Three Seconds

The black minivan stopped in a dark concrete corner of the multi-story garage.

Second floor, section A.

"Thirty-eight hours."

"See you."

"Outlawed. Don't you forget it."

Piet Hoffmann put his hand on Erik Wilson's shoulder and then got out of the back seat and breathed in the air that tasted of carbon dioxide. The narrow stairs led down to Regeringsgatan and the capital that was always in a rush.

Tulips. Church. SwissMiniGun. Ten kilos. Library. Wind meter. Letters. Transmitters. Nitroglycerine. Safety deposit box. CD. Poetry. Grave. Thirty-seven hours and fifty-five minutes left.

He started to walk along the pavement, passing close to people who looked at him without seeing him, strangers who lacked smiles. He longed for a particular house in a quiet street a few kilometers south of the city, the only place where he wasn't hounded and nothing demanded that he survive. He should call her again. Tulips and nitroglycerine and wind meter, he knew that he was capable and that he could do it in time, but Zofia, he still had no idea what to do about her. If danger and risk were involved, it was enough to be in control, then he could steer the outcome, but with Zofia he was never in control at all, he wasn't able to influence her reactions and feelings, no matter how he tried, he had no way of approaching her on his own terms.

He loved her so much.

Now he was doing the same as everyone else, hurrying along the city streets without a smile on his face: Master Samuelsgatan, Klara Norra Kyrkogata, Olof Palmes gata, and into a flower shop called Rose Garden on the corner of Vasagatan, which fronted onto Norra Bantorget. Two customers before him. He relaxed, lost himself in the red and yellow and blue flowers that all had names on small, square signs that he read and promptly forgot.

"Tulips?"

The young woman also had a name on a square badge that he had read several times and forgotten.

"Maybe I should vary it a bit?"

"Tulips always work well. In bud? From the cold room?"

"As usual."

One of the few flower shops in Stockholm that had tulips in May, perhaps because there was one customer of about thirty-five, who regularly came in and bought large bunches if they had been stored at max five degrees and still hadn't come out.

"Three bunches? One red, and two yellow?"

"Yes."

"Twenty-five stems in each bunch? And the plain white cards?" "Please."

Rustling tissue paper around each bunch. With thanks for a successful partnership, Aspsås Business Association on the card in each of the yellow bunches, and I love you on the one for the red bunch.

He paid and walked a couple of hundred meters down Vasagatan to a door with a plaque that said Hoffmann Security AB, first floor. He opened the door, turned off the alarm and walked straight across the kitchen to the sink where he had emptied fourteen mules of between fifteen hundred and two thousand grams of amphetamine each, the day before.

There was a vase in one of the kitchen cupboards. He found it in the one above the extractor fan and filled the heavy crystal glass with water and the bunch of twenty-five red tulips. The other two bunches, fifty light-green stems with as yet unopened, yellow buds, lay lined up across the worktop.

He turned the oven on to what he guessed was about 125 degrees. It was hard to distinguish exactly where one line changed to two on the old dial.

The fridge went down from 45 to 35 degrees, and just to be sure, he put a thermometer on the top shelf, as the gauge that was incorporated inside the plastic door was too crude and in any case, difficult to read.

Piet Hoffmann left the kitchen and the flat with an IKEA bag in his hand, went up the stairs two at a time to the loft and the shiny aluminum pipe, and knocked off the steel band in the way that he had when Henryk had been with him in the morning. Eleven tins, one at a time, from the fan heater into the bag. Then he locked up again and went down with eleven kilos of cut amphetamine in his arms.

I need three days to knock out the competition.

He checked the oven. It was warm, 125 degrees. He opened the fridge, checked the thermometer on the top shelf, 40 degrees, like in the flower shop, but he had to get the temperature down to 35.

I want to know how you're going to do it.

First tin out of the IKEA bag. One thousand grams of amphetamine. More than enough for fifty tulips.

With tulips and poetry.

He had cleaned the sink meticulously, but he still found some remains from yesterday that had gotten stuck to the edges of the metal plughole. The unplanned shooting and mules who, in a panic, had to be emptied in the one place they must never be linked to. He turned on the tap and let the hot water run while he picked off the last bits of vomit and milk and brown rubber.

