Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund; Börge Hellström

  "In there?"

  He had seen him before. The cleaner in the administration block. He had seemed taller then, more straight-backed, eyes that were curious and alert. The person sitting on the bunk with his knees pulled up under his chin and his back pressed hard to the wall was someone else.

  Only death, or fleeing from it, could change someone so quickly. "Is there a problem, Hoffmann?"

  The prisoner who couldn't be questioned tried to look more together than he actually was.

  "I don't know. What d'you think? Or did you come here to get your trash emptied?"

  "I think it would seem so. And that it's you that's causing it. The problem." The order to grant a lawyer access to your unit.

  "You asked for voluntary isolation. You refused to say why. And now you've got it, voluntary isolation."

  The order that you must not be questioned.

  "So… what's your problem?"

  "I want to be put in the hole."

  "You want what?"

  "The hole. Solitary confinement."

  I see you.

  You're sitting there in the clothes we've issued.

  But I don't understand who you are.

  "Solitary confinement? Exactly… what exactly are you talking about, Hoffmann?"

  "I don't want to have any contact with the other prisoners."

  "Are you being threatened?"

  "No contact. That's all I'm saying."

  Piet Hoffmann looked out through the open door. Prisoners who moved around freely represented death just as much here as in any other unit. They had been moved away from others but not from each other.

  "That's not the way it works. Hoffmann, solitary confinement is our decision. It's not something that individual prisoners can decide. You've been moved here on your request, in accordance with Paragraph eighteen. That's our duty. We are under obligation to do that if you request it. But the hole, solitary confinement, has a completely different set of regulations and conditions. Paragraph fifty is not something you can request, it's not voluntary, it is a decision that is enforced. By a principal officer in your unit. Or by me."

  They were walking around out there, and they knew. He wouldn't survive the week here.

  "Enforced?" "Yes."

  "And how the fuck is that decision made?"

  "If you're a danger to someone else. Or to yourself."

  With walls that locked you in there was nowhere to hide.

  "A danger?" "Yes."

  "In what way?"

  "Violence. Toward fellow prisoners. Or one of us, one of the staff."

  They were waiting for him.

  They whispered stuka.

  He moved closer to the chief warden and looked into a face that crumpled with pain-he had hit him hard.

  * * *

  He sat on the hard concrete floor. He'd heard talk of solitary confinement cells that were called the hole or the cage, he'd heard tales of people who excelled in violence in the world outside but who had broken after a few days in solitary confinement and were taken to the hospital unit in a fetal position, or those who had quietly hanged themselves with a sheet. A person couldn't be farther removed from life, from what was natural.

  He was sitting on the floor as there wasn't a chair. A heavy metal bed and a cement toilet bowl that was solidly attached to the floor. That was it.

  He had hit the chief warden in the middle of the face with his fist. The top of the cheek, eye, and nose. Oscarsson had fallen from the chair onto the floor, bleeding but conscious. The guards had rushed in, the governor held his hands in front of his face to protect himself against anything else, and Piet Hoffmann had voluntarily stretched his arms and legs for them to carry him out. The four guards each struggled with a part of his body while the prisoners lined the corridor and watched.

  He had survived the attack. He had survived voluntary isolation. He had managed to get here, as much protection as you could get in a closed prison, but he shrank just as he had before, I am alone, no one knows yet, he curled up on the hard surface, freezing then sweating then freezing again. He was still lying there when one of the guards opened the square hatch in the door to ask if he wanted his hour out in the fresh air-an hour a day in a cake slice-shaped cage with blue sky high above the metal mesh-but he shook his head. He didn't want to leave the cell, didn't want to expose himself to anyone.

  Lennart Oscarsson closed the door to the voluntary isolation unit and went slowly down the stairs, one at a time, to the ground floor of Block C. One hand to his cheek, his fingertips touching the swelling. It was tender and particularly swollen along the zygomatic bone, and there was a taste of blood on his tongue and in his throat. Give it about an hour, then the area around his eye would turn blue. The chief warden felt physical pain every second from a face that would take a long time to heal, but it meant nothing. It was the other pain, the one from the inside that he felt-all his working life he had lived with men who had no place in real society and he had been proud that he could read difficult people better than anyone, his professional knowledge, the only thing he felt was worth anything anymore.

  This punch, he hadn't seen it coming.

  He hadn't understood the desperation, hadn't anticipated the force of Hoffmann's fear.

  The riot squad had carried him down to where the bastard belonged, and he would stay there for a long time in the shirtiest of shitty cells. Lennart Oscarsson would file a report that afternoon, and a long sentence would become even longer. It didn't help. He felt his tender cheek with his fingers. It didn't change anything, didn't ease his frustration at having misread a prisoner.

  The iron bed, the cement toilet. No matter how long he waited, the cell was never going to be more than that. The dirty walls that had once been white, the ceiling that had never been painted, the floor that was so cold. He rang the bell again, kept his finger on the button long enough to irritate them. One of the guards would break in the end and hurry over to tell the prisoner who had assaulted the chief warden to stop ringing the bell or to look forward to days in a straitjacket.

