Three Seconds

binoculars from his chest and studied the building behind the Aspsås prison wall. The man who could be seen behind the window, the one who was called Piet Hoffmann, who Grens should have questioned the day before … there was something odd going on, something wasn’t right – people who suddenly got ill rarely had the strength and focus to shoot someone else through the eye.
     
    ‘Hermansson?’
    He had gone over to the open window and shouted through.
    ‘I want you to contact the prison doctor. I want to know how a prisoner who was given barrier nursing in the hospital unit yesterday morning is now, at lunchtime today, standing over there pointing a gun at hostages.’
    Ewert Grens stayed outside the open window for a while and looked over at the prison. The inner strength he had, the one that was always there and forced him to keep at it, keep at it, keep at it until he had ananswer, he knew exactly where it was coming from this time. The older warden. If the two people who had been taken hostage were both fellow prisoners, he wouldn’t have been so motivated, he wouldn’t have felt the same driving edge. That’s just how it was. He didn’t care much about one of the naked bodies on the workshop floor, he felt nothing for the prisoner who in theory could be in cahoots with the hostage taker. It wasn’t something that he was proud of, but that was how he felt. The warden, on the other hand, who wore a uniform and worked there,
an ordinary representative of a workplace that the general public hated
, an older man who had given his live to this crap, shouldn’t have to deal with such deep humiliation, a person who believed they had the right to take his life, a gun to his head.
    Grens swallowed.
    It was the warden, that’s what this was all about.
    He lowered the binoculars and fished out his mobile phone. He tried to remember if he had ever before asked his line manager for help two days in a row. After all, they had had an unspoken understanding for a long time to stay out of each other’s way in order to avoid conflicts. But he had no choice. He dialled the number of the office only a couple of doors down from his own. No reply. He dialled again, the switchboard this time, asked them to put him through to his mobile phone. Chief Superintendent Göransson answered after the first ring, his voice hushed, as if he was in a meeting and leaning forward to speak.
    ‘Ewert … I don’t have time right now. I’m trying to find a solution to a critical problem.’
    ‘This is critical too.’
    ‘We—’
    ‘I’m exactly fifteen hundred and three metres away from the prison in Aspsås. I’m responsible for an ongoing hostage situation. There’s a risk that one of the prison wardens might die if I make the wrong decision and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that that doesn’t happen. But I need some bureaucratic assistance. You know, the sort of thing you do.’
    Chief Superintendent Göransson ran his hand over his face and through his hair.
    ‘You’re at Aspsås, you say?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And you’re the gold commander?’
    ‘I just took over from Edvardson. He’s focusing on the task force.’
    Göransson held the telephone high up over his head and pointed at it with big gestures, catching the attention of the national police commissioner and state secretary and nodding vehemently at them until they understood.
    ‘I’m listening.’
    ‘I need a competent marksman.’
    ‘The national task force are there, aren’t they?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then I don’t understand.’
    ‘I need someone who is trained and equipped to shoot over a distance of fifteen hundred metres. Apparently the police aren’t. So I need a
military
marksman.’
    They were listening, the national police commissioner and the state secretary, they were sitting next to him and had started to get the picture.
    ‘You know as well as I do that the armed forces can’t be used against civilians.’
    ‘You’re the bureaucrat, Göransson. If you’re good at anything, then it’s that. Being a pen-pusher. I want you to come up with a solution.’
    ‘Ewert—’
    ‘
Before
the hostage dies.’
    __________
    Göransson held the phone in his hand.
     
    Dread
.
    It was there again
.
    ‘That was Ewert Grens. The DS who’s investigating Västmannagatan 79. And right now he’s standing right here.’
    He pointed at the map, at the thin lines that symbolised something that actually existed. Ewert Grens was actually