Three Seconds

her more and more each year. He was still not sure when she was laughing at him or was annoyed with him, but she wasgood at her job and intelligent and she looked at him in a way that was at once demanding and uncompromising, in a way that very few dared. He would talk to her again, maybe even ask her to leave the offices with him for a while, ask her for a coffee and a cake in the cafe on Bergsgatan. It felt good to be having these thoughts, to look forward to something, to having a coffee with the daughter they never had.
    Ewert Grens opened the door to the solitary confinement unit and the corridor where everything had kicked off a few hours ago. The body that had fallen forwards with blood pouring from the head had already been removed – strapped onto a stretcher and taken for an autopsy – and the two prison wardens who had been threatened with a gun and each locked away in a cell were now with a crisis management team in one of the visiting rooms, talking to a prison psychologist and prison chaplain.
    His first thought was actually about the banging.
    In each cell on the ground floor, the prisoners in solitary confinement were banging on their closed, locked door. A regular thumping sound that made your heart beat out of rhythm. He knew that that was what they did and had decided to ignore it, but it forced its way into his mind and he was relieved to carry on up the stairs behind Edvardson and past the armed police on the first landing.
    They stopped when they got to the second floor and nodded silently to the eight members of the national task force standing outside the workshop ready for an order to break down the door, throw in a shock grenade and take full control of the situation within ten seconds.
    ‘That’s too long.’
    Ewert Grens was talking quietly and John Edvardson leant in closer in order to reply in an equally quiet voice.
    ‘Eight seconds. With this team, Ewert, I can get it down to eight seconds.’
    ‘It’s still too long. Hoffmann, to aim and then move the muzzle from one head to the next and shoot, he doesn’t need more than one and a half seconds. And in his frame of mind … I can’t risk a dead hostage.’
    John Edvardson nodded at the ceiling and the dull shuffling of bodies changing position every now and then.
    Grens shook his head.
    ‘That’s not going to work either. From the door, from the roof, thenumber of seconds you’re talking about … the hostages could die several times over.’
    The banging, he couldn’t stand it much longer, his concentration couldn’t stretch to encompass both the madmen downstairs and the madman in there. He was on his way back down the stairs to the thundering noise, but turned when Edvardson put a hand on his shoulder.
    ‘Ewert …’
    ‘Thank you.’
    They stood in silence, with the waiting police breathing behind their backs.
    ‘In that case, Ewert, unless Hoffmann suddenly gives himself up, if and when we deem his threat to be more than just a threat … then there’s only one solution. The military marksman. With a weapon that is powerful enough to kill.’
    __________
    The dread hounded him, translating into jerky movements and a nervous cough. Fredrik Göransson had been walking for ten minutes now in endless circles, between the window and the desk in one of the rooms of the Government Offices, and he hadn’t got anywhere.
     
    ‘
We
made sure that the prisoners got the information about a grass.’
    The crumpled map was in the wastepaper basket – he picked it up and unfolded it.
    ‘
We
forced him to act.’
    ‘He had a job to do.’
    The national police commissioner had let the state secretary answer thus far. Now he looked at his colleague.
    ‘That didn’t involve threatening another person’s life.’
    ‘We burnt him.’
    ‘You’ve burnt other informants before.’
    ‘I have always denied that we even work with infiltrators. I’ve stood by and watched without giving any protection when an organisation has dealt with that person. But this … this isn’t the same. This isn’t burning him. This is murder.’
    ‘You still haven’t understood. We are not the ones who will make the decision. We are only providing a solution for the police officer who
will
make that decision.’
    The agitated man with the jerky movements couldn’t bear to stand still any longer, and with the dread chasing right behind him, he made a dash past the table to the closed door.
    ‘I want no part in this.’
    __________
    He