Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  A plastic bag with a disassembled miniature revolver.

  Some pentyl fuse that had been cut into two nine-meter lengths.

  A plastic sleeve with four centilitres of nitroglycerine divided up into twenty-four pockets.

  A tin of thirty percent amphetamine.

  He took a tube of glue from the drawer of the desk, a packet of razorblades and a packet of Rizla papers, thin with a sticky edge, generally used by people who like rolling their own cigarettes.

  Tulips.

  And poetry.

  He opened the first book. Lord Byron's Don Juan. It was perfect. Five hundred forty-six pages. Hardback. Eighteen centimeters long, twelve wide.

  He knew it would work. Over the past ten years, he had prepared a couple of hundred novels, poetry, and essay collections to hold ten to fifteen grams of amphetamine, and been successful each time. Now, for the first time, he would borrow the modified books himself and empty them in a cell in Aspsås prison.

  "I need three days to knock out the competition. During that time I don't want to have any contact and it's my responsibility to take in enough gear.

  He opened the front cover and with a razorblade cut through the hinge until it loosened and the spine of five hundred forty-six pages of Don Juan was revealed, then he tidied up the loose ends with the blade. He flicked through to page 90, held all the pages together and with a strong hand ripped them off and put them down on the desk. Then he flicked to page 390 and ripped off the next thick pile.

  It was these pages, from 91 to 390, he was going to work with.

  With a pencil he drew a rectangle that was fifteen centimeters long and one centimeter wide in the left-hand margin of page 91. Then, with the razorblade, he cut along the lines, deeper and deeper, millimeter by millimeter until he had cut through the whole pile, three hundred pages. His hand worked the razor blade well and even the slightest unevenness and loose strip was shaved off. He lifted the middle section of the book, which now had a new hole that was fifteen centimeters long, one centimeter wide and three centimeters deep, back into place and glued it together. He felt the edges with his fingertips, there was still some unevenness, so he lined the walls with Rizla papers. If he was going to fill it with amphetamine, it was important that the surfaces were even, and there was space for fifteen grams in this book, as it was particularly thick.

  The first ninety pages were still intact and he put them back where they should be, over the hole, glued them to the spine and the loose front board and then pressed Lord Byron's classic hard against the desk with both hands until he was certain that every page was glued in place.

  "What are you doing, Daddy?"

  Hugo's face peered at him from behind his elbow, close to the recently prepared book.

  "Nothing. Just reading a bit. Why don't you watch the show?" "It's finished."

  He stroked Hugo's cheek and got up; there were two more films, Winnie the Pooh had to eat more honey and get more scoldings from Rabbit before he was finished with everything.

  Piet Hoffmann prepared The Odyssey, My Life's Writings, and French Landscape in the same way. In two weeks' time, an inmate serving time at Aspsås prison who was interested in literature would be able to borrow as many as four books, containing a total of forty-two grams of amphetamine.

  Two books left.

  With a new razorblade, he cur a rectangular hole in the left hand margin of Nineteenth Century Stockholm and The Marionettes. In the first, he put the pieces of what a reader, who knew how, might be able to reassemble into a miniature revolver; the hardest piece was the cylinder loaded with six bullets, which was wider than he thought, but he managed to press it down carefully into the cavity by taking off some of the Rizla papers. A gun with the power to kill if the bullet hit its target. He had seen one for the first time six months ago in winoujcie, when a wired mule had tried to throw up 2,500 grams of heroin in the toilet at the ferry terminal, before even boarding the boat. Mariusz had opened the door to see the mule lying on the floor with a plastic bag to his mouth and he hadn't said a word, just moved in sufficiently close and aimed the short barrel at one of his eyes and killed him with one bullet. In the second hole, in the last book, he put a detonator the size of a large nail and a receiver the size of a penny-the kind that you put in your ear to receive and listen to sounds from two transmitters that are attached with Blu-Tack to the railings on a church tower balcony.

