Knock Knock

by Anders Roslund

  “The one and only.”

  The stranger looked at the detective with those steady eyes and now slowly raised his hands from the table. The same movement he’d tried several times before—but now he completed it. With his right hand he began to wiggle two of the fingers on his left hand.

  “You see, Grens?”

  And both fingers came loose. One at a time.

  “Medical-grade silicone and an individualized case design. As easy to coax them off as it is to get them on. Finger prostheses. The vacuum inside them holds them in place. Do you recognize me now? Missing two fingers?”

  “Why . . . Why the disguise? And your voice—that’s not how you sound?”

  Grens placed the gun between them on the kitchen table. Maybe to prove that he trusted his visitor. That they could trust each other.

  “This?”

  Piet Hoffmann pulled slightly at his puffy cheeks and just as puffy chin, ran a hand through his dyed hair, rolled the finger prostheses across the table until they clunked against the gun.

  “Death threats. Somebody means business. And what’s worse—Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus and Luiza are in just as much danger.”

  Grens picked up the finger prostheses. Felt them. Rolled them back over the table.

  “Why come here—break in—to the home of someone you said you never wanted to see again?”

  “I need your help, Grens.”

  “Go to the police then. They’ll help you.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “It works for everyone else. Regular people don’t sneak into police officers’ homes—they go to the police station and fill out paperwork.”

  “First of all, which of your colleagues would even help an ex-con? That’s not how it works—and you know it. You harass us. Persecute us. You just want us locked away again.”

  “Well then, you report that.”

  “And secondly, the police station is the only place I can’t go. Because the organization threatening me has contacts that reach deep inside that station. They’re working with someone. So now, Detective, we meet for another reason. Now we exchange our roles again. It’s your goddamn turn this time. This time you will help me, Grens. You’re going to infiltrate on my behalf.”

  Ewert Grens poured coffee into two porcelain cups and sat them down, steaming, on the kitchen table. One black. One with a splash of milk. He found a single roll of Marie biscuits in his pantry, and it fit nicely on the table between the finger prostheses and his gun.

  “I baked them myself.”

  Grens smiled. Much more warmly now.

  “And the coffee was brewed by a master. Not many people have been served in my kitchen. Anni, of course, when she lived here. Ågestam, the prosecutor, late one night. And now you, Hoffmann. Sven Sundkvist was here once, but it wasn’t a very nice evening, so he got nothing. Three guests in over thirty years, not exactly what you’d call a crowd.”

  Piet Hoffmann took a sip of coffee that was the strongest he’d ever tasted. It ripped into his chest. And washed his mind clear.

  “You’ve got the world’s easiest mission as an infiltrator—you have to infiltrate your own colleagues, Grens. Immerse yourself in the institution you already belong to, and no one will question you for it.”

  “And I should do this . . . because?”

  “Because the organization that’s threatening to kill me, kill my family, started out by working with someone inside that station, and then he gave two of these to my son.”

  Hoffmann had brought something with him. Grens only saw it now as Hoffmann pulled out his chair and showed him a small bag. He plucked out a toy.

  “The first one was left in our mailbox. This one was placed in Rasmus’s red backpack while twenty-four grade-school students practiced their letters.”

  Hoffmann put the toy next to Grens’s coffee mug. It was approximately the same height and breadth.

  “Do you see what it is?”

  “You know I don’t have any children. I don’t know anything about toys. Now and then I catch a commercial on the television, or pass by the window of a toy store, but not often. Not a particular interest of mine.”

  Hoffmann pulled off the toy’s two plastic arms. And plastic legs. And plastic nose. And plastic eyes. And plastic mouth. Until it was no longer a toy. Until it had changed shape.

  “But you understand this, Grens.”

  The detective jumped out of his chair and took a step back.

  “What the hell are you up to? A hand grenade—in my kitchen?”

  “Sit down.”

  “With the fuse plugged in! Are you threatening me, Hoffmann?”

  “Grens—please listen. One more time.”

  As the detective superintendent stood with his eyes glued to a live hand grenade, his visitor began to speak. Told him about a warning that was put into his family’s mailbox. About copies of highly classified documents sent to his office. About a cell phone dropped off by courier. About instructions to attack any criminal organization he chose with an unknown weapon. And about the contents of a red backpack, which led to Piet Hoffmann’s new appearance and a safe house for Zofia and his children.

  Ewert Grens stared at the grenade, which refused to move. He then went over to his sink, waited for the water to turn ice cold, and then filled up a glass. He drank it all, refilled it, drank it all again.

  “In your mailbox? And in Rasmus’s backpack?”

  “Yes.”

  “Disguised as a toy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Rasmus—he played with it?”

  “With the first one. He cried, even hit me, when I took it away from him.”

  Rage. That was what Grens felt.

  The kind that rose from deep inside, which he didn’t feel very often anymore.

  “You know I’m fond of your kids. They mean something to me.”

  “I know, Grens.”

  “So you think you got a sure thing? You come here and tell me about some threats and show me some hand grenade and tell me about Rasmus and Hugo and Luiza being locked in a fucking war-zone apartment? And you think I’ll just come running and help you?”

