Three Seconds

by Anders Roslund

  He counted fifty-seven small red and yellow and green lights on panels that controlled the water and electricity; counted them one more time.

  No steps, no voices.

  He was certain that no one had heard a body landing on the floor in one of the rooms with a door straight out into the passage that linked Block G and central security. He grabbed hold of a washbasin with his hands and hauled himself up. He was dizzy but the sensation crawling around his body disappeared after a while and he trusted it again.

  He searched around in the unnerving darkness.

  There was a flashlight on a hook on the wall under a fuse box. He chose that rather than the ceiling light-he could turn on the flashlight and let his eyes slowly adjust to the light. It hurt more than he'd imagined when the dark became light and it's possible he cried our when it was thrown back at him by the mirror above the washbasin.

  He closed his eyes and waited.

  The mirror didn't attack him anymore.

  He saw a head with hair of varying lengths, big tangles that hung loose. He picked the scissors up from the floor and straightened it, cut it as short as he could, only a few millimeters left. The razorblade had also been in one of the desk drawers and later in the same trouser pocket. He leaned down and gulped some water from the tap and then wet his face and bit by bit peeled off the beard he had started to cultivate on his way out of the meeting in Rosenbad, following the decision to infiltrate inside Aspsås's high prison walls.

  He looked in the mirror again.

  Four days earlier, he had had long, fair hair and a three-week beard. Now he was cropped and clean-shaven.

  Another face.

  He let the water run, got undressed, and rubbed the piece of dirty soap that was lying on the washbasin. He washed his body and waited until it had dried in the warm room. He went back to the pipe and the sharp metal edges and with his hands felt around and caught the pile of clothes that a few days earlier had been worn by a principal prison officer called Jacobson, before becoming a makeshift pillow to save his neck and prevent the clothes from being soiled by body fluids.

  They were about the same height and the uniform fit almost perfectly. The trousers were perhaps a bit too short, the shoes perhaps a bit too tight, but it didn't matter, it didn't show.

  He stood by the door and waited.

  He should be frightened, stressed, anxious. He felt nothing. He had been forced to adopt this life state when the ability not to feel meant the same as survival: no thoughts and no longings, no Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus, everything he had to remind him of life.

  He had stepped into it as he passed through the prison gate.

  Only dropped it for two seconds.

  When the shot was about to be fired.

  He had stood by the window and adjusted the earpiece and for the last time looked over at the church tower. He had glanced at the rug that concealed a body covered with explosives and the barrel of diesel and gas close to their feet and the fuse that was resting in his hand. He had checked his position, he had to stand in profile, he had to force them to aim at his head so no forensic scientist would later question the absence of a skull bone.

  Two seconds of pure fear.

  He had heard the order to fire on the receiver. He had to stand there and wait. But his legs had somehow moved too early, they had moved without him intending to do so.

  Twice he had not managed.

  But the third time, the state of control had returned, no thoughts and no feelings and no longings, he was protected again.

  The shot was fired.

  He stood firm.

  He had exactly three seconds.

  The time it would take for the ammunition, in a wind strength of seven meters per second and a temperature of eighteen degrees celsius, to leave the church tower and at a distance of fifteen hundred three meters hit a head in a workshop window.

  I mustn't move too soon, I know the sniper's observer is watching me with binoculars.

  I count.

  One thousand and one.

  I hold the lighter in my hand with the flame naked and ready.

  One thousand and two.

  I take a swift step forward just as the bullet hits the window and I hold the flame to the fuse that is attached to the body under the rug.

  The shot had been fired and it was no longer possible to see the object through a window that had been seriously damaged.

  He now had two seconds left.

  The time it would take for the fuse to burn down to the detonator, pentyl and nitroglycerine.

  I run to the pillar that I chose earlier, just a couple of meters away, one of the square concrete blocks that carry the ceiling.

  I stand behind it when the last centimeters of fuse disappear and the stuff that is wound and taped around a person's body explodes.

  My eardrums burst.

  Two walls-the one behind the principal prison officer and the one into the office-collapse.

  The shattered window is blown out and falls down into the prison yard.

  The pressure wave finds me but is dampened by the concrete pillar and the rug over the hostage's body.

  I am unconscious, but only for a few seconds.

  I am alive.

  He had been lying on the floor with the howling pain in his ears when the heat from the explosion reached the diesel barrel and black smoke assaulted the room.

  He had waited until it had found its way out through the hole that had until recently been a window, creating a grayish-black wall that blanketed and hid much of the workshop building.

  He had taken the pile of uniform clothes that belonged to the older guard and thrown it out through the window, then jumped out himself, onto a roof that was only a few meters below.

  I sit without moving and wait.

  I am holding the clothes in my arms, I see nothing through the thick smoke and with no eardrums I struggle to hear, but I feel the vibrations of people moving around on the roof close by, policemen who are there to put an end to a hostage drama; one of them even runs into me without realising who I am.

