Three Seconds

deserted car park and listened to swell by the cliffs where the sea flowed into Saltsjön. A few hours earlier, customers would have sat here, holding hands while they talked or yearned or just drank their café lattes in the kind of silence that is shared. A forgotten coffee cup on a bench, a couple of plastic trays with crumpled serviettes on another. He sat down by the building with its closed wooden shutters and a table chained to a lump of grey concrete. Piet Hoffmann looked out over the city where he had lived for the greater part of his life, but he still felt like a stranger, someone who was just visiting for a while and would soon move on, wherever it was he was actually going.
    He heard footsteps.
    Somewhere in the blackness behind him.
    At first faint and far away, feet against a hard surface, then closer and clearer, gravel that loudly proclaimed how much the person walking on it was trying not to be heard.
    ‘Piet.’
    ‘Lorentz.’
    A dark, solid man of his own age.
    They embraced each other as usual.
    ‘How much?’
    The dark, solid man sat down in front of him, elbows heavy on the table which dipped slightly. They had known each other for exactly ten years. One of the few people he trusted.
    ‘Ten kilos.’
    They had done time together at Österåker. Same unit, neighbouring cells. Two men who became close in a way that they would never have done if they’d met anywhere else but there, cooped up and without much choice, they had become best friends, without realising it at the time.
    ‘Strength?’
    ‘Thirty?’
    ‘Factory?’
    ‘Siedlce.’
    ‘Blossom. That’s good. It’s what they want. And I don’t need to bullshit about the quality. But personally, I can’t stand the smell.’
    Lorentz was the only name he would never give to Erik. He liked him. He needed him. Lorentz sold on what Piet had cut, to earn some money for himself.
    ‘But thirty per cent … too strong for Plattan and Centralen. No one there should have anything stronger than fifteen, otherwise there’s just trouble. This— I’ll sell it in the clubs, the kids want it strong and have the money to pay.’
    Erik had realised that there was someone whose name he was not going to get. And why. So Piet could continue to earn money from his own business and Erik and his colleagues turned a blind eye and sometimes even facilitated it, in exchange for continued infiltration.
    ‘Ten kilos of thirty per cent gear is a fuck of a lot. I’ll take it, obviously. Like I always do when you ask. But – and now I’m talking toyou as a friend, Piet – are you sure that you’ve got everything under control if anyone starts to ask questions?’
    They looked at each other. The supposed question could be interpreted as something else. Distrust. Provocation. It wasn’t. Lorentz meant exactly what he said and Piet knew that he was asking because he was concerned. Before, what he’d done was to cut a little more of the supplies that he got from somewhere to sell on somewhere else, for his own purposes. But this time he needed big money and for other reasons, so some of the vacuum-packed tins of uncut gear had been moved from the fan heater shaft to an IKEA bag only a few hours after Henryk’s visit.
    ‘I’ve got everything under control. And if I ever have to use the money from this lot one day, it’ll be because it’s too late to answer those questions.’
    Lorentz didn’t ask any more.
    He had come to understand that everyone had their reasons and made their choices and if they didn’t want to talk about it, it was pointless trying.
    ‘I’ll deduct fifty thousand for the explosives. You gave me such bloody short notice, Piet, that it cost more than usual.’
    One hundred kronor per gram. A million kronor for ten kilos.
    Nine hundred and fifty thousand in cash, the rest in explosives.
    ‘You’ve got everything?’
    ‘Pentyl.’
    ‘Not good enough.’
    ‘And nitroglycerine. High detonation velocity. Packed in plastic pockets.’
    ‘That’s what I want.’
    ‘You’ll get the detonator and fuse thrown in.’
    ‘If you insist.’
    ‘It’s going to be a big fucking bang.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘You’re a law unto yourself, Piet.’
    __________
    The two cars were parked in the dark with open boots when a blue IKEA bag with ten one-kilo tins of 30 per cent amphetamine and a brown briefcase with nine hundred and fifty thousand kronor in notesand two highly explosive packages swapped places. Now he had to move fast. Drove back