Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  PH: If you say so.

  Piet Hoffmann read through the amended documents in silence.

  "Five years."

  "Yes."

  "Attempted murder? Aggravated assault on an officer?"

  "Yes."

  IO: Two shots. Several witnesses confirm it.

  PH: (silence)

  IC): Several witnesses in the block of flats on Kaptensgatan in Söderhamn whose windows face the lawn where you fired two shots at Constable Dahl.

  PH: Söderhamn? There, I've never been there.

  Erik Wilson had worked with each little piece in detail so that, all together, it would add up to a credible and tenable background.

  "Does it- Do you think it'll work?"

  Any change to a judgment in a criminal record always required a new hearing for the investigation that had once taken place, and new entries in the Prison and Probation Service files from the prison where the sentence was served, according to the changes.

  "It works."

  "According to the judgment and preliminary investigation records, you hit a police officer in the face three times with a loaded Radom pistol and didn't stop until he fell unconscious to the ground."

  IO: You tried to kill a police officer on duty. One of my colleagues. I want to

  know why the hell you did that?

  PH: Is that a question?

  IO: I want to know why!

  PH: I never shot at a policeman in Söderhamn. Because I never went to

  Söderhamn. But if I had been there and if I had shot at your colleague it

  would have been because I don't particularly like the police.

  "You then turned the gun, cocked it, and fired two shots. One hit him in the thigh. The other in the left upper arm."

  Wilson leaned back against the plastic.

  "No one who looks at your background and has access to parts of your criminal record or the preliminary investigation will be in any doubt. I also added a note farther down about handcuffs. You were in handcuffs the whole time you were being questioned. For security reasons."

  "That's good."

  Piet Hoffmann folded together the two pieces of paper.

  "Give me a couple of minutes. I just want to go through them once more. Then I'll know it."

  He held the court judgment that had never been pronounced and the hearing that had never taken place, but still were his most important tools for carrying out his role in the prison corridors.

  Thirty-one hours left.

  Thursday

  The bells in both towers of Höglid church struck the hour after midnight as he left Erik Wilson and number two via the communal gardens and an entrance on Heleneborgsgatan. it was still unusually warm outside, whether it was the spring turning to summer or the kind of warmth that comes from inside when the body is tense. Piet Hoffmann took off his jacket and walked toward Bergsunds Strand and his car that was parked close enough to the water's edge for the headlights to illuminate the dark water when he started the engine. He drove from west to east Si5dermalm and the night, which should have been thronging with people who had longed for the warmth all winter and now didn't want to go home, was empty, the noisy town had fallen to rest. He accelerated after Slussen, along Stadsgardskajen, then braked and turned off just before Danvikstull bridge and the municipal boundary with Nacka. Down Tegelviksgatan and then left into Alsni5gatan to the barrier that blocked the only road up to Danviksberget.

  He got out into the dark and jangled his keys until he found the piece of metal that was about half the size of a normal key; he'd carried it with him for a while now; they'd met fairly frequently in recent years. He opened and closed the barrier and drove slowly along the winding road up the hill to the outdoor café at the top that had been serving cinnamon buns with a view of the capital for decades now.

  He stopped the car in a deserted lot and listened to the surf by the cliffs where the sea flowed into Saltsjon. A few hours earlier, customers would have sat here, holding hands while they talked or yearned or just drank their café lattes in the kind of silence that is shared. A forgotten coffee cup on a bench, a couple of plastic trays with crumpled napkins on another. He sat down by the building with its closed wooden shutters and a table chained to a lump of gray concrete. Piet Hoffmann looked out over the city where he had lived for the greater part of his life, but he still felt like a stranger, someone who was just visiting for a while and would soon move on, wherever it was he was actually going.

  He heard footsteps.

  Somewhere in the blackness behind him.

  At first faint and far away, feet against a hard surface, then closer and clearer, gravel that loudly proclaimed how much the person walking on it was trying not to be heard.

  "Pier."

  "Lorentz."

  A dark, solid man of his own age.