  “I’ve called you many things, Grens. But a sure thing has never been one of them. I’m here because I risked my life for many years for your police force. And now a member of that force thinks my family should die. A dirty cop. Whoever’s threatening me never could have done so without a cop. And I think you probably dislike that as much as I do, Grens. In fact, I think you might just dislike it enough to try to help me. Help us. Infiltrate your own colleagues. Let me be your handler this time.”

  Ewert Grens filled up another glass of water. Kept the tap running full blast so it would get even colder, colder than ice.

  Hugo. Rasmus. Luiza.

  Two little boys and a newborn girl, whom he’d gotten close to after just a short time.

  Dared to get close to.

  The only children he’d . . . well, he probably had ever spoken to. For real.

  “Are you kind of like our grandpa now?”

  “No, I’m not your grandfather. Not anybody’s, actually.”

  It had happened so fast. Suddenly, the boys were on either side of him, while he made them checkered pancakes, and they’d looked at him with such trust in their eyes.

  “Our uncle, then? Are you, Ewert? Like an uncle?”

  They put their faith in him. Thought he was the kind of adult who did the right thing. And it had made Grens feel warm someplace deep in his chest from that very first afternoon when he’d hastily filled in as a babysitter.

  “No. I’m not an uncle either. I’m not really anything to you.”

  “Because you can be, if you want.”

  What began in the Hoffmanns’ kitchen, that conversation, had developed into a friendship. Hugo still sometimes
came into town without his parents’ knowledge and went to the police station and asked to talk to the detective superintendent who spent his nights there on a sofa. And their little sister—Ewert Grens had accidentally been the first to know that Zofia was pregnant with her. Even before her father.

  Is that what I should do with myself? Later? In half a year when the police force doesn’t want me anymore?

  Pretend to be somebody’s grandfather?

  No.

  They had a nice time. It had done him good. But it was hardly the answer to his future.

  Grens drank more water. Emptied a big glass in just a few sips. The rage he felt at some criminals, some gang or mafia, threatening children—those children—wouldn’t pass; it stuck in his throat and chest, clumping up.

  “We need more cold water. And more hot coffee.”

  He’d just filled the coffeepot and started brewing when his door rang. At this hour? After midnight? First a masked visitor in his kitchen—and now someone was ringing a doorbell that never gets rung?

  The gun still lay on the table next to an unopened pack of dry biscuits. Ewert Grens grabbed it, cocked it, held it behind his back as he walked toward the front door.

  It rang again. Obstinately.

  He kept the gun behind him as he gently pushed open the door, just a crack that made it as hard to see out as it was to see in.

  “Superintendent Grens?”

  Two uniformed police officers. Fairly young. One blond, one brunette. That was all he could make out.

  “Yes?”

  “You called for backup. A burglar. Hermansson told us it was an emergency.”

  Ewert Grens de-cocked the gun and put it in his waistband, making sure it was hidden beneath his jacket as he opened the door wide.

  “Oh yes, right. Just a misunderstanding.”

  The dark-haired one was slightly larger, and he was the one who spoke.

  “A misunderstanding? According to Hermansson, your weapon was drawn. Aimed at the intruder in question.”

  “We . . . got our signals crossed.”

  The two officers looked at Grens. They too seemed to know Hermansson. And if they did, they knew she didn’t get her signals crossed.

  “We’d like to come inside. Just make sure everything’s okay.”

  Grens first instinct was to order them to go. But that wasn’t a good idea. They were just doing their jobs. According to protocol, when you receive an intruder report, you have to go inside and check the premises, make sure no one’s standing behind the person at the door with a gun in their back, forcing them to keep the police at bay. It didn’t matter if the person who had called it in was their commanding officer or not.

  “I . . . ah, I thought for a moment that it was an intruder. But it was just an old friend stopping by. He’s in the kitchen, we’re having a coffee. Do you want one too?”

  The detective superintendent stepped aside, inviting them in. One of the officers headed for the rest of the apartment, while the other followed Grens to the kitchen.

  “Here. My friend. Who I mistook for a burglar.”

  The officer stopped right about where Grens had a half hour earlier. In the doorway to the kitchen. From there the whole room was visible. The police officer saw a frumpy middle-aged man with a puffy face and a grizzled mustache, newly empty porcelain cups, a pack of biscuits, and a coffeepot just about to finish brewing another pot of coffee.

  However, the hand grenade and finger prostheses were gone.

  And Hoffmann had one of his hands beneath the table.

  “Hello. Name’s Haraldsson. I’m afraid I managed to give my friend Grens quite a scare.”

  “Haraldsson?”

  “Peter Haraldsson. Old friend.”

  The young police officer lingered for a moment. As if waiting for the man at the kitchen table to say more.

  “Did you want one? A cup? It’s fresh.”

  The detective superintendent nodded toward the coffeemaker.

  “No, thanks. I’ll just wait until my colleague is finished. If everything looks good, we’ll head out.”

