Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

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 into the back seat and asked the astonished policeman to drive him to Västmannagatan 79 and to wait for him there.