Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  "That's enough."

  He bent down toward the prostrate marksman.

  "Two minutes. Prepare to fire."

  He pointed to the door into the tower and the aluminum ladder peeping over the top of the hatch. They would go down into the room with the wooden altar-the marksman was to be disturbed as little as possible. He was about halfway down when he turned on the radio and held it to his mouth.

  "From now on, I only want traffic between myself and the marksman. Turn off your mobile phones. Only the marksman and I will communicate until the shot has been fired"

  The wooden stairs creaked with every step-they were approaching the control post and he would only leave again once it was over.

  Mariana Hermansson knocked on the dirty window and looked at the camera that was focused on her. It was the fourth locked door in the long passage under the prison and when it was opened, she ran toward central security and the exit.

  Martin Jacobson didn't understand what was happening. But he felt that it was nearing the end. In the last few minutes, Hoffmann had run back and forth several times, he was out of breath and he had shouted loudly about time and death. Jacobson tried to move his legs, his hands, he wanted to get away. He was so frightened, he didn't want to sit here anymore, he wanted to get up and go home and eat supper and watch TV and have a drink of Canadian whisky, the kind that tasted so soft.

  He was crying.

  He was still crying when Hoffmann came into the cramped storeroom, when he pushed him up against the wall and whispered that soon there would be an almighty explosion, that he should stay exactly where he was, that if he did that he would be protected and wouldn't die.

  He was lying with both elbows positioned on the wooden floor of the balcony and enough room for his legs; his position was comfortable and he could concentrate on the telescopic sight and the window.

  It was close.

  Never before on Swedish soil had a marksman taken another life in peacetime, not even shot to kill. But the hostage taker had threatened his hostages, refused to communicate, made another threat. He had gradually forced the situation to this choice between one life and another,

  One shot, one hit.

  He was capable; even at this distance he felt confident: one shot, one hit.

  But he would never see the consequences, a person blown to bits. He remembered one morning during training, the remains of live pigs that had been used as target practice-he couldn't bear to see a person like that.

  He edged fractionally farther out on the balcony so that he could see the window even better.

  She ran through the open prison gates and out into the nearly full parking lot, she rang Ewert's number for the second time and for the second time was cut off, she was nearly at the car and tried Sven and tried Edvardson without getting through, she got into the car, started it and drove over the grass and plants, looking up at the church tower as much as at the road as there was someone lying there, waiting.

  Ewert Grens removed his earpiece, he wanted to get rid of the voices that were there because he had ordered them to be, that were his responsibility now and that had one single task.

  To kill.

  "Target?"

  "Single man. Blue jacket."

  "Distance?"

  "Fifteen hundred and three meters."

  He didn't have much time left.

  Hermansson turned out of the prison drive and drove toward the small town of Asps1 s on the wrong side of the road.

  "Wind?"

  "Seven meters per second right."

  She accelerated fast as she turned up the volume on the radio to max. "Outside temperature?"

  "Eighteen degrees."

  Oscarsson, what he had just said, Ewert… before anything was fired, before… he had to know.

  I have never shot at a person.

  I have never ordered anyone else to shoot at a person.

  Thirty-five years in the police. In one minute… less than one minute. "Grens, over."

  Sterner.

  "Grens here, over."

  "The hostage… he's covered… as if there's some sort of blanket wrapped round him."

  "Right?"

  Ewert Grens waited.

  "I think… the blanket… Grens, it looks pretty weird…" Grens was shaking.

  It wasn't the people outside the walls who were going to decide, it was the hostage taker, he was the one who moved the boundaries, challenged them, forced them.

  "Continuer"

  "… I think he's preparing for a… an execution."

  You've worked there your whole life.

  You're the oldest one there. You're the weakest. You're the chosen one. You are not going to die.

  "Fire."

  He had been watching the tower and the people up there the whole time. He had been careful to stand in profile, with the hostage close by, the diesel barrel close by, he had listened to their voices which had been crystal clear, it had been easy to understand the order.

  Fire."

  Fifteen hundred three meters.

  Three seconds.

  He heard the click.

  He hesitated.

  He moved.

  The shot.

  Death.

  They waited.

  "Abort. Object out of sight."

  Hoffmann had stood there, his head cocked, in profile, he had been easy to see and easy to hit. Suddenly he moved. One single step was enough.

  Ewert Grens was breathing heavily, he hadn't noticed before. He put a hand to his cheek, it was hot.

  "Object in sight again. Ready to fire. Awaiting second order."

  Hoffmann was back, he was standing there again.

  One more time. A new decision. He didn't want to do it, couldn't face it.

  "Fire."

  He had heard a click. When the gun was cocked. And he had moved. This time he stayed where he was. In the middle of the window.

  The first click in his ear and he stayed where he was.

  Next.

  The second click.

  A finger on a trigger.

  Fifteen hundred and three meters. Three seconds.

  He moved.

  One single moment.

  It stretched out. It was empty and it was silent and prolonged.

