Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  Two and a half more hours. His face in the rearview mirror. A dark chin with salt-and-pepper stubble that was even more obvious on his cheeks-he had been a much younger man the last time he had stopped shaving. It itched a little, it always did to begin with, and then the straggled hair. He tugged at it, not much better really, it was actually too thin to grow.

  He would be arrested soon, transported in a police van to Kronoberg remand prison, be issued with baggy prison clothes.

  He drove through the dawn, his final trip to a small town to the north of Stockholm with a church and a library that he had visited less than twenty-four hours ago. The weak light and confused wind were his only companions in the square at Aspsås; Not even the magpies and pigeons and the bum who usually slept on one of the benches were there. Piet Hoffmann opened the returns box to the right of the library entrance and dropped in six books that were not borrowed often enough to merit being visible on the shelves. He then continued on to the church that took up so much space with its white facade, into the churchyard that was blanketed in a soft mist and looked up at the church tower that had a view over one of the country's high security prisons. He picked the locks of the solid wooden door and the considerably smaller door just inside and went up the uneven steps and an aluminum ladder to a closed hatch just under a cast iron bell that must weigh several hundred kilos.

  Nine square concrete buildings inside substantial walls, which looked more like Lego blocks in their own world than ever before.

  He looked toward the window he had chosen and aimed at it with an imagined gun, then took a silver receiver from his pocket-an earpiece identical to the one that was now hidden in a cavity in the left-hand margin of The Marionettes. He leaned over the railing, for a moment feeling like he might fall to the ground, and he held on to the iron railing with one hand while he checked that the two transmitters, a black cable, and a solar cell were still properly fixed where they should be. He put the receiver in his ear and one finger on a transmitter and ran it lightly back and forth-a crackling and snapping in his ear told him it was working fine.

  He went down again, to the graves that lay side by side, but not too close, to the mist that blotted out death.

  A merchant and his wife. A senior pilot and his wife. A mason and his wife. Men who had died as titles and professions and women who had died as the wives of their bedded husbands.

  He stopped in front of a stone that was gray and relatively small and the resting place of a captain. Piet Hoffmann saw his father, the way he imagined him at least, the simple boat that had gone out from the border area between Kaliningrad and Poland and disappeared with its fishing nets over the Danzig Bay and Baltic Sea for weeks on end, his mother who later stood there and watched the slow progress into shore and then ran down to the harbour and his father's embrace. That wasn't how it had been. His mother had often talked about the empty nights and the long wait, but never about running feet and open arms, that was the picture he had painted for himself when he, as a child, had asked curious questions about their lives in another time, and it was the image he chose to keep.

  A grave that hadn't been looked after for years. Moss crept over the corners of the stone and the small bed was overgrown with weeds. That was the one he was going to use. Captain Stein Vidar Olsson and wife. Born 3 March 1888. Died 18 May 1958. He had lived to be seventy. Now he was not even a gravestone that people came to visit. Piet Hoffmann held his mobile phone in his hand, his contact with Erik that would be cut in less than two hours. He turned it off, wrapped it in plastic wrap, put it in a plastic bag, got down on his knees and started to dig up the earth with his hands at the bottom right of the headstone, until he had a sufficiently large hole. He looked around, no other dawn visitors in the churchyard, dropped the telephone into the ground and covered it with earth and then hurried back to the car.

  Aspsås church was still veiled in morning mist. The next time he would see it would be from the window of a cell in a square concrete building.

  He'd managed it. He'd finished all his preparations. Soon he would be entirely on his own.

  Trust only yourself.

  He missed her already. He had told her and she hadn't said a word, somehow like being unfaithful-he would never touch another woman, but that was how it felt.

  A lie that was neverending. He, if anyone, knew all about it. It just changed shape and content, adapted to the next reality and demanded a new lie so that the old one could die. In the past ten years he had lied so much to Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus and all the others that when this was all over, he would have forever moved the boundary between lies and truth; that was how it was, he could never be entirely sure where the lie ended and the truth began, he didn't know any longer who he was.

  He made a sudden decision. He slowed down for a few kilometers and let it sink in that this really was the last time. He had had a feeling all year and now it had caught up with him, now he could feel it again and interpret it. That was how he worked. At first something vague that tugged at him somewhere in his body, then a period of restlessness when he tried to understand what it meant, then insight, a sudden, powerful understanding that had been so close for so long. He would sit out this sentence at Aspsås and he would finish his work there, and after that, never again. He had done his service for the Swedish police, for little thanks other than Erik's friendship and ten thousand kronor a month from their reward money, so that he didn't officially exist. He was going to live another life later, when he knew what a true life really looked like.

  Half past five. Stockholm was starting to wake up. There were only a few cars on the road, the odd person rushing to catch a train or bus. He parked on Norrtullsgatan opposite the primary school and opened the door to a cafe that opened early and served porridge and stewed apples and a cheese sandwich and an egg and black coffee on a red plastic tray for thirty-nine kronor. He saw Erik as soon as he walked in, a face over by the newspaper stand that disappeared behind Dagens Nyheter in order to avoid eye contact. Piet Hoffmann ordered his breakfast and chose a corner on the other side of the room as far away from him as he could get. There were six other customers: two young men from a construction site in high-viz jackets and four considerably older men dressed in suits, with their hair combed for the only fixed point in the day. Breakfast cafes often looked like this, men who didn't have anyone and fled the loneliness of eating alone-women seldom did that, maybe they coped with loneliness better than men, maybe they were more ashamed and didn't want to make it public.