  He was cold again.

  They knew. He was a snitch, he had a death threat. They would manage to get in here too. It was just a matter of time, as not even a carefully locked cell door could protect him. Wojtek had money and anyone could be bought when death was involved.

  The square hatch was some way up the door. It scraped and whined when it was opened.

  Staring eyes.

  "You want something?"

  Who are you?

  "I want to make a phone call."

  Guard?

  'And why should we let you phone?"

  Or one of them?

  "I want to call the police."

  The eye came closer, laughed.

  "You want to call the police? And do what? Report that you've just assaulted a prison warden? Those of us who work here don't have much time for that sort of thing."

  "None of your fucking business why and you know that. You know that you can't refuse me a phone call to the police."

  The eye was silent. The hatch was closed. Steps disappeared.

  Piet Hoffmann got up from the cold floor and threw himself over the button on the wall, held it in he guessed for about five minutes.

  Suddenly the door was pulled open. Three blue uniforms. The staring eyes that he now was convinced belonged to a guard. Beside him, another one, the same kind. Behind them, a third, with enough stripes for him to be a principal officer, an older man, in his sixties.

  He was the one who spoke.

  "My name is Martin Jacobson. I'm the principal officer here. Boss in this unit. What's the problem?"

  "I've asked to make a phone call. To the police. It's my damn right."

  The principal officer studied him-a prisoner in oversize clothes who was sweating and found it difficult to stand still-then looked at the guard with the staring eyes.

  "Roll in the phone."

  "But-"

  "I don't care why he's here. Let him phone." />
  He crouched on the edge of the iron bed with the telephone receiver in his hand.

  He had asked for the city police every time he got through. More rings this time-he had counted twenty for both Erik Wilson and Göransson. Neither of them had answered.

  He sat locked in a cell that had nothing other than an iron bed and a cement toilet bowl. He had no contact with the world outside or the other prisoners. None of the guards outside his cell door had any idea that he was there on behalf of the Swedish police.

  He was stuck. He couldn't get out. He was alone in a prison where he had been condemned to death by his fellow prisoners.

  He undressed himself and stood there shivering. He waved his arms around and started to sweat. He held his breath until the pressure in his chest was more than pain.

  He lay face down on the floor, wanting to feel something, anything, that wasn't fear.

  Piet Hoffmann knew as soon as the door into the corridor opened and then shut again.

  He didn't need to see, he just knew-they were there.

  The heavy steps of someone moving slowly. He hurried over to the cell door, put his ear to the cold metal, listened. A new prisoner being escorted by several wardens.

  Then he heard it, a voice he recognized.

  "Stukatj."

  Stefan's voice. On his way to a cell farther down the corridor. "What did you say?"

  The guard with the eyes. Piet Hoffmann pressed his ear even harder to the inside of the cell door-he wanted to be certain that he heard every word. "Stukay, It's Russian."

  "We don't speak Russian down here."

  "There's someone who does."

  "Into the cell with you now, just get in!"

  They were here. Soon there would be more, every prisoner in solitary confinement from now on would know that there was a snitch here, stewing in one of the cells.

  Stefan's voice, it had been pure hate.

  He pressed the red button and he would continue to press it until the guards came.

  They had let him know they were there. Now it was just a question of when, of time. Hours, days, weeks, the pursuers and the pursued knew that the moment would come when there was no more waiting.

  The square hatch opened, but it was other eyes, the older principal officer.

  "I want-"

  "Your hands are shaking.

  "For fuck's sake-"

  "You're sweating heavily."

  "Telephone, I want-"

  "You've got a twitch in your eye."

  He was still pressing on the button. A piercing pitch that echoed in the corridor.

  "Finger off the button, Hoffmann. You've got to calm down. And before I do anything… I want to know what's up."

  Pier Hoffmann lowered his hand. It was eerily quiet around them. "I have to make another phone call."

  "You just made one."

  "The same number. Until I get an answer."

  The cart with the phone and telephone directory on it was wheeled in and the gray-haired principal officer dialed the number he knew by heart. He watched the prisoner's face the whole time: the spasms in the muscles around his eyes, his forehead and hairline that were shiny and dripping, a person who was fighting his own fear as he waited for a phone that was not answered.

  "You're not looking good."

  "I have to make another call."

  "You can do later."

  "I have to-"

  "You didn't get an answer. You can call again later."

  Piet Hoffmann didn't let go of the receiver. He held it in his hands that were shaking as he met the eyes of the warden.

  "I want my books."

  "Which books?"

  "In my cell. In G2. I have the right to have five books down here. I want two of them. I can't just sit here staring at the walls. They're on my bedside table. Nineteenth Century Stockholm and The Marionettes. I want them here, now."

  The prisoner didn't shake as much when he talked about his books. He calmed down.

  "Poetry?"

  "You got a problem with that?"

  "Not often that it's read down here."

  "I need it. It helps me to believe in the future."

