Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  It was still thirty kilometers to the prison that he had visited at least twice a year for the past three decades. As a policeman in Stockholm he would regularly be involved in investigations that ended up there, questioning, prison transport, there was always someone who knew something and someone who had seen something, but the hatred of uniforms was greater there than anywhere else and their fear of the consequences justified, as a never survived long in an enclosed space, so the most usual answer on the recorder was a sneering laugh or simply empty silence.

  Yesterday, Ewert Grens had met and written off two of three names on the periphery of the investigation who owned security firms with official links to Wojtek International. He had drunk coffee with a certain Maciej Bosacki in Odensala outside Marsta, and more coffee with Karl Lager in Sodertalje and after only a couple of minutes at each table had known that they didn't do executions in city center flats.

  Far in the distance, the mighty wall.

  He had on occasion walked under the huge prison yard through a network of passages and each time he had met people he avoided in reality, in life. He had taken days and years from them, and he understood why they spat at him, he even respected it, but it did not affect him. They had all pissed on other people and in Ewert Grens's world, anyone who felt they had the right to harm someone else should have the balls to stand up for it later.

  The gray concrete grew longer, higher.

  He had one name left on the brown-stained paper. Piet Hoffmann, previously convicted of aiming and firing at a policeman, and who had then been granted a gun license all the same. Something was amiss.

  Ewert Grens parked the car and walked over to the prison entrance and the prisoner who would shortly be sitting in front of him.

  It didn't feel right.

  He didn't know why. Maybe it was too quiet. Maybe he was getting locked into his own head as well.

  He had fought off any thoughts that carried Zofia with them, which had been worst around two in the morning, just before it started to get light.

  He had gotten up, like before, chin-ups, jumping with his feet together until the sweat poured from his forehead and down his chest.

  He should be relaxed. Wojtek had gotten their reports, three days in a row. He had stamped out and taken over. From this afternoon, he would be getting bigger deliveries and selling more.

  "Morning, Hoffmann."

  "Morning."

  But he couldn't relax. Something was bothering him, something that demanded space and couldn't be reasoned away.

  He was scared.

  The doors had been unlocked, his neighbors were moving around out there, he couldn't see them but they were there, shouting and whispering. The sock between the door and the doorframe, the chair in front of the threshold, the pillow under the covers.

  Two minutes past seven. Eighteen minutes to go.

  He pressed himself against the wall.

  The older man at central security studied his police ID, typed something on a computer, sighed.

  "Questioning, you say?"

  " Yes."

  "Grens."

  "Yes."

  "Piet Hoffmann?"

  "I've reserved a room. So it would be great if you could let me in. So I could get to it."

  The older man was in no rush. He lifted the phone and punched in a number.

  "You'll have to wait a moment. There's something I need to check."

  It took fourteen minutes.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  The door was pulled open. One second. The chair was kicked over. One second. Stefan passed close to him on the right, a screwdriver in his fist.

  There's a moment left, a beat, people always experience half a second in such different ways.

  There were probably four of them.

  He had seen this happen several times, even taken part himself twice.

  Someone ran in with a screwdriver, a table leg, a cut piece of metal. And straight behind, more hands to punch or kill. Two out in the corridor, always at a distance to keep watch.

  The pillow and sweatshirt under the covers, his two and half seconds were over, his protection, his escape.

  One blow.

  He wouldn't manage more.

  One single blow, right elbow to the carotid receptors on the left side of the throat, a hard blow right there and Stefan's blood pressure would rocket, he would collapse, faint.

  His heavy body fell to the floor, blocking the door for the next pair of balled fists, a sharp piece of metal from the workshop, Karol Tomasz hit out in the air with it in order to keep his balance. Piet Hoffmann squeezed out between the doorframe and a shoulder that still hadn't quite fathomed where the person who was going to die was hiding. He ran out into the corridor between the two who were standing guard and on toward the closed door of the security office.

  They know.

  He ran and looked around, they were standing there.

  They know.

  He opened the door and went into the guards' room and someone roared stukatj behind him and the principal prison officer shouted get the hell out of here. He probably didn't shout anything himself, he couldn't be certain but it didn't feel like it, he stayed where he was in front of the closed door and whispered I want to be put in isolation, and when they didn't react, he said a bit louder I want a P18 and when none of the goddamn staring guards moved at all, in spite of everything he did scream, now, you fuckers, presumably that's what he did, I need to be in isolation now.

  Ewert Grens sat on a chair in the visiting room and looked at a roll of toilet paper on the floor by the bed and a mattress that was covered in plastic and stuck our over the end of the frame-fear and longing that for one hour every month was distilled down to two bodies holding each other tight. He moved over to the window, not much of a view: a couple of crude bars edged with barbed wire and farther back, the lower part of a thick gray concrete wall. He sat down again, the restlessness that was always in him and never let him relax. He played with the black cassette recorder that stood in the middle of the table every time he came here to question people who hadn't seen or heard anything; he remembered the faces as they came closer and lowered their voices, stared at the floor, full of hate, until he shut off. He wasn't sure that any of the interviews he'd done in this room had ever really helped him to solve an investigation.

