Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

The coffee was strong and the porridge was a bit lumpy, but it would be the last meal for a while where he could decide what he wanted, how he wanted it and where he wanted it. He had avoided the breakfasts at Osteraer, too early in the day to eat with people whose only common reference point was the need for drugs, the sort he'd been afraid of, but had met with aggression, scorn, distance, anything that didn't resemble weakness, in order to survive.

Erik Wilson walked past his table on his way out, nearly bumped into it. Hoffmann waited exactly five minutes and then followed, a couple of minutes' walk to Vartadisvagen. He opened the door of a silvery-gray Volvo and sat down in the passenger seat.

"You came in the red Golf, the one that's parked by the school?" "Yes."

"From the OK gas station at Slussen, like normal?"

Yep.

"I'll take it back this evening. You might find it hard to deliver it yourself:"

They pulled out of Vanadisvagen, drove slowly along Sankt Eriksgatan, and didn't say anything between the first two sets of red lights on Drottningholmsvagen.

"Have you got everything sorted?"

"Sorted."

"And Zofia?"

Piet Hoffmann didn't answer. Wilson stopped the car by a bus stop on Fridhemsplan, made it clear that he wasn't going any farther.

"And Zofia?"

"She knows."

They sat there at the start of the morning rush, with groups of people or long lines on the move now, rather than just the odd person.

"I made you even more dangerous in ASPEN yesterday. The patrol that arrests you will be full of preconceived ideas and adrenaline. It'll be violent, Piet. You can't be armed, because then it might get really nasty. But no one, no one who sees it, no one who hears about it or reads about it will even suspect who you're actually working for. And by the way, there's a warrant out for your arrest."

Piet Hoffmann started.

"A warrant? Since when?"

"A few hours ago."

The place still smelled of cigarette smoke. Or perhaps he just imagined it. There had always been a funk above the green felt. Piet Hoffmann leaned down toward it and sniffed, and he caught it again, the smell of smoke that was indelibly linked to the blue chalk on your fingertips and ashtrays on the corner of every pool table… he could even hear the coarse, sneering laughter when someone missed and a hard ball misfired. He downed half the cup of black coffee from the 7-Eleven on Fleminggatan in one gulp and looked at the clock. It was time. He checked again that the knife that he usually kept in his back pocket really wasn't there and then walked over to the window that looked out over Sankt Eriksgatan. He stood still, pretending to talk to someone on his mobile phone until he was sure that the man and the woman in the front of the patrol car had seen him.

They had been tipped off by an anonymous untraceable phone call that a serious, wanted criminal was going to be in Biljardpalatset this morning.

And then there he was in the window.

They had his name, and when they passed enter again on the car computer keypad, they also got his life.

KNOWN DANGEROUS ARMED

They were both young and new and had never come across this particular code in the criminal intelligence database that was only used for a handful of criminals.

Name Piet Hoffman ID number 721018-0010 Number of hits 75

They skimmed down quickly, got the clear picture that this person was extremely dangerous observed fifteen minutes before the murder in Ostling in the company of the subject, Markovic and familiar with weapons observed near the property that was raided in connection with suspected arms dealing and had previously threatened and fired at and wounded policemen and was likely to be armed.

“Command, this is car 9027. Over.”

“This is command. Over.”

“We require back-up for immediate arrest.”

He heard the sirens closing in between the city buildings and guessed that the sound and blue flashing lights would be turned off somewhere on Fleminggatan.

Two dark blue police vans stopped outside fifteen seconds later.

He was prepared.

“This is car 9027. Over.”

“Describe the suspect.”

“Piet Hoffmann. Very violent on previous arrests.”

“Last observation?”

“The entrance of Biljardpalaset. Sankt Eriksgatan 52.”

“Appearance?”

“Grey hooded top. Jeans. Fair hair. Unshaven. About one metre eighty tall.”

“Anything else?”

“Likely to be armed.”

He didn’t try to run away.

When the doors police were flung open at both ends of the deserted pool hall and several uniformed police ran in with on the floor drawn guns, Piet Hoffmann turned calmly round from the pool table, careful to keep both hands visable all the time. He fucking well get down on the floor didn’t lie down voluntarily but fell to the ground after two powerful strikes to his head and one more when bleeding he fucking pigs held his middle finger up in the air and then he couldn’t remember much more than a pair of handcuffs locking round his wrists, a kick in the ribs and the acute pain in his neck when it all stopped.

Erik Wilson had been sitting in the car opposite the entrance to the Kronoberg garage when two dark blue police vans had passed and sped off in the direction of Sankt Eriksgatan. He had waited until they turned off their sirens and then he had driven up to the barrier by the attendant's office, shown his ID and rolled slowly toward the automatic door to the Police Authority's garage under Kronobergsparken. He had parked in a steel cage in front of the elevator up to the remand prison and from the driver's seat observed the steady stream of police vehicles going in or out.

He had been waiting for half an hour when he rolled down both his windows so he could hear better, his whole body tense. He had tried to shake off the discomfort and dread but hadn't been particularly successful. He breathed in the damp gas-perfumed air and listened to a car stopping on the other side of the garage and someone getting out, then another, followed by sleepy footsteps in the opposite direction.

Then he saw the large bay doors being pulled to one side.

It had taken thirty-five minutes for eight specially trained policemen to locate and arrest one of the country's most documented and dangerous people.

The dark blue van came in and he watched it approach the final couple of hundred meters before driving into the steel cage and parking about a car's length away.

If anything happens, abort your mission and ask for voluntary isolation. To survive.

Two uniformed colleagues got out first. Then a man with a swollen face, gray hooded top, jeans and handcuffs.

The police, who had been instructed to arrest a wanted and presumably armed dangerous criminal, had confronted him in the only way they knew how.

With violence.

"Hey, I don't like fucking faggot police touching me."

Erik Wilson saw Piet Hoffmann suddenly turn toward the policeman standing nearest to him and spit in his face. The uniformed officer didn't say anything, show anything, and Piet spat again. A quick glance at his colleagues, who just happened to look away, then the policeman stepped forward and kneed Pier Hoffmann in the balls.

Only a criminal.

He groaned in pain, and again after a kick to the stomach, then got up and with his hands locked behind his back was being escorted by four uniformed policemen to the elevator and the remand prison, when Erik Wilson heard him say loudly to the face he had just spat at:

"Watch it, you prick. I'll get you. Sooner or later, we'll meet again. Sooner or later I'll put two bullets in you just like I did with that prick in Söderhamn."