Three Seconds

silently waiting for the next visitors. But the beauty was an illusion, a facade that when they got closer was replaced with danger, anxiety and tension, and the visitors had replaced their watering cans and flowers with semi-automatics and black visors. John Edvardson met them at thegate and they hurried towards the white church with the high steps up to a closed wooden door. Edvardson handed the binoculars to Ewert Grens, waiting in silence while the detective superintendent looked and found the right window.
     
    ‘That part of the workshop.’
    Ewert Grens handed the binoculars to Hermansson.
    ‘There’s only one entrance and exit to that part of the workshop. If you want to take hostages … that’s completely the wrong place to go.’
    ‘We’ve heard them talking.’
    ‘Both of them?’
    ‘Yes. They’re alive. So we can’t go in.’
    The room that was to the right just inside the church door wasn’t particularly big, but it was big enough to be made into a control post. A room where the immediate family would gather before a funeral, or the bride and groom would wait before a wedding. Sven and Hermansson moved the chairs back to the wall while Edvardson went over to the small wooden altar and unfolded a plan of the whole prison and then a detailed plan of the workshop.
    ‘And visible … all the time?’
    ‘I could order the marksmen to shoot at any time. But it’s too far. Fifteen hundred and three metres. I can only guarantee that our weapons will hit at max six hundred metres.’
    Ewert Grens pointed a finger at the drawing and the window that, for the moment, was their only contact with a person who had committed murder a few hours ago.
    ‘He knows that we can’t shoot him from here, and behind bars, behind reinforced glass … he feels safe.’
    ‘He
thinks
that he’s safe.’
    Grens looked at Edvardson.
    ‘Thinks?’
    ‘
We
can’t shoot him. Not with
our
equipment. But it is possible.’
    __________
    There was a drawing lying on the large conference table in one of the corner rooms in the Government Offices. It was bright and the light from the ceiling blended with light from the high window with a view over the water at Norrström and Riddarfjärden. Fredrik Göransson smoothed the folds in the stiff paper with his hand and moved it so thatit would be easier for the national police commissioner and the state secretary to see.
     
    ‘Here, this building nearest the wall, is Block B. And here, on the second floor, is the workshop.’
    The three faces leant over the table and, with the help of a piece of paper, studied a place they had never visited.
    ‘So Hoffmann is standing here. Close to him, on the floor, are the hostages. A prisoner and a warden. Completely naked.’
    It was hard to comprehend, from the straight lines on the architect’s drawing, that there was someone standing there, threatening to kill.
    ‘According to Edvardson, he has been totally exposed in the window since the national task force arrived.’
    Göransson moved the files and a thick folder with the Prison and Probation Service documents from the table onto one of the chairs in order to make more space, and when that wasn’t sufficient he moved the thermos and three mugs. He then unrolled a map of Aspsås district and with a felt pen drew a straight line from the squares that were the various prison buildings across the green area and open space to one of the other rectangles on the map, the one marked with a cross.
    ‘The church. Exactly fifteen hundred and three metres away. The only place with a view that is clear enough for the snipers. And Hoffmann knows that, Edvardson is sure of it. He knows that the police don’t have the equipment to reach him and that’s what he’s telling us by standing there.’
    There was a little coffee left in the thermos and the state secretary poured herself half a cup. Then she got up and moved away, looked at her visitors and spoke in a quiet voice.
    ‘You should have informed me yesterday.’
    She didn’t expect an answer.
    ‘You’ve manoeuvred us into a corner.’
    She was shaking with rage. She looked at them one at a time, then lowered her voice even more.
    ‘You have forced him to action. And now I don’t have any choice, I have to act as well.’
    She continued to look at them as she walked towards the door.
    ‘I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.’
    __________
    Each step had been painful, and when Ewert Grens spied the aluminium ladder that led up to a