Three Seconds

again.
    Ewert Grens swallowed.
    Hoffmann was about to die and it was as if he knew – one single moment, he used it and moved again.
    ‘Object in sight again. Ready to fire. Awaiting third order.’
    He was back.
    Grens grabbed hold of the earpiece that was resting on his shoulders, put it back in.
    He turned towards Sven, looking for a face that was turned away.
    ‘I repeat. Ready to fire. Awaiting third order. Over.’
    It was his decision. And his alone.
    A deep breath.
    He fumbled for the transmission button, felt it with his fingertips, pressed it, hard.
    ‘Fire.’
    __________
    Piet Hoffmann had heard the order for the third time.
     
    He had stood still when the gun was cocked.
    He had stood still when the finger pressed on the trigger.
    It was a strange feeling, knowing that a bullet was on its way, that he had three seconds left.
    __________
    The explosion blocked out all sound, light, her breath … somewhere behind her something detonated that sounded like a bomb.
     
    She braked abruptly and the car lurched, pulling her over towards the edge of the road and the ditch. She hung on, braked again and regained control, she stopped the car and got out, still so shaken that she hadn’t had time to be scared.
    Mariana Hermansson had only had a couple of hundred metres left before she would reach Aspsås church.
    She turned round, towards the prison.
    A sharp, intense fire.
    Then thick, black smoke that forced its way out of a gaping hole that until moments ago had been a window in the front of a prison workshop building.

PART FOUR
     

saturday
     

It was probably as dark as it could get at night towards the end of May.
     
    The houses and trees and fields were waiting all around with dissolving corners, to reappear when the light crept back.
    Ewert Grens was driving along the empty road, almost halfway, about twenty kilometres north of Stockholm. His body was tense, every joint and every muscle still ached with adrenaline, even though it was more than twelve hours now since the shot had been fired, the explosion and death. He hadn’t even tried to sleep, though he had lain down for a while on the sofa in his office and listened to the silent police headquarters, without closing his eyes – he just couldn’t turn off the roaring inside. He had tried to lose himself in thoughts of Anni and the cemetery, imagined what her resting place looked like. He still hadn’t been there, but he would go soon. It was one of those nights when, eighteen months ago, he would have talked to her, nights that he had managed to survive with her help; he would have called the nursing home, even though he wasn’t supposed to, nagged one of the staff until they woke her and handed over the receiver, and gradually calmed down as he told her everything, her presence in his ear. After she was gone, he had stopped calling and instead took the car and drove out towards Gärdet and Lidingö bridge and the nursing home that was so well situated on the wealthy island. He would sit in the parking place by her window, look up at it, and after a while get out of the car and walk round the house.
    Ewert, you can’t regulate your grief. Ewert, what you’re frightened of has already happened. Ewert, I never want to see you here again.
    Now he didn’t even have that.
    After a few hours he had got up, walked down the corridor and to the car on Bergsgatan and started to drive towards Solna and North Cemetery, he wanted to talk to her again. He had stood by one of the gates and searched the shadows and then carried on north, through the smudged landscape to a wall around a prison and a church with a beautiful tower.
    ‘Grens.’
    The dark, the quiet – if it had not been for the searing smell of fire and soot and diesel, it could all have been a dream, a head in a window, a mouth forming the word death, and in a while there would perhaps be nothing more than the birds singing their hearts out to the dawn and a town waking up without having heard anything about a hostage drama and a person lying motionless on the floor.
    ‘Yes?’
    He had pressed the button beside the gate and was talking into the intercom.
    ‘I’m the detective investigating all this mess. Can you let me in?’
    ‘It’s three in the morning.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘There’s no one here who—’
    ‘Can you let me in?’
    He slipped through the gate and central security, then crossed one of the prison’s dry inner yards.
    He had never fired death at a person