Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund; Börge Hellström

  A still, a frozen moment from one of Aspsås prison's many security cameras, a fuzzy frame around a fuzzy barred window.

  "Aspsås workshop. Block B. The person you can see standing there, in profile, has eight and a half minutes left to live."

  Wilson pulled the laptop over, angled the screen-he wanted to see that person, roughly in the middle of the window, part of a shoulder, part of a face.

  He had met a man ten years younger. He himself had been ten years younger. If it had been today would he have recruited Hoffmann? Would Hoffmann have wanted to be recruited? Piet had done time in Österåker. A prison some way north of Stockholm with a whole host of small-time crooks. Piet had been one of them. His first sentence. The kind who would serve his twelve months, run around for a while, then be sentenced to twelve more.

  But his roots, mother tongue, and personality could be used for more than just confirming statistics on reoffenders.

  "This one? Five minutes left to live."

  Sundkvist had changed the picture. Another security camera. It was closer, no frame, just the window, the face was clearer.

  They had added a few pistols to the property seized in connection with the already registered judgment, probably some kind of Kalashnikov. They normally did. It had later been easy ro ask for a new potential danger classification and tighter restrictions, no leave, no contact with the outside world. Piet had been desperate, he had listened, after months with no human contact, touch or talk, he could have been recruited for anything.

  "Three minutes. I think you can see in this picture. He's shouting. A camera inside the workshop."

  A face that filled the picture.

  It's him.

  "He's a dead man. We've analyzed it. That's what he's shouting."

  Erik Wilson looked at the absurd picture. The distorted face. The open, desperate mouth.

  He had built up Paula methodically.

  A petty thief had been developed into one of the country's most dangerous criminals, document by document. Criminal record, the national court administration databases, the police criminal intelligence database. The myth of his potency enhanced by patrol after patrol who unknowingly responded on the basis of the available information. And when he was about to take that last step, right into Wojtek's nerve center, when the mission required even more respect, he had also provided it. Erik Wilson had copied a DSM-IV-TR statement, a psychopathic test that was carried out on one of Sweden's criminals with the highest security classification.

  A document that had then been planted in the Prison and Probation Service records.

  Piet Hoffmann suddenly had a chronic lack of conscience, was extremely aggressive and very dangerous in terms of other people's safety.

  "My last picture."

  Thick, black smoke, in the distance what might be a building, at the top, what might be blue sky.

  "Two twenty-six p.m. When he died."

  The square screen, he heard Sundkvist talking but continued to search in the dense blackness, tried to see the person who had just been standing there.

  "There were five of you at that meeting, Erik. I need to know whether the recording that was left in an envelope in Grens's pigeonhole is genuine. If what can be heard here is exactly what was said. If three people who have never touched a trigger were accomplices to legitimate murder."

  His neck was now red all the way up. His fringe had flopped and for a while stood out in every direction, he paced, frustrated, up and down in front of Grens's desk.

  Lars Ågestam was almost hissing.

  "This damned system, Grens. Criminals working for the police. Criminals' own crimes being covered up and downplayed. One crime is legitimized so that another one can be investigated. Policemen who lie and withhold the truth from other policemen. Damn it, Grens, in a democratic society."

  During the night he had printed out three hundred two secret intelligence reports from the county police commissioner's laptop. So far he had managed to go through one hundred of them, comparing the truth with the city police investigations. Twenty-five had resulted in nolle prosequi, thirty-five in an acquittal.

  "Judgments were given in the remaining forty cases, but I can tell you that the judgments were wrong due the lack of underlying information. The people who were tried were given sentences, but for the wrong crime. Grens, are you listening? In all cases!"

  Ewert Grens looked at the prosecutor, suit and tie, a file in one hand, glasses in the other.

  A bloody rotten system.

  And there's more, Ågestam.

  Soon we'll talk about the intelligence report you haven't seen yet, the one that is so hot off the press that it's in a separate file.

  Västmannagatan 79.

  An investigation that we closed when other policemen with offices on the same corridor had the answer we lacked, which meant that a person had to be burned and they needed a useful idiot to carry the can.

  "Thank you. You've done a good job."

  He held out his hand to the prosecutor he would never learn to like.

  Lars Ågestam took it, shook for a bit too long perhaps, but it felt good, personal, on the same side for the first time, the long hours at night, each with a glass of whisky and Grens who had called him Lars on one occasion. He smiled.

  Conscious spite and attempted insult, he didn't need to worry this time. He let go of his hand and had just started to head for the door with a strange joy in his heart when he suddenly turned around.

  "Grens?"

  "Yes?"

  "That map you showed me when I was here last."

  "Yes?"

  "You asked about Haga. North Cemetery. If it was nice there."

  It was lying on the desk. He had seen it as soon as he came in. A map of a resting place that had been used for more than two hundred years and was one of the largest in the country.

  Grens kept it at hand. He was going to go there.

  "Did you find what you were looking for?"

  Ewert Grens was breathing heavily, rocking his great bulk.

  "Well, did you?"

  Grens turned round pointedly. He said nothing, just the labored breathing as he faced the pile of files on the desk.