  Two nine-meter pieces of pentyl fuse and a plastic envelope with twenty-four centilitres of nitroglycerine were still left on the desk. He took a furtive glance over at two small backs that were watching a cartoon about a fat bear. They laughed suddenly, a jar of honey had got stuck on Pooh's head. Hoffmann went out into the kitchen, opened another tub of ice cream and put it down on the table between them, stroked Rasmus on the cheek.

  It was going to be hardest to hide the pentyl fuse and plastic sleeve with nitroglycerine without anything showing.

  He chose the largest book, Nineteenth Century Stockholm, twenty-two centimeters long and fifteen centimeters wide. He cut open the front and back of the library cover and pulled out the porous paperlike filling and replaced it with the explosive and fuse, glued it up again, tidied the edges and then leafed through all six books to make sure that the hinges were properly glued and it wasn't possible to see any of the rectangular holes.

  "What's that?"

  Hugo's face popped up over the top of the desk again. The second video had finished.

  "Nothing."

  "What is that, Daddy?"

  He pointed at the shiny metal tin full of thirty percent amphetamine. "That? Oh… just grape sugar."

  Hugo stood there, he was in no hurry.

  "Don't you want to watch the rest? There's another video."

  "I will in a minute. There's two letters there, Daddy. Who are they to?" Inquisitive eyes had spotted the two envelopes that were lying high up in the open gun cabinet.

  "I'm not going to send them."

  "But they've got names on."

  "I'll finish them later."

  "What do they say?"

  "Shall I put the video on now?"

  "That's Mommy's name. On the white one. It looks like it. And the one on the brown one starts with an E, I can see that too."

  "Ewert. His name's Ewert. But I don't think he'll get it."

  The ninth part of Winnie the Pooh was about Piglet's birthday and an outing with Christopher Robin. Hugo sat down beside Rasmus again and Pier Hoffmann checked the contents of the brown envelope-a CD of the recording, three passports, and a transmitter-stamped it and put it in his brown leather bag along with the six prepared books from Aspsås library. Then, to the white envelope which Hugo had noticed had Zofia's name on-a CD, the fourth passport, and a letter with instructions-he now added 950,000 kronor, in notes, and put the envelope in his brown leather bag along with the rest.

  Fifteen hours left.

  He stopped Winnie the Pooh, helped the two children who were starting to heat up again put their shoes on, then went into the kitchen and the fridge and put fifty tulips with green buds into a cool box and carried this and the leather bag and two boys downstairs to the car that was parked right outside the front door, with a parking ticker tucked under the windshield wiper.

  He looked at the two red faces in the back seat.

  Two more stops.

  Then he would put them to bed, with clean sheets, and sit there and watch them until Zofia came home.

  They lay in the car while he went into the Handelsbanken branch on KungstradOrdsgatan, and down into the basement and a room full of rows of safe deposit boxes. He opened the empty box with one of his two keys and put in one brown envelope and one white envelope, locked it and emerged from the building a couple of minutes later, got in the car and drove to Hökens Gata on Sodermalm.

  He looked at them again-he was so ashamed.

  He had overstepped the boundary. The two boys whom he loved more than anything in the back seat, and amphetamine and nitroglycerin
e in the trunk.

  He swallowed, they weren't going to see him crying, he didn't want them to.

  He parked as close to the entrance to Hökens Gata 1 as he dared. Number four, fifteen hundred hours. Erik had already gone in from the other door.

  "I don't want to walk anymore."

  "I know. Just here, then we'll go home. I promise."

  "My legs hurt. Daddy, they really, really hurt."

  Rasmus had sat down on the first step. His hand was warm when Piet took it, he lifted him up on one arm, with the cool box and leather bag in the other hand. Hugo would have to walk up the stairs himself, like you sometimes do when you're the oldest.

  Three floors up, the door with LINDSTROM on the letter box opened from the inside at exactly the same time that his watch alarm started to bleep.

