Three Minutes

by Anders Roslund

  Grens followed Hoffmann’s unexpectedly deft movements. To height, weight, build, and a distinctive tattoo, you could now add bone damage to his left hand on identically mutilated fingers.

  Hoffmann had not been granted his part of the deal after he’d delivered. So he had to take the next step—those who’d condemned him to death had to believe they’d managed to kill him. And therefore remove his name from the list. And because they didn’t know his identity they had only watched him through blurry satellite images.

  “You’re right, Hoffmann. And when he’s done with that fancy tattoo you might just succeed. But you’ve missed an important detail.”

  For the first time since they left the café and the press conference on a wavy television transmission, Hoffmann stopped. “Excuse me?”

  “The fingerprint agreement. It didn’t exist when you left Sweden. Now it does. The US’s newly won right to have free access to the Swedish fingerprint database.”

  And when he stopped, he also encountered Grens’s gaze. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “That just like the corpse, you have a few fingers left. So this won’t work, because US law enforcement, through this agreement, can now simply look up fingerprints in our Swedish registers. My bosses clap their hands and talk about how important this tool is in the fight against crime. However, I’m quite sure that the investigators in the United States can get what they want without any Swede putting a stop to it, but it’s not quite so fucking easy when we want something out of them.”

  Hoffmann painted on a little more glue and once again ran his fingertips over the area that needed to merge, to make sure it wouldn’t be noticed. “It will work, Superintendent.”

  “Maybe you’re right and the man lying here is not accessible in their registers. Just like you. Up to that point it works. But you’re a convict, Hoffmann. And that’s why you’re in our Swedish criminal records. You’ll spread your fingerprints and sooner or later they’ll get ahold of them. And because they think you’re Danish or Swedish or Norwegian or Icelandic, you, Hoffmann, will be identified as quickly as you cut off those fingers.”

  “I’m not spreading any fingerprints. And I’m not getting caught. So there won’t be anything to compare it to. And, Grens, as soon as I’m found dead, no one will be looking for me.”

  Grens suddenly realized that Cesar had been standing beside them, working on the tattoo the whole time, and had heard everything. Grens nodded meaningfully toward the body and the tattoo artist, but Hoffmann didn’t lower his voice.

  “He doesn’t understand Swedish. And not much English.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Completely sure. But it doesn’t matter—Cesar’s not stupid, he knows exactly what I’m up to. I trust him. Sometimes, Grens, you have to choose to trust someone, even though you can really only trust yourself. Damned if I don’t almost trust you!”

  Hoffmann smiled weakly, and Grens smiled weakly back. It felt good.

  “So, Grens. Now we’ve come to why you’re here.”

  Still as loud. Grens didn’t feel entirely comfortable with that.

  “You’re the one who has to deliver me to the American Embassy.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, now that I’m dead.”

  “Get them to let me in? Make them trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  The bright light blinded Grens as he looked straight into it and moved closer to the body.

  “I don’t desecrate corpses.”

  “Grens . . . you tried to kill me once.”

  “Because I’m a cop. And I’m human—I made a mistake.”

  “And when you decided you had the right to do so, Grens, to kill me, then your moral right to judge how I survive ended. None of you have any fucking ethical mandate on that score anymore.”

  Grens pulled absently on both legs of the corpse. He was here to assist Hoffmann in his struggle to survive. And still furious at those who’d spat in the face of their agreement. He shrugged.

  “You think it’s possible?”

  “Superintendent—I know it’s possible.”

  The cell phone lay in one of the pockets of Grens’s blazer. He took it out, turned it on, and moved a couple of steps backward. Until the whole body fit in the screen of the phone’s camera.

  “Very well, Hoffmann. Let’s do this.”

  THE BROKEN NEON sign on the graffiti-covered stone wall was even more difficult to make out in the darkness. SUPER DELI. Ewert Grens rolled down the passenger-side window and glanced into the store—the same clerk still sat on her chair surrounded by half-empty shelves, and he wondered how it was possible to realistically hide the true nature of the business behind that door.

  Hoffmann gave Cesar a warm hug at the front door, thanked him for his help, and offered him the envelope with the money they’d agreed on.

  “No need.” Cesar kindly pushed back Hoffmann’s hand. “This time I should be paying you.”

  “Take it. Without you none of what I’m planning would be possible.”

  “You don’t understand, Peter. Today I . . . hell, sometimes you just cross a limit. You live. Experience something. Inking up that corpse, I don’t know, it’s rare I feel this damn intoxicated when I’m stone-cold sober.”

  Hoffmann stubbornly held out the envelope. Until Cesar snatched it from his hand, folded it twice, and pushed it into the breast pocket of Hoffmann’s vest.

  “It was . . . well, interesting to work with skin that resembled the wax paper I put on your head. Out of pure fucking habit, I tried to wipe away the mess of blood that usually smears the paint—and it wasn’t there, didn’t bleed—the skin cracked and slid apart. I learned that Super Glue cleans and holds together so well. I promise, they won’t see a thing.”

  A piece of the envelope stuck up, and Cesar pushed it down again, maybe a little harder, to be sure it would remain in Hoffmann’s pocket. “And you, Peter, will need that cash for other things. Like getting out of here.”

