Three Seconds by Anders Roslund, Börge Hellström

to the car, looked back at the hedge and the hole at the bottom in the middle where the children would appear.
        No sign of them. He wasn't surprised.
        He smiled again and started the engine.
        
----

        
         Ewert Grens looked at the mat that disappeared under the passenger seat and Sven Sundkvist. He had pushed the two cassettes in there. Two more were lurking in the glove compartment. He would take them with him sometime, pack them away, forget them.
        The two young but slightly less pale uniformed police were still standing on the pavement between the hood of the car and the entrance to Västmannagatan 79. Hermansson had started to reverse when one of them came over and knocked on the window, and Sven rolled it down.
        "What do you think?"
        Ewert Grens leaned forward from the back seat.
        "You were right. It was an execution."
        It was late afternoon at Kronoberg, and finding a parking place on Bergsgatan wasn't easy. Hermansson drove round the tired police headquarters three times before parking on Kungsholmsgatan, by the entrance to Norma1m Police and the County Criminal Police, despite protests from Ewert Grens. Grens nodded vaguely at the security guard and walked in through the entrance he hadn't used for years; he had long since learned to appreciate routine and had stuck to his rigidly in order not to fall apart. One corridor and a narrow staircase and then they came out into the County Communication Center, the heart of the vast building. In a room the size of a small football field, a police officer or a staff employee sat at every second computer, watching the three small screens in front of them and the considerably larger ones that covered the walls from floor to ceiling, ready to deal with the four hundred or so emergency calls that came in every day.
        Holding a cup of coffee each, they sat down next to a woman in her fifties, one of the civvies, and the sort of woman who put her hand on the arm of the person she was talking to.
        "At what time?"
        "Twelve thirty-seven, and a minute or so earlier."
        The woman who still had her hand on Ewert's arm typed in 12:36:00, and then the silence that felt like eternity, as is often the case when several people sit together listening to nothing.
    Twelve thirty-six twenty.
        An automatic voice, the same one that was used in the rest of the police world, followed by the voice of a real woman who was crying as she reported a domestic at an address in Mariatorget.
    Twenty thirty-seven ten.
        A child screaming about a dad who'd fallen down the stairs and there was alot of blood coming from his cheek and hair.
    Twelve thirty-seven fifty.
        A scraping sound.
        Obviously somewhere indoors. Possibly a mobile phone.
        Unknown number on the screen.
        "Pay-as-you-go card."
        The female operator had removed her hand from Ewert Grens, so he didn't answer in order to avoid anymore physical contact. It was years since anyone had touched him and he didn't know how to relax anymore.
    "Emergency services."
        The scraping sound again. Then a buzzing interference. And a man's voice that was tense, stressed, but he spoke in a whisper that was trying to sound calm.
    "A dead man. Vdstmannagatan 79."
        Swedish. No accent. He said something more, but the buzzing sound made it difficult to hear the last sentence.
        "I want to listen to it again."
        The operator slid the cursor back along the time code that stretched across one of the computer screens like a black worm.
    A dead man. Västmannagatan 79. Fourth floor."
        That was it. The buzzing disappeared and the call was cut. The monotone electronic voice said twelve thirty-eight thirty and a distressed old man reported a robbery in a newsagent on Karlavagen. Ewert Grens thanked her for her help.
        They walked together through the endless corridors of the