  "Hugo. Rasmus. This is Uncle Erik."

  Small hands were held out and shaken, he felt Erik Wilson's withering look: What the hell are they doing here?

  They went into the plastic-wrapped sitting room of the flat that was being renovated, and despite being tired, they looked curiously around at all the strange furniture.

  "Why is there plastic everywhere?"

  "There's work being done."

  "What do you mean, work?"

  "They're making the flat new and they don't want things to get dirty." He left them in the rustling sofa and went into the kitchen, and another piercing look. He cocked his head.

  "I didn't have a choice."

  Wilson didn't say anything-it was as if he'd lost track when he saw two children in a world that dealt in life and death.

  "Have you spoken to Zofia?"

  "No."

  "You have to speak to her."

  He didn't answer.

  "Piet, you can make all the excuses in the world. You know that you have to. Jesus Christ, you have to fucking talk to her, man!"

  Her reactions, the ones he couldn't control.

  "This evening. When the boys have gone to bed. I'll talk to her then." "You can still back out."

  "You know I'm going to finish this."

  Erik Wilson nodded and looked at the blue cool box that Pier lifted onto the table.

  "Tulips. Fifty. They'll be yellow."

  Wilson stared at the green stems and green buds that were lying among the white, square ice packs.

  "I'll put them in the fridge. It should be about 35 degrees. I want you to look after them. And the same day that I go in through the gate of Aspsås prison, I want you to send them to the address I give you."

  Wilson put his hand into the cool box and flipped over one of the white cards with the bouquet.

  "With thanks for a successful partnership, Aspsås Business Association." "Correct."

  "And where should they be sent?"

  "Aspsås prison. The prison governor."

  Erik Wilson didn't ask anymore questions. It was better not to know. "How much longer do we have to wait?"

  Hugo had grown bored of sliding his fingers over the plastic and making it rustle.

  "Just a little while. Go back in to Rasmus. I'll be there in a minute." Wilson waited until the small feet had disappeared into the gloom of the hall.

  "You'll be arrested tomorrow, Piet. After that, we'll have no contact whatsoever. You won't communicate with me or anyone else from the city police. Until you're ready and you tell us that you want out. It's too dangerous. If anyone suspects that you're working for us… you're dead."

  Erik Wilson walked down the corridor in Homicide. He was uneasy and slowed down outside Ewert Grens's office, as he had done every time he went past in recent days, curious eyes peering into the empty office and the music that was no longer there. He wondered what the detective superintendent who was investigating the murder in Västmannagatan was up to, what he knew, how long it would take before he started asking the questions that no one could answer.

  Wilson sighed, it didn't feel right, those children, they were so young. It was his job to encourage infiltrators to take big risks to get the information that the police depended on, but he wasn't sure that Piet had fully understood what he had to lose. They had gotten too close, he genuinely cared about him.

  If anything happens, abort.

  If anyone discovers who you are, you have a new mission.

  To survive.

  Wilson closed the door to his office and turned on his computer, which was not connected to the Internet for security reasons. He had explained to Piet, while the two boys pulled at their dad's arms, that he would go back to FLETC and southern Georgia in the meantime, to finish what he had been forced to interrupt a couple of days ago. He was not convinced that the man in front of him had actually been listening; he had said yes and he had nodded, but he was already on his way home to his last night of freedom for a long time. The computer screen was filled with an empty document and Erik Wilson started to write an intelligence report for the county commissioner, via Chief Superintendent Göransson, which would then be deleted from his own hard disk: a background report for the arrest of a wanted and violent criminal with three kilos of Polish amphetamine in his car trunk, a report that would not be delivered until tomorrow, as it had not happened yet.

  He had waited on his own by the kitchen table for two hours.

  A beer, a sandwich, a crossword, but he hadn't drunk, eaten, or written anything.

