Three Seconds

reached the fourth floor.
    A new sign on the letter box. The Polish name had been replaced. The brown wooden door was even older than his own. He looked at it, remembered the pool of blood under a head, small flags on the wall, the kitchen floor where Krantz had found traces of drugs.
    It had started here.
    The death that would force him to make a decision about more death.
    Vanadisvägen, Gävlegatan, Solnabron, he carried on through the mild night, as if someone else was walking beside him and he was just following, he thought nothing, felt nothing, not until he stopped on Solna Kyrkväg in front of an opening in the fence that was called Gate 1 and was one of ten entrances to North Cemetery.
    The expected edges in the inner pocket of his jacket.
    He had let it lie at arm’s length on his desk for months, then yesterday, without knowing why, he had taken it home with him. Now he was here, holding the map in his hand.
    He wasn’t even cold.
    Despite the fact that he knew it was always cold in graveyards.
    Ewert Grens followed the asphalt road that cut across large areas of green grass edged by birches, conifers and trees he didn’t know the name of. A hundred and fifty acres, thirty thousand graves. He had avoided looking at them – rather the branches on the trees than the grey stones that marked loss – but was now looking at some older graves, those who were buried as titles, not people: a post inspector, a station master, a widow. He carried on past large engraved stones that housed entire families who wanted always to be close, past other large stones that rose up stern and proud from the ground – slightly more important than the rest, even in death – to stare at him.
    Twenty-nine years.
    He had several times a day for most of his adult life lived through a few tainted moments –
she falls out of the police van, he doesn’t manage to stop in time, the back wheels roll over her head
– and sometimes, if he had forgotten to think about it, if he realised that several hours had passedsince the last time, he had been forced to think about it a bit longer and a bit more, mostly about the red that had been blood that poured from the head on his lap.
    He couldn’t do it any more.
    He looked at the trees and the graves and even the memorial garden over there, but it didn’t help, no matter how much he reprimanded himself, he could not focus on the flickering in her eyes or the spasms in her legs.
    What you’re frightened of has already happened
.
    He looked around, suddenly in a rush.
    He cut across the graves in an area that according to the signs was called Section 15B: beautiful, understated gravestones, people who had died with dignity and didn’t need to make such a bloody fuss afterwards.
    Section 16A. He lengthened his stride. Section 19E. He was out of breath, sweating.
    A green watering can on a stand, he filled it with water from the tap close by, carried it with him as he hurried on and the asphalt changed to gravel.
    Section 19B.
    He attempted to stand still again.
    He had never been here. He had tried, he had, but never managed.
    It had taken him one and a half years to walk a couple of kilometres.
    The failing light made it hard to see more than two headstones in front. He leant forwards so he could read more easily, each new sign marking a burial place.
    Grave 601.
    Grave 602.
    He was shaking, finding it difficult to breathe. For a moment he was about to turn round.
    Grave 603.
    Some overturned earth, a temporary flowerbed with something green, a small white wooden cross, nothing more.
    He lifted the watering can and watered the bush without flowers.
    __________
    She’s lying there.
     
    The girl who holds his hand and forces him to walk close to her as they wander through the Stockholm dawn, the girl who struggles besidehim on badly waxed skis through the snow-covered chestnut trees in Vasaparken, the girl who moves in with a young man to the flat on Sveavägen.
    She is the one who is lying there.
    Not the woman who sits in a wheelchair in a nursing home, the one who doesn’t recognise me.
    __________
    He didn’t cry, he had already done that. He smiled.
     
    I didn’t kill him.
    I didn’t kill you.
    __________
    What I am frightened of has already happened.
     

PART FIVE
     

a day later
     

He liked the brown bread, thick slices with seeds all around the crust, it filled him and crunched a little when he chewed. Black coffee and orange juice that had been pressed as he watched. A