  The flush on the prisoner's face had started to recede.

  "Then suddenly it hits me that the ceiling, my ceiling, is someone else's floor.”"

  "What?"

  "Perlin. Barefooted Child. If you like poetry, I can-"

  "Just get me my books"

  The older warden said nothing, just pulled the cart out of the cell and locked the heavy door. It was quiet again. Piet Hoffmann stayed on the cold floor and wiped his wet brow. He had twitches and spasms, he was shaking, he was swearing. He hadn't realized that it was visible, his fear.

  * * *

  He had moved from the floor to the bed and lain down on the thin mattress that didn't have any sheets or covers. He was freezing and had curled up in his stiff, oversize clothes and eventually fallen asleep, dreamed that Zofia was running in front of him and he couldn't get close to her no matter how much he tried, her hand disintegrated when he touched it, she shouted and he answered but she couldn't hear him, his voice dwindled to nothing and she got smaller and smaller, farther and farther away until she disappeared.

  He was woken by noise outside in the corridor.

  Someone was being escorted to the bathroom or the cage for some air, someone who had said something. He went over to the door, ear to the square hatch. It was another voice this time, Swedish, no accent, a voice that he hadn't heard before.

  "Paula, where are you?"

  He was sure that he'd heard it right.

  "Paula, you're not hiding are you?"

  The warden with the eyes told the voice to shut up.

  It had shouted in no particular direction, but just outside his cell, selected a specific listener.

  Piet Hoffmann sank down behind the door, sat there with his chest and chin against his knees, his legs weren't working.

  Someone had exposed him as a stukatj last night, he had been given a death sentence. But… Paula… he hadn't understood it, not until now, that this someone had also known his code name. Paula. Christ… there were only four people who knew the code name Paula. Erik Wilson had made it up. Chief Inspector Göransson had approved it. Only those two, for many years, only those two. After the meeting in Rosenbad, two more. The national police commissioner. The state secretary. No one else.

  Paula.

  It was one of those four.

  It was one of them, his protection, his escape-one of them had burned him.

  "Paula, we want to meet you so much."

  The same voice, farther away now toward the showers, then the same tired "shut up" from the wardens who didn't understand.

  Piet Hoffmann held his legs even tighter, pressed them into his body.

  He was already everyone's quarry. He was a snitch in a prison where informants were hated as much as sex offenders.

  Someone banged on their door.

  Someone screamed stukatj on the other side.

  Soon it would be as it always was when the shared hate was focused on one locked cell door. First, two who banged, then three and four, then more, minute by minute, hatred channelled into the hands that hit harder and harder. He put his hands to his ears, but the banging penetrated his head until he couldn't stand it anymore, he pressed the button and held it down until the noise of the bell drowned out the monotone rhythm.

  The square hatch opened. The principal officer's eye.

  "Yes?"

  "I want to make that phone call. And I want my books. I have to phone and I have to have my books."

  The door opened. The older principal prison officer came in, ran his hand through his thick, gray hair and pointed out into the corridor.

  "All that banging… has that got anything to do with you?"

  "No."

  "I've been working here for a long time. You're twitching, you're shaking, you're sweating. You're bloody frightened. And I think that's why you want to phon
e."

  He closed the door and made sure that the prisoner made note. "Am I right?"

  Piet Hoffmann looked at the blue uniform in front of him. He seemed friendly. He sounded friendly.

  Don't trust anyone.

  "No. It's got nothing to do with that. I just want to make a phone call now."

  The principal prison officer sighed. The telephone cart was standing at the other end of the corridor, so this time he got out his mobile phone, dialed the number of city police and handed it over to the prisoner who refused to admit that he was frightened and that the banging out there had anything to do with it.

  The first number. Ringing tone and no answer.

  Twitching, shaking, sweating, it all got worse.

  "Hoffmann."

  "One more. The other number."

  "You're not in a good way. I want to call a doctor. You should go to the hosp-"

  "Dial the fucking number. You're not moving me anywhere." Ringing tone again. Three rings. Then a man's voice.

  "Göransson."

  He had answered.

  His legs, he could feel them again.

  He had answered.

  He was just about to tell them, in a couple of moments they could start the administrative procedures that would mean freedom in a week.

  "Jesus, finally, I've been trying… I need help. Now."

  "Who am I talking to?"

  "Paula?"

  "Who?"

  "Piet Hoffmann."

  The silence didn't last that long, but it sounded like the phone had been put down, the electronic void that is empty, dead.

  "Hello? For fuck's shake, hello, where-"

  "I'm still here. What did you say your name was?"

  "Hoffmann. Piet Hoffmann. We-"

  "I'm very sorry, I have no idea who you are."

  "What the fuck… you know… you know perfectly well who I am, we met, just recently in the state secretary's office… I-"

  "No, we've never met. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a lot to do." Every muscle was tensed, his stomach was burning and his chest and his

  throat and when everything is burning you have to scream or run or hide or… "I'm going to call the hospital unit now."