Three Seconds

we’ve got about the same distance. I’m just passing Haga Park. What’s it about?’
    ‘Tell you when we get there.’
    __________
    Another locked gate in another uniformed world.
     
    Grens and Sundkvist arrived at the Svea Life Guards in Kungsängen only a few minutes apart. Sterner was waiting for them by the regiment guardhouse. He looked rested, but was wearing the same clothes as the day before, white and grey camouflages, creased after a night on top of the bedclothes. Standing in front of the closed gate and with the barracks behind him, he looked the cliché of a model American marine, cropped hair and broad-shouldered, square face, the kind that on films always stand too near and shout too loud.
    ‘Same clothes as yesterday?’
    ‘Yup. When the helicopter dropped me off … I went and lay down.’
    ‘And you slept?’
    ‘Like a baby.’
    Grens and Sundkvist exchanged looks. The guy who had fired had slept. But the one who had made the decision to fire, and his closest colleague, had not.
    Sterner signed them in and showed the way to a deserted barrack square, with solid buildings that stared down at all visitors. Sterner walked fast and Grens had difficulty keeping up when they went through the first door and carried on up the stairs, down long corridors with stone floors, conscripts still in underpants ahead of a day in uniform.
    ‘Life Guards. First company. The ones who are going to be officers and stay longest.’
    He stopped in a room with simple, institutional furniture, white walls that needed painting, and plastic flooring on hard concrete.
    Four work stations, one in each corner.
    ‘My colleagues won’t be coming in today. A two-day exercise in north Uppland, around Tierp. We won’t be disturbed here.’
    He closed the door.
    ‘I rang as soon as I woke up. The thought that I had as I fell asleep came back to me and refused to leave the bed.’
    He leant forwards.
    ‘I observed. With the binoculars. I watched him for a long time. I followed his movements, his face for nearly half an hour.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘He was standing in the window, fully exposed. You mentioned it too, I heard you. Like he knew he could be seen, that he wanted to demonstrate his power over the hostages, the whole situation, maybe even you. You said that he was doing it because he was sure he was out of range.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘That’s what
you
said. What
you
believed.’
    He looked at the door, as if he wanted to reassure himself that it really was shut.
    ‘
I
didn’t think that. Not then. And not now.’
    ‘I think you’ll need to explain that.’
    Grens felt uneasy, the same feeling that had kept him awake, that was in some way connected to the feeling he got in the burnt-out workshop.
    There was something that wasn’t right.
    ‘When I was watching him through the binoculars. Object in clear sight. Awaiting order. I don’t know, it was like he knew. I repeat. Awaiting order. As if he knew that he was in range.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘I aborted. Abort. Object out of sight. I aborted twice.’
    ‘Yes, and?’
    Well, both times … it was like he knew when I was going to shoot. He moved so … precisely.’
    ‘He moved several times.’
    Sterner got up, he was restless, went over to the door, checked it, then over to the window with a view of the square.
    ‘He did. But both times …
precisely
as I was about to fire.’
    ‘And the third time?’
    ‘He stood still. Then … it was like … like he’d decided. He stood still and waited.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘One bullet, one hit. The motto of sniper training. I only shoot if I know I’m going to hit the target.’
    Grens went over to the same window.
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Where …?’
    ‘Where did you hit him?’
    ‘The head. I shouldn’t have done it. But I had no choice.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I mean that from a distance, we always aim at the chest. The largest target area. I should have aimed there. But he was standing in profile the whole time and so … to get as big a target area as possible … I shot at his head.’
    ‘And the explosion?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Don’t know?’
    ‘
I don’t know
.’
    ‘But you—’
    ‘It wasn’t connected to the shot.’
    A group of about twenty teenagers in uniform marched across the gravel in two rows.
    They tried to lift their legs and swing their arms at the same time,while someone who was a bit older walked beside them screeching something.
    They weren’t