Three Seconds

A heavy, almost square pale face with small eyes that were set too close together. A thinner, longer face with a nose that had been broken in several places and not healed well and a chin and a cheek that had been sewn up by a hand that wasn't a doctor's.

Stefan Lygas and Karol Tomasz Penderecki.

Two of the four members of Wojtek who were serving long sentences at Aspsas, his helpers in knocking out the competition and taking over the drug market, and his executioners the moment he was exposed as Paula.

The first questions were asked at supper. Two of the older men, thick gold around bull necks, one on either side of him with their warm plates and sharp elbows. Stefan and Karol Tomasz got up to stop them but he waved to them, they should hold off, he would let the two men ask the same questions that he had on the prison bus a few hours ago; it was all about the same thing really, respect based on the shared hate of perverts.

'We want to see your papers.'

'That's what you say.'

'Have you got a problem with that?'

Stefan and Karol Tomasz had already done the bulk of the work. They had been talking about the fact that Piet was coming for the past few days, what he had been taken in for, who he'd worked with, his status with one of the eastern European mafias. They had managed to get in copies of 721018-0010 from the National Police Board criminal records, the criminal intelligence database, prison records and his most recent judgment, via Stefan's lawyer.

'No, but I've got a problem with people sitting too close.'

'Your papers, for fuck's sake!'

He would ask them into his cell and he would show them his papers and then he wouldn't have to answer anymore questions. The new prisoner in Cell 4 wasn't a sex offender or a wife beater, but in fact had precisely the background he claimed to have; he would probably even get a few smiles and a cautious slap on the shoulder- prisoners who had shot at policemen and were convicted of attempted murder and aggravated assault of an officer were the kind who didn't need to fight for their status.

'You'll get my judgment, if you just shut it now and let me finish my food.'

They played stud poker later with toothpicks that cost a thousand kronor each and he sat in the place that he'd taken from someone who no longer dared to take it back and he boasted about the fucking pig in Soderhamn who had begged for his life when he aimed at his forehead and he smoked rollies for the first time in years and he talked about a woman he was going to fuck senseless on his first supervised leave and they laughed loudly and he leaned back and looked around at the room and the corridor that was full of people who had longed to get away for so long that they no longer knew where.

Tuesday

He had driven slowly through the Stockholm dark which now had turned to light-one of those nights again, long hours of turmoil and restlessness. He hadn't been there for more than two weeks, but at around half past three he had found himself in the middle of the Udine, bridge once again, looking at the sky and water, I never want to see you here again, he had been on his way to the nursing home that he was no longer allowed to visit and the window where she no longer sat, what you are frightened of has already happened, when he suddenly turned around, drove back toward the houses and people, the capital that was so big and yet so small, where he had lived and worked all his life.

Ewert Grens got out of the car.

He had never been here before. He hadn't even known he was on his way here.

He had thought about it so many times and planned and started to drive, but never made it. Now, here he was standing by the southern entrance that was called Gate 1 and his legs felt rubbery like they would both collapse and there was pressure in his chest from his stomach or maybe his heart.

He started to walk but then stopped after a few steps.

He couldn't do it, his legs lacked the strength and whatever it was that was pressing inside came in regular thumps.

It was a gentle dawn and the sun shone so beautifully on the graves and grass and trees, but he wasn't going to go on. Not this morning. He would turn back to the car and drive into the city again as North Cemetery disappeared into the distance in his rearview mirror.

Maybe next time.

Maybe then he'd find out where her stone was, and maybe then he would go all the way there.

Next time.

The corridor at Homicide was deserted and dark. He helped himself to a forgotten, rather dry slice of bread from the basket on the table in the staffroom and pressed two cups of coffee out of the machine and then continued down to the office that would never sing again. He ate and drank his simple breakfast and lifted up the thin file for an ongoing investigation that was at a standstill. They had managed to identify the victim within the first couple of days as an informant for the Danish police, had secured traces of drug mules and amphetamines and confirmed that there had been at least one other Swedish-speaking person in the flat at the time of the murder, the voice that had raised the alarm that he had now listened to so often it had become a part of him.

They had discovered a Polish mafia branch called Wojtek, assumed to have a head office in Warsaw, and then they hit a wall.

Ewert Grens chewed the dry, hard bread and drank up the coffee that was left in the plastic cup. He didn't often give up. He wasn't the sort to do that. But this wall was so long and high and no matter how much he had pushed and shoved and shouted in the past two weeks, he had not managed to get around it or beyond it.

He had followed up the blood stains on the shirt that was found in a garage and had come to a dead end in a register with no matches.

Then he had gone to Poland with Sven to follow up the yellow stains that Krantz had found on the same item of clothing and had ended up in the remains of an amphetamine factory in a town called Siedlce. For a couple of days they had worked closely with some of the three thousand policemen assigned to a special police force to combat organized crime, and had encountered a sense of helplessness, a hunt that never gave results, a nation with five hundred criminal groups that fought every day for a slice of the domestic Polish capital cake, eighty-five even larger criminal groups with international connections, police who frequently took part in armed battles, and a nation that raked in more than five hundred billion kronor every year from the production of synthetic drugs.

Ewert Grens remembered the smell of tulips.

The amphetamine factory that was connected to the stains on the murderer's shirt had been in the basement of a block of flats in the middle of a rundown and dirty neighborhood a couple of kilometers west of the center- uniform buildings once built in their thousands as a temporary solution to an acute housing problem. Ewert Grens and Sven Sundkvist had sat in the car and watched a raid that had ended in a shoot-out and the death of a young policeman. The six people who were in some of the rooms in the basement had then not said a peep to either the Polish or Swedish interrogating officers, and had remained silent, just sneering or staring at the floor, as they knew, of course, that anyone who opened their mouth would not live for long.

Grens swore out loud in the empty room, opened the window and shouted something at someone in civvies who happened to be walking along the asphalt path across the courtyard of Kronoberg, then wrenched open the door and limped up and down the long corridor until his back and forehead were wet with sweat, then sat down on his chair to catch his racing breath.

He had never felt like this before.

He was used to anger, almost addicted to it. He always looked for conflict, hid himself away in it.

It wasn't that.

This feeling, like it was there, the truth, as if the answer was staring at him, laughing at him, a peculiar feeling of being so close without being able to see.

Ewert Grens took the file in his hand and went to lie down with his legs outstretched on the floor behind the