Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

Stefan kept coming toward him, the open mouth, the dry lips, the warm breath. His face was too close, it was invasive, it was attacking.

  "Go on, fucking shoot. Then there's one screw less in the world."

  Piet Hoffmann's mind was blank as the heavyweight body approached him. He had wanted to swap hostages, threaten Wojtek rather than the Prison and Probation Service, but had underestimated the hatred. When Stefan broke into a run for the last few steps toward him, his brain wasn't working, only his fear gave him the drive to survive. He pushed the guard away and aimed the revolver at the hating eyes and fired, one single bullet through the pupil, the lens, the vitreous, to the soft mass of the brain, where it stopped somewhere.

  Stefan took one more step, still sneering, he appeared to be unaffected, but a second later he fell heavily forward and Hoffmann had to move to avoid finding himself underneath him, then he bent down toward him, pressed the muzzle to his other eye, one more bullet.

  A person lay dead on the floor.

  The thumping banging that had drummed persistently and the echo of the shot… suddenly, suddenly everything was silent.

  A strange, breathless silence.

  "You can go in now."

  He pointed to one of the younger men, but it was the older one, Jacobson, who answered.

  "Hoffmann, now let's-"

  "I'm not going to die yet."

  He looked at the three guards that he needed, but were in the way. Two were younger, shaking, close to break down. The older one was fairly calm, the sort who would carry on trying to intercede, but also the sort who wouldn't break down.

  "Go into the cell."

  Metal on eyelids that were crying, darkness only a finger-twitch away. "Get in!"

  The young warden went into the empty cell and sat down on the edge of the iron bed.

  "Close! And lock!"

  Hoffmann tossed the keys to Jacobson; not a word this time, no attempt to communicate, no false contact intended to confuse, generate trust, emotion.

  "The body."

  He kicked it, it was about maintaining power, keeping distance.

  "I want it outside Cell 6. But not too close, so that the door can still be opened."

  "He's too heavy."

  "Now. Outside Cell 6. Okay?"

  He moved the gun from his temple to his eye, to his temple from his eye. "Where do you think it will be when I pull the trigger?"

  Jacobson got hold of the soft arms that no longer had muscle reflex; the sinewy, elderly body pulled, dragged 250 pounds of death along the hard linoleum floor and Hoffmann nodded when it was positioned just so the cell door could be opened.

  "Open it."

  He didn't recognize him, they had never met, but it was the voice that had passed his cell yesterday and called him Paula several times, one of Wojtek's runners.

  "You fucking stukatj."

  The same voice, shrill as he stormed out, when he stopped in his tracks.

  "Jesus…"

  He looked down at someone lying at his feet, stock-still, lungs that weren't breathing.

  "You fucking bastard…"

  "Down on your knees!"

  Hoffmann pointed at him with the miniature gun.

  "Get down!"

  Hoffmann had expected threats, maybe contempt.

  But the man in front of him said nothing as he collapsed beside the motionless body and for a second Hoffmann stood still-he had been prepared to kill again, and was now standing in front of someone who obeyed.

  "What's your name?"

  The young warden, when he felt the pressure of the muzzle, had closed his eyes and cried.

  "Jan. Janne."

  "Janne. Get in there."

  Another person in a prison uniform sitting on the edge of yet another empty iron bed when Jacobson locked the door to Cell 6.

  Hoffmann counted quickly. It felt like eternity, but he had only just begun. Eight, maybe nine minutes had passed since he opened the door to the toilet and raised the gun, no more. Two of the guards were locked up, the third was in front of him and the fourth and the fifth would stay out in the yard for a while longer. But central security could choose at any moment to look at the cameras in this unit on their monitors, or guards from other units might pass. He had to hurry. He knew where he was going. He had been on his way there since he realized he was on his own, with a death threat, burned by some of the few who knew his purpose and code name; on his way to the place he had chosen a long time ago in order not to die if what shouldn't happen happened.

  They were standing close by. Just as close as they had to. Enough distance for him to be in full control but to avoid being overpowered, and the prisoner who still had no name was dangerous, he would kill if he could.

  "I want you to get that lamp there."

  He held his outstretched arm toward a simple standard lamp that was lit in one of the corners of the wardens' office and waited until Jacobson had put it on the floor in front of him.

  "Tie him up. With the extension cord."

  Hands behind the prisoner's back and Jacobson pulled the white cord until it pressed into the equally white skin. Hoffmann felt it, checked, then wound the cord around the warden's waist and they started to move up the stairs that seemed to be alive: closed unit doors held back loud exchanges between angry prisoners and the rattling clatter of plates being laid on the table and the voices of irritated card players and a lonely TV that had been left on full volume. One single scream, one single kick on a door and he would be caught. He moved the gun barrel between the prisoner's and the guard's eyes, they should know, they should know.

  They got to the top of the building, to the narrow corridor just outside the workshop.

  The door was open. All the lights in the large space were turned off.

  The inmates who worked here were still eating breakfast with an hour to go before the morning shift.

  "That's not enough."

  He had waited to command the prisoner down onto his knees until they were in the middle of the workshop.