  I don't breathe, I haven't since I jumped through the window, I know that breathing in this toxic smoke is the same as death.

  He had moved close to those who heard the steps without realizing that they belonged to the man they had just seen die, over the roof toward the shiny sheets of metal that looked like a chimney. He had climbed down into the hole, his arms and legs pressed hard against the walls until the pipe narrowed and it had been difficult to keep his grip, then he had let go, fallen the last bit down to the bottom of the ventilation shaft.

  I crouch down and crawl into the pipe that is sixty centimeters in diameter and leads back into the building.

  With my hands against the metal, I pull myself forward bit by bit, until I am above a room that is a substation and has a door straight out into the lower prison passage.

  I lie down on my back, the pile of clothes under my head like a pillow. I am going to stay in the ventilation shaft for at least three days. I will piss and shit and wait but I will not dream, I will not feel, there is nothing, not yet.

  He put his ear to the door.

  It was difficult to make out, but there might be someone moving about out there-wardens walking past down the passage, not prisoners at this time of day, it was after lock-up and they would all be in their cells.

  He ran his hand over his face and head, no beard, no hair, down his thighs and calves, no dried urine.

  The new clothes smelled of another person, some deodorant or aftershave that the old warden must have used.

  Movements out there again, more people passing.

  He looked at the watch. Five to eight.

  He would wait a little longer; it was the guards coming off duty and on their way home, he had to avoid them, they had seen his face. He stood waiting for fifteen minutes more, the dark substation and fifty-seven yellow and red and green lights around him.

  Now.

  Several of them, and
at this time of day, it could only be the night shift. The ones that clocked in after lock-up, who never met the prisoners and therefore didn't know what they looked like.

  His hearing was dramatically impaired but he was certain that they had passed. He unlocked the door, opened it, went out and closed it again.

  Three wardens with their backs to him about twenty meters down the passage that linked Block G with central security. One was roughly his age, the others much younger and presumably newly qualified, on their way to one of their first workplaces. At the end of May Aspsås prison was always affected by the large influx of summer temps who, after a mere one-hour introduction and a two-day course, put on their uniforms and started to work.

  They had stopped in front of one of the locked security doors that divided the passage up into smaller sections and he hurried to catch up. The older one was holding a set of keys and had just unlocked the door when he came up behind them.

  "Can you wait for me, please?"

  They turned around, looked at him, up and down.

  "I'm a bit behind."

  "On your way home?"

  "Yes:"

  The guard didn't sound like he suspected anything when he spoke; it had been a friendly question, between colleagues.

  "You new?"

  "So new that I haven't got my own keys yet."

  "Less than two days then?"

  "Started yesterday."

  "Just like these TWO. Third day for you all tomorrow. Your first key day." He followed behind them.

  They had seen him. They had spoken to him.

  Now he was just one of four wardens walking together down a prison passage toward central security and the big gate there.

  They parted at the stairs that went up to Block A and an eleven-hour shift. He wished them a good night and they looked with envy at their colleague who was about to go home for an evening off.

  He stood in the middle of the reception area. There were three doors to choose from.

  The first was diagonally opposite him-a visiting room for a woman or a friend or a policeman or a lawyer. It was there that Stefan Lygis had sat when he was told that there was an informant, a snitch in the organization, someone had whispered so someone must die.

  The second one was directly behind him, the door that opened on to the corridor that ended in Block G. He almost laughed-he could walk back to his own cell dressed in uniform.

  He looked at the third door.

  The way past central security and the ever-watchful TV monitors and numbered switches that meant that all the locked doors in the prison could be opened from the large glass box.

  There were two people sitting in there. At the front a fairly plump guard with a dark unkempt beard and a tie thrown over his shoulder. Behind him another, considerably slimmer, man with his back to the exit-he couldn't see his face but guessed he was around fifty and probably had some kind of senior position. He took a deep breath, stretched and tried to walk straight: the explosion that had taken both eardrums had also played havoc with his balance.

  "Going home in your uniform? Already?"

  "Sorry?"

  The guard with the round face and sparse beard looked at him. "You're one of the new ones, aren't you?"

  "Yes."

  "And you're going home in your uniform already?"

  "Just the way it worked."

  The guard smiled-he was in no rush, some more empty words and the evening would be shorter.

  "It's warm out. Darn nice evening."

  "I'm sure it is."

  "Going straight home?"

  The guard leaned to one side and moved a small fan that was standing on the desk, fresh air in the stuffy room. It was easier to see the other man, the one who was thin and sitting on a chair at the back.

  He recognized him.

  "I think so."

  "Someone waiting for you?"

  Lennart Oscarsson.

  The chief warden he had assaulted a few days ago in a cell in the voluntary isolation unit, a fist in the middle of his face.

  "Not at home. But we're meeting again tomorrow. It's been a while." Oscarsson snapped shut the file and turned around.

  He looked over at him.

  He looked but didn't react.

