Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

He should laugh, really, because finally they were gone.

  Ewert had gone through his adult life with a crutch under each arm. Anni. Siw Malmkvist. And now, finally, he was going to walk alone. Which was presumably why he was crawling around on the floor.

  Sven sat down on the tired sofa and watched him lift up the last box and put it on top of the two others in a corner of the room, then laboriously and carefully tape it up. Ewert Grens was sweating and determined. He pushed the boxes until they were exactly where he wanted them and Sven wanted to ask how he felt, but didn't, it would be wrong, mostly out of consideration to himself, because the very fact that Ewert was doing what he was doing was answer enough in itself. He was moving on, though not yet aware of it himself.

  "What have you done?"

  She hadn't knocked.

  She had walked straight into the room and stopped abruptly in the absence of music, in front of the gaping hole on the shelf behind the desk. "Ewert? What have you done?"

  Mariana Hermansson looked at Sven who first nodded at the gap on the shelf and then at the pile of three cardboard boxes. Never before had she been to his room without hearing music, the now removed Siw Malmkvist. She didn't recognize it without her voice.

  "Ewert…"

  "You want something?"

  "I want to know what you've done."

  "She no longer exists."

  Hermansson went over to the empty shelf, ran a finger along the dusty lines left by the cassettes, the cassette player, speakers, and a black and white photo of the singer that had stood there all these years.

  She wiped off a dust ball, hid it in her hand.

  "She doesn't exist?"

  "No."

  "Who?

  "Her."

  "Who? Anni? Or Siw Malmkvist?"

  Ewert finally turned around and looked at her.

  "Did you want something, Hermansson?"

  He was still sitting on the floor, leaning against the boxes and wall. He had been grieving for nearly a year and a half now, lurching between a breakdown and madness. It had been an awful time, and she had told him to go to hell more than once and just as many times apologized afterward. On a couple of occasions she had almost given up, resigned and walked away from this difficult man's bitterness that seemed to have no end. She had gradually come to believe that one day he would capitulate, go to pieces completely, lie down and never get up again. But his face now, in the midst of all the suffering, had something purposeful about it, a determination that had not been there before.

  Some cardboard boxes, a gaping hole on a bookshelf, things like that could spark unexpected relief.

  "Yes, I did want something. We've just had a call-out. Västmannagatan 79."

  He was listening, she knew that, he was listening to her in that intense way that she had nearly forgotten.

  "An execution."

  Piet Hoffmann looked out of one of the beautiful apartment's big windows. It was a different flat in a different part of the center of Stockholm, but they were similar, three carefully renovated rooms, high ceilings and light-colored walls. Only there was no prospective buyer lying on the wooden floor here, with a gaping hole in one temple and two in the other.

  Down on the wide pavement, groups of well-dressed people were making their way, full of anticipation, into a matinee performance at the large theater; breathless and slightly hammy actors going in and out of doors onto the stage, proclaiming their lines.

  Sometimes he longed for that kind of life, just everyday, normal people doing normal things together.

  He left the dressed-up, excited people and the window with a view of both Vasagatan and Kungsbron, and crossed the largest room in the flat, his room, his office with its antique desk and two locked gun cabinets and an open fire that was very effective. He heard the last mule spewing up in the kitchen-she had been at it for a long time now. She wasn't used to it: it took a couple of trips before you were. Jerzy and Mariusz were standing by the sink with yellow rubber gloves on, picking out the bits of brown rubber that the young woman threw up, along with the milk and something else, in the two buckets on the floor in front of her. She was the fifteenth and final mule. They had emptied the first one in Västmannagatan, and had been forced to empty the rest here. Piet Hoffmann didn't like it. This flat was his protection, his cover, he didn't want it to be linked with either drugs or Poles. But they didn't have time. Everything had gone wrong. A person had been shot through the head. He studied Mariusz; the man with the shaved head and expensive suit had killed someone only a couple of hours ago, but showed nothing. Maybe he couldn't, maybe he was being professional. Hoffmann wasn't frightened of him, and he wasn't frightened of Jerzy, but he respected the fact that they had no limits; if he had made them nervous, suspicious of his loyalty, the shot that had been fired could just as easily have been aimed at him.

