Three Seconds (31 page)

    Grens swore out loud in the empty room, opened the window and shouted something at someone in civvies who happened to be walking along the asphalt path across the courtyard of Kronoberg, then wrenched open the door and limped up and down the long corridor until his back and forehead were wet with sweat, then sat down on his chair to catch his racing breath.

    He had never felt like this before.

    He was used to anger, almost addicted to it. He always looked for conflict, hid himself away in it.

    It wasn't that.

    This feeling, like it was there, the truth, as if the answer was staring at him, laughing at him, a peculiar feeling of being so close without being able to see.

    Ewert Grens took the file in his hand and went to lie down with his legs outstretched on the floor behind the corduroy sofa. He started to leaf through the papers starting with the voice informing the police about a dead man in Västmannagatan, through the following two weeks working at full capacity with access to all technical resources, to his trips to Copenhagen and Siedlce.

    He swore again, maybe shouted at someone again.

    They hadn't gotten anywhere.

    He was going to lie on the floor until he understood whose voice he had listened to so many times, what it was he didn't understand and couldn't quite get hold of, why the feeling that the truth was close at hand, laughing at him, was so intense.

     He heard the keys jangling.

    Two guards unlocking and opening the cells at the far end, the ones with a view over the large gravel pitch, Cell 8 and opposite, Cell 16.

    He braced himself, prepared himself for the twenty minutes each day that could mean death.

    It had been a god awful night.

    Despite having been awake for days, he had lain there, waiting for sleep that never came. They were there with him, Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus, they had stood outside the window and sat on the edge of his bed, lain down beside him and he had been forced to drive them away. They no longer existed; inside he had to stop feeling, he had a mission that he had chosen to complete and that left no room for dreaming-he had to suppress, forget. Anyone who dreamed in prison soon went under.

    They were getting closer. The keys jangled again, Cell 7 and Cell 15 were opened and he heard a faint
morning
and someone else reply
go to hell.

    He had eventually gotten up-when Zofia had disappeared and the dark outside was densest he had held the dread at bay with chin-ups and sit-ups and jumping on and off the bed with both his feet held together. There wasn't much space and he had hit the wall a couple of times, but it was good to sweat and to feel his heart beating in his rib cage.

    His work had already begun.

    In a matter of hours on that first afternoon he had earned himself the respect in the unit that he needed to continue. He now knew who was in charge of supplies and dealing, in which units and in which cells. One of them was here, the Greek in Cell 2; the other two were on separate floors in Block H. Piet Hoffmann would get in the first grams soon, the ones he was responsible for and that he would use to blow out the competition.

    The guards were even closer, opened Cell 6 and Cell 14. Only a couple of minutes more.

    The time after the cells were opened, between seven and seven twenty, was crucial. If he survived that, he would survive the rest of the day.

    He had prepared himself in the way that he would prepare himself every morning. In order to survive, he had to assume that in the course of the evening or night, someone had found out about his other name, that there was a Paula who worked for the authorities, a snitch who was there to break the organization. He was safe as long as the cell was locked, a closed door would hold off an attack, but the first twenty minutes once the cell had been opened, after the first
good morning,
were the difference between life and death; a well-planned attack would always be carried out when the guards had disappeared into their room for a cup of coffee and a break-twenty minutes with no staff in the unit and the time when several of the many murders in prison had been carried out in recent years.

    "Good morning."

    The guard had opened the door and looked in. Piet Hoffmann was sitting on the bed and stared at him without replying-it wasn't how he felt, it was just something he said because the rules said he should.

    The idiot guard didn't give in, he would stand there and wait until he got an answer, confirmation that the prisoner was alive and that everything was as it should be.

    "Good morning. Now fucking leave me in peace."

    The guard nodded and carried on, two cells at a time. This was when Hoffmann had to act. When the last door was opened it was too late.

     A sock around the handle, he pulled the door-that normally couldn't be locked or closed completely from the inside-toward him, jamming it by forcing the fabric of the sock between the door and door frame.

One second.

    He put the simple wooden chair that normally stood by the wardrobe just inside the threshold, careful to make sure that it blocked the greater part of the doorway.

One second.

    The pillow and blanket and trousers were made to look like a body under the covers, the blue arm of his training jacket a continuation of the body. It wouldn't fool anyone. But it was an illusion that would be given a fast double take.