  They embraced each other as usual.

  "How much?"

  The dark, solid man sat down in front of him, elbows heavy on the table which dipped slightly. They had known each other for exactly ten years. One of the few people he trusted.

  "Ten kilos."

  They had done time together at Österåker. Same unit, neighboring cells. Two men who became close in a way that they would never have done if they'd met anywhere else but there, cooped up and without much choice, they had become best friends, without realising it at the time.

  "Strength?"

  "Thirty?"

  "Factory?"

  "Siedlce."

  "Blossom. That's good. It's what they want. And I don't need to bullshit about the quality. But personally, I can't stand the smell."

  Lorentz was the only name he would never give to Erik. He liked him. He needed him. Lorentz sold on what Piet had cut, to earn some money for himself.

  "But thirty percent… too strong for Plattan and Centralen. No one there should have anything stronger than fifteen, otherwise there's just trouble. This- I'll sell it in the clubs, the kids want it strong and have the money to pay."

  Erik had realized that there was someone whose name he was not going to get. And why. So Piet could continue to earn money from his own business and Erik and his colleagues turned a blind eye and sometimes even facilitated it, in exchange for continued infiltration.

  "Ten kilos of thirty percent gear is a fuck of a lot. I'll take it, obviously. Like I always do when you ask. But-and now I'm talking to you as a friend, Piet-are you sure that you've got everything under control if anyone starts to ask questions?"

  They looked at each other. The supposed question could be interpreted as something else. Distrust. Provocation. It wasn't. Lorentz meant exactly what he said and Pier knew that he was asking because he was concerned. Before, what he'd done was to cut a little more of the supplies that he got from somewhere to sell on somewhere else, for his own purposes. But this time he needed big money and for other reasons, so some of the vacuum-packed tins of uncut gear had been moved from the fan heater shaft to an IKEA bag only a few hours after Henryk's visit.

  "I've got everything under control. And if I ever have to use the money from this lot one day, it'll be because it's too late to answer those questions."

  Lorentz didn't ask anymore.

  He had come to understand that everyone had their reasons and made their choices and if they didn't want to talk about it, it was pointless trying. "I'll deduct fifty thousand for the explosives. You gave me such damned short notice, Piet, that it cost more than usual."

  One hundred kronor per gram. A million kronor for ten kilos. Nine hundred fifty thousand in cash, the rest in explosives.

  "You've got everything?"

  "Pentyl."

  "Not good enough."

  "And nitroglycerine. High detonation velocity. Packed in plastic pockets."

  "That's what I want?"

  "You'll get the detonator and fuse thrown in."

  "If you insist."

  "It's going to be a big fucking bang."

  "Good."

  "You're a law unto yourself, Piet
."

  The two cars were parked in the dark with open trunks when a blue IKEA bag with ten one-kilo tins of thirty percent amphetamine and a brown briefcase with 950,000 kronor in notes and two highly explosive packages swapped places. Now he had to move fast. He drove back down the narrow winding road from Danviksberget, opened the barrier with the key and carried on toward Enskede and the house that he constantly longed for.

  It was too late by the rime he realized he had driven over it. It was so dark in the driveway and the red plastic fire engine was impossible to see. Piet Hoffmann rolled forward about half a meter, and then got down on his hands and knees and felt around by the right front wheel until he found Rasmus's favorite car. It wasn't in the best condition, but if he used a red felt pen on the door to make it look like enamel and bent the white ladder that was supposed to be fixed to the middle of the roof back in shape, then maybe it could be returned to service in the sandpit or the floor upstairs within a few days.

  They were in there, asleep. The other plastic fire engines. Under the beds, sometimes even in the beds of the two boys he was going to hug so hard in a few hours' time.

  He opened the trunk and then the brown briefcase that was right at the back behind the spare wheel and hesitated before taking out two small packages and leaving the 950,000 kronor in notes untouched.

  Slowly through the shadows in the garden.