The fireproof gloves were in one of the drawers with the cutlery. He laid a tulip on each one and put them into the oven, with the round buds nearest to the door. He loved the moment when it happened. Spring and life encapsulated on the end of a green stem. The buds suddenly woke up in the warmth of the oven and revealed their true color for the first time.

He took them out when they were just a couple of centimeters open, he had to be careful not to wait too long, to lose himself in the beauty, color and life.

He put them down on the worktop and took out the box of condoms-no ribs and no lubricant and definitely no scent-and carefully poked half a condom down into each bud, then filled it with amphetamine, one tip of a knife at a time. Three grams in the small buds, four in the slightly larger ones, pressed it down hard to get as much as possible in. Then he popped the two amphetamine-filled tulips on a serving dish in the humming freezer between the sink and the range.

They had to lie there in -65 degrees for ten minutes. Until the buds had closed again, gone back to sleep and hidden their glory. Only then would he move them from the freezer to a fridge regulated to 35 degrees and a long rest that would delay them flowering.

The next time they opened it would be at room temperature on a governor's desk.

When he wanted them to.

Piet Hoffmann stood in his large office looking out of the window at the people and cars on Kungsbron and Vasagatan, as was his wont. He had filled fifty tulips with a total of 185 grams of 30 percent amphetamine, without even thinking about the fact that the whitish-yellow powder had stolen years of his life and there had been a time when every waking hour was used to steal enough to get more for the next day. The rehab center, the fear, the prison sentence, the drug had been all-consuming and everything else meaningless until the morning she was suddenly standing in front of him. He had never injected since. She had forced him to hold onto her hand hard, as only people who trust each other can.

The cigar case was lying on the desk. The digital recorder beside it.

The document- I've read it. I assumed… I assumed that it concerned a… woman?

A recorder small enough to be transported in your anus.

Now it was voices on the computer.

That's my name, in here.

He copied the whole recording onto two separate CDs and put one in a brown and one in a white 8 x 10 envelope. He took down four passports from the top shelf in the gun cabinet, put three of them in the brown envelope and the fourth in the white envelope. Finally, he got out two small transmitters and two earpieces and put one in each envelope.

"It's me."

He had dialed the only number stored on the mobile phone.

"Hello."

"Västmannagatan. Your colleague's name, I've forgotten it. The guy who's investigating."

"Why?"

"Erik, I've only got thirty-five hours left."

"Grens."

"His whole name."

"Ewert Grens."

"Who is he?"

"I don't like the sound of this. What are you up to?"

"For Christ's sake, Erik. Who?"

"One of the older ones."

"Good?"

"Yes, he's good. And that makes me uneasy."

"What do you mean?"

"He's… he's the sort that doesn't give up."

Piet Hoffmann wrote the name on the front of the brown envelope in big, clear letters, then the address underneath in smaller letters. He checked the contents. A CD, three passports, one earpiece.

The sort who doesn't give up.

Erik Wilson enjoyed the last of the sun as it sank slowly into Lake Vattern. A moment of peace after Piet's strange phone call about Ewert Grens a short while ago, and before a meeting that would make an infiltrator even more dangerous. He had sensed the change hour by hour in recent days, how Piet retreated more and more. The last conversation he had had was with someone who could only be called Paula. He knew that it was necessary and even what he preached, but it still shocked him every time someone he liked became someone else.

He had walked the short distance from Jonkoping station to the Swedish Court Administration offices on several occasions in recent years, and if he cut down along Jarnvagsgatan and Vastra Storgatan, he could be at the heavy entrance door in just five minutes.

He was there to manipulate the system.

And he was good at it, at recruiting people, regardless of whether it was someone serving a sentence who could be used to infiltrate other criminal networks or a civil servant who could be used to add or delete a line or two here and there in a database. He was good at making them feel important, getting them to believe that they were helping society, as well as themselves, good at smiling when necessary and laughing when necessary and ingratiating himself with the infiltrator and informer so that they liked him more than he would ever like them.

