Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  "I don't understand."

  "I aborted. Abort. Object out of sight. I aborted twice."

  "Yes, and?"

  Well, both times… it was like he knew when I was going to shoot. He moved so… precisely."

  "He moved several times."

  Sterner got up, he was restless, went over to the door, checked it, then over to the window with a view of the square.

  "He did. But both times… precisely as I was about to fire."

  "And the third time?"

  "He stood still. Then… it was like… like he'd decided. He stood still and waited."

  'And?"

  "One bullet, one hit. The motto of sniper training. I only shoot if I know I'm going to hit the target."

  Grens went over to the same window.

  "Where?"

  "Where…

  "Where did you hit him?"

  "The head. I shouldn't have done it. But I had no choice."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that from a distance, we always aim at the chest. The largest target area. I should have aimed there. But he was standing in profile the whole time and so… to get as big a target area as possible… I shot at his head."

  And the explosion?"

  "I don't know."

  "Don't know?"

  "I don't know."

  "But you-"

  "It wasn't connected to the shot."

  A group of about twenty teenagers in uniform marched across the gravel in two rows.

  They tried to lift their legs and swing their arms at the same time, while someone who was a bit older walked beside them screeching something. They weren't succeeding.

  "And one more thing."

  "Yes?"

  "Who was he?"

  "Why?"

  "I killed him."

  The two rows were now standing at ease.

  The older uniform demonstrated how their guns should lie on their shoulders while they marched.

  It was important that they all held them the same way.

  "I killed him. I want to know his name. I feel I have the right." Grens hesitated, looked at Sven, and then back at Sterner.

  "Pier Hoffmann."

  Sterner's face showed nothing. If it was a name he recognized he hid it well.

  "Hoffmann. Do you have his personal details?"

  "Yes."

  "I want to go over to administration. And I'd like you to come with me. There's something I want to check."

  Ewert and Sven followed Sterner's back across the barrack square to a building that was smaller than the others and housed the regimental commander's quarters, administration, and a slightly better officers' mess. On the second floor, Sterner rapped on the doorframe of an open door, and an older man sitting in front of a computer gave them a friendly nod.

  "I need his personal ID number."

  Sven had already gotten out a notebook from his inner pocket, which he flicked through until he found what he was looking for.

  "721018-0010."

  The older man in front of the computer typed in the ten-digit number, waited for a few seconds and then shook his head.

  "Born in the early 1970s? Then he won't be here. Ten years back, that's what the law stipulates. Any documents older than that are stored in the military archives."

  He smiled, looked pleased.

  "But… I always make my own copies of anything we have before sending it off. Svea Life Guards' own archive. Every young man who has done his military service here in the past thirty years can be found on the shelves next door."

  A room crowded with shelves on every wall, from floor to ceiling. He got down on his knees and ran his finger along the backs of the files before picking out a black one.

  "Born 1972. Now, if he was here… ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three, maybe even ninety-four. Life Company, you said. Sniper training?" "Yes."

  He leafed through the papers, put the file back, then took out the one beside it.

  "Not ninety-one. So we'll try ninety-two."

  He had got about halfway when he stopped and looked up.

  "Hoffmann?"

  "Piet Hoffmann."

  "Then we've got a match."

  Ewert and Sven stepped forward simultaneously to get a better look at the papers that the archivist was holding up. Hoffmann's full name, Hoffmann's personal ID number, then a long row of combined numbers and letters, some sort of record.

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means that someone called Piet Hoffmann, someone with the personal ID number that you just gave me, completed his military service here in 1993. He followed an eleven-month training program, as a sniper."

  Ewert Grens scanned the piece of paper once more.

  It was him.

  The person they had seen die sixteen hours earlier.

  "Special training in weapons and shooting, all positions-prone, kneeling, standing, short range, long range… I think you get the gist?"

  Sterner opened the file, took out the piece of paper and copied it on a machine that was as big as the room.

  "That feeling that I had… that he knew exactly where I was, what I was doing. If he was trained here… he would have enough skills to know that Aspsås church tower was the only place that we could get him from. He knew that it was possible to kill him."

  Sterner held the copy crushed in his hand and then gave it to Grens.

  "He'd chosen that place with great care. It's no coincidence that he went to the workshop and that window, in particular. He provoked us to fire. He knew that a good, well-trained marksman could shoot him if he had to.

  He shook his head.

  "He wanted to die."

  The corridor of the intensive care unit at Danderyd hospital had yellow walls and a light blue floor. The nurses sent them friendly smiles and

  Ewert Grens and Sven Sundkvist gave equally friendly smiles back. It was a quiet morning-they had both been there for work on many occasions before, often in the evening or weekend, injured people waking on beds in the harsh light of the corridor, which was empty now, as it normally was when alcohol, football matches, and snowy roads were not the order of the day.

  They had driven there straight from Kungsingen and the Svea Life Guards, via Norrviken and Edsberg, through small and pleasant suburbs with big detached houses, which made Sven phone home to Anita and Jonas. They had had breakfast together and were about to go to their separate schools. He missed them.

