Three Seconds

The same incident. But not the truth. The incomplete information that he and Sven and Hermansson and Ågestam had had access to, which therefore had resulted in the investigation being downgraded.
    He continued to search the documents on the computer. He went back exactly one year. Three hundred and two secret intelligence reports recounting how an informant’s work to uncover one crime had given rise to another. He recognised several of them. Other investigations that had collapsed despite the fact that the knowledge was already in-house.
    He hadn’t slept the night before, he wouldn’t sleep tonight; the anger that could not be released filled him instead, forcing out tiredness, there was no room.
    I was a useful idiot.
    I carried out legitimate murder.
    I have carried the guilt all my adult life and I deserved it, but no bastard is going to force me to carry it for anyone else.
    I don’t know Hoffmann. I’m not interested in him.
    But this, this bloody awful guilt that I have no intention of taking on, I know that.
    He pulled the telephone over, remembered the number that he often dialled at this time of night. The voice was weak, as always when someone has just woken up.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Anita?’
    ‘Who …’
    ‘It’s Ewert.’
    An exasperated sigh from a dark bedroom upstairs in a terraced house somewhere in Gustavsberg.
    ‘Sven’s not here. He’s spending the night on an aeroplane, on the way to the USA. Because you sent him there a couple of hours ago.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘So don’t call here again tonight.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Goodnight, Ewert.’
    ‘I always phone Sven. So you’ll have to take it. You see … I’m so bloody angry.’
    Her slow breathing, he could hear it.
    ‘Ewert?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Phone someone else. Someone who gets paid for it. I have to sleep.’
    She hung up. He stared at the unfamiliar laptop sitting on his desk that stared back at him, at his concealed rage.
    Sven was on an aeroplane somewhere over the Atlantic.
    Hermansson. It didn’t feel right to call her, a young woman and an old man in the middle of the night.
    Grens lifted the plastic pocket on the blotter, ran his finger down the long list. He found what he was looking for and punched in the number of the one person he had absolutely no desire to talk to.
    __________
    Eight rings.
     
    He put the phone down, waited for exactly one minute, then called again.
    Someone answered immediately. Someone snatched the phone from its cradle.
    ‘Is that you, Grens?’
    ‘So you were awake?’
    ‘I am now. What the hell do you want?’
    Ewert Grens loathed him. Inflexible, hierarchical. Qualities he despised, but actually ones he needed now.
    ‘Ågestam?’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I need your help.’
    Lars Ågestam yawned, stretched, collapsed in a heap.
    ‘Go to bed, Grens.’
    ‘Your help. Now.’
    ‘Simple answer. The same one you get every time you wake me and my family up at this time. Ring the duty officer.’
    He hung up. Ewert Grens didn’t wait this time, rang back straight away.
    ‘Grens! Don’t you … bloody dare, you—’
    ‘Hundreds of cases. In the last year alone. Witnesses and evidence and interviews that … that disappeared.’
    Lars Ågestam cleared his throat.
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘We have to meet.’
    Someone said something in the background. Sounded like Ågestam’s wife. Grens tried to remember what she looked like, they had met, he remembered that but not her face, one of the kind that lack definition.
    ‘Grens, are you drunk?’
    ‘Hundreds. You’ve been involved in several yourself.’
    ‘Of course. We can meet. Tomorrow.’
    ‘Now, Ågestam! I don’t have much time. Monday morning. By then … then it’s too late. And what I need to tell you … it’s as much for your sake … don’t you understand how bizarre it feels to say that? To you?’
    The female voice in the background again. Grens could hear it, but not what it said. Ågestam whispered when he spoke again.
    ‘I’m listening.’
    ‘It’s not something I can say over the phone.’
    ‘But I’m listening!’
    ‘We have to meet. You’ll understand why.’
    The public prosecutor sighed.
    ‘Come here then.’
    ‘To you?’
    ‘To my house.’
    __________
    He had passed Åkeshov metro station and drove into an area of detached houses from the forties, the educated middle class. It was going to be a beautiful day, you could tell from the sun growing in the distance. He stopped the car in front of