"Hi."

"Thank you so much for staying late."

She smiled, a woman in her fifties whom he had recruited several years ago in connection with a case in Gota Court of Appeal. They had met in the courtroom every day for a week, and over dinner one evening had agreed that her position gave her authority to make changes in the databases that might be of assistance to the Swedish police in their ongoing work to map organized crime.

They walked up the steps of the imposing court building together and she waved over to the security guard I've got a visitor, then they continued ro Administration on the first floor. She sat down at her computer and he pulled over a chair from the neighboring empty desk and waited while she typed in her user name and password, and swiped a small plastic card along the top of her keyboard.

"Who?"

Her authorization card on a lanyard around her neck; she fiddled with it nervously.

"721018-0010."

He leaned his arm on the back of her chair. He knew she liked it. "Piet Hoffmann?"

"Yes."

"Stockrosvägen 21, 122 32 Enskede."

He looked at the screen and the first page of the Swedish National Police Board's records for Piet Hoffmann.

1. SERIOUS FIREARMS OFFENSES 08-06-1998

CHAPTER 9, PART 1, SECTION 2 THE FIREARMS ACT

2. UNLAWFUL DISPOSAL 04-05-1998 CHAPTER 10, PART 4, SPC

3.UNLAWFUL DRIVING 02-05-1998 PART 3, SECTION 2 RTOA (1951:649)

IMPRISONMENT ONE (1) YEAR SIX (6) MONTHS

04-07-1998 SENTENCE COMMENCED

01-07-1999 RELEASED ON PAROLE

Remaining term of imprisonment six months

"I just want to make a couple of adjustments."

He might have touched her back as he leaned toward the screen. Never more than that, the illusion of togetherness. They both knew what it was about, but she let herself be fooled because she needed something that resembled human contact, and he pretended because he needed someone to work for him. They used each other in the same way that a police handler and informer did, a silent agreement that was never defined, but that was a prerequisite for wanting to meet in the first place.

"Adjustments?"

"I want you… to add just a few things."

He changed position, leaned back, his hand near her back again. "Where?"

"The first page. The Österåker bit."

"Sentenced to one year and six months."

"Change it to five years."

She didn't ask why. She never did. She trusted him, trusted that the detective superintendent from the crime operations unit in Stockholm was sitting close to her in the best interests of society and crime prevention. Light fingers dancing on the keyboard as the line with ONE (I) YEAR six (6)

MONTHS became FIVE (5) YEARS.

"Thank you."

"Is that all?"

"Next line. Convicted of serious firearms offenses. That's not enough. I want you to add a couple more offenses. Attempted murder. Aggravated assault on an officer."

Only one computer on, only one desk lamp on in the large room on the first floor of the National Courts Administration. Wilson was aware of the risk that the woman who had stayed late was taking; while her colleagues had left long ago and were now lounging around on sofas in living rooms watching TV, she weighed the feeling of being important against the risk of prosecution and gross document forgery.

"Now he's got a longer sentence and more ratio decidendi. Anything else?" She printed off the relevant page of 721018-0010's criminal record and gave it to the man who was sitting so close and made her feel alive. She waited while he read and after a while seemed to lean in even closer. "That's fine. For today."

Erik Wilson held two pieces of paper that made the difference between respect and suspicion. Within the first hour of being inside Aspsås Prison walls, Piet Hoffmann would have to prove his convictions to insistent fellow prisoners and doing five years for ATTEMPTED MURDER AND AGGRAVATED ASSAULT ON AN OFFICER was the same as getting the security classification: powerful and capable of killing, if necessary.

Paula would be seen as what he was pretending to be from the very minute he entered his cell.

Erik Wilson stroked the smiling woman on the arm, gave her a fleeting kiss on the cheek, and she was still smiling as he rushed away to get the late train back to Stockholm.

The house looked smaller as the dark started to gnaw at the corners.

The facade was leached of color, the chimney and new tiled roof sank lower over the upstairs windows.

Piet Hoffmann stood between the two apple trees in the garden and tried to see into the kitchen and sitting room. It was half past ten, it was late, but she was usually still up at this time, somewhere to be seen behind the white or blue curtains.

