corduroy sofa. He started to leaf through the papers starting with the voice informing the police about a dead man in Vastmannagatan, through the following two weeks working at full capacity with access to all technical resources, to his trips to Copenhagen and Siedlce.
He swore again, maybe shouted at someone again.
They hadn't gotten anywhere.
He was going to lie on the floor until he understood whose voice he had listened to so many times, what it was he didn't understand and couldn't quite get hold of, why the feeling that the truth was close at hand, laughing at him, was so intense.
He heard the keys jangling.
Two guards unlocking and opening the cells at the far end, the ones with a view over the large gravel pitch, Cell 8 and opposite, Cell 16.
He braced himself, prepared himself for the twenty minutes each day that could mean death.
It had been a god awful night.
Despite having been awake for days, he had lain there, waiting for sleep that never came. They were there with him, Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus, they had stood outside the window and sat on the edge of his bed, lain down beside him and he had been forced to drive them away. They no longer existed; inside he had to stop feeling, he had a mission that he had chosen to complete and that left no room for dreaming-he had to suppress, forget. Anyone who dreamed in prison soon went under.
They were getting closer. The keys jangled again, Cell 7 and Cell 15 were opened and he heard a faint
He had eventually gotten up-when Zofia had disappeared and the dark outside was densest he had held the dread at bay with chin-ups and sit-ups and jumping on and off the bed with both his feet held together. There wasn't much space and he had hit the wall a couple of times, but it was good to sweat and to feel his heart beating in his rib cage.
His work had already begun.
In a matter of hours on that first afternoon he had earned himself the respect in the unit that he needed to continue. He now knew who was in charge of supplies and dealing, in which units and in which cells. One of them was here, the Greek in Cell 2; the other two were on separate floors in Block H. Piet Hoffmann would get in the first grams soon, the ones he was responsible for and that he would use to blow out the competition.
The guards were even closer, opened Cell 6 and Cell 14. Only a couple of minutes more.
The time after the cells were opened, between seven and seven twenty, was crucial. If he survived that, he would survive the rest of the day.
He had prepared himself in the way that he would prepare himself every morning. In order to survive, he had to assume that in the course of the evening or night, someone had found out about his other name, that there was a Paula who worked for the authorities, a snitch who was there to break the organization. He was safe as long as the cell was locked, a closed door would hold off an attack, but the first twenty minutes once the cell had been opened, after the first
'Good morning.'
The guard had opened the door and looked in. Piet Hoffmann was sitting on the bed and stared at him without replying-it wasn't how he felt, it was just something he said because the rules said he should.
The idiot guard didn't give in, he would stand there and wait until he got an answer, confirmation that the prisoner was alive and that everything was as it should be.
'Good morning. Now fucking leave me in peace.'
The guard nodded and carried on, two cells at a time. This was when Hoffmann had to act. When the last door was opened it was too late.
A sock around the handle, he pulled the door-that normally couldn't be locked or closed completely from the inside-toward him, jamming it by forcing the fabric of the sock between the door and door frame.
He put the simple wooden chair that normally stood by the wardrobe just inside the threshold, careful to make sure that it blocked the greater part of the doorway.
The pillow and blanket and trousers were made to look like a body under the covers, the blue arm of his training jacket a continuation of the body. It wouldn't fool anyone. But it was an illusion that would be given a fast double take.
Both the guards disappeared down the corridor. All the cells were unlocked and open now and Piet Hoffmann positioned himself to the left of the door, with his back to the wall. They could come at any moment. If they had found out, if he had been exposed, death would strike immediately.
He looked at the sock around the handle, the chair in front of the door, the pillows under the blanket.
Two and a half seconds.
His protection, his time to hit back.
He was breathing heavily
He would stand like this, waiting, for twenty minutes. It was his first morning in Aspsas prison.
There was someone standing in front of him. Two thin suit legs that had said something and were now waiting for an answer. He didn't reply.
'Grens? What are you doing?'
Ewert Grens had fallen asleep on the floor behind the brown corduroy sofa with an investigation file on his stomach.
'What about our meeting? It was you who wanted it this early. I assume that you've been here all night?'
His back ached a bit. The floor had been harder this time.
'That's none of your business.'
He rolled over and heaved himself up, using the arms of the sofa for support, and the world spun ever so slightly.
'How are you?'
'That's none of your business either.'
Lars Agestam sat down on the sofa and waited while Ewert Grens went over to his desk. There was no love lost between them. In fact, they couldn't stand each other. The young prosecutor and older detective superintendent came from different worlds and neither had any inclination to visit the other anymore. Agestam had tried at first, he had chatted and listened and watched until he realized it was pointless, Grens had decided to hate him and nothing would change that.
'Vastmannagatan 79. You wanted a report.'
Lars Agestam nodded.
'I get the distinct feeling that you're getting nowhere.'
They weren't getting anywhere. But he wouldn't admit it. Not yet.
Ewen Grens fully intended to keep hold of his resources, which Agestam had the power to remove.
'We're working on several theories.'
'Such as?'
'I'm not prepared to say anything yet.'
'I can't imagine what you've got. If you did have something, you'd give it to me and then tell me to shove off. I don't think you've got anything at all. I think it's time to scale down the case.'
'Scale down?'
Lars Agestam waved his skinny arm at the desk and the piles of ongoing investigations.