  The doctor was a young man, tall and thin, on the verge of skinny, with reserved eyes. He greeted them and showed them into a dark room with drawn curtains.

  "He's got a severe concussion. I'll have to ask you to keep the room dark."

  One single bed in the room.

  A man in his sixties, graying hair, tired eyes, scratches and wounds on both his cheeks, a cut on his forehead that looked deep, his right arm in a sling.

  He was found lying under a wall.

  "My name is Johan Ferm. We met last night when you came in. I've got two policemen with me who would like to ask you some questions."

  The fire and rescue service had searched the burned-out workshop for a long time before they heard faint sounds from underneath one of the piles of rubble. A naked and bruised prison officer with a broken collar bone, but a person who was still breathing.

  "I've given them five minutes. Then I'll ask them to leave."

  The gray-haired man pulled himself up, grimaced with pain and threw up in a bowl by the side of the bed.

  "He is not allowed to move. Severe concussion. Your five minutes have already started."

  Ewert Grens turned toward the young doctor.

  "We'd prefer it if we could be left alone."

  "I'm staying here. For medical reasons."

  Grens stood by the window while Sven Sundkvist moved a stool from the sink to the bedside, making sure that his face was at about the same height as the injured prison warden's.

  "You know Grens?"

  Martin Jacobson nodded. He knew who Ewert Gr
ens was, they had met several times; the detective superintendent regularly visited the place where he had chosen to work all his life.

  "This is not an interview, Jacobson. We'll do that later, when you're well enough and we have more time. But we do need some information now." "Sorry?"

  "This is not-"

  "You'll have to speak louder. My eardrums burst in the explosion." Sven leaned forward and raised his voice.

  "We've got a fairly good picture of what happened when you were taken hostage. Your colleagues have given us a detailed description of the shooting of a prisoner in solitary confinement."

  The doctor tapped on Sven's shoulder.

  `Ask short questions. That's all he can manage. Short answers. Otherwise you'll just be wasting your five minutes."

  Sven considered turning around and telling the man in the white coat to shut up. But he didn't. He never snapped at people as it seldom helped the situation.

  "First of all… can you remember any of what happened yesterday?" Jacobson was breathing heavily, he was in a lot of pain and struggled to find the words that disappeared in his seriously concussed brain.

  "I remember everything. Until I lost consciousness. If I've understood correctly, a wall fell on me?"

  "It fell down as a result of an explosion. But I want to know… what happened just before?"

  "I don't know. I wasn't there."

  "You weren't… there?"

  "I was in another room, Hoffmann put me there, hands tied behind my back, somewhere at the back of the workshop, near the main door. He moved me there after we'd stripped. And after that I think we only had contact once. You're not going to die. That's what he said. Just before the explosion."

  Sven looked at Ewert-they had both registered what the elderly guard had just said.

  "Jacobson… do you think that Hoffmann moved you in order to… protect you?"

  Martin Jacobson answered straight away.

  "I'm sure that's why he did it. Despite everything that happened. •. I didn't feel threatened anymore."

  Sven leaned even farther forward, it was important that Jacobson could hear.

  "The explosion. I want to ask more about that. If you think back, can you remember anything that might explain it) And the incredible force of it?"

  "No."

  "Nothing at all?"

  "I've thought about it. And of course, it was a workshop and there was diesel. That explains the smoke. But the actual explosion… nothing."

  The color of Jacobson's face had changed from white to ashen gray and great drops of sweat were running from his hairline.

  The doctor moved over to the bed.

  "He can't deal with much more. Just one more question. Then I'll have to ask you to leave."

  Sven nodded. The final question.

  "Throughout the entire hostage drama, Hoffmann is silent. No communication. Except for right at the end. He's a dead man. We don't understand why. I want to know if you saw him communicating at any point? Or anything that might resemble communication? We don't understand his silence."

  The warden who was lying in a hospital bed with a wounded ashen-gray face took a while to answer. Sven got the feeling that he was drifting off, and the doctor had indicated that he should stop when Jacobson raised an arm, he wanted to continue, he wanted to answer.

  "He used the phone."

  Jacobson looked at Sven, at Ewert.

  "He used the phone. In the office at the back of the workshop. Twice."

  Ewert Grens was driving to Aspsås and the large prison for the second time that morning.

  They had paid for a cup of bitter tea and a white bread sandwich with meatballs and something purplish that Sven claimed was beetroot salad. They had sat in the cafe by the hospital entrance and eaten in silence, with Jacobson's answers to keep them company. According to the injured warden, Hoffmann had left the hostages on two occasions and gone into the workshop office. He kept them in full view through the glass partition wall while he lifted the receiver of the phone that sat on the desk and talked for about fifteen seconds each time. Once right at the start, Hoffmann had warned them not to move and had walked backward toward the office with the gun pointing at them, the other time just before the explosion. From his position behind the partition wall, the naked and bound guard had clearly seen him phoning again and saw that he was now very nervous, only a few seconds, but Jacobson was sure of it; a few moments of doubt and fear, maybe the only ones throughout the whole drama.