He should have phoned.

The meeting at Rosenbad had finished just after five and then spilled over into the three bunches of tulips from the flower shop and the CD copies of a recording made in a room at the Government Offices and two letters addressed to two people who would never receive them and then up into the dark loft again and eleven tins with eleven kilos of amphetamine in a bag and buds that two by two were first put in the oven, then the freezer before being put in the fridge and suddenly the evening had disappeared without him having called.

Thirty-three hours left.

He opened the front door that was locked. No TV humming in the sitting room, no light over the round table in the kitchen, no radio from the study and the slow P1 talk shows that she liked so much. He had come home to a hostile house, to reactions that he couldn't control and that scared him.

Piet Hoffmann swallowed the feeling of being so totally fucking alone.

He had actually always been lonely, never had many friends as he dropped them one by one because he didn't understand the point, didn't have many relatives as he lost touch with those who hadn't dropped him first. But this was a different loneliness, one that he hadn't chosen himself.

He turned the light on in the kitchen. The table was empty, no blobs of jam and crumbs from just one more cookie, it had been wiped in circles until everything had been cleaned off. If he leaned forward he could even see the stripes from a J-doth on the shiny pine surface. They had sat there eating supper, just a few hours ago. And she had made sure that they finished their meals. He had not been there and wouldn't be part of it later either.

The vase was in the cupboard over the sink.

Twenty-five red tulips, he straightened the card, I love you, they would stand in the middle of the table where the card was visible.

He tried to put his feet down as quietly as possible on the stairs, but every tread creaked in warning and the ears that were listening would know he was near. He was frightened, not of the anger he would confront any minute now, but of the consequences.

She wasn't there.

He stood in the doorway and looked into an empty room. The bedspread was still on the bed and hadn't been touched. He continued on to Hugo's room and coughs from a throat that was only five years old and swollen. She wasn't there either.

One more room. He ran.

She was lying on the short, narrow bed snuggled close to their youngest son. Under the blanket, curled up. But she wasn't asleep, her breathing wasn't that regular.

"How are they?"

She didn't look at him.

"Have they still got a temperature?"

She didn't answer.

"I'm so sorry, I couldn't get away. I should have called, I know, I know that I should have."

Her silence. It was worse than everything else. He preferred open conflict.

"I'll look after them tomorrow. The whole day. You know that." That damn silence.

"I love you."

The stairs didn't creak as much when he went down. His jacket was hanging on the coat rack in the hall. He locked the front door behind him.

Thirty-two hours and thirty minutes left. He wouldn't sleep. Not tonight. Not tomorrow night. He would have plenty of time to do that later, locked up in five square meters for two weeks on remand, on a bunk with no TV and no newspapers and no visitors, he could lie down then and close out all this shit.

Piet Hoffmann sat in the car while the rest of the street went to sleep. He often did this, counted slowly to sixty and felt his body relaxing limb by limb.

Tomorrow.

He'd tell her everything tomorrow.

The windows in the neighboring houses that shared his suburban life went black one by one. The blue light of a TV still shone upstairs at the Samuelssons' and the Sundells'; a light that changed from yellow to red in the Nymans' cellar window, where he knew one of their teenage sons had a room. Otherwise, night had fallen. One last look at the house and the garden he could touch if he wound down the window and stuck out his hand, he was sure of it, which were now blanketed in silence and blackness, not even the small lights in the sitting room were on.

He would tell her everything tomorrow.

The car crept along the small streets as he made two phone calls; the first about a meeting at midnight at number two, the second about another meeting later at Danviksberget.

He wasn't in a rush anymore. An hour to hang around. He drove toward the city, to Soderrnalm and the area round Hornstull, where he had lived for so many years when it was still a rundown part of town that the city suits sneered at if they happened to stray there. He parked down by the waterfront on Bergsunds Strand, by the beautiful old wooden bath house that some crazy people had fought so hard to pull down a few years back and was now a hidden gem in this hip area, where women could swim on Mondays and men on Fridays. It was warm, even though night was at hand, so he took off his jacket and walked along the asphalt, with his eyes on the luminous water that reflected the headlamps of the occasional car that crept down past the flats looking for a place to park.

