Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund; Börge Hellström

  The kitchen was as spacious, as untouched.

  He followed Grens through the first section and into the next, a small eating area, a gateleg table and six chairs.

  "Do you live here on your own?"

  "Sit yourself down."

  A pile of blue files and a large notepad in the middle, two glasses that were still wet with a bottle of Seagram's between them.

  He was prepared.

  "A dram? Or are you driving?"

  He had made an effort. Even the same kind of whisky.

  "Here? With you in the vicinity? I wouldn't dare. You might have some dusty parking fine papers in your glove compartment."

  Ewert Grens remembered a cold winter's night one and a half years ago. He had crawled around on his hands and knees, his creased suit trousers in the wet new snow and measured the distance between a car and Vasagatan.

  Ågestam's car.

  He smiled again, a smile that was almost unnerving.

  "As I remember it, the parking fine was dismissed. By the prosecutor himself."

  In a fury, he had fined Lars Ågestam for his eight-centimeter error in parking, weary of a public prosecutor who made things difficult when the search for a sixteen-year-old girl who had disappeared forced them down into the tunnels under Stockholm.

  "You can pour me half a glass."

  They both took a drink while Grens produced a document from one of the files and put it down in front of Ågestam.

  "You got three hundred and two secret intelligence reports. About what actually happened, things the rest of us didn't know and so couldn't present in our official investigations."

  Lars Ågestam nodded.

  "That unit at Aspsås. For only police officers. When I charge Them all." "They were reports from last year. But this copy, this is still warm."

  M pulls a gun

  (Polish 9mm Radom)

  from shoulder holster.

  M cocks the gun and holds it to the buyer's head.

  "Submitted to the county police commissioner, like all the others."

  P orders M to calm down.

  IA lowers the gun, takes a step

  back, his weapon half-cocked.

  Lars Ågestam was about to speak when Grens interrupted.

  "I've spent… I'd guess… half my time working on Vastmannagaran since the alarm was raised. Sven Sundkvist and Mariana Hermansson as well. Nils Krantz estimates that he and three other colleagues spent a week searching the place with magnifying glasses and fingerprint lifting tape, Errfors says that he used as much time to analyze the body of a Danish citizen. A number of constables and detectives have guarded the crime scene, questioned neighbors and looked for bloody shirts in garbage cans for-if I'm conservative-twenty days."

  He looked at the prosecutor.

  "And you? How many hours have you put into this case?"

  Ågestam shrugged.

  "Hard to say… a week."

  Suddenly the buyer shouts

  "I'm the police."

  M again aims the gun

  at the buyer's head.

  Ewert Grens snatched the intelligence report out of Ågestam's hands and waved it in front of him.

  "Thirteen and a half working weeks. Five hundred and forty man-hours. When my colleagues and bosses who sit in the same corridor already had the answer. He even phoned, Ågestam, it says here, Hoffmann damn well rang himself and raised the alarm!"

  Lars Ågestam reached out for the report.

  "Can I have it back?"

  He left the table, went into the other part of the kitchen and opened one of the wall cupboards, looking for something, opened another one.

  "What's the purpose of all this?"

  "I want to solve a murder."

  "Do you not understand what I'm asking, Grens? What's the purpose of all this?"

  He found what he was looking for, a glass, filled it with water. "I have no intention of carrying the guilt."

  "Guilt?"

  "You've got nothing to do with it, Ågestam. But that's the truth. I'm not going to carry the guilt anymore. That's why I'm going to make sure that the people responsible are going to carry it for me."

  The public prosecutor looked at the report.

  "And you can use the report to do that?"

  "Yes. If I manage to finish this. Before tomorrow morning."

  Lars Ågestam stood in the middle of the large kitchen. He could hear the traffic through the open window-it had slowed, fewer cars that drove faster, it was starting to get late.

  "Can I wander around a bit? Here in the flat?"

  "Feel free."

  The hall seemed even longer than before, thick rugs on a parquet floor that was dark but not worn, brown wallpaper with a seventies design. He turned off and into the first and best door, into something that resembled a library, sat down in the leather armchair that seemed to protest while the sunken seat waited for its owner. The only room in the flat that didn't scream loneliness. He followed the shelves and rows of same-size books, turned on the standard lamp that was beautifully angled and that gave off a light that colored the printed pages yellow. He leaned back as he imagined the detective superintendent did, once more read the secret intelligence report that had been written by a policeman the day after the murder at Västmannagatan 79, whereas the investigation for which he and Grens were responsible had slowly led to nothing and closure.

  M holds the gun harder to

  the buyer's head and pulls the trigger.

  The buyer falls to the floor, at a right angle to the chair.

  Lars Ågestam reached for the lampshade and pulled it closer, he wanted to see properly, be sure, now that he had decided.

  He wouldn't be going home tonight.

  He would, in a while, go directly from here to the Regional Public Prosecution Office and reopen the preliminary investigation.

