen-hundred-and-three-meter stroll from Aspsås prison to Aspsås church. The open areas of grass cleansed him of the lack of sleep and the stench of diesel oil, but not the feeling that had gripped him, which he didn't like and knew would stay with him until he understood what it was he couldn't see.

  He should have worn other shoes.

  The green that looked so soft from a distance was full of dips and clay and he had stumbled a couple of times, fallen heavily to the ground, his trousers stained green by the grass and brown by the earth by the time he finally stopped outside a side gate into the churchyard.

  He turned around. The morning mist had evaporated and the gray walls were clear in the sunlight. He had stood here exactly twenty-four hours ago; he still hadn't made the decision about another person's death.

  A handful of visitors were moving around between the headstones, flowers in their hands, spouses or children or friends who cared. Grens avoided their eyes but watched their hands as they dug in between the green bushes and wreaths, as if he was testing himself, but being by a grave that meant nothing didn't feel like anything either.

  A plastic cordon was wound between the trees and some arbitrary poles. He pushed it down and stepped over it, raising his stiff leg high in the air. Four people were waiting at the heavy church door. Sven Sundkvist, two uniformed policemen from Aspsås district and an older man with a dog collar.

  He held out his hand, took another hand.

  "Gustaf Lindbeck. I'm the parish priest."

  The sort who pronounced Gustaf with a very dear f. Grens felt his mouth twitch. I should perhaps say Ewert with a very clear w.

  "Grens, detective superintendent with city police."

  "Are you the one who's responsible for this?"

  The parish priest tugged at the cordon.

  "I'm leading the investigation, if that's what you mean."

  Ewert Grens pulled at the same tape.

  "Is this a problem for you?"

  "I've already had to cancel a christening and a marriage. I have a funeral in an hour. I just wanted to know whether it would be possible to go ahead."

  Grens looked at the church, at Sven, at the visitors on their knees in front of gravestones, watering plants in narrow beds.

  "This is what we'll do."

  He tugged lightly at the tape until one of the temporary poles fell down.

  "I need to look over parts of the ground floor again. That'll take about half an hour. In the meantime, you-and only you-can be there and prepare what you have to prepare. When we're done, we'll remove the cordon and the funeral party can come in. But, for investigation purposes, I'll keep the church tower cordoned off for another day. Does that sound like a reasonable solution?"

  The priest nodded.

  "I'm very grateful. Bur… one more thing. The passing bell should be rung in about an hour. Can we use the church bell?"

  Ewert looked up at the tower and the heavy cast iron bell that hung in the middle.

  "Yes, you can. The bell itself isn't cordoned off."

  They walked toward the now open door. The church bell. The churchyard was watching him. The passing bell. A year and a half had passed and he hadn't even chosen her gravestone.

  The priest carried on straight ahead, into the cool and quiet church, whereas Grens and Sundkvist went right just inside the door. The chairs were still stacked up against the wall, the map folded out over the wooden altar near the only window in the vestibule.

  "Sven?"Yes?"7 want to hear it again. Who he is. What he capable of" Ewert held the drawing of a prison.

  "Extremely antisocial personality disorder. No ability to empathise." Slowly he folded it up.

  "Significant characteristics include impulsiveness, aggression, lack of respect for own and others' safety, lack of conscience."

  Map in his inner pocket, they wouldn't need it anymore.

  "Ewert, give me a hand."

  Sven had picked up and emptied six plastic cups emblazoned with the red and yellow Shell logo-a couple of hours of decisions about life and death based on the energy from bad coffee from the nearest gas station. He picked up one of the chairs and waited pointedly until Ewert took the next one. They left the room that would soon be a private gathering place for the bereaved and opened the door to the stairs up into the tower, a swift glance into the nave and the priest who was pushing a cart of bibles between two rows of pews. He saw them and raised his hand.

  "Are you going up?"

  "Yes."

  "The passing bell… there's only twenty minutes to go."

  "We'll be done by then."

  They went up the stairs and the aluminum ladder and somehow it felt farther and higher than the day before. The door to the church tower balcony was open and creaked gently in the wind that played over the gravestones and grass. Grens was about to close it when he noticed the mark on the doorframe. The wood was newly splintered on a level with the door handle. It was obvious and he remembered that the first sniper had remarked that the door had been forced open. He poked the splintered wood with a pen-it hadn't even darkened yet, it couldn't have been that long ago.

  The morning mist was clearing and the sky would soon be as blue as the day before. Aspsås prison was waiting under them like great lumps of gray, silent cement, walls and buildings that kept out dreams and laughter.

  Ewert Grens went out onto the flimsy wooden structure.

  "Sven, carry on reading."

  A sniper had lain here twenty-four hours ago.

  "There isn't anything else."

  A gun aimed at a person's head.

  "Read!"

  "Shooting incident involving a police officer in Söderhamn, at a public space on the edge of the town, he hit-"

  "That's enough."

  He had made his decision.

  His order was death.

  The wind picked up. It felt good on his face, and for a while there was only the sun that warmed his pale cheeks and the birds flying way above his head, chasing what couldn't be seen. He held on to the low railing, a moment of dizziness, one single step would pitch him headlong. He looked at his feet and at a couple of dark round stains on the last wooden board, the one that stopped a few centimeters out from the railing. He touched them with his fingertips, smelled them. Gun grease, must have escaped from the gun barrel and would now forever discolor the floor of the balcony.

  Ewert Grens knelt down, then lay so that his whole body was where the marksman had been. His elbows on the wooden floor, an imaginary gun in his hands, he aimed at the window that was no longer there, a hole surrounded by soot right up to the roof of the building called Block B.

  "This was where he was lying. When he was waiting for my order."

  Ewert looked up at Sven.

  "When he was waiting for me to ask him to kill."
<
br />   He waved impatiently at his colleague.

  "You lie down too. I want you to know what it feels like."

  "I don't like heights. You know that."

  "Sven, just lie down. The railing, it's enough, it'll protect you."

  Sven Sundkvist crept gingerly out, going a bit farther so he didn't need to lie near Grens's heavy body. He hated heights, too much to lose if you fell, a fear that got stronger every year. He crept and wriggled and stretched

  out his hand when he was sufficiently close, and clung on to the railing.

  It was high. Ewert was breathing heavily. The wind was blowing.

  Sven wrapped his fingers tighter around a cold iron railing and felt something coming loose; he was holding something in his hand. He pulled it back, even more came off, something black and rectangular, three or four centimeters long, a lead at one end.

  "Ewers."

  An outstretched hand.

  "This was on the railing."

  They both realized what it was.

  A solar cell.

  Painted black, the same color as the railing, the hand that had put it there did not want it to be seen.

  Sven pulled carefully at the equally black lead. It came loose and he pulled harder, hauling in a round piece of metal, smaller than the first, barely a centimeter in diameter.

  An electronic transmitter.

  When I was watching him through the binoculars. I don't know, it was like he knew.

  "A transmitter, a lead, a solar cell. Ewert… Sterner was right."

  As if he knew that he was in range.

  Sven held the lead, swinging it back and forth, forgot for a moment to be frightened of what was far below.

  "Hoffmann heard every word that was said between you and the sniper."

  * * *

  Ewert Grens had been careful to close the door to his room.

  Two cups of coffee and a cheese-and-ham roll from the vending machine in the corridor.

  He could still feel the force of the explosion and the smell of smoke and imagined breathing that vanished as he watched.

  He hadn't had a choice.