Three Seconds

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.'

Goransson 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?' Goransson 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 Goransson 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 Aspsas. 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. Goransson looked at it for a long time, he didn't normally go there and he wondered why.

'The consequences if he talks.'

'Sorry?'

Goransson 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.

Piet Hoffmann hadn't seen or heard the solid, long-haired guy in his twenties coming in, running toward him, but with guards from the riot squad outside he wasn't going to do much more, he just spat and whispered stukatj and closed the door when he left.

Death sentence. Already on his head.

He got up, coughed, and felt over his hip with one hand. The kick had caught him farther up than he first thought, broken a couple of his ribs. He had to get out of here. To the next level. Solitary confinement. Total isolation, only contact with the guards, never have any contact with other prisoners, twenty-four hours a day, locked in a cell with no way in and no way out.