Three Seconds

warden, principal officer and acting governor, he had finally been appointed as prison governor four months ago and had moved all his files into the shelves that were slightly longer and attached to the wall next to the sofas that were slightly softer. He had dreamt of having this office for so long that when he stood there with his dream in his hands, he didn’t know what to do with it. What do you do when you no longer have dreams? Escape? He gave a faint sigh as he looked out of the window at prisoners on a break in the yard: great groups of people who had murdered, abused, stolen and were sitting out there on the dry gravel, either reflecting or repressing their emotions in order to cope. He looked up over the wall to the small town with rows of white and red houses, stopped at the window that had for a long time been a family bedroom – now he lived there alone, he had made a choice, but he had made the wrong choice, and sometimes it is too late to right our wrongs.
     
    He sighed again without realising it. The evening and night had been filled with fury, the sort that crept up on you, started to ferment in your mind, then grew into frustration. It had started with a feeling ofirritation just by his temples when he heard the voice that he recognised, but had never spoken to before. He had been sitting at the kitchen table eating his supper as he always did, even though it was now only set for one, and he had almost finished when the phone rang. The general director had been friendly but firm when he told him that the detective superintendent from City Police who was coming to Aspsås in the morning to question a prisoner in G2, Piet Hoffmann, must not be allowed to do so. They must not meet under any circumstances, not today nor the next day nor the next. Lennart Oscarsson had not asked any questions and had not understood until later, when he was washing up one plate, one glass, one knife and fork, where the irritation that had turned into rage was coming from.
    A lie.
    A lie that had just been born.
    He had asked Ewert Grens to leave and had been on his way out when the alarm sucked all the air from the small room. A prisoner had been threatened, an emergency escort from G2 to the voluntary isolation unit.
    Piet Hoffmann.
    The name he had been ordered to lie about.
    Oscarsson bit his lower lip until it started to bleed. He chewed the wound with his teeth until it stung, as if to punish himself, maybe in order to forget for a moment the fury that made him want to open the window and jump out and run to the town and the people who knew nothing.
    The attack and the phone call to say that a policeman must not be allowed to carry out an interview were linked. There was more – he had been given another order – he was to allow a lawyer to visit a client last evening. They did come knocking every now and then when an imminent trial or recently pronounced sentence required a lawyer in the cell, but never on order and seldom after lock-up. This one had visited a Pole in G2 and was one of the lawyers paid to convey planted information, Oscarsson was sure of it.
    A late visit by a lawyer in the same unit as a reported attack the next morning.
    Lennart Oscarsson bit his lower lip again, his blood tasting of iron and something else. He didn’t know what he’d expected. Perhaps he had been naive, all the days he had looked up at the room where he wasnow standing and thought about the uniform he was now wearing. Whatever it was, he had never imagined that it would mean this.
    __________
    A cell with absolutely no personal belongings, just a bunk, a chair, a wardrobe, no colours and no soul. He had not left it since he got here and he wasn’t going to be staying. His death sentence had got here before him, it had been standing in the bathroom, waiting, with a kick to the hip and a mouth that whispered
stukatj
with the promise of more. If he was going to survive a week, he could only do it in another sort of isolation, solitary confinement, where prisoners were separated not only from the rest of the prison, but also from each other, locked into the cells every hour of the day.
     
    He stood on his toes when he pissed – the sink was a bit too high on the wall, but he wasn’t going to go out there, not to the toilets.
    Then he pressed a button by the door and held it down.
    ‘You want something?’
    ‘I want to make a phone call.’
    ‘There’s a phone in the corridor.’
    ‘I’m not going out there.’
    The