Three Seconds (23 page)

    One more room. He ran.

    She was lying on the short, narrow bed snuggled close to their youngest son. Under the blanket, curled up. But she wasn't asleep, her breathing wasn't that regular.

    "How are they?"

    She didn't look at him.

    "Have they still got a temperature?"

    She didn't answer.

    "I'm so sorry, I couldn't get away. I should have called, I know, I know that I should have."

    Her silence. It was worse than everything else. He preferred open conflict.

    "I'll look after them tomorrow. The whole day. You know that." That damn silence.

    "I love you."

    The stairs didn't creak as much when he went down. His jacket was hanging on the coat rack in the hall. He locked the front door behind him.

        Thirty-two hours and thirty minutes left. He wouldn't sleep. Not tonight. Not tomorrow night. He would have plenty of time to do that later, locked up in five square meters for two weeks on remand, on a bunk with no TV and no newspapers and no visitors, he could lie down then and close out all this shit.

    Piet Hoffmann sat in the car while the rest of the street went to sleep. He often did this, counted slowly to sixty and felt his body relaxing limb by limb.

    Tomorrow.

    He'd tell her everything tomorrow.

    The windows in the neighboring houses that shared his suburban life went black one by one. The blue light of a TV still shone upstairs at the Samuelssons' and the Sundells'; a light that changed from yellow to red in the Nymans' cellar window, where he knew one of their teenage sons had a room. Otherwise, night had fallen. One last look at the house and the garden he could touch if he wound down the window and stuck out his hand, he was sure of it, which were now blanketed in silence and blackness, not even the small lights in the sitting room were on.

    He would tell her everything tomorrow.

    The car crept along the small streets as he made two phone calls; the first about a meeting at midnight at number two, the second about another meeting later at Danviksberget.

    He wasn't in a rush anymore. An hour to hang around. He drove toward the city, to Soderrnalm and the area round Hornstull, where he had lived for so many years when it was still a rundown part of town that the city suits sneered at if they happened to stray there. He parked down by the waterfront on Bergsunds Strand, by the beautiful old wooden bath house that some crazy people had fought so hard to pull down a few years back and was now a hidden gem in this hip area, where women could swim on Mondays and men on Fridays. It was warm, even though night was at hand, so he took off his jacket and walked along the asphalt, with his eyes on the luminous water that reflected the headlamps of the occasional car that crept down past the flats looking for a place to park.

    A rather hard park bench for ten minutes, a slow beer at Gamla Uret where the bartender, whom Hoffmann knew from late nights in another life, had a very loud laugh, a couple of articles in a forgotten evening paper, oily fingers from the bowl of peanuts at the far end of the bar.

    He had frittered away the hour.

    He started to walk toward Högalidsgatan 38 and Heleneborgsgatan 9, and a flat on the second floor with an uneven parquet floor.

    Erik Wilson
was
sitting on a plastic-covered sofa when the man who now could only be Paula opened the front door and crossed the water-damaged hall floor.

    "It's not too late. To pull out. You know that"

    He looked at him with something that resembled warmth, which he shouldn't do but that was the way it was. An infiltrator should be an instrument, something that he and the police authorities could use for as long as it was productive or simply abandon if things got too risky.

    "You're never going to be particularly well paid. You'll never get any official thanks."

    With Piet though, or Paula, it was different. He had become something more. A friend.

    "You've got Zofia. And the boys. I've no idea what that feels like, but… I think about it sometimes, long for it. And if I had… there's no bloody way that I'd risk it for someone who wouldn't even say thanks."

    Wilson was very aware that right here, right now, he was doing something that he shouldn't. Giving a unique infiltrator an argument for backing out when the authorities needed him most.

    "This time you're taking a risk that is far bigger than before. I said it yesterday in the tunnel on the way over from Rosenbad.
Piet, look at me when I'm talking.
I'll say it again.
Look at me!
The moment you've completed our mission, you'll be on Wojtek's hit list. Are you sure you understand what that means, really means?"

    Nine years as an infiltrator. Piet Hoffmann looked at the plastic-covered furniture and chose a green, or possibly brown, armchair. No. He wasn't sure anymore that he did understand what it entailed or why they were in fact sitting here facing each other in a secret meeting place while his wife and children slept in a silent house. Sometimes it's just like that. Sometimes something starts and then carries on and days become months and years without you being able to reflect on it. But he remembered clearly why he said yes, and what they had said about a sentence that could instead be served with regular leave and then when he was released, a life where his criminal activity could be simplified, as long as he worked for the police they would turn a blind eye to his own criminal record, hide it away and make sure that the criminal operations unit and public prosecutor didn't bother him. It had all seemed so bloody simple. He hadn't even considered the lies, the danger of being exposed as a snitch, the lack of appreciation and protection. He didn't have a family then. He existed only for himself, and then barely.

