Three Seconds

repeated it much louder, as if to drown out the banging, or perhaps because he needed to say it again,
he shot him through the eye
.
    __________
    He heard them storming up the stairs, and saw even more rushing over the prison yard. The two naked bodies on the floor twitched anxiously. He moved the gun from one face to the other, the eyes, reminding them: he needed some more time before they discovered him.
     
    ‘What’s this all about?’
    The older warden, crouched over on his knees, his joints aching intensely, didn’t say anything else but it was obvious that he was rocking back and forth to distribute the weight.
    Piet Hoffmann heard him but didn’t answer.
    ‘Hoffmann. Look at me. What is this all about?’
    ‘I’ve already answered that.’
    ‘I didn’t understand the answer.’
    ‘Not dying yet.’
    He leant his head back, face up, and looked at the revolver with one eye and Hoffmann with the other.
    ‘You won’t get out of here alive.’
    He looked at him, demanding an answer.
    ‘You’ve got a family.’
    If he spoke, became someone, changed from an object to a subject, a person who communicated with another person …
    ‘You’ve got a wife and children.’
    ‘I know what you’re doing.’
    Piet Hoffmann moved, walked behind the naked bodies, maybe to check that the plastic tape round their wrists was still in place, but probably to avoid the watching, demanding eyes.
    ‘You see, I have too. A wife. Three children. All grown up now. It—’
    ‘Jacobson? Is that what you’re called? Shut up! I just said in a friendly way that I know exactly what you’re fucking up to. I don’t have a family. Not now.’
    He pulled at the plastic which cut in deeper, bled some more.
    ‘And I’m not going to die, yet. If that means that you have to die instead, so fucking what. You’re just my protection, Jacobson, a shield and you’ll never be anything more than that. With or without your wife and children.’
    __________
    The principal officer from B2 had tried to make a connection with the colleague he had just released from Cell 3 a couple of minutes ago. A young man, not much older than his son, just covering for the summer, he hadn’t even been there a month yet. That’s the way it goes. Someone might spend their entire working life waiting for a morning like this. Others could experience it after only twenty-four days.
     
    Only the one sentence.
    He had repeated the same thing in answer to every question.
    He shot him, through the eye.
    The young warden was suffering from acute shock – he had seen a man die and had had a gun pressed to his eye, the circle on the soft skin still obvious. He had then sat and waited, locked inside a solitary confinement cell with death. There wouldn’t be any more words, not for a while. The principal officer instructed the guards who were nearest tolook after him, and carried on to the other colleague, the one who had been in Cell 6 and who was pale and sweaty, the one who whispered, but was perfectly audible.
    ‘Where’s Jacobson?’
    The principal officer put a hand on his shoulder, which was thin and trembling.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘There were three of us. Jacobson, he was here too.’
    __________
    The conversation had ended sometime ago.
     
    When the words dried up, he was irritated and hoped for more, something mitigating, calming, a continuation that assured him everything was fine now. But there wasn’t any more to say. The principal officer from B2 had explained all there was to explain.
    Two guards locked in. A dead prisoner.
    And an assumed hostage-taking.
    The prison governor hit the receiver against the desk and a vase of yellow tulips fell to the floor. A third warden, Martin Jacobson, had been taken by an armed prisoner serving a long sentence who had been in solitary confinement, a certain 0913 Hoffmann.
    He sat down on the floor, his fingers distracted by the yellow petals that floated in the spilt water.
    Of course he had put up a protest. Just as Martin had later put up a protest.
    I lied outright to a detective superintendent. I lied because you ordered me to. But this, I won’t do this.
    He tore the yellow petals to shreds, one at a time, small, porous strips that he dropped onto the wet floor. Then he reached over for the telephone receiver that was still hanging from the wire, dialled a number and didn’t stop talking until he was absolutely certain that the general director had understood every word, every