Three Seconds

him all afternoon and evening, a night’s sleep and some time after he hadwoken to realise that the visit from Grens had sparked a gnawing, consuming feeling that would not go away, no matter how hard he tried. Prioritising infiltration inside prison walls over and above a murder investigation was not a good solution. He had sat at the table in Rosenbad and weighed it against control over the Polish mafia and had chosen to restrict criminal expansion.
     
    ‘Göransson.’
    That bloody voice
.
    ‘I want to talk to you, Göransson.’
    He had never liked it
.
    ‘Morning, Ewert.’
    Ewert Grens limped more noticeably now – either that or the corridor walls just amplified the hard sound of a healthy leg meeting a concrete floor.
    ‘The firearms register.’
    Whatever it is that takes up so much room
.
    Fredrik Göransson avoided the heavy hands that fumbled for plastic cups and the coffee machine buttons beside him.
    There’s no room here again
.
    ‘You’re standing too close.’
    ‘I’m not going to move again.’
    ‘If you want an answer, you’re going to have to.’
    Ewert Grens stayed where he was.
    ‘721018-0010. Three Radom pistols and four hunting rifles.’
    The name that was still blinking on his screen
.
    ‘Yes, what about it?’
    ‘I want to know how someone with his criminal record was granted a firearms licence for work.’
    ‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at.’
    ‘Assaulting a police officer. Attempted murder.’
    The plastic cup was full. Grens tasted the warm liquid, gave a satisfied nod and pressed the button for another.
    ‘I don’t get it, Göransson.’
    I get it, Grens.
    He has a firearms licence because he is not violent and is not a classified psychopath and does not need to be branded dangerous and has not been convicted of attempted murder.
    Because the database entries that you’ve seen are a tool, fake.
    ‘I’ll look into it. If it’s important.’
    Grens tested the second cup, looked just as happy and started to walk away, slowly.
    ‘It
is
important. I want to know who issued that licence. And why.’
    It was me
.
    ‘I’ll do what I can.’
    ‘I need it today. He’s in for questioning first thing tomorrow morning.’
    Chief Superintendent Göransson stood where he was under the flickering, whirring light as Grens walked away.
    He shouted after the detective who had demanded answers.
    ‘And the others?’
    Grens stopped without turning round.
    ‘Which others?’
    ‘You had three names when you came to me yesterday.’
    ‘I’m dealing with those two today. This bastard is doing time already, so I know where I’ve got him, he’ll be there tomorrow too.’
    Too close
.
    The ungainly body carrying a plastic cup in each hand limped off down the corridor and disappeared into an office.
    Grens had been standing too close.
    __________
    The toilet bowl was yellow from piss and the sink was full of wet tobacco and cigarette butts with no filter. The unscented detergent didn’t even remove the top layer of dirt. He scrubbed for a long time with the brush and then with the scouring cloth, but they only slid over the worn porcelain surface. The toilet outside the door to the workshop was small and used by people who pissed outside the bowl in the short breaks they could get from the work they hated, a couple of minutes’ respite from a punishment that was never clearer than when you were standing by a machine that drilled small holes for screws at the bottom of a lamppost hatch.
     
    Piet Hoffmann went into the big room and greeted the same faces that he had the day before. He wiped over all the workbenches and shelves, washed the floor around the diesel barrel, emptied the bins, cleaned the large window that faced the church. Every now and then he’d glance over at the small office behind the glass wall and the twoscrews sitting there. He was waiting for them to get up and do their round of the workshop, which they had to do every half an hour.
    ‘Is it you?’
    He was big, hair in a long ponytail and a beard that made him look much older than his – Hoffmann guessed – twenty years.
    ‘Yes.’
    He was working on the press, big hands holding metal that would be shaped into rectangular hatches – he could do a couple a minute if he didn’t stop to look out the window.
    ‘One g. For today. Every day.’
    ‘This afternoon.’
    ‘Block H.’
    ‘We’ve got a man there.’
    ‘Michal?’
    ‘Yes. You get it off him and pay him.’
    Hoffmann took his