A rather hard park bench for ten minutes, a slow beer at Gamla Uret where the bartender, whom Hoffmann knew from late nights in another life, had a very loud laugh, a couple of articles in a forgotten evening paper, oily fingers from the bowl of peanuts at the far end of the bar.

He had frittered away the hour.

He started to walk toward Högalidsgatan 38 and Heleneborgsgatan 9, and a flat on the second floor with an uneven parquet floor.

Erik Wilson was sitting on a plastic-covered sofa when the man who now could only be Paula opened the front door and crossed the water-damaged hall floor.

"It's not too late. To pull out. You know that"

He looked at him with something that resembled warmth, which he shouldn't do but that was the way it was. An infiltrator should be an instrument, something that he and the police authorities could use for as long as it was productive or simply abandon if things got too risky.

"You're never going to be particularly well paid. You'll never get any official thanks."

With Piet though, or Paula, it was different. He had become something more. A friend.

"You've got Zofia. And the boys. I've no idea what that feels like, but… I think about it sometimes, long for it. And if I had… there's no bloody way that I'd risk it for someone who wouldn't even say thanks."

Wilson was very aware that right here, right now, he was doing something that he shouldn't. Giving a unique infiltrator an argument for backing out when the authorities needed him most.

"This time you're taking a risk that is far bigger than before. I said it yesterday in the tunnel on the way over from Rosenbad. Piet, look at me when I'm talking. I'll say it again. Look at me! The moment you've completed our mission, you'll be on Wojtek's hit list. Are you sure you understand what that means, really means?"

Nine years as an infiltrator. Piet Hoffmann looked at the plastic-covered furniture and chose a green, or possibly brown, armchair. No. He wasn't sure anymore that he did understand what it entailed or why they were in fact sitting here facing each other in a secret meeting place while his wife and children slept in a silent house. Sometimes it's just like that. Sometimes something starts and then carries on and days become months and years without you being able to reflect on it. But he remembered clearly why he said yes, and what they had said about a sentence that could instead be served with regular leave and then when he was released, a life where his criminal activity could be simplified, as long as he worked for the police they would turn a blind eye to his own criminal record, hide it away and make sure that the criminal operations unit and public prosecutor didn't bother him. It had all seemed so bloody simple. He hadn't even considered the lies, the danger of being exposed as a snitch, the lack of appreciation and protection. He didn't have a family then. He existed only for himself, and then barely.

"I'm going to finish this."

"No one will blame you if you pull out."

He'd started, and then continued. He'd learned to live for the kicks, for the adrenaline that forced his heart to explode in his chest, for the pride of knowing that he was better at this than anyone else, he who had never been best at anything.

"I'm not going to pull out."

He was addicted. He didn't know what life was like without the adrenaline, the pride.

"Well, we've talked about it openly then."

He was one of those people who had never managed to finish anything. He was going to do it this time.

"I really appreciate you asking, Erik. I realize that it's not really your job. But, yes, we have talked openly about this."

Erik Wilson had asked the question. And got the answer he wanted to have.

"In case anything should happen."

He changed his position on the uncomfortable plastic-covered sofa.

"If you're about to be exposed, you can't escape very far in a prison, but you can demand to be put in isolation."

Wilson looked at Paula, Piet.

"You might be given a death sentence. But you're not going to die. When you've asked to be put in isolation, once you have that protection, contact us and wait for a week. That's the time we'll need to get the papers sorted for someone to come and get you out."

He opened the black briefcase that was standing by his feet and put two folders on the coffee table between them. A new section from the Swedish National Police Board's criminal records and an equally new interrogation transcript which was now included in the documentation of a ten-year-old preliminary investigation.

INTERROGATING OFFICER JAN ZANDER (JO): A nine millimeter Radom. PIET HOFFMANN (PH): Right.

RD: When you were arrested. Recently fired. Two bullets were missing from the magazine.

PH: If you say so.

Piet Hoffmann read through the amended documents in silence.