  "Not at home? I had one once, a family that is, but well, I don't know, it just, you know-"

  "You'll have to excuse me."

  "What?"

  "I haven't got time."

  His tie was still flung over his shoulder, there were bits of food on it, or maybe it was just wet and lying there to dry.

  "Haven't got time? Who does have time?"

  The guard pulled his beard, flared his nostrils, his eyes hurt.

  "But by all means. Go. I'll open for you."

  Two steps up to the metal detector.

  Then two steps to the door that was opened from inside the glass box.

  Piet Hoffmann turned around, nodded to the guard who was waving his hands around in irritation.

  Lennart Oscarsson was still there, right behind him.

  Their eyes met again.

  He expected someone to start shouting, to come running.

  But not a word, not a movement.

  The man who was clean-shaven with cropped hair and wearing a warden's uniform when he disappeared out through the gate in the prison wall may have seemed familiar but he didn't have a name-the summer temps seldom did-this one smiled when his face was brushed by the warm wind. It was going to be a lovely evening.

  Yet Another Day Later

  Ewert Grens was sitting at his desk in front of a bookshelf with a hole that could not be filled, no matter how hard he tried, and the dust lay in straight lines no matter how often he wiped it away. He had been sitting there for nearly three hours. And he would continue to sit there until he had worked our whether what he had just seen was something he should be concerned about or whether it was just one of those moments that seemed to be important but that lost all significance if it wasn't shared with someone else.

  The day had started with a beautiful morning.

  He had slept on the brown corduroy sofa with the window to the courtyard open and had been woken by the first trucks on Bergsgatan. He had stood for a while looking up at the blue sky and gentle wind and then, with a coffee cup in each hand, had gone to the elevators and the remand jail a couple of floors up.

  He couldn't resist it.

  If you were there early enough and it was clear enough, at this time of day, for a few hours, you could walk along the obvious line cast by the sun in the corridor of the remand jail. This morning he had walked where the floor shone most, making sure to pass the cells where he knew they were in custody for the third day with full restrictions. Ågestam had been careful to ensure that they would wait for most of the statutory seventy-two hours and later that day Grens would attend the court proceedings for the issue of arrest warrants for a chief superintendent, a national police commissioner, and a state secretary from the Ministry of Justice.

  The hole on the bookshelf It was as if it was growing.

  It would continue to do so until he had made up his mind.

  He had spent two days fast forwarding and rewinding tapes from the security cameras at Aspsås prison, frame by frame through locked doors and long passages and gray walls and barbed wire barriers back to those seconds that exploded with thick smoke and dead people. He had studied

  Krantz's forensic reports and Errfors' autopsy report and all Sven's and Hermansson's interviews.

  He had spent considerable time on two things in particular.

  A transcript of the dialogue between the sniper and the observer just before the shot was fired.

  Where they talked about a rug that Hoffmann had put over the hostage and tied with something that later in the investigation proved to be a pentyl fuse.

  A rug that encapsulates and directs the blast pressure downward, protecting anyone standing nearby.

  An interview with a principal prison officer called Jacobso
n.

  Where Jacobson described how Hoffmann covered the hostage's skin with small plastic bags filled with some sort of fluid, which later in the investigation proved to be nitroglycerine.

  Nitroglycerine in such large amounts that every part of the body is shattered and can never be identified.

  Ewert Grens had laughed out loud in the office.

  He had stood in the middle of the floor and looked at the video recorder and the transcripts on the desk and had continued to laugh as he left the police headquarters and drove out to Aspsås and the wall that dominated the small town. He had gone to central security and requested to see all footage from the prison security cameras from twenty-six minutes past two in the afternoon of the twenty-seventh of May and thereafter. He had driven back, got himself some fresh coffee from the machine and sat down to watch every moment that had passed since a lethal shot was fired from a church tower.

  Grens had already known what he was looking for.

  He had selected the camera that was called number fourteen and was installed about a meter above the glass front of central security. He had then fast forwarded and stopped to study every person who went out. Wardens, visitors, prisoners, suppliers, one head at a time as they passed, their hairline close to the lens; some showed their ID, some signed the register, most were waved through by a guard who recognized them.

  He got as far as a tape that was recorded four days after the shot was fired.

  Ewert Grens had known instantly that he'd found it.

  A man with cropped hair in a Prison and Probation Service uniform had looked up at the camera as he left at six minutes past eight in the evening, looked up for just too long, and then gone on.

  Grens had felt the pressure in his stomach and chest that was normally anger, but this time was something else.

  He had stopped the tape and rewound, studied the man who chatted with the guard for a while and then looked up at the camera in the same way that he had done three weeks earlier with another guard in another glass-fronted security office, the one in the Government Offices. Grens had followed the uniformed person through the metal detector and the gate and the wall via cameras number fifteen and sixteen and had observed that the person had problems with his balance: it had been an almighty blast, the sort that could burst your eardrums.