Three Seconds

screw stepped into the cell and bent over the sink.
    ‘It stinks.’
    ‘I have the right to make a phone call.’
    ‘Fuck, you pissed in the sink.’
    ‘I have the right to ring my lawyer, non-custodial services, the police and my five approved numbers. And I want to do that now.’
    ‘In this unit, which you asked to come to yourself, we use the toilets in the corridor. And I haven’t got your bloody list.’
    ‘The police. I want to call a number on the City Police switchboard. You can’t refuse me.’
    ‘There’s a telephone in—’
    ‘I want to call from here. I have the right to ring the police in private.’
    Twelve rings.
    Piet Hoffmann held the cordless phone in his hand. Erik Wilson wasn’t there, he knew that he was away in the USA, on some course in the southeast, during the period that they were not going to have any contact. But that was where he called, his office, that was where he had to begin.
    He was put through again.
    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.
    Fourteen rings.
    Erik wasn’t going to answer, no matter how long he waited.
    ‘I want to call the switchboard.’
    I am alone.
    The regular tone of a switchboard, muffled, feeble.
    No one knows yet
.
    ‘Police Authority, Stockholm, can I help you?’
    ‘Göransson.’
    ‘Which one?’
    ‘The head of criminal operations.’
    The female voice put him through. Then that muffled, feeble ringing, again and again.
I am alone. No one knows yet
. He waited with the receiver pressed to his ear. The regular sound got louder, with each ring it got a little louder until it was piercing his brain and mixing with the voice from the bathroom that passed the closed cell and shouted
stukatj
once, twice, three times.
    __________
    Ewert Grens lay on the corduroy sofa and looked at the shelf behind the desk and the hole that he had filled again early that morning, the row of files and a lonely cactus concealed a whole life.
As if there hadn’t been any dust
. He turned round and looked at the ceiling, spotted new cracks that were about to separate and then come together, only to separate again. He had stayed in the car. The park attendant had pointed towards the lawns and trees that were practically a forest, explained that the new graves were at the far end towards Haga. He had even offered to go with him, show the way to someone who had never been there before. Grens had thanked him and shaken his head, he would go there another day.
     
    ‘The noise?’
    Someone had stopped in his doorway.
    ‘Do you want something?’
    ‘The noise.’
    ‘What bloody noise?’
    ‘The noise. That … atonal one. Dissonance.’
    Lars Ågestam crossed the threshold.
    ‘The noise that I normally hear. Siw Malmkvist. I was heading for it now. Until I realised that I’d walked past. That it was … silent.’
    The public prosecutor stepped into an office that looked different, as if it had taken on new dimensions and what had previously been at the centre had disappeared.
    ‘Have you rearranged the furniture?’
    He looked at the shelf. The files, preliminary investigations, a dead pot plant. A bit of wall that had previously been something else, presumably the centre.
    ‘What have you done?’
    Grens didn’t answer. Lars Ågestam listened to the music that had always been there, that he detested and had been forced to listen to.
    ‘Grens? Why …?’
    ‘That’s got nothing to do with you.’
    ‘You’ve—’
    ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
    The prosecutor swallowed – there might have been something to talk about that wasn’t to do with law; he had tried and he regretted it as usual.
    ‘Västmannagatan.’
    ‘What about it?’
    ‘I gave you three days.’
    Not a sound. And that wasn’t how it should be, in here.
    ‘Three days. For the last names.’
    ‘We’re not quite finished.’
    ‘If you still haven’t got anything … Grens, I will scale down the case this time.’
    Ewert Grens had been lying down until now. He quickly got up, his body leaving a deep impression on the soft sofa.
    ‘You bloody well won’t! We’ve done exactly what you suggested. Identified and contacted several names on the periphery of the investigation. We’ve questioned them, dismissed them. All except one. A certain Piet Hoffmann who is already doing time and right now is in the prison’s