  There were no empty spaces in the parking lot that had been peaceful only a few hours ago. Morning had woken one of Sweden's maximum security prisons. Ewert Grens parked on some grass near the wall and, while he waited for Sven Sundkvist, made a phone call to Hermansson, who for the third day was working on a report of the murder at Vdstmannagatan 79, which was to be delivered to the prosecutor that afternoon. He would then decide whether to downgrade the investigation.

  "I want you to put it to one side for the moment."

  "Ågestam was here yesterday. He wants it this afternoon." "Hermansson?"

  "Yes?"

  "Ågestam will get the report when you've finished it. Put it to one side. I want you to make a list of all outgoing calls from Aspsås prison between eight forty-five and nine forty-five in the morning and one-thirty and two-thirty in the afternoon. Then I want you to check them. I want to know which ones we can forget and which ones might have been made from the workshop office."

  He had expected her to protest.

  She didn't.

  "Hoffmann?"

  "Hoffmann."

  The prison yard was full of inmates-it was the morning break with spring sun and they sat in groups and looked up at the sky with cheeks that turned rosy. Grens had no wish to listen to sarcastic remarks from anyone he had previously investigated and questioned and so chose to go underground, via a concrete passageway that reminded him of another investigation. Neither Ewert Grens nor Sven Sundkvist said anything, but they were thinking about the same case, how they had walked side by side five years ago, a father who had killed his daughter's murderer and then been given a long sentence himself, a case that often returned and niggled, with images that they had tried to forget for a long time. Some investigations did that.

  They came out of the passage and were struck by the silence, even in the stairwell of Block B. The annoying banging had stopped. They passed solitary confinement in B1 and the normal units in B2, which were all empty as the prisoners had been evacuated to Block K and would remain there as long as the building that still echoed from the explosion was a cordoned off crime scene and part of an investigation.

  Four forensic technicians were creeping around in different parts of the charred workshop and soot-licked walls that had once been white. The smell of diesel oil stuck to everything, a thick and sharp smell that reminded those there of how poisonous each breath had been only a day earlier. Nils Krantz left the remains of death, concentrated and determined. Neither Ewert nor Sven had ever seen him laugh; he was simply someone who functioned far better with a microscope than a cocktail glass.

  "Follow me."

  Krantz walked over to the part of the workshop that looked out over the prison yard, hunkered down in front of a wall with a hole about the size of a grapefruit, then turned and pointed straight across the room.

  "So, the bullet penetrated the window there. The window that you could see from the church tower, where Hoffmann chose to stand, fully exposed, for the whole drama. We're talking about fire and explosive ammunition and an initial velocity of eight hundred and thirty meters per second. That means three seconds from the shot being fired to hitting its target."

  Nils Krantz had never witnessed a crime happening, he had never been in a place when it became a crime scene. But that was precisely what his work entailed, being there, getting others to be there later, at the exact time that it happened.

  "The projectile penetrated a window and a skull with massive impact. Then it flattened and the velocity slowed unti
l it reached here, see the big hole, and met the next wall."

  He closed his hand around a long metal pole in the middle of the hole that showed the angle of the trajectory-the shot had been fired from somewhere higher up.

  "The bullet when loaded is nearly ten centimeters long. But the part that is fired, the bit that remains if you discount the jacket, is three, maybe even three and a half centimeters, and this then hit and ripped through parts of the wall and continued out into the prison yard. And a projectile that slices through glass, human bone, and a thick concrete wall in that order will totally flatten out and look more or less like an old eighteenth-century coin."

  Grens and Sundkvist looked at the crater in the wall. They had both listened to Jacobson talking about a sound like a whiplash, the force had been unimaginable.

  "It's out there somewhere. We haven't found it yet, but we will soon. I've got several police officers from Aspsa's district on their hands and knees in the gravel looking."

  Krantz walked over to the window where Hoffmann had stood. Red and white flags on the wall, the floor, the ceiling. More than Grens could remember from his visit during the night.

  "I've had to make a kind of system. Red for bloodstains, white for remains. I've never worked with bodies that have been so totally blown apart."

  Sven studied the small flags, tried to understand what they actually signified, moved closer-he who normally avoided unmistakeable death.

  "We're talking about an explosion and fragments of dead people. But there's something I don't understand."

  This time, Sven moved even closer. He wasn't frightened, didn't feel any discomfort. This wasn't death, he couldn't see it like that.

  "Human tissue. Thousands of bits. This type of projectile rips bodies apart. Into big bits. It doesn't explode."

  People broken down into particles that were only centimeters away from Sven, they stopped being people then.

  "So we're looking for something else. Something that exploded. Something that blows things into smithereens, not big bits."

  "Such as?"

  "An explosive. I can't think of any other explanation."

  Ewert Grens saw the red and white flags, shards of glass, soot that blanketed everything.

  "Explosive. What kind?"

  Krantz made an irritation gesture with his arms.