Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund; Börge Hellström

  The telephone in his hand. He refused to let go.

  "I'm not going anywhere until I've got my two books."

  "The phone."

  "My books. I have the right to have five books in solitary confinement!"

  He loosened his grip on the cordless phone and let it slip out of his hand.

  It cracked when it hit the floor, plastic bits bouncing in every direction. He lay down next to them, his arms around his stomach and chest and throat, it was still burning and when everything is burning, you have to run or hide.

  * * *

  "Did he sound desperate?"

  "Yes."

  "Stressed?"

  "Yes."

  "Frightened?"

  "Very frightened."

  They looked at each other. If we let it out who Hoffmann is? They had more coffee. What the organization then does with that knowledge is not our problem. They moved the piles of paper from one side of the table to the other. We will not and cannot be responsible for other people's actions.

  It should have been over.

  They had arranged a meeting for a lawyer with one of his clients that evening. They had burned him.

  And yet, not long ago, he had called from a cell, from prison. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  "It can't have-"

  "It was him."

  The national police commissioner fetched the pack of cigarettes that was kept in a desk drawer and not to be smoked. He offered the open pack to his colleague, the matches were on the table and the room was immediately awash with white.

  "Give me one too."

  Göransson shook his head.

  "If you haven't smoked for two years, I don't want to encourage you." "I'm not going to smoke it. I'm just going to hold it."

  He felt it between his fingers, sorely missed and familiar-now it offered calm when he most needed it.

  "We've got plenty of time."

  "Four days. And one's already gone. If Grens and Hoffmann meet.., If Hoffmann talks… if-"

  Göransson interrupted himself. He didn't need to say more. They could both visualize the limping detective inspector, aging and obstinate, the sort who never gives up, who pursues the truth as far as he can and then some more when he realizes that a handful of colleagues have known it from the start. He would carry on and he wouldn't stop until he found the ones who had protected it and then buried it.

  "It's just a matter of time, Fredrik. An organization that gets hold of that kind of information and has the means will use them. It might take a bit more time when there's no contact with fellow prisoners, but the moment will come."

  The national police commissioner fingered the cigarette that wasn't lit.

  It was so familiar. He would soon smell his fingertips, hold on to the forbidden pleasure a bit longer.

  "But, if you want, we can… I mean, being locked away like that, in solitary confinement, it's a terrible place. No human contact. He should be moved back to the unit he came from, to the men he's gotten to know-if he's suffering down there, he should… well, he should be with other prisoners. On… humanitarian grounds."

  * * *

  He paused as he normally did in front of the window in the chief warden's office and looked out over his universe: the big prison and the small town. He had never been particularly curious about what might be elsewhere, what could be seen from here was all he had ever wished for. The reflection of the sun made the window a mirror and he gingerly touched his cheek, nose, forehead. He felt tender, it was hard to see properly in the darkened glass, but looked like the blue around his eye was already changing shade.

  He had misread him, a desperation that he hadn't recognized. "Hello?"

  The telephone on the desk had interrupted the feeling of his skin tightening.

  "Lennart?"

  He recognized the general director's voice.

  "It's me."

  There was a faint crackling in the receiver, a mobile somewhere outdoors and a strong wind.

  "It's about Hoffmann."

  "Okay.”

  "He's to go back. To the unit he came from."

  The crackling was now nearly inaudible.

  "Lennart?"

  "What the hell are you saying?"

  "He's to go back. First thing tomorrow morning at the latest." "There's a serious threat involved."

  "On humanitarian grounds."

  "He is not going back to that unit. He should not even be in the same prison. If he's going anywhere, it's away, express transport, to Kumla or Hall." "You're not going to express him anywhere. He's going to go back."

  "A prisoner who has been threatened is never sent back to the same unit." "It's an order."

  The two bunches of tulips on his desk had started to open, the yellow petals like lit lamps in front of him.

  "I was given an order to allow a late visit from a lawyer and I did it. I was given an order not to let a DS carry out an interview, and I did it. But this- I won't do it. If 0913 Hoffmann is sent back to the unit where he was threatened-"

  "It's an order. Non-negotiable."

  Lennart Oscarsson bent down toward the yellow petals, wanted to smell something that was genuine. His cheek brushed against a flower and tightened again; it had been a powerful punch.

  "I personally would have nothing against seeing him go to hell. I have my reasons. But as long as I'm head of this prison, it's not going to happen. That would only mean death and there have been enough murders in Swedish prisons in recent years, investigations that no one has seen and no one has heard of and bodies that are eventually hidden away as no one is actually that interested."

  The crackling again, whether it was the wind or labored breathing into a sensitive microphone.

  "Lennart?"

  It was breathing.

  "You'll do it. Or you'll lose your post. You've got two hours."

  He was lying on the iron bed with his eyes shut. I'm very sorry, I have no idea who you are. The people who were supposed to open the door and lead him back to reality had declared that he didn't exist.

  He was officially condemned to ten years' imprisonment.

