Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  "You've got five minutes. But only five minutes, mind."

  They both turned around and the guard in the passenger seat was about to answer when Hoffmann interrupted.

  "Five minutes to chuck this bastard out. Otherwise… things could get messy in here."

  They'd tell the other guards later.

  Word would spread, to people inside as well.

  It was all about building respect.

  The guard in the passenger seat sighed loudly before making a call on the radio, saying that a car had to be sent immediately to the prison transport bus that was waiting by Norrtull as there was a prisoner who needed to be picked up and taken to Österåker in a separate vehicle.

  Piet Hoffmann had never been inside the walls of Aspsås prison before. He had mapped out all the buildings from the church tower and had studied the bars in front of every window, and while on remand, with Erik's help, he had learned about the prisoners and staff in all the corridors of Block G, but when both iron gates opened and the bus headed toward the central security, it was the first time that he had actually been inside one of the country's highest security prisons. It was hard to move with the tight, heavy leg irons on, each step was too short and the sharp metal cut into his skin. Two guards right behind him and two just as close in front when they pointed to the door to the left of the normal visitors' door, the one that went straight into registration and more guards from security. They undid the restraints and he could move his arms and legs freely while he was naked and bent over double, with a rubber-gloved hand checking up his ass and another pulling at his hair like a comb and a third feeling around in his armpits.

  He'd been issued new clothes that hung off him and were just as ugly as the others, and was then escorted to a sterile waiting room where he sat on a wooden chair and didn't say a word.

  Ten days had passed.

  For twenty-three hours of the day he had lain on a bunk behind a metal door with a peephole in from the corridor. Five square meters and no visitors, no newspapers, no TV, no radio. Time to break you and make you compliant.

  He had gotten used to having someone there. He had forgotten how much loneliness reinforced your longing.

  He missed her so much.

  He wondered what she was doing right now, what she had on, how she smelled, if her steps were long and relaxed, or short and irritated.

  Zofia might not be there for him anymore.

  He had told her the truth and she would do with it what she wanted and he was so scared that in a couple of months he would no longer have anyone to miss, he would be nothing.

  He had been staring at the white walls of the waiting room for four hours when two guards from the day shift opened the door and explained that a cell in G2 Left would be his home at the start of the long sentence. One in front and one behind as they started to walk through a wide passage under the prison yard, a few hundred meters of concrete floor and concrete walls, a locked internal door with a security camera and another passage and then steep stairs up to Block G.

  He had left behind the days cooped up in remand at Kronoberg and the fast-track trial, where he did exactly what he told Henryk and the deputy CEO he would do.

  He had admitted to possession of three kilos of amphetamine in the trunk of a rented car.

  He had got the prosecutor to confirm that he was acting alone and was solely responsible for the crime.

  He had declared himself satisfied with the judgment and had signed the document and thereby avoided any unnecessary wait for it to enter into force.

  The following day, here he was walking through one of the passages in Aspsås prison on his way to a cell.

  "I'd like to have six books."

  The warden in front of him stopped.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I'd like to borrow-"

  "I heard what you said. I was just hoping that I'd heard wrong. You've only been here a few hours, you're not even in your unit yet, and you start talking about books."

  "You know it's my right."

  "We'll talk about that later."

  "I need them. It's important to me. Without books I won't survive this."

  "Later."

  You don't understand.

  I'm not here to serve some shitty sentence.

  I'm here to knock out all the drug dealers in your leaky prison in a matter of days and then take over myself.

  Then I'll carry on working, analyzing, putting together the pieces until I know everything I need to know, and with that knowledge I will destroy the Polish organization's operations, in the name of the Swedish police.

  I don't think you've understood that.

  The unit was completely deserted when he arrived, sandwiched between two young and quite nervous guards.

  Ten years had passed and it was a completely different prison, but it could well have been the same unit as back then: he was back on the corridor with eight cells on each side, the well-equipped kitchen, the TV corner with card games and thoroughly thumbed newspapers, the table tennis table at the far end of the small storeroom with a broken bat hanging in the middle of the tattered net, the pool table with the dirty green baize and every ball safely locked away… even the smell was the same: sweat, dust, fear, and adrenaline and perhaps a hint of moonshine.

  "Name?"

  "Hoffmann."

  The principal prison officer was as short as he was round and he nodded at the two guards from inside his glass box, indicating that from here on he would take charge.

  "Haven't we met before?"

  "Don't think so."

  He had small eyes that seemed to pierce everything he looked at and it was hard to imagine that there was actually a person in there.

  "From your papers, I understand that you… Hoffmann, was it?… are someone who is familiar with the way things work in a place like this."

  Piet Hoffmann nodded silently at the principal officer. He wasn't there to tell some fat fucking inspector that he deserved a thrashing.

  "Yes. I know very well how it works."

