Three Seconds

Then he would put them to bed, with clean sheets, and sit there and watch them until Zofia came home.

They lay in the car while he went into the Handelsbanken branch on KungstradOrdsgatan, and down into the basement and a room full of rows of safe deposit boxes. He opened the empty box with one of his two keys and put in one brown envelope and one white envelope, locked it and emerged from the building a couple of minutes later, got in the car and drove to Hokens Gata on Sodermalm.

He looked at them again-he was so ashamed.

He had overstepped the boundary. The two boys whom he loved more than anything in the back seat, and amphetamine and nitroglycerine in the trunk.

He swallowed, they weren't going to see him crying, he didn't want them to.

He parked as close to the entrance to Hokens Gata 1 as he dared. Number four, fifteen hundred hours. Erik had already gone in from the other door.

'I don't want to walk anymore.'

'I know. Just here, then we'll go home. I promise.'

'My legs hurt. Daddy, they really, really hurt.'

Rasmus had sat down on the first step. His hand was warm when Piet took it, he lifted him up on one arm, with the cool box and leather bag in the other hand. Hugo would have to walk up the stairs himself, like you sometimes do when you're the oldest.

Three floors up, the door with LINDSTROM on the letter box opened from the inside at exactly the same time that his watch alarm started to bleep.

'Hugo. Rasmus. This is Uncle Erik.'

Small hands were held out and shaken, he felt Erik Wilson's withering look: What the hell are they doing here?

They went into the plastic-wrapped sitting room of the flat that was being renovated, and despite being tired, they looked curiously around at all the strange furniture.

'Why is there plastic everywhere?'

'There's work being done.'

'What do you mean, work?'

'They're making the flat new and they don't want things to get dirty.' He left them in the rustling sofa and went into the kitchen, and another piercing look. He cocked his head.

'I didn't have a choice.'

Wilson didn't say anything-it was as if he'd lost track when he saw two children in a world that dealt in life and death.

'Have you spoken to Zofia?'

'No.'

'You have to speak to her.'

He didn't answer.

'Piet, you can make all the excuses in the world. You know that you have to. Jesus Christ, you have to fucking talk to her, man!'

Her reactions, the ones he couldn't control.

'This evening. When the boys have gone to bed. I'll talk to her then.' 'You can still back out.'

'You know I'm going to finish this.'

Erik Wilson nodded and looked at the blue cool box that Pier lifted onto the table.

'Tulips. Fifty. They'll be yellow.'

Wilson stared at the green stems and green buds that were lying among the white, square ice packs.

'I'll put them in the fridge. It should be about 35 degrees. I want you to look after them. And the same day that I go in through the gate of Aspsas prison, I want you to send them to the address I give you.'

Wilson put his hand into the cool box and flipped over one of the white cards with the bouquet.

'With thanks for a successful partnership, Aspsas Business Association.' 'Correct.'

'And where should they be sent?'

'Aspsas prison. The prison governor.'

Erik Wilson didn't ask anymore questions. It was better not to know. 'How much longer do we have to wait?'

Hugo had grown bored of sliding his fingers over the plastic and making it rustle.

'Just a little while. Go back in to Rasmus. I'll be there in a minute.' Wilson waited until the small feet had disappeared into the gloom of the hall.

'You'll be arrested tomorrow, Piet. After that, we'll have no contact whatsoever. You won't communicate with me or anyone else from the city police. Until you're ready and you tell us that you want out. It's too dangerous. If anyone suspects that you're working for us… you're dead.'

Erik Wilson walked down the corridor in Homicide. He was uneasy and slowed down outside Ewert Grens's office, as he had done every time he went past in recent days, curious eyes peering into the empty office and the music that was no longer there. He wondered what the detective superintendent who was investigating the murder in Vastmannagatan was up to, what he knew, how long it would take before he started asking the questions that no one could answer.

Wilson sighed, it didn't feel right, those children, they were so young. It was his job to encourage infiltrators to take big risks to get the information that the police depended on, but he wasn't sure that Piet had fully understood what he had to lose. They had gotten too close, he genuinely cared about him.

If anything happens, abort.

If anyone discovers who you are, you have a new mission.

To survive.

Wilson closed the door to his office and turned on his computer, which was not connected to the Internet for security reasons. He had explained to Piet, while the two boys pulled at their dad's arms, that he would go back to FLETC and southern Georgia in the meantime, to finish what he had been forced to interrupt a couple of days ago. He was not convinced that the man in front of him had actually been listening; he had said yes and he had nodded, but he was already on his way home to his last night of freedom for a long time. The computer screen was filled with an empty document and Erik Wilson started to write an intelligence report for the county commissioner, via Chief Superintendent Goransson, which would then be deleted from his own hard disk: a background report for the arrest of a wanted and violent criminal with three kilos of Polish amphetamine in his car trunk, a report that would not be delivered until tomorrow, as it had not happened yet.

He had waited on his own by the kitchen table for two hours.

A beer, a sandwich, a crossword, but he hadn't drunk, eaten, or written anything.

Hugo and Rasmus had gone to sleep upstairs a long time ago. They had had pancakes with strawberry jam and too much whipped cream first and then he had put them to bed and opened their windows and watched them fall asleep after only a few minutes.

He heard them now, the steps that he knew so well.

Through the garden, up the front steps and then the creak as the door opened and he felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach.

'Hi.'

She was so beautiful.

'Hi.'

'Are they asleep?'

'Have been for a couple of hours.'

'And how's the temperature?'

'It'll be gone tomorrow.'

She gave him a light kiss on the cheek and smiled, she didn't notice that the world was about to fall to pieces.

Another kiss, on the other side, twice, as always.

She didn't notice that the damn floor was heaving.

'We have to talk.'