Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

"I was given it by Ågestam nearly five years ago after we'd had a slight altercation. It's a modern one, the kind that young people have. Don't tell him, but I haven't actually used it much. Until a couple of weeks ago, that is. When I started listening to some interesting recordings."

The bag of cinnamon buns was in the way, so he moved it.

"But these I've borrowed from the property store. From a burglary in a flat in Stora Nygatan. The preliminary investigation was closed. The seized property released. No one claimed it."

He positioned two small speakers on the table and took his time wiring them up.

"If they're good… who knows, I might just keep them."

Ewert Grens pressed one of the buttons.

Chairs scraping, noise of people moving.

"A meeting."

He looked around the room.

"In this room. At this table. Tenth of May at fifteen forty-nine. I'll fast forward a bit, twenty-eight minutes and twenty-four seconds."

He turned to his line manager.

Göransson had taken off his jacket, revealing dark stains near the armholes of his light blue shirt.

"The person speaking. I think you'll recognize the voice."

"You've dealt with similar cases before."

"You let me, Sven, Hermansson, Krantz, Errfors and…"

"Ewert-"

"… a whole bloody bunch of policemen work for weeks on an investigation that you already had the answer to."

Göransson looked at him for the first time. He had started to speak but Grens shook his head.

"I'll be done soon."

Fingers on the machine's sensitive buttons, got the right one after a while.

"I'll fast forward some more. Twenty-two minutes and seventeen seconds. The same meeting. Another voice."

"I don't want that to happen. You don't want that to happen. Paula doesn't have time for Västmannagatan."

Ewert Grens looked at the national police commissioner.

Maybe the well-polished veneer was starting to crack, it certainly felt like that: too many twitches around the eyes, hands rubbing slowly together.

"Lie to your colleagues. Burn your employees. Give some crimes immunity so that others can be solved. If that is the future of policing… then I'm glad it's only six years until I retire."

He didn't expect a response, adjusted the speakers so they stood face on when he turned them toward the state secretary.

"He was sitting directly opposite you. Doesn't it feel strange?"

"I guarantee that you won't be charged for anything that happened at

Västmannagatan 79. I guarantee that we will do our best to help you complete

your operation in prison."

"A microphone, at about knee-height, on a person who was sitting in the same place that I am now."

And… that we will look after you when the work is done. I know that you will then have a death threat and be branded throughout the criminal world. We will give you a new life, a new identity, and money to start over again abroad."

Grens lifted the small speakers, moved them even closer toward the state secretary.

"I want to be sure that you hear what comes next."

Her voice again, exactly where he'd interrupted her.

"I guarantee you this in my capacity as a state secretary of the Ministry of Justice."

He reached for the white paper bag, first one more cinnamon bun, then what was left of the coffee at the bottom of his cup.

"Crime: failure to report a crime. Crime: protection of a criminal. Crime: conspiring to commit crime."

He was anticipating that they might ask him to leave, threaten to call security, ask him what the hell he thought he was doing.

"Crime: perjury. Crime: gross misuse of public office. Crime: forgery of documents."

They sat still. They said nothing.

"Perhaps you know of others?"

Some seagulls had been circling outside the window since the meeting began.

Their loud screeches were now the only thing to be heard.

That, and the regular breathing of four people around a table.

Ewert Grens stood up after a while, walked slowly across the room, first to the window and the birds, then back to the people who were no longer in a rush to get anywhere.

"I won't carry the guilt. Not anymore. Not again."

Three days earlier he had dared to make a decision he had dreaded throughout his working life-to fire a lethal shot at another person.

"I was not responsible for his death."

Last night he had dared to spend several hours in a cemetery-a modest grave that he had been more frightened of than anything else he could remember.

"I was not responsible for her death."

His voice, it was remarkably calm again.

"It was not me who committed murder."

He pointed at them, one at a time.

"It was you. It was you. It was you."

A couple of centimeters above the tail bone, the third or fourth vertebra, the pain was unbearable at times. He moved with care, he pedalled with his feet in the air, one at a time, then nothing could be heard and the intense pain was dulled for a while.

He didn't notice the smell, the stench of urine and feces; in the first few hours perhaps, but that was a long time ago, not now, not anymore.

He had kept his eyes open the first evening and night and morning, looking for what couldn't be seen, shouting voices and running feet. But he had his eyes closed all the time now, the heavy darkness. He couldn't see anything in any case.

He was lying on square pieces of aluminum that had been welded to form a long, round pipe-he guessed about sixty centimeters in diameter, just enough room for his shoulders and if he stretched his arms up he could press his palms against the top of the pipe.

There was still pressure on his stomach and he let go of the drops that trickled down his thighs-it felt better, eased the discomfort. He hadn't had anything to drink since the morning before he took the hostages, only the urine he managed to catch and lift to his mouth, a couple of handfuls over a hundred hours.

He knew that a person could survive a week without water, but thirst was like hosting madness and his lips and palate and throat shrivelled in the presence of dryness. He held out, just as he held out against the hunger and pain in his joints from lying so still, and against the dark that he had relaxed into once the shouting and running feet fell silent. It was the heat that had made him think about giving up a couple of times. All electricity had been turned off in connection with the smoke and fire and when the ventilation system no longer supplied fresh air, the temperature in the sealed pipe had risen and felt like a fever. In the last few hours he had just aimed at a couple of minutes at a time, but that didn't work anymore, he couldn't stand much more.

He should have left the pipe yesterday.

That was what he had planned: three days for the adrenaline and full alert to die down.

But yesterday afternoon someone had opened the door, come in, and walked around in the substation. He had lain petrified and listened to the footsteps and breathing of a guard or electrician or plumber only half a meter below him. The control room for the prison's water and electricity was only checked a few times a week, he knew that, but still he waited for another twenty-four hours to be on the safe side.

He pulled his left arm up toward his face, looked at the watch that had belonged to the elderly warden.

Quarter to seven. Another hour to lock-up.

Then an hour and a quarter for the staff to change shifts, when the day guards became the night guards.

It was time.

He checked that the scissors were still in his trouser pocket, the ones that had been in a pen holder on the desk in the workshop office and that he had cut his long hair with on the first day, his arm and hand movements restricted by the inside of the pipe, but he had plenty of time to do it and it had been a good way to forget the sound of people looking for body parts. He teased them out of his pocket again and, arm back, hit the inside of the pipe hard with the point until his fingertips felt a hole and he could slash the soft metal with the blades. He braced his body directly above the cut and pushed back, feet against the base, both hands against the sharp edges of the metal. He was bleeding heavily when the pipe finally gave way and he sank through the aluminum and fell onto the stone floor of the substation.