Three Seconds

investigate.'

The shirt was gray-and-white checks and had stains that now, after twenty-four hours, were more brown than red. Ewert Grens picked at it in irritation with a glove.

'The murderer's shirr. The murderer's blood. But yet we're getting nowhere.'

Nils Krantz was still sitting in front of the image of red peaks above various numbers.

'No identity. But maybe a place.'

'I don't understand.'

The cramped room was just as damp and dark as all the other rooms in forensics. Sven looked at the two men beside him. They were the same age, balding, not particularly jolly, tired but thorough, and, perhaps the greatest similarity, they had lived for their work until they became their work.

The younger generation that was just starting out was not likely to ever be the same. Grens and Krantz were the sort of men who no longer had a natural place.

'The smaller flecks of blood, the ones that belong to the murderer, don't come from anyone in our databases. But a person with no name has to live somewhere and always takes something with them when they move around. I usually look for traces of persistent and organic pollutants that are stored in the body, difficult to break down, that have a long life and don't dissolve easily-sometimes they point the investigation in the direction of a specific geographic place.'

Krantz even moved like Grens. Sven, who had never noticed it before, looked around to see if there was a sofa, suddenly convinced that the forensic scientist also stayed in his office sometimes when the light had faded and his own flat meant loneliness.

'But not this time. There's nothing in the blood that can link your murderer to a specific place, country or even continent.'

'Damn it, Nils, you just said-'

'But there's something else on the shirt.'

He unfolded the shirt on the workbench with great care.

'In several places. But here in particular, at the bottom of the right arm. Flower fragments.'

Grens leaned forward in an attempt to see something that could not be seen.

'It's Blossom. Polish Yellow.'

They were finding it more and more often in raids. The smell of tulips. Chemical amphetamine from factories that used flower fertilizer instead of acetone.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes. The ingredients, smell and even the yellow color, like saffron, a sulphate that gives off color in running water.'

'Poland. Again.'

'And, I know exactly where it comes from.'

Krantz folded the shirt with small movements, just as carefully as he had unfolded it.

'I've analyzed amphetamine with exactly this composition in connection with two other investigations in less than a month. We now know that it is manufactured in an amphetamine factory just outside Siedlce, a town about a hundred kilometers east of Warsaw.'

The strong sunlight had become uncomfortably warm and made his jacket itch on his neck and his shoes feel too tight.

It was fifteen minutes since the state secretary had left the room for a brief meeting in an even bigger room, and a decision that would mean all or nothing. Piet Hoffmann had a dry mouth and swallowed what should have been saliva, but now was anxiety and fear.

Strange.

A small-time dealer who had served a sentence in a locked cell in Osteraker prison. A family man with a wife and two young boys whom he had come to love more than anything else in the world.

He was someone else now.

A man of thirty-five, sitting on the edge of a desk in a building that was the symbol of power, the state secretary's phone in his agitated hand.

'Hi.'

'When are you coming back?'

'Later on this evening. This meeting seems to be going on forever. And I can't leave. How are they?'

'Do you care?'

Her voice upset him. It was cold, hollow.

'Hugo and Rasmus, how are they?'

She didn't answer. She stood there in front of him-he knew every expression, every gesture, her slim hand massaging her forehead, her feet fidgeting in oversize slippers. Any minute now she would decide whether or not she could bear to carry on being angry.

'They're a bit better. An hour ago their temperature was one-oh-one point three.'

'I love you.'

He put the phone down, looked at the people around the table and then at the clock. Nineteen minutes had passed. Damn saliva, there wasn't any, no matter how much he tried to swallow. He stretched and had started to walk toward his empty chair over at the far end of the table when the door opened.

She was back, with a tall, well-built man, half a step behind her. 'This is Pal Larsen, the director general.'

She had made her decision.

'He's going to help us. With what happens next.'

Piet Hoffmann heard what she was saying, and should perhaps have laughed or clapped his hands. He's going to help us. With what happens next. She had made up her mind to overlook his presence which, legally, was tantamount to accomplice to murder. She was taking a risk. And deemed that it was one worth taking. He knew of at least two other occasions where she had granted a secret pardon to infiltrators who had been given a prison sentence. But he was fairly certain that she had never before chosen to overlook what she knew about an unsolved crime-solutions normally stopped at the level of the police.

'I want to know what this is about.'

The director general of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service made it quite clear that he had no intention of sitting down.

'You are going to-now, how did we put it-help us position someone.' 'And who are you?'

'Erik Wilson, City Police.'

'And you think that I should help you with a placement?'

'Pal?'

The state secretary smiled at the general director.

'Me. You're going to help me.'

The well-built man in a tight suit said nothing, but his body language betrayed his frustration.

'Your task is to position Paula-the man sitting next to me here-in Aspsas prison to serve a sentence he will be given once he has been arrested for the possession of three kilos of amphetamine.'

'Three kilos? That'll be a long sentence. Then he'll have CO go to a holding prison first, Kumla, before being transferred.'

'Not this time.'

'Yes, he-'

'Pal?'

The state secretary had a voice that was soft but could give surprisingly harsh instructions.

'Deal with it.'

Wilson weathered the embarrassing silence.

'When Paula arrives at Aspsas, his work duties will already be fixed.

He'll start as the new cleaner in the administration block and workshop.' 'Prison management usually only grants cleaning duties as a reward.' 'Then reward him.'

'And who the hell is Paula? He must have a name? Do you? Because you can talk for yourself, can't you?'

The director general of the Prison and Probation Service was used to giving orders and being obeyed, not being