  A few minutes later, his colleague arrived. Done. And they walked on either side of Grens to the front door.

  “I’m sorry, guys, made a mistake this evening. But you did a damn fine job, I want you to know that. I promise to make sure your superior officer knows that too.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The new batch of freshly brewed coffee was just as strong as the previous one.

  Piet Hoffmann swallowed, waiting for the rip in his chest that would make his thoughts clear and clean and tangible.

  “This was what I found in my mail at my office. It changed everything.”

  There had been more than just a grenade in that bag. Grens’s nocturnal visitor took out a thick bundle of papers and dropped them on the table.

  “This is what I found.”

  The detective looked at the padded envelope Hoffmann placed on top of the stack.

  To Piet Koslow Hoffmann

  “The same typewriter used for the other letters. No return address. I’m sure you’ll recognize what I found inside. Copies of logbooks and intelligence reports that are supposed to exist in a single copy, locked inside a safe. Notes from all the meetings I had with Erik Wilson—an infiltrator providing information about organized crime to his handler at the City Police, who then collected and used it.”

  Grens flipped through the stack, reading bits here and there.

  Even the contents of the white envelope. The one that should have been closed with a wax seal. Even that had been copied in its entirety. Pages that revealed the infiltrator’s code name, Paula, and his real name, Piet Koslow Hoffmann.

  He slowly lifted his gaze—from the documents on the table to the face opposite him, which had been transformed so skillfully. And now Grens understood.

  The seriousness. The fear.

  Someone had access to the only thing that protected an infiltrator—his anonymity.

  If this got into the wrong hands.

  If the hardened criminals and violent organizations that Piet Hoffmann had infiltrated got ahold of this, if they knew who he really was, that he’d tricked them, deliberately violated the mafia’s most sacred rule—never, ever, ever snitch.

  If . . .

  He was dead.

  Zofia, Hugo, Rasmus, Luiza.

  Dead.

  “I understand your situation. But I’m not sure what the hell they want you to do for them. What they think you’re going to do, but won’t do, because you’ve chosen to change your identity and hid your family in a secure location. Chose to escape.”

  “Here, Grens. Listen to this.”

  Piet Hoffmann pulled a phone out of his pocket, opened some app, and held it forward so Ewert Grens could hear.

  “. . . you’re going to initiate a small gang war // with an FN BRG-15.”

  “I recorded our conversation on my phone. They’ve transformed their voice, so it could be anyone. And the clicks here and there are where I’ve edited out unimportant information.”

  Grens leaned closer to the voice, which had clearly been distorted by an electronic soundboard.

  “You can decide which criminal organization. // You knock them out. And then // let it be known which weapon was used in the attack // make sure people know where they can get one of their own.”

  “Are you with me, Grens? They want me to start a gang war and kick off an arms race, by using the very weapon they want to sell. And they want to do it without ever showing themselves. In case it goes wrong. So they need someone neutral, who can’t be connected to them. I’m fairly certain we’re dealing with international arms dealers, new to the Swedish market. Who want to start by selling off some of their stockpile of a machine gun that wasn’t supposed to exist and yet does. A
nd then, once they’ve done that, take over the rest of the arms trade.”

  “‘And yet does’ . . . What do you mean by that?”

  “I’ve got one in the trunk of my car. Parked about a block away.”

  Ewert Grens randomly pulled a couple of copies out of the large stack sitting in the middle of his kitchen table.

  “International arms dealers who know who you are, what you’ve done, and what you’re capable of? Who have penetrated my police station?”

  “As deep as it goes.”

  Ewert Grens stood up. No longer thirsty for water or coffee. Just restless. Like always, when he needed to think.

  A dirty cop. Someone who got into the safe in the investigative unit and stole the folder and the envelope that described Piet Hoffmann’s work as an infiltrator. Just like a dirty cop broke into the archive in the basement and stole Zana Lilaj’s life.

  Two corrupt colleagues at the same time?

  Or the same?

  He tried the hall. Long and straight. Paced back and forth several times. It didn’t help. He wandered in and out of his bedroom, in and out of his office, in and out of the library. That didn’t help either. But on the balcony. Out there he could relax. With his view over the rooftops of Stockholm. Out there he could get ahold for just a moment of that buzzing, spinning.

  Dejan Pejović. Branko Stojanović.

  Within hours of each other, just a few kilometers apart, they ended up dead on their backs in the dawn light. Executed. Identical wounds and identical ammunition. Both associated with notorious arms dealers.

  There had to be a connection.

  But were they connected to this?

  To Piet Hoffmann?

  Threats against the Hoffmann family, which in turn were supposed to create an opening for an international arms dealer?

  It might be a coincidence. That happens.

  That’s what Erik Wilson, Grens’s boss and Hoffmann’s former handler, had said over a piece of apple cake.

  But I’m a police officer, so I don’t really believe in coincidences—do you, Ewert?

  Ewert Grens breathed in the lukewarm air, leaned far out over the balcony’s low railing, and his chest tightened when he realized how easy it would be to fall. Against the asphalt. Forever.