  The unit would be empty for another three hours, until they came back from the workshop or the library and classroom. He had time for a guided tour with the unit's principal officer to learn how and where he should piss and why lock-in time was seven thirty and not seven thirty-five, and still have plenty of time to sit down in his own cell and come to terms with the fact that from now on this was his home.

  Piet Hoffmann positioned himself in the TV corner a few minutes before the others were due back. He had seen photos of all the other fifteen prisoners in the unit and knew their backgrounds, and if he sat here he could see every single one as they came in, but more important, he himself would be seen, it would be obvious that there was someone new in Cell 4, someone who wasn't scared, someone who didn't hide and wait for the right moment to sneak out and show his papers for approval, someone who had already sat down in someone else's favorite chair and taken someone's marked cards and started to play solitaire on someone's table without even asking if he could.

  He was looking for two faces in particular.

  A heavy, almost square pale face with small eyes that were set too close together. A thinner, longer face with a nose that had been broken in several places and not healed well and a chin and a cheek that had been sewn up by a hand that wasn't a doctor's.

  Stefan Lygas and Karol Tomasz Penderecki.

  Two of the four members of Wojtek who were serving long sentences at Aspsås, his helpers in knocking out the competition and taking over the drug market, and his executioners the moment he was exposed as Paula.

  The first questions were asked at supper. Two of the older men, thick gold around bull necks, one on either side of him with their warm plates and sharp elbows. Stefan and Karol Tomasz got up to stop them but he waved to them, they should hold off, he would let the two men ask the same questions that he had on the prison bus a few hours ago; it was all about the same thing really, respect based on the shared hate of perverts.

&nbs
p; "We want to see your papers."

  "That's what you say."

  "Have you got a problem with that?"

  Stefan and Karol Tomasz had already done the bulk of the work. They had been talking about the fact that Piet was coming for the past few days, what he had been taken in for, who he'd worked with, his status with one of the eastern European mafias. They had managed to get in copies of 721018-0010 from the National Police Board criminal records, the criminal intelligence database, prison records and his most recent judgment, via Stefan's lawyer.

  "No, but I've got a problem with people sitting too close."

  "Your papers, for fuck's sake!"

  He would ask them into his cell and he would show them his papers and then he wouldn't have to answer anymore questions. The new prisoner in Cell 4 wasn't a sex offender or a wife beater, but in fact had precisely the background he claimed to have; he would probably even get a few smiles and a cautious slap on the shoulder-prisoners who had shot at policemen and were convicted of attempted murder and aggravated assault of an officer were the kind who didn't need to fight for their status.

  "You'll get my judgment, if you just shut it now and let me finish my food."

  They played stud poker later with toothpicks that cost a thousand kronor each and he sat in the place that he'd taken from someone who no longer dared to take it back and he boasted about the fucking pig in Söderhamn who had begged for his life when he aimed at his forehead and he smoked rollies for the first time in years and he talked about a woman he was going to fuck senseless on his first supervised leave and they laughed loudly and he leaned back and looked around at the room and the corridor that was full of people who had longed to get away for so long that they no longer knew where.

  Tuesday

  He had driven slowly through the Stockholm dark which now had turned to light-one of those nights again, long hours of turmoil and restlessness. He hadn't been there for more than two weeks, but at around half past three he had found himself in the middle of the Udine, bridge once again, looking at the sky and water, I never want to see you here again, he had been on his way to the nursing home that he was no longer allowed to visit and the window where she no longer sat, what you are frightened of has already happened, when he suddenly turned around, drove back toward the houses and people, the capital that was so big and yet so small, where he had lived and worked all his life.

  Ewert Grens got out of the car.

  He had never been here before. He hadn't even known he was on his way here.

  He had thought about it so many times and planned and started to drive, but never made it. Now, here he was standing by the southern entrance that was called Gate 1 and his legs felt rubbery like they would both collapse and there was pressure in his chest from his stomach or maybe his heart.

  He started to walk but then stopped after a few steps.

  He couldn't do it, his legs lacked the strength and whatever it was that was pressing inside came in regular thumps.

  It was a gentle dawn and the sun shone so beautifully on the graves and grass and trees, but he wasn't going to go on. Not this morning. He would turn back to the car and drive into the city again as North Cemetery disappeared into the distance in his rearview mirror.

  Maybe next time.

  Maybe then he'd find out where her stone was, and maybe then he would go all the way there.

  Next time.

  The corridor at Homicide was deserted and dark. He helped himself to a forgotten, rather dry slice of bread from the basket on the table in the staffroom and pressed two cups of coffee out of the machine and then continued down to the office that would never sing again. He ate and drank his simple breakfast and lifted up the thin file for an ongoing investigation that was at a standstill. They had managed to identify the victim within the first couple of days as an informant for the Danish police, had secured traces of drug mules and amphetamines and confirmed that there had been at least one other Swedish-speaking person in the flat at the time of the murder, the voice that had raised the alarm that he had now listened to so often it had become a part of him.

  They had discovered a Polish mafia branch called Wojtek, assumed to have a head office in Warsaw, and then they hit a wall.

