Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  He held the plastic bag in his hand, swinging slowly back and forth between the steering wheel and the door.

  Piet Hoffmann had left number five at half past eleven that morning, an empty flat that could be accessed from two addresses. He had felt stressed, the shooting at Västmannagatan, the breakthrough with Wojtek, trust or potential death sentence, stay or run. When he closed the gate to the communal gardens, his phone had rung. Someone from the nursery who mentioned fever and two little boys with burning cheeks lying on a sofa, who needed to be picked up so they could go home. He had gone straight to Hagtomsgarden in Enskededalen, collected the two hot, sleepy children and then headed toward the house in Enskede.

  He looked at the plastic bag, at the shirt that was in it, gray and white checks that were now covered in blood and tissue from a person.

  He had put the boys to bed, where they had each fallen asleep clutching an unread comic. He had phoned Zofia, promised to stay at home with them, and she had kissed the receiver twice-always an even number.

  He looked out of the car window at a clock above a shop door. Six more minutes. He turned around. They sat there silently, with shiny eyes and floppy bodies. Rasmus was almost flat out on the back seat.

  He had wandered around in the watchful house, every now and then giving a sleeping, feverish cheek a worried caress, and had realized that he didn't have any choice. There was a bottle of Calpol, in the door of the fridge and after much protest that it tasted horrible and they would rather be ill, both had eventually swallowed a double dose, served to them in a dessert spoon. He had carried them out to the car, driven the short distance to Slussen and Sodermalm and parked a couple of hundred meters from the entrance on Hökens Gata.

  Rasmus was now actually lying on the back seat. Hugo was half on top of him. Their flaming cheeks were slightly less red for a while as the Calpol worked its magic.

  Piet Hoffmann felt something in his chest that was possibly shame. I'm so sorry. You shouldn't be here.

  Right from the start, when he had been recruited, he had promised himself that he would never put anyone he loved in danger. This was the only time. It would never happen again. It had almost happened once before, a few years ago, when there had been an unexpected knock on the door and Zofia had asked the two visitors in for coffee. She had been charming and pleased and had no idea of who she was serving: the deputy CEO and the number four. They were just checking out in more detail someone who was on his way up. Hoffmann had explained to her later that they were two of his clients and she believed him, as she always did.

  Two more minutes.

  He leaned over to the back and kissed their surprisingly cool foreheads, said that he had to leave them on their own for a very short while, that they had to promise to sit still like big boys.

  He locked the car door and went in through the entrance to Hökens Gata 1.

  Erik had gone in through the door to Gotgatan 15 twenty minutes earlier and was watching him now from a window on the second floor, as he always did when Paula crossed the communal gardens.

  Meeting place number four at fourteen hundred hours.

  An empty flat, a beautiful central flat that was being renovated for the next few months, one of six meeting places. Two flights up, the door with LINDSTROM on the letter box. He nodded at Erik and handed him the plastic bag that had been lying in one of the locked gun cabinets and contained a shirt with blood stains and gunshot residue, the one that Mariusz had been wearing twenty-four hours earlier, then he hurried back down to the children.

  The steps from the SAS plane down to the runway at Copenhagen airport were made of aluminum and too shallow to take one step at a time yet too high when he tried to take two. Ewert Grens looked at his fellow passengers, who were having the same problem. Ungainly movements down toward a small bus that was waiting to drive them to the terminal building.

  Grens waited by the last step for a white car with blue stripes and the word POLICE written on it, with a young uniformed man behind the wheel, similar to the Swedish officer who had dropped him off near the departures hall at Arlanda just under an hour ago. The young man hurried out, opened the door to the back sear and saluted the Swedish detective superintendent. A salute. It had been a while. Just as he had done for his bosses in the seventies. No one seemed to do that anymore, now that he was a boss, which he was happy about. Found all that submissive waving hard to stomach.

  There was already someone else in the back.

  A man in his forties in civilian clothes, similar to Sven, the sort of policeman who looks nice.

  "Jacob Andersen."

  Grens smiled.

  "You said that your office looked out over Langebro."

  "Welcome to Copenhagen."

  After driving four hundred meters, the car stopped by a door that was roughly in the middle of the terminal building. They went into the airport police station. Ewert Grens had been there several times before, so he made his way to the meeting room at the back, where there was coffee and Danish pastries on the table.

  They picked you up by car. Booked a meeting room in the local station. Served you coffee and cake.

  Grens looked at his Danish colleagues who were sorting out plastic cups and sugar.

  It felt good, as if the strange standoffishness, the silent opposition to working together had evaporated.

  Jacob Andersen wiped his fingers on his trousers after eating a sticky pastry and then put an 8 x 10 photograph down in the middle of the table. A color copy, enlarged several times. Grens studied the picture. A man somewhere between thirty and forty, crew cut, fair, coarse features.

  "Carsten."

  In the autopsy room, Ludvig Errfors had described a man of northern European appearance with internal surgical and dental work that would indicate that he had probably grown up in Sweden.

