Three Seconds

decided.
    ‘I’m going to call a meeting. At Rosenbad.’
    When Erik Wilson left Chief Superintendent Göransson’s office, he walked slowly down the corridor, hovering outside Ewert Grens’s open door, but the office was empty. The detective superintendent who would never close his investigation was not there.

wednesday
     

A wall of people.
     
    He had forgotten that at eight in the morning, it stretched from the metro platform through the corridors up onto Vasagatan.
    The car was still standing in the driveway, alongside a red plastic fire engine, in case the children’s fever got worse, in case Zofia had to drive to the doctor or the chemist. Piet Hoffmann yawned as he zigzagged through the commuters who were moving too slowly, still sleepy. He had got out of bed every hour through the night as their temperatures rose. The first time was just after midnight when he had opened all the windows in both boys’ rooms, folded the blankets back from their hot bodies and then alternated between the two bedsides until they went back to sleep. The last time was around five, when he forced a dose of Calpol into them. They needed to rest, sleep, to get better again. Two whispering parents in dressing gowns had agreed at dawn how to divide up the day, as they always did when one of them was ill or the nursery had a planning day. He would work in the morning, then come home, they would have lunch together, then Zofia would go to work in the afternoon.
    Vasagatan wasn’t exactly beautiful, a sad and soulless stretch of asphalt, but it was still where many visitors, having just got off the train or out of the airport bus or taxi, emerged into the Stockholm of water and islands that the shiny tourist brochures had promised them. Piet Hoffmann was late and didn’t pay much attention to what was beautiful or ugly as he approached the Sheraton hotel and the table nearest the bar at the far end of the elegant lobby.
    They had met thirty-six hours earlier in a spacious, dark building on ul. Ludwika Idzikowskiego in Mokotów in central Warsaw. Henryk Bak and Zbigniew Boruc. His contact and the Deputy CEO.
    He greeted them, firm handshakes from men who were careful to demonstrate that they gave firm handshakes.
    The visit was head office’s way of showing they were serious.
    This was where it all started. This was a priority operation. Delivery times and dates to the prison would be managed directly by Warsaw.
    They let go of each other’s hand and the Deputy CEO sat down again by the half empty glass of orange juice on the table. Henryk started to walk beside Hoffmann towards the exit, but then slowed down and carried on half a step behind him, as if he was unsure of the way or just wanted to have control. Vasagatan was just as soulless from this angle. They passed the entrance to the metro and then crossed the road between the passing cars and followed the pavement on the other side to a doorway, where a security firm had offices on the first floor.
    They didn’t talk to each other, just as they hadn’t spoken on their way to meet the Roof one and a half days earlier in Warsaw. They were silent as they climbed the stairs to the door of Hoffmann Security AB, and then carried on to the second, third, fourth and fifth floors, and right on up to the single metal door into the loft.
    Piet Hoffmann opened it and they went into the dark. There was a black switch somewhere on the wall. He felt around and eventually found it after having fumbled considerably lower down than he could remember it being. They locked the door from the inside and were careful to leave the key in the lock, so that no one else could get in. The storeroom with number twenty-six on the door was empty, except for four summer tyres that were lying on top of each other in the far corner. He picked up the top one and pulled out the hammer and chisel that were inside the rim, then went back out into the narrow passage with the dim lighting and followed the large, shiny aluminium pipe that was suspended a few centimetres above their heads to where it met the wall and disappeared into a fan heater. He placed the tip of the chisel against the edge of the steel band that joined the pipe and the heater and then hit it hard with the hammer until the band moved and he could take out eighty-one whitish metal tins from the temporary opening.
    Henryk waited until the tins were lined up on the loft floor and then picked out three: the tin furthest to the left, one from