Three Seconds

smelt of her. His overnight bag was in the wardrobe, already packed: two passports, wallet with euros, zloty and US dollars, a shirt, socks, underwear and a toilet bag. He picked it up and carried it down into the hall. The water had started to boil, half a bag of dry spaghetti into the bubbling water. He looked at the clock. Half past five. He didn’t have much time, but he would make it.
    It was still warm outside, the last of the sun would soon disappear behind the roof of the neighbouring house. Piet Hoffmann went overto the hedge that would have to be pruned properly this summer. He saw two children he recognised on the other side and called to them that food was ready. He heard a taxi approaching down the narrow road. It pulled up and parked in the driveway by the garage. The red plastic fire engine survived once again.
    ‘Hi.’
    ‘Hi.’
    They hugged each other, like they always did and every time he thought he would never let go.
    ‘I can’t eat with you. I have to go to Warsaw this evening. An emergency meeting. But I’ll be home again tomorrow night. OK?’
    She shrugged.
    ‘No, not really. I was looking forward to having the evening together. But OK.’
    ‘I’ve made supper. It’s on the table. I’ve told the boys food is ready so they’re on their way. Or at least, they should be.’
    He kissed her quickly on the lips.
    ‘One more. You know.’
    One more. Always an even number. His hand on her cheek, two more kisses.
    ‘Now it’s three. So one more.’
    He kissed her again. They smiled at each other. He picked up his bag and walked over to the car, looked back at the hedge and the hole at the bottom in the middle where the children would appear.
    No sign of them. He wasn’t surprised.
    He smiled again and started the engine.

Ewert Grens looked at the mat that disappeared under the passenger seat and Sven Sundkvist. He had pushed the two cassettes in there. Two more were lurking in the glove compartment. He would take them with him sometime, pack them away, forget them.
     
    The two young, but slightly less pale uniformed police were still standing on the pavement between the bonnet of the car and the entrance to Västmannagatan 79. Hermansson had started to reverse when one of them came over and knocked on the window, and Sven rolled it down.
    ‘What do you think?’
    Ewert Grens leant forwards from the back seat.
    ‘You were right. It was an execution.’
    It was late afternoon at Kronoberg, and finding a parking place on Bergsgatan wasn’t easy. Hermansson drove round the tired police headquarters three times before parking on Kungsholmsgatan, by the entrance to Normalm Police and the County Criminal Police, despite protests from Ewert Grens. Grens nodded vaguely at the security guard and walked in through the entrance he hadn’t used for years; he had long since learnt to appreciate routine and had stuck to his rigidly in order not to fall apart. One corridor and a narrow staircase and then they came out into the County Communication Centre, the heart of the vast building. In a room the size of a small football pitch, a police officer or a staff employee sat at every second computer, watching the three small screens in front of them and the considerably larger ones that covered the walls from floor to ceiling, ready to deal with the four hundred or so emergency calls that came in every day.
    Holding a cup of coffee each, they sat down next to a woman in her fifties, one of the civvies, and the sort of woman who put her hand on the arm of the person she was talking to.
    ‘At what time?’
    ‘Twelve thirty-seven, and a minute or so earlier.’
    The woman who still had her hand on Ewert’s arm typed in 12.36.00, and then the silence that felt like eternity, as is often the case when several people sit together listening to nothing.
    Twelve thirty-six twenty.
    An automatic voice, the same one that was used in the rest of the police world, followed by the voice of a real woman who was crying as she reported a domestic at an address in Mariatorget.
    Twenty thirty-seven ten.
    A child screaming about a dad who’d fallen down the stairs and there was alotalotalot of blood coming from his cheek and hair.
    Twelve thirty-seven fifty.
    A scraping sound.
    Obviously somewhere indoors. Possibly a mobile phone.
    Unknown number on the screen.
    ‘Pay-as-you-go card.’
    The female operator had removed her hand from Ewert Grens, so he didn’t answer in order to avoid any more physical contact.