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 Osteraker in a separate vehicle.
Piet Hoffmann had never been inside the walls of Aspsas 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.
He had told her the truth and she would do with it what she wanted and he was so scared that in a couple of months he would no longer have anyone to miss, he would be nothing.
He had been staring at the white walls of the waiting room for four hours when two guards from the day shift opened the door and explained that a cell in G2 Left would be his home at the start of the long sentence. One in front and one behind as they started to walk through a wide passage under the prison yard, a few hundred meters of concrete floor and concrete walls, a locked internal door with a security camera and another passage and then steep stairs up to Block G.
He had left behind the days cooped up in remand at Kronoberg and the fast-track trial, where he did exactly what he told Henryk and the deputy CEO he would do.
He had admitted to possession of three kilos of amphetamine in the trunk of a rented car.
He had got the prosecutor to confirm that he was acting alone and was solely responsible for the crime.
He had declared himself satisfied with the judgment and had signed the document and thereby avoided any unnecessary wait for it to enter into force.
The following day, here he was walking through one of the passages in Aspsas prison on his way to a cell.
'I'd like to have six books.'
The warden in front of him stopped.
'Excuse me?'
'I'd like to borrow-'
'I heard what you said. I was just hoping that I'd heard wrong. You've only been here a few hours, you're not even in your unit yet, and you start talking about books.'
'You know it's my right.'
'We'll talk about that later.'
'I need them. It's important to me. Without books I won't survive this.'
'Later.'
You don't understand.
I'm not here to serve some shitty sentence.
I'm here to knock out all the drug dealers in your leaky prison in a matter of days and then take over myself.
Then I'll carry on working, analyzing, putting together the pieces until I know everything I need to know, and with that knowledge I will destroy the Polish organization's operations, in the name of the Swedish police.
I don't think you've understood that.
The unit was completely deserted when he arrived, sandwiched between two young and quite nervous guards.
Ten years had passed and it was a completely different prison, but it could well have been the same unit as back then: he was back on the corridor with eight cells on each side, the well-equipped kitchen, the TV corner with card games and thoroughly thumbed newspapers, the table tennis table at the far end of the small storeroom with a broken bat hanging in the middle of the tattered net, the pool table with the dirty green baize and every ball safely locked away… even the smell was the same: sweat, dust, fear, and adrenaline and perhaps a hint of moonshine.
'Name?'
'Hoffmann.'
The principal prison officer was as short as he was round and he nodded at the two guards from inside his glass box, indicating that from here on he would take charge.
'Haven't we met before?'
'Don't think so.'
He had small eyes that seemed to pierce everything he looked at and it was hard to imagine that there was actually a person in there.
'From your papers, I understand that you… Hoffmann, was it?… are someone who is familiar with the way things work in a place like this.'
Piet Hoffmann nodded silently at the principal officer. He wasn't there to tell some fat fucking inspector that he deserved a thrashing.
'Yes. I know very well how it works.'
The unit would be empty for another three hours, until they came back from the workshop or the library and classroom. He had time for a guided tour with the unit's principal officer to learn how and where he should piss and why lock-in time was seven thirty and not seven thirty-five, and still have plenty of time to sit down in his own cell and come to terms with the fact that from now on this was his home.
Piet Hoffmann positioned himself in the TV corner a few minutes before the others were due back. He had seen photos of all the other fifteen prisoners in the unit and knew their backgrounds, and if he sat here he could see every single one as they came in, but more important, he himself would be seen, it would be obvious that there was someone new in Cell 4, someone who wasn't scared, someone who didn't hide and wait for the right moment to sneak out and show his papers for approval, someone who had already sat down in someone else's favorite chair and taken someone's marked cards and started to play solitaire on someone's table without even asking if he could.
He was looking for two faces in particular.