"Five years."

"Yes."

"Attempted murder? Aggravated assault on an officer?"

"Yes."

IO: Two shots. Several witnesses confirm it.

PH: (silence)

IC): Several witnesses in the block of flats on Kaptensgatan in Söderhamn whose windows face the lawn where you fired two shots at Constable Dahl.

PH: Söderhamn? There, I've never been there.

Erik Wilson had worked with each little piece in detail so that, all together, it would add up to a credible and tenable background.

"Does it- Do you think it'll work?"

Any change to a judgment in a criminal record always required a new hearing for the investigation that had once taken place, and new entries in the Prison and Probation Service files from the prison where the sentence was served, according to the changes.

"It works."

"According to the judgment and preliminary investigation records, you hit a police officer in the face three times with a loaded Radom pistol and didn't stop until he fell unconscious to the ground."

IO: You tried to kill a police officer on duty. One of my colleagues. I want to

know why the hell you did that?

PH: Is that a question?

IO: I want to know why!

PH: I never shot at a policeman in Söderhamn. Because I never went to

Söderhamn. But if I had been there and if I had shot at your colleague it

would have been because I don't particularly like the police.

"You then turned the gun, cocked it, and fired two shots. One hit him in the thigh. The other in the left upper arm."

Wilson leaned back against the plastic.

"No one who looks at your background and has access to parts of your criminal record or the preliminary investigation will be in any doubt. I also added a note farther down about handcuffs. You were in handcuffs the whole time you were being questioned. For security reasons."

"That's good."

Piet Hoffmann folded together the two pieces of paper.

"Give me a couple of minutes. I just want to go through them once more. Then I'll know it."

He held the court judgment that had never been pronounced and the hearing that had never taken place, but still were his most important tools for carrying out his role in the prison corridors.

Thirty-one hours left.

Thursday

The bells in both towers of Höglid church struck the hour after midnight as he left Erik Wilson and number two via the communal gardens and an entrance on Heleneborgsgatan. it was still unusually warm outside, whether it was the spring turning to summer or the kind of warmth that comes from inside when the body is tense. Piet Hoffmann took off his jacket and walked toward Bergsunds Strand and his car that was parked close enough to the water's edge for the headlights to illuminate the dark water when he started the engine. He drove from west to east Si5dermalm and the night, which should have been thronging with people who had longed for the warmth all winter and now didn't want to go home, was empty, the noisy town had fallen to rest. He accelerated after Slussen, along Stadsgardskajen, then braked and turned off just before Danvikstull bridge and the municipal boundary with Nacka. Down Tegelviksgatan and then left into Alsni5gatan to the barrier that blocked the only road up to Danviksberget.

He got out into the dark and jangled his keys until he found the piece of metal that was about half the size of a normal key; he'd carried it with him for a while now; they'd met fairly frequently in recent years. He opened and closed the barrier and drove slowly along the winding road up the hill to the outdoor café at the top that had been serving cinnamon buns with a view of the capital for decades now.

He stopped the car in a deserted lot and listened to the surf by the cliffs where the sea flowed into Saltsjon. A few hours earlier, customers would have sat here, holding hands while they talked or yearned or just drank their café lattes in the kind of silence that is shared. A forgotten coffee cup on a bench, a couple of plastic trays with crumpled napkins on another. He sat down by the building with its closed wooden shutters and a table chained to a lump of gray concrete. Piet Hoffmann looked out over the city where he had lived for the greater part of his life, but he still felt like a stranger, someone who was just visiting for a while and would soon move on, wherever it was he was actually going.

He heard footsteps.

Somewhere in the blackness behind him.

At first faint and far away, feet against a hard surface, then closer and clearer, gravel that loudly proclaimed how much the person walking on it was trying not to be heard.

"Pier."

"Lorentz."

A dark, solid man of his own age.

They embraced each other as usual.

"How much?"

The dark, solid man sat down in front of him, elbows heavy on the table which dipped slightly. They had known each other for exactly ten years. One of the few people he trusted.

"Ten kilos."

