Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund; Börge Hellström

  According to all the documentation, Piet Hoffmann was one of the few criminals who had the potential to actually do what he threatened. Ewert Grens went through the Prison and Probation Service documents, including psychopathic tests and sentences, read through his criminal record on the computer screen, five years, attempted murder and assault of a police officer, observations in the criminal intelligence database of a criminal who was KNOWN DANGEROUS ARMED.

  He had not had any choice.

  He was about to turn off the computer and go back out into the corridor for another cheese-and-ham roll when he noticed something at the bottom of the screen, the first entry in Piet Hoffmann's criminal record.

  Date last modified.

  Grens worked it out. Eighteen days ago.

  A sentence that was served ten years ago.

  He stayed in the room, pounding from wall to wall, from window to door, that feeling again that something was wrong, something didn't fit.

  He dialed a number that he had long since learned off by heart, data support, he had spent many a night swearing over the keys and symbols that seemed to have a mind of their own.

  A young male voice answered. They were always young and they were always male.

  "This is Grens. I need a bit of help."

  "Detective superintendent? Just one moment."

  Ewert Grens had on a couple of occasions walked through the whole building in order to see what they were explaining, which was why he knew that what he heard while he waited, metal against metal, was the young male voice, just like all the others, disposing of an empty Coke can on one of the piles around his computer.

  "I want to know who's changed an entry in someone's criminal record. Can you access that?"

  "I'm sure I can. But that comes under the national court administration. You'll need to talk to their support team."

  "But if I was to ask you? Now?"

  The young voice opened a new can.

  "Give me five minutes."

  Four minutes and forty-five seconds later, Grens smiled at the receiver. "What have you got?"

  "Nothing out of the ordinary. It was changed on one of the national court administration computers."

  "By who?"

  "Someone who's authorized. An Ulrika Danielsson. Do you want her number?"

  He tramped around the room again, drank some cold coffee that was trying to stick to the bottom of the cup.

  He remained standing up for the next phone call.

  "Ulrika Danielsson."

  "Grens, City Police in Stockholm."

  "How can I help you?"

  "It's about an investigation. 721018-0010. A judgment that's nearly ten years old."

  "Right?"

  'And according to the register it was modified recently. Exactly eighteen days ago."

  "I see."

  "By you."

  He could hear her silence.

  "I wanted to know why."

  She was nervous. He was sure of it. Long pauses, deep breaths. "I'm afraid I can't comment on that."

  "You can't comment?"

  "Confidentiality clause."

  "Which damn confidentiality clause?"

  "I'm afraid I can't say anymore."

  Grens didn't raise his voice, he lowered it-sometimes it worked even better.

  "I want to know why you changed it. And what you changed." "I said that I can't comment."

  "Ulrika… can I call you that, by the way?"

  He didn't wait for the answer.

  "Ulrika, I am a detective superintendent. I'm investigating a murder. And you work for the national court administration. You can claim the confidentiality clause as much as you like for hacks. But not for me."

  I-

  "Now, you're going to answer me. Or I'll just get back to you, Ulrika, in a couple of days. That's as long as it takes to get a court order."

  Deep breaths. She couldn't contain them any longer.

  "Wilson."

  "Wilson?"

  "Your colleague. You'll have to ask him."

  It was no longer just a feeling.

  Something wasn't right.

  * * *

  He lay down on the brown corduroy sofa. Half an hour had passed and he had really tried, he had closed his eyes and relaxed and was even less likely to fall asleep than when he started.

  I don't understand.

  A prisoner in a workshop window kept getting in the way.

  Why did you want to die?

  A face in profile.

  If you could hear, which Sterner is sure of if what we found in the church tower and what is now lying on my desk is a working transmitter, why the hell did you dodge your own death twice and then choose to face it the third time?

  A person who had made sure he was visible the whole time.

  Had you decided but didn't dare?

  Where then did you get the courage to stand still and die?

  And why did you make sure that after the shot you would be blown into a thousand pieces?

  "Are you sleeping?"

  Someone had knocked on the door and Hermansson popped her head round.

  "Not really."

  He sat up, happy to see her; he often was. She sat down beside him on the sofa, a file on her lap.

  "I've finished the report about Västmannagatan 79. I'm pretty sure that he'll still recommend that it's scaled down. We don't seem to be getting any farther."

  Grens sighed. "It feels… it feels very odd. If we close this… my third unsolved murder here."

  "Third?"

  "One at the start of the eighties, a body that was cut up into small pieces and found in the water near Kastellholmen by some fishermen pulling in a net. And then one a couple of winters ago, the woman in the hospital service passage, the one who was dragged from the tunnel system, her face covered in big holes from rat bites."

  He tapped the file. "Is it me who's getting worse, Hermansson? Or is it reality that's getting more complicated?"

  Hermansson looked at her boss and smiled.

  "Ewen?"

  "Yes?"

  "And exactly how long have you worked here?"

  "You know that."

  "How long?"

  "Since… before you were born. Thirty-five years."

  "And how many murders have you investigated?"

