Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  "You and me to have a meeting. In about half an hour."

  "I don't think so."

  "A meeting. In your office. In your capacity as CHIS controller." "Tomorrow."

  Grens looked at the sign in his rearview mirror; it was hard to read in the dark but he knew what the town he had just left was called.

  He hoped it would be a while before he had to return.

  "Paula."

  "Excuse me?"

  "That's what we're going to talk about."

  He waited, there was a long silence.

  "Paula who?"

  He didn't answer. The forest transformed slowly into high-rise blocks-he was getting close to Stockholm.

  "Grens, answer me. Paula who?"

  Ewert Grens just held his handset for a while, then hung up.

  The corridor was empty. The coffee machine hummed, hidden by the dark. He settled on one of the chairs outside Göransson's office.

  His boss would soon be there. Grens was convinced of it.

  He drank the vending machine coffee.

  Wilson was Hoffmann's handler. A handler records the informant's work in a logbook. The logbook is kept in a safe by the CHIS controller. Göransson.

  "Grens."

  The chief superintendent opened the door to his office. Ewert Grens looked at the clock and smiled. Exactly half an hour since their conversation. He was shown into an office that was considerably larger than his own and sat down in a leather armchair, wriggled a bit.

  Göransson was nervous.

  He was trying hard to pretend the opposite, but Grens recognized the breathing, the pitch, the slightly exaggerated movements.

  "The logbook, Göransson. I want to see it."

  "I don't understand."

  Grens was furious but hadn't thought of showing it.

  He didn't shout, he didn't threaten.

  Not yet.

  "Give me the logbook. The whole file."

  Göransson was sitting on the edge of the desk. He waved at two walls of shelves, files on every shelf.

  "Which goddamn file?"

  "The file of the person I murdered."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "The snitch file."

  "What do you want it for?"

  I am going to nail you, you bastard. I've got a day to do it.

  "You know."

  "What I know, Ewert, is that there is only one copy of it, and it's in my safe, which only I have the code to, and there's a reason for that."

  Göransson gave a light kick to the safe, which was green and stood against the wall behind his desk.

  As no unauthorized persons can see it."

  Grens breathed slowly. He had been about to strike out, balled fist that was halfway to Göransson's face when he caught it, the desire was so strong.

  He released his cramping fingers, held them out, an exaggerated gesture perhaps.

  "The file, Göransson. And I'll need a pen."

  Göransson looked at the hand in front of him, the gnarled fingers. An Ewert Grens who shouts, who threatens, I can deal with that. "Can I have it?"

  "'What?"

  "The pen."

  But the loud whispering.

  "And a piece of paper."

  "Ewert?"

  "A piece of paper."

  The gnarled fingers pointing at him.

  He gave them a notebook and a pen, a red felt tip.

  "You got a name from me half an hour ago. I know that that name is in the informant file. I want to see it."

  He knows.

  Ewert Grens held the notebook against the armrest of the leather chair and wrote something. Handwriting that was normally difficult to read. But nor now. Five carefully written letters in red felt tip.

  Grens knows.

  Göransson went over to the safe, maybe his hands were shaking, maybe that was why it took so long to set the six digits, to open the heavy door, to take out a black, rectangular file.

  `Are all the meetings between your handler and this Hoffmann recorded here?"

  “ Yes .”

  “And this is the only copy?"

  "It's the copy that I keep as CHIS controller. The only one."

  "Destroy it."

  He put the black folder down in front of him on the desk and looked through the code names of criminals who were recruited to work as informants for the Swedish police. He had gotten halfway when he stopped.

  I knew it was wrong and I said so.

  "Grens?"

  "Yes?"

  I left her room.

  "It's here. The name you're looking for."

  Ewert Grens had already got up and was standing behind his boss, reading over his shoulder, tightly written pages.

  First the code name. Then the date. Then a summary of that day's short meeting in a flat that could be entered from two different addresses.

  Page after page, meeting after meeting.

  "You know what I want."

  I got out.

  You can't have it.

  "Give me the envelope, Göransson. Give it to me."

  With every logbook came an envelope with the informant's real name, sealed by the handler on the first day of the operation, a wax seal, red and shiny.

  "Open it."

  I can walk out of this with my head held high.

  "I can't do that."

  "Now, Göransson."

  Grens clutched the envelope in his hand, read the name that he had heard spoken for the first time only days ago, on a recording of a meeting in an office in the Government Offices.

  Five letters.

  The same name that he had just written on a note pad.

  P-a-u-l-a.

  He reached over for Göransson's letter opener, broke the seal and opened the brown envelope.

  He knew it already.

  But still the damned thumping in his chest.

  Ewert Grens pulled out the piece of paper and read the name that he knew would be there. Confirmation that the person he had ordered to be shot really had worked for the city police.

  Piet Hoffmann.

  Piet.

  Paula.

  The Swedish code name system, first letter of a man's name became the first letter of a woman's name. The informant file was full of snitches called Maria, Lena, Birgitta.

