Three Seconds

learnt not to use drug addicts as they were unreliable and often seemed to throw up by themselves long before they reached their destination.
    Inside, the anger and frustration and dread, more emotions, more thoughts.
    There hadn’t been any operation.
But there had been a delivery over which he had no control.
    There hadn’t been any results.
The Poles should have been back in Warsaw by now, his tool for mapping and identifying another partner.
    There hadn’t been any deal
. They had shipped in fifteen mules unnecessarily, ten experienced ones who they supplied with two hundred capsules each and five new ones who took one hundred and fifty capsules each, in total more than twenty-seven kilos of freshly produced amphetamine which, once it had been cut for sale, would come to eighty-one kilos with a street value of one hundred and fifty kronor per gram.
    But without any back-up, there was no operation, no result, not even a deal.
    It was an unchecked delivery that had ended in murder.
    Piet Hoffmann gave the young, wan woman called Irina a brief nod. The money had been in his trouser pocket since the morning, counted and rolled up in bundles. He pulled out the last bundle and flicked through the banknotes so she could see it was all there. She was one of the new ones and didn’t yet have the capacity that the organisation expected. She had only delivered fifteen hundred grams on her firsttrip, which would be three times as much when cut to its sellable form, worth a total of six hundred and seventy-five thousand kronor.
    ‘Your four per cent. Twenty-seven thousand kronor. But I’ve rounded it up to three thousand euros. And if you dare to swallow more next time, you’ll earn more. Your stomach stretches a little each time.’
    She was pretty. Even when her face was pale and her hairline sweaty. Even when she had been on her knees in a three-room flat in Sweden, puking up her guts for a couple of hours.
    ‘And my tickets.’
    Piet Hoffmann nodded to Jerzy who took out two tickets from the inner pocket of his dark jacket. One for the train from Stockholm to Ystad and one for the ferry from Ystad to Ś winouj ś cie. He held them out to her, and she was just about to take them when he pulled back his hand and smiled. He waited a bit then held them out again, and just when she was about to take them, he pulled back his hand, again.
    ‘For fuck’s sake, she’s earned them!’
    Hoffmann snatched the tickets from him and gave them to her.
    ‘We’ll be in touch. When we need your help again.’
    The anger, the frustration, the dread.
    They were finally alone in the flat that functioned as an office for one of Stockholm’s security firms.
    ‘This was my operation.’
    Piet Hoffmann took a step closer to the man who had shot and killed a person that morning.
    ‘
I
am the one who speaks the language and
I
am the one who gives the orders in this country.’
    It was more than anger. It was rage. He had contained it since the shooting. First they had to take care of the mules, empty them, secure the delivery. Now he could release it.
    ‘If anyone is going to shoot, it’s on my order
and only my
order.’
    He wasn’t sure where it was coming from, why it was so intense. If it was disappointment that a business partner had not materialised. If it was frustration because a person who probably had the same brief as he did had been killed without reason.
    ‘And the gun, where the fuck is it?’
    Mariusz pointed at his chest, to the inner pocket of his jacket.
    ‘You murdered someone. You can get life for that. And you’re so fucking stupid that you’ve still got the gun in your pocket?’
    Rage and something else tearing at him.
You should have been reporting back to Poland
. He blocked out the feeling that might equally be fear, took a step towards the man who was smiling, pointing at his inner pocket, and stopped when they were face to face.
Play your role
. That was all that mattered, power and respect, taking and never letting go.
Play your role or die
.
    ‘He was a policeman.’
    ‘And how the fuck d’you know that?’
    ‘He said so.’
    ‘And since when did you speak Swedish?’
    Piet Hoffmann took measured breaths. He realised that he was irritated and tired as he walked over to the round kitchen table and the metal bowl that contained two thousand, seven hundred and forty-nine regurgitated and cleaned capsules: a good twenty-seven kilos of pure amphetamine.
    ‘He said police. I heard it. You heard