Three Seconds by Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström Read Free Book Online

looking toward.
        "Do you want to know or not?"
        Krantz had been squatting on the kitchen floor for a bit too long. "Otherwise I've got plenty else to be getting on with."
        His hand was close to a crack in the marble floor. Ewert Grens nodded, I'm listening.
        "That spot there, can you see it?"
        Grens looked at something that was whitish with uneven edges.
        "Bits of stomach lining. And it's definitely no more than twelve hours old. There are several similar spots in this area."
        The forensic scientist drew a circle with his hand in the air around himself.
        "All with the same content. Food remains and bile. But also something far more interesting. Bits of rubber."
        When Grens looked closer, he could see the white spots with uneven edges in at least three places.
        "The rubber is partly corroded, probably by stomach acids."
        Krantz looked up.
        "And traces of rubber in vomit, we know what that means."
        Ewert Grens gave a loud sigh.
        Rubber meant human containers. Human containers meant drugs. A dead man in connection with a delivery meant a drugs-related murder. And a drugs-related murder always meant investigation and lots of hours, lots of resources.
        "A mule, a swallower who's delivered the goods right here in the kitchen."
        He turned toward the sitting room.
        'And him? What do we know about him?"
        "Nothing."
        "Nothing?"
        "Not yet. You have to have something to do, Grens."
        Ewert Grens went back into the sitting room and over to the man who no longer existed, watched as two men took hold of the dead man's arms and legs, as they lifted him and put him into a black body bag, as they pulled up the zipper and put the body bag on a metal stretcher that they only just managed to push down the narrow hall.
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         He left Vasagatan and then got caught in a traffic jam by Suisun. It was nearly five o'clock and he should have been at the kindergarten an hour ago.
        Piet Hoffmann sat in the car and desperately tried to fend off the stress and heat and irritation caused by the afternoon traffic, which he could do nothing about. Three lanes at a standstill as far down the tunnel as he could see. To combat this battle with the city, he often thought about the soft skin on Zofia's face when he stroked it, or Hugo's eyes when he managed to ride his bike on his own, or Rasmus's hair, splashed with carrot soup and orange juice, standing out in every direction. It didn't work. Who did you do time with? Images of the people he was thinking about merged every time into images of a deal in a flat in Västmannagatan that had ended in another man's death. Skåne. Mio, Josef Libanon, Virtanen. The Count. How many names do you want? Another infiltrator with the same mission as he had. Who else? But the other infiltrator who sat facing him just didn't act as well. Who else? He, if anyone, should know what a faked background looked like, how it was put together, and which questions were needed to make it collapse. They had both been working for the police in their respective ways and ended up in the same place. He didn't have any choice, otherwise they might both have died, and one was in fact enough, one who wasn't him.
        He had seen people die before. It wasn't that. It was part of his daily life and his credibility required it; he had learned to shrug off dead people who weren't close to him. But he had been in charge of this operation. A murder, he risked life imprisonment.
        Erik had phoned from the airport outside Jacksonville. Nine years as a secret civil servant on the unofficial payroll of the Swedish police had taught Piet Hoffmann that he was valuable. The authorities had magicked away offenses in both a private and professional capacity before, so Erik Wilson should be able to make this one vanish too. The police were good at