Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

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.