Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

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.