  Ewert Grens knew everything about moments like this, how they tormented you, ate you up and never, never let go.

  'Abort. Object out of sight."

  He had moved again.

  Ewert Grens swallowed.

  Hoffmann was about to die and it was as if he knew-one single moment, he used it and moved again.

  "Object in sight again. Ready to fire. Awaiting third order."

  He was back.

  Grens grabbed hold of the earpiece that was resting on his shoulders, put it back in.

  He turned toward Sven, looking for a face that was turned away. "I repeat. Ready to Fire. Awaiting third order. Over."

  It was his decision. And his alone.

  A deep breath.

  He fumbled for the transmission button, felt it with his fingertips, pressed it, hard.

  "Fire."

  Piet Hoffmann had heard the order for the third time.

  He had stood still when the gun was cocked.

  He had stood still when the finger pressed on the trigger.

  It was a strange feeling, knowing that a bullet was on its way, that he had three seconds left.

  The explosion blocked out all sound, light, her breath… somewhere behind her something detonated that sounded like a bomb.

  She braked abruptly and the car lurched, pulling her over toward the edge of the road and the ditch. She hung on, braked again, and regained control. She stopped the car and got out, still so shaken that she hadn't had time to be scared.

  Mariana Hermansson had only had a couple of hundred meters left before she would reach Aspsås church.

  She turned around, toward the prison.

  A sharp, intense fire.

  Then thick, black smoke that for
ced its way out of a gaping hole that until moments ago had been a window in the front of a prison workshop building.

  PART FOUR

  Saturday

  It was probably as dark as it could get at night toward the end of May.

  The houses and trees and fields were waiting all around with dissolving corners, to reappear when the light crept back.

  Ewen Grens was driving along the empty road, almost halfway, about twenty kilometers north of Stockholm. His body was tense, every joint and every muscle still ached with adrenaline, even though it was more than twelve hours now since the shot had been fired, the explosion and death. He hadn't even tried to sleep, though he had lain down for a while on the sofa in his office and listened to the silent police headquarters, without closing his eyes-he just couldn't turn off the roaring inside. He had tried to lose himself in thoughts of Anni and the cemetery, imagined what her resting place looked like. He still hadn't been there, but he would go soon. It was one of those nights when, eighteen months ago, he would have talked to her, nights that he had managed to survive with her help; he would have called the nursing home, even though he wasn't supposed to, nagged one of the staff until they woke her and handed over the receiver, and gradually calmed down as he told her everything, her presence in his ear. After she was gone, he had stopped calling and instead took the car and drove out toward Gardet and Lidingö bridge and the nursing home that was so well situated on the wealthy island. He would sit in the parking place by her window, look up at it, and after a while get out of the car and walk around the house.

  Ewert, you can't regulate your grief. Ewert, what you're frightened of has already happened. Ewert, I never want to see you here again.

  Now he didn't even have that.

  After a few hours he had gotten up, walked down the corridor and to the car on Bergsgatan and started to drive toward Solna and North Cemetery. He wanted to talk to her again. He had stood by one of the gates and searched the shadows and then carried on north, through the smudged landscape to a wall around a prison and a church with a beautiful tower.

  "Grens."

  The dark, the quiet-if it had not been for the searing smell of fire and soot and diesel, it could all have been a dream, a head in a window, a mouth forming the word death, and in a while there would perhaps be nothing more than the birds singing their hearts out to the dawn and a town waking up without having heard anything about a hostage drama and a person lying motionless on the floor.

  "Yes?"

  He had pressed the button beside the gate and was talking into the intercom.

  "I'm the detective investigating all this mess. Can you let me in?" "It's three in the morning."

  "Yes."

  "There's no one here who-"

  "Can you let me in?"

  He slipped through the gate and central security, then crossed one of the prison's dry inner yards.

  He had never fired death at a person before.

  It had been his decision.

  His responsibility.

  Ewert Grens approached the building called Block B, paused a while outside the front door, and looked up at the second floor.

  The acrid smell of fire had almost intensified.

  First an explosion and a projectile that penetrated and shattered a window and a person's head. Then another, more powerful one, the god-awful black smoke that never seemed to stop, that concealed what they were trying to see; an explosion that could not be explained.

  His decision.

  He started to walk up the stairs, past all the closed doors, toward the smell of smoke.

  His responsibility.

  Ewen Grens had in fact never had any relationship to death. He worked with it, frequently came face to face with it, and any thoughts of his own death were irrelevant. They had stopped thirty years ago the moment that he, as the driver of a police van, had driven over a head that had then ceased to function. Anni's head. He had no desire to die, it wasn't that, nor did he desire to live. In his meeting with guilt and grief he had developed the ability to encapsulate it, and had continued to do so, and now he didn't even know where to start.

  The door was open and the inside was black with soot.

  Grens looked into the burned-out workshop, pulled some transparent plastic bags over his shoes and stepped over the blue and white cordon.

