Three Seconds

leather armchair that seemed to protest while the sunken seat waited for its owner. The only room in the flat that didn’t scream loneliness. He followed the shelves and rows of same-sized books, turned on the standard lamp that was beautifully angled and that gave off a light that coloured the printed pages yellow. He leant back as he imagined the detective superintendent did, once more read the secret intelligence report that had been written by a policeman the day after the murder at Västmannagatan 79, whereas the investigation for which he and Grens were responsible had slowly led to nothing and closure.
M holds the gun harder to
the buyer’s head and pulls the trigger.
The buyer falls to the floor, at a right angle to
the chair.
    Lars Ågestam reached for the lampshade and pulled it closer, he wanted to see properly, be sure, now that he had decided.
    He wouldn’t be going home tonight.
    He would, in a while, go directly from here to the Regional Public Prosecution Office and reopen the preliminary investigation.
    He stood up and was about to leave the room when he noticed two black and white photographs on the wall between two bookshelves: a woman and a man, they were young and full of anticipation, they were wearing police uniforms and their eyes were alive.
    He had always wondered what he looked like, back then, when he was someone else.
    ‘Have you decided?’
    Grens was sitting where he had left him, amongst the blue files and empty glasses at an elegant kitchen table.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘If you prosecute, Ågestam, we’re not just talking about normal policemen. I’ll give you a commanding officer. And an even higher ranking officer. And a state secretary.’
    Lars Ågestam looked at the three pieces of A4 paper in his hand.
    ‘And you maintain that there’s enough? I assume that I haven’t seen everything.’
    A security camera in Rosenbad with five people on their way into one of the offices. A recording of five voices in a closed meeting.
    You haven’t seen everything.
    ‘There’s enough.’
    Ewert Grens smiled for the third time.
    Lars Ågestam thought that it looked almost natural, he smiled fleetingly back.
    ‘Haul them in. I’ll have the arrest warrants sorted within three days.’

He went down the stairs in the silent building.
     
    It was years ago now, his painful leg on the stone stairs, but tonight he had walked past the lift, his hand gripping the handrail. Two doors had greeted him with scurrying footsteps to doormats and peepholes as he passed, curious eyes that wanted to see him up on the fourth floor, he who never used the stairs suddenly doing so. At the bottom and the door nearest the entrance, a wall clock that chimed, he counted, twelve times.
    Sveavägen was almost empty and it was still warm, maybe they’d get a bloody summer this year as well. He breathed in, one deep breath, slowly released the air.
    Ewert Grens had invited another person into his home.
    Ewert Grens hadn’t immediately experienced a pain in his chest and asked him to leave.
    He had never done that before, not since the accident – it had been her place and their shared home. He shrugged off the gentle breeze and started to walk west along Odengatan, just as empty, just as warm. He took off his jacket and undid the top buttons on his shirt.
    Of all people, the well-groomed prosecutor whom he hated, whom he had met a few years ago and loathed.
    He had even almost enjoyed it.
    He slowed down by the kiosk on Odenplan, stood in the queue with the mobile kids sending text messages to other mobile kids, bought a hamburger and a drink that tasted of orange but had lost its bubbles. He had said no to the prosecutor’s suggestion of finishing the evening with a beer in the lawyers’ haunt at Frescati, only to regret it and wander restlessly from room to room until he was compelled to go out, just somewhere else, at least for a while.
    Two rats at his feet, from a hole under the kiosk into the park with sleeping men on wooden benches. Four young women over there, short skirts and high-heeled shoes, running towards one of the buses that had just closed its doors and was pulling out.
    He ate his hamburger outside Gustav Vasa church, then turned right into a street he had visited several times in the past few weeks, blocks of flats that were on their way to bed. He looked at himself in the glass panes of the large front door, punched in the code which he now knew off by heart and took the lift that creaked as it