Three Seconds

going to meet for one of
your
operations!’
    Jacob Andersen didn’t like people who raised their voices unnecessarily.
    ‘Next time you talk to me like that, this meeting is over.’
    ‘But if it was you who—’
    ‘Understood?’
    ‘Yes.’
    The Danish detective superintendent continued.
    ‘The only thing I know is that Carsten was going to meet representatives from Wojtek and a Swedish contact. But I don’t have any names.’
    ‘A Swedish contact?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Are you sure about that?’
    ‘That’s the information I have.’
    Two Swedish voices in a flat where the Polish mafia was tying up a deal.
    One was dead. The other raised the alarm.
    ‘It was you.’
    Andersen looked at Grens, taken aback.
    ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘The Swedish contact.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘I’m saying that I’m going to find the bastard.’
    __________
    The house was only a couple of hundred metres from the heavy traffic on Nynäsvägen, which thundered through any thoughts. But you only had to drive down a couple of little back streets, past the school and a small park, to discover another world. He opened the car door and listened. You couldn’t even hear the hum of the heavy lorries that were trying to overtake one another.
     
    She was standing in the driveway, waiting in front of the garage when he swung in.
    So beautiful, with her slippers still on and not enough clothes.
    ‘Where have you been? Where have the children been?’
    Zofia opened the back door and stroked Rasmus on the cheek, lifted him up in her arms.
    ‘Two clients, I’d forgotten about them.’
    ‘Clients?’
    ‘A security guard who had to have a bullet-proof vest and a shop that needed its alarm system adjusted. I had no choice. And they didn’t have to sit in the back seat for long.’
    She felt both their brows.
    ‘They’re not too warm.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘Maybe they’re getting better.’
    ‘I hope so.’
    I kiss her on the cheek and she smells of Zofia, as I cobble together a lie.
    It’s so simple. And I’m good at it.
    But I can’t bear to tell yet another one, not to her, not to the kids, not any more.
    The wooden steps creaked as the two parents carried their feverish children indoors and up to bed, their small bodies under white duvets. He stood there for a while looking at them. They were already asleep, snoring and snuffling as people do when they’re fighting lurking bacteria. He tried to remember what life was like before these two boys who he loved more than anything in the world, empty days when he had only himself to think of. He remembered it well, but felt nothing, he had never been able to comprehend how what had once been so important, so strong and so absolute, was suddenly meaningless as soon as someone small had come along, looked at him and called him Daddy.
    He walked from one room to the other and kissed them on the forehead. They were starting to get hot again, the fever burning on his lips. He went back down to the kitchen and sat on a chair behind Zofia and watched her back as she washed the dishes, which would then be put away in a cupboard in his home, her home,
their
home. He trusted her. That was what it was, he felt a trust that he had never dared dream of. He trusted her and she trusted him.
    And she trusted him
.
    He had just lied to her. He seldom thought about it, it was habit. He always considered the plausibility of a lie before he was even conscious that he was going to lie. This time the lie had been reluctant. He sat behind her and it still felt unreasonable, demanding, hard to bear.
    She turned round, smiled, stroked his chin with a wet hand.
    The hand that he so often yearned for.
    But now it just felt uncomfortable.
    Two clients, I’d forgotten about them. And they didn’t have to sit in the back seat for long
.
    What if she hadn’t trusted him?
I don’t believe you
. What if she hadn’t accepted his lie?
I want to know what you’ve really been up to.
    He would have fallen. He would have collapsed. His strength, his life, his drive, he had built it all up around her trust.
    __________
    Ten years earlier.
     
    He’s locked up in Österåker prison, just north of Stockholm.
    His neighbours, his mates for twelve months – they all have their own way of living with the shame. They have carefully constructed their defence, their lies.
    The man opposite, in cell 4, a junkie who stole to pay for his habit, who burgled fifteen houses a night in some suburbs, and his bloody