Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

Piet Hoffmann lifted up the two books and put them down in front of him on the bed. Nineteenth Century Stockholm. The Marionettes. Bound in hard, mono colored library boards, marked with STORE in blue and ASPSS LIBRARY in red. He opened the first page, got a firm grip of the cover and with a powerful rug pulled it loose. Another tug and the spine of the book collapsed, a third and the back came off He looked over at the locked cell door. Still quiet. No one walking around out there, no one who had heard and hurried over to the hatch at the top of the door with meddlesome eyes. He changed position, back to the door-if anyone were to look in all they would see was a fidgety long-termer who couldn't sleep.

He ran his hand carefully over the torn book. His fingers along the left-hand margin and a cut-out, rectangular hole.

It was there. In eleven pieces.

He turned the book over, coaxed out the metal that in a matter of minutes would be a five-centimeter-long mini-revolver. First the larger pieces, the frame with the barrel and cylinder pivot and trigger, a couple of gentle taps with the handle of the sewing machine screwdriver on the millimeter-long pins between them, then the barrel protector with the first screw, the butt sides with the second screw and the butt stabiliser with the third.

He turned to the door, but the footsteps were only in his head, as before.

He spun the tiny revolver's cylinder, emptied it, took his time checking the six bullets as long as half a thumbnail that were lined up on the iron bed-ammunition that together weighed no more than a gram.

He had seen a person stop breathing in that godforsaken toilet far away in winoujcie ferry terminal, the short barrel right up close to a petrified eye, the miniature revolver had killed with a single shot.

Piet Hoffmann held it, raised it, aimed it at the dirty wall. Left index finger light on the trigger-there was just enough room with the trigger guard sawn off-slowly pull back, he watched the hammer follow the movement of the finger, a final squeeze and it leaped forward, then the sound, the sharp click. It worked.

He ripped apart the second book in the same way, revealing a hole in the left-hand margin, a detonator the size of a nail and a receiver the size of a penny. He ran the sewing machine screwdriver along the bottom edges of the book's thick covers, front and back, cut open the glued hinge and pulled out two nine-meter-long pieces of pentyl fuse and an equally thin plastic envelope containing twenty-four centilitres of nitroglycerine.

It was a few minutes past seven.

He heard the wardens changing shift out in the corridor behind the locked door-night shift to day shift. One more hour. Then he would be collected and taken back.

G2 left. Back. He was condemned to die there.

He pressed the button on the wall.

"Yes?"

"I need a shit."

"You've got a hole beside the bed."

"It's blocked. My puke from yesterday."

The single speaker crackled.

"How urgent?"

"As soon as possible."

"Five minutes."

Piet Hoffmann stood by the door, footsteps, several footsteps, two guards coming to get someone, to the cell, who unlocked the door and opened it, toilet visit, never two prisoners in the corridor at the same time, get in your cell for Christ's sake. The revolver was resting in the palm of his hand-he opened the cylinder, counted the six bullets, pushed it to the bottom of one of the deep front pockets on his trousers and the coarse fabric hid it, just as it hid the detonator and receiver in the other pocket and the pentyl fuse and plastic envelope with nitroglycerine stuffed down his underpants.

"Open for the prisoner in number nine."

The guard who had shouted was right outside his door. Hoffmann ran back to the bed, lay down, and watched the square hatch opening and the guard looking in long enough to confirm that the prisoner was lying down precisely where he should be.

The jangling of keys.

"You wanted to go to the toilet. Get up and do it then."

One warden by the cell door. Another one farther down the corridor. Two more out in the yard.

Hoffmann looked over at the wardens' room. The fifth one was sitting there. The older one, Jacobson, the principal officer, gray thinning hair and his back to the corridor.

They're too far apart from each other.

He walked slowly toward the shower room and toilets, three guards inside, they're too far apart from each other.

He sat down on the dirty plastic toilet seat, flushed, turned on the tap. He breathed deeply, each breath from somewhere deep in his stomach, the calm that was down there, he needed it, he wasn't going to die, not yet.

"I'm ready. You can open again."

The warden opened the door and Piet Hoffmann launched himself forward, showed the mini-revolver first and then held it hard to the bastard's eye that stared at him through a hatch in the cell door.

"Your colleague."

He whispered.

"Get your colleague to come here."

The warden didn't move. Maybe he didn't understand. Maybe he was petrified.

"Now. Get him to come here now."

Hoffmann kept his eye on the personal alarm hanging from the warden's belt and pressed the muzzle of the gun even harder against the closed eyelid.

"Erik?"

He had understood. His voice was feeble, a careful wave of the hand. "Erik? Can you come here?"

Piet Hoffmann saw the second warden come closer, then stop suddenly, realising that his colleague was standing stock-still with what looked like a piece of metal to his head.

"Come here."

The warden who was called Erik hesitated then started to walk, casting a glance up at the camera that maybe someone was watching right now up in central security.

"Once more and I'll kill him. Kill. Kill him."

With one hand he pressed even harder against the eyelid and with the other he tore loose two pieces of plastic that were their only way to raise an alarm.

They waited. They did precisely what he said. They knew that he had nothing to lose, it was obvious.

One more.

One more person who could move around freely in the corridor. Hoffmann looked over toward the wardens' office. The face was still turned away, the neck bent forward, as if he was reading.

"Get up."

The older, gray man turned around. There was about twenty meters between them, but he knew exactly what was going on. A prisoner holding something to someone's head. A colleague standing absolutely still beside them, waiting.

"No alarm. No locked doors."

Martin Jacobson swallowed.

He had always wondered how it would feel. Now he knew.

All these damn years waiting for an attack and all the damn anxiety that just this sort of situation might arise.

Calm.

That was how he felt.

"No alarm! No locked doors. I'll shoot!"

Principal Prison Officer Jacobson knew the security instructions for Aspsås prison by heart. In the event of attack: lock yourself in. Raise the alarm. He had many years ago helped to formulate the instructions that underpinned a prison culture with unarmed staff, and now for the first time was about to put them into action.

He should first lock the door to the wardens' office from the inside. Then he should raise the alarm with central security.

But the voice, he had listened to it, and the body, he had watched it, he had heard and seen and knew Hoffmann's aggression and he knew that the prisoner who was shouting and holding a gun was both violent and capable. He had read the prison file and the reports on an inmate who was classified as psychopathic, but his colleagues' lives, human lives, were so much more important than security instructions. So he did not stay in the office and he did not lock the door. He did not press his personal alarm nor the one on the wall. Instead, he approached them slowly just as Hoffmann had indicated that he should, past the first cell door where someone started to bang on it from the inside, a heavy monotonous sound that echoed in the corridor walls. A prisoner reacting to something that was going on out there and doing what they always did when they were angry or wanted attention or were just happy about something, anything that was out of the ordinary. Every door he passed, someone else began to knock, others who had no idea what was actually going on out here but were keeping up with something that was better than nothing.