  "Hm, Ågestam?"

  "Yes?"

  He didn't look at the visitor who was about to leave, his voice was different, it was a bit too high and the young prosecutor had long since learned that that often meant discomfort.

  "You seem to have misinterpreted something."

  "Right?"

  "You see, Ågestam, this is just work. I am not your damn buddy."

  They had gotten their food, fish that wasn't salmon, the waiter's suggestion. I need to know whether the recording that was left in an envelope in Grens's pigeonhole is genuine. They had eaten without speaking, without even looking at each other. If what can be heard here is exactly what was said. The questions were there on the table beside the candlestick and pepper grinder, waiting for them. If three people who have never touched a trigger were accomplices to a legitimate murder.

  "Sundkvist?"

  Erik Wilson put his cutlery down on the empty plate, emptied his third glass of mineral water, lifted the napkin from his knee.

  "Yes."

  "You've come a long way for nothing."

  He had decided.

  "You see, in some way… it's like we're all in the same business."

  "You went to see Grens the next day. You knew, Erik, but you said nothing."

  "In the same business. The criminals. The people investigating the crime. And the informants make up the gray zone."

  He wasn't going to say anything.

  "And Sundkvist, this is the future. More informants. More covert human intelligence. It's a growth area. That's why I'm here."

  "If you had talked to us then, Erik, we wouldn't have been sitting opposite each other today. On either side of a dead man."

  "And that is why my European colleagues are here. We're here to learn. As it will continue to expand."

 
They had worked on the same corridor for so damn long.

  Wilson had never before seen Sven Sundkvist lose control.

  "I want you to listen bloody closely now, Erik!"

  Sven grabbed the laptop, a plate on the white marble floor, a glass on the white tablecloth.

  "I can fast forward or rewind to wherever you want. Here? See that? The exact moment that the bullet penetrates the reinforced glass."

  A mouth shouting in a monitor.

  "Or here? The exact moment the workshop explodes."

  A face in profile in a window.

  "Or here, maybe? I haven't shown you this one yet. The remnants. The flags on the wall. All that remains."

  A person stopped breathing,

  "You're responding the way you're supposed to respond, the way you've always responded: You protect your informant. But for Christ's sake, Erik, he's dead! There's nothing to protect anymore! Because you and your colleagues failed to do exactly that. That's why he's standing there in the window. That's why he dies exactly… there."

  Erik Wilson reached out to the computer screen that was turned toward him, closed it with a snap, and pulled out the plug.

  "I have worked as a handler as long as you have sat a few doors down. I have been responsible for informants all my working life. I have never not succeeded."

  Sven Sundkvist opened the laptop and turned it back again.

  "You can keep the cord. The battery's got plenty of juice."

  He pointed to the screen.

  "I don't understand, Erik. You've worked together for nine years. But when I show you that picture there… the exact moment he… there, do you see, exactly there he dies… you don't react."

  Erik Wilson snorted.

  "He wasn't my friend."

  You trusted me.

  "But I was his friend."

  I trusted you.

  "That's the way it works, Sundkvist. A handler pretends to be the informant's best friend. A handler has to play the role of the informant's best friend so goddamn well that the informant is willing to risk his life every day to get more information for his handler."

  I miss you.

  "So the guy you saw on the screen? You were right. I didn't react." Erik Wilson dropped his linen napkin on the table.

  "Are you paying, Sundkvist?"

  He started to leave. The tasteful restaurant around him, the lady on her own at the table to the left with a glass of red wine, two men to the right at a table full of papers and dessert plates.

  "Västmannagatan 79."

  Sven Sundkvist caught up with him, beside him.

  "You knew everything, Erik. But you chose to say nothing. And contributed to the disappearance of someone associated with a murder. You manipulated police authority records and the national courts administration database. You placed-"

  "Are you threatening me?"

  Erik Wilson had stopped, red face, shoulders up.

  He was showing something that was more than just nothing. "Are you, Sundkvist? Threatening me?"

  "What do you think?"

  "What do I think? You've tried to convince me by showing me evidence and tried to get me to feel something by showing me pictures of death. And now you're trying to threaten me with some kind of goddamn investigation? Sundkvist, you've used all the chapters in the interview book. What do I think? You're insulting me."

  He continued on down the small step, past the table with four older men who were looking for their glasses and studying the menu and the empty serving carts and the two green climbers on a white wall.

  One last look.

  He stopped.

  "But… the truth is that I don't like people who burn my best informant when I'm not there."

  He looked at Sven Sundkvist.

  "So… yes, that recording. The meeting you're talking about. It did happen. What you heard is genuine. Every single word."

  * * *

  Ewert Grens should perhaps have laughed. At least felt whatever it was that sometimes bubbles up in your belly, a delight that can't be heard.

  The recording was genuine.

  The meeting had taken place.

  Sven had called from a restaurant in the center of Jacksonville as he watched Wilson walk to his car and start the journey back to south Georgia, after he had confirmed it all.