  Hugo and Rasmus had gone to sleep upstairs a long time ago. They had had pancakes with strawberry jam and too much whipped cream first and then he had put them to bed and opened their windows and watched them fall asleep after only a few minutes.

  He heard them now, the steps that he knew so well.

  Through the garden, up the front steps and then the creak as the door opened and he felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach.

  "Hi."

  She was so beautiful.

  "Hi."

  "Are they asleep?"

  "Have been for a couple of hours."

  "And how's the temperature?"

  "It'll be gone tomorrow."

  She gave him a light kiss on the cheek and smiled, she didn't notice that the world was about to fall to pieces.

  Another kiss, on the other side, twice, as always.

  She didn't notice that the damn floor was heaving.

  "We have to talk."

  "Now?"

  "Now."

  A slight sigh.

  "Can't it wait?"

  "No."

  "Tomorrow? I'm so tired."

  "By then it'll be too late."

  She went upstairs to change, soft trousers and the thick sweater with too-long sleeves. She was all he had ever wanted and she looked at him in silence as she curled up in the corner of the sofa and waited for him to start talking. He had thought of making food with a strong scent of either India or Thailand, opening a bottle of expensive red wine and then starting to tell her, gently, after a while, But he had realized that what was false and had to be explained became even falser when it was disguised by enjoyment and intimacy. He leaned forward, hugged her-she smelled good, she smelled of Zofia.

  "I love you. I love Hugo. I love Rasmus. I love this house. I love knowing that there's someone who calls me my husband and someone else who calls me Daddy. I didn't know it was possible. I've gotten used to it, I'm completely dependent on it now."

  She pulled herself into a ball even more and withdrew farther into the corner of the sofa. She could tell that he'd been rehearsing what he had to say.

  "I want you to listen to me, Zofia. But most of all, I want you to sit there and not leave until I have finished."

  He always knew more about every situation than those he would later share it with. If he was more prepared, he would have more control and someone who has control is always the one who decides.

  Not now.

  Her feelings, her reactions, they scared him.

  "Then- Zofia, you can do what you like. Listen to me and then do what you want."

  He sat opposite her and in a quiet voice, started to
tell a story about a prison sentence ten years ago, about a policeman who had recruited him as an infiltrator and about continued criminal activity and the police who turned a blind eye, about a Polish mafia organization called Wojtek, about secret meetings in flats that were being renovated, that she had dropped off her husband and collected him from a shell company that he had called Hoffmann Security AB, about a fabricated criminal record and suspect database and prison records that described him as extremely violent and classified him as psychopathic, that the illusion that was one of Sweden's most dangerous men would be arrested tomorrow morning at six thirty in a pool hall in central Stockholm, about the expected trial and outcome, a sentence with years in prison, a life behind high walls that would start in about ten days and continue for two months, about having to look his wife and children in the eye each day and know that their trust and confidence was built on a lie.

  Friday

  They had lain beside each other in bed and tried very hard to avoid touching.

  She had been completely still.

  Now and then he had stopped breathing, scared that he might not hear what she didn't say.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, knew that she was awake, that she was lying there looking at his false back. He had continued to talk as they shared a cheap bottle of wine and when he was done, she just got up, disappeared into the bedroom and turned off the light. She hadn't spoken, screamed, only silence.

  Piet Hoffmann got dressed, suddenly in a hurry to get away-it wasn't possible to stay with the nothingness. He turned around and they looked at each other without saying anything until he gave her a key to a safe deposit box in the Handelsbanken branch on Kungstradgardsgatan. If she still wanted to share a life together she should go there if he contacted her and said that everything had kicked off. She should open the safe deposit box and she would find one brown and one white envelope and she should do exactly what the handwritten letter instructed her to do. He wasn't sure if she had listened, her eyes had been distant, and he fled to the two small heads that were sleeping on two small pillows and he breathed in the smell of them and stroked them on the cheek and then left the house in the residential area that was still fast asleep.