  Anger chased frustration chased dread and he struggled to stand still with all the turmoil inside him.

  He had been there and he hadn't been able to prevent it.

  To prevent it would have meant death for him.

  So another person had died instead.

  The young woman in front of him was done. He didn't know her, they had never met. He knew that she was called Irina and she came from Gdansk, that she was twenty-two and a student and was prepared to take a risk that was far greater than she imagined and that was enough. She was a perfect mule. Just the sort they were looking for. Of course there were others, junkies from the suburbs of larger cities who flocked in their thousands, willing to use their bodies as containers for less than she was paid, but they had learned not to use drug addicts as they were unreliable and often seemed to throw up by themselves long before they reached their destination.

  Inside, the anger and frustration and dread, more emotions, more thoughts.

  There hadn't been any operation. But there had been a delivery over which he had no control.

  There hadn't been any results. The Poles should have been back in Warsaw by now, his tool for mapping and identifying another partner.

  There hadn't been any deal. They had shipped in fifteen mules unnecessarily, ten experienced ones who they supplied with two hundred capsules each and five new ones who took one hundred and fifty capsules each, in total more than twenty-seven kilos of freshly produced amphetamine which, once it had been cut for sale, would come to eighty-one kilos with a street value of one hundred and fifty kronor per gram.

  But without any backup, there was no operation, no result, not even a deal.

  It was an unchecked delivery that had ended in murder.

  Piet Hoffmann gave the young, wan woman called Irina a brief nod. The money had been in his trouser pocket since the morning, counted and rolled up in bundles. He pulled out the last bundle and flicked through the banknotes so she could see it was all there. She was one of the new ones and didn't yet have the capacity that the organization expected. She had only delivered fifteen hundred grams on her first trip, which would be three times as much when cut to its sellable form, worth a total of 675,000 kronor.

  "Your four percent. Twenty-seven thousand kronor. But I've rounded it up to three thousand euros. And if you dare to swallow more next time, you'll earn more. Your stomach stretches a little each time."

  She was pretty. Even when her face was pale and her hairline sweaty. Even when she had been on her knees in a three-room flat in Sweden, puking up her guts for a couple of hours.

  "And my tickets."

  Piet Hoffmann nodded to Jerzy, who took out two tickets from the inner pocket of his dark jacket. One for the train from Stockholm to Ystad and one for the ferry from Ystad to winoujcie. He held them out to her, and she was just about to take them when he pulled back his hand and smiled. He waited a bit then held them out again, and just when she was about to take them, he pulled back his hand, again.

  "For fuck's sake, she's earned them!"

  Hoffmann snatched the tickets from him and gave them to her. "We'll be in touch. When we need your help again.
"

  The anger, the frustration, the dread.

  They were finally alone in the flat that functioned as an office for one of Stockholm's security firms.

  "This was my operation."

  Piet Hoffmann took a step closer to the man who had shot and killed a person that morning.

  "I am the one who speaks the language and I am the one who gives the orders in this country."

  It was more than anger. It was rage. He had contained it since the shooting. First they had to take care of the mules, empty them, secure the delivery. Now he could release it.

  "If anyone is going to shoot, it's on my order and only my order."

  He wasn't sure where it was coming from, why it was so intense. Whether it was disappointment that a business partner had not materialized. Whether it was frustration because a person who probably had the same brief as he did had been killed without reason.

  "And the gun, where the fuck is it?"

  Mariusz pointed at his chest, to the inner pocket of his jacket.

  "You murdered someone. You can get life for that. And you're so fucking stupid that you've still got the gun in your pocket?"

