Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  The crackling again, whether it was the wind or labored breathing into a sensitive microphone.

  "Lennart?"

  It was breathing.

  "You'll do it. Or you'll lose your post. You've got two hours."

  He was lying on the iron bed with his eyes shut. I'm very sorry, I have no idea who you are. The people who were supposed to open the door and lead him back to reality had declared that he didn't exist.

  He was officially condemned to ten years' imprisonment.

  If those in the know denied it, if the people who had arranged a fake trial and produced a criminal record, if they denied it, there was no one else who could explain.

  He wouldn't get out. He would be pursued to the death and no matter how much he ran and how long he managed to stay hidden, there was no one there on the other side of the wall who would open the door and help him out.

  It was windy out in the prison yard, warm air rebounding off the concrete wall and coming back with even less oxygen. The prison's chief warden walked briskly and wiped his damp forehead with his shirt sleeve. The main door to solitary confinement was locked and he rattled through his keys. It wasn't often he visited the dismal corridor that was the temporary home of those who couldn't conform even with the country's most serious criminals.

  "Martin."

  The wardens' room was just inside the door and he nodded to three of his employees, Martin Jacobson and two temporary wardens, youngsters whose names he hadn't learned yet.

  "Martin, I'd like to talk to you for a moment."

  The two temps nodded; they had heard what he hadn't said and went out into the corridor, closing the door behind them.

  "Hoffmann."

  "Cell 9. He's not looking good. He-"

  "He's to go back. To G2. By tomorrow morning at the latest."

  The principal officer looked out into the empty corridor, heard the big ugly clock on the wall ticking, the second hand filling the room. "Lennart?"

  "You heard right."

  Martin Jacobson got up from the chair by the narrow desk that was largely used as a place to put cups, looked at his friend, colleague, boss. "We've been working together here for… a good twenty years. We've been neighbors for almost as long. You are one of my only friends in here, and out there, one of the few people I ask over for a Sunday drink." He tried to catch the eye of someone who wasn't there.

  "Look at me, Lennart."

  "No questions."

  "Look at me!"

  "I'm asking you, Martin, this time, no goddamn questions."

  The gray-haired man swallowed, in surprise, in anger.

  "What's this all about?"

  "No bloody questions."

  "He'll die."

  "Martin-"

  "This goes against everything we know, everything we say, everything we do."

  "I'm going now. You've got an order. Do it."

  Lennart Oscarsson opened the door; he was already on his way out.

  "He punched you, Lennart… is this personal?"

  It tightened. And when he moved, every step ached, a shooting pain from his cheekbone down.

  "Is it? Is it personal?"

  "Just do as I ask."

  "No."

  "In that case, Martin, do as you are ordered!"

  "I won't do it. Because it's wrong. If he's going to be moved back. then you're going to have to do it yourself."

  Lennart Oscarsson walked toward Cell 9 with two huge holes in his back. He could feel his perhaps best friend's eyes, staring, and he wanted to turn around and explain the order that he himself had so recently been appalled by. Martin was a wise friend, an experienced colleague, the sort who had the courage to speak up when someone who should know better was wrong.

  An unconscious hand to the back of his jacket as he approached the locked cell, brushed over the fabric, by the holes, the eyes, trying to get rid of them. The temps with no names were close behind him and stopped by the door, keys jangling as they looked for the right one.

  The prisoner was lying on the iron bed, naked except for a pair of white underpants. He was resting, trembling, his torso as white as his face. "You're going back."

  The pale body, he didn't look like much, but only a couple of hours ago he had punched him hard in the face.

  "Tomorrow morning. Eight o'clock."

  He didn't move.

  "To the same unit and the same cell."

  He didn't seem to hear, to see.

  "Did you hear what I said?"

  The chief warden waited, then nodded to his young colleagues and to the door.

  "The books."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I need the books. It's my legal right."

  "Which books?"

  "I've asked for two of the five books that I have the right to have. Nineteenth Century Stockholm. The Marionettes. They're in my cell."

  "You're going to read?"

  "The nights are long here."

  Lennart Oscarsson nodded to the wardens again-they should close and lock and leave the cell.

  He sat up. Back. He was going to die. Back. He was dead the moment he went back into the same unit, hated, hunted, he had broken one of the first prison rules, he was a snitch, and you killed snitches.

  He got down on his knees in front of the cement toilet bowl, two fingers down his throat, he held them there until he started to puke.

  Fear had sucked everything out of him and he spat it out, he had to get rid of it. He stayed on his knees and emptied himself, emptied out everything that had been, everything that was inside him, he was on his own now, the people who could burn him had burnt again.

  He pressed the button.

  He wasn't going to die, not yet.

  He had kept it pressed in for fourteen minutes when the hatch in the door opened and the warden with the eyes shouted at him to goddamn take his finger off.

  He didn't turn round, just pressed even harder.

  "The books."

  "You're going to get them."

  "The books!"

  "I've got them with me. Chief's orders. If you want me to come in, take your finger off the button."