  Hoffmann leaned closer. “You will take this envelope. Because you’re going to help me with one more thing—a small bomb.”

  “A bomb?”

  “Something to blow a car into the air.”

  They had both lowered their voices, to make sure Grens wouldn’t hear.

  “Like last time? Or do you have any special requests?”

  “Self-timed explosive device with a remote switch. And also a vibration sensor, Cesar—that’s important.”

  A few seconds of silence, a scrutinizing gaze at the older man still sitting in the car, then he nodded slowly with his dark eyes on Hoffmann. “Okay, my friend. In twelve hours. In the same place I always deliver your orders.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cesar lifted his black tool bag, ready to go. “Who, Peter?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Someone who turns angels to rag dolls.”

  Grens rolled up the window while the two hardened criminals discussed something on the pavement and ended by hugging again. The Swedish police officer smiled—apparently that was the same everywhere, the more hardened the criminal the more they hugged. Hoffmann drove slowly through a somewhat run-down neighborhood, and Grens’s thoughts lingered on wax paper and tattoos and corpses. No matter how many years he worked, he still ran across new criminal methods. And no matter how fast they developed their policing, criminals always seemed to be a step ahead.

  Darkened blocks replaced each other as the Chapinero neighborhood became the district of Fontibón, slightly nicer houses with broad fences in front of terraced entrances and staircases. The Internet café didn’t look like much standing next to—and completely overshadowed by—a large bingo hall, the entire property glittered Bingo Royale and the announcer’s voice over a speaker charged through wide-open windows.

  “Superintendent?”

  Grens was halfway across the sidewalk when Hoffmann called to him from the driver’s seat.

&nb
sp; “One more thing.”

  Grens turned back and realized he was barely limping, his leg hadn’t given him much pain for several days, and he almost missed it. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe the adrenaline, being responsible for a man who was literally fighting and running for his life.

  “Your trip to Washington.”

  Washington. He’d never even visited the United States before this trip. And now he would head there for a second time in less than a week. Their options had finally boiled to one—only Sue Masterson had enough influence to vouch for him when he delivered the body of El Sueco. In order to get the US Embassy to let him in, believe in him—and in the corpse.

  “How does it feel, Grens—you got this?”

  Grens leaned in through the side window, and when he grabbed the door, he stood quite firmly. “Like I’d gladly meet Masterson again. Over a coffee. But I’m not so sure she wants to see me.”

  “Once you’re done with this, Grens, and she’s agreed to vouch for you, I want you to give her this.” Hoffmann opened the glove compartment and pulled out an envelope that seemed like what he’d just tried to force on Cesar. And yet not at all. This one was sealed. With a red wax seal.

  Red, round, and shiny with no stamp in the middle. It looked like the sealed envelopes the Swedish police used for their criminal informants and had likely used with Hoffmann, envelopes that were stored with a logbook and contained an informant’s real name, sealed by the handler on the first day of a mission.

  “What’s this?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. But this has nothing to do with code names or real names. What you’re holding, which no messenger can open undetected, is my absolute last tip. My parting gift to Masterson.”

  “Which holds what?”

  “The time and location where they can pick up the pieces of one of the names on their list.”

  “I asked you for just this. You may remember that? For a tip. About a drug delivery. When we were waiting for that fucking press conference. I told you, you could go home. With your family. To Sweden. A short sentence in protective custody along with your favorite policemen. But maybe I was unclear? Or maybe you misunderstood one small detail—that in order to influence your situation in Sweden the tip has to be to the Swedish police. Not to American law enforcement.”

  “I remember. And I’m working on it. You’ll get your tip, Grens. But this is something else entirely—it’s personal—and it’s meant for Masterson.”

  Grens took the envelope, fiddled a bit with the seal, and hid it in his inside jacket pocket. “If you say so.”

  “I do say so. Tomorrow then. See you outside the Hospital Universitario San Ignacio. And we’ll unload some of the morgue’s educational materials.”

  The car disappeared beyond the bingo hall’s flashing neon sign, and Ewert Grens opened the door to an Internet café for the first time in his life. He paid for an hour at a computer and for a plastic cup of light liquid the café owner insisted on labeling coffee. And then he entered one of the few telephone numbers he knew by heart.

  He was about to break his promise to leave no trace that could lead back to Erik Wilson and from there to Sue Masterson. But now, using his authority as a policeman was the only chance he had left to fulfill a greater promise—ensuring that Piet Hoffmann came home alive.

  “Hello?”

  Drowsy. Tired. Hoarse.

  “Sven, it’s me.”

  Someone who was lying down. Fumbling with the phone.

  “Ewert?”

  Someone who cleared his throat and rolled over on his side and whispered so as not to wake up the person lying next to him.

  “You don’t know how happy I am to hear your voice!”

  Ewert Grens smiled, swallowed. And hoped that it wouldn’t be audible over the phone. Sven Sundkvist, his closest colleague and the person in his life who’d put up with him the longest, might think he was touched. “And I was under the impression that you were pretty tired of it.”