  "Even lower. And bend forward."

  "Why?"

  "Bend forward!"

  "You can kill me. You can kill the fucking screw. But Paula, that's what your fucking pig friends call you, isn't it, you're still dead. In here. Sooner or later. Doesn't matter. We know. We won't let you go. You know that's the way it works."

  Hoffmann brought his free fist down on the prisoner's neck with force. He didn't know why, it was just what happened when he couldn't answer. After all, it was true. Wojtek's runner was right.

  "Take down some packing tape. Bind his wrists! And then pull off the cord!"

  Jacobson stood on his toes as he lifted a roll of the hard gray plastic packing tape that is used for cardboard boxes down from the shelves over the press machine. He had to cut two half-meter lengths and tape them around the prisoner's arms, tight, until it cut into the skin and made it bleed, then he had to rip the clothes from the kneeling prisoner and undress himself, each piece of clothing on the floor in two piles, then he had to turn round, his naked back to Hoffmann, the hard plastic around his own wrists as well.

  Piet Hoffmann had carefully remembered everything about the room that smelled of oil and diesel and dust. He had located the surveillance cameras over the drilling machine and the smaller pallet jacks, paced out the distance between the rectangular workbenches and the three large pillars that held up the ceiling, he knew exactly where the diesel barrel was and which tools were kept in what cupboard.

  The prisoner with no name and the gray-haired guard were on their knees, naked, with their hands behind their backs. Hoffmann checked again that they were properly bound, then lifted up both piles of clothes and carried them over to a workbench near the wall with the big windows facing the church. The receiver was in one of his front pockets. He put it in his ear, listened, smiled, and looked out of the window toward the church tower-he heard the wind blowing gently across a transmitter, it worked.

  Then the wind was drowned out.


  A loud, repetitive sound took over.

  The alarm.

  He hurried toward the piles of clothes, grabbed the plastic thing that was flashing red from the belt in the waist of the blue uniform trousers and read the electronic message.

  B.1.

  Solitary confinement. The unit they had just left. It was sooner than he had expected.

  He looked out through the window.

  Toward the church. Toward the church tower.

  He still had another fifteen minutes before the first police reached the outer wall. And another couple of minutes before the correctly trained staff were in the correct position with the correct weapons.

  The alarm had been raised by one of the principal officers who was on his

  way to the prison yard, but who on passing the closed door to the stairs had popped in to say morning and to check that everything was okay. The first guards now rushed down the dimly lit corridor, then all stopped at the same time, all looking at the same scene.

  A dead man lying on the floor.

  Persistent banging on locked cell doors from confused and aggressive prisoners.

  A pale and sweating colleague was released from Cell 6.

  The released colleague was agitated and pointed to Cell 3.

  Another imprisoned colleague was let out, a young man who was crying-he looked down at the floor and said something, he shot him, and then repeated it much louder, as if to drown out the banging, or perhaps because he needed to say it again, he shot him through the eye.

  He heard them storming up the stairs, and saw even more rushing over the prison yard. The two naked bodies on the floor twitched anxiously. He moved the gun from one face to the other, the eyes, reminding them: he needed some more time before they discovered him.

  "What's this all about?"

  The older warden, crouched over on his knees, his joints aching intensely, didn't say anything else but it was obvious that he was rocking back and forth to distribute the weight.

  Piet Hoffmann heard him but didn't answer.

  "Hoffmann. Look at me. What is this all about?"

  "I've already answered that."

  "I didn't understand the answer."

  "Not dying yet."

  The man leaned his head back, face up, and looked at the revolver with one eye and Hoffmann with the other.

  "You won't get out of here alive."

  He looked at him, demanding an answer.

  "You've got a family."

  If he spoke, became someone, changed from an object to a subject, a person who communicated with another person…

  "You've got a wife and children."

  "I know what you're doing."

  Pier Hoffmann moved, walked behind the naked bodies, maybe to check that the plastic tape round their wrists was still in place, but probably to avoid the watching, demanding eyes.

  "You see, I have too. A wife. Three children. All grown up now. It-"

  "Jacobson? Is that what you're called? Shut up! I just said in a friendly way that I know exactly what you're fucking up to. I don't have a family. Not now."

  He pulled at the plastic which cut in deeper, bled some more.

  "And I'm not going to die, yet. If that means that you have to die instead, so fucking what. You're just my protection, Jacobson, a shield and you'll never be anything more than that. With or without your wife and children."

  The principal officer from B2 had tried to make a connection with the colleague he had just released from Cell 3 a couple of minutes ago. A young man, not much older than his son, just covering for the summer. He hadn't even been there a month yet. That's the way it goes. Someone might spend their entire working life waiting for a morning like this. Others could experience it after only twenty-four days.

  Only the one sentence.

  He had repeated the same thing in answer to every question. He shot him, through the eye.

  The young warden was suffering from acute shock-he had seen a man die and had had a gun pressed to his eye, the circle on the soft skin still obvious. He had then sat and waited, locked inside a solitary confinement cell with death. There wouldn't be anymore words, not for a while. The principal officer instructed the guards who were nearest to look after him, and went on to the other colleague, the one who had been in Cell 6 and who was pale and sweaty, the one who whispered, but was perfectly audible.

