Three Seconds

pitch that echoed in the corridor.
    ‘Finger off the button, Hoffmann. You’ve got to calm down. And before I do anything … I want to know what’s up.’
    Piet Hoffmann lowered his hand. It was eerily quiet around them.
    ‘I have to make another phone call.’
    ‘You just made one.’
    ‘The same number. Until I get an answer.’
    The trolley with the phone and telephone directory on it was wheeled in and the grey-haired principal officer dialled the number he knew off by heart. He watched the prisoner’s face the whole time: the spasms in the muscles around his eyes, his forehead and hairline that were shiny and dripping, a person who was fighting his own fear as he waited for a phone that was not answered.
    ‘You’re not looking good.’
    ‘I have to make another call.’
    ‘You can do later.’
    ‘I have to—’
    ‘You didn’t get an answer. You can call again later.’
    Piet Hoffmann didn’t let go of the receiver. He held it in his hands that were shaking as he met the eyes of the warden.
    ‘I want my books.’
    ‘Which books?’
    ‘In my cell. In G2. I have the right to have five books down here. I want two of them. I can’t just sit here staring at the walls. They’re on my bedside table.
Nineteenth Century Stockholm
and
The Marionettes
. I want them here, now.’
    The prisoner didn’t shake as much when he talked about his books, he calmed down.
    ‘Poetry?’
    ‘You got a problem with that?’
    ‘Not often that it’s read down here.’
    ‘I need it. It helps me to believe in the future.’
    The flush on the prisoner’s face had started to recede.
    ‘
Then suddenly it hits me that the ceiling, my ceiling, is someone else’s floor.
’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Ferlin.
Barefooted Child.
If you like poetry, I can—’
    ‘Just get me my books.’
    The older warden said nothing, just pulled the trolley out of the cell and locked the heavy door. It was quiet again. Piet Hoffmann stayed on the cold floor and wiped his wet brow. He had twitches and spasms, he was shaking, he was sweating. He hadn’t realised that it was visible, his fear.

He had moved from the floor to the bed and lain down on the thin mattress that didn’t have any sheets or covers. He was freezing and had curled up in his stiff, oversized clothes and eventually fallen asleep, dreamt that Zofia was running in front of him and he couldn’t get close to her no matter how much he tried, her hand disintegrated when he touched it, she shouted and he answered but she couldn’t hear him, his voice dwindled to nothing and she got smaller and smaller, further and further away until she disappeared.
     
    He was woken by noise outside in the corridor.
    Someone was being escorted to the bathroom or the cage for some air, someone who had said something. He went over to the door, ear to the square hatch. It was another voice this time, Swedish, no accent, a voice that he hadn’t heard before.
    ‘
Paula, where are you?
’
    He was sure that he’d heard it right.
    ‘
Paula, you’re not hiding are you?
’
    The warden with the eyes told the voice to shut up.
    It had shouted in no particular direction, but just outside his cell, selected a specific listener.
    Piet Hoffmann sank down behind the door, sat there with his chest and chin against his knees, his legs weren’t working.
    Someone had exposed him as a
stukatj
last night, he had been given a death sentence. But … Paula … he hadn’t understood it, not until now, that this someone had also known his code name. Paula. Christ … there were only four people who knew the code name Paula. Erik Wilson had made it up. Chief Inspector Göransson had approved it. Only those two, for many years, only those two. After the meeting in Rosenbad, two more. The national police commissioner. The state secretary. No one else.
    Paula.
    It was one of those four.
    It was one of them, his protection, his escape – one of them had burnt him.
    ‘
Paula, we want to meet you so much.
’
    The same voice, further away now towards the showers, then the same tired shut up from the wardens who didn’t understand.
    Piet Hoffmann held his legs even tighter, pressed them into his body.
    He was already everyone’s quarry. He was a grass in a prison where informants were hated as much as sex offenders.
    Someone banged on their door.
    Someone screamed
stukatj
on the other side.
    Soon it would be as it always was when the shared hate was focused on one locked cell door. First, two who banged, then three