Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

He pulled the telephone over, remembered the number that he often dialed at this time of night. The voice was weak, as always when someone has just woken up.

"Hello?"

"Anita?"

"Who…"

"It's Ewen."

An exasperated sigh from a dark bedroom upstairs in a terraced house somewhere in Gustaysberg.

"Sven's not here. He's spending the night on an plane, on the way to the USA. Because you sent him there a couple of hours ago."

"I know."

"So don't call here again tonight."

"I know."

"Goodnight, Ewert."

"I always phone Sven. So you'll have to take it. You see… I'm so damn angry.”

Her slow breathing, he could hear it.

"Ewert?"

"Yes?"

"Phone someone else. Someone who gets paid for it. I have to sleep."

She hung up. He stared at the unfamiliar laptop sitting on his desk that stared back at him, at his concealed rage.

Sven was on an plane somewhere over the Atlantic.

Hermansson. It didn't feel right to call her, a young woman and an old man in the middle of the night.

Grens lifted the plastic pocket on the blotter, ran his finger down the long list. He found what he was looking for and punched in the number of the one person he had absolutely no desire to talk to.

Eight rings.

He put the phone down, waited for exactly one minute, then called again.

Someone answered immediately. Someone snatched the phone from its cradle.

"Is that you, Grens?"

"So you were awake?"

"I am now. What the hell do you want?"

Ewert Grens loathed him. Inflexible, hierarchical. Qualities he despised, but actually ones he needed now

"Ågestam?"

"Yes?"

"I need your help."

Lars Ågestam yawned, stretched, collapsed in a heap.

"Go to bed, Grens."

"Your help. Now."

"Simple answer. The same one you get every time you wake me and my family up at this time. Call the duty officer."

He hung up. Ewert Grens didn't wait this time, rang back straight away. "Grens! Don't you… bloody dare, you-"

"Hundreds of cases. In the last year alone. Witnesses and evidence and interviews that… that disappeared."

Lars Ågestam cleared his throat.

"What are you talking about?"

"We have to meet."

Someone said something in the background. Sounded like Ågestam's wife. Grens tried to remember what she looked like. They had met, he remembered that but not her face, one of the kind that lack definition. "Grens, are you drunk?"

"Hundreds. You've been involved in several yourself."

"Of course. We can meet. Tomorrow."

"Now, Ågestam! I don't have much time. Monday morning. By then… then it's too late. And what I need to tell you… it's as much for your sake. don't you understand how bizarre it feels to say that? To you?"

The female voice in the background again. Grens could hear it, but not what it said. Ågestam whispered when he spoke again.

"I'm listening."

"It's not something I can say over the phone."

"But I'm listening!"

"We have to meet. You'll understand why."

The public prosecutor sighed.

"Come here then."

"To you?"

"To my house."

He had passed Åkeshov metro station and drove into an area of detached houses from the forties, the educated middle class. It was going to be a beautiful day, you could tell from the sun growing in the distance. He stopped the car in front of a garden with large apple trees at the end of a sleeping street. He had been here once before, about five years ago. The newly appointed prosecutor had received a number of threats during the trial of a young father accused of murder and Grens had not taken it very seriously until the yellow house had black paint, you're dead, you bastard, sprayed from the kitchen to the sitting room.

Two big cups on the table.

A pot of freshly brewed tea between them.

"Black, isn't it?"

"Black."

Grens drank the whole cup and Ågestam filled it again.

"Nearly as good as the stuff from the machine in the corridor." "It's quarter past four in the morning. What do you want?"

The briefcase was already on the table. Grens opened it and pulled out three files.

"Do you recognize these?"

Lars Ågestam nodded.

"Yes."

"Three investigations that we've worked on together over the past year."

Ewert Grens pointed to them, one at a time.

"Serious drug offense, parking lot in Regeringsgatan. Tried and acquitted.

Firearms offense, pathway under Liljeholm bridge. Tried and acquitted.

Attempted kidnapping, Magnus Ladulåsgatan. Tried and acquitted."

"Can you keep your voice down? My wife. My children. They're asleep." Ågestam waved his hand at the ceiling, the floor above.

"Have you got children? You didn't the last time."

"Well, I do now."

Grens lowered his voice.

"Do you remember them?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You know why. I didn't get approval. Lack of evidence."

Grens put the files to one side, replaced them with a laptop that had until recently been on a high ranking officer's desk behind a locked door. He searched through the documents, as before, turned the screen toward the prosecutor.

"I want you to read."

Lars Ågestam picked up the teacup, lifted it to his mouth and there it remained. He couldn't get it any farther, his fingers frozen.

"What is this?"

He looked at Ewert Grens.

"Grens? What is this?"

"What is it? The same addresses. The same times. But a different truth." "I don't understand."

"This one? Serious drug offense, parking lot, Regeringsgatan. But what actually happened. Described in a secret intelligence report written by a policeman who wasn't part of the investigation."

Ewert Grens looked on the computer again.

"Two more. Read."

His neck was red. Hand through his hair.

"And this one?"

"This one? Firearms offense, pathway under Liljeholm bridge. And this one? Attempted kidnapping, Magnus Ladulåsgatan. Also what actually happened. Also described in a secret intelligence report written by police who weren't part of the investigation."

The prosecutor stood up.

"Grens, I-"

'And this is just three of three hundred and two cases from last year. They're all there. The truth we were never told. Crimes that were swept under the carpet so that other crimes could be solved. An official investigation, the sort that you and I deal with. And another that exists only here, in secret intelligence reports for police management."

Ewert Grens looked at the man in a robe in front of him.

"Lars, you were involved in twenty-three of them. Cases where you prosecuted and were unsuccessful. You closed them because you didn't have all the information that was included in the real report, the secret one, the one that would have nailed the snitch."

Lars Ågestam didn't stir.

He said Lars.

It feels… weird, uninvited. It's only my name. But when Grens says it… it's almost uncomfortable.

He has never used my first name before.

I don't want him to do it ever again.

"The snitch?"

"The snitch. The informant. The covert human intelligence source. A criminal who commits crimes that we then overlook because he's helping us to deal with other crimes."

Ågestam had been holding the cup in front of his mouth throughout the whole conversation. He put it down now.

"Whose laptop?"

"You don't want to know."

"Whose?"

"The county police commissioner."

Lars Ågestam got up from the table, disappeared out of the kitchen and up the stairs with hurried steps.

Ewert Grens watched him.

I've got more.

Västmannagatan 79.

You'll get that as well. When we wrap all this up. In the next twenty-four hours.