Three Seconds

friendly question, between colleagues.
    ‘You new?’
    ‘So new that I haven’t got my own keys yet.’
    ‘Less than two days then?’
    ‘Started yesterday.’
    ‘Just like these two. Third day for you all tomorrow. Your first key day.’
    He followed behind them.
    They had seen him. They had spoken to him.
    Now he was just one of four wardens walking together down a prison passage towards central security and the big gate there.
    They parted at the stairs that went up to Block A and an eleven-hour shift. He wished them a good night and they looked with envy at their colleague who was about to go home for an evening off.
    He stood in the middle of the reception area. There were three doors to choose from.
    The first was diagonally opposite him – a visiting room for a woman or a friend or a policeman or a lawyer. It was there that Stefan Lygás had sat when he was told that there was an informant, a grass in the organisation, someone had whispered so someone must die.
    The second one was directly behind him, the door that opened on to the corridor that ended in Block G. He almost laughed – he could walk back to his own cell dressed in uniform.
    He looked at the third door.
    The way past central security and the ever-watchful TV monitors and numbered switches that meant that all the locked doors in the prison could be opened from the large glass box.
    There were two people sitting in there. At the front a fairly plump guard with a dark unkempt beard and a tie thrown over his shoulder. Behind him another, considerably slimmer, man with his back to the exit – he couldn’t see his face but guessed he was around fifty and probably had some kind of senior position. He took a deep breath, stretched and tried to walk straight, the explosion that had taken both eardrums had also played havoc with his balance.
    ‘Going home in your uniform? Already?’
    ‘Sorry?’
    The guard with the round face and sparse beard looked at him.
    ‘You’re one of the new ones, aren’t you?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And you’re going home in your uniform already?’
    ‘Just the way it worked.’
    The guard smiled – he was in no rush, some more empty words and the evening would be shorter.
    ‘It’s warm out. Bloody nice evening.’
    ‘I’m sure it is.’
    ‘Going straight home?’
    The guard leant to one side and moved a small fan that was standing on the desk, fresh air in the stuffy room. It was easier to see the other man, the one who was thin and sitting on a chair at the back.
    He recognised him.
    ‘I think so.’
    ‘Someone waiting for you?’
    Lennart Oscarsson.
    The prison governor he had assaulted a few days ago in a cell in the voluntary isolation unit, a fist in the middle of his face.
    ‘Not at home. But we’re meeting again tomorrow. It’s been a while.’
    Oscarsson snapped shut the file and turned round.
    He looked over at him.
    He looked but didn’t react.
    ‘Not at home? I had one once, a family that is, but well, I don’t know, it just, you know—’
    ‘You’ll have to excuse me.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I haven’t got time.’
    His tie was still flung over his shoulder, there were bits of food on it, or maybe it was just wet and lying there to dry.
    ‘Haven’t got time? Who does have time?’
    The guard pulled his beard, flared his nostrils, his eyes hurt.
    ‘But by all means. Go. I’ll open for you.’
    __________
    Two steps up to the metal detector.
     
    Then two steps to the door that was opened from inside the glass box.
    Piet Hoffmann turned round, nodded to the guard who was waving his hands around in irritation.
    Lennart Oscarsson was still there, right behind him.
    Their eyes met again.
    __________
    He expected someone to start shouting, to come running.
     
    But not a word, not a movement.
    The man who was clean shaven with cropped hair and wearing a warden’s uniform when he disappeared out through the gate in the prison wall may have seemed familiar but he didn’t have a name – the summer temps seldom did – this one smiled when his face was brushed by the warm wind, it was going to be a lovely evening.

yet another day later
     

Ewert Grens was sitting at his desk in front of a bookshelf with a hole that could not be filled, no matter how hard he tried, and the dust lay in straight lines no matter how often he wiped it away. He had been sitting there for nearly three hours. And he would continue to sit there until he had worked out whether what he had just seen was something he