Three Seconds

lead twice without feeling anything. It slipped down a bit and Piet Hoffmann held his breath until it got stuck, about halfway down his thigh. It felt like it was going to stay there.
    __________
    Big windows with deep white sills and a view over the still waters of Norrström and Riddarfjärden. The room smelt of fresh coffee and detergent and there were six chairs around the meeting table. He was last, only two places left, he moved towards one of them. They studied him without a word. He passed behind their backs and made sure to feel the fabric of his trousers with a casual hand: the microphone was still there, but facing in the wrong direction. He adjusted it as he pulled out a chair and sat down.
     
    He recognised all four people, but had met only two of them before, Göransson and Erik.
    The state secretary was sitting closest to him and she pointed to a document in front of her, then got up and held out her hand.
    ‘The document— I’ve read it. I assumed … I assumed that it concerned a … woman?’
    She had a firm handshake. She was like the others, the ones who press too hard and think that it’s the same as power.
    ‘Paula.’
    Piet Hoffmann kept hold of her hand.
    ‘That’s my name, in here.’
    The uncomfortable silence dragged out and while he waited for someone to start speaking, he looked down at the papers that the state secretary had referred to.
    He recognised Erik’s way of expressing himself.
    Västmannagatan 79. The secret report.
    A copy of the same document lay in front of each of them. They were already part of the chain of events.
    ‘This is the first time that Paula and I have met like this.’
    Erik Wilson was careful to look everyone straight in the eye when he spoke.
    ‘With other people. In a room that we haven’t secured. Where we don’t have control.’
    He held up the report, the detailed description of a murder witnessed by one of the people at a meeting table in the Government Offices.
    ‘An unprecedented meeting. And I hope that we will leave having made an unprecedented decision.’
    __________
    Ewert Grens had been lying on the office floor when Sven Sundkvist knocked on his door a couple of minutes earlier and walked in. Sven hadn’t said anything, hadn’t asked any questions, he just sat down on the corduroy sofa and waited, like he always did.
     
    ‘It’s better here.’
    ‘Here?’
    ‘On the floor. The sofa is starting to get too soft.’
    He had slept there for a second night. His stiff leg didn’t ache at all and he had more or less got used to the cars accelerating all the way up the steep slope on Hantverkargatan.
    ‘I want to report on Västmannagatan.’
    ‘Anything new?’
    ‘Not much.’
    Ewert Grens lay on the floor and peered at the ceiling. There were some large cracks near the lamp, which he had never paid attention to before. Whether they were new or whether the music had always just been in the way.
    He sighed.
    He had investigated murders all his adult life. Västmannagatan 79, a feeling somewhere in his chest – there was something that didn’t fit. They had identified the body, the flat owner, even the remains of amphetamine and bile from the mule. They had blood stains and the angle from which the gun was fired. They had a witness with a Swedish voice who chose to raise the alarm and a Polish security firm that meant the Eastern European mafia.
    They had as good as bloody nothing.
    They were no closer to a solution than they had been in Copenhagen Airport the evening before.
    ‘There are fifteen flats in that block. I’ve interviewed everyone who was there at the time of the murder. Three of them have observations that might be of interest. On the ground floor— Are you listening, Ewert?’
    ‘Carry on.’
    ‘On the ground floor there’s a Finn who can give a pretty good description of two men he’d never seen before, as he has the best possible observation point – everyone who goes in or out passes his door. Pale, shaved heads, dark clothes, forties. Only through the peephole and only for a few seconds, but you can actually see and hear more than I thought from there and he also mentioned a Slavic language, so it all fits.’
    ‘Polish.’
    ‘In terms of the tenant, that would seem likely.’
    ‘Mules, bodies, Poles. Drugs, violence, Eastern Europe.’
    Sven Sundkvist looked down at the older man on the floor. He just lay there and couldn’t care less what anyone else thought, with a confidence that Sven could