Three Seconds (6 page)

    Sven looked at his boss with gratitude, hurried away from the dark stains on the carpet and discoloring on the wallpaper, while Ewert Grens hunkered down to get closer to the dead body.

    The balance of power had been redistributed and restored. But it would happen again. And he had to win every time.

Carry on acting. Or die.

    He stood between Mariusz and Jerzy at Hoffmann Security's round kitchen table, emptying 2,750 capsules of amphetamine The latest delivery from the factory in Siedlce. Their white medical-gloved fingers first picked off the brown rubber that
was
there to protect the mule's stomach in case of any leaks, then cut open the capsule with a knife and poured the powder into large glass bowls where it was mixed with grape sugar. One part amphetamine from eastern Poland to two parts grape sugar from the supermarket on the corner. Twenty-seven kilos of pure drugs transformed into eighty-one kilos that could be sold on the street.

    Piet Hoffmann put a metal tin on some kitchen scales and filled it with exactly one thousand grams of cut amphetamine. A piece of tin foil was placed carefully over the powder and then something that resembled a sugar lump was put on the foil. He held a match to the methaldehyde pellet and when the white square started to burn, he closed the lid of the tin. The flames would then die when the oxygen ran out and one kilo of amphetamine would be vacuum-packed.

    He repeated this operation, one tin at a time, eighty-one times. "Benzine?"

    Jerzy opened the bottle of petroleum ether, splashed some of the colorless fluid on the tin lids and sides and then rubbed the metal surfaces with cotton wool. He lit another match and a bluish flame flared that he then smothered with a rag after ten seconds.

    All the fingerprints had now been removed.

     The bloodstains were smallest on the hall carpet, slightly bigger on the wall at the other end of the spacious sitting room, even bigger by the table, and largest by the overturned chair. They also got darker and deeper the closer to the body they were, and the most visible was the large patch on the carpet in which the lifeless head was floating.

    Ewert Grens was sitting so close that if the body on the floor had started to whisper he would hear it. This death didn't feel like anything, it didn't even have a name.

    "The entrance wound, Ewert, here."

    Nils Krantz had crept around on all fours, filmed and photographed. He was one of the few experts Grens actually trusted and had proved often enough that he wasn't the kind of person who would take shortcuts just so he could get home an hour earlier to watch TV.

    "Someone held the gun hard to his head. The gas pressure between the muzzle and the temple must have been enormous. You can see for yourself. Half the side's been blown off."

    The skin on his face was already gray, his eyes empty, his mouth a straight line that would never talk again.

    "I don't understand. One entrance wound. But two exit wounds?" Krantz held his hand near the hole that was
as
large as a tennis ball in the middle of the right side of the head.

    "I've only seen this a couple of times in thirty-odd years. But it happens.

    And the autopsy will confirm it-that it's only one shot. I'm sure of it."

    He tugged at the sleeve of Grens's white overalls, his voice eager.

    "One shot to the temple. The bullet was jacketed, half lead and half titanium, and it split when it hit one of the skull bones."

    Krantz got up and stretched his arm in the air. It was an old flat and the ceiling was about three meters high. A few hairline cracks, but otherwise in good shape, except for where the forensic technician was pointing: a deep gash in the whitewash.

    "We took half the bullet down from there."

    Small pieces of plaster had fallen where careful fingers had dug out the hard metal.

    Some way off there was a considerably larger tear in some soft wood. "And that is from the other half. The kitchen door was obviously closed."

    "I don't know, Nils."

    Ewert Grens was still sitting by the head that had too many holes.

    "The call-out said execution. But having looked… it could just as easily be suicide."

    "Someone has tried to make it look like that."

    "What do you mean?"

    Krantz slid his foot closer to the hand that was holding a gun.

    "That looks staged. I think that someone shot him and
then
put the gun in his hand."

    He disappeared out into the hall and came back immediately with a black case in his hand.

    "But I'll check it. I'll do a GSR test on the hand. Then we'll know." Ewert started to calculate, looked over at Hermansson; she was doing the same.

    One hour and forty-five minutes since the alarm was raised, they still had plenty of time. The body hadn't yet started to attract enough foreign particles to make a residue test worthless.

