Three Seconds (69 page)

    Chairs scraping, noise of people moving.

    "A meeting."

    He looked around the room.

    "In this room. At this table. Tenth of May at fifteen forty-nine. I'll fast forward a bit, twenty-eight minutes and twenty-four seconds."

    He turned to his line manager.

    Göransson had taken off his jacket, revealing dark stains near the armholes of his light blue shirt.

    "The person speaking. I think you'll recognize the voice."

"You've dealt with similar cases before."

    "You let me, Sven, Hermansson, Krantz, Errfors and…"

    "Ewert-"

    "… a whole bloody bunch of policemen work for weeks on an investigation that you already had the answer to."

    Göransson looked at him for the first time. He had started to speak but Grens shook his head.

    "I'll be done soon."

    Fingers on the machine's sensitive buttons, got the right one after a while.

    "I'll fast forward some more. Twenty-two minutes and seventeen seconds. The same meeting. Another voice."

"I don't want that to happen. You don't want that to happen. Paula doesn't have time for Västmannagatan."

    Ewert Grens looked at the national police commissioner.

    Maybe the well-polished veneer was starting to crack, it certainly felt like that: too many twitches around the eyes, hands rubbing slowly together.

    "Lie to your colleagues. Burn your employees. Give some crimes immunity so that others can be solved. If that is the future of policing… then I'm glad it's only six years until I retire."

    He didn't expect a response, adjusted the speakers so they stood face on when he turned them toward the state secretary.

    "He was sitting directly opposite you. Doesn't it feel strange?"

"I guarantee that you won't be charged for anything that happened at

Västmannagatan 79. I guarantee that we will do our best to help you complete

your operation in prison."

    "A microphone, at about knee-height, on a person who was sitting in the same place that I am now."

And… that we will look after you when the work is done. I know that you will then have a death threat and be branded throughout the criminal world. We will give you a new life, a new identity, and money to start over again abroad."

    Grens lifted the small speakers, moved them even closer toward the state secretary.

    "I want to be sure that you hear what comes next."

    Her voice again, exactly where he'd interrupted her.

"I guarantee you this in my capacity as a state secretary of the Ministry of Justice."

    He reached for the white paper bag, first one more cinnamon bun, then what was left of the coffee at the bottom of his cup.

    "Crime: failure to report a crime. Crime: protection of a criminal. Crime: conspiring to commit crime."

    He was anticipating that they might ask him to leave, threaten to call security, ask him what the hell he thought he was doing.

    "Crime: perjury. Crime: gross misuse of public office. Crime: forgery of documents."

    They sat still. They said nothing.

    "Perhaps you know of others?"

    Some seagulls had been circling outside the window since the meeting began.

    Their loud screeches were now the only thing to be heard.

    That, and the regular breathing of four people around a table.

    Ewert Grens stood up after a while, walked slowly across the room, first to the window and the birds, then back to the people who were no longer in a rush to get anywhere.

    "I won't carry the guilt. Not anymore. Not again."

    Three days earlier he had dared to make a decision he had dreaded throughout his working life-to fire a lethal shot at another person.

    "I was not responsible for his death."

    Last night he had dared to spend several hours in a cemetery-a modest grave that he had been more frightened of than anything else he could remember.

    "I was not responsible for her death."

    His voice, it was remarkably calm again.

    "It
was
not me who committed murder."

    He pointed at them, one at a time.

    "It was you. It was you. It
was
you."

Another Day Later

    A couple of centimeters above the tail bone, the third or fourth vertebra, the pain was unbearable at times. He moved with care, he pedalled with his feet in the air, one at a time, then nothing could be heard and the intense pain was dulled for a while.

    He didn't notice the smell, the stench of urine and feces; in the first few hours perhaps, but that was a long time ago, not now, not anymore.

    He had kept his eyes open the first evening and night and morning, looking for what couldn't be seen, shouting voices and running feet. But he had his eyes closed all the time now, the heavy darkness. He couldn't see anything in any case.

    He was lying on square pieces of aluminum that had been welded to form a long, round pipe-he guessed about sixty centimeters in diameter, just enough room for his shoulders and if he stretched his arms up he could press his palms against the top of the pipe.

    There was still pressure on his stomach and he let go of the drops that trickled down his thighs-it felt better, eased the discomfort. He hadn't had anything to drink since the morning before he took the hostages, only the urine he managed to catch and lift to his mouth, a couple of handfuls over a hundred hours.

    He knew that a person could survive a week without water, but thirst was like hosting madness and his lips and palate and throat shrivelled in the presence of dryness. He held out, just as he held out against the hunger and pain in his joints from lying so still, and against the dark that he had relaxed into once the shouting and running feet fell silent. It was the heat that had made him think about giving up a couple of times. All electricity had been turned off in connection with the smoke and fire and when the ventilation system no longer supplied fresh air, the temperature in the sealed pipe had risen and felt like a fever. In the last few hours he had just aimed at a couple of minutes at a time, but that didn't work anymore, he couldn't stand much more.

