Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  They were there now.

  Paula had courage, authority, and criminal credibility, and had reached the top of the organization-he had communicated directly with the deputy CEO and the Roof in Warsaw, behind the facade of what was supposed to be a Polish security firm.

  "I heard him cock the gun but wasn't quick enough."

  Erik Wilson looked at his infiltrator and friend, at the face that switched between Piet and Paula.

  "I tried to calm them down, but could only go so far… Erik, I had no choice, you see that, don't you? I have a role to play and I have to do it bloody well, otherwise… otherwise I'm a dead man too."

  It was always unexpected; his face had become completely Paula now.

  "It was him who didn't play his role well enough. Something wasn't right. You have to be a criminal to play a criminal."

  Erik Wilson didn't need convincing, he knew the score, that Paula risked death every day as a consequence, that people like him, squealers, were hated by their own. But still, without really knowing why, he wanted to test Piet's innocence before doing everything he could to ensure that he got criminal immunity.

  "The shot…"

  "What about it?"

  "What angle?"

  "I know what you're after, Erik. I'm covered."

  "What angle?"

  Piet Hoffmann knew that Wilson had to ask his questions, that was just the way it was.

  "Right temple. Left angle. Held to the head."

  "Where were you?"

  "Directly opposite the dead man."

  Erik Wilson cast his mind back to the flat he had recently visited, to the parch on the floor and the flags on the wall, to a cone-shaped corridor where there was no blood or brain tissue.

  "Your clothes?"

  "Nothing."

  So far, the right answers.

  There was no blood in the corner opposite the dead man.

  The person who had fired the shot would have been sprayed with blood. "Do you still have them? The clothes?"

  "No. I burned them. To be on the safe side."

  Hoffmann knew what Erik was looking for. Proof.

  "But I rook the killer's clothes. I offered to burn them and I saved the shirt. In case it was needed."

  Always on your own. Trust no one but yourself:

  That was how Piet Hoffmann lived, that was how he survived. "I guessed as much."

  "And the gun. I've got that too."

  Wilson smiled.

  "And the alarm?"

  "That was me."

  Correct answer again.

  Wilson had twelve passed through the County Communication Center thirty-seven when he left Kronoberg and had checked fifty the recording.

  "I listened to it. You were in a state. You had reason to be. But we'll sort this out. I'll start working on it as soon as we've said goodbye, in a while."

  Ewert Grens was tired of waiting. It was twenty minutes since their last conversation. How long did it take to verify a dead man's dental impressions and fingerprints? Jacob Andersen from Copenhagen had talked about an informer. Grens sighed. The national police authority's future vision: private individuals as covert human intelligence, much cheaper than detectives, and the police could get rid of an informer if necessary, burn them without any responsibility or militant unions. A future that was not his-he would have retired by then-when police work would be interchangeable with criminals who ratted on their own.

  Twenty-four minutes. He phoned up himself.

  "Andersen."

  "You're taking your bloody time."

  "Ah, it's you, Ewert Grens."

  "Well?"

  "It's him."

  "You sure?"

  "The fingerprints were enough."

  "Who?"

  "We called him Carsten. One of my best infiltrators."

  "Not the damn code name."

  "You know how it works, as his handler, I can't-"

  "I'm leading a murder investigation. I'm not interested in your hush-hush secrecy. I want a name, a personal identity number, an address."

  "You won't get it."

  "Civil status. Shoe size. Sexual orientation. Underpants size. I want to know what he was doing at the murder scene. Who he was working for. Everything."

  "You won't get it. He was one of several infiltrators involved in this operation. So you can't get any information whatsoever."

  Ewert Grens slammed the receiver down on the desk before shouting into it: "So… let's see… first of all, the Danish police are operating on Swedish territory without informing the Swedish police! And when the shit hits the fan and the operation ends in a murder, the Danish police still don't give the Swedish police any information, even though they are trying to solve the murder. Andersen, how does that sound?"

  The telephone receiver slammed down onto the desk again, harder this time. He wasn't shouting anymore, it was more like a hiss.

  "I know that you've got a job to do, Andersen, and that's why you're behaving the way you are. But I have too. And if I haven't solved this in… say twenty-four hours, then we're going to have a meeting, no matter what you think, and you and I are going to exchange information until there is nothing left to tell."

  Piet Hoffmann felt lighter.

  He had answered the deputy CEO's questions about the incident at Västmannagatan correctly and so avoided a trip to the edge of town and two bullets in the head. And he had just answered Erik's questions correctly, the only person who could confirm his true mission and who was now working to avert a trial and sentence.

  The meeting with the Roof in Warsaw, their financial guarantee for the work involved in taking over the closed market in Sweden, this was what they had been waiting for.

  "Four thousand captive, big-time consumers. Prices three times higher than outside the walls. Eight, maybe nine million kronor per day. If everyone pays, that is."

  Hoffmann pulled a piece of plastic off the kitchen table.

  "But that's not the plan."

  Erik Wilson listened and leaned back. This moment made it all worth it.

