Three Seconds

one of Sweden’s hardest prisons. For the Swedish police, more information about supplies, delivery dates and distribution channels until the operation had been built up enough for it to be destroyed – days or weeks waiting for the moment when the organisation had full control but hadn’t yet expanded to the next prison, when an informant’s knowledge was sufficient to reach the very heart of the organisation back in a black building on ul. Ludwika Idzikowskiego in Warsaw.
    Hoffmann looked at the alarm clock that was ticking too loud. Twenty past seven. He moved the chair, made his bed and after a while opened the door to a sleepy corridor. Stefan and Karol Tomasz smiled at him as he passed the kitchen and breakfast table. The prison bus usually came with any new prisoners around this time and it was obvious that someone who was called the Greek was now sitting on one of the evil-smelling seats with a couple of guys from Block H opposite him and presumably they weren’t saying much to each other as they looked out of the windows and tried to understand what the fuck had actually happened.
    He had a hot shower, washing away the tension of twenty minutes behind a cell door ready to fight and flee. He looked in the part of the mirror that wasn’t steamed up yet at someone who was unshaven and whose hair was a bit too long – leave the razor in his pocket, the salt and pepper stubble would stay where it was today.
    The cleaning trolley was in a cupboard just outside the main door to the unit.
    A metal frame with a black bin liner, hard rolls of considerably smaller, white bin bags, a small brush with a wobbly dustpan, a smelly plastic bucket, small bits of material that he assumed were used for washing the windows, and at the bottom some unperfumed detergent which he had never seen before.
    ‘Hoffmann.’
    The principal prison officer with piercing eyes was sitting in the aquarium with the wardens when he passed the big glass panes.
    ‘First day?’
    ‘First day.’
    ‘You have to wait at every locked door. Look up at every camera. And if and when central security decides to let you through, you do it as fast as possible in the few seconds that it’s open.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘I looked through your papers yesterday. You’ve got … now, what was it? … ten years. I don’t know, Hoffmann, but with a bit of luck that should be enough time for you to learn how to clean properly.’
    The first locked door was at the start of the underground passage. He stopped the trolley, looked up at the camera, waited for the clicking sound and then carried on through. The air was damp and he felt chilled as he walked under the prison yard; he had been escortedthrough a similar passage several times in the year he was at Österåker: to the hospital unit, or the gym, or the kiosk where every kronor earned could be exchanged for shaving cream and soap. He stopped in front of each door, nodded at the watchful cameras and then hurried through while the door was open – he wanted to attract as little attention as possible.
    ‘Hey you!’
    He had nodded at a group of prisoners from the other side of the prison on their way to their various workplaces when one of them turned round, looked at him.
    ‘Yeah?’
    A druggie. Skinny as hell, evasive eyes, feet that found it hard to stand still.
    ‘I heard— I want to buy. Eight g.’
    Stefan and Karol Tomasz had done a good job.
    A big prison is a small place when messages pass through walls.
    ‘Two.’
    ‘Two?’
    ‘You can get two. This afternoon. In the blind spot.’
    ‘Two? Fuck, I need at least—’
    ‘That’s all you’ll get. This time round.’
    The skinny prick was waving his long arms when Hoffmann turned his back and carried on down the wide passage.
    He would stand there. His body shaking, counting the minutes until he got that feeling that made this all bearable. He would buy his two g and he would inject them with a dirty syringe in the first available toilet.
    Piet Hoffmann walked away slowly and tried not to laugh.
    Only a few hours to go.
    Then he would have taken over all drug dealing in Aspsås prison.
    __________
    The lights in the Homicide corridor were strong and flickered every now and then. An irritating brightness that blinded you, combined with a jarring, whirring sound every time they flickered. The two strip lights by the vending machines were worst. Fredrik Göransson could still feel the dread of yesterday in his body; it had taken