  Ewert Grens chewed the dry, hard bread and drank up the coffee that was left in the plastic cup. He didn't often give up. He wasn't the sort to do that. But this wall was so long and high and no matter how much he had pushed and shoved and shouted in the past two weeks, he had not managed to get around it or beyond it.

  He had followed up the blood stains on the shirt that was found in a garage and had come to a dead end in a register with no matches.

  Then he had gone to Poland with Sven to follow up the yellow stains that Krantz had found on the same item of clothing and had ended up in the remains of an amphetamine factory in a town called Siedlce. For a couple of days they had worked closely with some of the three thousand policemen assigned to a special police force to combat organized crime, and had encountered a sense of helplessness, a hunt that never gave results, a nation with five hundred criminal groups that fought every day for a slice of the domestic Polish capital cake, eighty-five even larger criminal groups with international connections, police who frequently took part in armed battles, and a nation that raked in more than five hundred billion kronor every year from the production of synthetic drugs.

  Ewert Grens remembered the smell of tulips.

  The amphetamine factory that was connected to the stains on the murderer's shirt had been in the basement of a block of flats in the middle of a rundown and dirty neighborhood a couple of kilometers west of the center-uniform buildings once built in their thousands as a temporary solution to an acute housing problem. Ewert Grens and Sven Sundkvist had sat in the car and watched a raid that had ended in a shoot-out and the death of a young policeman. The six people who were in some of the rooms in the basement had then not said a peep to either the Polish or Swedish interrogating officers, and had remained silent, just sneering or staring at the floor, as they knew, of course, that anyone who opened their mouth would not live for long.

  Grens swore out loud in the empty room, opened the window and shouted something at someone in civvies who happened to be walking along the asphalt path across the courtyard of Kronoberg, then wrenched open the door and limped up and down the long corridor until his back and forehead were wet with sweat, then sat down on his chair to catch his racing breath.

  He had never felt like this before.

  He was used to anger, almost addicted to it. He always looked for conflict, hid himself away in it.

  It wasn't that.

  This feeling, like it was there, the truth, as if the answer was staring at him, laughing at him, a peculiar feeling of being so close without being able to see.

  Ewert Grens took the file in his hand and went to lie down with his legs outstretched on the floor behind the corduroy sofa. He started to leaf through the papers starting with the voice informing the police about a dead man in Västmannagatan, through the following two weeks working at full capacity with access to all technical resources, to his trips to Copenhagen and Siedlce.

  He swore again, maybe shouted at someone again.

  They hadn't gotten anywhere.

  He was going to lie on the floor until he understood whose voice he had listened to so many times, what it was he didn't understand and couldn't quite get hold of, why the feeling that the truth was close at hand, laughing at him, was so intense.

  He heard the keys jangling.

  Two guards unlocking and opening the cells at the far end, the ones with a view over the large gravel pitch, Cell 8 and opposite, Cell 16.

  He braced himself, prepared himself for the twenty minutes each day that could mean death.

  It had been a god awful night.

  Despite having been awake for days, he had lain there, waiting for sleep that never came. They were there with him, Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus, they had stood outside the window and sat on
the edge of his bed, lain down beside him and he had been forced to drive them away. They no longer existed; inside he had to stop feeling, he had a mission that he had chosen to complete and that left no room for dreaming-he had to suppress, forget. Anyone who dreamed in prison soon went under.

  They were getting closer. The keys jangled again, Cell 7 and Cell 15 were opened and he heard a faint morning and someone else reply go to hell.

  He had eventually gotten up-when Zofia had disappeared and the dark outside was densest he had held the dread at bay with chin-ups and sit-ups and jumping on and off the bed with both his feet held together. There wasn't much space and he had hit the wall a couple of times, but it was good to sweat and to feel his heart beating in his rib cage.

  His work had already begun.

  In a matter of hours on that first afternoon he had earned himself the respect in the unit that he needed to continue. He now knew who was in charge of supplies and dealing, in which units and in which cells. One of them was here, the Greek in Cell 2; the other two were on separate floors in Block H. Piet Hoffmann would get in the first grams soon, the ones he was responsible for and that he would use to blow out the competition.

  The guards were even closer, opened Cell 6 and Cell 14. Only a couple of minutes more.

  The time after the cells were opened, between seven and seven twenty, was crucial. If he survived that, he would survive the rest of the day.

  He had prepared himself in the way that he would prepare himself every morning. In order to survive, he had to assume that in the course of the evening or night, someone had found out about his other name, that there was a Paula who worked for the authorities, a snitch who was there to break the organization. He was safe as long as the cell was locked, a closed door would hold off an attack, but the first twenty minutes once the cell had been opened, after the first good morning, were the difference between life and death; a well-planned attack would always be carried out when the guards had disappeared into their room for a cup of coffee and a break-twenty minutes with no staff in the unit and the time when several of the many murders in prison had been carried out in recent years.