  Piet Hoffmann spotted them as soon as the door opened. His books. In the guard's hand. His chest, the pressure that had been there, making him shake, was released. He relaxed, wanted to collapse, wanted to cry, that was how it felt, released and he just wanted to cry.

  "It smells of puke in here."

  The guard peered into the cement hole, started retching, and moved back.

  "It's your choice. You know that no one cleans in here. That smell, you'll just have to get used to it."

  The warden gripped the books in his hands, shook them, flicked through, shook them again. Hoffmann stood in front of him but felt nothing, he knew that they would hold up.

  He had sat on the iron bed for a long time holding the two books from Aspsås library close by. They were intact. He had just been down on his knees and emptied himself, now, now he was calm, his body felt soft, he could nearly bend over again and if he rested, if he slept for a while, he could refill it with energy, he wasn't going to die, not yet.

  Friday

  He had woken gleaming with sweat, fallen asleep again, dreamed in fragments and without color, the sort of sleep that is shallow and black and white and far away. He had woken again and sat up on the iron bed and looked at the floor and the books that were lying there for a long time-he wouldn't lie down again, his body was screaming for rest, but as sleep rook more energy than it gave he chose to stay sitting where he was and wait as the dawn turned into morning.

  It was quiet, dark.

  The solitary confinement corridor would sleep for a few more hours.

  He had emptied himself yesterday of the fear that got in the way and had to be gotten rid of, the smell still stringent in the air around the cement hole. He had emptied himself and now there was only one thing left, the will to survive.

  Piet Hoffmann lifted up the two books and put them down in front of him on t
he bed. Nineteenth Century Stockholm. The Marionettes. Bound in hard, mono colored library boards, marked with STORE in blue and ASPSS LIBRARY in red. He opened the first page, got a firm grip of the cover and with a powerful rug pulled it loose. Another tug and the spine of the book collapsed, a third and the back came off He looked over at the locked cell door. Still quiet. No one walking around out there, no one who had heard and hurried over to the hatch at the top of the door with meddlesome eyes. He changed position, back to the door-if anyone were to look in all they would see was a fidgety long-termer who couldn't sleep.

  He ran his hand carefully over the torn book. His fingers along the left-hand margin and a cut-out, rectangular hole.

  It was there. In eleven pieces.

  He turned the book over, coaxed out the metal that in a matter of minutes would be a five-centimeter-long mini-revolver. First the larger pieces, the frame with the barrel and cylinder pivot and trigger, a couple of gentle taps with the handle of the sewing machine screwdriver on the millimeter-long pins between them, then the barrel protector with the first screw, the butt sides with the second screw and the butt stabiliser with the third.

  He turned to the door, but the footsteps were only in his head, as before.

  He spun the tiny revolver's cylinder, emptied it, took his time checking the six bullets as long as half a thumbnail that were lined up on the iron bed-ammunition that together weighed no more than a gram.

  He had seen a person stop breathing in that godforsaken toilet far away in winoujcie ferry terminal, the short barrel right up close to a petrified eye, the miniature revolver had killed with a single shot.

  Piet Hoffmann held it, raised it, aimed it at the dirty wall. Left index finger light on the trigger-there was just enough room with the trigger guard sawn off-slowly pull back, he watched the hammer follow the movement of the finger, a final squeeze and it leaped forward, then the sound, the sharp click. It worked.

  He ripped apart the second book in the same way, revealing a hole in the left-hand margin, a detonator the size of a nail and a receiver the size of a penny. He ran the sewing machine screwdriver along the bottom edges of the book's thick covers, front and back, cut open the glued hinge and pulled out two nine-meter-long pieces of pentyl fuse and an equally thin plastic envelope containing twenty-four centilitres of nitroglycerine.

  It was a few minutes past seven.

  He heard the wardens changing shift out in the corridor behind the locked door-night shift to day shift. One more hour. Then he would be collected and taken back.

  G2 left. Back. He was condemned to die there.

  He pressed the button on the wall.

  "Yes?"

  "I need a shit."

  "You've got a hole beside the bed."

  "It's blocked. My puke from yesterday."

  The single speaker crackled.

  "How urgent?"

  "As soon as possible."

  "Five minutes."

  Piet Hoffmann stood by the door, footsteps, several footsteps, two guards coming to get someone, to the cell, who unlocked the door and opened it, toilet visit, never two prisoners in the corridor at the same time, get in your cell for Christ's sake. The revolver was resting in the palm of his hand-he opened the cylinder, counted the six bullets, pushed it to the bottom of one of the deep front pockets on his trousers and the coarse fabric hid it, just as it hid the detonator and receiver in the other pocket and the pentyl fuse and plastic envelope with nitroglycerine stuffed down his underpants.

  "Open for the prisoner in number nine."

  The guard who had shouted was right outside his door. Hoffmann ran back to the bed, lay down, and watched the square hatch opening and the guard looking in long enough to confirm that the prisoner was lying down precisely where he should be.

  The jangling of keys.

  "You wanted to go to the toilet. Get up and do it then."