They had done time together at Österåker. Same unit, neighboring cells. Two men who became close in a way that they would never have done if they'd met anywhere else but there, cooped up and without much choice, they had become best friends, without realising it at the time.

"Strength?"

"Thirty?"

"Factory?"

"Siedlce."

"Blossom. That's good. It's what they want. And I don't need to bullshit about the quality. But personally, I can't stand the smell."

Lorentz was the only name he would never give to Erik. He liked him. He needed him. Lorentz sold on what Piet had cut, to earn some money for himself.

"But thirty percent… too strong for Plattan and Centralen. No one there should have anything stronger than fifteen, otherwise there's just trouble. This- I'll sell it in the clubs, the kids want it strong and have the money to pay."

Erik had realized that there was someone whose name he was not going to get. And why. So Piet could continue to earn money from his own business and Erik and his colleagues turned a blind eye and sometimes even facilitated it, in exchange for continued infiltration.

"Ten kilos of thirty percent gear is a fuck of a lot. I'll take it, obviously. Like I always do when you ask. But-and now I'm talking to you as a friend, Piet-are you sure that you've got everything under control if anyone starts to ask questions?"

They looked at each other. The supposed question could be interpreted as something else. Distrust. Provocation. It wasn't. Lorentz meant exactly what he said and Pier knew that he was asking because he was concerned. Before, what he'd done was to cut a little more of the supplies that he got from somewhere to sell on somewhere else, for his own purposes. But this time he needed big money and for other reasons, so some of the vacuum-packed tins of uncut gear had been moved from the fan heater shaft to an IKEA bag only a few hours after Henryk's visit.

"I've got everything under control. And if I ever have to use the money from this lot one day, it'll be because it's too late to answer those questions."

Lorentz didn't ask anymore.

He had come to understand that everyone had their reasons and made their choices and if they didn't want to talk about it, it was pointless trying. "I'll deduct fifty thousand for the explosives. You gave me such damned short notice, Piet, that it cost more than usual."

One hundred kronor per gram. A million kronor for ten kilos. Nine hundred fifty thousand in cash, the rest in explosives.

"You've got everything?"

"Pentyl."

"Not good enough."

"And nitroglycerine. High detonation velocity. Packed in plastic pockets."

"That's what I want?"

"You'll get the detonator and fuse thrown in."

"If you insist."

"It's going to be a big fucking bang."

"Good."

"You're a law unto yourself, Piet."

The two cars were parked in the dark with open trunks when a blue IKEA bag with ten one-kilo tins of thirty percent amphetamine and a brown briefcase with 950,000 kronor in notes and two highly explosive packages swapped places. Now he had to move fast. He drove back down the narrow winding road from Danviksberget, opened the barrier with the key and carried on toward Enskede and the house that he constantly longed for.

It was too late by the rime he realized he had driven over it. It was so dark in the driveway and the red plastic fire engine was impossible to see. Piet Hoffmann rolled forward about half a meter, and then got down on his hands and knees and felt around by the right front wheel until he found Rasmus's favorite car. It wasn't in the best condition, but if he used a red felt pen on the door to make it look like enamel and bent the white ladder that was supposed to be fixed to the middle of the roof back in shape, then maybe it could be returned to service in the sandpit or the floor upstairs within a few days.

They were in there, asleep. The other plastic fire engines. Under the beds, sometimes even in the beds of the two boys he was going to hug so hard in a few hours' time.

He opened the trunk and then the brown briefcase that was right at the back behind the spare wheel and hesitated before taking out two small packages and leaving the 950,000 kronor in notes untouched.

Slowly through the shadows in the garden.

He didn't turn on any lights until he was in the kitchen and had shut the door; he didn't want to wake Zofia with any irritating, unnecessary light, nor did he want to be caught out by naked feet on their way to the toilet or the fridge. He sat down at the table that had been wiped so well, the marks from the cloth still showing. In a few hours, they would eat breakfast here together, sticky, messy, and noisy.

