Three Seconds

noises.
    Piet Hoffmann was standing by the pile of glass-fibre tiles. He had made the right decision. If they had still been up there under the ceiling, they would have swallowed and muffled the small movements that were now happening above his head.
    More scraping sounds.
    This time outside the door.
    They were up the church tower, on the roof, by the door. They were reducing his field of action. There were enough of them now to guard the prison and still prepare for an assault on several fronts.
    He picked up the square glass-fibre tiles and threw them, one after the other, at the door. They would hear it. They would be standing out there with their listening equipment and they would know that it was now more difficult to get in; that there was something in the way that would take another second to pass, the extra time a person holding a gun needs to shoot his hostages.
    __________
    Mariana Hermansson was driving far too fast, sirens wailing and blue lights flashing. They were now some distance north of Stockholm and were strangely silent, perhaps remembering previous hostage takings, or earlier visits to the prison as part of their day-to-day investigations. Sven rummaged around in the glove compartment and after a while managed to find what he was looking for, as he usually did: two cassettes of Siwan’s sixties hits. He put one into the player, as they had always listened to Grens’s past in order to avoid talking and gloss over the realisation that they didn’t have much to say to each other.
     
    ‘Take that out!’
    Ewert had raised his voice and Sven wasn’t sure that he understood why.
    ‘I thought—’
    ‘Take it out, Sven! Show some respect for my grief.’
    ‘You mean—’
    ‘Respect. Grief.’
    Sven ejected the cassette and put it back in the glove compartment, careful to close it in a way that Ewert would see and hear. He rarely understood his boss and he had learnt not to ask questions, that sometimes it was easier just to let people’s peculiarities be just that. He himself was one of the boring ones, someone who didn’t seek out conflict, who didn’t demand answers in order to position himself in the hierarchy, he had long since decided that those who were anxious and lacked confidence could do that.
    ‘The hostage taker?’
    ‘What about him?’
    ‘Have you got the background then?’
    ‘Hold on a tick.’
    Sven Sundkvist pulled a document out of an envelope and then put on his glasses. The first page, from the criminal intelligence database, had the special code that was only used for a handful of criminals. He passed it to Grens.
    KNOWN DANGEROUS ARMED
    ‘One of
those
.’
    Ewert Grens sighed. One of the ones who always meant reinforcement or special units with specially trained policemen whenever an arrest was planned. One of the ones who had no limits.
    ‘More?’
    ‘Criminal record. Ten years for possession of amphetamine. But it’s the earlier conviction that’s interesting for us.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Five years. Attempted murder. Aggravated assault of a police officer.’
    Sven Sundkvist looked at the next document.
    ‘I’ve also got the grounds for judgement. When he was arrested in Söderhamn, the hostage taker first hit a policeman in the face several times with the butt of a gun, then fired two shots at him, one in the thigh and one in the left upper arm.’
    Ewert Grens put his hand up.
    His face had turned a shade of red. He leant back, and drew his other hand through his thinning hair.
    ‘Piet Hoffmann.’
    Sven Sundkvist was taken aback.
    ‘How do you know that?’
    ‘That’s what he’s called.’
    ‘I hadn’t even read his name yet, but, yes, he is called that. Ewert … how did you know?’
    The red in Ewert’s face deepened, his breathing was perhaps more laboured.
    ‘I read the judgement,
Sven, precisely that bloody judgement
less than twenty-four hours ago. It was Piet Hoffmann I was going to see when I went to Aspsås in connection with the murder at Västmannagatan 79.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    Ewert Grens shook his head slowly.
    ‘He’s one of the three names I was going to question and eliminate from the Västmannagatan investigation.
Piet Hoffmann
. I don’t know why or how, but he was one of them, Sven.’
    __________
    The churchyard should have been beautiful. The sun was shining through the high, green leaves, the gravel paths had recently been raked and the grass was in neat squares in front of the gravestones that stood