Three Seconds

The pillow and sweatshirt under the covers, his two and half seconds were over, his protection, his escape.

One blow.

He wouldn't manage more.

One single blow, right elbow to the carotid receptors on the left side of the throat, a hard blow right there and Stefan's blood pressure would rocket, he would collapse, faint.

His heavy body fell to the floor, blocking the door for the next pair of balled fists, a sharp piece of metal from the workshop, Karol Tomasz hit out in the air with it in order to keep his balance. Piet Hoffmann squeezed out between the doorframe and a shoulder that still hadn't quite fathomed where the person who was going to die was hiding. He ran out into the corridor between the two who were standing guard and on toward the closed door of the security office.

They know.

He ran and looked around, they were standing there.

They know.

He opened the door and went into the guards' room and someone roared stukatj behind him and the principal prison officer shouted get the hell out of here. He probably didn't shout anything himself, he couldn't be certain but it didn't feel like it, he stayed where he was in front of the closed door and whispered I want to be put in isolation, and when they didn't react, he said a bit louder I want a P18 and when none of the goddamn staring guards moved at all, in spite of everything he did scream, now, you fuckers, presumably that's what he did, I need to be in isolation now.

Ewert Grens sat on a chair in the visiting room and looked at a roll of toilet paper on the floor by the bed and a mattress that was covered in plastic and stuck our over the end of the frame-fear and longing that for one hour every month was distilled down to two bodies holding each other tight. He moved over to the window, not much of a view: a couple of crude bars edged with barbed wire and farther back, the lower part of a thick gray concrete wall. He sat down again, the restlessness that was always in him and never let him relax. He played with the black cassette recorder that stood in the middle of the table every time he came here to question people who hadn't seen or heard anything; he remembered the faces as they came closer and lowered their voices, stared at the floor, full of hate, until he shut off. He wasn't sure that any of the interviews he'd done in this room had ever really helped him to solve an investigation.

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.

Goransson 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 Goransson 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 Aspsas, 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?'

Goransson 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