Three Seconds

often.
    ‘How can I help you?’
    It wasn’t something they’d ever talked about. But in some way they had just agreed. In order to work together, they made sure they never met.
    ‘Västmannagatan.’
    Chief Superintendent Göransson has no piles of paper on his desk, no empty paper cups, no crumbs from artificial cakes from the vending machine.
    ‘Västmannagatan?’
    So he can’t understand where it’s coming from; this feeling of discomfort, that there’s no room
.
    ‘That says nothing to me.’
    ‘The killing. I’m investigating the last names and want to check them against the firearms register.’
    Göransson nodded, turned to his computer and logged on to the register which only a few authorised people had access to, for security reasons.
    ‘You’re standing too close, Ewert.’
    The discomfort
.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    It came from inside
.
    ‘Can you move back a couple of steps?’
    Whatever it was that demanded more space
.
    Göransson was looking at a person he didn’t like and who didn’t like him, so they seldom got in each other’s way, that was all there was to it.
    ‘Personal ID?’
    ‘721018-0010. 660531-2559. 580219-3672.’
    Three personal ID numbers. Three names on the screen.
    ‘What do you want to know?’
    ‘Everything.’
    Västmannagatan.
    Suddenly he understood
.
    ‘Göransson? Did you hear? I want everything.’
    That name
.
    ‘One of them has a licence. For work, plus four hunting guns.’
    ‘Guns for work?’
    ‘Pistols.’
    ‘Make?’
    ‘Radom.’
    ‘Calibre?’
    ‘Nine millimetre.’
    The name that was still blinking on the screen
.
    ‘Damn it, Göransson. Damn it!’
    The detective superintendent had got up quickly and was already halfway out the door.
    ‘But we already have access to them, Ewert.’
    Grens stopped mid-step.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘There’s a memorandum here. All the weapons have been seized. Krantz has them, no doubt.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘It doesn’t say. You’ll have to ask him.’
    The dull sound of a heavy body limping away down the corridor. Chief Superintendent Göransson didn’t have the energy to fight the feeling that something was afoot, the dread that made him shrivel inside. He looked at the name on the screen for a long time.
    Piet Hoffmann
.
    Ewert Grens would only have to press a few buttons and make a couple of phone calls to find the registered gun-owner’s current domicile and then go to the small town with a big prison to the northof the city and he would question him until he got the answer he mustn’t get.
    What wasn’t meant to happen had just happened.
    __________
    Piet Hoffmann waited behind the locked toilet door until he was absolutely sure he was alone.
     
    Elastic, spoon, plastic bag.
    This was exactly how he had hidden drugs and syringes in Österåker. Lorentz had told him that it still worked despite the fact that it was so bloody simple. Maybe that was why. No screw in any prison would search the actual toilet U-bend.
    The cistern, the drains, the waste pipe under the sink, hiding places that you might as well forget these days. But the U-bend, after all these years, they still had no idea.
    He put the elastic, the bent spoon and the plastic bag full of amphetamine down on the filthy toilet floor. He attached the plastic bag to one end of the elastic and the spoon to the other, then got down on his knees beside the toilet bowl, holding the plastic bag in his hand and pushing it as far down the pipe as he could, stretching the elastic. His arm and sleeve were wet up to his shoulder when he flushed and the pressure of the water pushed the plastic bag even further down the pipe, the bent spoon catching on the edge of the pipe. He waited, flushed again. The elastic should stretch even more and the plastic bag would be suspended at the other end somewhere far down the pipe.
    You couldn’t see the spoon that was hooked over the edge of the pipe, holding the plastic bag in place.
    But it would be easy to get hold of next time.
    Down on his knees, hand in the wet, carefully haul it in.
    __________
    Ewert Grens had left Göransson and the Homicide offices, and the truth that he couldn’t quite grasp wasn’t laughing so loud now.
Radom
. For the first time since the preliminary investigation started he had a lead, a name.
Nine millimetre
. Someone who might be the link to an execution.
     
    Piet Hoffmann.
    A name he had never heard before.
    But who owned a security firm that got official bodyguard