Three Seconds

out, maybe there had been a change, they were perhaps closer to tolerating each other.

He looked at the people around him again, those drinking beer in their coats and scarves in outside cafes, laughing, chatting, as people who get on well together do.

He sighed.

There had been no change, there never would be.

Grens had other reasons, Agestam was sure of it, his own reasons, ones that he would never dream of sharing with a young public prosecutor he had decided to despise.

'Grens.'

Still a lot of traffic on Sveavagen. He had to concentrate to hear the voice on the intercom.

'It's Agestam, will you-'

'I'll open. Four flights up.'

A thick reddish carpet on the floor, walls that were possibly marble, lights that were bright without being offensive. If he had lived in town, in a flat, he would have looked for an entrance like this.

He avoided the elevator, broad staircase all the way up, E AND A GRENS on the mailbox in a dark door.

'Come in.'

The large detective superintendent with the thinning hair opened the door, same clothes as that afternoon and the night before, a gray jacket and even grayer trousers.

Agestam looked around in wonder-the hall seemed endless. 'It's big.'

'I haven't spent much time here in the last few years. But still manage to find my way around.'

Ewert Grens smiled. It looked unnatural. He had never experienced it before. His coarse face was normally tense, harassing the people it was facing; the smile, a different face that made Agestam uncertain.

He walked down the long hall with rooms opening off it, counted at least six empty rooms that looked untouched, asleep. That was how Sven had described them, rooms that didn't want to wake up.

The kitchen was as spacious, as untouched.

He followed Grens through the first section and into the next, a small eating area, a gateleg table and six chairs.

'Do you live here on your own?'

'Sit yourself down.'

A pile of blue files and a large notepad in the middle, two glasses that were still wet with a bottle of Seagram's between them.

He was prepared.

'A dram? Or are you driving?'

He had made an effort. Even the same kind of whisky.

'Here? With you in the vicinity? I wouldn't dare. You might have some dusty parking fine papers in your glove compartment.'

Ewert Grens remembered a cold winter's night one and a half years ago. He had crawled around on his hands and knees, his creased suit trousers in the wet new snow and measured the distance between a car and Vasagatan.

Agestam's car.

He smiled again, a smile that was almost unnerving.

'As I remember it, the parking fine was dismissed. By the prosecutor himself.'

In a fury, he had fined Lars Agestam for his eight-centimeter error in parking, weary of a public prosecutor who made things difficult when the search for a sixteen-year-old girl who had disappeared forced them down into the tunnels under Stockholm.

'You can pour me half a glass.'

They both took a drink while Grens produced a document from one of the files and put it down in front of Agestam.

'You got three hundred and two secret intelligence reports. About what actually happened, things the rest of us didn't know and so couldn't present in our official investigations.'

Lars Agestam nodded.

'That unit at Aspsas. For only police officers. When I charge Them all.' 'They were reports from last year. But this copy, this is still warm.'

M pulls a gun

(Polish 9mm Radom)

from shoulder holster.

M cocks the gun and holds it to the buyer's head.

'Submitted to the county police commissioner, like all the others.'

P orders M to calm down.

IA lowers the gun, takes a step

back, his weapon half-cocked.

Lars Agestam was about to speak when Grens interrupted.

'I've spent… I'd guess… half my time working on Vastmannagaran since the alarm was raised. Sven Sundkvist and Mariana Hermansson as well. Nils Krantz estimates that he and three other colleagues spent a week searching the place with magnifying glasses and fingerprint lifting tape, Errfors says that he used as much time to analyze the body of a Danish citizen. A number of constables and detectives have guarded the crime scene, questioned neighbors and looked for bloody shirts in garbage cans for-if I'm conservative-twenty days.'

He looked at the prosecutor.

'And you? How many hours have you put into this case?'

Agestam shrugged.

'Hard to say… a week.'

Suddenly the buyer shouts

'I'm the police.'

M again aims the gun

at the buyer's head.

Ewert Grens snatched the intelligence report out of Agestam's hands and waved it in front of him.

'Thirteen and a half working weeks. Five hundred and forty man-hours. When my colleagues and bosses who sit in the same corridor already had the answer. He even phoned, Agestam, it says here, Hoffmann damn well rang himself and raised the alarm!'

Lars Agestam reached out for the report.

'Can I have it back?'

He left the table, went into the other part of the kitchen and opened one of the wall cupboards, looking for something, opened another one.

'What's the purpose of all this?'

'I want to solve a murder.'

'Do you not understand what I'm asking, Grens? What's the purpose of all this?'

He found what he was looking for, a glass, filled it with water. 'I have no intention of carrying the guilt.'

'Guilt?'

'You've got nothing to do with it, Agestam. But that's the truth. I'm not going to carry the guilt anymore. That's why I'm going to make sure that the people responsible are going to carry it for me.'

The public prosecutor looked at the report.

'And you can use the report to do that?'

'Yes. If I manage to finish this. Before tomorrow morning.'

Lars Agestam stood in the middle of the large kitchen. He could hear the traffic through the open window-it had slowed, fewer cars that drove faster, it was starting to get late.

'Can I wander around a bit? Here in the flat?'

'Feel free.'

The hall seemed even longer than before, thick rugs on a parquet floor that was dark but not worn, brown