  He stood up and was about to leave the room when he noticed two black-and-white photographs on the wall between two bookshelves: a woman and a man. They were young and full of anticipation, they were wearing police uniforms and their eyes were alive.

  He had always wondered what he looked like, back then, when he was someone else.

  "Have you decided?"

  Grens was sitting where he had left him, among the blue files and empty glasses at an elegant kitchen table.

  "Yes."

  "If you prosecute, Ågestam, we're not just talking about normal policemen. I'll give you a commanding officer. And an even higher ranking officer. And a state secretary."

  Lars Ågestam looked at the three pieces of letter-sized paper in his hand. "And you maintain that there's enough? I assume that I haven't seen everything."

  A security camera in Rosenbad with five people on their way into one of the offices. A recording of five voices in a closed meeting.

  You haven't seen everything.

  "There's enough."

  Ewert Grens smiled for the third time.

  Lars Ågestam thought that it looked almost natural, he smiled fleetingly back.

  "Haul them in. I'll have the arrest warrants sorted within three days."

  * * *

  He went down the stairs in the silent building.

  It was years ago now, his painful leg on the stone stairs, but tonight he had walked past the elevator, his hand gripping the handrail. Two doors had greeted him with scurrying footsteps to doormats and peepholes as he passed, curious eyes that wanted to see him up on the fourth floor, he who never used the stairs suddenly doing so. At the bottom and the door nearest the entrance, a wall clock that chimed, he counted, twelve times.

  Sveav5gen was almost empty and it was still warm, maybe they'd get a damned summer this year as well. He breathed in, one deep breath, slowly released the air.

  Ewert Grens had invited another person into his home.

  Ewert Grens hadn't immediately experienced a pain in his chest and asked him to leave.

  He had never done that before, not since the accident-it had been her place and the
ir shared home. He shrugged off the gentle breeze and started to walk west along Odengatan, just as empty, just as warm. He took off his jacket and undid the top buttons on his shirt.

  Of all people, the well-groomed prosecutor whom he hated, whom he had met a few years ago and loathed.

  He had even almost enjoyed it.

  He slowed down by the kiosk on Odenplan, stood in the queue with the mobile kids sending text messages to other mobile kids, bought a hamburger and a drink that tasted of orange but had lost its bubbles. He had said no to the prosecutor's suggestion of finishing the evening with a beer in the lawyers' haunt at Frescati, only to regret it and wander restlessly from room to room until he was compelled to go out, just somewhere else, at least for a while.

  Two rats at his feet, from a hole under the kiosk into the park with sleeping men on wooden benches. Four young women over there, short skirts and high-heeled shoes, running toward one of the buses that had just closed its doors and was pulling out.

  He are his hamburger outside Gustav Vasa church, then turned right into a street he had visited several times in the past few weeks, blocks of flats that were on their way to bed. He looked at himself in the glass panes of the large front door, punched in the code which he now knew off by heart and took the elevator that creaked as it reached the fourth floor.

  A new sign on the mailbox. The Polish name had been replaced. The brown wooden door was even older than his own. He looked at it, remembered the pool of blood under a head, small flags on the wall, the kitchen floor where Krantz had found traces of drugs.

  It had started here.

  The death that would force him to make a decision about more death.

  Vanadisvagen, Gavlegatan, Solnabron, he carried on through the mild night, as if someone else was walking beside him and he was just following, he thought nothing, felt nothing, not until he stopped on Solna Kyrkvag in front of an opening in the fence that was called Gate 1 and was one of ten entrances to North Cemetery.

  The expected edges in the inner pocket of his jacket.

  He had let it lie at arm's length on his desk for months; then yesterday, without knowing why, he had taken it home with him. Now he was here, holding the map in his hand.

  He wasn't even cold.

  Despite the fact that he knew it was always cold in graveyards.

  Ewert Grens followed the asphalt road that cut across large areas of green grass edged by birches, conifers, and trees he didn't know the names of A hundred and fifty acres, thirty thousand graves. He had avoided looking at them-rather the branches on the trees than the gray stones that marked loss-but was now looking at some older graves, those who were buried as titles, not people: a postal inspector, a stationmaster, a widow. He went on past large engraved stones that housed entire families who wanted always to be close, past other large stones that rose up stern and proud from the ground-slightly more important than the rest, even in death-to stare at him.

  Twenty-nine years.

  He had several times a day for most of his adult life lived through a few tainted moments-she falls out of the police van, he doesn't manage to stop in time, the back wheels roll over her head-and sometimes, if he had forgotten to think about it, if he realized that several hours had passed since the last time, he had been forced to think about it a bit longer and a bit more, mostly about the red that had been blood that poured from the head on his lap.

  He couldn't do it anymore.

  He looked at the trees and the graves and even the memorial garden over there, but it didn't help, no matter how much he reprimanded himself, he could not focus on the flickering in her eyes or the spasms in her legs.

  What you're frightened of has already happened.

  He looked around, suddenly in a rush.