  There was a knock at the door and a man came in. According to the documents, Hoffmann was not yet middle-aged, so this was someone else, considerably older and in a blue prison staff uniform.

  "Lennart Oscarsson. Chief Warden of Asps5s."

  Grens took his outstretched hand and smiled.

  "Well blow me down, the last time we met you were just a lowly principal officer. You've come up in the world. Have you managed to let anymore go?"

  A few years in a couple of seconds.

  They were there, back to the time when Principal Prison Officer Lennart Oscarsson had granted a convicted, relapsed pedophile an escorted hospital visit, a pervert who had done a runner while he was being transported and murdered a five-year-old girl.

  "Last time we met, you were just a detective superintendent. And now… you still are?"

  "Yes. You need to make major mistakes to be kicked up the ass."

  Grens stood on the other side of the table and waited for more sarcasm, something just as funny, but it didn't come. He'd seen it as soon as Oscarsson entered the room-the chief warden seemed distant, unfocused, his mind elsewhere.

  "You're here to talk to Hoffmann."

  "Yes."

  "I've just come from the hospital wing. You can't see him."

  "I'm sorry, I notified you of my visit yesterday and he was fit as a fiddle then."

  "They were hospitalized last night."

  "They?"'

  "Three so far. Soaring temperatures. We don't know what it is. The prison doctor has decided that they should be in isolation. They are not permitted to see anyone at all until we know what it is."

  Ewert Grens gave
a loud sigh.

  "How long?"

  "Three, maybe four days. That's all I can say at the moment?'

  They looked at each other, there wasn't much more to say and they were just getting ready to go when a piercing noise ripped through the air. The black square of plastic on Oscarsson's hip flashed red, one flash for every loud bleep.

  The warden grabbed the alarm that hung on his belt and read the display, his face aghast at first, then stressed and evasive.

  "Sorry, I've got to go."

  He was already on his way out.

  "Something has obviously happened. Can you find your own way out?"

  Lennart Oscarsson ran toward the stairs, down and along the passage toward the prison units. Checked the alarm display again.

  G2.

  Block G, first Floor.

  That was where he was.

  The prisoner he had just lied about on the explicit order of the head of the Prison and Probation Service.

  He had shouted at them and then sat down on the floor.

  They had reacted after a while-one of the guards had locked the door from the inside and stayed by the glass window to keep an eye on the men out in the corridor, and another had rung central security and asked for assistance from the prison riot squad to escort a prisoner to an isolation cell following a supposed threat.

  He had moved to a chair and was now partially hidden from the people circling outside who whispered stukatj sufficiently loud for him to hear as they passed.

  Stukaj.

  Snitch.

  The door to the national police commissioner's office was open.

  Göransson knocked lightly on the doorframe. He was expected-a large silver thermos on the table between the sofas, open sandwiches in crumpled paper bags from the small breakfast cafe at the other end of Bergsgaran. He poured two cups of coffee and wolfed down a sandwich. He was hungry, the anxiety was draining him. He had walked down the corridor and slowly past Grens's office, the only one where the lights were often on early in the morning, drowning everything in banal music. It was as empty as Göransson felt. Ewert Grens, who normally slept there and was at his desk working as soon as it was light outside, wasn't there. He had already left for the prison in Aspsås, as early as he said he would yesterday. Grew must not talk to Hoffmann. A large piece of bread got stuck in his mouth and grew until he was forced to spit it out onto the paper plate. Hoffmann must not talk to Grew. He drank some more coffee, rinsing down what was still stuck.

  "Fredrik?"

  The national police commissioner had returned and sat down beside his colleague.

  "Fredrik, what's wrong? Are you okay?"

  Göransson tried to smile but couldn't, his mouth just wouldn't do it. "No."

  "We'll manage to sort this out."

  He took a bite of a sandwich, lifted up the cheese-something green underneath, pepper or maybe a couple of slices of cucumber.

  "I've just gotten off the phone. Grens is on his way back from Asps5.s. And has been told he won't be able to see the prisoner called Piet Hoffmann for three, maybe even four days."

  Göransson looked at the piece of bread. The cramps in his body receded somewhat, so he picked it up and tried to fill the void again.

  "Troubled."

  "Pardon?"

  "You asked how I was. Troubled. That's what I am. Bloody troubled." He left the cheese and bread on the plate, and later threw it in the trash. He couldn't do it. His mouth, his throat, he was so dry.

  "Troubled in case Hoffmann talks. Troubled to find out what I'm prepared to do to stop him."

  They had burned informants before. We don't know who he is. Dropped them when there were too many questions. We don't work with criminals. Looked the other way when the hunt began and the criminal organization that had been infiltrated found its own solutions.

  But never in a prison, never locked up with no escape.

  Life, death.

  Suddenly it was all so clear.

  "What troubles you most?"

  The national police commissioner leaned toward him.

  "You have to think about it, Fredrik. What troubles you the most? The consequences if Hoffmann talks? Or the consequences if we take action?" Göransson was silent.

  "Do you have any choice, Fredrik?"

  "I don't know."

  "Do I have any choice?"

  "I don't know!"