  He didn't turn on any lights until he was in the kitchen and had shut the door; he didn't want to wake Zofia with any irritating, unnecessary light, nor did he want to be caught out by naked feet on their way to the toilet or the fridge. He sat down at the table that had been wiped so well, the marks from the cloth still showing. In a few hours, they would eat breakfast here together, sticky, messy, and noisy.

  The packages were lying in the middle of the table. He hadn't checked them, he never did. When they were from Lorentz, that was enough. He opened the first one, which looked like a thin pencil case, and took out a long cord. At least, that was what it seemed to be, like eighteen meters of thin, coiled cord. But for anyone who knew anything about explosives, it was something completely different. A pentyl fuse and the difference between life and death. He unwound it, felt it, then cut it in the middle and put back the two nine-meter lengths. The other package was square, a plastic sleeve with twenty-four small pockets, a bit like the ones that his dad had had in the green album where he kept his coins from the time he had called Konigsberg his home, used coins that were of no particular value. Once, when his body was screaming for another fix, Pier had tried to sell them and had realized that the brown bits of metal that he had never been interested in were very worn and of no value to collectors other than his father, who saw a value that was connected to his memories from times gone by. He gingerly touched each little pocket, the transparent fluid inside, a total of four centiliters of nitroglycerine divided into twenty-four flat plastic pockets.

  Someone let out a whimper.

  Piet Hoffmann opened the door.

  The same whimper again, then silence.

  He started to go up the stairs. Rasmus was having a nightmare, but this time it disappeared without need for comfort.

  So he went down instead, to the cellar and his personal gun cabinet that stood in one of the storerooms. He opened it and there they were, several on one shelf. He took one of them and went upstairs again.

  The world's smallest revolver, SwissMiniGun, no bigger than a car key.

  He had bought them direct from the factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds last spring, six-millimeter bullets in the miniature revolver's cylinder, each one powerful enough to kill. He rested the weapon on his palm and weighed it as he swung his arm backward and forward across the table-only a few grams were needed to end a life.

  He closed the kitchen door for a second time and started to saw both ends of the trigger guard with a hacksaw blade-the metal band that ran around and protected the trigger was too small, he couldn't get his index finger in and he was removing it so he could squeeze the trigger and shoot-a couple of minutes was all that was needed for it to fall to the floor.

  He then held the tiny gun with only two fingers, raised it and aimed at the dishwasher, pretending to fire.

  A deadly weapon no longer than a toothpick, but still too big.

  So he was going to divide it up into even smaller components with the minute screwdriver that reminded him of his granny in Kaliningrad, where she kept it in a drawer under her sewing machine that stood in the bedroom and seemed like a huge bit of furniture to a seven-year-old. First, with great care, he undid the screw on one side of the wooden butt, put it down on the white surface of the worktop so that he could see it-he mustn't lose it. The next screw was on the other side of the butt and closer to the hammer. Then with the point of the screwdriver against the pin in the middle of the revolver, he tapped it lightly a couple of times until it fell out and the toothpick-sized gun broke up into six separate parts: the two butt sides, the revolver frame with the barrel and cylinder pivot and trigger, the cylinder with six bullets, the barrel protector and a part of the frame that didn't have a name. He put each piece in a plastic bag and carried them out with eighteen meters of pentyl fuse and four centilitres of thinly packaged nitroglycerine, all of which was then placed on top of 950,000 kronor in a brown bag behind the spare tire in the trunk of the car.

  Piet Hoffmann had sat on one of the kitchen chairs and watched the light force back the night. He had been waiting for her for hours, and now he heard her heavy tread on the wooden stairs, foot flat down on the surface in the way that she always did when she hadn't had enough sleep. He often listened to people's steps-they clearly reflected what was going on inside and it was always easier to work out how someone was feeling by closing his eyes when he or she approached.

  "Good morning."

  She hadn't seen him and she jumped when he spoke.

  "Hi."

  The coffee was already made, so he poured in just the amount of milk she liked in the morning. He carried the cup over to the beautiful and tousled and sleepy woman in a dressing gown, and she took it. Such tired eyes, she had been furious for half the night and then slept in a bed with a feverish child for the other half.