  Rage and something else tearing at him. You should have been reporting back to Poland. He blocked out the feeling that might equally be fear, took a step toward the man who was smiling, pointing at his inner pocket, and stopped when they were face to face. Play your role. That was all that mattered, power and respect, taking and never letting go. Play your role or die.

  "He was a policeman."

  "And how the fuck d'you know that?"

  "He said so."

  "And since when did you speak Swedish?"

  Piet Hoffmann took measured breaths. He realized that he was irritated and tired as he walked over to the round kitchen table and the metal bowl that contained 2,749 regurgitated and cleaned capsules: a good twenty-seven kilos of pure amphetamine.

  "He said police. I heard it. You heard it."

  Hoffmann didn't turn around when he replied.

  "You were at the same meeting as me in Warsaw. You know the rules. Until we're done here, it's me, and only me, who decides."

  He had been uncomfortable during the short journey from Kronoberg to Vasastan. Or rather, he'd been sitting on something. When Hermansson swung into Västmannagatan and pulled up outside number 79, he lifted his heavy body a touch while he felt around on the seat with his hand. Two cassettes. Siw mixes. He held the hard plastic cases in his hand and looked at the music that should have been packed away, and then at the passenger seat and glove compartment. There were two more cassettes in there. He bent down and pushed them as far under the seat as possible. He was as scared of being near them as he was of forgetting to take them with him, the last four remnants of another life that would remain packed away in a cardboard box sealed with tape.

  Ewen Grens preferred sitting here in the back.

  He no longer had any music to play and he had no desire to listen to or answer the frequent calls on the radio. And anyway, Hermansson drove considerably better than both Sven and he did in the busy city traffic.

  There wasn't much room on the street; three police cars and forensics' dark-blue Volkswagen bus double-parked alongside a tight row of residents' cars. Mariana Hermansson slowed down, drove up onto the pavement and stopped in front of the main door, which was guarded by two uniformed policemen. They were both young and pale and the one closest rushed over to the unknown men and a woman in a red car. Hermansson knew what he wanted and at precisely the same moment that he tapped on the window, she rolled it down and held up her police ID.

  "We're investigators. All three of us."

  She smiled at him. Not only did he look young, he was probably considerably younger than she was. She guessed he was in his first weeks of service, as there weren't many who didn't recognize Ewen Grens.

  "Was it you who took the call?"

  "Yes."

  "Who raised the alarm?"

  "Anonymous, according to the CCC."

  "You mentioned an execution?"

  "We said it looked like an execution. You'll understand when you get there."

  Up on the fourth floor, the door farthest away from the elevator was open. Another uniformed colleague was standing watch. He was older, had been in the force longer; he recognized Sundkvist and gave him a nod. Two steps later Hermansson had her ID ready and was just about to show it, and she wondered if she would ever stay anywhere long enough to be recognized by more than her immediate colleagues-she didn't think so, she wasn't the sort who stayed.

  They put on their white coats and transparent shoe covers and went in. Ewert had insisted on waiting for the elevator that was slow down and slow up, so he'd be there soon.

  A long hallway, a bedroom with nothing in it but a narrow bed, a kitchen with nice cupboards painted in a shade of green, and a study with an abandoned desk and empty shelves.

  And one more room.

  They looked at each other, and went in.

  The sitting room really only had one piece of furniture. A large, rectangular oak dining table with six matching chairs. Four of them were by the table, the fifth had been pushed back at an angle, as if the person sitting there had gotten up suddenly. The sixth was lying on the floor. The heavy chair had for some reason fallen and they went over to establish why.

  The dark patch on the carpet was the first thing they saw.

  A large, brownish stain with uneven edges. They guessed about forty, maybe fifty centimeters in diameter.

  Then they saw the head.

  It was in the middle of the stain, on top of it, as if it were floating. The man looked relatively young-it was hard to tell as his face was mangled, but his body was strong, and his clothes were not the sort that older men often wear: black boots, black jeans, a white T-shirt, lots of silver around his neck, wrists, and fingers.

