Three Seconds

answer. The forest transformed slowly into high rise blocks – he was getting close to Stockholm.
    ‘Grens, answer me. Paula who?’
    Ewert Grens just held his handset for a while, then hung up.
    __________
    The corridor was empty. The coffee machine hummed, hidden by the dark. He settled on one of the chairs outside Göransson’s office.
     
    His boss would soon be there. Grens was convinced of it.
    He drank the vending machine coffee.
    Wilson was Hoffmann’s handler. A handler records the informant’s work in a logbook. The logbook is kept in a safe by the CHIS controller.
    Göransson.
    ‘Grens.’
    The chief superintendent opened the door to his office. Ewert Grens looked at the clock and smiled. Exactly half an hour since their conversation.
    He was shown into an office that was considerably larger than his own and sat down in a leather armchair, wriggled a bit.
    Göransson was nervous.
    He was trying hard to pretend the opposite, but Grens recognised the breathing, the pitch, the slightly exaggerated movements.
    ‘The logbook, Göransson. I want to see it.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    Grens was furious but hadn’t thought of showing it.
    He didn’t shout, he didn’t threaten.
    Not yet.
    ‘Give me the logbook. The whole file.’
    Göransson was sitting on the edge of the desk. He waved at two walls of shelves, files on every shelf.
    ‘Which bloody file?’
    ‘The file of the person I murdered.’
    ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
    ‘The grass file.’
    ‘What do you want it for?’
    I am going to nail you, you bastard. I’ve got a day to do it.
    ‘You know.’
    ‘What I know, Ewert, is that there is only one copy of it, and it’s in my safe, which only I have the code to, and there’s a reason for that.’
    Göransson gave a light kick to the safe that was green and stood against the wall behind his desk.
    ‘As
no
unauthorised persons can see it.’
    Grens breathed slowly. He had been about to hit out, balled fist that was halfway to Göransson’s face when he caught it, the desire was so strong.
    He released his cramping fingers, held them out, an exaggerated gesture perhaps.
    ‘The file, Göransson. And I’ll need a pen.’
    __________
    Göransson looked at the hand in front of him, the gnarled fingers.
     
    An Ewert Grens who shouts, who threatens, I can deal with that
.
    ‘Can I have it?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The pen.’
    But the loud whispering
.
    ‘And a piece of paper.’
    ‘Ewert?’
    ‘A piece of paper.’
    The gnarled fingers pointing at him.
    He gave them a notebook and a pen, a red felt tip.
    ‘You got a name from me half an hour ago. I know that that name is in the informant file. I want to see it.’
    He knows
.
    Ewert Grens held the notebook against the armrest of the leather chair and wrote something. Handwriting that was normally difficult to read. But not now. Five carefully written letters in red felt tip.
    Grens knows
.
    Göransson went over to the safe, maybe his hands were shaking, maybe that was why it took so long to set the six digits, to open the heavy door, to take out a black, rectangular file.
    ‘Are all the meetings between your handler and this Hoffmann recorded here?
’
    ‘
Yes
.’
    ‘
And this is the only copy?
’
    ‘
It’s the copy that I keep as CHIS controller. The only one.’
    ‘
Destroy it.’
    He put the black folder down in front of him on the desk and looked through the code names of criminals who were recruited to work as informants for the Swedish police. He had got halfway when he stopped.
    I knew it was wrong and I said so.
    ‘Grens?’
    ‘Yes?’
    I left her room
.
    ‘It’s here. The name you’re looking for.’
    Ewert Grens had already got up and was standing behind his boss, reading over his shoulder, tightly written pages.
    First the code name. Then the date. Then a summary of that day’s short meeting in a flat that could be entered from two different addresses.
    Page after page, meeting after meeting.
    ‘You know what I want.’
    I got out.
    ‘You can’t have it.’
    ‘Give me the envelope, Göransson. Give it to me.’
    With every logbook came an envelope with the informant’s real name, sealed by the handler on the first day of the operation, a wax seal, red and shiny.
    ‘Open it.’
    I can walk out of this with my head held high
.
    ‘I can’t do that.’
    ‘Now, Göransson.’
    __________
    Grens clutched the envelope in his hand, read the name that he had heard spoken for the first time