Three Seconds

'You're not getting anywhere. The investigation is at a standstill. You know as well as I do, Grens, that it's unreasonable to tie up so many resources when an investigator is having no success.'

'I never give up on a murder.'

They looked at each other. They came from different worlds. 'So, what have you got then?'

'You never scale down murder cases, Agestam. You solve them.' You know-'

'And that is what I have done for thirty-five years. Since you were running around peeing in your diaper.'

The prosecutor wasn't listening anymore. You just needed to decide that you weren't going to hear anything and then you didn't. It was a long time now since Ewert Grens had been able to hurt him.

'I read through the conclusions of the preliminary investigation. But it was… quick. You mentioned a number of names on the periphery of the investigation that haven't been fully probed. Do that. Investigate every name on the periphery and close it. You've got three days. Then we'll meet again. And if you haven't got anything more by then, you can make as much fuss as you like, I will scale down the case.'

Ewert Grens watched the determined suit-back leave his office and would no doubt have shouted after it if the other voice hadn't already been there, the one that had been in his head every hour for two weeks now, that was once again whispering and wheedling its way in, persistently repeating the short sentences, driving him mad.

'A dead man. Vdstmannagatan 79. Fourth floor.'

He had three days.

Who are you?

Where are you?

He had stood with his back pressed hard against the cell wall for twenty minutes, every muscle tensed, every sound an imagined threat of attack. Nothing had happened.

His fifteen fellow prisoners had been to the toilet and showered and then gone to the kitchen for an early breakfast, but none of them had stopped outside his door, no one had tried to open it. He was still only Piet Hoffmann here, a member of Wojtek, arrested with three kilos of Polish Yellow in his boot and convicted of possession, and a previous conviction for having beaten some bastard pig before firing two shots at him.

They had disappeared, one by one, some to the laundry and the workshop, most to the classrooms, a couple to the hospital. No one went on strike and stayed in their cell, which often happened: the striker laughed at the threat of punishment and continued to refuse to work as the extra couple of months on twelve years existed only on official papers.

'Hoffmann.'

It was the principal prison officer who had welcomed him the day before, with blue eyes that pierced whoever was standing in front of him.

'Yes?'

'Time to get out of your cell.'

'Is it?'

'Your work duties. Cleaning. The administration building and the workshops. But not today. Today you're going to come with me and try to learn how and where and when to use your brushes and detergents.'

They walked side by side down the corridor through the unit and down the stairs to the underground passage.

When Paula arrives at Aspsas, his work duties will already be fixed. On his first afternoon, he'll start as the new cleaner in the administration block and workshop.

The shapeless fabric of the prison-issue clothes chafed against his thighs and shoulders as they approached the second floor of Block B.

Prison management usually only grants cleaning duties as a reward.

They stopped in front of the toilets outside the main door to the workshop.

Then reward him.

Piet Hoffmann nodded-he would start his cleaning round here, with the cracked basin and piss pot in a changing room that stank of mold. They continued into the big workshop with its faint smell of diesel.

'The toilet out there, the office behind the glass window and then the entire workshop. You got it?'

He stayed standing in the doorway, looking around the room. Workbenches with something that looked like bits of shiny piping on them, shelves with piles of packing tape, punch presses, pallet jacks, half-full pallets and at every work station, a prisoner who earned ten kronor an hour. Prison workshops often produced simple items that were then sold to commercial manufacturers; at Osteraker, he had cut out square red wooden blocks for a toy manufacturer. Here it was lamppost components: decimeter-long rectangular covers for the access hatch to the cables and switches that is positioned at the base, the kind that you see ten meters apart along every road, which no one ever notices but has to be made somewhere. The principal prison officer walked into the workshop and pointed at the dust and overflowing bins, while Hoffmann nodded at prisoners he didn't recognize: the one in his twenties standing by a punching press bending over the edges of the rectangular cover; the one who spoke Finnish over by the drilling machine and made small holes for every screw; and the one farthest away by the window who had a big scar from his throat to his cheek and was leaning over the barrel of diesel as he cleaned his tools.

'Look at the floor. It's damned important that you're thorough about it. Scrub as hard as you damn well can, otherwise it smells.'

Piet Hoffmann didn't hear what the principal prick was saying. He had stopped by the barrel of diesel and the window. It was the one he had aimed at. He had lain on the church tower balcony holding an imaginary gun and shot at the window he selected exactly fifteen hundred and three meters away. It was a beautiful church and you got a clear view of the tower from here, as free a view as you got of the window from the tower.

He turned around, back to the window, memorized the rectangular room that was divided by three thick, whitewashed concrete pillars, big enough for a person to stand behind and not be seen. He took a couple of steps forward toward the pillar that was nearest to the window and stood close by it. It was just as big as he thought-he could stand there and be completely hidden. He walked slowly back across the room, getting the feel of it, getting used to it, didn't stop until he got to the room behind the glass wall that was an office for the prison wardens.

'Good, Hoffmann, that room… it's got to shine.'

A small desk, some shelves, a dirty rug. There was a pair of scissors in the pen holder, a telephone on the wall, two drawers that were unlocked and mostly empty.

It was a matter of time.

If everything went wrong, if Paula was exposed, the more time he had, the more chance he had of surviving.

The principal officer walked in front of him along the passage and under the prison yard to the administration building, four locked doors with four watchful cameras. They looked up into each one, nodded to the lens, then waited for central security to press one of their buttons and the click that told them that the door was open. It took them more than ten minutes to put a couple of hundred meters underground behind them.

The first floor of the administration block was a narrow corridor with a view of the prison reception area. Every prisoner who was escorted in fresh from the chain, through security to reception, could be studied from the six offices and the poky meeting room. The chief warden and his administrative staff had seen him as he was led in yesterday, a priority prisoner with handcuffs and leg irons in Kronoberg remand clothes, with streaky fair hair and a salt-and-pepper two-week beard.

'Are you following me, Hoffmann? You'll be coming here every day. And when you leave, there won't be a speck of dirt left behind. Will there? Loads of floors to be scrubbed, desks to be dusted, trash cans to be emptied and windows to be cleaned. Do you have a problem with that?'

The rooms had institution-gray walls and floors and ceilings, as if the gloominess and hopelessness of the corridor spilled over into the offices. There were a few pots with green plants and a few circles of ceramic tiles on one of the walls, otherwise it was all dead, furniture and colors that did not tempt you to dare dream of anywhere else.

'Perhaps we should introduce you. Get a move on.'

The chief warden was in his fifties, a man who was as gray as his walls. It said Oscarsson on his door.

'This is Hoffmann. He's the new cleaner here from tomorrow.'

The chief held out a hand that was soft, but with a firm grip.

'Lennart Oscarsson. I want both cans emptied every day. The one under the table and the one over there by