  He cut across the graves in an area that according to the signs was called Section I5B: beautiful, understated gravestones, people who had died with dignity and didn't need to make such a bloody fuss afterwards.

  Section 16A. He lengthened his stride. Section 19E. He was out of breath, sweating.

  A green watering can on a stand, he filled it with water from the tap close by, carried it with him as he hurried on and the asphalt changed to gravel.

  Section 19B.

  He attempted to stand still again.

  He had never been here. He had tried, he had, but never managed. It had taken him one and a half years to walk a couple of kilometers.

  The failing light made it hard to see more than two headstones in front.

  He leaned forward so he could read more easily, each new sign marking a burial place.

  Grave 601.

  Grave 602.

  He was shaking, finding it difficult to breathe. For a moment he was about to turn around.

  Grave 603.

  Some overturned earth, a temporary flowerbed with something green, a small white wooden cross, nothing more.

  He lifted the watering can and watered the bush without flowers.

  She's lying there.

  The girl who holds his hand and forces him to walk close to her as they wander through the Stockholm dawn, the girl who struggles beside him on badly waxed skis through the snow-covered chestnut trees in Vasaparken, the girl who moves in with a young man to the flat on Sveavägen.

  She is the one who is lying there.

  Not the woman who sits in a wheelchair in a nursing home, the one who doesn't recognize me.

  He didn't cry, he had already done that. He smiled. I didn't kill him.

  I didn't kill you.

  What I am frightened of has already happened.

  * * *

  PART FIVE

  * * *

  A Day Later

  * * *

  He liked the brown bread, thick slices with seeds all around the crust, it filled him and crunched a little when he chewed. Black coffee and orange juice that had been pressed as he watched. A couple of minutes from the flat, on the corner of Odengatan and Döbelnsgatan, Ewert Grens had eaten breakfast there a couple of times a week for as long as he could remember.

  He had slept for nearly four hours, in his own bed, in the big flat and without dreaming about running and someone in pursuit. He had known it would be a good night as soon as he had shut the door, sat down in the large kitchen, and looked out of the window, gathered up all the files and papers that were still lying on the table, stood singing in the warm shower for a bit too long, listened to the voices of night radio.

  Grens paid for his breakfast and four cinnamon buns, asked if they could be put in a bag, then a quick walk alongside the cars that stood waiting for each other in the dense morning traffic, Sveavägen to Sergels Torg, Drottninggatan to Rosenbad and the Government Offices.

  The security guard, who was young and probably new, studied his ID and compared his name for a second and third time with the one given in the meeting book.

  "The Ministry of Justice?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know where her office is?"

  "I was here a couple of nights ago, but we've never met."

  The camera was in the middle of the corridor at face height. Ewert Grens looked into it, just as a police informant had done a few weeks ago, smiled at the lens, at roughly the same time that one of the security staff opened the door to a control room several floors down in the huge government building and discovered that the metal shelf with numbered security tapes was empty in two places.

  They were waiting for him by the large table at the far end of the room. A half-empty porcelain cup in front of each of them.

  It was eight in the morning and they had already been there a while; they had taken him seriously.

  He looked at them, still not a word.

  "You asked for a meeting. Well, you've got a meeting. We presume it won't take long. We've all got other planned meetings to go to."

  Ewers Grens looked at the three faces, one at a time, long enough for it to be just too long. The two first faces, if they were calm, if they were pretending to be. Göransson, on the
other hand, had a shiny forehead, his eyes kept blinking, his lips creased as he pressed them together hard.

  "I've brought some cinnamon buns."

  He put the white paper bag on the table.

  "For Christ's sake, Grens!"

  Hoffmann had had a family.

  Two children who would grow up without a father.

  "Does anyone want one? I bought one for each of us."

  What if they looked him up in years to come? What if they asked questions, what would he answer?

  It was my job?

  It was my damned duty?

  Your father's life was not as valuable to me and society as that of the prison warden he was threatening?

  "No? Well, I think I'll take one. Göransson, can you pass me a cup?" He drank the coffee, ate a cinnamon bun, and one more.

  "Two cinnamon buns left. If anyone changes their mind."

  He looked at them again, one at a time as before. The state secretary met his gaze-she was calm, even a faint smile. The national police commissioner sat completely still, his eyes turned to the window, the Royal Palace roof and Storkyrkan tower. Göransson stared at the table. It was difficult to tell, but it looked like his shiny forehead was covered in droplets.

  Ewert Grens opened the briefcase and produced a laptop.

  "Good machine this. Sven took a similar one with him to the USA. He was there yesterday."

  With fumbling fingers, he slipped in the CD, opened the file and a black square filled the screen.

  'A lot of keys. But I'm quite good at it now. And by the way, it was Erik Wilson that Sven went to meet. With his laptop."

  The security cameras were situated in two places. One about a meter above the glass security desk, the other in the corridor on the second floor. The footage he had seized late in the evening a couple of days ago was jumpy and slightly blurred, but they could all see what it was.