  “Don’t you understand, Ewert . . . you don’t, do you, well—I’ve been worried. For real. You just disappeared. Wandered out of the station you’ve more or less lived in as long as I’ve known you—without a word—carrying a brown suitcase with an Eiffel Tower sticker in one corner.”

  Sven rolled out of bed now, bare feet against the cold floor, as he crept out of the bedroom he shared with his wife and down the wooden stairs to the darkness of their terraced home’s first floor.

  “It’s the middle of the night, Ewert. You know that, right?”

  “Night?”

  Sundkvist knew that voice so well. Ewert sounded surprised, for real. And was perhaps just as surprised as his voice indicated. That’s usually how it was. His boss wanted to talk—and as soon as it occurred to him to call, he did. Without considering the circumstances of the person he was calling. As you do when your own life lacks context, routine, family.

  But this time he wasn’t calling from the threadbare corduroy sofa in in the police station where he usually slept. The phone number. The sound quality. The background noise. He was somewhere else.

  “So you hadn’t thought of that? Okay, Ewert. A time difference. I guess I at least know you’re a good distance from here. West? East? Will it soon be night or has night passed?”

  “Sorry, Sven, but that’s still none of your business.” Grens brought the phone closer to his mouth, as usual when he was about to be serious. “Where are you?”

  “In the kitchen. It’s cold. We lower the heat at night.”

  “Then I want you to get dressed. Not because you’re cold. But because I need you to drive into town. To the police station.”

  “Ewert?”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Please, Ewert, listen now—”

  “How long?”

  “Twenty-five minutes. There’s no traffic now. Since it is the middle of the night.”

  “Good. When you get there, forward an email to the US Embassy in Bogotá—but do it from my email address. From the Police Authority in Stockholm. To a Jonathan Woods. Ask for a meeting. And attach a photo.”

  “A photograph?”

  “Of a body.”

  “Ewert?”

  “A corpse.”

  Sundkvist was no longer tiptoeing over the cold floor—he was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of water. This wasn’t good. He knew that, of course. When his stomach started burning like this, from his chest to his neck, tightening with each breath, he’d learned that meant this was something he’d rather not be a part of.

  He hadn’t seen his boss and friend for several days, and had been worried, thought more about Ewert than he dared admit to himself. Then suddenly Ewert got in contact with him. In the middle of the night. From a location Sven now realized was probably Bogotá, Colombia. And he did so with a picture of a dead man.

  A reality that didn’t quite hang together. Despite the fact that his thoughts turned in and out and back again, that damn corpse made no more sense now than when he started. Ewert Grens—in South America? It didn’t fit. A man who spent his days between the police station in Kungsholmen and the apartment on Svea Road, a life that took place within a few square kilometers. If somebody had asked Sven just a few hours ago to guess the extent of Ewert’s knowledge of the continent of South America, he would have wagered that his boss probably didn’t even know where Colombia was located.

  “Ewert—who is the dead person?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Who took the picture?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Sundkvist was a skilled interrogator. The City Police’s best. But this time he wouldn’t be getting any answers, because Grens was acting like all the criminals they’d interrogated or would interrogate—giving an answer that meant no comment, or an angry stare at the floor, or a simple fuck-you to the interrogator. Grens basically did all three at once.
<
br />   “Okay, Ewert—then let’s go back in time a bit, shall we? To the moment you ran past me in the hallway with your Eiffel Tower suitcase in hand. On the same day the news happened to be dominated by the kidnapping of an American politician and a new war on terror that focused on the global center of cocaine production. I didn’t consider it at the time, of course. But now you want me to send a picture of a corpse to the US Embassy in . . . that very nation’s capital city?”

  “Finally.”

  “Ewert—what the hell is this about? Really?”

  A dead man. And a detective’s first instinct should be to investigate, seek answers. Ewert was doing the opposite. He was shutting down. Hiding something. Even from his closest associate. He’d done that only once before in the time Sven had served at his side—when two young women were transported to Sweden against their will and locked up in order to be bought by Swedish men. Back then Grens had altered evidence, influenced the investigation, and risked his career to protect a man he cared for, felt responsible for. But in Colombia, on the other side of the Atlantic? In an official drug war? In that case—for whose sake? His own?

  No. Not Ewert, he didn’t work like that. Sundkvist was breathing very slowly. It simply didn’t make sense.

  “Sven?” An impatient, strained voice. “Sven, stop being so damn difficult! I don’t have much time. I’m sending you a picture. When you get to the homicide unit, log on to the network from my office, using my login. And then send the email I’m asking you to send. I keep my ID card with my gun in the gun cabinet. And the key to the cabinet is under my tape deck.”

  The tape deck. Next to the photo of Siw and the cassette tapes, which were Ewert’s everything. Where else would it be if not among the most important things in the room?

  “Ewert? Answer me honestly now. No fucking no comment or I can’t tell you that.”

  “Sven . . .”

  “Ewert—are you in danger?”

  Grens hesitated. Too long. “No.”

  “Colombia? The American Embassy? A corpse? Can you guarantee, Ewert, that what you’re asking me to do has nothing to do with you being in danger?”

  “Yes, Sven. I can guarantee that. I am not in danger.”