'Pistols.'
'Make?'
'Radom.'
'Caliber?'
'Nine millimeter.'
'Damn it, Goransson. Damn it!'
The detective superintendent had gotten up quickly and was already halfway out the door.
'But we already have access to them, Ewert.'
Grens stopped mid-step.
'What do you mean?'
'There's a memorandum here. All the weapons have been seized. Krantz has them, no doubt.' 'Why? '
'It doesn't say. You'll have to ask him.'
The dull sound of a heavy body limping away down the corridor. Chief Superintendent Goransson didn't have the energy to fight the feeling that something was afoot, the dread that made him shrivel inside. He looked at the name on the screen for a long time.
Ewert Grens would only have to press a few buttons and make a couple of phone calls to find the registered gun-owner's current domicile and then go to the small town with a big prison to the north of the city and he would question him until he got the answer he mustn't get.
What wasn't meant to happen had just happened.
Piet Hoffmann waited behind the locked toilet door until he was absolutely sure he was alone.
Elastic, spoon, plastic bag.
This was exactly how he had hidden drugs and syringes in Osteraker. Lorentz had told him that it still worked despite the fact that it was so damn simple. Maybe that was why. No guard in any prison would search the actual toilet U-bend.
The cistern, the drains, the waste pipe under the sink, hiding places that you might as well forget these days. But the U-bend, after all these years, they still had no idea.
He put the elastic, the bent spoon, and the plastic bag full of amphetamine down on the filthy toilet floor. He attached the plastic bag to one end of the elastic and the spoon to the other, then got down on his knees beside the toilet bowl, holding the plastic bag in his hand and pushing it as far down the pipe as he could, stretching the elastic. His arm and sleeve were wet up to his shoulder when he flushed and the pressure of the water pushed the plastic bag even farther down the pipe, the bent spoon catching on the edge of the pipe. He waited, flushed again. The elastic should stretch even more and the plastic bag would be suspended at the other end somewhere far down the pipe.
You couldn't see the spoon that was hooked over the edge of the pipe, holding the plastic bag in place.
But it would be easy to get hold of next time.
Down on his knees, hand in the wet, carefully haul it in.
Ewert Grens had left Goransson and the Homicide offices, and the truth that he couldn't quite grasp wasn't laughing so loud now.
Pier Hoffmann.
A name he had never heard before.
But who owned a security firm that got official bodyguard jobs from Wojtek International when there were state visits. And who had a license for Polish-manufactured guns, for work purposes, despite having served a five- year sentence for aggravated assault. Guns which, according to the register, were already in the hands of the police. Seized two weeks ago.
Ewert Grens got out of the elevator on his way to the forensics unit.
He had a name.
Soon he would have more.
Piet Hoffmann had sore knees when he got up off the toiler floor and listened to the silence. He had flushed twice more, listened again, but there were still no other sounds when he unlocked the door and went out into the corridor, making it look like he'd been sitting in there for a while, dicky tummy that took its time. He went over to the TV corner, shuffled a pack of cards, made it look like he was entertaining himself for a few minutes, while he sneaked a look over at the wardens' office and the kitchen in order to locate the guards that ran around in the unit.
Faces that were turned away, uniformed backs doing something. He held up his middle finger, that usually got them moving.
Nothing. No one reacted, no one saw.
The others still had an hour left of their afternoon stint in the classroom and workshop, the corridor was empty, the screws were some place else. Now.
He walked toward the row of cells. A quick look back at nothing. He opened the door to number 2.
The Greek's cell.
It looked the same, the same damn bed and the same damn wardrobe and chair and bedside table. It smelled different, stuffy, maybe sour, but it was just as fucking warm and the air he breathed was just as dusty. A photo of a child on the wall, a girl with long dark hair, another photo of a woman, his daughter's mother, Hoffmann was convinced.
If anyone opened the door.
If anyone saw what he was holding in his hand right now, what he was about to do.
He gave a start, just an instant-he mustn't start to feel.
Not many injections or snorts-thirteen or fourteen grams-but enough in here, enough for a new judgment and extended sentence and immediate removal to another prison.
Thirteen or fourteen grams that had to be put somewhere up high.
He tested the curtain rail, pulling it carefully; it came loose on the first attempt. A bit of tape around the plastic bag and it stayed in place against the wall. It was easy to lift the curtain rail back.
He opened the door and had a last look around the room-he stopped at the photo on the wall. The girl was about five, she was standing on a lawn, and in the background some happy children were waving. They were all on their way somewhere, a school trip, backpacks in their hands and yellow and red baseball caps on their heads.
Her father wouldn't be here when she came to visit next time.
Ewert Grens bent forward over the low workbench and the row of seven guns.
Three Polish-manufactured Radom pistols and four hunting rifles. 'In one gun cabinet?'
'In two gun cabinets. Both approved.'
'He had a license for them?'
'The very ones issued by city police.'
Grens was standing beside Nils Krantz in one of the forensic unit's many rooms that look like a small laboratory with fume cupboards and microscopes and tins of chemical preparations. He lifted up one of the pistols, held the plastic covered weapon in his hand, weighed it in front of him in the air. He was absolutely certain-the dead man lying on the sitting room floor had been holding one like this in his hand.
'Two weeks ago?'
'Yes. An office in a flat on Vasagatan. Serious drug offense.'
'And nothing?'
'We've test-fired them all. None of them have been used for any other crime.'
'And Vastmannagatan 79?'
'I know that you hoped you'd get another answer. But you're not going to. None of these weapons have anything to do with the shooting.'
Ewert Grens hit his hand hard on the piece of furniture that was closest. A metal cupboard shuddered as the books and files fell to the floor.