  "We have a different system here. Male code names for male informers, female code names for female informers. Why make it more confusing than necessary?"

  I saw you on the floor; you had three gaping holes in your head.

  "Carsten. Or Jens Christian Toft."

  I saw you later on Errfors's autopsy table, your face stripped of skin.

  "Danish citizen, but born and raised in Sweden. Convicted of aggravated assault, perjury and extortion and had served two years in D Block at Vestre Prison in Copenhagen when he was recruited by us. In much the same way that you do. Sometimes we even recruit them when they're on remand."

  I recognize you, it's you, even in that picture from the autopsy when you were being washed, you looked the same.

  "We trained him, gave him a background. He was paid by Copenhagen Police as an infiltrator to initiate deals with as many of the big players in organized crime as possible. Hell's Angels, Bandidos, the Russians, Yugoslavians, Mexicans… whichever gang you like. This was the third time that he had initiated a deal with the Polish group, Wojtek."

  "Wojtek?"

  "Wojtek Security International. Security guards, bodyguards, CIT. Officially. Just like in all the other Eastern European states. A facade for organized crime."

  "Polish mafia. Now it has a name. Wojtek."

  "But it was the first time he was dealing with them in Sweden. Without backup. We wanted to avoid an operation on Swedish territory. So it was what we call an uncontrolled purchase."

  Ewert Grens apologized. He had the photo of the dead man in one hand and his mobile phone in the other as he left the room and went out into the departures hall, dodging the bags that were hurrying toward a new queue.

  "Sven?"

  "Yes?"

  "Where are you?"

  "In my office."

  "Get in front of the computer and do a multisearch for Jens Christian Toft in all the databases. Born in 1965."

  He bent down and picked up a bag that had fallen off a smiling, sunburned old lady's cart. She thanked him and he smiled back as he listened to Sven Sundkvist pull out his chair, and then the irritating note that sounds like a tune every time you turn on the
computer.

  "Ready?"

  "No."

  "I haven't got much time."

  "Ewen, I'm logging on. It takes a bit of time. There's not a lot I can do to change that."

  "You can open it faster."

  A couple of minutes of clacking on the keyboard, Grens walking restlessly between the travelers and the check-in desks, waiting for Sven's voice.

  "No hits."

  "Not anywhere?"

  "No criminal record, not in the driver's license register, he's not a Swedish citizen, his fingerprints haven't been recorded, he's not in the criminal intelligence database."

  Grens walked slowly around the bustling departures hall twice.

  But he had a name. He now knew who had been lying in a dark patch on the sitting room floor.

  It meant nothing.

  He wasn't interested in the dead man. A lifeless identity was only meaningful Wit helped him to get closer to the perpetrator. It was his job to check the name, but it wasn't to be found in any Swedish register, so it didn't make the slightest difference.

  "I want you to listen to this."

  Ewert Grens was once again sitting in the room with the oversized Danish pastries and miniature cups in Kastrup police station.

  "Not yet."

  "It's not much. But it's all I've got."

  A voice whispering seven words to the emergency services was still his closest link to the murderer.

  "Not yet, Grens. Before we carry on, I want to make sure that you are absolutely clear about the terms of this meeting."

  Jacob Andersen took the CD player and headphones but put them down on the table.

  "You didn't get any information earlier on the phone because I wanted to know who I was talking to. And whether I could trust you. Because if it becomes known that Carsten was working for us, there's a risk that other infiltrators-who he had recommended and backed for Wojtekmight also die. So what we talk about here doesn't go beyond these walls. Okay?"

  "I don't like all this cloak-and-dagger stuff surrounding informers and their operations. It interferes with other investigations."

  "Okay?"

  "Okay."

  Andersen put on the headphones and listened.

  "Someone raising the alarm from the flat."

  "I realize that."

  "His voice?" Ewert Grens pointed at the photograph on the table. "No."

  "Have you heard it before?"

  "I'd need to hear more to be able to give you a definite answer." "That's all we've got."

  Jacob Andersen listened again.

  "No. I don't recognize the voice."

  Carsten, who was called Jens Christian Toft, was dead in the picture but it felt almost like he was looking at him, and Grens didn't like it. He pulled the photo toward him and flipped it over.

  "I'm not interested in him. I'm interested in who shot him. I want to know who else was in the flat."

  "I have no idea."

  "You must've damn well known who he was going to meet for one of your operations!"

  Jacob Andersen didn't like people who raised their voices unnecessarily. "Next time you talk to me like that, this meeting is over."

  "But if it was you who-"

  "Understood?"

  "Yes."

  The Danish detective superintendent continued.

  "The only thing I know is that Carsten was going to meet representatives from Wojtek and a Swedish contact. But I don't have any names."

  "A Swedish contact?"

  "Yes."

  "Are you sure about that?"

  "That's the information I have.),

  Two Swedish voices in a flat where the Polish mafia was tying up a deal. One was dead. The other raised the alarm.

  "It was you."

  Andersen looked at Grens, taken aback.

  "Excuse me?"

