Three Seconds

'Then I think you should stick on the blue light. It's quicker?'

Ewert Grens leaned back in the seat when the car approached Norrtull and the northbound E4. Who are you? He had the headphones on, so he would be able to listen to it several times before they stopped outside Terminal 5. What were you doing there? He was on his way to see someone who knew more about at least one of the people who had been in the flat when a lead and titanium bullet had penetrated one man's head, and he would not return until he knew more himself. Where are you now?

He held the plastic bag in his hand, swinging slowly back and forth between the steering wheel and the door.

Piet Hoffmann had left number five at half past eleven that morning, an empty flat that could be accessed from two addresses. He had felt stressed, the shooting at Vastmannagatan, the breakthrough with Wojtek, trust or potential death sentence, stay or run. When he closed the gate to the communal gardens, his phone had rung. Someone from the nursery who mentioned fever and two little boys with burning cheeks lying on a sofa, who needed to be picked up so they could go home. He had gone straight to Hagtomsgarden in Enskededalen, collected the two hot, sleepy children and then headed toward the house in Enskede.

He looked at the plastic bag, at the shirt that was in it, gray and white checks that were now covered in blood and tissue from a person.

He had put the boys to bed, where they had each fallen asleep clutching an unread comic. He had phoned Zofia, promised to stay at home with them, and she had kissed the receiver twice-always an even number.

He looked out of the car window at a clock above a shop door. Six more minutes. He turned around. They sat there silently, with shiny eyes and floppy bodies. Rasmus was almost flat out on the back seat.

He had wandered around in the watchful house, every now and then giving a sleeping, feverish cheek a worried caress, and had realized that he didn't have any choice. There was a bottle of Calpol, in the door of the fridge and after much protest that it tasted horrible and they would rather be ill, both had eventually swallowed a double dose, served to them in a dessert spoon. He had carried them out to the car, driven the short distance to Slussen and Sodermalm and parked a couple of hundred meters from the entrance on Hokens Gata.

Rasmus was now actually lying on the back seat. Hugo was half on top of him. Their flaming cheeks were slightly less red for a while as the Calpol worked its magic.

Piet Hoffmann felt something in his chest that was possibly shame. I'm so sorry. You shouldn't be here.

Right from the start, when he had been recruited, he had promised himself that he would never put anyone he loved in danger. This was the only time. It would never happen again. It had almost happened once before, a few years ago, when there had been an unexpected knock on the door and Zofia had asked the two visitors in for coffee. She had been charming and pleased and had no idea of who she was serving: the deputy CEO and the number four. They were just checking out in more detail someone who was on his way up. Hoffmann had explained to her later that they were two of his clients and she believed him, as she always did.

Two more minutes.

He leaned over to the back and kissed their surprisingly cool foreheads, said that he had to leave them on their own for a very short while, that they had to promise to sit still like big boys.

He locked the car door and went in through the entrance to Hokens Gata 1.

Erik had gone in through the door to Gotgatan 15 twenty minutes earlier and was watching him now from a window on the second floor, as he always did when Paula crossed the communal gardens.

Meeting place number four at fourteen hundred hours.

An empty flat, a beautiful central flat that was being renovated for the next few months, one of six meeting places. Two flights up, the door with LINDSTROM on the letter box. He nodded at Erik and handed him the plastic bag that had been lying in one of the locked gun cabinets and contained a shirt with blood stains and gunshot residue, the one that Mariusz had been wearing twenty-four hours earlier, then he hurried back down to the children.

The steps from the SAS plane down to the runway at Copenhagen airport were made of aluminum and too shallow to take one step at a time yet too high when he tried to take two. Ewert Grens looked at his fellow passengers, who were having the same problem. Ungainly movements down toward a small bus that was waiting to drive them to the terminal building.

Grens waited by the last step for a white car with blue stripes and the word POLICE written on it, with a young uniformed man behind the wheel, similar to the Swedish officer who had dropped him off near the departures hall at Arlanda just under an hour ago. The young man hurried out, opened the door to the back sear and saluted the Swedish detective superintendent. A salute. It had been a while. Just as he had done for his bosses in the seventies. No one seemed to do that anymore, now that he was a boss, which he was happy about. Found all that submissive waving hard to stomach.

There was already someone else in the back.

A man in his forties in civilian clothes, similar to Sven, the sort of policeman who looks nice.

'Jacob Andersen.'

Grens smiled.

'You said that your office looked out over Langebro.'

'Welcome to Copenhagen.'

After driving four hundred meters, the car stopped by a door that was roughly in the middle of the terminal building. They went into the airport police station. Ewert Grens had been there several times before, so he made his way to the meeting room at the back, where there was coffee and Danish pastries on the table.

They picked you up by car. Booked a meeting room in the local station. Served you coffee and cake.

Grens looked at his Danish colleagues who were sorting out plastic cups and sugar.

It felt good, as if the strange standoffishness, the silent opposition to working together had evaporated.

Jacob Andersen wiped his fingers on his trousers after eating a sticky pastry and then put an 8 x 10 photograph down in the middle of the table. A color copy, enlarged several times. Grens studied the picture. A man somewhere between thirty and forty, crew cut, fair, coarse features.

'Carsten.'

In the autopsy room, Ludvig Errfors had described a man of northern European appearance with internal surgical and dental work that would indicate that he had probably grown up in Sweden.

'We have a different system here. Male code names for male informers, female code names for female informers. Why make it more confusing than necessary?'

I saw you on the floor; you had three gaping holes in your head.

'Carsten. Or Jens Christian Toft.'

I saw you later on Errfors's autopsy table, your face stripped of skin.

'Danish citizen, but born and raised in Sweden. Convicted of aggravated assault, perjury and extortion and had served two years in D Block at Vestre Prison in Copenhagen when he was recruited by us. In much the same way that you do. Sometimes we even recruit them when they're on remand.'

I recognize you, it's you, even in that picture from the autopsy when you were being washed, you looked the same.

'We trained him, gave him a background. He was paid by Copenhagen Police as an infiltrator to initiate deals with as many of the big players in organized crime as possible. Hell's Angels, Bandidos, the Russians, Yugoslavians, Mexicans… whichever gang you like. This was the third time that he had initiated a deal with the Polish group, Wojtek.'

'Wojtek?'

'Wojtek Security International. Security guards, bodyguards, CIT. Officially. Just like in all the other Eastern European states. A facade for organized crime.'

'Polish mafia. Now it has a name. Wojtek.'

'But it was the first time he was dealing with them in Sweden. Without backup. We wanted to avoid an operation on Swedish territory. So it was what we call an uncontrolled purchase.'

Ewert Grens apologized. He had the photo of the dead man in one hand and his mobile phone in the other as he left the room and went out into the departures hall, dodging the bags that were hurrying toward a new queue.

'Sven?'