  Sven Sundkvist tried to concentrate on the gun in his right hand.

  If he only looked at it for long enough, if he blanked everything else out, he might avoid the ugliness of death that he would never understand.

  It was shiny and black, nine-millimeter caliber and a make that he didn't often see at crime scenes: Radom, a Polish weapon. He bent down closer to it, thereby distancing himself from the life that had spilled out onto the expensive carpet and left a large dark stain. It seemed that the ejector was stuck in the discharge position and he could clearly see the bullet casing in the chamber. He studied the barrel, the butt, the grip safety, looking for something to fix his eyes on, anything but death.

  Nils Krantz was standing farther away, flanked by two younger colleagues. Three forensic technicians who together would scour every nook and cranny in the room. One of them had a video camera in his hand and was filming something on the white wallpaper. Sven took a step away from the head, and looked at what the camera was focused on: a small discolored parch of something, something harmless and sufficiently far away from the lifeless eyes.

  "The victim has one entrance wound from one shot to the head."

  Nils Krantz had sneaked up behind his filming colleague and was now close to Sven Sundkvist's ear.

  "But two exit wounds."

  Sven turned away from the wallpaper and discoloring and looked askance at the older forensic scientist.

  "The entrance wound is larger than both exit wounds because of the contact gas pressure."

  Sven heard what Krantz was saying, but he didn't understand and chose not to ask. He didn't need to know and instead followed the finger that was pointing at the discoloring on the wallpaper.

  "By the way, what we're just filming and what you're looking at right now comes from the victim, brain tissue."

  Sven Sundkvist took a deep breath. He had wanted to avoid death and had therefore chosen to focus on the discoloring on the wallpaper, but he had only found more death, as real as it ever could be. He lowered his eyes and heard Ewert come in to the room.

  "Sven?"

  "Yes?"

  "Perhaps you shoul
d go down and talk to our colleagues who took the call? And maybe some neighbors? The people who aren't here."

  Sven looked at his boss with gratitude, hurried away from the dark stains on the carpet and discoloring on the wallpaper, while Ewert Grens hunkered down to get closer to the dead body.

  The balance of power had been redistributed and restored. But it would happen again. And he had to win every time.

  Carry on acting. Or die.

  He stood between Mariusz and Jerzy at Hoffmann Security's round kitchen table, emptying 2,750 capsules of amphetamine The latest delivery from the factory in Siedlce. Their white medical-gloved fingers first picked off the brown rubber that was there to protect the mule's stomach in case of any leaks, then cut open the capsule with a knife and poured the powder into large glass bowls where it was mixed with grape sugar. One part amphetamine from eastern Poland to two parts grape sugar from the supermarket on the corner. Twenty-seven kilos of pure drugs transformed into eighty-one kilos that could be sold on the street.

  Piet Hoffmann put a metal tin on some kitchen scales and filled it with exactly one thousand grams of cut amphetamine. A piece of tin foil was placed carefully over the powder and then something that resembled a sugar lump was put on the foil. He held a match to the methaldehyde pellet and when the white square started to burn, he closed the lid of the tin. The flames would then die when the oxygen ran out and one kilo of amphetamine would be vacuum-packed.

  He repeated this operation, one tin at a time, eighty-one times. "Benzine?"

  Jerzy opened the bottle of petroleum ether, splashed some of the colorless fluid on the tin lids and sides and then rubbed the metal surfaces with cotton wool. He lit another match and a bluish flame flared that he then smothered with a rag after ten seconds.

  All the fingerprints had now been removed.

  The bloodstains were smallest on the hall carpet, slightly bigger on the wall at the other end of the spacious sitting room, even bigger by the table, and largest by the overturned chair. They also got darker and deeper the closer to the body they were, and the most visible was the large patch on the carpet in which the lifeless head was floating.