  'And now I want the secret intelligence report. About what actually happened at Västmannagatan 79."

  The whispering again.

  Göransson looked at the colleague he had never liked.

  He knows.

  "You can't have it."

  "Where do you keep the secret intelligence report? What actually happened at Västmannagatan 79? That those of us investigating were not to know?"

  "It's not here."

  "Where?"

  "There's only one copy."

  " Jesus , Göransson, where?"

  He knows.

  "The county police commissioner has it. Our most senior officer."

  He limped badly, it wasn't the pain-it was years since he'd bothered about that-this was just how he walked, left foot light on the floor, right foot heavy on the floor, left leg light on the floor. But with anger as his motor, he thumped his right leg down harder on the surface and the monotonous sound was quickly carried by the walls in the unlit corridor. The elevator down four floors, right toward the escalator, through the canteen, elevator five floors up. Then that sound again, someone limping down the last stretch of corridor who stopped outside the door of the county police commissioner's office.

  He stood still, listened.

  He pressed down the handle.

  It was locked.

  Ewert Grens had stopped in his travels three times: first at the data support office and one of the Coke-drinking young men to collect a CD with a surprisingly simple and accessible program that could open all code words on all computers in two minutes; then at the small kitchen opposite the vending machine for a towel; and finally the maintenance office opposite the stores for a hammer and a screw
driver.

  He wound the towel around the hammer several times, positioned the screwdriver in the gap between the upper door hinge and the pin, looked around in the dark one more time and came down hard on the screwdriver with the hammer until the pin was loose. He moved the screwdriver down to the lower hinge and the next pin, until the hammer blows released it. From there it was easy to separate the two hinges, to carefully rock the screwdriver back and forth between the door and the doorframe, to push the door back until the lock barrel slid out of its fixture.

  He lifted the door and put it to one side.

  It was lighter than he had imagined.

  He had forced other doors during raids-a heart attack on the other side, scared children on their own-in order to avoid waiting for a locksmith who might never come.

  But he had never broken into a senior police officer's room before.

  The laptop was on the desk, just like his own. He started it, waited while the CD program identified and replaced the code words and then searched the documents as he had learned to do.

  A couple of minutes was all he needed.

  Ewert Grens re-hung the door on its hinges, coaxed the pins back in, checked that there were no scratches or splinters on the doorframe, and then walked away with the computer in a briefcase.

  The alarm clock behind the telephone didn't work. It had stopped at a quarter to four. Grens focused on the white clock while he phoned the talking clock for the second time that night.

  Three forty-five and thirty seconds. Precisely. It was working. The night was receding without him having noticed.

  He was sweaty. He unwound the towel from the hammer and wiped his forehead and neck. Walking through the building, forcing open a door, more exercise than he was used to.

  He sat down at the computer that had until recently been on another desk, searched for the file he had started to read earlier.

  Västmannagatan 79.

  The secret intelligence report. The actual events.

  He reached over for a thin file at the back of the desk, leafed through it. The same incident. But not the truth. The incomplete information that he and Sven and Hermansson and Ågestam had had access to, which therefore had resulted in the investigation being downgraded.

  He continued to search the documents on the computer. He went back exactly one year. Three hundred two secret intelligence reports recounting how an informant's work to uncover one crime had given rise to another. He recognized several of them. Other investigations that had collapsed despite the fact that the knowledge was already in-house.

  He hadn't slept the night before, he wouldn't sleep tonight; the anger that could not be released filled him instead, forcing out tiredness. There was no room.

  I was a useful idiot.

  I carried out legitimate murder.

  1 have carried the guilt all my adult life and I deserved it, but no bastard is going to force me to carry it for anyone else.

  I don't know Hoffmann. I'm not interested in him.

  But this, this god awful guilt that I have no intention of taking on, I know that.

  He pulled the telephone over, remembered the number that he often dialed at this time of night. The voice was weak, as always when someone has just woken up.

  "Hello?"

  "Anita?"

  "Who…"

  "It's Ewen."

  An exasperated sigh from a dark bedroom upstairs in a terraced house somewhere in Gustaysberg.

  "Sven's not here. He's spending the night on an plane, on the way to the USA. Because you sent him there a couple of hours ago."

  "I know."

  "So don't call here again tonight."

  "I know."

  "Goodnight, Ewert."

  "I always phone Sven. So you'll have to take it. You see… I'm so damn angry.”

  Her slow breathing, he could hear it.

  "Ewert?"

  "Yes?"

  "Phone someone else. Someone who gets paid for it. I have to sleep."

  She hung up. He stared at the unfamiliar laptop sitting on his desk that stared back at him, at his concealed rage.

  Sven was on an plane somewhere over the Atlantic.

  Hermansson. It didn't feel right to call her, a young woman and an old man in the middle of the night.

  Grens lifted the plastic pocket on the blotter, ran his finger down the long list. He found what he was looking for and punched in the number of the one person he had absolutely no desire to talk to.

  Eight rings.

