Three Seconds (38 page)

    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 police 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.