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

that, a few secret intelligence reports on the right bosses' desks was usually enough.
        The temperature had risen in the stationary car and Piet Hoffmann dried away the sweat from his shirt collar just as the blasted line started to move. He fixed his eyes on a number plate that was edging slowly forward a few meters ahead and forced his mind back to images of Hugo and Rasmus and his real life, and twenty minutes later got out of the car in the visitors' parking lot at Hagtornsgarden, in the midst of all the flats in Enskededalen.
        By the front door he suddenly stopped with his hand in the air, a few centimeters from the handle. He listened to the voices of the noisy, boisterous children who were playing and smiled, lingering awhile in the best moment of the day. He went to open the door, but stopped again; something tight across his shoulders. He quickly felt under his jacket, heaved a sigh of relief-he had remembered to take off his holster.
        He opened the door. It smelled of baking, a late snack for some of the children who were sitting around a table in the lunch room. The noise was coming from farther in, the big play room. He sat down on a low stool in the entrance, near the tiny shoes and colorful jackets on pegs marked with the children's names and hand-drawn elephants.
        He nodded at one of the young women, a new member of staff. "Hi."
        'Are you Hugo and Rasmus's dad?"
        "How did you guess? I haven't-"
        "Not many left."
        She disappeared behind some shelves filled with well-used jigsaw puzzles and square wooden building blocks and reappeared almost immediately with two boys aged three and five who made his heart laugh.
        "Hello, Daddy."
        "Hello-lello, Daddy."
        "Hello-lello-lello, Daddy."
        "Hello-lello-lello-"
        "Hello, you two. You both win. We haven't got time for anymore hellos today. Maybe tomorrow. Then there will be more time. Okay?"
        He reached out for the red jacket and pulled it on to Rasmus's outstretched arms, then sat him on his lap to take his indoor shoes off the feet that wouldn't keep still, and put on his outdoor shoes. He leaned forward and glanced at his own shoes. Shit. He'd forgotten to put them in the fire. The black shininess might be a film of death, with traces of skin and blood and brain tissue-he had to burn them as soon as he got home.
        He checked the child car seat that was strapped onto the passenger seat, facing backward. It felt as secure as it should and Rasmus was already picking at the pattern on the fabric as was his wont. Hugo's seat was more like a hard square that made him sit a bit higher and he fastened the seat belt tight before giving his soft cheek a quick kiss.
        "Daddy's just going to make a quick phone call. Will you be quiet for a while? I promise to be finished before we drive under Nynäsvägen."
        Capsules with amphetamine, child car seats secured, shoes shiny with the remains of death.
        Right now he didn't want to see that they were different parts of the same working day.
        He closed his phone the moment the car passed the busy main road. He had managed to make two quick calls, the first to a travel agent to book a ticket on the 6:55p.m. SAS flight to Warsaw, and the second to Henryk, his contact at the head office, to book a meeting there three hours later.
        "I did it! I finished on this side of the road. Now I'm only going to talk to you."
        "Were you talking to work?"
        "Yes, the office."
        Three years old. And he could already distinguish between the two languages and what Daddy used them for. He stroked Rasmus's hair and felt Hugo leaning forward to say something behind him.
        "I can speak Polish too. Jeden, diva, trzy, cztery, pire, szege, siedem-"
        He stopped, and then carried on in a slightly darker voice: "-eight, nine, ten."
        "Very good. You know lots of