  "You haven't slept at all."

  She wasn't irritated, her voice didn't sound it, she was just tired. "Just worked out that way."

  He put some bread, butter, and cheese on the table.

  "Their temperatures?"

  "They've gone down. For the moment. A few more days at home, maybe just two."

  More footsteps, much lighter, feet that were bright from the moment they left the bed and touched the floor. Hugo was oldest but still woke up first. Piet went over to him, picked him up, and kissed and squeezed his soft cheeks.

  "You're prickly."

  "I haven't shaved yet."

  "You're more prickly than normal."

  Bowls, spoons, glasses. They all sat down, Rasmus's chair still empty, but they would leave him to sleep as long as he needed to.

  "I'll take them today."

  She had expected him to say that. But it was hard. Because it wasn't true.

  "The whole day."

  The set table. Not so long ago, nitroglycerine had lain there beside some pentyl fuse and a loaded gun. Now it was laden with porridge and yogurt and crispbread. The cornflakes crunched noisily and some orange juice was spilled on the floor. They ate their breakfast as they usually did until Hugo banged his spoon down on the table.

  "Why are you angry with each other?"

  Piet exchanged glances with Zofia.

  "We're not angry."

  He had turned to his oldest son as he spoke and instantly realized that this five-year-old was not going to be satisfied with a platitude and therefore decided to hold his challenging eyes.

  "Why are you lying? I can tell. You are angry."

  Piet and Zofia looked at each other again and then she decided to answer.

  "We were angry. But we're not anymore."

  Piet
Hoffmann looked at his son with gratitude and felt his shoulders dropping. He had been so tense, longing to hear those words, but he hadn't dared ask the question himself.

  "Good. No one's angry. Then I want more bread and more cornflakes."

  His five-year-old hands poured more cereal on what was already in his bowl and put some cheese on another slice of bread which then lay next to the first one that hadn't even been started yet. His parents chose not to say anything. This morning he was allowed to do as he pleased. He was wiser than they were right now

  He sat on the wooden step by the front door. She had just left. And he still hadn't said what he needed to say, it just hadn't worked out that way. Tonight. Tonight he would tell her. About everything.

  He'd given Hugo and Rasmus a dose of Calpol as soon as her back had disappeared down the narrow path between the Samuelssons' and Sundells' houses. Then half a dose more. Thirty minutes later their temperatures had dropped and they were dressed and ready for nursery.

  He had twenty-one and a half hours left.

  Piet Hoffmann had ordered Sweden's most common car, a silver Volvo. It wasn't ready, neither cleaned nor checked. He didn't have time to spare, so instead chose a red Volkswagen Golf, Sweden's second most common car.

  Someone who doesn't want to be seen or remembered should stand out as little as possible.

  He parked near the churchyard and fifteen hundred meters away from the enormous concrete wall. A long and open decline all the way down, meadows of grass that were green but not that tall yet. That was where he was going. Aspsås prison, one of the country's three high security prisons. He was going to be arrested, held on remand, prosecuted, sentenced, and locked into a cell within the next ten, maybe twelve, or max fourteen days.

  He got out of the car and squinted into the sun and wind.

  It was going to be a beautiful day, but looking at a prison wall, all he could think of was hatred.

  Twelve fucking months inside another all-encompassing concrete wall, the only emotion that was left.

  He had for a long time thought it was simply the rebellion of a young person against everything that restricted or hemmed him in. It wasn't. He was no longer particularly young, but the feeling was just as potent when he looked at the wall. Hatred of the routines, the tyranny, the isolation, the locked doors, the attitudes, the work with square blocks of wood in the workshops, the suspicion, the secure transport, urine tests, body searches. Hatred of the screws, the pigs, uniforms, rules, whatever represented society, that bloody hatred that he'd shared with the others, the only thing they had in common, that and the drugs and the loneliness. That hatred had forced them to talk to each other, even to strive for something, rather strive for something that was driven by hatred than nothing at all.