Three Seconds

the extension lead.’
    Hands behind the prisoner’s back and Jacobson pulled the white lead until it pressed into the equally white skin. Hoffmann felt it, checked, then wound the lead round the warden’s waist and they started to move up the stairs that seemed to be alive: closed unit doors held back loud exchanges between angry prisoners and the rattling clatter of plates being laid on the table and the voices of irritated card players and a lonely TV that had been left on full volume. One single scream, one single kick on a door and he would be caught. He moved the gun barrel between the prisoner’s and the screw’s eyes, they should know, they should know.
    They got to the top of the building, to the narrow corridor just outside the workshop.
    The door was open. All the lights in the large space were turned off.
    The inmates who worked here were still eating breakfast with an hour to go before the morning shift.
    ‘That’s not enough.’
    He had waited to command the prisoner down onto his knees until they were in the middle of the workshop.
    ‘Even lower. And bend forwards.’
    ‘
Why?
’
    ‘Bend forwards!’
    ‘
You can kill me. You can kill the fucking screw. But Paula, that’s what your fucking pig friends call you, isn’t it, you’re still dead. In here. Sooner or later. Doesn’t matter. We know. We won’t let you go. You know that’s the way it works.
’
    Hoffmann brought his free fist down on the prisoner’s neck with force. He didn’t know why, it was just what happened when he couldn’t answer. After all, it was true. Wojtek’s runner was right.
    ‘Take down some packing band. Bind his wrists! And then pull off the flex!’
    Jacobson stood on his toes as he lifted a roll of the hard grey plastic packing band that is used for cardboard boxes down from the shelves over the press machine. He had to cut two half-metre lengths and tape them round the prisoner’s arms, tight, until it cut into the skin and made it bleed, then he had to rip the clothes from the kneeling prisoner and undress himself, each piece of clothing on the floor in two piles, then he had to turn round, his naked back to Hoffmann, the hard plastic around his own wrists as well.
    Piet Hoffmann had carefully remembered everything about the room that smelt of oil and diesel and dust. He had located the surveillance cameras over the drilling machine and the smaller pallet jacks, paced out the distance between the rectangular workbenches and the three large pillars that held up the ceiling, he knew exactly where the diesel barrel was and which tools were kept in what cupboard.
    The prisoner with no name and the grey-haired guard were on their knees, naked, with their hands behind their backs. Hoffmann checked again that they were properly bound, then lifted up both piles of clothes and carried them over to a workbench near the wall with the big windows facing the church. The receiver was in one of his front pockets. He put it in his ear, listened, smiled, and looked out of the window towards the church tower – he heard the wind blowing gently across a transmitter, it worked.
    Then the wind was drowned out.
    A loud, repetitive sound took over.
    The alarm.
    He hurried towards the piles of clothes, grabbed the plastic thing that was flashing red from the belt in the waist of the blue uniform trousers and read the electronic message.
    B1.
    Solitary confinement. The unit they had just left. It was sooner than he had expected.
    He looked out through the window.
    Towards the church. Towards the church tower.
    He still had another fifteen minutes before the first police reached the outer wall. And another couple of minutes before the correctly trained staff were in the correct position with the correct weapons.
    __________
    The alarm had been raised by one of the principal officers who was on his way to the prison yard, but who on passing the closed door to the stairs had popped in to say
morning
and to check that everything was OK. The first guards now rushed down the dimly lit corridor, then all stopped at the same time, all looking at the same scene.
     
    A dead man lying on the floor.
    Persistent banging on locked cell doors from confused and aggressive prisoners.
    A pale and sweating colleague was released from Cell 6.
    The released colleague was agitated and pointed to Cell 3.
    Another imprisoned colleague was let out, a young man who was crying – he looked down at the floor and said something,
he shot him
, and then