Three Seconds

as the informant was dead.
    __________
    You don’t exist any more.
     
    But someone is using your phone.
    __________
    He was sweating again, but it wasn’t the heat; this came from inside, a feeling that burnt and cut, like nothing he had known before.
     
    Someone has control of your phone. Someone has found it and has dialled the only number that is stored there.
    Who?
    Someone investigating? Someone in pursuit?
    The room was cool, he was freezing so he pulled back the bedclothes and crept down under the duvet that smelt of scented conditioner and lay still until he started to sweat again.
    Someone who doesn’t know who has this phone. Someone who is calling a number that isn’t registered anywhere.
    He was shivering again, more than before, the thick duvet was chafing his head.
    He could phone. He could listen to the voice with no risk of being identified.
    He dialled the number.
    A sound wave looking for a harbour in the weightless air, a few seconds stretched to hours and years, then the ringing tone, a long shrill peep.
    He listened to the tone that rasped in his ear three times.
    And a voice he could recognise.
    ‘
Mission completed.
’
    Careful breathing on the other end, at least that’s what it sounded like – perhaps it was just the signal that was weak and atmospheric interference was trying to muscle in.
    ‘
Wojtek eliminated in Aspsås.
’
    He lay on the bed, didn’t move, scared that the person talking to him would vanish from his hand.
    ‘
See you in an hour at number three.
’
    __________
    Erik Wilson smiled to the voice that blended with another, a repeated call over the loudspeakers, probably in an airport.
     
    He had perhaps known, somewhere deep, deep down, or at least hoped.
    Now he knew.
    He answered.
    ‘Or another time, another place.’

From the Authors
     
    Three Seconds
is a novel about today’s criminals and the two authorities – the police and the Prison and Probation Service – who meet and are responsible for them.
     
    And a novel allows the authors liberties.
    Fact and fiction.
    Together.
    __________
    The Swedish Police Service
    FACT The Police Service has for many years used criminals as covert human intelligence sources. A cooperation that is denied and concealed. In order to investigate serious crime, other crimes have been marginalised and a number of preliminary investigations and trials have therefore been carried out without the correct information.
     
    FICTION Ewert Grens does not exist.
     
    FACT Only criminals can play criminals and have, if so required, been recruited when on remand or later. The police criminal intelligence database and reports have been used as tools to develop suitable and credible personal backgrounds. Extensive doctoring of information has become standard working practice in a society based on the rule of law.
     
    FICTION Sven Sundkvist does not exist.
     
    FACT Criminal informants are, in our time, outlaws. When a criminal informant is exposed, the authorities deny having using their services, and look the other way while the organisation that has been infiltrated tries to resolve the problem. The police supervisory authority is convinced that conventional intelligence methods are not sufficient tocombat organised crime and will continue to develop their work with covert human intelligence in the future.
     
    FICTION Mariana Hermansson does not exist.
     
    __________
    The Swedish Prison and Probation Service
    FACT Most prison inmates are drug users. Anyone serving a prison sentence can continue to use drugs inside. A drug user who is released from prison having served their sentence often returns to crime in order to continue to feed their habit and to pay back drug-related debts incurred in prison.
     
    FICTION Aspsås prison does not exist.
     
    FACT Anyone who works with criminals knows that drug abuse is a major contributor to reoffending. Despite this, it is still possible to distribute drugs in high security prisons by hiding amphetamines in bunches of yellow tulips that are sent to prison governors, in the left-hand margin of hardback books from library stores, and in plastic bags stuffed down toilets using elastic bands and spoons. The Prison and Probation Service could –
for goodness sake, a prison is a closed system –
stop all drug supplies, but refrains from doing so.
     
    FICTION Lennart Oscarsson does not exist.
     
    FACT Drugs are effective in reducing anxiety levels and an amphetamine user who has had his fix