  "The Swedish contact."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I'm saying that I'm going to find the bastard."

  The house was only a couple of hundred meters from the heavy traffic on Nynäsvägen, which thundered through any thoughts. But you only had to drive down a couple of little back streets, past the school and a small park, to discover another world. He opened the car door and listened. You couldn't even hear the hum of the heavy trucks that were trying to overtake one another.

  She was standing in the driveway, waiting in front of the garage when he swung in.

  So beautiful, with her slippers still on and not enough clothes. "Where have you been? Where have the children been?"

  Zofia opened the back door and stroked Rasmus on the cheek, lifted him up in her arms.

  "Two clients, I'd forgotten about them."

  "Clients?"

  'A security guard who had to have a bullet-proof vest and a shop that needed its alarm system adjusted. I had no choice. And they didn't have to sit in the back seat for long."

  She felt both their brows.

  "They're not too warm."

  "Good."

  "Maybe they're getting better."

  "I hope so."

  I kiss her on the cheek and she smells of Zofia, as I cobble together a lie. It's so simple. And I'm good at it.

  But I can't bear to tell yet another one, not to her, not to the kids, not anymore.

  The wooden steps creaked as the two parents carried their feverish children indoors and up to bed, their small bodies under white duvets. He stood there for a while looking at them. They were already asleep, snoring and snuffling as people do when they're fighting lurking bacteria. He tried to remember what life was like before these two boys whom he loved more than anything in the world, empty days when he had only himself to think of. He remembered it well, but felt nothing, he had never been able to comprehend how what had once been so important, so strong and so absolute, was suddenly meaningless as soon as someone small had come along, looked at him and called him Daddy.

  He walked from one room to the other and kissed them each on the forehead. They were starting to get hot again, the fever burning on his lips. He went back down to the kitchen and sat on a chair behind Zofia and watched her back as she washed the dishes, which would then be put away in a cupboard in his home, her home, their home. He trusted her. That was what it was, he felt a trust that he had never dared dream of. He trusted her and she trusted him.

  And she trusted him.

  He had just lied to her. He seldom thought about it, it was habit. He always considered the plausibility of a lie before he was even conscious that he was going to lie. This time the lie had been reluctant. He sat behind her and it still felt unreasonable, demanding, hard to bear.

  She turned around, smiled, stroked his chin with a wet hand. The hand that he so often yearned for.

  But now it just felt uncomfortable.

  Two clients, I'd forgotten about them. And they didn't have to sit in the back seat for long.

  What if she hadn't trusted him? I don't believe you. What if she hadn't accepted his lie? I want to know what you've really been up to.

  He would have fallen. He would have collapsed. His strength, his life, his drive, he had built it all up around her trust.

  Ten years earlier.

  He's locked up in Österåker prison, just north of Stockholm.

  His neighbors, his mares for twelve months-they all have their own way of living with the shame. They have carefully constructed their defense, their lies.

  The man opposite, in cell 4, a junkie who stole to pay for his habit, who burgled fifteen houses a night in some suburbs, and his damned insistence that I never hurt children, I always shut the door to their room, I never steal anything from them; his mantra and defense to help him bear the shame, a home-made set of morals that made him seem a little better than he was, to himself at least, that kept self-loathing at bay.

  Piet knew, just like everyone else knew, that the man in cell 4 had pissed on that morality long ago. He stole whatever he could sell, from the children's rooms as well, because the need for drugs was stron
ger than his self-respect.

  And the man farther down in cell 8, who had been sentenced for assault so many times, who had devised another life lie, his own moral with another mantra, to keep himself afloat: I never hit women, only men, I would never hit a woman.

  Piet knew, just like everyone else knew, that the man in cell 8 had separated word from deed long ago. He hit women too, he hit anyone who crossed his path.

  Made-up morals.

  Piet had scorned them, just as he had always held those who lied to themselves in contempt.

  He looked at her. The soft hand had been uncomfortable.

  He only had himself to blame. He had trampled all over his own morals, the very reason he was still someone he liked: my family, I will never use my family for lies, I will definitely never force Zofia and the boys to get caught up in my lies.

  And now he'd done it, just like the man in cell 4 and the man in cell 8 and all the others he had despised.

  He had lied to himself.

  There was nothing left of him that he could like.

  Zofia turned off the water-she was done. She wiped around the sink and then sat down on his knee. He held her, kissed her on the cheek, twice like she always wanted, he burrowed his nose in the dip between her neck and shoulder, staying where the skin was softest.

  Erik Wilson opened an empty document on the computer that he only used after a meeting with an infiltrator.

  M pulls a gun

  (Polish 9mm Radom)

  from shoulder holster.

  M cocks the gun and holds it to

  the buyer's head.

  He tried to remember and write down Paula's account from their meeting at number five.

  To protect him. To protect himself.

  But more than anything, to have a reason for paying out police reward money, should anyone ask why and when. Without an intelligence report and the pot for rewarding information from the general public, Paula would not be paid for his work or be able to remain anonymous and off the official payroll, nor would any of his colleagues.