Three Seconds

I don’t want to encourage you.’
    ‘I’m not going to smoke it. I’m just going to hold it.’
    He felt it between his fingers, sorely missed and familiar – now it offered calm when he most needed it.
    ‘We’ve got plenty of time.’
    ‘Four days. And one’s already gone. If Grens and Hoffmann meet … If Hoffmann talks … if—’
    Göransson interrupted himself. He didn’t need to say more. They could both visualise the limping detective inspector, aging and obstinate, the sort who never gives up, who pursues the truth as far as he can and then some more when he realises that a handful of colleagues have known it from the start. He would carry on and he wouldn’t stop until he found the ones who had protected it and then buried it.
    ‘It’s just a matter of time, Fredrik. An organisation that gets hold of that kind of information and has the means, will use them. It might take a bit more time when there’s no contact with fellow prisoners, but the moment will come.’
    The national police commissioner fingered the cigarette that wasn’t lit.
    It was so familiar, he would soon smell his fingertips, hold on to the forbidden pleasure a bit longer.
    ‘But, if you want, we can … I mean, being locked away like that, in solitary confinement, it’s a terrible place. No human contact. He should be moved back to the unit he came from, to the men he’s got to know – if he’s suffering down there, he should … well, he should be with other prisoners. On … humanitarian grounds.’
    He paused as he normally did in front of the window in the governor’s office and looked out over his universe: the big prison and the small town. He had never been particularly curious about what might be elsewhere, what could be seen from here was all he had ever wished for. The reflection of the sun made the window a mirror and he gingerly touched his cheek, nose, forehead. He felt tender, it was hard to see properly in the darkened glass, but looked like the blue around his eye was already changing shade.
     
    He had misread him, a desperation that he hadn’t recognised.
    ‘Hello?’
    The telephone on the desk had interrupted the feeling of his skin tightening.
    ‘Lennart?’
    He recognised the general director’s voice.
    ‘It’s me.’
    There was a faint crackling in the receiver, a mobile somewhere outdoors and a strong wind.
    ‘It’s about Hoffmann.’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘He’s to go back. To the unit he came from.’
    The crackling was now nearly inaudible.
    ‘Lennart?’
    ‘What the hell are you saying?’
    ‘He’s to go back. First thing tomorrow morning at the latest.’
    ‘There’s a serious threat involved.’
    ‘On humanitarian grounds.’
    ‘He is not going back to that unit. He should not even be in the same prison. If he’s going anywhere, it’s away, express transport, to Kumla or Hall.’
    ‘You’re not going to express him anywhere.
He’s going to go back
.’
    ‘A prisoner who has been threatened is
never
sent back to the same unit.’
    ‘It’s an order.’
    The two bunches of tulips on his desk had started to open, the yellow petals like lit lamps in front of him.
    ‘I was given an order to allow a late visit from a lawyer and I did it. I was given an order not to let a DS carry out an interview, and I did it. But this— I won’t do it. If 0913 Hoffmann is sent back to the unit where he was threatened—’
    ‘It’s an order. Non-negotiable.’
    Lennart Oscarsson bent down towards the yellow petals, wanted to smell something that was genuine. His cheek brushed against a flower and tightened again, it had been a powerful punch.
    ‘I personally would have nothing against seeing him go to hell. I have my reasons. But as long as I’m governor of this prison, it’s not going to happen. That would only mean death and there have been enough murders in Swedish prisons in recent years, investigations that no one has seen and no one has heard of and bodies that are eventually hidden away as no one is actually that interested.’
    The crackling again, whether it was the wind or laboured breathing into a sensitive microphone.
    ‘Lennart?’
    It was breathing.
    ‘You’ll do it. Or you’ll lose your post. You’ve got two hours.’
    __________
    He was lying on the iron bed with his eyes shut.
I’m very sorry, I have no idea who you are
. The people who were supposed to open the door and lead him back to reality had declared that he didn’t exist.
     
    He was officially condemned