Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

Another day from hell.

He had lied to an investigating officer and chewed his lower lip to shreds. He had forced a prisoner to go back to the unit where he was threatened and when the prisoner had taken hostages, had ripped the yellow petals of the tulips into tiny, porous pieces and dropped them on the wet floor. When his mobile phone rang, the ringtone echoing in the empty surroundings, he went into one of the empty cells and lay down exhausted on one of the bunks with no mattress.

"Oscarsson?"

He recognized the general director's voice immediately, stretched out his body on the hard bunk.

"Yes?"

"His demands?"

"What are his demands?"

"Nothing."

"Three hours and fifty-four minutes. And not a single demand?" "No communication at all."

He had just seen a mouth fill a TV monitor, tight lips that slowly formed words about death. He couldn't bear to talk about it.

"If there are demands, when he makes demands, Lennart, he's not allowed to leave the prison."

"I don't understand."

"If he asks for the gate to be opened, you mustn't allow it. Under any circumstances."

The hard bunk. He couldn't feel it.

"Am I understanding you correctly? You want me to… to ignore the policy that you yourself have written? And that all of us who hold senior positions have signed? That if anyone's life is in danger, if we believe a hostage taker is prepared to carry out any threats he has made, if he demands to be released, we should open the gates to save lives. And that is the agreement that you now want me to ignore?"

"I know what policies and regulations I've formulated. But… Lennart, if you still like your job, then you'll do as I ask you."

He couldn't move. It was impossible.

"As you ask me?"

Everyone has their limits, an exact point beyond which they can't go. This was his.

"Or as someone has asked you?"

"Get up."

Piet Hoffmann was standing between the two naked bodies. He had bent down toward one of them and spoken close to the tired, old eyes until they had finally understood and started to get up. The prison warden who was called Jacobson grimaced with pain as he straightened his knees and back and started to walk in the direction pointed out by the hostage taker-past the three solid concrete pillars and in behind a wall near the door, a separate part that seemed to be some kind of store: unopened cardboard boxes stacked up one on the other with sticky labels from tool and machine part suppliers. He was to sit down-Hoffmann pushed him to the floor in irritation when he didn't move fast enough-he was to leanback and stretch out his legs, so that it would be easier to tie his feet together. The older man tried to reach out to him in desperation several times, asking why and how and when, but got no answer, then watched Piet Hoffmann's silent back until it disappeared somewhere behind a drill and a workbench.

That bloody banging. Ewert Grens shook his head. It seemed to follow a pattern. The nutters banged on their cell doors for two minutes, then waited for one, then banged for two more. So he walked over to the security office, with Edvardson directly behind him, and made sure he closed the door properly. The two small monitors side by side on a desk showed the same picture, all black, a camera turned to the workshop wall. He reached over for the coffeepot which was cold and had a brown, heavy fluid at the bottom. He turned it almost upside down and waited while brown fluid trickled slowly into one of the already used mugs, offered it to John Edvardson, but had it all to himself. He drank and swallowed-it wasn't particularly nice, but strong enough.

"Hello."

He had just about emptied the white plastic mug when the telephone in front of him started to ring.

"Detective Superintendent Grens?"

He looked around. All these damn cameras. Central security had seen him go into the security office and connected the call.

"Yes."

"Can you hear who it is?"

Grens recognized the voice. The bureaucrat who sat a couple of floors up from him in the police headquarters at Kronoberg.

"I know who you are."

"Can you talk? There's something making an almighty din there." "I can talk."

He heard the national police commissioner clear his throat.

"Has the situation changed at all?"

"No. We want to act. We should be able to. But right now we haven't got the right people. And time is running out."

"You asked for a military marksman."

"Yes."

"That's why I'm calling. Your request is now on my desk."

"Just a moment."

Grens waved at Edvardson, he wanted him to check the door, make sure that it was closed properly.

"Hello?"

"I think I have a solution."

The national police commissioner was quiet, waiting for a reaction from Grens, but then carried on when the void was filled with the noise from the corridor.

"I've just signed a contract. I have employed an instructor and military marksman, who was recently discharged, as an assistant commissioner for six hours. He's been serving with the Svea Life Guards at Kungsangen. The position will initially entail supporting Aspsås police district. He has just left Kungsangen in a helicopter and will land at Aspsås church in ten, max fifteen minutes. When his contract ends, in exactly five hours and fifty-six minutes, he will be collected and taken back to Kungsangen in the same helicopter and will then apply for the newly vacant position for an instructor and military marksman which has not yet been advertised."

He heard it when it was no more than a small spot in the cloudless sky. He ran over to the window and watched it grow as the noise got louder and then land, blue and white, on the tall grass in the field between the prison wall and the churchyard. Piet Hoffmann looked at the two people waiting high up on the church tower balcony, then at the helicopter and the police officers running toward it. He listened to the people moving around on the roof above his head and the ones just outside the door and he nodded to no one in particular. Now, now everything was in place. He checked that the nameless prisoner's hands and legs were tied well enough and then hurried over to the wall that separated the storeroom from the rest of the workshop, managed to get the old warden up, forced him to walk in front of him across the floor to one of the cameras that was pointing to the wall-he turned it and made sure that the whole of his mouth and the warden's was clear when he spoke.

He leaned forward as he walked, dressed in a white-and-gray camouflage uniform. He was in his forties and had introduced himself as Sterner.

"I can't do this."

As they walked over to the church and then went up the stairs and the aluminum ladder, Ewen Grens had described a hostage drama that was out of control and might culminate in a shot from the church tower.

"Can't? What the hell do you mean?"

The military marksman who, for another five hours and thirty-eight minutes would legally serve as a policeman, had emerged onto the narrow balcony and switched places with one of the two men already lying there.

"This is not a normal sniper rifle. It's an M107. It's a heavier, more powerful, anti-materiel rifle. For targeting buses. Or boats. Exploding mines.

He had greeted the colleague who was still there and would function as an observer.

"Long distance. That was the information I was given. That was what I should be prepared for. But this- I can't shoot at a soft target."

Holding the binoculars, he had observed Piet Hoffmann in one corner of the window and realized what this was all about.

Now he looked at Grens.

"I'm sorry, so he-that man there-is a soft target?"

"Yes."

"And… what exactly does that mean?"