    "I'm going to finish this."

    "No one will blame you if you pull out."

    He'd started, and then continued. He'd learned to live for the kicks, for the adrenaline that forced his heart to explode in his chest, for the pride of knowing that he was better at this than anyone else, he who had never been best at anything.

    "I'm not going to pull out."

    He was addicted. He didn't know what life was like without the adrenaline, the pride.

    "Well, we've talked about it openly then."

    He was one of those people who had never managed to finish anything. He was going to do it this time.

    "I really appreciate you asking, Erik. I realize that it's not really your job.
But, yes, we have talked openly about this."

    Erik Wilson had asked the question. And got the answer he wanted to have.

    "In case anything should happen."

    He changed his position on the uncomfortable plastic-covered sofa.

    "If you're about to be exposed, you can't escape very far in a prison, but you can demand to be put in isolation."

    Wilson looked at Paula, Piet.

    "You might be given a death sentence. But you're not going to die. When you've asked to be put in isolation, once you have that protection, contact us and wait for a week. That's the time we'll need to get the papers sorted for someone to come and get you out."

    He opened the black briefcase that was standing by his feet and put two folders on the coffee table between them. A new section from the Swedish National Police Board's criminal records and an equally new interrogation transcript which was now included in the documentation of a ten-year-old preliminary investigation.

    INTERROGATING OFFICER JAN ZANDER (JO): A nine millimeter Radom. PIET HOFFMANN (PH): Right.

    RD: When you were arrested. Recently fired. Two bullets were missing from the magazine.

    PH: If you say so.

    Piet Hoffmann read through the amended documents in silence.

    "Five years."

    "Yes."

    "Attempted murder? Aggravated assault on an officer?"

    "Yes."

    IO: Two shots. Several witnesses confirm it.

    PH: (silence)

    IC): Several witnesses in the block of flats on Kaptensgatan in Söderhamn whose windows face the lawn where you fired two shots at Constable Dahl.

    PH: Söderhamn? There, I've never been there.

    Erik Wilson had worked with each little piece in detail so that, all together, it would add up to a credible and tenable background.

    "Does it- Do you think it'll work?"

    Any change to a judgment in a criminal record always required a new hearing for the investigation that had once taken place, and new entries in the Prison and Probation Service files from the prison where the sentence was served, according to the changes.

    "It works."

    "According to the judgment and preliminary investigation records, you hit a police officer in the face three times with a loaded Radom pistol and didn't stop until he fell unconscious to the ground."

    IO: You tried to kill a police officer on duty. One of my colleagues. I want to

    know why the hell you did that?

    PH: Is that a question?

    IO: I want to know why!

    PH: I never shot at a policeman in Söderhamn. Because I never went to

    Söderhamn. But if I had been there and if I had shot at your colleague it

    would have been because I don't particularly like the police.

    "You then turned the gun, cocked it, and fired two shots. One hit him in the thigh. The other in the left upper arm."

    Wilson leaned back against the plastic.

    "No one who looks at your background and has access to parts of your criminal record or the preliminary investigation will be in any doubt. I also added a note farther down about handcuffs. You were in handcuffs the whole time you were being questioned. For security reasons."

    "That's good."

    Piet Hoffmann folded together the two pieces of paper.

    "Give me a couple of minutes. I just want to go through them once more. Then I'll know it."

    He held the court judgment that had never been pronounced and the hearing that had never taken place, but still were his most important tools for carrying out his role in the prison corridors.

    Thirty-one hours left.

Thursday

   The bells in both towers of Höglid church struck the hour after midnight as he left Erik Wilson and number two via the communal gardens and an entrance on Heleneborgsgatan. it was still unusually warm outside, whether it was the spring turning to summer or the kind of warmth that comes from inside when the body is tense. Piet Hoffmann took off his jacket and walked toward Bergsunds Strand and his car that was parked close enough to the water's edge for the headlights to illuminate the dark water when he started the engine. He drove from west to east Si5dermalm and the night, which should have been thronging with people who had longed for the warmth all winter and now didn't want to go home, was empty, the noisy town had fallen to rest. He accelerated after Slussen, along Stadsgardskajen, then braked and turned off just before Danvikstull bridge and the municipal boundary with Nacka. Down Tegelviksgatan and then left into Alsni5gatan to the barrier that blocked the only road up to Danviksberget.

    He got out into the dark and jangled his keys until he found the piece of metal that was about half the size of a normal key; he'd carried it with him for a while now; they'd met fairly frequently in recent years. He opened and closed the barrier and drove slowly along the winding road up the hill to the outdoor café at the top that had been serving cinnamon buns with a view of the capital for decades now.