  The coffee was strong and the porridge was a bit lumpy, but it would be the last meal for a while where he could decide what he wanted, how he wanted it and where he wanted it. He had avoided the breakfasts at Osteraer, too early in the day to eat with people whose only common reference point was the need for drugs, the sort he'd been afraid of, but had met with aggression, scorn, distance, anything that didn't resemble weakness, in order to survive.

  Erik Wilson walked past his table on his way out, nearly bumped into it. Hoffmann waited exactly five minutes and then followed, a couple of minutes' walk to Vartadisvagen. He opened the door of a silvery-gray Volvo and sat down in the passenger seat.

  "You came in the red Golf, the one that's parked by the school?" "Yes."

  "From the OK gas station at Slussen, like normal?"

  Yep.

  "I'll take it back this evening. You might find it hard to deliver it yourself:"

  They pulled out of Vanadisvagen, drove slowly along Sankt Eriksgatan, and didn't say anything between the first two sets of red lights on Drottningholmsvagen.

  "Have you got everything sorted?"

  "Sorted."

  "And Zofia?"

  Piet Hoffmann didn't answer. Wilson stopped the car by a bus stop on Fridhemsplan, made it clear that he wasn't going any farther.

  "And Zofia?"

  "She knows."

  They sat there at the start of the morning rush, with groups of people or long lines on the move now, rather than just the o
dd person.

  "I made you even more dangerous in ASPEN yesterday. The patrol that arrests you will be full of preconceived ideas and adrenaline. It'll be violent, Piet. You can't be armed, because then it might get really nasty. But no one, no one who sees it, no one who hears about it or reads about it will even suspect who you're actually working for. And by the way, there's a warrant out for your arrest."

  Piet Hoffmann started.

  "A warrant? Since when?"

  "A few hours ago."

  The place still smelled of cigarette smoke. Or perhaps he just imagined it. There had always been a funk above the green felt. Piet Hoffmann leaned down toward it and sniffed, and he caught it again, the smell of smoke that was indelibly linked to the blue chalk on your fingertips and ashtrays on the corner of every pool table… he could even hear the coarse, sneering laughter when someone missed and a hard ball misfired. He downed half the cup of black coffee from the 7-Eleven on Fleminggatan in one gulp and looked at the clock. It was time. He checked again that the knife that he usually kept in his back pocket really wasn't there and then walked over to the window that looked out over Sankt Eriksgatan. He stood still, pretending to talk to someone on his mobile phone until he was sure that the man and the woman in the front of the patrol car had seen him.

  They had been tipped off by an anonymous untraceable phone call that a serious, wanted criminal was going to be in Biljardpalatset this morning.

  And then there he was in the window.

  They had his name, and when they passed enter again on the car computer keypad, they also got his life.

  KNOWN DANGEROUS ARMED

  They were both young and new and had never come across this particular code in the criminal intelligence database that was only used for a handful of criminals.

  Name Piet Hoffman ID number 721018-0010 Number of hits 75

  They skimmed down quickly, got the clear picture that this person was extremely dangerous observed fifteen minutes before the murder in Ostling in the company of the subject, Markovic and familiar with weapons observed near the property that was raided in connection with suspected arms dealing and had previously threatened and fired at and wounded policemen and was likely to be armed.

  “Command, this is car 9027. Over.”

  “This is command. Over.”

  “We require back-up for immediate arrest.”

  He heard the sirens closing in between the city buildings and guessed that the sound and blue flashing lights would be turned off somewhere on Fleminggatan.

  Two dark blue police vans stopped outside fifteen seconds later.

  He was prepared.

  “This is car 9027. Over.”

  “Describe the suspect.”

  “Piet Hoffmann. Very violent on previous arrests.”

  “Last observation?”

  “The entrance of Biljardpalaset. Sankt Eriksgatan 52.”

  “Appearance?”

  “Grey hooded top. Jeans. Fair hair. Unshaven. About one metre eighty tall.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Likely to be armed.”

  He didn’t try to run away.

  When the doors police were flung open at both ends of the deserted pool hall and several uniformed police ran in with on the floor drawn guns, Piet Hoffmann turned calmly round from the pool table, careful to keep both hands visable all the time. He fucking well get down on the floor didn’t lie down voluntarily but fell to the ground after two powerful strikes to his head and one more when bleeding he fucking pigs held his middle finger up in the air and then he couldn’t remember much more than a pair of handcuffs locking round his wrists, a kick in the ribs and the acute pain in his neck when it all stopped.

