Three Seconds (19 page)

    "It's better here."

    "Here?"

    "On the floor. The sofa is starting to get too soft."

    He had slept there for a second night. His stiff leg didn't ache at all and he had more or less gotten used to the cars accelerating all the way up the steep slope on Hantverkargatan.

    "I want to report on Västmannagatan."

    "Anything new?"

    "Not much."

    Ewert Grens lay on the floor and peered at the ceiling. There were some large cracks near the lamp, which he had never paid attention to before. Whether they were new or whether the music had always just been in the way.

    He sighed.

    He had investigated murders all his adult life. Västmannagatan 79, a feeling somewhere in his chest-there was something that didn't fit. They had identified the body, the flat owner, even the remains of amphetamine and bile from the mule. They had blood stains and the angle from which the gun was fired. They had a witness with a Swedish voice who chose to raise the alarm and a Polish security firm that meant the Eastern European mafia.

    They had as good as bloody nothing.

    They were no closer to a solution than they had been in Copenhagen Airport the evening before.

    "There are fifteen flats in that block. I've interviewed everyone who was there at the time of the murder. Three of them have observations that might be of interest. On the ground floor- Are you listening, Ewert?"

    "Carry on."

    "On the ground floor there's a Finn who can give a pretty good description of two men he'd never seen before, as he has the best possible observation point-everyone who goes in or out passes his door. Pale, shaved heads, dark clothes, forties. Only through the peephole and only for a few seconds, but you can actually see and hear more than I thought from there and he also mentioned a Slavic language, so it all fits."

    "Polish."

    "In terms of the tenant, that would seem likely."

    "Mules, bodies, Poles. Drugs, violence, Eastern Europe."

    Sven Sundkvist looked down at the older man on the floor. He just lay there and couldn't care less what anyone else thought, with a confidence that Sven could never achieve, as he was the sort who, no matter how much he had tried to change it over the years, wanted to be liked and therefore tended to be amenable and not make a fuss.

    "There's a young woman who lives on the fourth floor, a couple of doors down from the crime scene, and an old man up on the fifth floor above. Both of them were at home at the time of the murder and said that they heard what they describe as a clear bang."

    "A bang?"

    "Neither of them was willing to say more than that. They don't know anything about weapons and couldn't say whether it was a gun shot. But they are both certain that what they called a
bang
was loud and a sound that was not a normal part of the building."

    "That's all?"

    "That's all."

    The ringing from the phone on the desk was sharp and irritating, and did not let up, despite the fact that Sven remained sitting on the sofa and Ewert stayed on the floor.

    "Should I answer?"

    "I can't understand why they don't give up."

    "Should I answer it, Ewert?"

    "It's on my desk."

    He got up patiently and lumbered toward the loud ringing.

    "Yes?"

    "You sound out of breath."

    "I was lying on the floor."

    "I want you to come down here."

    Grens and Sundkvist didn't say anything, they just left the room and went down the corridor, waited impatiently for the elevator that took for ever to go down. Nils Krantz was at the door to the forensics department and showed them into a narrow room.

    "You asked me to extend the search area. I did. All the stairwells between numbers seventy and ninety. And in the trash store of Västmannagatan 73, in a paper recycling container, we found this."

    Krantz was holding a plastic bag. Ewert Grens leaned closer and put on his reading glasses a few moments later. Something in fabric, gray-and white checks, partially covered in blood, a shirt perhaps, or maybe a jacket.

    "Very interesting. This could be our breakthrough."

    The forensic scientist opened the plastic bag and put the fabric on something that looked like a serving tray, and with a bent finger pointed at the obvious stains.

    "Blood stains and gunshot residue that take us back to the flat in Västmannagatan 79, as it's the victim's blood and gunpowder from the same charge that we found in the flat."

    "Which doesn't get us anywhere. Which doesn't give us a damn shit more than we already knew."

    Krantz pointed at the gray-and-white piece of clothing.

    "It's a shirt. It's got the victim's blood on it. But there's more. We've identified another blood group. I'm certain that it belongs to the person who fired. Ewert, this is the shirt that the murderer was wearing."

        A courtroom. That's what it felt like. A room that smelled of power. A document that described a violent incident lying on an important table. Göransson was the prosecutor who checked the facts and asked the questions; the state secretary was the judge who listened and made the decisions; Wilson, to his right, was the defense who claimed self-defense and asked for leniency. Piet Hoffmann wanted to get up and walk away, but was forced to stay calm. After all, he was the accused.

    "I didn't have any choice. My life was in danger."

    "You always have a choice."

    "I tried to calm them down. But I could only go so far. I'm supposed to be a criminal, through and through. Otherwise I'm dead."

    "I don't understand."

    It was a bizarre feeling. He was sitting one floor away from the Swedish prime minister in the building that ruled Sweden. Outside, down on the pavement in the real world, people were walking back from lunch with a warm low-alcohol beer and a cup of coffee because they'd chosen to pay five kronor more, while he was here, with those in power, trying to explain why the authorities should not investigate a murder.

    "I'm their number one in Sweden. The people who were in the flat have been trained by the Polish intelligence service and know how to sniff out anything that doesn't feel right."

