Three Seconds

When you’ve asked to be put in isolation, once you have that protection, contact us and wait for a week. That’s the time we’ll need to get the papers sorted for someone to come and get you out.’
    He opened the black briefcase that was standing by his feet and put two folders on the coffee table between them. A new section from the Swedish National Police Board’s criminal records and an equally new interrogation transcript which was now included in the documentation of a ten-year-old preliminary investigation.
INTERROGATING OFFICER JAN ZANDER (IO): A nine millimetre Radom.
PIET HOFFMANN (PH): Right.
IO: When you were arrested. Recently fired. Two bullets were missing from the magazine.
PH: If you say so.
    Piet Hoffmann read through the amended documents in silence.
     
‘Five years.’
‘Yes.’
‘Attempted murder? Aggravated assault on an officer?’
‘Yes.’
IO: Two shots. Several witnesses confirm it.
PH: (silence)
IO: Several witnesses in the block of flats on Kaptensgatan in Söderhamn whose windows face the lawn where you fired two shots at Constable Dahl.
PH: Söderhamn? There, I’ve never been there.
    Erik Wilson had worked with each little piece in detail so that, all together, it would add up to a credible and tenable background.
     
    ‘Does it— Do you think it’ll work?’
    Any change to a judgement in a criminal record always required a new hearing for the investigation that had once taken place, and new entries in the Prison and Probation Service files from the prison where the sentence was served, according to the changes.
    ‘It works.’
    ‘According to the judgement and preliminary investigation records,you hit a police officer in the face three times with a loaded Radom pistol and didn’t stop until he fell unconscious to the ground.’
IO: You tried to kill a police officer on duty. One of my colleagues. I want to know why the hell you did that?
PH: Is that a question?
IO: I want to know why!
PH: I never shot at a policeman in Söderhamn. Because I never went to Söderhamn. But if I had been there and if I had shot at your colleague it would have been because I don’t particularly like the police.
    ‘You then turned the gun, cocked it and fired two shots. One hit him in the thigh. The other in the left upper arm.’
     
    Wilson leant back against the plastic.
    ‘No one who looks at your background and has access to parts of your criminal record or the preliminary investigation will be in any doubt. I also added a note further down about handcuffs. You were in handcuffs the whole time you were being questioned. For security reasons.’
    ‘That’s good.’
    Piet Hoffmann folded together the two pieces of paper.
    ‘Give me a couple of minutes. I just want to go through them once more. Then I’ll know it.’
    He held the court judgement that had never been pronounced and the hearing that had never taken place, but still were his most important tools for carrying out his role in the prison corridors.
    Thirty-one hours left.

thursday
     

The bells in both towers of Höglid church struck the hour after midnight as he left Erik Wilson and number two via the communal gardens and an entrance on Heleneborgsgatan. It was still unusually warm outside, whether it was the spring turning to summer or the kind of warmth that comes from inside when the body is tense. Piet Hoffmann took off his jacket and walked towards Bergsunds Strand and his car that was parked close enough to the water’s edge for the headlights to illuminate the dark water when he started the engine. He drove from west to east Södermalm and the night, which should have been thronging with people who had longed for the warmth all winter and now didn’t want to go home, was empty, the noisy town had fallen to rest. He accelerated after Slussen, along Stadsgårdskajen, then braked and turned off just before Danvikstull bridge and the municipal boundary with Nacka. Down Tegelviksgatan and then left into Alsnögatan to the barrier that blocked the only road up to Danviksberget.
     
    He got out into the dark and jangled his keys until he found the piece of metal that was about half the size of a normal key; he’d carried it with him for a while now, they’d met fairly frequently in recent years. He opened and closed the barrier and drove slowly along the winding road up the hill to the outdoor café at the top that had been serving cinnamon buns with a view of the capital for decades now.
    He stopped the car in a