  Grens didn't laugh. He had emptied himself that morning in a cage on a roof. He had screamed until the rage was released and let him sleep on a sofa. So now there was a space to be filled.

  But not with more anger, that was no longer enough.

  Not with satisfaction, even though he knew he was so close.

  But hate.

  Hoffmann had been burned. But survived. And taken hostages in order to continue surviving.

  I carried out a legitimate murder.

  Ewert Grens phoned a person he loathed for the second time. "I need your help again."

  "Okay.”

  "Can you come to my apartment tonight?"

  "Your flat?"

  "Corner of Odengatan and Sveavägen."

  "Why?"

  "As I said. I need your help."

  Lars Ågestam scoffed.

  "You want me to meet you? After work? Why should I want to do that?

  After all… I'm not… now how did you put it… your buddy."

  The secret intelligence report that was also on the laptop, but so fresh that it was in another file.

  The one I didn't show you last night.

  The one that I'm going to show you because I have no intention of carrying someone else's guilt.

  "It's not social, it's work. Västmannagatan 79. The preliminary investigation you just scaled down."

  "You're welcome to come to the Regional Public Prosecution Office tomorrow during the day."

  "You can open it again. As I know what actually happened. But I need your help one more time, Ågestam. Tomorrow morning is too late. That is when the head of the Government Offices security realizes that something is missing and passes on that information. When the wrong people then have time to adapt their versions, manipulate the evidence, change reality yet again."

  Grens coughed extensively close to the mouthpiece, as if he was uncertain as to how to continue.

  "And I apologize. For that. I was perhaps… well, you know." "No, what?"

  "Damn it, Ågestam!"

  "What?"

  "I was perhaps… I may have been a bit… churlish, a bit… well, unnecessarily harsh."

  Lars Ågestam walked down the seven flights of stairs in the offices at Kungsbron. A pleasant evening, warm, he longed for heat, as he always did after eight months of bitter wind and unpredictable snow. He turned around, looked at the windows of the Regional Public Prosecution Office, all dark. Two late phone calls had been longer than he expected: one phone call home-he had explained that he had to stay late and several times promised that he would wash the glasses from last night which still smelled of alcohol before he went to bed-then one call with Sven Sundkvist. He had gotten hold of him somewhere that sounded like an airport. He had wanted more information about the part of the investigation that involved Poland and their trip there to a now defunct amphetamine factory.

  "His flat?"

  "Yes."

  "You're going to Ewert Grens's flat?"

  Sven Sundkvist hadn't said anything but didn't want to hang up-their conversation was already finished and Ågestam was impatient, wanted to get on his way.

  "Yes. I'm going to Ewert Grens's flat."

  "I'm sorry, Ågestam, but there's something I don't quite understand. I've known Ewert, I've been his closest colleague for nearly fourteen years. But I have never, never ever, Ågestam, been invited to his flat. It's… I don't know… so private, a strange kind of… protection. Once, five years ago, one time only, Ågestam, the day after the hostage drama in the morgue at Soder hospital, I forced my way into his home, against his will. But now you're saying that he asked you there? And you're quite sure about that?"

  Lars Ågestam
wandered slowly through the city, lots of people on the street despite the fact it was a Sunday and past nine o'clock-after winter's drought of warmth and company it was always harder to go home when life had just returned.

  He hadn't realized that it might be more than just an investigation, more than just a question of working late. It really felt like something had changed last night in the kitchen at Åkeshov; the whisky and three hundred and two copies of secret intelligence reports resembled a kind of closeness. But Ewert Grens had soon killed that feeling, happy to hurt in the way that only he knew how. So if it was as extraordinary to be invited to his flat as Sven made out, maybe there had been a change, they were perhaps closer to tolerating each other.

  He looked at the people around him again, those drinking beer in their coats and scarves in outside cafés, laughing, chatting, as people who get on well together do.

  He sighed.

  There had been no change, there never would be.

  Grens had other reasons, Ågestam was sure of it, his own reasons, ones that he would never dream of sharing with a young public prosecutor he had decided to despise.

  "Grens."

  Still a lot of traffic on Sveavägen. He had to concentrate to hear the voice on the intercom.

  "It's Ågestam, will you-"

  "I'll open. Four flights up."

  A thick reddish carpet on the floor, walls that were possibly marble, lights that were bright without being offensive. If he had lived in town, in a flat, he would have looked for an entrance like this.

  He avoided the elevator, broad staircase all the way up, E AND A GRENS on the mailbox in a dark door.

  "Come in."

  The large detective superintendent with the thinning hair opened the door, same clothes as that afternoon and the night before, a gray jacket and even grayer trousers.

  Ågestam looked around in wonder-the hall seemed endless. "It's big."

  "I haven't spent much time here in the last few years. But still manage to find my way around."

  Ewert Grens smiled. It looked unnatural. He had never experienced it before. His coarse face was normally tense, harassing the people it was facing; the smile, a different face that made Ågestam uncertain.

  He walked down the long hall with rooms opening off it, counted at least six empty rooms that looked untouched, asleep. That was how Sven had described them, rooms that didn't want to wake up.