Three Seconds

way to raise an alarm.
    They waited. They did precisely what he said. They knew that he had nothing to lose, it was obvious.
    One more.
    One more person who could move around freely in the corridor. Hoffmann looked over towards the wardens’ office. The face was still turned away, the neck bent forwards, as if he was reading.
    ‘Get up.’
    The older, grey man turned round. There was about twenty metres between them, but he knew exactly what was going on. A prisoner holding something to someone’s head. A colleague standing absolutely still beside them, waiting.
    ‘No alarm. No locked doors.’
    Martin Jacobson swallowed.
    He had always wondered how it would feel. Now he knew.
    All these bloody years waiting for an attack and all the bloody anxiety that just this sort of situation might arise.
    Calm.
    That was how he felt.
    ‘No alarm! No locked doors.
I’ll shoot!
’
    Principal Prison Officer Jacobson knew the security instructions for Aspsås prison off by heart.
In the event of attack: lock yourself in. Raise the alarm.
He had many years ago helped to formulate the instructions that underpinned a prison culture with unarmed staff, and now for the first time was about to put them into action.
    He should first lock the door to the wardens’ office from the inside.
    Then he should raise the alarm with central security.
    But the voice, he had listened to it, and the body, he had watched it, he had heard and seen and knew Hoffmann’s aggression and he knew that the prisoner who was shouting and holding a gun was both violent and capable. He had read the prison file and the reports on an inmate who was classified as psychopathic, but his colleagues’ lives, human lives, were so much more important than security instructions. So he did not stay in the office and he did not lock the door. He did not press his personal alarm nor the one on the wall. Instead, he approached them slowly just as Hoffmann had indicated that he should, past the first cell door where someone started to bang on it from the inside, a heavy monotonous sound that echoed in the corridor walls. A prisoner reacting to something that was going on out there and doing what they always did when they were angry or wanted attention or were just happy about something, anything that was out of the ordinary. Every door he passed, someone else began to knock, others who had no idea what was actually going on out here but were keeping up with something that was better than nothing.
    ‘Hoffmann, I—’
    ‘Shut up.’
    ‘Maybe we—’
    ‘Shut up!
I’ll shoot.
’
    Three screws. All sufficiently close now. It would take at least a few minutes more before the ones out in the yard would come in.
    He shouted down the empty corridor.
    ‘Stefan!’
    Again.
    ‘Stefan, Stefan!’
    Cell 3.
    ‘
Fucking grass
.’
    The voice was vicious, ripping through words and walls.
    Stefan.
    A couple of metres away, a locked door, the only thing that separated them.
    ‘
You’re going to die, you fucking grass
.’
    When he pressed the gun harder against the young warden’s eyelid it slid on something.
    Something wet, tears, he was crying.
    ‘You’re going to swap places. You go in there. Into Cell 3.’
    He didn’t move. It was as if he hadn’t heard.
    ‘Open the door and go in! That’s all you’ve got to do. Open the door, for fuck’s sake!’
    The warden moved mechanically, pulled out his keys, dropped them on the floor, tried again, turned the key with great precision, moved once the door had slowly swung open.
    ‘
Fucking grass. With his new mates.
’
    ‘You’re going to swap places. Now!’
    ‘
Bastard snitch. What – what the fuck you got in your hand
?’
    Stefan was considerably taller and considerably heavier than Piet Hoffmann.
    When he stood in the cell doorway, he filled it – a dark and despising shadow.
    ‘Get out.’
    He didn’t hesitate. Sneering, he moved too fast, too close.
    ‘Stop!’
    ‘And why should I do that? Cos some little grass shit has a gun to a screw’s head?
’
    ‘Stop!’
    Stefan kept coming towards him, the open mouth, the dry lips, the warm breath. His face was too close, it was invasive, it was attacking.
    ‘
Go on, fucking shoot. Then there’s one screw less in the world
.’
    Piet Hoffmann’s mind was blank as the heavyweight bodyapproached him. He had wanted to swap hostages, threaten Wojtek rather than the Prison and Probation Service, but had underestimated the hatred. When Stefan broke into a run for