  Erik Wilson had been sitting in the car opposite the entrance to the Kronoberg garage when two dark blue police vans had passed and sped off in the direction of Sankt Eriksgatan. He had waited until they turned off their sirens and then he had driven up to the barrier by the attendant's office, shown his ID and rolled slowly toward the automatic door to the Police Authority's garage under Kronobergsparken. He had parked in a steel cage in front of the elevator up to the remand prison and from the driver's seat observed the steady stream of police vehicles going in or out.

  He had been waiting for half an hour when he rolled down both his windows so he could hear better, his whole body tense. He had tried to shake off the discomfort and dread but hadn't been particularly successful. He breathed in the damp gas-perfumed air and listened to a car stopping on the other side of the garage and someone getting out, then another, followed by sleepy footsteps in the opposite direction.

  Then he saw the large bay doors being pulled to one side.

  It had taken thirty-five minutes for eight specially trained policemen to locate and arrest one of the country's most documented and dangerous people.

  The dark blue van came in and he watched it approach the final couple of hundred meters before driving into the steel cage and parking about a car's length away.

  If anything happens, abort your mission and ask for voluntary isolation. To survive.

  Two uniformed colleagues got out first. Then a man with a swollen face, gray hooded top, jeans and handcuffs.

  The police, who had been instructed to arrest a wanted and presumably armed dangerous criminal, had confronted him in the only way they knew how.

  With violence.

  "Hey, I don't like fucking faggot police touching me."

  Erik Wilson saw Piet Hoffmann suddenly turn toward the policeman standing nearest to him and spit in his face. The uniformed officer didn't say anything, show anything, and Piet spat again. A quick glance at his colleagues, who just happened to look away, then the policeman stepped forward and kneed Pier Hoffmann in the balls.

  Only a criminal.

  He groaned in pain, and again after a kick to the stomach, then got up and with his hands locked behind his back was being escorted by four uniformed policemen to the elevator and the remand prison, when Erik Wilson heard him say loudly to the face he had just spat at:

  "Watch it, you prick. I'll get you. Sooner or later, we'll meet again. Sooner or later I'll put two bullets in you just like I did with that prick in Söderhamn."

  Only a criminal can play a criminal.

  PART THREE

  Monday

  They were standing so close to him.

  Two of them behind him who would rub right up against his back if he took a step back in the confined space, two more in front, staring in his eyes, ears, nose, their every breath warm moisture on the skin of his face.

  They had been warned.

  All the wardens in Stockholm's Kronoberg remand prison had read the documents about one of Sweden's most dangerous criminals, and they had all heard the story that ten days ago, when he had just been arrested in the pool hall by Sankt Eriksgatan, he spat in the face of one of their colleagues as they walked through the parking lot and then threatened him with two bullets the next time they met.

  This time he was being transported elsewhere. The small elevator down to the metal cage in the garage under Kronobergsparken and then the transport bus to Aspsås prison. There were four of them, two more than usual, and the prisoner was in handcuffs and leg irons. They had even considered a waist restraint, but decided against it.

  He was the kind who hated everything and used what little intelligence he had to cause trouble; they had seen a few over the years, serious criminals with a one-way ticket to an early grave. The wardens kept a constant eye on the prisoner and each other; it was in the short distance from the elevator to the waiting bus that he had spat the last time, only to get an almighty knee in the balls in return when three of them happened to look the other way at the same time.

  They were waiting, prepared, he was going to make a move soon, they knew it.

  He was silent as they escorted him to the bus. He was silent as he got on. He was silent as he sat down on one of the back seats. The prisoner who hated everything and needed extra guards was silent a
s they drove through the underground garage toward the exit and security desk by Drottningholmsvagen. Then it started.

  "Where the fuck you going?"

  As he was being shoved onto the bus, the prisoner whose name was Hoffmann had noticed another guy already sitting there in equally baggy clothes with the Prison and Probation Service logo on his chest. He had stared at him, waited until he caught his eye.

  "Österåker."

  One of the other prisons to the north of Stockholm. The transport bus from the remand often took several prisoners to various prisons where they would serve their sentences.

  "And what the fuck you in for?"

  The prisoner whose name was Hoffmann got no answer.

  "One more time. What the fuck you in for?"

  "Assault."

  "What you get?"

  "Ten months."

  The wardens looked at each other. This wasn't good.

  "Ten months, eh? Guessed as much. You look like one of them. Little shits who beat up their women don't get much more than that."

  Hoffmann had lowered his voice to a growl and tried to move closer as the bus passed through the security barrier and headed north along Sankt Eriksgatan.

  "What d'you mean?"

  The prisoner who was going to Österåker had noticed the change in Hoffmann's tone and his aggression, and tried without realising to back away.

  "That you're the kind of guy who only hits women. The kind that the rest of us have a problem with."

  "How the fuck… how the fuck d'you know that?"

  Piet Hoffmann smiled to himself. He'd guessed right. And he knew that the guards were listening-that was what he wanted, them to listen and then to talk about the dangerous prisoner with threatening behavior who needed extra cover.

  "You can always tell a cowardly little prick who deserves to die."

  They were listening and Piet Hoffmann was sure that they'd already realized what his next move would be. They had all seen it before. It was always dangerous and a risk to transport pedophiles and wife beaters with other prisoners. He looked at the seat in front, his voice calm.