  "Where's Jacobson?"

  The principal officer put a hand on his shoulder, which was thin and trembling.

  "What do you mean?"

  "There were three of us. Jacobson, he was here too."

  The conversation had ended some time ago.

  When the words dried up, he was irritated and hoped for more, something mitigating, calming, a continuation that assured him everything was fine now. But there wasn't anymore to say. The principal officer from B2 had explained all there was to explain.

  Two guards locked in. A dead prisoner.

  And an assumed hostage-taking.

  The chief warden hit the receiver against the desk and a vase of yellow tulips fell to the floor. A third warden, Martin Jacobson, had been taken by an armed prisoner serving a long sentence who had been in solitary confinement, a certain 0913 Hoffmann.

  He sat down on the floor, his fingers distracted by the yellow petals that floated in the spilled water.

  Of course he had put up a protest. Just as Martin had later put up a protest.

  I lied outright to a detective superintendent. I lied because you ordered me to. But this, I won't do this.

  He tore the yellow petals to shreds, one at a time, small, porous strips that he dropped onto the wet floor. Then he reached over for the telephone receiver that was still hanging from the wire, dialed a number and didn't stop talking until he was absolutely certain that the general director had understood every word, every insinuation.

  "I want an explanation."

  A cough. That was all.

  "Pål, an explanation!"

  Another cough. And nothing more.

  "You call me at home late at night and order me to move a prisoner back to the unit where he was threatened, and no questions. You tell me that it has to happen by this morning at the latest. Right now, Pål, that prisoner has a loaded gun aimed at one of my employees. Explain the connection between your order and the hostage-taking. Or I'll be forced to ask someone else the same questions."

  It was warm in the security office that was part of the entrance to Aspsås prison and was called central security, just as it is in every prison in Sweden. The warden in a creased blue uniform, who was called Bergh, was sweating despite the fan on the table right behind him that made any loose paper and his thin fringe flutter. So he turned around and looked for the towel that hung in the space between the red and green buttons on the control panel and the sixteen TV monitors.

  Naked bodies.

  The resolution of the black-and-white image wasn't great, and it flickered a bit, but he was sure.

  The picture on the screen closest to the towel showed two naked bodies on a floor and a man wearing prison-issue clothes holding something to their heads.

  He looked up at the beautiful blue sky. A few wispy clouds, a pleasant sun and a warm breeze. It was a lovely summer day. Apart from the sound of the sirens from the first police car, two uniformed officers in front, both from Aspsås police district.

  "Oscarsson…?"

  The governor of Aspsås prison was standing by the main gate in the asphalt garage, the concrete wall like an unpainted gray set behind him. "What the hell-"

  "He's already shot someone."

  "Oscarsson?"

  "And threatened to do it again."

  They were in the front with the windows rolled down: a young policewoman whom Lennart Oscarsson had never seen before sitting beside a sergeant of about his own age, Rydén-they didn't know each other, but knew of each other, one of the few policemen who had served in Aspsås for as long as Oscarsson had worked at the prison.

  They turned off
the blue light and got out.

  "Who?"

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

  "Piet Hoffmann. Thirty-six years old. Ten years for drugs offenses.

  According to our records, extremely dangerous, classified psychopath, violent." A sergeant from the Aspsås district who had been to the large prison enough times to know his way round.

  "I don't understand. Block B. Solitary confinement. And armed?" He's going back. To G2. By tomorrow morning at the latest.

  "We don't understand it either."

  "But the gun? For Christ's sake, Oscarsson… how? Where from-?" "I don't know. I don't know."

  Rydén looked at the concrete wall, over it and at what he knew was the second floor and roof of Block B.

  "I need to know more. What kind of gun?"

  Lennart Oscarsson sighed.

  "According to the warden who was threatened-he was confused, in shock, but he described some kind of… miniature pistol."

  "Pistol? Or revolver?"

  "What's the difference?"

  "With a magazine? Or a rotating cylinder?"

  "I don't know."

  Rydén's gaze lingered on the roof of Block B.

  "A hostage taking. A violent, dangerous convict."

  He shook his head.

  "We need a completely different kind of weapon. Different knowledge. We need policemen who are specially trained for this."

  He went over to the car, a hand in through the open window. He could just reach the radio microphone.

  "I'll contact the inspector on duty at the CCC. I'll ask them to send the national task force."

  The dirty floor was hard and cold against his bare lower leg.

  Martin Jacobson moved carefully, tried to rock his body back, pain pressing on his joints. Crumpled, bent forward, hands behind their backs, they had been kneeling beside each other since they came into the main workshop. He shot a look at the prisoner who was so close he could feel his breath. He couldn't remember his name, it was seldom that those who were locked up in solitary confinement became individuals. Central European, he was sure of that, big, and his hate was tangible, there was bad blood between them, something old-when their eyes locked, he spat, sneered, and Hoffmann had gotten tired of him screaming in a language that Jacobson didn't understand, had kicked him in the cheek and wound the sharp plastic tape around his legs as well.