  "The exact number, I assume?"

  "Yes."

  "Two hundred and thirteen."

  "Two hundred and thirteen."

  "Including this one."

  She smiled again.

  "Thirty-five years. Two hundred and thirteen murders. Of which three are unsolved!'

  He didn't answer. It wasn't a question.

  "One every twelve years, Ewert. I don't know how you measure things like that. But I'd say that's not too bad."

  He glanced at her. Thought what he had often thought about. He knew already. If he had had a son, a daughter.

  Kind of like her.

  "There was something else?"

  She opened the file and took out a plastic sleeve that was at the back. "Two more things."

  She pulled out two pieces of paper from the awkward plastic.

  "You asked me to get a record of all outgoing phone calls from Aspsås prison between eight forty-five and nine forty-five in the morning and one thirty and two thirty in the afternoon."

  Near columns of numbers to the left and first name and last name to the right.

  "Thirty-two calls. Even though restrictions had been placed on outgoing calls from the prison."

  Hermansson ran down the long column of numbers with her finger.

  "I've cleared thirty of them. Eleven calls from staff to their family who were worried or to say that they would be home late. Eight calls to us, the police, to Aspsås district or City. Three calls to the Prison and Probation Service in Norrkoping. Four calls to inmates' families who were due to visit, to arrange new times. And…"

  She looked at the detective superintendent.

  "… four calls to the major newspa
pers' hotlines."

  Grens shook his head.

  "About the same frequency as usual. The hotline calls, I guess that was our colleagues?"

  Hermansson laughed briefly.

  "According to the chancellor of justice that question qualifies as investigation of sources. And that, I believe, Ewert, is a crime that carries a prison sentence.

  "Colleagues, in other words."

  She continued.

  "I've crossed them all out. So I have thirty qualified explanations." She moved her finger to the numbers at the bottom.

  "That leaves two phone calls. One in the morning, at nine twenty-three, and one in the afternoon at twelve minutes past two. Calls from Aspsås prison to a contract phone registered at the Ericsson offices in Vastberga."

  The next plastic sleeve, handwritten notes from a note pad.

  "I followed the number up. According to Ericsson's HR department, the phone is used by one of their employees called Zofia Hoffmann."

  Grens spluttered.

  "Hoffmann."

  "Married to a Piet Hoffmann."

  She turned over the piece of paper. More handwriting.

  "I checked the personal details I was given. Zofia Hoffmann is registered as living in Stockrosvägen in Enskede. According to her employer, the company's correct name is evidently Ericsson Enterprise AB. She disappeared from the workplace yesterday just before lunch."

  "While the hostage drama was ongoing."

  "Yes."

  "Between phone calls."

  "Yes.

  Ewert Grens got up out of the soft sofa and stretched his aching back while Hermansson took out another piece of paper.

  "According to the tax authorities, Zofia and Piet Hoffmann have two children together. The two boys have attended a nursery school at an address in Enskededalen every weekday for the past three years and are collected by either their mother or father at around five o'clock. But yesterday, a couple of hours before her husband was shot to death by us, and exactly twenty minutes after she left work, Zofia Hoffmann picked up the boys considerably earlier than normal without notifying any of the staff. She seemed tense-two of the nursery school teachers described her as that, she didn't meet their eye, didn't seem to hear their questions."

  Mariana Hermansson studied the older man who bent down to touch the floor, then up and leaned back; his large body and an exercise that he had no doubt learned in a strict gym half a century ago.

  "I sent a patrol car around to their house, a detached house built in the fifties, a few minutes' drive south of the city. We looked in through two closed windows, rang the doorbell, saw that the doors were locked, looked through the letter box and could see today's newspaper and yesterday's post. Nothing. Nothing, Ewert, to indicate that anyone in the family had been there since yesterday morning."

  Twice more. He bent forward and then leaned back.

  "Issue an arrest warrant."

  An arrest warrant was issued for Zofia Hoffmann thirty minutes ago." Ewert Grens nodded briefly; it might have been praise.

  "He phoned her. He warned her. He protected her from the consequences of his own death."

  She had stepped out into the corridor and closed the door when she stopped, turned round and opened it again.

  "There was one more thing."

  Grens was still standing in the middle of the floor.

  "Yes?"

  "Can I come in?"

  "You've never asked for permission before."

  It felt ominous.

  She had been on her way to tell him all morning and had still managed to leave his office without having spoken about why she really came.

  "I know something that may hold the key. And that you should have known yesterday, but I didn't get to you in time."

  She wasn't used to being out of control, of not being sure that she was doing the right thing.

  "I was on my way to tell you. I ran through the prison corridors and drove as fast as I could toward the church."

  It was a feeling she didn't like. Not anytime, and certainly not here, with Ewert.

  "I tried to call but your phone was switched off. I knew that every minute, second counted. I could hear you and the sniper talking on the car radio. Your order. The sound of the gun being fired."

  "Hermansson?"

  "Yes?"

  "Get to the point."

  She looked at him. She was nervous. It was a long time since she had felt like this in here.

