'Who was he?'
'Why?'
'I killed him.'
The two rows were now standing at ease.
The older uniform demonstrated how their guns should lie on their shoulders while they marched.
It was important that they all held them the same way.
'I killed him. I want to know his name. I feel I have the right.' Grens hesitated, looked at Sven, and then back at Sterner.
'Pier Hoffmann.'
Sterner's face showed nothing. If it was a name he recognized he hid it well.
'Hoffmann. Do you have his personal details?'
'Yes.'
'I want to go over to administration. And I'd like you to come with me. There's something I want to check.'
Ewert and Sven followed Sterner's back across the barrack square to a building that was smaller than the others and housed the regimental commander's quarters, administration, and a slightly better officers' mess. On the second floor, Sterner rapped on the doorframe of an open door, and an older man sitting in front of a computer gave them a friendly nod.
'I need his personal ID number.'
Sven had already gotten out a notebook from his inner pocket, which he flicked through until he found what he was looking for.
'721018-0010.'
The older man in front of the computer typed in the ten-digit number, waited for a few seconds and then shook his head.
'Born in the early 1970s? Then he won't be here. Ten years back, that's what the law stipulates. Any documents older than that are stored in the military archives.'
He smiled, looked pleased.
'But… I always make my own copies of anything we have before sending it off. Svea Life Guards' own archive. Every young man who has done his military service here in the past thirty years can be found on the shelves next door.'
A room crowded with shelves on every wall, from floor to ceiling. He got down on his knees and ran his finger along the backs of the files before picking out a black one.
'Born 1972. Now, if he was here… ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three, maybe even ninety-four. Life Company, you said. Sniper training?' 'Yes.'
He leafed through the papers, put the file back, then took out the one beside it.
'Not ninety-one. So we'll try ninety-two.'
He had got about halfway when he stopped and looked up.
'Hoffmann?'
'Piet Hoffmann.'
'Then we've got a match.'
Ewert and Sven stepped forward simultaneously to get a better look at the papers that the archivist was holding up. Hoffmann's full name, Hoffmann's personal ID number, then a long row of combined numbers and letters, some sort of record.
'What does that mean?'
'It means that someone called Piet Hoffmann, someone with the personal ID number that you just gave me, completed his military service here in 1993. He followed an eleven-month training program, as a sniper.'
Ewert Grens scanned the piece of paper once more.
It was him.
The person they had seen die sixteen hours earlier.
'Special training in weapons and shooting, all positions-prone, kneeling, standing, short range, long range… I think you get the gist?'
Sterner opened the file, took out the piece of paper and copied it on a machine that was as big as the room.
'That feeling that I had… that he knew exactly where I was, what I was doing. If he was trained here… he would have enough skills to know that Aspsas church tower was the only place that we could get him from. He knew that it
Sterner held the copy crushed in his hand and then gave it to Grens.
'He'd chosen that place with great care. It's no coincidence that he went to the workshop and that window, in particular. He provoked us to fire. He knew that a good, well-trained marksman could shoot him if he had to.
He shook his head.
'He wanted to die.'
The corridor of the intensive care unit at Danderyd hospital had yellow walls and a light blue floor. The nurses sent them friendly smiles and
Ewert Grens and Sven Sundkvist gave equally friendly smiles back. It was a quiet morning-they had both been there for work on many occasions before, often in the evening or weekend, injured people waking on beds in the harsh light of the corridor, which was empty now, as it normally was when alcohol, football matches, and snowy roads were not the order of the day.
They had driven there straight from Kungsingen and the Svea Life Guards, via Norrviken and Edsberg, through small and pleasant suburbs with big detached houses, which made Sven phone home to Anita and Jonas. They had had breakfast together and were about to go to their separate schools. He missed them.
The doctor was a young man, tall and thin, on the verge of skinny, with reserved eyes. He greeted them and showed them into a dark room with drawn curtains.
'He's got a severe concussion. I'll have to ask you to keep the room dark.'
One single bed in the room.
A man in his sixties, graying hair, tired eyes, scratches and wounds on both his cheeks, a cut on his forehead that looked deep, his right arm in a sling.
He was found lying under a wall.
'My name is Johan Ferm. We met last night when you came in. I've got two policemen with me who would like to ask you some questions.'
The fire and rescue service had searched the burned-out workshop for a long time before they heard faint sounds from underneath one of the piles of rubble. A naked and bruised prison officer with a broken collar bone, but a person who was still breathing.
'I've given them five minutes. Then I'll ask them to leave.'
The gray-haired man pulled himself up, grimaced with pain and threw up in a bowl by the side of the bed.
'He is
Ewert Grens turned toward the young doctor.
'We'd prefer it if we could be left alone.'
'I'm staying here. For medical reasons.'
Grens stood by the window while Sven Sundkvist moved a stool from the sink to the bedside, making sure that his face was at about the same height as the injured prison warden's.
'You know Grens?'
Martin Jacobson nodded. He knew who Ewert Grens was, they had met several times; the detective superintendent regularly visited the place where he had chosen to work all his life.
'This is not an interview, Jacobson. We'll do that later, when you're well enough and we have more time. But we do need some information now.' 'Sorry?'
'This is not-'
'You'll have to speak louder. My eardrums burst in the explosion.' Sven leaned forward and raised his voice.
