Three Seconds

tell the prisoner who had assaulted the governor to stop ringing the bell or to look forward to days in a straitjacket.
     
    He was cold again.
    They knew. He was a grass, he had a death threat. They would manage to get in here too. It was just a matter of time, as not even a carefully locked cell door could protect him. Wojtek had money and anyone could be bought when death was involved.
    The square hatch was some way up the door. It scraped and whined when it was opened.
    Staring eyes
.
    ‘You want something?’
    Who are you?
    ‘I want to make a phone call.’
    Screw?
    ‘And why should we let you phone?’
    Or one of them?
    ‘I want to ring the police.’
    The eye came closer, laughed.
    ‘You want to ring the police? And do what? Report that you’ve just assaulted a prison governor? Those of us who work here don’t have much time for that sort of thing.’
    ‘None of your fucking business why and you know that. You know that you can’t refuse me a phone call to the police.’
    The eye was silent. The hatch was closed. Steps disappeared.
    Piet Hoffmann got up from the cold floor and threw himself over the button on the wall, held it in, he guessed for about five minutes.
    Suddenly the door was pulled open. Three blue uniforms. The staring eyes that he now was convinced belonged to a screw. Beside him, another one, the same kind. Behind them, a third, with enough stripes for him to be a principal officer, an older man, in his sixties.
    He was the one who spoke.
    ‘My name is Martin Jacobson. I’m the principal officer here. Boss in this unit. What’s the problem?’
    ‘I’ve asked to make a phone call. To the police. It’s my bloody right.’
    The principal officer studied him – a prisoner in oversized clothes who was sweating and found it difficult to stand still – then looked at the screw with the staring eyes.
    ‘Roll in the phone.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘I don’t care why he’s here. Let him phone.’
    __________
    He crouched on the edge of the iron bed with the telephone receiver in his hand.
     
    He had asked for the City Police every time he got through. More rings this time – he had counted twenty for both Erik Wilson and Göransson.
    Neither of them had answered.
    He sat locked in a cell that had nothing other than an iron bed and a cement toilet bowl. He had no contact with the world outside or the other prisoners. None of the screws outside his cell door had any idea that he was there on behalf of the Swedish police.
    He was stuck. He couldn’t get out. He was alone in a prison where he had been condemned to death by his fellow prisoners.
    __________
    He undressed himself and stood there shivering. He waved his arms around and started to sweat. He held his breath until the pressure in his chest was more than pain.
     
    He lay face down on the floor, wanting to feel something, anything, that wasn’t fear.
    __________
    Piet Hoffmann knew as soon as the door into the corridor opened and then shut again.
     
    He didn’t need to see, he just knew – they were there.
    The heavy steps of someone moving slowly. He hurried over to the cell door, put his ear to the cold metal, listened. A new prisoner being escorted by several wardens.
    Then he heard it, a voice he recognised.
    ‘
Stukatj
.’
    Stefan’s voice. On his way to a cell further down the corridor.
    ‘What did you say?’
    The screw with the eyes. Piet Hoffmann pressed his ear even harder to the inside of the cell door – he wanted to be certain that he heard every word.
    ‘
Stukatj
.
It’s Russian
.’
    ‘We don’t speak Russian down here.’
    ‘
There’s someone who does.
’
    ‘Into the cell with you now, just get in!’
    They were here. Soon there would be more, every prisoner in solitary confinement from now on would know that there was a grass here, stewing in one of the cells.
    Stefan’s voice, it had been pure hate.
    __________
    He pressed the red button and he would continue to press it until the screws came.
     
    They had let him know they were there. Now it was just aquestion of when, of time. Hours, days, weeks, the pursuers and the pursued knew that the moment would come when there was no more waiting.
    The square hatch opened, but it was other eyes, the older principal officer.
    ‘I want—’
    ‘Your hands are shaking.’
    ‘For fuck’s sake—’
    ‘You’re sweating heavily.’
    ‘Telephone, I want—’
    ‘You’ve got a twitch in your eye.’
    He was still pressing on the button. A piercing