Three Seconds

newspapers, the table tennis table at the far end of the small storeroom with a broken bat hanging in the middle of the tattered net, the pool table with the dirty green baize and every ball safely locked away … even the smell was the same: sweat, dust, fear and adrenaline and perhaps a hint of moonshine.
    ‘Name?’
    ‘Hoffmann.’
    The principal prison officer was as short as he was round and he nodded at the two screws from inside his glass box, indicating that from here on he would take charge.
    ‘Haven’t we met before?’
    ‘Don’t think so.’
    He had small eyes that seemed to pierce everything he looked at and it was hard to imagine that there was actually a person in there.
    ‘From your papers, I understand that you … Hoffmann, was it? …are someone who is familiar with the way things work in a place like this.’
    Piet Hoffmann nodded silently at the principal officer. He wasn’t there to tell some fat fucking inspector that he deserved a thrashing.
    ‘Yes. I know very well how it works.’
    The unit would be empty for another three hours, until they came back from the workshop or the library and classroom. He had time for a guided tour with the unit’s principal officer to learn how and where he should piss and why lock-in time was seven thirty and not seven thirty-five, and still have plenty of time to sit down in his own cell and come to terms with the fact that from now on this was his home.
    __________
    Piet Hoffmann positioned himself in the TV corner a few minutes before the others were due back. He had seen photos of all the other fifteen prisoners in the unit and knew their background, and if he sat here he could see every single one as they came in, but more importantly, he himself would be seen, it would be obvious that there was someone new in Cell 4, someone who wasn’t scared, someone who didn’t hide and wait for the right moment to sneak out and show his papers for approval, someone who had already sat down in someone else’s favourite chair and taken someone’s marked cards and started to play patience on someone’s table without even asking if he could.
     
    He was looking for two faces in particular.
    A heavy, almost square pale face with small eyes that were set too close together. A thinner, longer face with a nose that had been broken in several places and not healed well and a chin and a cheek that had been sewn up by a hand that wasn’t a doctor’s.
    Stefan Lygás and Karol Tomasz Penderecki.
    Two of the four members of Wojtek who were serving long sentences at Aspsås, his helpers in knocking out the competition and taking over the drugs market, and his executioners the moment he was exposed as Paula.
    __________
    The first questions were asked at supper. Two of the older men, thick gold around bull necks, one on either side of him with their warm plates and sharp elbows. Stefan and Karol Tomasz got up to stop thembut he waved to them, they should hold off, he would let the two men ask the same questions that he had on the prison bus a few hours ago; it was all about the same thing really, respect based on the shared hate of nonces.
     
    ‘We want to see your papers.’
    ‘That’s what you say.’
    ‘Have you got a problem with that?’
    Stefan and Karol Tomasz had already done the bulk of the work. They had been talking about the fact that Piet was coming for the past few days, what he had been done for, who he’d worked with, his status with one of the eastern European mafias. They had managed to get in copies of 721018-0010 from the National Police Board criminal records, the criminal intelligence database, prison records and his most recent judgement, via Stefan’s lawyer.
    ‘No, but I’ve got a problem with people sitting too close.’
    ‘Your papers, for fuck’s sake!’
    He would ask them into his cell and he would show them his papers and then he wouldn’t have to answer any more questions. The new prisoner in Cell 4 wasn’t a sex offender or a wife beater, but in fact had precisely the background he claimed to have; he would probably even get a few smiles and a cautious slap on the shoulder – prisoners who had shot at policemen and were convicted of attempted murder and aggravated assault of an officer were the kind who didn’t need to fight for their status.
    ‘You’ll get my judgement, if you just shut it now and let me finish my food.’
    __________
    They played stud poker later with toothpicks that cost a thousand kronor each and