  There was always something lonely about places that have been destroyed by fire, the all-engulfing flames that eventually turned and subsided. He was walking on the remains of shelves that had fallen, between machines that were black and had been chewed and stopped.

  It was there. On the ceiling, on the walls. What he had come for.

  He had seen the white ones before, the forensic team's markers for body parts. More than in Västmannagatan. But the red ones, he had never been to a crime scene with red flags.

  Two bodies, hundreds… maybe thousands of pieces.

  He wondered whether Errfors, the forensic pathologist, would ever be able to piece enough together for an identification. People who had been alive until recently, who no longer existed, other than in bits marked by small flags. He started to count them without knowing why, just a few square meters of wall, but tired of it when he reached three hundred seventy-four. He crossed over the window that was no longer there, a light breeze through the hole in the wall. He stood in the place where Hoffmann had stood, the church and the church rower silhouetted against the sky. The sniper had lain up there, he had aimed and fired a bullet on Ewert Grens's command.

  Aspsås shrank in the rear view mirror.

  He had stayed for a couple of hours in the stench of burned oil and heavy smoke. The feeling had continued to torment him, no matter how many red and white flags marking body parts he counted, he still couldn't understand it, and the unease kept him awake, a reminder of the adrenaline and irritation. He didn't like it, tried to lose it in the mess on the floor and the tools that would never be used again, but it clung to him, whispering something he couldn't understand. He was approaching Stockholm through the northern satellite towns and suburbs when his mobile phone sang out from the back seat. He slowed down, leaned back for his jacket.

  "Ewert?"

  "Are you awake?"

  "Where are you?"

  "This early, Sven? Shouldn't it be me who's calling you?"

  Sven Sundkvist smiled. It was a long time since he and Anita had been bothered by the phone ringing in the bedroom between midnight and dawn. Ewert always called the minute he had something that needed an immediate answer, and that tended to be at night when everyone else was asleep. But he hadn't been able to sleep himself last night. He had lain close to Anita and listened to the ticking of the alarm clock until, after a couple of hours, he crept out of bed and went down to the kitchen on the ground floor of their terraced house, and sat there doing crosswords, as he sometimes did when the nights were long. But the unease refused to leave his house. The same unease that Ewert had talked about earlier that evening, thoughts that had nowhere to go.

  "I'm on my way into the city, Ewert. I'm just by Gullmarsplan and then heading west. To Kungsangen. Sterner just called."

  "Sterner?"

  "The sniper."

  Grens accelerated-the early morning commuters were still in their garages, so it was easy to drive.

  "Then we've got about the same distance. I'm just passing Haga Park. What's it about?"

  "Tell you when we get there."

  Another locked gate in another uniformed world.

  Grens and Sundkvist arrived at the Svea Life Guards in Kungsangen only a few minutes apart. Sterner was waiting for them by the regiment guardhouse. He looked rested, but was wearing the same clothes as the day before, white-and-gray camouflage, creased after a night on top of the bedclothes. Standing in front of the closed gate and with the barracks behind him, he looked the cliché of a model American marine, cropped hair and broad-shouldered, square face, the kind that on films always stand too near and shout too loud.

  "Same clothes as
yesterday?"

  "Yup. When the helicopter dropped me off… I went and lay down." "And you slept?"

  "Like a baby."

  Grens and Sundkvist exchanged looks. The guy who had fired had slept. But the one who had made the decision to fire, and his closest colleague, had not.

  Sterner signed them in and showed the way to a deserted barrack square, with solid buildings that stared down at all visitors. Sterner walked fast and Grens had difficulty keeping up when they went through the first door and carried on up the stairs, down long corridors with stone floors, conscripts still in underpants ahead of a day in uniform.

  "Life Guards. First company. The ones who are going to be officers and stay longest."

  He stopped in a room with simple, institutional furniture, white walls that needed painting, and plastic flooring on hard concrete.

  Four work stations, one in each corner.

  "My colleagues won't be coming in today. A two-day exercise in north Uppland, around Tierp. We won't be disturbed here."

  He closed the door.

  "I called as soon as I woke up. The thought that I had as I fell asleep came back to me and refused to leave the bed."

  He leaned forward.

  "I observed. With the binoculars. I watched him for a long rime. I followed his movements, his face for nearly half an hour."

  "And?"

  "He was standing in the window, fully exposed. You mentioned it too, I heard you. Like he knew he could be seen, that he wanted to demonstrate his power over the hostages, the whole situation, maybe even you. You said that he was doing it because he was sure he was out of range."

  "Right."

  "That's what you said. What you believed."

  He looked at the door, as if he wanted to reassure himself that it really was shut.

  "I didn't think that. Not then. And not now."

  "I think you'll need to explain that."

  Grens felt uneasy, the same feeling that had kept him awake, that was in some way connected to the feeling he got in the burned-out workshop. There was something that wasn't right.

  "When I was watching him through the binoculars. Object in clear sight. Awaiting order. I don't know, it was like he knew. I repeat. Awaiting order. As if he knew that he was in range."