hundred. Until we've got it all. Then we'll raise it. Fuck, maybe we'll do more than that.
Piet Hoffmann was back in the cramped cell in Osteraker. Where drugs ruled. Where those who
'I need three days to knock out the competition. During that time I don't want to have any contact and it's my responsibility to take in enough gear.'
'Three days.'
'From day four, I want one kilo of amphetamine to be delivered once a week through Wojtek's channels. It's my job to see that it's used. I don't want anyone hiding or storing anything, nothing that resembles competition.'
Hotel lobbies are strange places.
No one belongs there. No one has any intention of staying there.
The two tables closest to them, which had been empty until now, were suddenly transformed into two groups of Japanese tourists who sat down to wait patiently for the rooms they had booked, which weren't ready yet.
The deputy CEO lowered his voice.
'How will you get it in?'
'That's my responsibility.'
'I want to know how you're going to do it.'
'The same way that I did at Osteraker ten years ago. The same way that I've done it several times since in other prisons.'
'How?'
'With all due respect, you know that I'm capable, that I'll take responsibility for it, and that should be enough.'
'Hoffmann,
Piet Hoffmann smiled-it felt unnatural-for the first time since last night.
'Tulips and poetry.'
The door wasn't properly shut.
He distinctly heard footsteps out in the corridor, and they were hurrying toward him.
He didn't want any visitors right now He wasn't going to share this with anyone.
Erik Wilson got up from his chair and checked the door handle. It
Two meetings in a matter of hours.
The longer one at number five with Paula's version of the murder in Vastmannagatan and his report from the meeting in Warsaw, and the considerably shorter one at number four when a plastic bag containing a bloody shirt changed hands.
Wilson looked over at the locked cupboard by the wall on the other side of the room.
It was in there. A murderer's battledress.
It wouldn't stay there much longer.
The steps out in the corridor had disappeared, as had the ones in his head. He looked at the computer screen.
Name Piet
Personal ID number
His most important tool over the past nine years for developing the best infiltrator he'd ever heard of.
ASPEN, the criminal intelligence database.
He had started as soon as Piet was released from Osteraker, his first day of freedom and first day as a newly recruited infiltrator. Erik Wilson had himself met him at the gate, driven him the fifty kilometers to Stockholm in his own car and when he had dropped him off, he carried on straight to the police headquarters and recorded the first observation of 721018-0010 in ASPEN, intelligence that from that moment would be available to every police officer who logged on to find out more about Piet Hoffmann. A concise, but accurate account of how, on his release, the suspect was met at the gates of Osteraker by a car and two previous convicts and known criminals with confirmed links to the Yugoslavian mafia.
Over the years he had successively made him more dangerous
He listened again. More footsteps out in the corridor. The sound got clearer, louder, until they passed his door and slowly disappeared again.
He tilted the screen up.
KNOWN.
In two weeks' time, Piet would be given a long prison sentence and then take over enough power to control the drug supply, the kind of force that was treated with respect inside.
DANGEROUS.
Which was why Erik Wilson now wrote this in capital letters.
ARMED.
The next colleague to check Piet Hoffmann in the database would now be presented with a special page and a special code that was only used for a handful of criminals.
KNOWN DANGEROUS ARMED
Any patrol with access to this truth, which was their own intelligence after all, would know him to be extremely dangerous and confront him as such, and this reputation would then accompany him in the secure transport that would transfer him from custody to prison.
He held the mobile phone to his ear. According to the automatic voice that spoke every ten seconds, it was exactly half past twelve when the dark door with HOLM on the letter box opened from inside and Piet Hoffmann walked into a plastic-sheeted flat on the second floor. The parquet floor was uneven and creaked, probably due to water damage.
Number two.
Hogalidsgatan 38 and Heleneborgsgaran 9.
Erik Wilson had made some instant coffee, as he usually did, and as normal, Hoffmann did not drink it. A soft sofa in what must have been the TV room, transparent plastic sheeting to protect the fabric during the two-month renovation that rustled when they moved and after a while clung to the film of sweat on his back.
'We'll use this.'
Piet Hoffmann knew that they didn't have much time.
He could see it in Erik's eyes, for the first time, as they darted around the room, restless and unfocused. The man who had been his contact for nine years and who had never laughed or cried was stressed, and therefore doing what stressed people often do, trying to hide it, thus making it all the more obvious.
Hoffmann opened a small tin that once had been manufactured and sold for storing tea leaves, but which now contained the yellow, cohesive substance smelling strongly of tulips.
'Blossom.'
Erik Wilson carefully scraped off a piece with the plastic knife that Hoffmann gave him, put it to his tongue, felt it burning, and knew he would get a blister there.
