Three Seconds

envelope – a CD of the recording, three passports and a transmitter – franked it and put it in his brown leather bag along with the six prepared books from Aspsås library. Then, to the white envelope which Hugo had noticed had Zofia’s name on – a CD, the fourth passport and a letter with instructions – he now added nine hundred and fifty thousand kronor, in notes, and put the envelope in his brown leather bag along with the rest.
    Fifteen hours left.
    He stopped Winnie the Pooh, helped the two children who were starting to heat up again put their shoes on, then went into the kitchen and the fridge and put fifty tulips with green buds into a cool box and carried this and the leather bag and two boys downstairs to the car thatwas parked right outside the front door, with a parking fine tucked under the windscreen wiper.
    __________
    He looked at the two red faces in the back seat.
     
    Two more stops.
    Then he would put them to bed, with clean sheets, and sit there and watch them until Zofia came home.
    They lay in the car while he went into the Handelsbanken branch on Kungsträdgårdsgatan, and down into the basement and a room full of rows of safe deposit boxes. He opened the empty box with one of his two keys and put in one brown envelope and one white envelope, locked it and emerged from the building a couple of minutes later, got in the car and drove to Hökens Gata on Södermalm.
    He looked at them again – he was so ashamed.
    He had overstepped the boundary. The two boys whom he loved more than anything in the back seat, and amphetamine and nitroglycerine in the boot.
    He swallowed, they weren’t going to see him crying, he didn’t want them to.
    __________
    He parked as close to the entrance to Hökens Gata 1 as he dared. Number four, fifteen hundred hours. Erik had already gone in from the other door.
     
    ‘I don’t want to walk any more.’
    ‘I know. Just here, then we’ll go home. I promise.’
    ‘My legs hurt. Daddy, they really, really hurt.’
    Rasmus had sat down on the first step. His hand was warm when Piet took it, he lifted him up on one arm, with the cool box and leather bag in the other hand. Hugo would have to walk up the stairs himself, like you sometimes do when you’re the oldest.
    Three floors up, the door with LINDSTRÖM on the letter box opened from the inside at exactly the same time that his watch alarm started to bleep.
    ‘Hugo. Rasmus. This is Uncle Erik.’
    Small hands were held out and shaken, he felt Erik Wilson’s withering look,
what the hell are they doing here?
    They went into the plastic-wrapped sitting room of the flat that was being renovated, and despite being tired, they looked curiously around at all the strange furniture.
    ‘Why is there plastic everywhere?’
    ‘There’s work being done.’
    ‘What do you mean, work?’
    ‘They’re making the flat new and they don’t want things to get dirty.’
    He left them in the rustling sofa and went into the kitchen, and another piercing look. He cocked his head.
    ‘I didn’t have a choice.’
    Wilson didn’t say anything – it was as if he’d lost track when he saw two children in a world that dealt in life and death.
    ‘Have you spoken to Zofia?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You have to speak to her.’
    He didn’t answer.
    ‘Piet, you can make all the excuses in the world. You know that you have to. Jesus Christ, you have to fucking talk to her, man!’
    Her reactions, the ones he couldn’t control.
    ‘This evening. When the boys have gone to bed. I’ll talk to her then.’
    ‘You can still back out.’
    ‘You know I’m going to finish this.’
    Erik Wilson nodded and looked at the blue cool box that Piet lifted onto the table.
    ‘Tulips. Fifty. They’ll be yellow.’
    Wilson stared at the green stems and green buds that were lying amongst the white, square ice packs.
    ‘I’ll put them in the fridge. It should be about two degrees. I want you to look after them. And the same day that I go in through the gate of Aspsås prison, I want you to send them to the address I give you.’
    Wilson put his hand into the cool box and flipped over one of the white cards with the bouquet.
    ‘With thanks for a successful partnership, Aspsås Business Association.’
    ‘Correct.’
    ‘And where should they be sent?’
    ‘Aspsås prison. The prison governor.’
    Erik Wilson didn’t ask any more questions. It was better not to know.
    ‘How much longer do we have to wait?’
    Hugo had got bored of sliding