Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

"According to the chancellor of justice that question qualifies as investigation of sources. And that, I believe, Ewert, is a crime that carries a prison sentence.

"Colleagues, in other words."

She continued.

"I've crossed them all out. So I have thirty qualified explanations." She moved her finger to the numbers at the bottom.

"That leaves two phone calls. One in the morning, at nine twenty-three, and one in the afternoon at twelve minutes past two. Calls from Aspsås prison to a contract phone registered at the Ericsson offices in Vastberga."

The next plastic sleeve, handwritten notes from a note pad.

"I followed the number up. According to Ericsson's HR department, the phone is used by one of their employees called Zofia Hoffmann."

Grens spluttered.

"Hoffmann."

"Married to a Piet Hoffmann."

She turned over the piece of paper. More handwriting.

"I checked the personal details I was given. Zofia Hoffmann is registered as living in Stockrosvägen in Enskede. According to her employer, the company's correct name is evidently Ericsson Enterprise AB. She disappeared from the workplace yesterday just before lunch."

"While the hostage drama was ongoing."

"Yes."

"Between phone calls."

"Yes.

Ewert Grens got up out of the soft sofa and stretched his aching back while Hermansson took out another piece of paper.

"According to the tax authorities, Zofia and Piet Hoffmann have two children together. The two boys have attended a nursery school at an address in Enskededalen every weekday for the past three years and are collected by either their mother or father at around five o'clock. But yesterday, a couple of hours before her husband was shot to death by us, and exactly twenty minutes after she left work, Zofia Hoffmann picked up the boys considerably earlier than normal without notifying any of the staff. She seemed tense-two of the nursery school teachers described her as that, she didn't meet their eye, didn't seem to hear their questions."

Mariana Hermansson studied the older man who bent down to touch the floor, then up and leaned back; his large body and an exercise that he had no doubt learned in a strict gym half a century ago.

"I sent a patrol car around to their house, a detached house built in the fifties, a few minutes' drive south of the city. We looked in through two closed windows, rang the doorbell, saw that the doors were locked, looked through the letter box and could see today's newspaper and yesterday's post. Nothing. Nothing, Ewert, to indicate that anyone in the family had been there since yesterday morning."

Twice more. He bent forward and then leaned back.

"Issue an arrest warrant."

An arrest warrant was issued for Zofia Hoffmann thirty minutes ago." Ewert Grens nodded briefly; it might have been praise.

"He phoned her. He warned her. He protected her from the consequences of his own death."

She had stepped out into the corridor and closed the door when she stopped, turned round and opened it again.

"There was one more thing."

Grens was still standing in the middle of the floor.

"Yes?"

"Can I come in?"

"You've never asked for permission before."

It felt ominous.

She had been on her way to tell him all morning and had still managed to leave his office without having spoken about why she really came.

"I know something that may hold the key. And that you should have known yesterday, but I didn't get to you in time."

She wasn't used to being out of control, of not being sure that she was doing the right thing.

"I was on my way to tell you. I ran through the prison corridors and drove as fast as I could toward the church."

It was a feeling she didn't like. Not anytime, and certainly not here, with Ewert.

"I tried to call but your phone was switched off. I knew that every minute, second counted. I could hear you and the sniper talking on the car radio. Your order. The sound of the gun being fired."

"Hermansson?"

"Yes?"

"Get to the point."

She looked at him. She was nervous. It was a long time since she had felt like this in here.

"You asked me to talk to Oscarsson. I did. The circumstances surrounding Hoffmann, Ewert-someone was giving Oscarsson orders, someone was telling him what to do."

She had learned to read his face.

She knew what it meant when the color started to rise in his cheeks and the vein on his temple started to throb.

"The night before you went there, Oscarsson was ordered to let a lawyer visit one of the prisoners in the same unit as Hoffmann, and then to prevent you or anyone else from questioning him or meeting him. He was ordered to move him back to the unit where he came from, despite the fact that prisoners who have been threatened are never moved back, and, in contravention of the prison service's own regulations, that the gates should be kept shut, even if Hoffmann demanded that they be opened."

"Hermansson, what the hell-"

"Ewert, let me finish. I had the information but I didn't get to you in time. And after… the explosion, it didn't seem relevant to talk about it just then."

He put his hand on her shoulder. Something he had never done before. "Hermansson. I'm furious, but not at you. You did the right thing. But I do want to know who."

"Who?"

"Who made the orders?"

"I don't know."

"Don't know!"

"He wouldn't tell me."

Ewert Grens almost ran across the room to the desk and the shelves behind. A hole with edges of dust. It wasn't there. The music that had given him comfort and strength for all these years. It was at times like this he had needed it most, when anger tipped over into rage, starting somewhere in his belly, burning its way to every part of his body, and it would stay there until he knew who had made him into a useful idiot, who had let him shoot.

"With that information, I wouldn't have ordered the sniper to fire." He looked at his young colleague.

"If I had known what I know now… Hoffmann would never have died."

The brown plastic cup would soon be full of strong, black, bitter coffee. The machine rattled as it normally did, mostly toward the end, reluctant to give up the last drops. Chief Superintendent Göransson drank the coffee while he was out in the corridor. He saw Mariana Hermansson coming out of Grens's office, a file under her arm. He knew what their meeting had been about, they were doing exactly what they should, filing the reports required following a lethal shooting at Aspsås.

I did not participate.

He crushed the cup, the hot liquid running down the back of his hand.

I jumped ship.

Göransson drank some more of the bitterness, emptied the cup. He greeted Sven Sundkvist, who was passing. He also had a couple of files under his arm, on his way to the office that Hermansson had just left, to Ewert Grens.

He noticed the flushed cheeks, the pulsing vein by his temple.

Sven knew Ewert Grens better than anyone else in the building, he had had to face his boss's anger and learn to deal with it, so now when the shouting and the kicking of trash cans took over he no longer saw or heard it, it had nothing to do with him. Only Ewert could chase his own demons.

"You don't look happy."

"Drop by Hermansson when you're done here. She'll explain. I can't face it right now."

Sven looked at the man in the middle of the floor. They had met earlier that morning. This boiling rage hadn't been there then.

Something had happened.

"What do you know about Wilson?"

"Erik?"

"Are there any other Wilsons on the goddamn corridor?"

Another kind of anger. Clear, tangible. Ewert could be angry about most things, a difficult, irritated anger that was such a frequent caller that it never got through. But this anger was serious, it demanded space and he tried not to downplay it.