  The silver thermos fell to the floor when Göransson made an uncontrolled, sweeping gesture over the table. The national police commissioner waited, then picked it up when he decided that the man wasn't going to strike out again.

  "Fredrik, listen to me."

  He moved closer.

  "What we are doing is not wrong. It's just the way things are. We are doing no wrong. The only thing we are doing and the only thing we have done is to talk to a lawyer who represents two Wojtek members who are doing time in Aspsås. If he then decides to give that information to his clients, if he decided to do that yesterday evening, then we can't be held responsible. And if his clients then choose to do something, which prisoners often do, we are not responsible for that either."

  He didn't come much closer but did move forward a little more.

  "We can't be responsible for anything other than our own actions."

  It was possible to see Kronobergsparken from the window. There were some small children playing in the sandpit and a couple of dogs running around that refused to listen to their masters who each waited with leash in hand. It was a lovely little park right in the middle of Kungsholmen. Göransson looked at it for a long time, he didn't normally go there and he wondered why.

  "The consequences if he talks."

  "Sorry?"

  Göransson stayed standing by the window, soothed by the air that came in through the small open rectangle at the top.

  "Your question. What troubles me most. The consequences if Hoffmann talks."

  He moved the chair slightly to the left. Now he could see the whole corridor through the glass, and the pool table where the four who had just attacked him were pretending to play while keeping an eye on him. It was obvious that they wanted him to know that he was a goddamn rat who had nowhere to go, a prison is a closed system with walls that shut you in and anyone who wants to run will soon meet something hard that they can't get past. Karol Tomasz was standing closest-he raised his arm, pointed at his mouth, formed the word stukatj over and over again.

  Paula no longer existed.

  Piet Hoffmann tried to find somewhere deep inside that wasn't roaring, he had to try to understand that he now had a new mission, to survive. They knew.

  They must have found out in the evening, during the night. Nothing had changed at lock-up time, someone had communication channels that opened locked doors.

  If you're about to be exposed, you can't escape very far in a prison, but you can demand to be put in isolation.

  There were ten of them, helmets and riot shields to protect them, and armed with sedatives to keep control. The prison riot squad had run across the yard and up the stairs of Block G. Six of them would stay to prevent and discourage repeated violence, four of them would escort the vulnerable prisoner down the passage and deep into the bowels of the earth, to Block C and the voluntary isolation unit, two escorts behind, two in front.

  You might be given a death sentence. But you're not going to die.

  Sixteen cells here as well. Voluntary isolation was built to look like any other unit in any prison-the wardens' room, the TV corner, the showers, the kitchen, the Ping-Pong table-the people who asked to come here could move around freely without the risk of bumping into prisoners from other units in the prison. The faces he saw were the only ones he would meet.

  A week.

  He would wait, avoid confrontation; he could stay alive here, survive here. Outside the door he was dead-every part of the big prison was a potential screwdriver to the throat, a table leg against his forehead as many times as was needed to make it cave in. In one week, Erik and the city pol
ice would come and get him. He wouldn't die, not yet, not with Hugo and Rasmus, not with Zofia, he wouldn't

  would not

  would not

  would

  not

  Are you all right?"

  He had fallen to the floor without using his hands, hitting his cheek and chin, and for a few seconds was somewhere else: the attack, the guards in the aquarium, the mouths forming stukatj, the riot guys in their black uniforms. He suddenly found it hard to breathe and had felt his legs swaying as he tried to stay upright.

  He hadn't known until now that all the damned energy just drains from your body when the only thing that exists is a fear of death.

  "I don't know. Toilet, I need to wash my face, I'm sweating."

  The sink in the middle looked almost clean. He turned on the tap and let the water run until it was cold, stuck his head under it to cool his neck and back, then filled his hands and rubbed against the skin of his face, as if he was returning-he wasn't even particularly dizzy.

  The kick caught him on the side.

  The pain was intense, burning from somewhere on his hip.

  Piet Hoffmann hadn't seen or heard the solid, long-haired guy in his twenties coming in, running toward him, but with guards from the riot squad outside he wasn't going to do much more, he just spat and whispered stukatj and closed the door when he left.

  Death sentence. Already on his head.

  He got up, coughed, and felt over his hip with one hand. The kick had caught him farther up than he first thought, broken a couple of his ribs. He had to get out of here. To the next level. Solitary confinement. Total isolation, only contact with the guards, never have any contact with other prisoners, twenty-four hours a day, locked in a cell with no way in and no way out.

  Stukatj.

  He had to get away again. He mustn't die.

  Ewert Grens had stopped halfway back from Aspsås, at the OK gas station in Taby, and was sitting on one of the stools by the window with an orange juice and a cheese sandwich. Soaring temperatures. Isolation. Three, maybe four days. He had stood in the visiting room with its toilet rolls and plastic-covered mattress and wanted to thump the walls, but had refrained; it would be pointless to argue with a prison doctor about infections he'd never heard about. He bought another artificial sandwich, it was the final stretch back to Stockholm and he couldn't put it off any longer. He turned off the E4 at Haga South, drove past the hospital and stopped some way down Solna kyrkvag. Entrance 1, as far as he had come the last time.