Three Seconds

for a long time.
    A couple of dance steps, no singing, no music, just unaccompanied steps.
    He tried to lift the box on top, but it was far too heavy, so he pushed it out of the room and down the long corridor to the lift. Three floors down, to the cellar, to the property store. He wrote a reference number on the top of the box with the marker again –
19361231
. Then he went down another corridor, even darker than the last, and pushed and sweated on to the door that opened into confiscated property.
    ‘Einarsson.’
    A young lad, civilian staff, was standing behind the long wooden counter that felt so old. Every time Grens came here he was reminded of a grocer’s shop he often went to as a boy on his way home from school, a shop near Odenplan which had long since disappeared and was now yet another café for teenagers who drank milky coffee and compared mobile phones.
    ‘Can I help you?’
    ‘I want Einarsson to look after this.’
    ‘Yes, but I—’
    ‘Einarsson.’
    The young man snorted loudly, but said nothing. He left the counter and went to get a man of Ewert’s age, with a black apron tied tightly round his rotund body.
    ‘Ewert.’
    ‘Tor.’
    One of the policemen who had been really good and then after years of working together, had suddenly sat down one morning and explained that he couldn’t face all the crap any more, let alone investigate it. They had talked a lot about it at the time and Ewert had understood that that was how things could be when you had something to live for, when you yearned for days without pointless deaths. Einarsson had sat there and did not get up until his superiors had opened the door to the basement and the confiscated goods that were indeed a part of ongoing investigations, but which seldom stayed with you all evening.
    ‘I’ve got some boxes I want you to look after.’
    The older man behind the counter took the things and read the square letters in blue marker.
    ‘PI Malmkvist. What the hell is that?’
    ‘Preliminary investigation Malmkvist.’
    ‘I realise that. But I’ve never heard of the case.’
    ‘Closed investigation.’
    ‘But then it shouldn’t—’
    ‘I want you to keep them here. In a safe place.’
    ‘Ewert, I—’
    Einarsson was silent, studied Grens for a long time, then the box. He smiled. Preliminary investigation Malmkvist. Reference number 19361231. He gave another even broader smile.
    ‘Jesus, that’s her birthday, isn’t it?’
    Grens nodded. ‘A closed investigation.’
    ‘Are you sure about that?’
    ‘I’ll be down with another two boxes.’
    ‘In that case … investigations like this are best stored here. If the stuff is unique, I mean. Better than some unsafe attic or damp cellar.’
    Ewert Grens hadn’t realised how tense he was until, to his surprise, he felt his shoulders, arms and legs slowly relax. He hadn’t been sure that Einarsson would understand.
    ‘I need a chain of custody record. So, if you could just fill these in now. Then I can find a safe place.’
    Einarsson handed him two blank forms and a pen.
    ‘In the meantime, I’ll mark clearly that it’s classified information. Because it is, isn’t it?’
    Grens nodded again.
    ‘Good. Then it can only be opened by authorised persons.’
    The policeman who had once been a detective himself and who now wore a black apron and worked behind a counter in the basement, slapped a red sticker over the flaps of the box, a seal that could not be broken by anyone other than the man who could identify himself as DS Ewert Grens.
    Ewert was full of gratitude as he watched his colleague struggle over to the shelves with the cardboard box in his arms.
    Someone who didn’t need an explanation.
    He left the form on the counter and turned to leave when he heard Einarsson singing one of Siw Malmkvist’s songs somewhere between the rows of seized property.
    The tears I cried for you could fill an ocean
    The Swedish version of ‘Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool’. Ewert Grens stopped and shouted in the direction of the cramped storage space.
    ‘Not now.’
    But you don’t care how many tears I cry
    ‘Einarsson!’ Ewert bellowed, and Einarsson popped his head round some shelves in surprise.
    ‘Not now, Einarsson. You’re disturbing my grief.’
    He felt lighter when he left – the basement was almost attractive and he shook his head at the lift and decided instead to take the stairs three floors up. He was about halfway when the mobile phone in the inner pocket