Three Seconds

cucumber.
    ‘I’ve just come off the phone. Grens is on his way back from Aspsås. And has been told he won’t be able to see the prisoner called Piet Hoffmann for three, maybe even four days.’
    Göransson looked at the piece of bread. The cramps in his body receded somewhat, so he picked it up and tried to fill the void again.
    ‘Troubled.’
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘You asked how I was. Troubled. That’s what I am. Bloody troubled.’
    He left the cheese and bread on the plate, and later threw it in the bin. He couldn’t do it. His mouth, his throat, he was so dry.
    ‘Troubled in case Hoffmann talks. Troubled to find out what I’m prepared to do to stop him.’
    They had burnt informants before.
We don’t know who he is
. Dropped them when there were too many questions.
We don’t work with criminals
. Looked the other way when the hunt began and the criminal organisation that had been infiltrated found its own solutions.
    But never in a prison, never locked up with no escape.
    Life, death.
    Suddenly it was all so clear.
    ‘What troubles you most?’
    The national police commissioner leant towards him.
    ‘You have to think about it, Fredrik. What troubles you the most? The consequences if Hoffmann talks? Or the consequences if we take action?’
    Göransson was silent.
    ‘Do you have any choice, Fredrik?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Do I have any choice?’
    ‘I don’t know!’
    The silver thermos fell to the floor when Göransson made an uncontrolled, sweeping gesture over the table. The national police commissioner waited, then picked it up when he decided that the man wasn’t going to strike out again.
    ‘Fredrik, listen to me.’
    He moved closer.
    ‘What we are doing is not wrong. It’s just the way things are.
We are doing no wrong
. The only thing
we
are doing and the only thing
we
have done is to talk to a lawyer who represents two Wojtek members who are doing time in Aspsås. If
he
then decides to give that information to his clients, if
he
decided to do that yesterday evening, then we can’t be held responsible. And if his clients then choose to do something, which prisoners often do, we are not responsible for that either.’
    He didn’t come much closer but did move forward a little more.
    ‘
We
can’t be responsible for anything other than
our own
actions.’
    It was possible to see Kronobergsparken from the window. There were some small children playing in the sandpit and a couple of dogs running around that refused to listen to their masters who waited with leash in hand. It was a lovely little park right in the middle of Kungsholmen. Göransson looked at it for a long time, he didn’t normally go there and he wondered why.
    ‘The consequences if he talks.’
    ‘Sorry?’
    Göransson stayed standing by the window, soothed by the air that came in through the small open rectangle at the top.
    ‘Your question. What troubles me most. The consequences if Hoffmann talks.’
    __________
    He moved the chair slightly to the left. Now he could see the whole corridor through the glass, and the pool table where the four who had just attacked him were pretending to play whilst keeping an eye on him. It was obvious that they wanted him to know that he was a bloody rat who had nowhere to go, a prison is a closed system with walls that shut you in and anyone who wants to run will soon meet something hard that they can’t get past. Karol Tomasz was standing closest – he raised his arm, pointed at his mouth, formed the word
stukatj
over and over again.
     
    Paula no longer existed.
    Piet Hoffmann tried to find somewhere deep inside that wasn’t roaring, he had to try to understand that he now had a new mission, to survive.
    They knew.
    They must have found out in the evening, during the night. Nothing had changed at lock-up time, someone had communication channels that opened locked doors.
    If you’re about to be exposed, you can’t escape very far in a prison, but you can demand to be put in isolation.
    There were ten of them, helmets and riot shields to protect them, and armed with sedatives to keep control. The prison riot squad had run across the yard and up the stairs of Block G. Six of them would stay to prevent and discourage repeated violence, four of them would escort the vulnerable prisoner down the passage and deep into the bowels of the earth, to Block C and the voluntary isolation unit, two escorts behind, two in front.
    You might be given a death sentence. But you’re not