Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

With dogs. That's important.

With dogs? And what happens when we find what you've planted? To the fellow prisoner who you've wasted your drugs on?

One more floorboard, under the sink.

And behind the bedside lamp, the small hole in the wall for the wall plug.

"Everything all right? You found anything? No? What a shame. You'll have to go jerk-off in some other cell. Or d'you want me to help you?"

The guy opposite laughed. The guy beside him banged on his door and hissed keep doing them up the ass, Hoffmann.

They had heard.

Piet Hoffmann sat down on the edge of the bunk when they locked the door again and went on to the next cell. There was half a cigarette under a pair of boxer shorts in the mess under the bedside table; he lit up and lay down.

Ten minutes more.

He smoked and scoured the ceiling, then the dogs began to bark. "What the fuck, fucking hell, it's not mine, for fuck's sake!"

The Greek in Cell 2 had a piercing voice, the kind that opened locked cell doors.

"What the fuck, that- you've planted that, you fucking bastard screws, I'm going to-"

One of the security guards had lifted up the black dog that was now frantically pawing above the window behind the curtain rail. The plastic bag had been taped to the wall and contained fourteen grams of high quality amphetamine. The Greek was escorted down the corridor and out of the unit, shaking and swearing, and would be transported to Kumla or Hall the next day to serve the rest of a long sentence that just got longer. At roughly the same time, two more plastic bags with the same amount of amphetamine were found in two cells on the top and bottom floors of

Block H and three inmates in all would now be spending their last night in Aspsås.

Piet Hoffmann lay on the bed and could smile for the first time since he'd been inside the high walls.

Right now.

Right now, we've taken over.

He had slept heavily for nearly four hours when it was darkest outside the barred windows and once the Finn two cells away had presumably calmed down. The jangling of keys had penetrated his brain and prevented him from sleeping every time the bastard rang the bell and demanded attention. The unit hadn't settled until a couple of the other prisoners had threatened a riot the next time a Finnish finger played with the bell,

Piet Hoffmann pressed his back against the wall. An anxious glance at the pillow under the covers and the chair in the threshold and the sock between the door and its frame. His protection, exactly the same as yesterday and as tomorrow, two and a half seconds if anyone knew and attacked at the only time of day when the guards couldn't see or hear.

One minute past seven. Nineteen minutes left. Then he would go out, have a shower, and eat breakfast with the others.

He had taken the first step. He had felled the three main dealers in Aspsås prison with forty-two grams of 30 percent manufactured amphetamine. Warsaw and the deputy CEO had already received the reports they needed and opened a bottle of 2ubrOwka, raised a glass to the next stage.

Eight minutes left.

His breathing was measured, every muscle tensed, death didn't come knocking.

Today he was going to take the next step. For Wojtek, the first grams to the first customers and the rumor that there was a new supplier in 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 organization 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 organization 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 cart was in a cupboard just outside the main door to the unit.

A metal frame with a black garbage bag, hard rolls of considerably smaller white trash 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 that 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 cart, looked up at the camera, waited for the clicking sound and then went on through. The air was damp and he felt chilled as he walked under the prison yard; he had been escorted through 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 around, 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 around."

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 him all afternoon and evening, a night's sleep and some time after he had woken to realize that the visit from Grens had sparked a gnawing, consuming feeling that would not go away, no matter how hard he tried. Prioritizing infiltration inside prison walls over and above a murder investigation was not a good solution. He had sat at the table in Rosenbad and weighed it against control over the Polish mafia and had chosen to restrict criminal expansion.