Three Seconds

'I'd be more than happy to explain why.'

Wilson gripped the report firmly in one hand.

'We could have smashed the Mexican mafia in an expansion phase nine months ago. We could have eliminated the Egyptian mafia in an expansion phase five months ago. If we'd had the mandate for our infiltrators to respond in full. But it didn't happen. We stood by and watched as two more players happily helped themselves. Now we have another opportunity. This time, with the Poles.'

Piet Hoffmann tried to sit still and with one hand under the table attempted to untangle the lead and the pieces of tape that had started to stick together.

Small movements with searching fingers.

'Paula will continue to infiltrate. He will be in the right place at the point when Wojtek takes over all drug dealing in Swedish prisons. He is the one who will supply Warsaw with reports about deliveries and sales and at the same time supply us with information about how and when to launch an attack and smash them.'

He'd got it. A microphone the size of a pinhead under the material of his trousers. He fixed it again, trying to pull it up, back toward his groin, as it sat better there and it was easier to point in the direction of whoever was talking.

He stopped abruptly.

Goransson, who was sitting directly opposite him, suddenly started to stare, his gaze unflinching.

'High security Swedish prisons. And Wojtek are going to concentrate on two categories of prisoner. First of all, the millionaires, the ones who have earned their money through organized crime and are inside for a long time, and who will transfer their ill-gotten gains gram by gram, day by day, to a property on ul. Ludwika Idzikowskiego. And then the lackeys, the ones who have no money and who leave prison with substantial debts and in order to survive, pay off these debts by selling large quantities of drugs or committing violent crimes, debts that Wojtek can link to a dangerous criminal network.'

He let go of the microphone and placed both his hands on the table, where they were visible.

Goransson was still looking directly at him and it was as hard to breathe as it was to swallow, each second an hour, until he looked away.

'I can't say it anymore clearly than that. It's you who decides. Let Paula continue or stand by and watch once again.'

The state secretary looked at each of them, and then out of the window at the sun, which was so beautiful. Maybe she also longed to be out.

'Could I ask you to leave the room?'

Piet Hoffmann shrugged and started to walk toward the door, but stopped suddenly. The microphone. It had come unstuck and slithered down between his right leg and the material of his trousers.

'It will only take a couple of minutes. Then you can come back in.'

He said nothing. But he held up his middle finger as he left the room. He heard a tired sigh behind him. They had observed it, were irritated, kept their eyes averted. That was what he had intended, he wanted to avoid any questions about what was being dragged behind his foot as he shut the door.

The state secretary's face still gave nothing away.

'You mentioned nine months. Five months. The Mexican and Egyptian mafia. I said no because the criminals you use as infiltrators can only be deemed to be high risk.'

'Paula is not a high-risk source. He is Wojtek's ticket to expansion. The whole operation is built around him.'

'I will never give criminal immunity to someone who neither you nor I trust.'

'I do trust him,'

'Then perhaps you can explain to me why Chief Superintendent Goransson body-searched him out there not long ago.'

Erik Wilson looked at his boss and then at the woman with the blank face.

' I am Paula's handler, I am the one who works with him every day. I trust him and Wojtek is already here! We’ve never managed to position an infiltrator so centrally in an expanding organization before. With Paula, we can cut them down with one fell swoop. If he's given immunity with regard to Vastmannagatan. If he is allowed to operate fully from the inside.'

The state secretary went over to the window and the golden sun, and a view of the capital that was going about its afternoon business without any idea of the decisions that governed it. Then she turned and looked at the fourth participant in the meeting who had not yet said anything.

'What do you think?'

She had opened her door for Detective Superintendent Wilson and Chief Superintendent Goransson. But it was in decisions like this that she turned to the top man in the police authority and asked him to sit down at the table with her and listen.

'The criminal elite, multimillionaires, major criminals as Wojtek's financiers. The criminal grass roots, those indebted, the petty thieves, as Wojtek's slaves.'

The national police commissioner had a sharp, nasal voice.

'I don't want that to happen. You don't want that to happen. Paula doesn't have time for Vastmannagatan.'

Piet Hoffmann had a couple of minutes.

He checked the CCTV close to the elevators, and positioned himself right underneath to be certain that he was in a blind spot. He made sure that he was on his own and then undid his trousers and soon got hold of the thin microphone lead and pulled it up to his crotch and positioned it on his groin.

The tape had dislodged.

Goransson's hands had disturbed it when he searched him.

A few more minutes.

He pulled a thread loose from one of the inner seams, and with clumsy fingers tied the lead to the fabric and angled the microphone toward the zipper of his trousers, then pulled down his sweater as far as he could over the waistband.

It was not the best solution. But it was the only one he had time for.

'You can come in again now,'

The door midway down the corridor was open. The state secretary waved to him and he tried to walk as naturally as he could, with short steps.

They had decided. At least, that's what it felt like.

'One more question.'

The state secretary looked first at Goransson, then at Wilson.

'Just over twenty-four hours ago, a preliminary investigation was opened. I'm guessing it's being led by the city police. I want to know how you'll, er, deal with that.'

Erik Wilson had been waiting for her question.

'You've read the report that I sent to the head of homicide.'

He pointed at the copies of the document that were still lying in front of each one of them on the table.

'And this is the report that the investigators, Grens, Sundkvist, Hermansson, and Krantz, have written. What they know, what they've seen. Compare it with the contents of my report, with the actual events and background as to why Paula was taking part in the operation in the flat.'

She leafed quickly through the pages.

'A real report. And one that shows how much our colleagues know.'

She didn't like it. As she read, the dead face came alive for the first time, the mouth, the eyes, as if it was warding off the contempt and a decision that she thought she would never have to consider.

'And now? What's happened since this was written?'

Wilson smiled, the first smile for a long time in a room that was being suffocated by its own solemnity.

'Now? If I've understood rightly, the investigators have just found a shirt in a plastic bag in a gargabe bin near the scene of the crime.'

He looked at Hoffmann, still with a smile on his face.

'A shirt covered in blood and gunshot residue. But… blood that's not recorded in any Swedish database. My guess is that it may be a red herring, one that will get them nowhere but that will take time and effort to