    Krantz opened his case and looked for a round tube of fingerprint lifting tape. He pressed the tape against the victim's hand several times, in particular the area between the index finger and thumb. Then he went out into the kitchen, to the microscope that had been set up on the worktop, put the fingerprint lifting tape on the glass plate, and studied it through the ocular.

    A few seconds passed.

    "No gunshot residue."

    "As you thought."

    "So the hand that was holding the gun didn't fire it."

    He turned around.

    "This is murder, Ewert."

    He put his left hand to his right shoulder and pulled at the leather strap until the pressure on his shoulders was released and he could hold the holster with one hand. He opened it and pulled out a Radom with a nine-millimeter caliber. He did a recoil operation, put the last bullet in the magazine, so that fourteen were in place.

    Piet Hoffmann stood still for a while, his breathing so loud he could hear himself.

    He was alone in the room and the flat that looked out over Vasagatan and Kungsbron. The last mule had taken the train south a couple of hours ago, and Mariusz and Jerzy had just started their car and headed off in the same direction.

    A long day, but it was still only the afternoon and he had to stay awake for hours yet.

    The gun cabinets stood on the floor behind the desk. Two identical cabinets, a couple of meters high, about a meter wide, a smaller shelf on top and two rifles on a considerably larger shelf below. He put the gun on the top shelf in the first cabinet, and the full magazine in the same place in the second.

    He walked through the rooms that had functioned as offices for Hoffmann Security AB for two years now. One of Wojtek Security International's many branches. He had visited most of them several times, and the ones farthest north in Helsinki, Copenhagen, and Oslo more often.

    The fireplace with its dark tiles and white frame was beautiful, the sort that he knew Zofia wanted at home. He fished up a handful of small dry twigs from the bottom of the wood basket and lit them, then waited until the larger, thicker logs that he placed on top started to burn before taking his clothes off. The jacket, trousers, shirt, underpants, and socks were all eaten by the yellow flames. Next, a pile of Jerzy's and Mariusz's clothes. The flames were red and intense now, and he stood naked in front of the fire, enjoying the warmth until they died down sufficiently for him to close the bathroom door and shower away this awful day.

    A person had had half his head blown off.

    A person who probably had the same job as he had, but had a less solid background.

    He turned on the shower and the hot water pummelled his skin, testing his pain threshold, but he knew if he persevered, his body would eventually go numb and be filled with a strange calm.

    He'd been doing this for too long; he sometimes forgot who he was and it frightened him when his life as someone else encroached on his life as a husband and father, and day-to-day reality in a house in a neighborhood where people cur their grass and weeded their flowerbeds.

    Hugo and Rasmus.

    He had promised to pick them up just after four. He turned off the water and took a clean towel from the shelf by the mirror. It was nearly half past four. He hurried back into the office, checked that the fire had died down, opened the wardrobe and picked out a white shirt, a gray jacket, and worn jeans.

You have sixty seconds to leave and lock the fiat.

    He jumped and realized that he would never get used to the electronic voice that spoke to him from the coded lock on the front door, as soon as he had punched in the correct six digits.

The alarm will be activated in fifty seconds.

    He should contact Warsaw immediately, he should have done it already, but had waited on purpose, he wanted to know that the delivery was secure first.

The alarm will be activated in forty seconds.

    He locked the front door of Hoffmann Security AB and closed the wrought-iron gate. A security firm. That was how the organization worked. That was how all branches of the Eastern European mafia worked. Piet Hoffmann remembered his visit to St. Petersburg a year ago, a city with eight hundred security firms, established by ex-KGB men and intelligence agents, different fronts for the same business.

    He was halfway down the stairs when one of his two phones rang. The mobile phone that only one person knew about.

    "Wait a minute."

    He had parked the car just down Vasagatan. He opened the door and got in, then carried on the conversation without the risk of being overheard.

    "Yes?"

    "You need my help."

    "I needed it yesterday."

    "I've booked a return flight and will be back in Stockholm tomorrow. Meet you at number five at eleven. And I think you should make a trip yourself, before then. For the sake of your credibility."