Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

A sock around the handle, he pulled the door-that normally couldn't be locked or closed completely from the inside-toward him, jamming it by forcing the fabric of the sock between the door and door frame.

One second.

He put the simple wooden chair that normally stood by the wardrobe just inside the threshold, careful to make sure that it blocked the greater part of the doorway.

One second.

The pillow and blanket and trousers were made to look like a body under the covers, the blue arm of his training jacket a continuation of the body. It wouldn't fool anyone. But it was an illusion that would be given a fast double take.

Half a second.

Both the guards disappeared down the corridor. All the cells were unlocked and open now and Piet Hoffmann positioned himself to the left of the door, with his back to the wall. They could come at any moment. If they had found out, if he had been exposed, death would strike immediately.

He looked at the sock around the handle, the chair in front of the door, the pillows under the blanket.

Two and a half seconds.

His protection, his time to hit back.

He was breathing heavily

He would stand like this, waiting, for twenty minutes. It was his first morning in Aspsås prison.

There was someone standing in front of him. Two thin suit legs that had said something and were now waiting for an answer. He didn't reply.

"Grens? What are you doing?"

Ewert Grens had fallen asleep on the floor behind the brown corduroy sofa with an investigation file on his stomach.

"What about our meeting? It was you who wanted it this early. I assume that you've been here all night?"

His back ached a bit. The floor had been harder this time.

"That's none of your business."

He rolled over and heaved himself up, using the arms of the sofa for support, and the world spun ever so slightly.

"How are you?"

"That's none of your business either."

Lars Ågestam sat down on the sofa and waited while Ewert Grens went over to his desk. There was no love lost between them. In fact, they couldn't stand each other. The young prosecutor and older detective superintendent came from different worlds and neither had any inclination to visit the other anymore. Ågestam had tried at first, he had chatted and listened and watched until he realized it was pointless, Grens had decided to hate him and nothing would change that.

"Västmannagatan 79. You wanted a report."

Lars Ågestam nodded.

"I get the distinct feeling that you're getting nowhere."

They weren't getting anywhere. But he wouldn't admit it. Not yet.

Ewen Grens fully intended to keep hold of his resources, which Ågestam had the power to remove.

"We're working on several theories."

"Such as?"

"I'm not prepared to say anything yet."

"I can't imagine what you've got. If you did have something, you'd give it to me and then tell me to shove off. I don't think you've got anything at all. I think it's time to scale down the case."

"Scale down?"

Lars Ågestam waved his skinny arm at the desk and the piles of ongoing investigations.

"You're not getting anywhere. The investigation is at a standstill. You know as well as I do, Grens, that it's unreasonable to tie up so many resources when an investigator is having no success."

"I never give up on a murder."

They looked at each other. They came from different worlds. "So, what have you got then?"

"You never scale down murder cases, Ågestam. You solve them." You know-"

"And that is what I have done for thirty-five years. Since you were running around peeing in your diaper."

The prosecutor wasn't listening anymore. You just needed to decide that you weren't going to hear anything and then you didn't. It was a long time now since Ewert Grens had been able to hurt him.

"I read through the conclusions of the preliminary investigation. But it was… quick. You mentioned a number of names on the periphery of the investigation that haven't been fully probed. Do that. Investigate every name on the periphery and close it. You've got three days. Then we'll meet again. And if you haven't got anything more by then, you can make as much fuss as you like, I will scale down the case."

Ewert Grens watched the determined suit-back leave his office and would no doubt have shouted after it if the other voice hadn't already been there, the one that had been in his head every hour for two weeks now, that was once again whispering and wheedling its way in, persistently repeating the short sentences, driving him mad.

"A dead man. Vdstmannagatan 79. Fourth floor."

He had three days.

Who are you?

Where are you?

He had stood with his back pressed hard against the cell wall for twenty minutes, every muscle tensed, every sound an imagined threat of attack. Nothing had happened.

His fifteen fellow prisoners had been to the toilet and showered and then gone to the kitchen for an early breakfast, but none of them had stopped outside his door, no one had tried to open it. He was still only Piet Hoffmann here, a member of Wojtek, arrested with three kilos of Polish Yellow in his boot and convicted of possession, and a previous conviction for having beaten some bastard pig before firing two shots at him.

They had disappeared, one by one, some to the laundry and the workshop, most to the classrooms, a couple to the hospital. No one went on strike and stayed in their cell, which often happened: the striker laughed at the threat of punishment and continued to refuse to work as the extra couple of months on twelve years existed only on official papers.

"Hoffmann."

It was the principal prison officer who had welcomed him the day before, with blue eyes that pierced whoever was standing in front of him.

"Yes?"

"Time to get out of your cell."

"Is it?"

"Your work duties. Cleaning. The administration building and the workshops. But not today. Today you're going to come with me and try to learn how and where and when to use your brushes and detergents."

They walked side by side down the corridor through the unit and down the stairs to the underground passage.

When Paula arrives at Aspsås, his work duties will already be fixed. On his first afternoon, he'll start as the new cleaner in the administration block and workshop.

The shapeless fabric of the prison-issue clothes chafed against his thighs and shoulders as they approached the second floor of Block B.

Prison management usually only grants cleaning duties as a reward.

They stopped in front of the toilets outside the main door to the workshop.

Then reward him.

Piet Hoffmann nodded-he would start his cleaning round here, with the cracked basin and piss pot in a changing room that stank of mold. They continued into the big workshop with its faint smell of diesel.

"The toilet out there, the office behind the glass window and then the entire workshop. You got it?"

He stayed standing in the doorway, looking around the room. Workbenches with something that looked like bits of shiny piping on them, shelves with piles of packing tape, punch presses, pallet jacks, half-full pallets and at every work station, a prisoner who earned ten kronor an hour. Prison workshops often produced simple items that were then sold to commercial manufacturers; at Österåker, he had cut out square red wooden blocks for a toy manufacturer. Here it was lamppost components: decimeter-long rectangular covers for the access hatch to the cables and switches that is positioned at the base, the kind that you see ten meters apart along every road, which no one ever notices but has to be made somewhere. The principal prison officer walked into the workshop and pointed at the dust and overflowing bins, while Hoffmann nodded at prisoners he didn't recognize: the one in his twenties standing by a punching press bending over the edges of the rectangular cover; the one who spoke Finnish over by the drilling machine and made small holes for every screw; and the one farthest away by the window who had a big scar from his throat to his cheek and was leaning over the barrel of diesel as he cleaned his tools.