Three Seconds

hurried along the gravel path.
    __________
    Ewert Grens impatiently clutched the folder that contained Nils Krantz’s photographs of a dead man. Ten minutes earlier, he had sent one of them to a fax machine in the crime operations unit in Copenhagen, a photograph of a head that had been washed, but still had skin, before the autopsy. There were three other pictures in the folder and he studied them while he waited. One taken from the front, one from the left side, one from the right. A considerable amount of his working day was taken up looking at pictures of death and he had learnt that it was often difficult to distinguish whether someone was asleep or actually dead. This time it was fairly obvious as there were three great holes in the head. If he hadn’t been to the scene or been handed a photograph by someone from forensics or received it by fax from a colleague somewhere else, he usually started by looking for the shiny steel stand that the head always rests on, and if he found it, it was a photograph from an autopsy. He looked at the pictures again and wondered what he would look like, what a person studying the photo of his head on a steel stand would think.
     
    ‘Grens.’
    The phone finally rang and he put the folder down on the desk.
    ‘Jacob Andersen, Copenhagen.’
    ‘Well?’
    ‘The photograph you faxed.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘It’s probably him.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘One of my informers.’
    ‘
Who?
’
    ‘I can’t say. Not yet. Not before I’m absolutely certain. I don’t want to disclose an informer unnecessarily. You know how it works.’
    Ewert Grens knew how it worked and didn’t like it. The need to protect the identity of covert human intelligence sources had increasedas they had become more numerous, and sometimes was more important than the need for the police to provide each other with correct information. Nowadays, when each and every policeman could call themselves a handler and had the right to make their own CHIS contacts, the secrecy was more often a hindrance than a help.
    ‘What do you need?’
    ‘Everything you’ve got.’
    ‘Dental impressions. Fingerprints. We’re waiting for the DNA.’
    ‘Send it.’
    ‘I’ll do that straight away. And I assume that you’ll call again in a few minutes.’
    The head on the steel stand.
    Grens stroked his finger over the smooth photographic paper.
    An infiltrator. From Copenhagen. One of two people who spoke Swedish in a flat when a Polish mafia execution took place.
    Who was the other one?
    __________
    Piet Hoffmann walked down the gravel path through the dull communal garden. A quick glance up at the fifth floor of the building opposite, where he caught a glimpse of Wilson’s head in a window that happened not to be protected by plastic. He had left Frédéric Chopin on the first plane just after eight, the Polish carrier LOT. He had spent the night with his forehead pressed against a cold window pane, but he wasn’t particularly tired. Anxiety and adrenaline from a day that had included a person being killed and an important meeting in Warsaw jostled in his breast; he was definitely heading somewhere and had no idea how to stop. He had called home and Rasmus had picked up the phone and didn’t want to let go of the receiver because he had so much to tell; it hadn’t been easy to follow it all, something about a cartoon and a monster that was green and horrible. Piet Hoffmann swallowed and shook, as you do when you miss someone more than you were physically prepared for – he would see them this evening and he would hold all three of them tight until they asked him to let go. He got to the fence and opened the gate, and moved from the garden of Vulcanusgatan 15 to that of Sankt Eriksplan 17, and then in through the back door to the stairs that remained dark, even though he flicked the switch for the lights several times. Five flights of steepstairs, never a lift with the risk of getting stuck, each step covered with brown paper that made it difficult to move without making a noise. He checked the bells and names on the letter boxes. The door with STENBERG on it opened from inside at eleven hundred hours precisely.
     
    Erik Wilson had taken the plastic off two chairs and the table in the kitchen and was now uncovering the gas cooker and a cupboard under the sink. He hunted around until he found a pan and a jar of something that looked like instant coffee.
    ‘The Stenbergs’ treat. Whoever they are.’
    They sat