Three Seconds

time. He wiped and scrubbed for an hour or more – it was a good way of getting to know the room and working out the distance from the window to the pillars and noting the position of all the surveillance cameras, to know more than everyone else, to be able to control every situation, the difference between life and death. The screws got up from their chairs and left the office and he hurried in with his trolley to wipe over an empty desk and an equally empty bin, careful to stand with his back to the glass wall and workshop the whole time. He only needed a couple of seconds, the razor blade was in his pocket and he switched it to the top drawer of the desk in an empty space between the pens and paperclips. A new bag in the bin, still with his back to the glass, then he went out, took the lift down to the passage with four locked doors to the administration block.
    __________
    His body felt itchy and his suit was too tight over the chest. He loosened his tie a touch and ran even faster down the corridor and through the door into the larger building that had swallowed the surrounding buildings and now constituted the greater part of a block dedicated to police operations.
     
    Fredrik Göransson had sweat on his cheeks, neck, back.
    Piet Hoffmann. Paula.
    Ewert Grens was on his way there, to Aspsås prison, had alreadybooked the time and room. He would only have to question Hoffmann for a couple of minutes, no more, before Hoffmann would lean over the table, ask Grens to switch off the recorder and then burst out laughing and explain that you can go home now, we’re working for the same side, for Christ’s sake, I’m here working for one of your colleagues and it was your bosses, in that room in the Government Offices, who chose to overlook an execution in a flat in the centre so that I could carry on my infiltration here, on the inside.
    Göransson stepped out from the lift and into a room without knocking on the door and without any consideration to the hand that was holding a telephone receiver and the arm that waved that he should wait outside until the call was finished. He sank down into one of the sofas and tugged absent-mindedly at his increasingly red throat. The national police commissioner asked if he could call the person on the other end of the phone back and finished the conversation, looking at a person who was a stranger to him.
    ‘Ewert Grens.’
    His forehead was moist and his eyes were darting around.
    The national police commissioner got up from the desk and walked over to a trolley filled with big glasses and small bottles of mineral water. He opened one and poured it over two ice cubes, hoping that it would be sufficiently cool to calm the man down.
    ‘He’s on his way there. He’s going to question him. It’s not good … it’s … we have to burn him.’
    ‘Fredrik?’
    ‘We have to—’
    ‘Fredrik, look at me. Exactly what are you talking about?’
    ‘Grens. He’s going to question Hoffmann tomorrow. At the prison, in one of the visiting rooms.’
    ‘Here. Take the glass. Have some more to drink.’
    ‘Don’t you understand? We have to burn him.’
    __________
    There were people at every desk in the administration block. He started with the narrow corridor outside, cleaned and scrubbed it until the grey linoleum almost sparkled. Then he waited until one at a time they signalled that he could come in and empty the bin and dust the shelves and desk. The rooms were small and anonymous and all looked outover the prison yard. He saw groups of prisoners he didn’t know out there, cigarettes in hand as they sat down in the sun to daydream, some with a football on their lap, a couple walking round the track alongside the inner wall. Only one door was shut and he passed it at regular intervals, hoping that it would be open enough for him to look in, and a couple of hours later, it was the only room that remained.
     
    He knocked, waited.
    ‘Yes?’
    The prison governor didn’t recognise him from yesterday.
    ‘Hoffmann. I’m here to do the cleaning, I thought—’
    ‘You’ll have to wait. Until I’m ready. Clean the other rooms in the meantime.’
    ‘I have.’
    Lennart Oscarsson had already closed the door. But Piet Hoffmann had seen what he wanted to see over his shoulder. The desk and the vases of tulips. The buds that had started to open.
    He sat down on a chair near the door, with one hand on the trolley. He looked over at the door at shorter and shorter intervals. He