  One warden by the cell door. Another one farther down the corridor. Two more out in the yard.

  Hoffmann looked over at the wardens' room. The fifth one was sitting there. The older one, Jacobson, the principal officer, gray thinning hair and his back to the corridor.

  They're too far apart from each other.

  He walked slowly toward the shower room and toilets, three guards inside, they're too far apart from each other.

  He sat down on the dirty plastic toilet seat, flushed, turned on the tap. He breathed deeply, each breath from somewhere deep in his stomach, the calm that was down there, he needed it, he wasn't going to die, not yet.

  "I'm ready. You can open again."

  The warden opened the door and Piet Hoffmann launched himself forward, showed the mini-revolver first and then held it hard to the bastard's eye that stared at him through a hatch in the cell door.

  "Your colleague."

  He whispered.

  "Get your colleague to come here."

  The warden didn't move. Maybe he didn't understand. Maybe he was petrified.

  "Now. Get him to come here now."

  Hoffmann kept his eye on the personal alarm hanging from the warden's belt and pressed the muzzle of the gun even harder against the closed eyelid.

  "Erik?"

  He had understood. His voice was feeble, a careful wave of the hand. "Erik? Can you come here?"

  Piet Hoffmann saw the second warden come closer, then stop suddenly, realising that his colleague was standing stock-still with what looked like a piece of metal to his head.

  "Come here."

  The warden who was called Erik hesitated then started to walk, casting a glance up at the camera that maybe someone was watching right now up in central security.

  "Once more and I'll kill him. Kill. Kill him."

  With one hand he pressed even harder against the eyelid and with the other he tore loose two pieces of plastic that were their only way to raise an alarm.

  They waited. They did precisely what he said. They knew that he had nothing to lose, it was obvious.

  One more.

  One more person who could move around freely in the corridor. Hoffmann looked over toward the wardens' office. The face was still turned away, the neck bent forward, as if he was reading.

  "Get up."

  The older, gray man turned around. There was about twenty meters between them, but he knew exactly what was going on. A prisoner holding something to someone's head. A colleague standing absolutely still beside them, waiting.

  "No alarm. No locked doors."

  Martin Jacobson swallowed.

  He had always wondered how it would feel. Now he knew.

  All these damn years waiting for an attack and all the damn anxiety that just this sort of situation might arise.

  Calm.

  That was how he felt.

  "No alarm! No locked doors. I'll shoot!"

  Principal Prison Officer Jacobson knew the security instructions for Aspsås prison by heart. In the event of attack: lock yourself in. Raise the alarm. He had many years ago helped to formulate the instructions that underpinned a prison culture with unarmed staff, and now for the first time was about to put them into action.

  He should first lock the door to the wardens' office from the inside. Then he should raise the alarm with central security.

  But the voice, he had listened to it, and the body, he had watched it, he had heard and seen and knew Hoffmann's aggression and he knew that the prisoner who was shouting and holding a gun was both violent and capable. He had read the prison file and the reports on an inmate who was classified as psychopathic, but his colleagues' lives, human lives, were so much more important than security instructions. So he did not stay in the office and he did not lock the door. He did not press his personal alarm nor the one on the wall. Instead, he approached them slowly just as Hoffmann had indicated that he should, past the first cell door where someone started to bang on it from the inside, a heavy monotonous sound that echoed in the corridor walls. A prisoner reacting to something that was going on out there and doing what the
y always did when they were angry or wanted attention or were just happy about something, anything that was out of the ordinary. Every door he passed, someone else began to knock, others who had no idea what was actually going on out here but were keeping up with something that was better than nothing.

  "Hoffmann,

  "Shut up."

  "Maybe we-"

  "Shut up! I'll shoot."

  Three guards. All sufficiently close now It would take at least a few minutes more before the ones out in the yard would come in.

  He shouted down the empty corridor.

  "Stefan!"

  Again.

  "Stefan, Stefan!"

  Cell 3.

  "Fucking snitch."

  The voice was vicious, ripping through words and walls.

  Stefan.

  A couple of meters away, a locked door, the only thing that separated them.

  "You're going to die, you fucking snitch."

  When he pressed the gun harder against the young warden's eyelid it slid on something.

  Something wet, tears, he was crying.

  "You're going to swap places. You go in there. Into Cell 3."

  He didn't move. It was as if he hadn't heard.

  "Open the door and go in! That's all you've got to do. Open the door, for fuck's sake!"

  The warden moved mechanically, pulled out his keys, dropped them on the floor, tried again, turned the key with great precision, moved once the door had slowly swung open.

  "Fucking grass. With his new mates."

  "You're going to swap places. Now!"

  "Bastard snitch. What-what the fuck you got in your hand?"

  Stefan was considerably taller and considerably heavier than Piet Hoffmann.

  When he stood in the cell doorway, he filled it-a dark and despising shadow.

  "Get out."

  He didn't hesitate. Sneering, he moved too fast, too close.

  "Stop!"

  And why should I do that? 'Cause some little snitch shit has a gun to a screw's head?"

  "Stop!"