Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

"Then we've got about the same distance. I'm just passing Haga Park. What's it about?"

"Tell you when we get there."

Another locked gate in another uniformed world.

Grens and Sundkvist arrived at the Svea Life Guards in Kungsangen only a few minutes apart. Sterner was waiting for them by the regiment guardhouse. He looked rested, but was wearing the same clothes as the day before, white-and-gray camouflage, creased after a night on top of the bedclothes. Standing in front of the closed gate and with the barracks behind him, he looked the cliché of a model American marine, cropped hair and broad-shouldered, square face, the kind that on films always stand too near and shout too loud.

"Same clothes as yesterday?"

"Yup. When the helicopter dropped me off… I went and lay down." "And you slept?"

"Like a baby."

Grens and Sundkvist exchanged looks. The guy who had fired had slept. But the one who had made the decision to fire, and his closest colleague, had not.

Sterner signed them in and showed the way to a deserted barrack square, with solid buildings that stared down at all visitors. Sterner walked fast and Grens had difficulty keeping up when they went through the first door and carried on up the stairs, down long corridors with stone floors, conscripts still in underpants ahead of a day in uniform.

"Life Guards. First company. The ones who are going to be officers and stay longest."

He stopped in a room with simple, institutional furniture, white walls that needed painting, and plastic flooring on hard concrete.

Four work stations, one in each corner.

"My colleagues won't be coming in today. A two-day exercise in north Uppland, around Tierp. We won't be disturbed here."

He closed the door.

"I called as soon as I woke up. The thought that I had as I fell asleep came back to me and refused to leave the bed."

He leaned forward.

"I observed. With the binoculars. I watched him for a long rime. I followed his movements, his face for nearly half an hour."

"And?"

"He was standing in the window, fully exposed. You mentioned it too, I heard you. Like he knew he could be seen, that he wanted to demonstrate his power over the hostages, the whole situation, maybe even you. You said that he was doing it because he was sure he was out of range."

"Right."

"That's what you said. What you believed."

He looked at the door, as if he wanted to reassure himself that it really was shut.

"I didn't think that. Not then. And not now."

"I think you'll need to explain that."

Grens felt uneasy, the same feeling that had kept him awake, that was in some way connected to the feeling he got in the burned-out workshop. There was something that wasn't right.

"When I was watching him through the binoculars. Object in clear sight. Awaiting order. I don't know, it was like he knew. I repeat. Awaiting order. As if he knew that he was in range."

"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."