Three Seconds

Aspsas church was still veiled in morning mist. The next time he would see it would be from the window of a cell in a square concrete building.

He'd managed it. He'd finished all his preparations. Soon he would be entirely on his own.

Trust only yourself.

He missed her already. He had told her and she hadn't said a word, somehow like being unfaithful-he would never touch another woman, but that was how it felt.

A lie that was neverending. He, if anyone, knew all about it. It just changed shape and content, adapted to the next reality and demanded a new lie so that the old one could die. In the past ten years he had lied so much to Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus and all the others that when this was all over, he would have forever moved the boundary between lies and truth; that was how it was, he could never be entirely sure where the lie ended and the truth began, he didn't know any longer who he was.

He made a sudden decision. He slowed down for a few kilometers and let it sink in that this really was the last time. He had had a feeling all year and now it had caught up with him, now he could feel it again and interpret it. That was how he worked. At first something vague that tugged at him somewhere in his body, then a period of restlessness when he tried to understand what it meant, then insight, a sudden, powerful understanding that had been so close for so long. He would sit out this sentence at Aspsas and he would finish his work there, and after that, never again. He had done his service for the Swedish police, for little thanks other than Erik's friendship and ten thousand kronor a month from their reward money, so that he didn't officially exist. He was going to live another life later, when he knew what a true life really looked like.

Half past five. Stockholm was starting to wake up. There were only a few cars on the road, the odd person rushing to catch a train or bus. He parked on Norrtullsgatan opposite the primary school and opened the door to a cafe that opened early and served porridge and stewed apples and a cheese sandwich and an egg and black coffee on a red plastic tray for thirty-nine kronor. He saw Erik as soon as he walked in, a face over by the newspaper stand that disappeared behind Dagens Nyheter in order to avoid eye contact. Piet Hoffmann ordered his breakfast and chose a corner on the other side of the room as far away from him as he could get. There were six other customers: two young men from a construction site in high-viz jackets and four considerably older men dressed in suits, with their hair combed for the only fixed point in the day. Breakfast cafes often looked like this, men who didn't have anyone and fled the loneliness of eating alone-women seldom did that, maybe they coped with loneliness better than men, maybe they were more ashamed and didn't want to make it public.

The coffee was strong and the porridge was a bit lumpy, but it would be the last meal for a while where he could decide what he wanted, how he wanted it and where he wanted it. He had avoided the breakfasts at Osteraer, too early in the day to eat with people whose only common reference point was the need for drugs, the sort he'd been afraid of, but had met with aggression, scorn, distance, anything that didn't resemble weakness, in order to survive.

Erik Wilson walked past his table on his way out, nearly bumped into it. Hoffmann waited exactly five minutes and then followed, a couple of minutes' walk to Vartadisvagen. He opened the door of a silvery-gray Volvo and sat down in the passenger seat.

'You came in the red Golf, the one that's parked by the school?' 'Yes.'

'From the OK gas station at Slussen, like normal?'

Yep.

'I'll take it back this evening. You might find it hard to deliver it yourself:'

They pulled out of Vanadisvagen, drove slowly along Sankt Eriksgatan, and didn't say anything between the first two sets of red lights on Drottningholmsvagen.

'Have you got everything sorted?'

'Sorted.'

'And Zofia?'

Piet Hoffmann didn't answer. Wilson stopped the car by a bus stop on Fridhemsplan, made it clear that he wasn't going any farther.

'And Zofia?'

'She knows.'

They sat there at the start of the morning rush, with groups of people or long lines on the move now, rather than just the odd person.

'I made you even more dangerous in ASPEN yesterday. The patrol that arrests you will be full of preconceived ideas and adrenaline. It'll be violent, Piet. You can't be armed, because then it might get really nasty. But no one, no one who sees it, no one who hears about it or reads about it will even suspect who you're actually working for. And by the way, there's a warrant out for your arrest.'

Piet Hoffmann started.

'A warrant? Since when?'

'A few hours ago.'

The place still smelled of cigarette smoke. Or perhaps he just imagined it. There had always been a funk above the green felt. Piet Hoffmann leaned down toward it and sniffed, and he caught it again, the smell of smoke that was indelibly linked to the blue chalk on your fingertips and ashtrays on the corner of every pool table… he could even hear the coarse, sneering laughter when someone missed and a hard ball misfired. He downed half the cup of black coffee from the 7-Eleven on Fleminggatan in one gulp and looked at the clock. It was time. He checked again that the knife that he usually kept in his back pocket really wasn't there and then walked over to the window that looked out over Sankt Eriksgatan. He stood still, pretending to talk to someone on his mobile phone until he was sure that the man and the woman in the front of the patrol car had seen him.

They had been tipped off by an anonymous untraceable phone call that a serious, wanted criminal was going to be in Biljardpalatset this morning.

And then there he was in the window.

They had his name, and when they passed enter again on the car computer keypad, they also got his life.

KNOWN DANGEROUS ARMED

They were both young and new and had never come across this particular code in the criminal intelligence database that was only used for a handful of criminals.

Name Piet Hoffman ID number 721018-0010 Number of hits 75

They skimmed down quickly, got the clear picture that this person was extremely dangerous observed fifteen minutes before the murder in Ostling in the company of the subject, Markovic and familiar with weapons observed near the property that was raided in connection with suspected arms dealing and had previously threatened and fired at and wounded policemen and was likely to be armed.

“Command, this is car 9027. Over.”

“This is command. Over.”

“We require back-up for immediate arrest.”

He heard the sirens closing in between the city buildings and guessed that the sound and blue flashing lights would be turned off somewhere on Fleminggatan.

Two dark blue police vans stopped outside fifteen seconds later.

He was prepared.

“This is car 9027. Over.”

“Describe the suspect.”

“Piet Hoffmann. Very violent on previous arrests.”

“Last observation?”

“The entrance of Biljardpalaset. Sankt Eriksgatan 52.”

“Appearance?”

“Grey hooded top. Jeans. Fair hair. Unshaven. About one metre eighty tall.”

“Anything else?”

“Likely to be armed.”

He didn’t try to run away.

When the doors police were flung open at both ends of the deserted pool hall and several uniformed police ran in with on the floor drawn guns, Piet Hoffmann turned calmly