    "We're talking about murder. And you, Hoffmann, or Paula, or whatever I should call you, could have prevented it."

    "The first time they put the gun to the buyer's head, I managed to stop them shooting. But the next time, he had just exposed himself, he was the enemy, a snitch, dead…
I didn't have a bloody choice."

    "And as you didn't have a choice, neither do we, and so should we just pretend that the whole thing never happened?"

    All four of them looked at him, each with the report in front of them on the table. Wilson, Göransson, and the state secretary. The fourth person had remained silent. Hoffmann couldn't understand why.

    "Yes, if you want to break this new mafia branch before it gets established. If you want to do that, then you don't have any choice."

    This courtroom was like all the others, just as cold, no real people. He had been in this situation five times before, the accused, in front of people he did not respect but who would decide whether he should be part of society or live in a few square meters behind a secure door. A couple of suspended sentences, a couple of acquittals due to lack of evidence, and just one prison sentence, and a year from hell in Österåker.

    That time he had not been successful in defending his case. He would not do it again.

      Nils Krantz leaned nearer the computer screen as he pointed to the image of small red peaks that all pointed upward over different numbers.

    "The top row, if you look here, is from Copenhagen police. The DNA profile of a Danish citizen called Jens Christian Toft. The man who was killed in Västmannagatan 79. The bottom row is from the National Laboratory of Forensic Science, an analyzis of all the blood stains on the shirt over there that we found in the trash at Västmannagatan 73 that are at least two by two millimeters. You see, identical rows. Every single STR marker-that's the red peaks-is exactly the same length."

    Ewert Grens listened to him, but still only saw a very uniform pattern. "I'm not interested in him, Nils. But I am interested in the murderer." Krantz considered a sarcastic retort or irritated comment. But he did neither, chose to ignore Grens instead, as it often felt better.

    "But I also asked them specifically to give the same priority to analyzing even smaller spots of blood. Too small to stand up as evidence in court. But big enough to establish any marked difference."

    He showed the next image.

    A similar pattern, red peaks, but with larger distances and different numbers.

    "These are from another person."

    "Who?"

    "I don't know."

    "You've got the profile."

    "But no hits."

    "Don't be so damn difficult, Nils."

    "I've matched and compared them with everything I've got access to. I'm certain it's the murderer's blood. But I'm equally certain that this DNA won't be found in any Swedish database."

    He looked at the detective superintendent.

    "Ewert, the murderer is probably not Swedish. The course of action, the Radom gun, no DNA matches. You'll have to start looking farther afield, in other places."

       It looked like it would be a lovely evening. The sun was already dipping like a ripe orange at the point where the sky melted into Riddarfiarden, the only thing you could see from the large window of the state secretary's office. Piet Hoffmann looked into the light that made the sad, expensive birch meeting table look even sadder. He longed to be out of here, for Zofia's soft body, for Hugo's laugh, Rasmus's eyes when he said
Daddy.

    "Before we continue the meeting-"

    He wasn't there. He was as far away from it all as he could be in a room that contained power and the people who could decide whether he should be put even farther away.

    Erik Wilson, the defense lawyer in this trial, cleared his throat.

    "Before we continue the meeting, I want a guarantee that Paula will not be charged for anything that might have happened in Västmannagatan 79."

    The state secretary had one of those faces that showed no emotion. "I understood that that was what you wanted."

    "You've dealt with similar cases before."

    "But if I am to grant criminal immunity, I also have to understand why." The microphone was still in place, halfway down his thigh.

    But it was about to slip again, he could feel the tape was gradually becoming unstuck. The next time he got up, he was sure that it would not stay where it was.

    "I'd be more than happy to explain why."

    Wilson gripped the report firmly in one hand.

    "We could have smashed the Mexican mafia in an expansion phase nine months ago. We could have eliminated the Egyptian mafia in an expansion phase five months ago. If we'd had the mandate for our infiltrators to respond in full. But it didn't happen. We stood by and watched as two more players happily helped themselves.
Now
we have another opportunity. This time, with the Poles."

    Piet Hoffmann tried to sit still and with one hand under the table attempted to untangle the lead and the pieces of tape that had started to stick together.

    Small movements with searching fingers.

    "Paula will continue to infiltrate. He will be in the right place at the point when Wojtek takes over all drug dealing in Swedish prisons. He is the one who will supply Warsaw with reports about deliveries and sales and at the same time supply us with information about how and when to launch an attack and smash them."

    He'd got it. A microphone the size of a pinhead under the material of his trousers. He fixed it again, trying to pull it up, back toward his groin, as it sat better there and it was easier to point in the direction of whoever was talking.

    He stopped abruptly.

    Göransson, who was sitting directly opposite him, suddenly started to stare, his gaze unflinching.

    "High security Swedish prisons. And Wojtek are going to concentrate on two categories of prisoner. First of all,
the millionaires,
the ones who have earned their money through organized crime and are inside for a long time, and who will transfer their ill-gotten gains gram by gram, day by day, to a property on ul. Ludwika Idzikowskiego. And then
the lackeys,
the ones who have no money and who leave prison with substantial debts and in order to survive, pay off these debts by selling large quantities of drugs or committing violent crimes, debts that Wojtek can link to a dangerous criminal network."