Three Seconds

it.
    ‘I’m trying to solve Västmannagatan in the usual way. A report to the head of homicide and the secret locker. But … it’s not enough this time.
Murder, Piet!
We’ll have to take it higher than police headquarters. We have to go to Rosenbad. And you’re going to come too.’
    ‘You know that’s not possible.’
    ‘You don’t have any choice.’
    ‘Erik, for fuck’s sake, I can’t just stroll in through the main entrance of the Government Offices, together with the police and politicians!’
    ‘I’ll collect you from 2B.’
    Piet Hoffmann sat on the sofa that was protected with plastic sheeting that was sticking to his back and slowly shook his head.
    ‘If anyone sees me … I’m dead.’
    ‘In the same way that you’ll be dead the minute anyone in prison discovers who you are. Only, you’ll be banged up then. You need the authorities. To get out. To survive.’
    __________
    He left the instant coffee in the second floor flat and instead drank a dark roast coffee with warm milk in a café on the corner of Pålsundsgatan, and tried to concentrate on the sound of Italian crooners and a table of giggling girls who had swapped their school lunches for a plate of cinnamon buns, and two people at a table at the back who were trying to look like poets and talking too loudly aboutwriting, but only succeeded in being an imitation of others who talked too loud.
     
    Erik was right.
Always on your own.
He had no choice.
Trust no one but yourself.
    He put down his empty coffee cup and walked over Västerbron accompanied by a cautious sun, paused quietly for a while by the railings, twenty-seven metres above the water, and wondered how it would feel to jump, the seconds that were all and nothing before your body slammed into the transparent surface. He phoned home and spoke to Zofia from the middle of Norr Mälarstrand and, yet another lie, told her that her work was just as important as his but that he couldn’t come home and hold the fort until later on tonight. He heard her raise her voice and then put the phone down when he couldn’t bear to lie any more.
    The asphalt became harder the closer to the heart of the city he came.
    When he walked into a multi-storey car park opposite an expensive department store, the pavement on Regeringsgatan was empty despite the fact it was only early afternoon. He climbed the narrow stairs up to the first floor, moved between the parked cars in section B until he spotted the black minibus with darkened windows in the far corner by the concrete wall. He went over and tried the handle on one of the back doors. It was unlocked. He opened the door to the back seat of the abandoned car, then looked at his watch. He would have to wait ten more minutes.
    Zofia had not stopped talking when he put the phone down. She had continued to talk to him in his head as he walked along the water at Norr Mälarstrand and past the ugly buildings at Tegelbacken, and was there beside him with her frustration on the seat in the empty car. She wasn’t to know that he was the sort who lied.
    He shivered.
    It was always cold in these sterile car parks, but this particular chill came from within, a chill that neither clothes nor movement could change. There is nothing that chills like self-contempt.
    The door to the driver’s seat opened.
    He checked his watch. Ten minutes exactly.
    Erik usually waited somewhere on the floor above, where you could see every car in Section B if you bent down, and anyone who might be too close. He didn’t turn round when he got in, said nothing, juststarted the minibus and drove the short distance from Hamngatan to Mynttorget, and in through the gate to the small stone yard and the building where the MPs had their offices. They got out and were no sooner through the door than a security guard came to meet them and asked them to follow him down two flights of stairs and along a corridor under the Riksdag building that came out in Rosenbad; it only took a few minutes to walk along the corridor between the two centres of political power in Sweden, and it was the only way to get into the Government Offices without being seen.
    __________
    He checked the door, only a few metres from the main security office by the official entrance to Rosenbad. He held the door handle until he was certain that it was locked.
     
    It was hard to move.
    The sink merged into the toilet seat and the whitewashed walls pressed against him.
    The thin oblong digital recorder was in his