Three Seconds

smoothly, I should be behind bars in the right institution within a fortnight.’
    Piet Hoffmann was sitting in a hotel lobby in the centre of Stockholm, but was in fact looking around the small cell in Österåker prison from ten years ago.
    Hideous days when voices screamed
urine test
and grown men lined up to stand in the mirrored room where gimlet eyes inspected their penises and urine. Horrendous nights with spot inspections, standing barely awake in your underpants outside the cell door while a gang of screws stripped, smashed and emptied everything and when they were done, just walked away from the chaos.
    He would deal with it this time. He was there for reasons greater than the humiliation.
    ‘When you’re in place, there’ll be two stages to the operation. In exactly the same way that we took one prison after the other in Norway from Oslo prison, or in Finland from Riihimäki, which was the first.’
    The Deputy CEO leant forwards.
    ‘You’ll knock out any competition that’s already there. Then we’ll deliver our products through our own channels. To begin with, the remaining seventy-eight kilos that Henryk just approved: you’ll use that to dump prices. Everyone inside has to learn that we are the dealers. Amphetamine for fifty kronor a gram instead of three hundred. Until we’ve got it all. Then we’ll raise it. Fuck, maybe we’ll do more than that.
Keep buying
. We’ll bump it up to five hundred, why not six hundred per gram.
Or stop injecting
.’
    Piet Hoffmann was back in the cramped cell in Österåker. Where drugs ruled. Where those who
owned
the drugs ruled. Amphetamine. Heroin. Even bread and rotten apples left for three weeks in a bucket of water in a cleaning cupboard – the minute they changed into 12 per cent moonshine, it was the owner of the cleaning bucket who ruled.
    ‘I need three days to knock out the competition. During that time I don’t want to have any contact and it’s my responsibility to take in enough gear.’
    ‘Three days.’
    ‘From day four, I want one kilo of amphetamine to be delivered once a week through Wojtek’s channels. It’s my job to see that it’s used.I don’t want anyone hiding or storing anything, nothing that resembles competition.’
    Hotel lobbies are strange places.
    No one belongs there. No one has any intention of staying there.
    The two tables closest to them, that had been empty until now, were suddenly transformed into two groups of Japanese tourists who sat down to wait patiently for the rooms they had booked, which weren’t ready yet.
    The Deputy CEO lowered his voice.
    ‘How will you get it in?’
    ‘That’s my responsibility.’
    ‘I want to know how you’re going to do it.’
    ‘The same way that I did at Österåker ten years ago. The same way that I’ve done it several times since in other prisons.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘With all due respect, you know that I’m capable, that I’ll take responsibility for it, and that should be enough.’
    ‘Hoffmann,
how
?’
    Piet Hoffmann smiled – it felt unnatural – for the first time since last night.
    ‘Tulips and poetry.’

The door wasn’t properly shut.
     
    He distinctly heard footsteps out in the corridor, and they were hurrying towards him.
    He didn’t want any visitors right now. He wasn’t going to share this with anyone.
    Erik Wilson got up from his chair and checked the door handle. It
was
already closed. He had imagined it, the steps scraping on the floor, getting louder and louder, were not there. He was more anxious, more stressed than he realised.
    Two meetings in a matter of hours.
    The longer one at number five with Paula’s version of the murder in Västmannagatan and his report from the meeting in Warsaw, and the considerably shorter one at number four when a plastic bag containing a bloody shirt changed hands.
    Wilson looked over at the locked cupboard by the wall on the other side of the room.
    It was in there. A murderer’s battledress.
    It wouldn’t stay there much longer.
    The steps out in the corridor had disappeared, as had the ones in his head. He looked at the computer screen.
    Name
Piet Hoffmann
Personal ID number
721018-0010
Number of hits
75
    His most important tool over the past nine years for developing the best infiltrator he’d ever heard of.
    ASPEN , the criminal intelligence database.
    He had started as soon as Piet was released from Österåker, his first day of freedom and first day as a newly recruited infiltrator. Erik Wilson