Three Seconds

succeeding.
    ‘And one more thing.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Who was he?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I killed him.’
    The two rows were now standing at ease.
    The older uniform demonstrated how their guns should lie on their shoulders while they marched.
    It was important that they all held them the same way.
    ‘I killed him. I want to know his name. I feel I have the right.’
    Grens hesitated, looked at Sven, and then back at Sterner.
    ‘Piet Hoffmann.’
    Sterner’s face showed nothing. If it was a name he recognised he hid it well.
    ‘Hoffmann. Do you have his personal details?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I want to go over to administration. And I’d like you to come with me. There’s something I want to check.’
    Ewert and Sven followed Sterner’s back across the barrack square to a building that was smaller than the others and housed the regimental commander’s quarters, administration and a slightly better officers’ mess. On the second floor, Sterner rapped on the doorframe of an open door, and an older man sitting in front of a computer gave them a friendly nod.
    ‘I need his personal ID number.’
    Sven had already got out a notebook from his inner pocket, which he flicked through until he found what he was looking for.
    ‘721018-0010.’
    The older man in front of the computer typed in the ten-digit number, waited for a few seconds and then shook his head.
    ‘Born in the early nineteen seventies? Then he won’t be here. Ten years back, that’s what the law stipulates. Any documents older than that are stored in the Military Archives.’
    He smiled, looked pleased.
    ‘But … I always make my own copies of anything we have beforesending it off. Svea Life Guards’ own archive. Every young man who has done his military service here in the past thirty years can be found on the shelves next door.’
    A room crowded with shelves on every wall, from floor to ceiling. He got down on his knees and ran his finger along the backs of the files before picking out a black one.
    ‘Born nineteen seventy-two. Now, if he was here … ninety-one, ninety-two, ninety-three, maybe even ninety-four. Life Company, you said. Sniper training?’
    ‘Yes.’
    He leafed through the papers, put the file back, then took out the one beside it.
    ‘Not ninety-one. So we’ll try ninety-two.’
    He had got about halfway when he stopped and looked up.
    ‘Hoffmann?’
    ‘Piet Hoffmann.’
    ‘Then we’ve got a match.’
    Ewert and Sven stepped forward simultaneously to get a better look at the papers that the archivist was holding up. Hoffmann’s full name, Hoffmann’s personal ID number, then a long row of combined numbers and letters, some sort of record.
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘It means that someone called Piet Hoffmann, someone with the personal ID number that you just gave me, completed his military service here in nineteen ninety-three. He followed an eleven-month training programme, as a sniper.’
    Ewert Grens scanned the piece of paper once more.
    It was him.
    The person they had seen die sixteen hours earlier.
    ‘Special training in weapons and shooting, all positions – prone, kneeling, standing, short range, long range … I think you get the gist?’
    Sterner opened the file, took out the piece of paper and copied it on a machine that was as big as the room.
    ‘That feeling that I had … that he knew exactly where I was, what I was doing. If he was trained here … he would have enough skills to know that Aspsås church tower was the only place that we could get him from. He knew that it
was
possible to kill him.’
    Sterner held the copy crushed in his hand and then gave it to Grens.
    ‘He’d chosen that place with great care. It’s no coincidence that he went to the workshop and that window, in particular. He provoked us to fire. He knew that a good, well-trained marksman could shoot him if he had to.’
    He shook his head.
    ‘He wanted to die.’
    __________
    The corridor of the intensive care unit at Danderyd hospital had yellow walls and a light blue floor. The nurses sent them friendly smiles and Ewert Grens and Sven Sundkvist gave equally friendly smiles back. It was a quiet morning – they had both been there for work on many occasions before, often in the evening or weekend, injured people waiting on beds in the harsh light of the corridor, which was empty now, as it normally was when alcohol, football matches and snowy roads were not the order of the day.
     
    They had driven there straight from