Three Seconds

envelope in Grens's pigeonhole is genuine. If what can be heard here is exactly what was said. If three people who have never touched a trigger were accomplices to legitimate murder.'

His neck was now red all the way up. His fringe had flopped and for a while stood out in every direction, he paced, frustrated, up and down in front of Grens's desk.

Lars Agestam was almost hissing.

'This damned system, Grens. Criminals working for the police. Criminals' own crimes being covered up and downplayed. One crime is legitimized so that another one can be investigated. Policemen who lie and withhold the truth from other policemen. Damn it, Grens, in a democratic society.'

During the night he had printed out three hundred two secret intelligence reports from the county police commissioner's laptop. So far he had managed to go through one hundred of them, comparing the truth with the city police investigations. Twenty-five had resulted in nolle prosequi, thirty-five in an acquittal.

'Judgments were given in the remaining forty cases, but I can tell you that the judgments were wrong due the lack of underlying information. The people who were tried were given sentences, but for the wrong crime. Grens, are you listening? In all cases!'

Ewert Grens looked at the prosecutor, suit and tie, a file in one hand, glasses in the other.

A bloody rotten system.

And there's more, Agestam.

Soon we'll talk about the intelligence report you haven't seen yet, the one that is so hot off the press that it's in a separate file.

Vastmannagatan 79.

An investigation that we closed when other policemen with offices on the same corridor had the answer we lacked, which meant that a person had to be burned and they needed a useful idiot to carry the can.

'Thank you. You've done a good job.'

He held out his hand to the prosecutor he would never learn to like.

Lars Agestam took it, shook for a bit too long perhaps, but it felt good, personal, on the same side for the first time, the long hours at night, each with a glass of whisky and Grens who had called him Lars on one occasion. He smiled.

Conscious spite and attempted insult, he didn't need to worry this time. He let go of his hand and had just started to head for the door with a strange joy in his heart when he suddenly turned around.

'Grens?'

'Yes?'

'That map you showed me when I was here last.'

'Yes?'

'You asked about Haga. North Cemetery. If it was nice there.'

It was lying on the desk. He had seen it as soon as he came in. A map of a resting place that had been used for more than two hundred years and was one of the largest in the country.

Grens kept it at hand. He was going to go there.

'Did you find what you were looking for?'

Ewert Grens was breathing heavily, rocking his great bulk.

'Well, did you?'

Grens turned round pointedly. He said nothing, just the labored breathing as he faced the pile of files on the desk.

'Hm, Agestam?'

'Yes?'

He didn't look at the visitor who was about to leave, his voice was different, it was a bit too high and the young prosecutor had long since learned that that often meant discomfort.

'You seem to have misinterpreted something.'

'Right?'

'You see, Agestam, this is just work. I am not your damn buddy.'

They had gotten their food, fish that wasn't salmon, the waiter's suggestion. I need to know whether the recording that was left in an envelope in Grens's pigeonhole is genuine. They had eaten without speaking, without even looking at each other. If what can be heard here is exactly what was said. The questions were there on the table beside the candlestick and pepper grinder, waiting for them. If three people who have never touched a trigger were accomplices to a legitimate murder.

'Sundkvist?'

Erik Wilson put his cutlery down on the empty plate, emptied his third glass of mineral water, lifted the napkin from his knee.

'Yes.'

'You've come a long way for nothing.'

He had decided.

'You see, in some way… it's like we're all in the same business.'

'You went to see Grens the next day. You knew, Erik, but you said nothing.'

'In the same business. The criminals. The people investigating the crime. And the informants make up the gray zone.'

He wasn't going to say anything.

'And Sundkvist, this is the future. More informants. More covert human intelligence. It's a growth area. That's why I'm here.'

'If you had talked to us then, Erik, we wouldn't have been sitting opposite each other today. On either side of a dead man.'

'And that is why my European colleagues are here. We're here to learn. As it will continue to expand.'

They had worked on the same corridor for so damn long.

Wilson had never before seen Sven Sundkvist lose control.

'I want you to listen bloody closely now, Erik!'

Sven grabbed the laptop, a plate on the white marble floor, a glass on the white tablecloth.

'I can fast forward or rewind to wherever you want. Here? See that? The exact moment that the bullet penetrates the reinforced glass.'

A mouth shouting in a monitor.

'Or here? The exact moment the workshop explodes.'

A face in profile in a window.

'Or here, maybe? I haven't shown you this one yet. The remnants. The flags on the wall. All that remains.'

A person stopped breathing,

'You're responding the way you're supposed to respond, the way you've always responded: You protect your informant. But for Christ's sake, Erik, he's dead! There's nothing to protect anymore! Because you and your colleagues failed to do exactly that. That's why he's standing there in the window. That's why he dies exactly… there.'

Erik Wilson reached out to the computer screen that was turned toward him, closed it with a snap, and pulled out the plug.

'I have worked as a handler as long as you have sat a few doors down. I have been responsible for informants all my working life. I have never not succeeded.'

Sven Sundkvist opened the laptop and turned it back again.

'You can keep the cord. The battery's got plenty of juice.'

He pointed to the screen.

'I don't understand, Erik. You've worked together for nine years. But when I show you that picture there… the exact moment he… there, do you see, exactly there he dies… you don't react.'

Erik Wilson snorted.