Three Seconds

wallpaper with a seventies design. He turned off and into the first and best door, into something that resembled a library, sat down in the leather armchair that seemed to protest while the sunken seat waited for its owner. The only room in the flat that didn't scream loneliness. He followed the shelves and rows of same-size books, turned on the standard lamp that was beautifully angled and that gave off a light that colored the printed pages yellow. He leaned back as he imagined the detective superintendent did, once more read the secret intelligence report that had been written by a policeman the day after the murder at Vastmannagatan 79, whereas the investigation for which he and Grens were responsible had slowly led to nothing and closure.

M holds the gun harder to

the buyer's head and pulls the trigger.

The buyer falls to the floor, at a right angle to the chair.

Lars Agestam reached for the lampshade and pulled it closer, he wanted to see properly, be sure, now that he had decided.

He wouldn't be going home tonight.

He would, in a while, go directly from here to the Regional Public Prosecution Office and reopen the preliminary investigation.

He stood up and was about to leave the room when he noticed two black-and-white photographs on the wall between two bookshelves: a woman and a man. They were young and full of anticipation, they were wearing police uniforms and their eyes were alive.

He had always wondered what he looked like, back then, when he was someone else.

'Have you decided?'

Grens was sitting where he had left him, among the blue files and empty glasses at an elegant kitchen table.

'Yes.'

'If you prosecute, Agestam, we're not just talking about normal policemen. I'll give you a commanding officer. And an even higher ranking officer. And a state secretary.'

Lars Agestam looked at the three pieces of letter-sized paper in his hand. 'And you maintain that there's enough? I assume that I haven't seen everything.'

A security camera in Rosenbad with five people on their way into one of the offices. A recording of five voices in a closed meeting.

You haven't seen everything.

'There's enough.'

Ewert Grens smiled for the third time.

Lars Agestam thought that it looked almost natural, he smiled fleetingly back.

'Haul them in. I'll have the arrest warrants sorted within three days.'

He went down the stairs in the silent building.

It was years ago now, his painful leg on the stone stairs, but tonight he had walked past the elevator, his hand gripping the handrail. Two doors had greeted him with scurrying footsteps to doormats and peepholes as he passed, curious eyes that wanted to see him up on the fourth floor, he who never used the stairs suddenly doing so. At the bottom and the door nearest the entrance, a wall clock that chimed, he counted, twelve times.

Sveav5gen was almost empty and it was still warm, maybe they'd get a damned summer this year as well. He breathed in, one deep breath, slowly released the air.

Ewert Grens had invited another person into his home.

Ewert Grens hadn't immediately experienced a pain in his chest and asked him to leave.

He had never done that before, not since the accident-it had been her place and their shared home. He shrugged off the gentle breeze and started to walk west along Odengatan, just as empty, just as warm. He took off his jacket and undid the top buttons on his shirt.

Of all people, the well-groomed prosecutor whom he hated, whom he had met a few years ago and loathed.

He had even almost enjoyed it.

He slowed down by the kiosk on Odenplan, stood in the queue with the mobile kids sending text messages to other mobile kids, bought a hamburger and a drink that tasted of orange but had lost its bubbles. He had said no to the prosecutor's suggestion of finishing the evening with a beer in the lawyers' haunt at Frescati, only to regret it and wander restlessly from room to room until he was compelled to go out, just somewhere else, at least for a while.

Two rats at his feet, from a hole under the kiosk into the park with sleeping men on wooden benches. Four young women over there, short skirts and high-heeled shoes, running toward one of the buses that had just closed its doors and was pulling out.

He are his hamburger outside Gustav Vasa church, then turned right into a street he had visited several times in the past few weeks, blocks of flats that were on their way to bed. He looked at himself in the glass panes of the large front door, punched in the code which he now knew off by heart and took the elevator that creaked as it reached the fourth floor.

A new sign on the mailbox. The Polish name had been replaced. The brown wooden door was even older than his own. He looked at it, remembered the pool of blood under a head, small flags on the wall, the kitchen floor where Krantz had found traces of drugs.

It had started here.

The death that would force him to make a decision about more death.

Vanadisvagen, Gavlegatan, Solnabron, he carried on through the mild night, as if someone else was walking beside him and he was just following, he thought nothing, felt nothing, not until he stopped on Solna Kyrkvag in front of an opening in the fence that was called Gate 1 and was one of ten entrances to North Cemetery.

The expected edges in the inner pocket of his jacket.

He had let it lie at arm's length on his desk for months; then yesterday, without knowing why, he had taken it home with him. Now he was here, holding the map in his hand.

He wasn't even cold.

Despite the fact that he knew it was always cold in graveyards.

Ewert Grens followed the asphalt road that cut across large areas of green grass edged by birches, conifers, and trees he didn't know the names of A hundred and fifty acres, thirty thousand graves. He had avoided looking at them-rather the branches on the trees than the gray stones that marked loss-but was now looking at some older graves, those who were buried as titles, not people: a postal inspector, a stationmaster, a widow. He went on past large engraved stones that housed entire families who wanted always to be close, past other large stones that rose up stern and proud from the ground-slightly more important than the rest, even in death-to stare at him.

Twenty-nine years.

He had several times a day for most of his adult life lived through a few tainted moments-she falls out of the police van, he doesn't manage to stop in time, the back wheels roll over her head-and sometimes, if he had forgotten to think about it, if he realized that several hours had passed since the last time, he had been forced to think about it a bit longer and a bit more, mostly about the red that had been blood that poured from the head on his lap.

He couldn't do it anymore.

He looked at the trees and the graves and even the memorial garden over there, but it didn't help, no matter how much he reprimanded himself, he could not focus on the flickering in her eyes or the spasms in her legs.

What you're frightened of has already happened.

He looked around, suddenly in a rush.

He cut across the graves in an area that according to the signs was called Section I5B: beautiful, understated gravestones, people who had died with dignity and didn't need to make such a bloody fuss afterwards.

Section 16A. He lengthened his stride. Section 19E. He was out of breath, sweating.

A green watering can on a stand, he filled it with water from the tap close by, carried it with him as he hurried on and the asphalt changed to gravel.

Section 19B.