  If those in the know denied it, if the people who had arranged a fake trial and produced a criminal record, if they denied it, there was no one else who could explain.

  He wouldn't get out. He would be pursued to the death and no matter how much he ran and how long he managed to stay hidden, there was no one there on the other side of the wall who would open the door and help him out.

  It was windy out in the prison yard, warm air rebounding off the concrete wall and coming back with even less oxygen. The prison's chief warden walked briskly and wiped his damp forehead with his shirt sleeve. The main door to solitary confinement was locked and he rattled through his keys. It wasn't often he visited the dismal corridor that was the temporary home of those who couldn't conform even with the country's most serious criminals.

  "Martin."

  The wardens' room was just inside the door and he nodded to three of his employees, Martin Jacobson and two temporary wardens, youngsters whose names he hadn't learned yet.

  "Martin, I'd like to talk to you for a moment."

  The two temps nodded; they had heard what he hadn't said and went out into the corridor, closing the door behind them.

  "Hoffmann."

  "Cell 9. He's not looking good. He-"

  "He's to go back. To G2. By tomorrow morning at the latest."

  The principal officer looked out into the empty corridor, heard the big ugly clock on the wall ticking, the second hand filling the room. "Lennart?"

  "You heard right."

  Martin Jacobson got up from the chair by the narrow desk that was largely used as a place to put cups, looked at his friend, colleague, boss. "We've been working together here for… a good twenty years. We've been neighbors for almost as long. You are one of my only friends in here, and out there, one of the few people I ask over for a Sunday drink." He tried to catch the eye of someone who wasn't ther
e.

  "Look at me, Lennart."

  "No questions."

  "Look at me!"

  "I'm asking you, Martin, this time, no goddamn questions."

  The gray-haired man swallowed, in surprise, in anger.

  "What's this all about?"

  "No bloody questions."

  "He'll die."

  "Martin-"

  "This goes against everything we know, everything we say, everything we do."

  "I'm going now. You've got an order. Do it."

  Lennart Oscarsson opened the door; he was already on his way out.

  "He punched you, Lennart… is this personal?"

  It tightened. And when he moved, every step ached, a shooting pain from his cheekbone down.

  "Is it? Is it personal?"

  "Just do as I ask."

  "No."

  "In that case, Martin, do as you are ordered!"

  "I won't do it. Because it's wrong. If he's going to be moved back. then you're going to have to do it yourself."

  Lennart Oscarsson walked toward Cell 9 with two huge holes in his back. He could feel his perhaps best friend's eyes, staring, and he wanted to turn around and explain the order that he himself had so recently been appalled by. Martin was a wise friend, an experienced colleague, the sort who had the courage to speak up when someone who should know better was wrong.

  An unconscious hand to the back of his jacket as he approached the locked cell, brushed over the fabric, by the holes, the eyes, trying to get rid of them. The temps with no names were close behind him and stopped by the door, keys jangling as they looked for the right one.

  The prisoner was lying on the iron bed, naked except for a pair of white underpants. He was resting, trembling, his torso as white as his face. "You're going back."

  The pale body, he didn't look like much, but only a couple of hours ago he had punched him hard in the face.

  "Tomorrow morning. Eight o'clock."

  He didn't move.

  "To the same unit and the same cell."

  He didn't seem to hear, to see.

  "Did you hear what I said?"

  The chief warden waited, then nodded to his young colleagues and to the door.

  "The books."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I need the books. It's my legal right."

  "Which books?"

  "I've asked for two of the five books that I have the right to have. Nineteenth Century Stockholm. The Marionettes. They're in my cell."

  "You're going to read?"

  "The nights are long here."

  Lennart Oscarsson nodded to the wardens again-they should close and lock and leave the cell.

  He sat up. Back. He was going to die. Back. He was dead the moment he went back into the same unit, hated, hunted, he had broken one of the first prison rules, he was a snitch, and you killed snitches.

  He got down on his knees in front of the cement toilet bowl, two fingers down his throat, he held them there until he started to puke.

  Fear had sucked everything out of him and he spat it out, he had to get rid of it. He stayed on his knees and emptied himself, emptied out everything that had been, everything that was inside him, he was on his own now, the people who could burn him had burnt again.

  He pressed the button.

  He wasn't going to die, not yet.

  He had kept it pressed in for fourteen minutes when the hatch in the door opened and the warden with the eyes shouted at him to goddamn take his finger off.

  He didn't turn round, just pressed even harder.

  "The books."

  "You're going to get them."

  "The books!"

  "I've got them with me. Chief's orders. If you want me to come in, take your finger off the button."

  Piet Hoffmann spotted them as soon as the door opened. His books. In the guard's hand. His chest, the pressure that had been there, making him shake, was released. He relaxed, wanted to collapse, wanted to cry, that was how it felt, released and he just wanted to cry.

  "It smells of puke in here."

  The guard peered into the cement hole, started retching, and moved back.