Half a second.

    Both the guards disappeared down the corridor. All the cells were unlocked and open now and Piet Hoffmann positioned himself to the left of the door, with his back to the wall. They could come at any moment. If they had found out, if he had been exposed, death would strike immediately.

    He looked at the sock around the handle, the chair in front of the door, the pillows under the blanket.

    Two and a half seconds.

    His protection, his time to hit back.

    He was breathing heavily

    He would stand like this, waiting, for twenty minutes. It was his first morning in Aspsås prison.

     There was someone standing in front of him. Two thin suit legs that had said something and were now waiting for an answer. He didn't reply.

    "Grens? What are you doing?"

    Ewert Grens had fallen asleep on the floor behind the brown corduroy sofa with an investigation file on his stomach.

    "What about our meeting? It was you who wanted it this early. I assume that you've been here all night?"

    His back ached a bit. The floor had been harder this time.

    "That's none of your business."

    He rolled over and heaved himself up, using the arms of the sofa for support, and the world spun ever so slightly.

    "How are you?"

    "That's none of your business either."

    Lars Ågestam sat down on the sofa and waited while Ewert Grens went over to his desk. There was no love lost between them. In fact, they couldn't stand each other. The young prosecutor and older detective superintendent came from different worlds and neither had any inclination to visit the other anymore. Ågestam had tried at first, he had chatted and listened and watched until he realized it was pointless, Grens had decided to hate him and nothing would change that.

    "Västmannagatan 79. You wanted a report."

    Lars Ågestam nodded.

    "I get the distinct feeling that you're getting nowhere."

    They weren't getting anywhere. But he wouldn't admit it. Not yet.

    Ewen Grens fully intended to keep hold of his resources, which Ågestam had the power to remove.

    "We're working on several theories."

    "Such as?"

    "I'm not prepared to say anything yet."

    "I can't imagine what you've got. If you did have something, you'd give it to me and then tell me to shove off. I don't think you've got anything at all. I think it's time to scale down the case."

    "Scale down?"

    Lars Ågestam waved his skinny arm at the desk and the piles of ongoing investigations.

    "You're not getting anywhere. The investigation is at a standstill. You know as well as I do, Grens, that it's unreasonable to tie up so many resources when an investigator is having no success."

    "I never give up on a murder."

    They looked at each other. They came from different worlds. "So, what have you got then?"

    "You never scale down murder cases, Ågestam. You solve them." You know--"

    "And that is what I have done for thirty-five years. Since you were running around peeing in your diaper."

    The prosecutor wasn't listening anymore. You just needed to decide that you weren't going to hear anything and then you didn't. It was a long time now since Ewert Grens had been able to hurt him.

    "I read through the conclusions of the preliminary investigation. But it was… quick. You mentioned a number of names on the periphery of the investigation that haven't been fully probed. Do that. Investigate every name on the periphery and close it. You've got three days. Then we'll meet again. And if you haven't got anything more by then, you can make as much fuss as you like, I will scale down the case."

    Ewert Grens watched the determined suit-back leave his office and would no doubt have shouted after it if the other voice hadn't already been there, the one that had been in his head every hour for two weeks now, that was once again whispering and wheedling its way in, persistently repeating the short sentences, driving him mad.

"A dead man. Vdstmannagatan 79. Fourth floor."

    He had three days.

    Who are you?

    Where are you?

    He had stood with his back pressed hard against the cell wall for twenty minutes, every muscle tensed, every sound an imagined threat of attack. Nothing had happened.

    His fifteen fellow prisoners had been to the toilet and showered and then gone to the kitchen for an early breakfast, but none of them had stopped outside his door, no one had tried to open it. He was still only Piet Hoffmann here, a member of Wojtek, arrested with three kilos of Polish Yellow in his boot and convicted of possession, and a previous conviction for having beaten some bastard pig before firing two shots at him.

    They had disappeared, one by one, some to the laundry and the workshop, most to the classrooms, a couple to the hospital. No one went on strike and stayed in their cell, which often happened: the striker laughed at the threat of punishment and continued to refuse to work as the extra couple of months on twelve years existed only on official papers.

    "Hoffmann."

    It was the principal prison officer who had welcomed him the day before, with blue eyes that pierced whoever
was
standing in front of him.