Three Seconds

a garden with large apple trees at the end of a sleeping street. He had been here once before, about five years ago. The newly appointed prosecutor had received a number of threats during the trial of a young father accused of murder and Grens had not taken it very seriously until the yellow house had black paint,
you’re dead, you bastard
, sprayed from the kitchen to the sitting room.
     
    Two big cups on the table.
    A pot of freshly brewed tea between them.
    ‘Black, isn’t it?’
    ‘Black.’
    Grens drank the whole cup and Ågestam filled it again.
    ‘Nearly as good as the stuff from the machine in the corridor.’
    ‘It’s quarter past four in the morning. What do you want?’
    The briefcase was already on the table. Grens opened it and pulled out three files.
    ‘Do you recognise these?’
    Lars Ågestam nodded.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Three investigations that we’ve worked on together over the past year.’
    Ewert Grens pointed to them, one at a time.
    ‘Serious drug offence, car park in Regeringsgatan.
Tried and acquitted
. Firearms offence, pathway under Liljeholm bridge.
Tried and acquitted
. Attempted kidnapping, Magnus Ladulåsgatan.
Tried and acquitted
.’
    ‘Can you keep your voice down? My wife. My children. They’re asleep.’
    Ågestam waved his hand at the ceiling, the floor above.
    ‘Have you got children? You didn’t the last time.’
    ‘Well, I do now.’
    Grens lowered his voice.
    ‘Do you remember them?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘You know why. I didn’t get approval. Lack of evidence.’
    Grens put the files to one side, replaced them with a laptop that had until recently been on a high ranking officer’s desk behind a locked door. He searched through the documents, as before, turned the screen towards the prosecutor.
    ‘I want you to read.’
    Lars Ågestam picked up the tea cup, lifted it to his mouth and there it remained. He couldn’t get it any further, his fingers frozen.
    ‘What is this?’
    He looked at Ewert Grens.
    ‘Grens?
What
is this?’
    ‘What is it? The same addresses. The same times. But a different truth.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘This one? Serious drug offence, car park, Regeringsgatan. But what
actually
happened. Described in a secret intelligence report written by a policeman who wasn’t part of the investigation.’
    Ewert Grens looked on the computer again.
    ‘Two more. Read.’
    His neck was red. Hand through his hair.
    ‘And this one?’
    ‘This one? Firearms offence, pathway under Liljeholm bridge. And this one? Attempted kidnapping, Magnus Ladulåsgatan. Also what
actually
happened. Also described in a secret intelligence report written by police who weren’t part of the investigation.’
    The prosecutor stood up.
    ‘Grens, I—’
    ‘And this is just three of three hundred and two cases from last year. They’re all there. The truth we were never told. Crimes that were swept under the carpet so that other crimes could be solved. An official investigation, the sort that you and I deal with. And another that exists only here, in secret intelligence reports for police management.’
    Ewert Grens looked at the man in a dressing gown in front of him.
    ‘Lars, you were involved in twenty-three of them. Cases where you prosecuted and were unsuccessful. You closed them because you didn’t have all the information that was included in the
real
report, the
secret
one, the one that would have nailed the grass.’
    Lars Ågestam didn’t stir.
    He said Lars.
    It feels … weird, uninvited. It’s only my name. But when Grens says it … it’s almost uncomfortable.
    He has never used my first name before.
    I don’t want him to do it ever again.
    ‘The grass?’
    ‘The grass. The informant. The covert human intelligence source. A criminal who commits crimes that we then overlook because he’s helping us to deal with other crimes.’
    Ågestam had been holding the cup in front of his mouth throughout the whole conversation. He put it down now.
    ‘Whose laptop?’
    ‘You don’t want to know.’
    ‘
Whose?
’
    ‘The county police commissioner.’
    Lars Ågestam got up from the table, disappeared out of the kitchen and up the stairs with hurried steps.
    Ewert Grens watched him.
    I’ve got more.
    Västmannagatan 79.
    You’ll get that as well. When we wrap all this up. In the next twenty-four hours.
    Hurried steps down again. The prosecutor had a printer in his arms, linked it up to the laptop – they listened to three hundred and two