  "It's your choice. You know that no one cleans in here. That smell, you'll just have to get used to it."

  The warden gripped the books in his hands, shook them, flicked through, shook them again. Hoffmann stood in front of him but felt nothing, he knew that they would hold up.

  He had sat on the iron bed for a long time holding the two books from Aspsås library close by. They were intact. He had just been down on his knees and emptied himself, now, now he was calm, his body felt soft, he could nearly bend over again and if he rested, if he slept for a while, he could refill it with energy, he wasn't going to die, not yet.

  * * *

  Friday

  * * *

  He had woken gleaming with sweat, fallen asleep again, dreamed in fragments and without color, the sort of sleep that is shallow and black and white and far away. He had woken again and sat up on the iron bed and looked at the floor and the books that were lying there for a long time-he wouldn't lie down again, his body was screaming for rest, but as sleep rook more energy than it gave he chose to stay sitting where he was and wait as the dawn turned into morning.

  It was quiet, dark.

  The solitary confinement corridor would sleep for a few more hours.

  He had emptied himself yesterday of the fear that got in the way and had to be gotten rid of, the smell still stringent in the air around the cement hole. He had emptied himself and now there was only one thing left, the will to survive.

  Piet Hoffmann lifted up the two books and put them down in front of him on the bed. Nineteenth Century Stockholm. The Marionettes. Bound in hard, mono colored library boards, marked with STORE in blue and ASPSS LIBRARY in red. He opened the first page, got a firm grip of the cover and with a powerful rug pulled it loose. Another tug and the spine of the book collapsed, a third and the back came off He looked over at the locked cell door. Still quiet. No one walking around out there, no one who had heard and hurried over to the hatch at the top of the door with meddlesome eyes. He changed position, back to the door-if anyone were to look in all they would see was a fidgety long-termer who couldn't sleep.

  He ran his hand carefully over the torn book. His fingers along the left-hand margin and a cut-out, rectangular hole.

  It was there. In eleven pieces.

  He turned the book over, coaxed out the metal that in a matter of minutes would be a five-centimeter-long mini-revolver. First the larger pieces, the frame with the barrel and cylinder pivot and trigger, a couple of gentle taps with the handle of the sewing machine screwdriver on the millimeter-long pins between them, then the barrel protector with the first screw, the butt sides with the second screw and the butt stabiliser with the third.

  He turned to the door, but the footsteps were only in his head, as before.

  He spun the tiny revolver's cylinder, emptied it, took his time checking the six bullets as long as half a thumbnail that were lined up on the iron bed-ammunition that together weighed no more than a gram.

  He had seen a person stop breathing in that godforsaken toilet far away in winoujcie ferry terminal, the short barrel right up close to a petrified eye, the miniature revolver had killed with a single shot.

  Piet Hoffmann held it, raised it, aimed it at the dirty wall. Left index finger light on the trigger-there was just enough room with the trigger guard sawn off-slowly pull back, he watched the hammer follow the movement of the finger, a final squeeze and it leaped forward, then the sound, the sharp click. It worked.

  He ripped apart the second book in the same way, revealing a hole in the left-hand margin, a detonator the size of a nail and a receiver the size of a penny. He ran the sewing machine screwdriver along the bottom edges of the book's thick covers, front and back, cut open the glued hinge and pulled out two nine-meter-long pieces of pentyl fuse and an equally thin plastic envelope containing twenty-four centilitres of nitroglycerine.


  It was a few minutes past seven.

  He heard the wardens changing shift out in the corridor behind the locked door-night shift to day shift. One more hour. Then he would be collected and taken back.

  G2 left. Back. He was condemned to die there.

  He pressed the button on the wall.

  "Yes?"

  "I need a shit."

  "You've got a hole beside the bed."

  "It's blocked. My puke from yesterday."

  The single speaker crackled.

  "How urgent?"

  "As soon as possible."

  "Five minutes."

  Piet Hoffmann stood by the door, footsteps, several footsteps, two guards coming to get someone, to the cell, who unlocked the door and opened it, toilet visit, never two prisoners in the corridor at the same time, get in your cell for Christ's sake. The revolver was resting in the palm of his hand-he opened the cylinder, counted the six bullets, pushed it to the bottom of one of the deep front pockets on his trousers and the coarse fabric hid it, just as it hid the detonator and receiver in the other pocket and the pentyl fuse and plastic envelope with nitroglycerine stuffed down his underpants.

  "Open for the prisoner in number nine."

  The guard who had shouted was right outside his door. Hoffmann ran back to the bed, lay down, and watched the square hatch opening and the guard looking in long enough to confirm that the prisoner was lying down precisely where he should be.

  The jangling of keys.

  "You wanted to go to the toilet. Get up and do it then."

  One warden by the cell door. Another one farther down the corridor. Two more out in the yard.

  Hoffmann looked over at the wardens' room. The fifth one was sitting there. The older one, Jacobson, the principal officer, gray thinning hair and his back to the corridor.