Three Seconds

He hadn't prepared himself to meet someone threatening and insulting.

All previous visits to this room had felt like an attack, difficult and full of animosity, but with the music gone and the feeling from last night still lingering, he giggled suddenly because it struck him it had almost felt good to come in.

He had two files on the table in front of them and opened the first one that was on top.

'Secret intelligence reports. Three hundred and two in total. The copies I printed out last night.'

He then lifted up the second file.

'Summaries of the preliminary investigations into the same cases. What you knew, what you could investigate. I've managed to go through a hundred of them. One hundred of the cases that were closed or where prosecution did not result in a conviction. I've used every minute I've had since we met at my place to find, analyze, and compare them with what actually happened. In other words, the information that some of your colleagues already had, that's reported here, in the secret intelligence reports.'

Agestam was talking about copies that were taken from a laptop that had been on the desk of one of the top ranking officers. Grens hoped that the door was still working as it should.

'Twenty-five of the cases ended in nolle prosequi-the prosecutor realized that there wasn't sufficient evidence to secure a verdict and the cases were dropped. In thirty-five cases, the accused was acquitted-the court disallowed the prosecutor to proceed.'

Lars Agestam's neck was turning flaming red as it normally did when he got agitated. Ewert Grens had witnessed it every time they faced each other with contempt. Only this time the anger was targeted at someone else and it was almost unsettling; disdain had been their only means of communication, where they felt secure-if they couldn't hide behind it, it felt awkward. Where did you start?

'If, and I'm quite sure about this, if the prosecution had had access to the facts that the police, your colleagues, Grens, already had and that were kept from us, if all the information in this damn file of secret intelligence reports hadn't been hidden on a computer in a commissioner's office, then all these cases, all of them, Grens, would have ended with a conviction.'

Sven Sundkvist ordered some more mineral water, more lemon slices. He wasn't hot anymore, the exclusive restaurant was cool and the air was easy to breathe, but he was tense.

He had only had one minute.

He had gotten Wilson to stop, turn back, sit down again.

Now he had to get him to participate.

He looked at his colleague. His face was still expressionless. But not his eyes. There was an uneasiness in their depths. They didn't waver, Wilson was far too professional for that, but the voices in the recording had surprised him, disturbed him, demanded answers.

'This recording was in an envelope in Ewert Grens's pigeonhole.' Sven nodded at the symbol on the screen that meant sound file.

'No sender. The day after Hoffmann's death. The pigeonholes, about as far from your office as mine, wouldn't you say?'

Wilson didn't sigh, didn't shake his head, didn't tense his jaw. But his eyes, the uneasiness was there again.

'The envelope contained a CD of the recording. But there was more. Three passports issued under different names, all with the same photograph, a rather grainy black-and-white picture of Hoffmann. And at the bottom of the envelope, an electronic receiver, the small silver metal kind that you put in your ear. We've been able to link it to a transmitter that was attached to a church tower in Aspsas. The spot chosen by the sniper who Grens eventually ordered to fire, as he was guaranteed to hit the target from there.'

Erik Wilson should have grabbed the edge of the white tablecloth and pulled it from the table, turning the floor to broken glass and petals. He should have spat, cried, snapped.

He didn't. He sat as still as he could, hoping that nothing would show. Sundkvist had said they were accomplices to legitimate murder.

He had said that Paula was dead.

If it had been someone else he would have continued walking. If someone else had presented him with that goddamn recording he would have dismissed it as nonsense. But Sundkvist never bullshitted. He himself did. Grens did, most policemen did, most people he knew did. But not Sundkvist.

'Before I leave, I'd like you to summarise exactly what you are guaranteeing me.”

No one except Paula could have recorded that meeting or had the motive CO do so. He had chosen to let Grens and Sundkvist in on it. He had a reason.

They burned you.

'I want to show you some pictures as well.'

Sven turned the screen toward Wilson, opened a new file.

A still, a frozen moment from one of Aspsas prison's many security cameras, a fuzzy frame around a fuzzy barred window.

'Aspsas workshop. Block B. The person you can see standing there, in profile, has eight and a half minutes left to live.'

Wilson pulled the laptop over, angled the screen-he wanted to see that person, roughly in the middle of the window, part of a shoulder, part of a face.

He had met a man ten years younger. He himself had been ten years younger. If it had been today would he have recruited Hoffmann? Would Hoffmann have wanted to be recruited? Piet had done time in Osteraker. A prison some way north of Stockholm with a whole host of small-time crooks. Piet had been one of them. His first sentence. The kind who would serve his twelve months, run around for a while, then be sentenced to twelve more.

But his roots, mother tongue, and personality could be used for more than just confirming statistics on reoffenders.

'This one? Five minutes left to live.'

Sundkvist had changed the picture. Another security camera. It was closer, no frame, just the window, the face was clearer.

They had added a few pistols to the property seized in connection with the already registered judgment, probably some kind of Kalashnikov. They normally did. It had later been easy ro ask for a new potential danger classification and tighter restrictions, no leave, no contact with the outside world. Piet had been desperate, he had listened, after months with no human contact, touch or talk, he could have been recruited for anything.

'Three minutes. I think you can see in this picture. He's shouting. A camera inside the workshop.'

A face that filled the picture.

It's him.

'He's a dead man. We've analyzed it. That's what he's shouting.'

Erik Wilson looked at the absurd picture. The distorted face. The open, desperate mouth.

He had built up Paula methodically.

A petty thief had been developed into one of the country's most dangerous criminals, document by document. Criminal record, the national court administration databases, the police criminal intelligence database. The myth of his potency enhanced by patrol after patrol who unknowingly responded on the basis of the available information. And when he was about to take that last step, right into Wojtek's nerve center, when the mission required even more respect, he had also provided it. Erik Wilson had copied a DSM-IV-TR statement, a psychopathic test that was carried out on one of Sweden's criminals with the highest security classification.

A document that had then been planted in the Prison and Probation Service records.

Piet Hoffmann suddenly had a chronic lack of conscience, was extremely aggressive and very dangerous in terms of other people's safety.

'My last picture.'

Thick, black smoke, in the distance what might be a building, at the top, what might be blue sky.

'Two twenty-six p.m. When he died.'

The square screen, he heard Sundkvist talking but continued to search in the dense blackness, tried to see the person who had just been standing there.

'There were five of you at that meeting, Erik. I need to know whether the recording that was left in an