Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

Hoffmann shook his head in irritation.

"What's so bloody hard to understand? You'll get two."

Every customer would be able to get at least one hit-today once again journey to a world that was artificial and therefore so much easier to live in. But no one would get enough to begin with to be able to sell on, no other dealers, no competition, the drugs would be controlled from a cell in the left-hand corridor, G2.

"Fucking hell, I-"

"You'll fucking shut up if you want anything at all."

The skinny junkie was shaking even more than he had been in the morning, his feet moving constantly, his eyes everywhere except for the face they were talking to. He was silent, held his hand out until he was given a small white ball and started to walk off before he'd even put it in his pocket.

"I think you've forgotten something."

The skinny prick had a twitch by his eyes, the spasms increased and his cheeks rippled unrhythmically.

"I'll fix the money."

"Fifty kronor a gram."

The twitch stopped for a couple of seconds.

"Fifty?"

Hoffmann smiled at his confusion. He could ask anything from three hundred to four hundred fifty. Now when there were no other suppliers, maybe even six hundred. But he wanted the news to pass through all the walls, and then they could raise it, when all the customers were on one list, the one that belonged to the prison's sole supplier.

"Fifty."

"Fuck, fuck. then I want twenty g."

"Two."

"Or thirty, maybe even-"

"You're in debt now."

"I'll fix it."

"We keep an eye on our debts."

"Don't worry, man, I mean I've always-"

"Good. We'll find a solution then."

Faint steps thumping down the passage from Block H that quickly got louder. They could both hear them and the druggie had already started to walk away.

"Do you work?"

"Study."

"Where?"

The skinny guy was sweating and his cheeks were twitching and rippling.

"Fuck, does it-"

"Where?"

"Classroom F3."

"You can order from Stefan from now on. And collect from him."

Two locked doors and the elevator up to Block G. He pushed the cart into the cleaning cupboard that stank of damp cloths, stuffed eleven of the small plastic balls into his pockets and left the rest under the crumpled documents. In an hour they would be passed to other hands in the various prison buildings and in each unit there would be consumers who knew about the new supplier and the quality and the price, and he and Wojtek would have taken over, the lot.

They were waiting for him.

Some in the corridor, a couple in the TV corner, evasive eyes full of hunger.

He had eleven sales in his pockets for a unit that was like all the others: five were going to pay from cash that could be counted in millions, earnings from criminal activities that society seldom managed to stop; six didn't have enough money to pay for the socks on their feet and would end up working for Wojtek on the outside to pay off their debt-they were an investment, criminal labor and he owned them.

Fredrik Göransson sat on one of the national police commissioner's sofas and listened to the voice on the other end of the telephone talk loudly, the initial low murmur had become clear words in short bursts.

"Mutual problem?"

"Yes."

"This early in the morning?"

The deep man's voice sighed and the national police commissioner continued.

"It's about Hoffmann."

"Well?"

"He's going to be called in for questioning this morning, in one of the visiting rooms. A detective superintendent from city police who's investigating Västmannagatan 79."

He waited for an answer, a reaction, anything. He got nothing.

"That interview, Pål, is not going to happen. Under no circumstances are you going to let Hoffmann meet a policeman as part of the preliminary investigation in connection with that address."

Silence again and when the voice responded, it was once more a low murmur that couldn't be heard from a few meters away.

"I can't say anymore. Not here, not now. Apart from that you've got to fix it."

The national police commissioner was sitting on the edge of the desk and it was starting to be uncomfortable. He straightened his back and there was a crunching sound from somewhere in his hip.

"Pål I just need a couple of days. A week maybe. I want you to do this for me."

He put the phone down and leaned forward, a few more crunches, sounded like his lower back.

"We've got ourselves a few days. Now we have to take action. In order to avoid the same situation happening again in seventy-two or ninety-six hours."

They shared what was left in the coffeepot. Göransson lit another cigarette.

The meeting a couple of weeks earlier in a beautiful room with a view of Stockholm had mutated into something new Code Paula was no longer an operation that the Swedish police had worked on and waited for for several years, it now also involved a criminal counterpart who they did not know much about and who had knowledge that would have consequences far beyond that oblong meeting table if it were to be passed on.

"So, Erik Wilson is abroad?"

Göransson nodded.

"And Hoffmann's Wojtek contacts in the unit, do we know who they are?"

Chief Superintendent Göransson nodded again, leaned back a touch and for the first time since he sat down, the fabric felt almost comfortable.

The national police commissioner looked at his face, which seemed calmer.

"You're right."

He lifted up the empty coffeepot to see if there was anything left. He was thirsty: he'd never really understood all the fuss about water with bubbles, but poured himself a glass as it was there and, because the room was full of cigarette smoke, found it refreshing.

"If we let it our who Hoffmann is? If the members of an organization find out there's an informant among them-what the organization does then with that knowledge is not our problem. We will not and cannot be responsible for other people's actions."

One more glass, more bubbles.

"Like you said, we'll burn him."

He had dreamed about the hole. For four nights in a row, the straight edges in the dust on the shelf behind his desk had become a yawning, bottomless hole and no matter where he was or how much he tried to get away, he was drawn toward the black hole and then just as he started to fall, he woke up breathless on the floor behind the corduroy sofa, his back slippery with sweat.

It was half past four and already warm and bright in the courtyard of Kronoberg. Ewert Grens went out into the corridor and over to the small pantry, where a blue hand towel was hanging from the tap. He wet it and went back to the office and the hole that was much smaller in reality. So many hours, such a large part of his day for thirty-five years had revolved around a time that no longer existed. With the wet cloth he wiped over the long, hard edges that marked where the cassette recorder he had been given for his twenty-fifth birthday had stood, then the considerably shorter edges from the cassettes and the photo, even the squares that had been the two loudspeakers, which were kind of beautiful in their clarity.

And now there wasn't even dust.

He moved a cactus plant from the windowsill, the files from the floor-the majority of which contained long-since completed preliminary investigations that should have been filed somewhere-and filled every tiny space on the now empty shelves so that he wouldn't need to fall anymore; the hole had gone and if there wasn't a hole, there couldn't be a bottomless pit.

A cup of black coffee around which the air was still full of swirling dust particles looking for a new home didn't taste as good as usual, as if the dust had dissolved in the brown liquid; it even looked a shade lighter.