Three Seconds

He listened again.

First of all, scraping sounds, someone walking, fabric rubbing against a microphone with every step. After eleven minutes and forty-seven seconds-he checked on the sound file timer-a couple of voices, muffled. The microphone had been low, leg height, and it was obvious that Hoffmann moved every now and then to get closer to the sound source, had slowly stretched out a leg toward the person talking, suddenly got up and stood right next to them.

'The document… I've read it. I assumed… I assumed that it concerned a… woman?'

The only voice he hadn't heard before.

A woman, forty, maybe fifty years old. A soft voice with harsh sentences, he was sure he would recognize it if he heard it again.

'Paula. That's my name, in here.'

The clearest voice.

The person with the microphone.

Hoffmann. But he called himself Paula. A code name.

'We have to make him more dangerous… He will have committed some serious crimes. He'll be given a long sentence.'

The third voice.

Quite a high voice, the sort that doesn't fit the face, a colleague from the same corridor, only a few doors down and someone who had just happened to be passing on one of the first days of the investigation and had wanted to know how it was going and to give some ideas that pointed in the wrong direction.

Ewert Grens slammed his hand down on the desk, hard.

Erik Wilson.

He hit the desk again, with both hands this time, swore loudly at the cold office walls that just stood there.

Two more voices.

The two he knew best, part of a hierarchical chain of command, links between a criminal and a government office.

'Paula doesn’t have time for Vastmannagatan.'

A sharp, nasal voice, a bit too loud.

The national police commissioner.

'You've dealt with similar cases before.'

A deep, resonant voice, that didn't swallow its words, but held them, vowels that were prolonged.

Goransson.

Ewert Grens stopped the recording and in one go drank the coffee that was still too hot and burned its way down from his throat to his stomach. He didn't feel it-.warm, cold, he was shaking as he had been since he listened to it the first time and was about to go back out into the corridor and pour more of the heat into himself until he managed to feel something other than the throttling rage.

A meeting at Rosenbad.

He took a felt pen from the pen holder and drew a rectangle and five circles straight onto the blotter.

A meeting table with five heads.

One who was probably a state secretary from the Ministry of Justice. One who called himself Paula. One who functioned as Paula's handler. One who was the most senior police officer in the country. And one, he looked at the circle that represented Goransson, who was Ewert Grens's immediate line manager and Erik Wilson's line manager and responsible for both their workloads and had therefore known all along why there were no answers in the Vastmannagatan 79 case.

'I am a useful idiot.'

Ewert Grens picked up the vandalized blotter and threw it to the floor. 'I am a bloody useful idiot.'

He pressed play again, sentences that he had already heard.

'Paula. That's my name, in here.'

You weren't the mafia. You were one of us. You were employed by us to pretend you were the mafia.

And I murdered you.

Sunday

The big clock on Kungsholms church struck half past midnight when Ewert Grens left his office and the police headquarters and drove the short distance to Rosenbad. It was a lovely, warm night, but he didn't notice. He knew what had happened at Vastmannagatan 79. He knew why Pier Hoffmann had done time at Aspsas prison. And he suspected why the exact same people who had arranged for Hoffmann's prison sentence had suddenly been there, searching for a bureaucratic reason for killing him.

Piet Hoffmann was dangerous.

Piet Hoffmann knew the truth about a murder that was less important than continued infiltration.

When Grens identified Hoffmann's name on the periphery of the investigation and wanted to question him, he became even more dangerous.

They had burned him.

But he had survived an attack, taken hostages, and positioned himself where he was visible in a workshop window.

You recorded the meeting. You sent it to me. The man who had to decide on your death.

Ewert Grens parked on Fredsgatan close to the dark building from where Sweden was governed. He would soon make his way in there. He had just listened to a meeting that had been recorded in one of its many senior offices twenty-one days ago.

He got out his mobile phone and dialed Sven Sundkvist's number. Three rings. Someone coughed and struggled to find strength.

'Hello?'

'Sven, it's me. I want-'

'Ewert, I'm asleep. I've been asleep since eight. We missed out on last night, remember?'

'You're not going to get much more sleep tonight either. You're going to go to the USA, to south Georgia. Your plane leaves Arlanda in two and half hours. You'll arrive-'

'Ewert.'

Sven had pulled himself up, his voice was stronger-it was probably easier to talk when your chest and airways were free of pillows and duvets. 'What are you talking about?'

'I want you to get up and get dressed, Sven. You're going to meet Erik Wilson and you're going to get him to confirm that a meeting I've now listened to actually rook place. I'll call you in a couple of hours. By that time, you'll be sitting in a taxi and you'll have listened to the sound file that I've forwarded to your computer. You'll understand exactly what this is all about.'

Grens cut the engine and got out of the car.

The doors to power were made of glass and had opened automatically whenever he had been there during the day. Now they remained closed and he had to press a bell to wake the security guard one floor up.

'Yes?'

'Detective Superintendent Grens, City Police. I'm here to look at some of your surveillance camera footage.'

'Now?'

'Do you have anything else to do?'

Some rustling papers near the microphone made the speaker crackle. 'Did you say Grens?'