Three Seconds

employer, the company’s correct name is evidently Ericsson Enterprise AB. She disappeared from the work place yesterday just before lunch.’
    ‘While the hostage drama was ongoing.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Between phone calls.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Ewert Grens got up out of the soft sofa and stretched his aching back while Hermansson took out another piece of paper.
    ‘According to the tax authorities, Zofia and Piet Hoffmann have two children together. The two boys have attended a nursery school at an address in Enskededalen every weekday for the past three years and are collected by either their mother or father at around five o’clock. But yesterday, a couple of hours before her husband was shot to death by us, and exactly twenty minutes after she left work, Zofia Hoffmann picked up the boys considerably earlier than normal without notifying any of the staff. She seemed tense – two of the nursery school teachers described her as that, she didn’t meet their eye, didn’t seem to hear their questions.’
    Mariana Hermansson studied the older man who bent down to touch the floor, then up and leant back; his large body and an exercise that he had no doubt learnt in a strict gym hall half a century ago.
    ‘I sent a patrol car round to their house, a detached house built in the fifties, a few minutes’ drive south of the city. We looked in through two closed windows, rang the doorbell, the doors were locked, looked through the letter box and could see today’s newspaper and yesterday’s post. Nothing. Nothing, Ewert, to indicate that anyone in the family had been there since yesterday morning.’
    Twice more. He bent forwards and then leant back.
    ‘Issue an arrest warrant.’
    ‘An arrest warrant
was
issued for Zofia Hoffmann thirty minutes ago.’
    Ewert Grens nodded briefly, it might have been praise.
    ‘He phoned her. He warned her. He protected her from the consequences of his own death.’
    __________
    She had stepped out into the corridor and closed the door when she stopped, turned round and opened it again.
     
    ‘There was one more thing.’
    Grens was still standing in the middle of the floor.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Can I come in?’
    ‘You’ve never asked for permission before.’
    It felt ominous.
    She had been on her way to tell him all morning and had still managed to leave his office without having spoken about why she really came.
    ‘I know something that may hold the key. And that you should have known yesterday, but I didn’t get to you in time.’
    She wasn’t used to being out of control, of not being sure that she was doing the right thing.
    ‘I was on my way to tell you. I ran through the prison corridors and drove as fast as I could towards the church.’
    It was a feeling she didn’t like. Not anytime, and certainly not here, with Ewert.
    ‘I tried to call but your phone was switched off. I knew that every minute, second counted. I could hear you and the sniper talking on the car radio. Your order. The sound of the gun being fired.’
    ‘Hermansson?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Get to the point.’
    She looked at him. She was nervous. It was a long time since she had felt like this in here.
    ‘You asked me to talk to Oscarsson. I did. The circumstances surrounding Hoffmann, Ewert – someone was given Oscarsson orders, someone was telling him what to do.’
    She had learnt to read his face.
    She knew what it meant when the colour started to rise in his cheeks and the vein on his temple started to throb.
    ‘The night before you went there, Oscarsson was ordered to let a lawyer visit one of the prisoners in the same unit as Hoffmann, and then to prevent you or anyone else from questioning him or meeting him. He was ordered to move him back to the unit where he came from, despite the fact that prisoners who have been threatened are never moved back, and, in contravention of the prison service’s own regulations, that the gates should be kept shut, even if Hoffmann demanded that they be opened.’
    ‘Hermansson, what the hell—’
    ‘Ewert, let me finish. I had the information but I didn’t get to you in time. And after … the explosion, it didn’t seem relevant to talk about it just then.’
    He put his hand on her shoulder. Something he had never done before.
    ‘Hermansson. I’m furious, but not at you. You did the right thing. But I do want to know who.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Who made the orders?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Don’t know!’
    ‘He wouldn’t tell me.’
    Ewert Grens almost