Three Seconds

down.
    ‘How’s Zofia?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You don’t know?’
    ‘We haven’t seen much of each other in the past couple of days. But her voice – we spoke for quite a long time on the phone last night and again this morning – and I can hear it, she knows that I’m lying, that I’m lying more than usual.’
    ‘Take care of her. You know what I mean?’
    ‘You know damn well that I take good care of her.’
    ‘Good, that’s good, Piet. Nothing you do is worth more than her and the kids. I just want you to remember that.’
    He didn’t like the instant coffee much, there was a stale aftertaste, reminiscent of the coffee in the more expensive restaurants in Warsaw.
    ‘He should never have said he was the police.’
    ‘Was he?’
    ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think he was like me. And that he was bloody frightened.’
    Wilson nodded. He probably had been frightened. And in a panic had flung out the words that he thought would protect him. But had had the opposite effect.
    ‘I heard him scream
I’m the police
, a gun being cocked and then a shot.’
    Hoffmann put his cup down – the instant coffee was undrinkable, no matter how hard he tried.
    ‘It’s been a while since I saw someone die close at hand. That silence when they stop breathing and you hold on to the last breath until it ebbs away.’
    Erik Wilson was looking at someone who had been touched bydeath and lived with the responsibility for it; the rather lean man in front of him who could be hard as nails when he needed to be, was someone else right now. It was three years since they had taken the first steps to infiltrate Wojtek Security International. The national crime operations division had identified the company as a flourishing branch of the Eastern European mafia that was already established in Norway and Denmark. The CHIS controller at City Police had forwarded the intelligence report to Wilson and reminded him of Paula’s background, that Polish was his other mother tongue and that he was in ASPEN , the criminal intelligence database, and had a criminal record that was solid enough to withstand any checks and probing.
    They were there now.
    Paula had courage, authority and criminal credibility, and had reached the top of the organisation – he had communicated directly with the Deputy CEO and the Roof in Warsaw, behind the facade of what was supposed to be a Polish security firm.
    ‘I heard him cock the gun but wasn’t quick enough.’
    Erik Wilson looked at his infiltrator and friend, at the face that switched between Piet and Paula.
    ‘I tried to calm them down, but could only go so far … Erik, I had no choice, you see that, don’t you? I have a role to play and I have to do it bloody well, otherwise … otherwise I’m a dead man too.’
    It was always unexpected; his face had become completely Paula now.
    ‘It was him who didn’t play his role well enough. Something wasn’t right. You have to be a criminal to play a criminal.’
    Erik Wilson didn’t need convincing, he knew the score, that Paula risked death every day as a consequence, that people like him, squealers, were hated by their own. But still, without really knowing why, he wanted to test Piet’s innocence before doing everything he could to ensure that he got criminal immunity.
    ‘The shot …’
    ‘What about it?’
    ‘What angle?’
    ‘I know what you’re after, Erik. I’m covered.’
    ‘What angle?’
    Piet Hoffmann knew that Wilson had to ask his questions, that was just the way it was.
    ‘Right temple. Left angle. Held to the head.’
    ‘Where were you?’
    ‘Directly opposite the dead man.’
    Erik Wilson cast his mind back to the flat he had recently visited, to the patch on the floor and the flags on the wall, to a cone-shaped corridor where there was no blood or brain tissue.
    ‘Your clothes?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    So far, the right answers.
    There was no blood in the corner opposite the dead man.
    The person who had fired the shot would have been sprayed with blood.
    ‘Do you still have them? The clothes?’
    ‘No. I burned them. To be on the safe side.’
    Hoffmann knew what Erik was looking for. Proof.
    ‘But I took the killer’s clothes. I offered to burn them and I saved the shirt. In case it was needed.’
    Always on your own. Trust no one but yourself.
    That was how Piet Hoffmann lived, that was how he survived.
    ‘I guessed as much.’
    ‘And the gun. I’ve got that too.’
    Wilson smiled.
    ‘And the