  He put the phone down, waited for exactly one minute, then called again.

  Someone answered immediately. Someone snatched the phone from its cradle.

  "Is that you, Grens?"

  "So you were awake?"

  "I am now. What the hell do you want?"

  Ewert Grens loathed him. Inflexible, hierarchical. Qualities he despised, but actually ones he needed now

  "Ågestam?"

  "Yes?"

  "I need your help."

  Lars Ågestam yawned, stretched, collapsed in a heap.

  "Go to bed, Grens."

  "Your help. Now."

  "Simple answer. The same one you get every time you wake me and my family up at this time. Call the duty officer."

  He hung up. Ewert Grens didn't wait this time, rang back straight away. "Grens! Don't you… bloody dare, you-"

  "Hundreds of cases. In the last year alone. Witnesses and evidence and interviews that… that disappeared."

  Lars Ågestam cleared his throat.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "We have to meet."

  Someone said something in the background. Sounded like Ågestam's wife. Grens tried to remember what she looked like. They had met, he remembered that but not her face, one of the kind that lack definition. "Grens, are you drunk?"

  "Hundreds. You've been involved in several yourself."

  "Of course. We can meet. Tomorrow."

  "Now, Ågestam! I don't have much time. Monday morning. By then… then it's too late. And what I need to tell you… it's as much for your sake. don't you understand how bizarre it feels to say that? To you?"

  The female voice in the background again. Grens could hear it, but not what it said. Ågestam whispered when he spoke again.

  "I'm listening."

  "It's not something I can say over the phone."

  "But I'm listening!"

  "We have to meet. You'll understand why."

  The public prosecutor sighed.

  "Come here then."

  "To you?"

  "To my house."

  He had passed Åkeshov metro station and drove into an area of detached houses from the forties, the educated middle class. It was going to be a beautiful day, you could tell from the sun growing in the distance. He stopped the car in front of a garden with large apple trees at the end of a sleeping street. He had been here once before, about five years ago. The newly appointed prosecutor had received a number of threats during the trial of a young father accused of murder and Grens had not taken it very seriously until the yellow house had black paint, you're dead, you bastard, sprayed from the kitchen to the sitting room.

  Two big cups on the table.

  A pot of freshly brewed tea between them.

  "Black, isn't it?"

  "Black."

  Grens drank the whole cup and Ågestam filled it again.

  "Nearly as good as the stuff from the machine in the corridor." "It's quarter past four in the morning. What do you want?"

  The briefcase was already on the table. Grens opened it and pulled out three files.

  "Do you recognize these?"

  Lars Ågestam nodded.

  "Yes."

  "Three investigations that we've worked on together over the past year."

  Ewert Grens pointed to them, one at a time.

  "Serious drug offense, parking lot in Regeringsgatan. Tried and acquitted.

  Firearms offense, pathway under Liljeholm bridge. Tried and acquitted.

&
nbsp; Attempted kidnapping, Magnus Ladulåsgatan. Tried and acquitted."

  "Can you keep your voice down? My wife. My children. They're asleep." Ågestam waved his hand at the ceiling, the floor above.

  "Have you got children? You didn't the last time."

  "Well, I do now."

  Grens lowered his voice.

  "Do you remember them?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "You know why. I didn't get approval. Lack of evidence."

  Grens put the files to one side, replaced them with a laptop that had until recently been on a high ranking officer's desk behind a locked door. He searched through the documents, as before, turned the screen toward the prosecutor.

  "I want you to read."

  Lars Ågestam picked up the teacup, lifted it to his mouth and there it remained. He couldn't get it any farther, his fingers frozen.

  "What is this?"

  He looked at Ewert Grens.

  "Grens? What is this?"

  "What is it? The same addresses. The same times. But a different truth." "I don't understand."

  "This one? Serious drug offense, parking lot, Regeringsgatan. But what actually happened. Described in a secret intelligence report written by a policeman who wasn't part of the investigation."

  Ewert Grens looked on the computer again.

  "Two more. Read."

  His neck was red. Hand through his hair.

  "And this one?"

  "This one? Firearms offense, pathway under Liljeholm bridge. And this one? Attempted kidnapping, Magnus Ladulåsgatan. Also what actually happened. Also described in a secret intelligence report written by police who weren't part of the investigation."

  The prosecutor stood up.

  "Grens, I-"

  'And this is just three of three hundred and two cases from last year. They're all there. The truth we were never told. Crimes that were swept under the carpet so that other crimes could be solved. An official investigation, the sort that you and I deal with. And another that exists only here, in secret intelligence reports for police management."

  Ewert Grens looked at the man in a robe in front of him.

  "Lars, you were involved in twenty-three of them. Cases where you prosecuted and were unsuccessful. You closed them because you didn't have all the information that was included in the real report, the secret one, the one that would have nailed the snitch."

  Lars Ågestam didn't stir.

  He said Lars.

  It feels… weird, uninvited. It's only my name. But when Grens says it… it's almost uncomfortable.