  "You asked me to talk to Oscarsson. I did. The circumstances surrounding Hoffmann, Ewert-someone was giving Oscarsson orders, someone was telling him what to do."

  She had learned to read his face.

  She knew what it meant when the color started to rise in his cheeks and the vein on his temple started to throb.

  "The night before you went there, Oscarsson was ordered to let a lawyer visit one of the prisoners in the same unit as Hoffmann, and then to prevent you or anyone else from questioning him or meeting him. He was ordered to move him back to the unit where he came from, despite the fact that prisoners who have been threatened are never moved back, and, in contravention of the prison service's own regulations, that the gates should be kept shut, even if Hoffmann demanded that they be opened."

  "Hermansson, what the hell-"

  "Ewert, let me finish. I had the information but I didn't get to you in time. And after… the explosion, it didn't seem relevant to talk about it just then."

  He put his hand on her shoulder. Something he had never done before. "Hermansson. I'm furious, but not at you. You did the right thing. But I do want to know who."

  "Who?"

  "Who made the orders?"

  "I don't know."

  "Don't know!"

  "He wouldn't tell me."

  Ewert Grens almost ran across the room to the desk and the shelves behind. A hole with edges of dust. It wasn't there. The music that had given him comfort and strength for all these years. It was at times like this he had needed it most, when anger tipped over into rage, starting somewhere in his belly, burning its way to every part of his body, and it would stay there until he knew who had made him into a useful idiot, who had let him shoot.

  "With that information, I wouldn't have ordered the sniper to fire." He looked at his young colleague.

  "If I had known what I know now… Hoffmann would never have died."

  The brown plastic cup would soon be full of strong, black, bitter coffee. The machine rattled as it normally did, mostly toward the end, reluctant to give up the last drops. Chief Superintendent Göransson drank the coffee while he was out in the corridor. He saw Mariana Hermansson coming out of Grens's office, a file under her arm. He knew what their meeting had been about, they were doing exactly what they should, filing the reports required following a lethal shooting at Aspsås.

  I did not participate.

  He crushed the cup, the hot liquid running down the back of his hand.

  I jumped ship.

  Göransson drank some more of the bitterness, emptied the cup. He greeted Sven Sundkvist, who was passing. He also had a couple of files under his arm, on his way to the office that Hermansson had just left, to Ewert Grens.

  He noticed the flushed cheeks, the pulsing vein by his temple.

  Sven knew Ewert Grens better than anyone else in the building, he had had to face his boss's anger and learn to deal with it, so now when the shouting and the kicking of trash cans took over he no longer saw or heard it, it had nothing to do with him. Only Ewert could chase his own demons.

  "You don't look happy."

  "Drop by Hermansson when you're done here. She'll explain. I can't face it right now."

  Sven looked at the man in the middle of the floor. They had met earlier that morning. This boiling rage hadn't been there then.

  Something had happened.

  "What do you know about Wilson?"

  "Erik?"

  "Are there any other Wilsons on the goddamn corridor?"

  Another kind of anger. Clear, tangi
ble. Ewert could be angry about most things, a difficult, irritated anger that was such a frequent caller that it never got through. But this anger was serious, it demanded space and he tried not to downplay it.

  I must go to Hermansson afterwards.

  "I don't know him. Even though we've been here almost the same length of time. It just turned out that way. But… he seems like a nice enough guy. Why?"

  "I just heard his name today in the wrong circumstances."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We'll talk about that later too."

  Sven didn't ask anymore questions. He knew he wouldn't get any answers yet.

  "I've got the first report on Hoffmann Security AB. You interested?" "You know I am."

  He put two pieces of paper down on Ewert's desk.

  "I want you to have a look. Come over here."

  Ewert stood beside Sven.

  "A close company with annual reports and normal articles of association. I can look into that more, if you want, take a really good look at the figures."

  He pointed at the second piece of paper.

  "But this, I want you to have a look at this, right now."

  A drawing of four squares stacked on top of each other.

  "The ownership structure, Ewert. This is interesting. A board that consists of three people. Piet Hoffmann, Zofia Hoffmann, and a Polish citizen, Stanislaw Rosloniec."

  A Polish citizen.

  "I've run a check on Rosloniec. He lives in Warsaw, is not registered in any international criminal intelligence databases and-now it gets really interesting-is employed by a Polish company called Wojtek Security International."

  Wojtek.

  Ewert Grens searched Sven's pattern of squares but saw an airport in Denmark and a detective superintendent called Jacob Andersen.

  Eighteen days ago.

  They had sat in a meeting room at Kastrup police station and eaten greasy pastries and Andersen had spoken about a Danish informant who was supposed to buy amphetamines. In an apartment in Stockholm. With two Poles and their Swedish contact.

  Swedish contact.

  "Damn it „. hang on a minute, Sven!"

  Grens pulled open one of his desk drawers and took out a CD player and the CD of the voice that Krantz had burned for him. Headphones on and three sentences he knew by heart.

  A dead man. Vdstrnannagatan 79. Fourth floor.