Three Seconds

'Extremely antisocial personality disorder. No ability to empathise.' Slowly he folded it up.

'Significant characteristics include impulsiveness, aggression, lack of respect for own and others' safety, lack of conscience.'

Map in his inner pocket, they wouldn't need it anymore.

'Ewert, give me a hand.'

Sven had picked up and emptied six plastic cups emblazoned with the red and yellow Shell logo-a couple of hours of decisions about life and death based on the energy from bad coffee from the nearest gas station. He picked up one of the chairs and waited pointedly until Ewert took the next one. They left the room that would soon be a private gathering place for the bereaved and opened the door to the stairs up into the tower, a swift glance into the nave and the priest who was pushing a cart of bibles between two rows of pews. He saw them and raised his hand.

'Are you going up?'

'Yes.'

'The passing bell… there's only twenty minutes to go.'

'We'll be done by then.'

They went up the stairs and the aluminum ladder and somehow it felt farther and higher than the day before. The door to the church tower balcony was open and creaked gently in the wind that played over the gravestones and grass. Grens was about to close it when he noticed the mark on the doorframe. The wood was newly splintered on a level with the door handle. It was obvious and he remembered that the first sniper had remarked that the door had been forced open. He poked the splintered wood with a pen-it hadn't even darkened yet, it couldn't have been that long ago.

The morning mist was clearing and the sky would soon be as blue as the day before. Aspsas prison was waiting under them like great lumps of gray, silent cement, walls and buildings that kept out dreams and laughter.

Ewert Grens went out onto the flimsy wooden structure.

'Sven, carry on reading.'

A sniper had lain here twenty-four hours ago.

'There isn't anything else.'

A gun aimed at a person's head.

'Read!'

'Shooting incident involving a police officer in Soderhamn, at a public space on the edge of the town, he hit-'

'That's enough.'

He had made his decision.

His order was death.

The wind picked up. It felt good on his face, and for a while there was only the sun that warmed his pale cheeks and the birds flying way above his head, chasing what couldn't be seen. He held on to the low railing, a moment of dizziness, one single step would pitch him headlong. He looked at his feet and at a couple of dark round stains on the last wooden board, the one that stopped a few centimeters out from the railing. He touched them with his fingertips, smelled them. Gun grease, must have escaped from the gun barrel and would now forever discolor the floor of the balcony.

Ewert Grens knelt down, then lay so that his whole body was where the marksman had been. His elbows on the wooden floor, an imaginary gun in his hands, he aimed at the window that was no longer there, a hole surrounded by soot right up to the roof of the building called Block B.

'This was where he was lying. When he was waiting for my order.'

Ewert looked up at Sven.

'When he was waiting for me to ask him to kill.'

He waved impatiently at his colleague.

'You lie down too. I want you to know what it feels like.'

'I don't like heights. You know that.'

'Sven, just lie down. The railing, it's enough, it'll protect you.'

Sven Sundkvist crept gingerly out, going a bit farther so he didn't need to lie near Grens's heavy body. He hated heights, too much to lose if you fell, a fear that got stronger every year. He crept and wriggled and stretched

out his hand when he was sufficiently close, and clung on to the railing.

It was high. Ewert was breathing heavily. The wind was blowing.

Sven wrapped his fingers tighter around a cold iron railing and felt something coming loose; he was holding something in his hand. He pulled it back, even more came off, something black and rectangular, three or four centimeters long, a lead at one end.

'Ewers.'

An outstretched hand.

'This was on the railing.'

They both realized what it was.

A solar cell.

Painted black, the same color as the railing, the hand that had put it there did not want it to be seen.

Sven pulled carefully at the equally black lead. It came loose and he pulled harder, hauling in a round piece of metal, smaller than the first, barely a centimeter in diameter.

An electronic transmitter.

When I was watching him through the binoculars. I don't know, it was like he knew.

'A transmitter, a lead, a solar cell. Ewert… Sterner was right.'

As if he knew that he was in range.

Sven held the lead, swinging it back and forth, forgot for a moment to be frightened of what was far below.

'Hoffmann heard every word that was said between you and the sniper.'

Ewert Grens had been careful to close the door to his room.

Two cups of coffee and a cheese-and-ham roll from the vending machine in the corridor.

He could still feel the force of the explosion and the smell of smoke and imagined breathing that vanished as he watched.

He hadn't had a choice.

According to all the documentation, Piet Hoffmann was one of the few criminals who had the potential to actually do what he threatened. Ewert Grens went through the Prison and Probation Service documents, including psychopathic tests and sentences, read through his criminal record on the computer screen, five years, attempted murder and assault of a police officer, observations in the criminal intelligence database of a criminal who was KNOWN DANGEROUS ARMED.

He had not had any choice.

He was about to turn off the computer and go back out into the corridor for another cheese-and-ham roll when he noticed something at the bottom of the screen, the first entry in Piet Hoffmann's criminal record.

Date last modified.

Grens worked it out. Eighteen days ago.

A sentence that was served ten years ago.

He stayed in the room, pounding from wall to wall, from window to door, that feeling again that something was wrong, something didn't fit.

He dialed a number that he had long since learned off by heart, data support, he had spent many a night swearing over the keys and symbols that seemed to have a mind of their own.

A young male voice answered. They were always young and they were always male.

'This is Grens. I need a bit of help.'

'Detective superintendent? Just one moment.'