    He should have left the pipe yesterday.

    That was what he had planned: three days for the adrenaline and full alert to die down.

    But yesterday afternoon someone had opened the door, come in, and walked around in the substation. He had lain petrified and listened to the footsteps and breathing of a guard or electrician or plumber only half a meter below him. The control room for the prison's water and electricity was only checked a few times a week, he knew that, but still he waited for another twenty-four hours to be on the safe side.

    He pulled his left arm up toward his face, looked at the watch that had belonged to the elderly warden.

    Quarter to seven. Another hour to lock-up.

    Then an hour and a quarter for the staff to change shifts, when the day guards became the night guards.

    It was time.

    He checked that the scissors were still in his trouser pocket, the ones that had been in a pen holder on the desk in the workshop office and that he had cut his long hair with on the first day, his arm and hand movements restricted by the inside of the pipe, but he had plenty of time to do it and it had been a good way to forget the sound of people looking for body parts. He teased them out of his pocket again and, arm back, hit the inside of the pipe hard with the point until his fingertips felt a hole and he could slash the soft metal with the blades. He braced his body directly above the cut and pushed back, feet against the base, both hands against the sharp edges of the metal. He was bleeding heavily when the pipe finally gave way and he sank through the aluminum and fell onto the stone floor of the substation.

    He counted fifty-seven small red and yellow and green lights on panels that controlled the water and electricity; counted them one more time.

    No steps, no voices.

    He was certain that no one had heard a body landing on the floor in one of the rooms with a door straight out into the passage that linked Block G and central security. He grabbed hold of a washbasin with his hands and hauled himself up. He was dizzy but the sensation crawling around his body disappeared after a while and he trusted it again.

    He searched around in the unnerving darkness.

    There was a flashlight on a hook on the wall under a fuse box. He chose that rather than the ceiling light-he could turn on the flashlight and let his eyes slowly adjust to the light. It hurt more than he'd imagined when the dark became light and it's possible he cried our when it was thrown back at him by the mirror above the washbasin.

    He closed his eyes and waited.

    The mirror didn't attack him anymore.

    He saw a head with hair of varying lengths, big tangles that hung loose. He picked the scissors up from the floor and straightened it, cut it as short as he could, only a few millimeters left. The razorblade had also been in one of the desk drawers and later in the same trouser pocket. He leaned down and gulped some water from the tap and then wet his face and bit by bit peeled off the beard he had started to cultivate on his way out of the meeting in Rosenbad, following the decision to infiltrate inside Aspsås's high prison walls.

    He looked in the mirror again.

    Four days earlier, he had had long, fair hair and a three-week beard. Now he was cropped and clean-shaven.

    Another face.

    He let the water run, got undressed, and rubbed the piece of dirty soap that was lying on the washbasin. He washed his body and waited until it had dried in the warm room. He went back to the pipe and the sharp metal edges and with his hands felt around and caught the pile of clothes that a few days earlier had been worn by a principal prison officer called Jacobson, before becoming a makeshift pillow to save his neck and prevent the clothes from being soiled by body fluids.

    They were about the same height and the uniform fit almost perfectly. The trousers were perhaps a bit too short, the shoes perhaps a bit too tight, but it didn't matter, it didn't show.

    He stood by the door and waited.

    He should be frightened, stressed, anxious. He felt nothing. He had been forced to adopt this life state when the ability not to feel meant the same as survival: no thoughts and no longings, no Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus, everything he had to remind him of life.

    He had stepped into it as he passed through the prison gate.

    Only dropped it for two seconds.

    When the shot was about to be fired.

    He had stood by the window and adjusted the earpiece and for the last time looked over at the church tower. He had glanced at the rug that concealed a body covered with explosives and the barrel of diesel and gas close to their feet and the fuse that was resting in his hand. He had checked his position, he had to stand in profile, he had to force them to aim at his head so no forensic scientist would later question the absence of a skull bone.

    Two seconds of pure fear.

    He had heard the order to fire on the receiver. He had to stand there and wait. But his legs had somehow moved too early, they had moved without him intending to do so.

    Twice he had not managed.

    But the third time, the state of control had returned, no thoughts and no feelings and no longings, he was protected again.

    The shot was fired.

    He stood firm.

    He had exactly three seconds.

    The time it would take for the ammunition, in a wind strength of seven meters per second and a temperature of eighteen degrees celsius, to leave the church tower and at a distance of fifteen hundred three meters hit a head in a workshop window.