Three Seconds (29 page)

     “Command, this is car 9027. Over.”

    “This is command. Over.”

    “We require back-up for immediate arrest.”

    He heard the sirens closing in between the city buildings and guessed that the sound and blue flashing lights would be turned off somewhere on Fleminggatan.

    Two dark blue police vans stopped outside fifteen seconds later.

    He was prepared.

    “This is car 9027. Over.”

    “Describe the suspect.”

    “Piet Hoffmann. Very violent on previous arrests.”

    “Last observation?”

    “The entrance of Biljardpalaset. Sankt Eriksgatan 52.”

    “Appearance?”

    “Grey hooded top. Jeans. Fair hair. Unshaven. About one metre eighty tall.”

    “Anything else?”

    “Likely to be armed.”

    He didn’t try to run away.

    When the doors
police
were flung open at both ends of the deserted pool hall and several uniformed police ran in with
on the floor
drawn guns, Piet Hoffmann turned calmly round from the pool table, careful to keep both hands visable all the time. He
fucking well get down on the floor
didn’t lie down voluntarily but fell to the ground after two powerful strikes to his head and one more when bleeding he
fucking pigs
held his middle finger up in the air and then he couldn’t remember much more than a pair of handcuffs locking round his wrists, a kick in the ribs and the acute pain in his neck when it all stopped.

    Erik Wilson had been sitting in the car opposite the entrance to the Kronoberg garage when two dark blue police vans had passed and sped off in the direction of Sankt Eriksgatan. He had waited until they turned off their sirens and then he had driven up to the barrier by the attendant's office, shown his ID and rolled slowly toward the automatic door to the Police Authority's garage under Kronobergsparken. He had parked in a steel cage in front of the elevator up to the remand prison and from the driver's seat observed the steady stream of police vehicles going in or out.

    He had been waiting for half an hour when he rolled down both his windows so he could hear better, his whole body tense. He had tried to shake off the discomfort and dread but hadn't been particularly successful. He breathed in the damp gas-perfumed air and listened to a car stopping on the other side of the garage and someone getting out, then another, followed by sleepy footsteps in the opposite direction.

    Then he saw the large bay doors being pulled to one side.

    It had taken thirty-five minutes for eight specially trained policemen to locate and arrest one of the country's most documented and dangerous people.

    The dark blue van came in and he watched it approach the final couple of hundred meters before driving into the steel cage and parking about a car's length away.

If anything happens, abort your mission and ask for voluntary isolation. To survive.

    Two uniformed colleagues got out first. Then a man with a swollen face, gray hooded top, jeans and handcuffs.

    The police, who had been instructed to arrest a wanted and presumably armed dangerous criminal, had confronted him in the only way they knew how.

    With violence.

    "Hey, I don't like fucking faggot police touching me."

    Erik Wilson saw Piet Hoffmann suddenly turn toward the policeman standing nearest to him and spit in his face. The uniformed officer didn't say anything, show anything, and Piet spat again. A quick glance at his colleagues, who just happened to look away, then the policeman stepped forward and kneed Pier Hoffmann in the balls.

Only a criminal.

    He groaned in pain, and again after a kick to the stomach, then got up and with his hands locked behind his back was being escorted by four uniformed policemen to the elevator and the remand prison, when Erik Wilson heard him say loudly to the face he had just spat at:

    "Watch it, you prick. I'll get you. Sooner or later, we'll meet again. Sooner or later I'll put two bullets in you just like I did with that prick in Söderhamn."

Only a criminal can play a criminal.

PART THREE

Monday

    They were standing so close to him.

    Two of them behind him who would rub right up against his back if he took a step back in the confined space, two more in front, staring in his eyes, ears, nose, their every breath warm moisture on the skin of his face.

    They had been warned.

    All the wardens in Stockholm's Kronoberg remand prison had read the documents about one of Sweden's most dangerous criminals, and they had all heard the story that ten days ago, when he had just been arrested in the pool hall by Sankt Eriksgatan, he spat in the face of one of their colleagues as they walked through the parking lot and then threatened him with two bullets the next time they met.

    This time he was being transported elsewhere. The small elevator down to the metal cage in the garage under Kronobergsparken and then the transport bus to Aspsås prison. There were four of them, two more than usual, and the prisoner was in handcuffs and leg irons. They had even considered a waist restraint, but decided against it.

    He was the kind who hated everything and used what little intelligence he had to cause trouble; they had seen a few over the years, serious criminals with a one-way ticket to an early grave. The wardens kept a constant eye on the prisoner and each other; it was in the short distance from the elevator to the waiting bus that he had spat the last time, only to get an almighty knee in the balls in return when three of them happened to look the other way at the same time.

    They were waiting, prepared, he was going to make a move soon, they knew it.

    He was silent as they escorted him to the bus. He was silent as he got on. He was silent as he sat down on one of the back seats. The prisoner who hated everything and needed extra guards was silent as they drove through the underground garage toward the exit and security desk by Drottningholmsvagen. Then it started.

    "Where the fuck you going?"

    As he was being shoved onto the bus, the prisoner whose name was Hoffmann had noticed another guy already sitting there in equally baggy clothes with the Prison and Probation Service logo on his chest. He had stared at him, waited until he caught his eye.

    "Österåker."

    One of the other prisons to the north of Stockholm. The transport bus from the remand often took several prisoners to various prisons where they would serve their sentences.

    "And what the fuck you in for?"

    The prisoner whose name was Hoffmann got no answer.

    "One more time. What the fuck you in for?"

    "Assault."

    "What you get?"

    "Ten months."

    The wardens looked at each other. This wasn't good.

    "Ten months, eh? Guessed as much. You look like one of them. Little shits who beat up their women don't get much more than that."

    Hoffmann had lowered his voice to a growl and tried to move closer as the bus passed through the security barrier and headed north along Sankt Eriksgatan.

    "What d'you mean?"

    The prisoner who was going to Österåker had noticed the change in Hoffmann's tone and his aggression, and tried without realising to back away.

    "That you're the kind of guy who only hits women. The kind that the rest of us have a problem with."

    "How the fuck… how the fuck d'you know that?"

    Piet Hoffmann smiled to himself. He'd guessed right. And he knew that the guards were listening-that was what he wanted, them to listen and then to talk about the dangerous prisoner with threatening behavior who needed extra cover.

    "You can always tell a cowardly little prick who deserves to die."

    They were listening and Piet Hoffmann was sure that they'd already realized what his next move would be. They had all seen it before. It was always dangerous and a risk to transport pedophiles and wife beaters with other prisoners. He looked at the seat in front, his voice calm.

    "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.