  Three hellish years constructing a person and role that was dangerous enough to penetrate an organization that they otherwise couldn't get near. Paula's information was worth the work of forty detectives-he knew more about this mob than the Swedish police.

  "The plan is to control the outside as well."

  This moment was what motivated him to put up with the exposure, the constant threat.

  "There are people who can pay for their drugs from their cell, who have plenty of money."

  The moment when an organization was about to expand, take power, become something else.

  "And there are others who can't pay, but we keep selling to them and they keep consuming and when they've served their sentence, they're released with a couple of T-shirts, three hundred kronor and a ticket home. Wojtek's boys. That's how we'll recruit new criminals on the outside. When they've done their time they'll be given the choice between working to pay off their debt or two bullets."

  The moment when the Swedish police could make their move, squash the criminal expansion, the moment that would never come again.

  "Do you understand, Erik? This country has fifty-six prisons. And more are being built. Wojtek will control every single one. But also an army of indebted serious criminals on the outside."

  The Eastern European mafia's three areas of operation.

  Arms. Prostitution. Drugs.

  Wilson sat at what would soon once more be a plastic-covered kitchen table with a view out to the communal gardens. Criminal organizations were in control and the police could only stand by and watch. Now Wojtek was about to make their final move. First the prisons, then the streets. But this time there was a massive difference. This time the police had their own man at the top. The police knew where, how, and exactly when it would be possible to sweep in and launch a counterattack.

  Erik Wilson watched Paula open the gate, close it and disappear into the house on the other side of the garden.
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  It was time to call another meeting.

  At the government offices.

  They had to have guarantees that he wouldn't be held responsible for the murder in Vasrmannagatan 79, so they could continue their infiltration work, even from inside prison.

  There were still two cardboard boxes in one corner of the room. Soon he would push them down the corridor, down to Einarsson and the protection of a classified stamp and safe storage in the property store.

  She had been all on her own.

  He hadn't really understood that at the time, it had been all about him, about his own fear and how lonely he had been.

  He hadn't even gone. When she was being buried, he had lain, clean-shaven, in a black suit, on the corduroy sofa in his office and stared at the ceiling.

  Ewers Grens turned around-he couldn't bear to look at the boxes that were so strongly associated with her, he was ashamed.

  He had tried to forget about Västmannagatan 79 for a while-he was getting nowhere and his desk was full of ongoing investigations that were getting older and harder to solve by the hour. He looked through the preliminary investigation files and put them to the side, one after the other. Attempted extortion and pimply youths from the Sodra Station area who had threatened shop owners in Ringens Centrum. Car theft and an unmarked police car that had been found stripped of its computer and communication equipment in a tunnel under the Sankt Eriksbron. Violation of a woman's integrity and a former husband who had repeatedly breached his restraining order and gone to his former wife's domicile on Sibyllegatan. Uninteresting and soulless, but nonetheless, such investigations were his daily fare and he would sort them out later. He was good at that, after all, at reality. But not right now A dead man was lying in the way.

  "Come in."

  Someone had knocked on the door. Even a knock echoed in a room with no music.

  "Do you have a moment?"

  Grens looked up at the doorway and someone he didn't particularly like. He didn't know why, there was no real reason, but sometimes that's just the way it is, something that you can't put your finger on, that bothers you all the same. "No, I don't have time."

  Thick blond hair, slim, bright-eyed, eloquent, intellectual, presumably attractive, still quite young.

  Erik Wilson was everything that Ewert Grens was not.

  "Not even for a simple question?"

  Grens sighed.

  "There's no such thing as a simple question."

  Erik Wilson smiled and came in. Grens was about to protest, but stopped himself. Wilson was one of the few who had never complained about the loud music in their shared corridor. Perhaps he had the right to pop into the silence.

  "Västmannagatan 79. The shooting. If I've understood correctly. you're the one investigating?"

  "That's what you say."

  Erik Wilson looked the curmudgeonly detective superintendent in the eye. The day before he'd had a look on the computer at the CR system and was convinced that he had found a good enough excuse to hide his real purpose.

  "Just a thought. Was it on the ground floor?"

  A Finnish name, stolen goods, a ton of refined copper.

  "No."

  According to the entry in the register, a case that was no longer open, and a sentence that would already have come into force.

  'A year ago. Same address. I investigated a Finnish man who was dealing in serious amounts of stolen refined copper."

  A minor crime that Grens had not investigated, so presumably he lacked the same knowledge that Wilson did.

  'And?"

  "Same address. Was just curious. Is there any connection?"

  "No."

  "Are you sure about that?"

  "I'm sure about that. This involves some Poles. And a dead Danish infiltrator."

  Erik Wilson had the information he wanted.

  Grens was investigating.

  Grens already had dangerous information.

  And Grens would continue to dig and delve. The older man was glowing in the way that he sometimes did, when he was at his best.

  "Infiltrator?"

  "You… I don't think you've got anything to do with this."

