Three Seconds

disappeared.
    ‘This is a good place. The best place to access him. We’ll operate from here.’
    John Edvardson gripped the iron balcony railings even harder. It was blowing more than he’d realised up here and it was a long way down.
    ‘I need your help, Rydén. From now on, I’ll be working from here but I also need someone closer to the prison, with an overview, someone like you, eyes that know the surroundings.’
    Rydén watched some of the visitors to the graveyard; they had looked up anxiously at the tower several times and were now leaving, the peace they had sought and shared with others was gone and wouldn’t be recaptured here today.
    He nodded slowly, he had been listening and understood, but had another solution.
    ‘I’d be happy to do that, but there’s a policeman, a commanding officer, who knows the prison even better, who worked in this district while it was being built and who has come here regularly ever since, to hand over prisoners for questioning. A proper detective.’
    ‘And who’s that?
    ‘A DS at City Police. His name’s Ewert Grens.’

Every word was transmitted with perfect clarity, the silver receiver worked just as well as he knew it would.
     
    ‘And who’s that?’
    He adjusted it slightly, a gentle push on the thin metal disc with his index finger to push the earpiece harder against his inner ear.
    ‘A DS at City Police. His name’s Ewert Grens.’
    Their voices were clear, as if they were holding the transmitter to their mouths and trying to talk straight into it.
    Piet Hoffmann waited by the window.
    They were standing by the low iron railing, perhaps even leaning ever so slightly forwards.
    Then something happened.
    Clear scraping noises, first a metal gun meeting a wooden floor, then a heavy body lying down.
    ‘Fifteen hundred and three metres.’
    ‘Fifteen hundred and three metres. Is that right?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Too far. We don’t have any equipment for that distance. We can see him, but we can’t reach him.’

The car was barely moving.
     
    The morning traffic was bumper to bumper, tired and tetchy as it crept along in both lanes of the Klarastrand road.
    An angry passenger got off a bus in front and started to walk along the edge of the busy main artery, and looked happier as he passed the warm vehicles and reached the slip road to the E4 long before his fellow passengers. Ewert Grens thought about tooting at the man who was walking where he shouldn’t, or maybe even getting out his police sign, but he didn’t; he understood him and if a furious walk in polluted air alongside cars that had fused together prevented people from thumping the dashboard and frightening their fellow commuters, then that was exactly what they should be allowed to do.
    He fingered the crumpled map that was lying in the passenger seat.
    He had decided. He was on his way to her.
    In a couple of kilometres he would stop in front of one of the gates to North Cemetery that were always open and he would get out of the car and he would find her grave and he would say something to her that resembled a farewell.
    His mobile phone was under the map.
    He let it stay there for the first three rings, then looked at it for the next three, then picked it up when he realised that it wasn’t going to stop.
    The duty officer.
    ‘Ewert?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Where are you?’
    The familiar tone. Grens had already started to look for ways out of the frozen queue – a duty officer who sounded like that wanted help quickly.
    ‘The Klarastrand road, northbound.’
    ‘You’ve got an order.’
    ‘For when?’
    ‘It’s bloody urgent, Ewert.’
    Ewert didn’t like changing plans that had been decided.
    He liked routine and he liked closure and therefore found it difficult to change directions when in his heart he was already on his way.
    And so he should have sighed, perhaps protested a bit, but what he felt was relief.
    He didn’t need to go. Not yet.
    ‘Wait.’
    Grens indicated, nudged the nose of the car out into the opposite lane to make a U-turn over the continuous white line, accompanied by hysterical hooting from vehicles that had to brake suddenly. Until he’d had enough, wound down the window and put the blue flashing light on the roof.
    All cars went silent. All the drivers ducked their heads.
    ‘Ewert?’
    ‘I’m here.’
    ‘An incident at Aspsås prison. You know the prison better than any other officer in the county. I need you there, now, as gold