Three Seconds

or where prosecution did not result in a conviction. I’ve used every minute I’ve had since we met at my place to find, analyse and compare them with what actually happened. In other words, the informationthat some of your colleagues already had, that’s reported here, in the secret intelligence reports.’
    Ågestam was talking about copies that were taken from a laptop that had been on the desk of one of the top ranking officers. Grens hoped that the door was still working as it should.
    ‘Twenty-five of the cases ended in
nolle prosequi
– the prosecutor realised that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to secure a verdict and the cases were dropped. In thirty-five cases, the accused was acquitted – the court disallowed the prosecutor to proceed.’
    Lars Ågestam’s neck was turning flaming red as it normally did when he got agitated. Ewert Grens had witnessed it every time they faced each other with contempt. Only this time the anger was targeted at someone else and it was almost unsettling; disdain had been their only means of communication, where they felt secure – if they couldn’t hide behind it, it felt awkward, where did you start?
    ‘If, and I’m quite sure about this, if the prosecution had had access to the facts that the police,
your colleagues, Grens
, already had and that were kept from us, if all the information in this bloody file of secret intelligence reports hadn’t been hidden on a computer in a commissioner’s office, then all these cases,
all of them, Grens
, would have ended with a conviction.’
    __________
    Sven Sundkvist ordered some more mineral water, more lemon slices. He wasn’t hot any more, the exclusive restaurant was cool and the air was easy to breathe, but he was tense.
     
    He had only had one minute.
    He had got Wilson to stop, turn back, sit down again.
    Now he had to get him to participate.
    He looked at his colleague. His face was still expressionless. But not his eyes. There was an uneasiness in their depths. They didn’t waver, Wilson was far too professional for that, but the voices in the recording had surprised him, disturbed him, demanded answers.
    ‘This recording was in an envelope in Ewert Grens’s pigeonhole.’
    Sven nodded at the symbol on the screen that meant sound file.
    ‘No sender. The day after Hoffmann’s death. The pigeonholes, about as far from your office as mine, wouldn’t you say?’
    Wilson didn’t sigh, didn’t shake his head, didn’t tense his jaw. But his eyes, the uneasiness was there again.
    ‘The envelope contained a CD of the recording. But there was more. Three passports issued under different names, all with the same photograph, a rather grainy black and white picture of Hoffmann. And at the bottom of the envelope, an electronic receiver, the small silver metal kind that you put in your ear. We’ve been able to link it to a transmitter that was attached to a church tower in Aspsås. The spot chosen by the sniper who Grens eventually ordered to fire, as he was guaranteed to hit the target from there.’
    Erik Wilson should have grabbed the edge of the white tablecloth and pulled it from the table, turning the floor to broken glass and petals, he should have spat, cried, snapped.
    He didn’t. He sat as still as he could, hoping that nothing would show.
    Sundkvist had said they were accomplices to legitimate murder.
    He had said that Paula was dead.
    If it had been someone else he would have carried on walking. If someone else had presented him with that bloody recording he would have dismissed it as nonsense. But Sundkvist never bullshitted. He himself did. Grens did, most policemen did, most people he knew did. But not Sundkvist.
    ‘Before I leave, I’d like you to summarise exactly what you are guaranteeing me.’
    No one except Paula could have recorded that meeting or had the motive to do so. He had chosen to let Grens and Sundkvist in on it. He had a reason.
    They burnt you.
    ‘I want to show you some pictures as well.’
    Sven turned the screen towards Wilson, opened a new file.
    A still, a frozen moment from one of Aspsås prison’s many security cameras, a fuzzy frame round a fuzzy barred window.
    ‘Aspsås workshop. Block B. The person you can see standing there, in profile, has eight and a half minutes left to live.’
    Wilson pulled the laptop over, angled the screen – he wanted to see that person, roughly in the middle of the window, part of a shoulder, part of a face.
    He had met a man ten years