  "Well, you've certainly whetted my curiosity."

  "Close the door when you leave."

  Wilson didn't protest, he didn't need anymore. He was already out in the corridor when Grens's voice cut through the dust.

  "The door!"

  Two steps back, Wilson shut the door and walked to the neighboring one.

  Chief Superintendent Göransson.

  "Erik?"

  "Do you have a moment?"

  "Sit down."

  Erik Wilson sat down in front of the man who was his boss and who was Grens's boss and who was also the CHIS controller in the city police district.

  "You've got a problem."

  Wilson looked at Göransson. The room was big, the desk was big. Perhaps that was why he always looked so small.

  "Have I?"

  "I've just been to see Ewert Grens. He's investigating the killing at Västmannagatan. The problem is that I'm not investigating, and I know considerably more about what happened than the appointed investigator does right now."

  "I don't understand why that should be a problem."

  "Paula."

  "Right?"

  "Do you remember him?"

  "I remember him."

  Wilson knew that he wouldn't need to explain much more.

  "He was there."

  The automatic voice.

  Twelve thirty-seven fifty.

  Scraping sounds. Obviously somewhere indoors. The voice was tense, whispered, with no accent.

  A dead man. Västmannagatan 79. Fourth floor.

  One more time."

  Nils Krantz pressed play on the CD player and carefully adjusted the speakers. By this point they both recognized the humming of a fridge that made it difficult to hear the last two words.

  "One more time."

  Ewert Grens listened to the only link they had to a man who had witnessed a murder and then decided to vanish.

  "Again."

  The forensic scientist shook his head.

  "I've got a lot to do, Ewert. But I can burn a CD for you so you can listen to it as much and as often as you like."

  Krantz burned the sound file of the alarm call that was received by the County Communication Center a matter of minutes after the man had been shot onto another disc.

  "What do I do with it?"

  "You don't have a CD player?"

  "I think Ågestam gave me a machine once, after we'd had a small confrontation about a father who shot and killed his daughter's murderer. But I've never used it. Why should I?"

  "Here, borrow this one. And give it back when you're done."

  "One more time?"

  Krantz shook his head again.

  "Ewert?"

  "Yes?"

  "You don't know how to use it?"

  No."

  "Put on the headphones. And press play. You'll manage."

  Grens sat at the far end of the forensics department. He pressed a few random buttons and gingerly pulled at a rather long flex, and then jumped when the alarm voice was suddenly there again, in the headphones.

  It was all he knew about the person he was looking for.

  "One more thing."

  Nils Krantz gestured to his ears. Ewert had to take the headphones off. "We've scoured Västmannagatan 79. All the rooms. And we've found nothing that can be linked to the investigation."

  "Look again."

  "I’ll have you know that we're not sloppy. If we didn't find anything the first time, we won't find it the second time. You know that, Ewert."

  Ewert Grens did know that. But he also knew that there was nothing else, that right now he had gotten absolutely nowhere with the investigation. He hurried through the vast building with the CD player in his hand, toward the exit to Kungsholmsgatan. A few minutes later, he waved down a passing patrol car from the pavement, opened the door, got int
o the back seat and asked the astonished policeman to drive him to Västmannagatan 79 and to wait for him there.

  He made his way up to the fourth floor, stopping briefly in front of the door with a name plate with the Finnish name that Wilson had tried ro push him to discuss this morning, then continued on to the flat that was still being guarded by contracted security men in green uniforms. He looked at the big blood stain and the markers on the walls, but this time it was the kitchen that interested him and a spot near the fridge where Krantz was one hundred percent certain that the man had been standing when he called and raised the alarm. You sound calm despite the fact that you're frightened. He put the headphones on and pressed the two buttons that had worked the last time. You are precise, systematic, purposeful. The voice again. You can cut yourself off and carry on functioning, despite that fact that you're in the midst of chaos. Grens walked between the sink and the worktop, listening to someone who had been in exactly the same place and had whispered a message about a dead man while the people on the other side of the door stood next to the body that was still bleeding heavily. You're involved in the murder but chose to raise the alarm and then disappear.

  "This thing is damn marvelous."

  He had rung Nils Krantz as he walked down the stairs.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The machine that you lent me, Jesus, I can listen to it when I want, as many times as I want."

  "That's good, Ewert. Great. Speak to you again soon."

  The car was double-parked outside the front door, waiting, the policeman ready behind the wheel, with his safety belt still on.

  Grens clambered into the back seat.

  "Arlanda."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I want to go to Arlanda."

  "This is not a taxi, you know. I knock off in quarter of an hour."

  "Then I think you should stick on the blue light. It's quicker?'

  Ewert Grens leaned back in the seat when the car approached Norrtull and the northbound E4. Who are you? He had the headphones on, so he would be able to listen to it several times before they stopped outside Terminal 5. What were you doing there? He was on his way to see someone who knew more about at least one of the people who had been in the flat when a lead and titanium bullet had penetrated one man's head, and he would not return until he knew more himself. Where are you now?