The packages were lying in the middle of the table. He hadn't checked them, he never did. When they were from Lorentz, that was enough. He opened the first one, which looked like a thin pencil case, and took out a long cord. At least, that was what it seemed to be, like eighteen meters of thin, coiled cord. But for anyone who knew anything about explosives, it was something completely different. A pentyl fuse and the difference between life and death. He unwound it, felt it, then cut it in the middle and put back the two nine-meter lengths. The other package was square, a plastic sleeve with twenty-four small pockets, a bit like the ones that his dad had had in the green album where he kept his coins from the time he had called Konigsberg his home, used coins that were of no particular value. Once, when his body was screaming for another fix, Pier had tried to sell them and had realized that the brown bits of metal that he had never been interested in were very worn and of no value to collectors other than his father, who saw a value that was connected to his memories from times gone by. He gingerly touched each little pocket, the transparent fluid inside, a total of four centiliters of nitroglycerine divided into twenty-four flat plastic pockets.

Someone let out a whimper.

Piet Hoffmann opened the door.

The same whimper again, then silence.

He started to go up the stairs. Rasmus was having a nightmare, but this time it disappeared without need for comfort.

So he went down instead, to the cellar and his personal gun cabinet that stood in one of the storerooms. He opened it and there they were, several on one shelf. He took one of them and went upstairs again.

The world's smallest revolver, SwissMiniGun, no bigger than a car key.

He had bought them direct from the factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds last spring, six-millimeter bullets in the miniature revolver's cylinder, each one powerful enough to kill. He rested the weapon on his palm and weighed it as he swung his arm backward and forward across the table-only a few grams were needed to end a life.

He closed the kitchen door for a second time and started to saw both ends of the trigger guard with a hacksaw blade-the metal band that ran around and protected the trigger was too small, he couldn't get his index finger in and he was removing it so he could squeeze the trigger and shoot-a couple of minutes was all that was needed for it to fall to the floor.

He then held the tiny gun with only two fingers, raised it and aimed at the dishwasher, pretending to fire.

A deadly weapon no longer than a toothpick, but still too big.

So he was going to divide it up into even smaller components with the minute screwdriver that reminded him of his granny in Kaliningrad, where she kept it in a drawer under her sewing machine that stood in the bedroom and seemed like a huge bit of furniture to a seven-year-old. First, with great care, he undid the screw on one side of the wooden butt, put it down on the white surface of the worktop so that he could see it-he mustn't lose it. The next screw was on the other side of the butt and closer to the hammer. Then with the point of the screwdriver against the pin in the middle of the revolver, he tapped it lightly a couple of times until it fell out and the toothpick-sized gun broke up into six separate parts: the two butt sides, the revolver frame with the barrel and cylinder pivot and trigger, the cylinder with six bullets, the barrel protector and a part of the frame that didn't have a name. He put each piece in a plastic bag and carried them out with eighteen meters of pentyl fuse and four centilitres of thinly packaged nitroglycerine, all of which was then placed on top of 950,000 kronor in a brown bag behind the spare tire in the trunk of the car.

Piet Hoffmann had sat on one of the kitchen chairs and watched the light force back the night. He had been waiting for her for hours, and now he heard her heavy tread on the wooden stairs, foot flat down on the surface in the way that she always did when she hadn't had enough sleep. He often listened to people's steps-they clearly reflected what was going on inside and it was always easier to work out how someone was feeling by closing his eyes when he or she approached.

"Good morning."

She hadn't seen him and she jumped when he spoke.

"Hi."

The coffee was already made, so he poured in just the amount of milk she liked in the morning. He carried the cup over to the beautiful and tousled and sleepy woman in a dressing gown, and she took it. Such tired eyes, she had been furious for half the night and then slept in a bed with a feverish child for the other half.

"You haven't slept at all."

She wasn't irritated, her voice didn't sound it, she was just tired. "Just worked out that way."

He put some bread, butter, and cheese on the table.

"Their temperatures?"

"They've gone down. For the moment. A few more days at home, maybe just two."

More footsteps, much lighter, feet that were bright from the moment they left the bed and touched the floor. Hugo was oldest but still woke up first. Piet went over to him, picked him up, and kissed and squeezed his soft cheeks.

"You're prickly."

"I haven't shaved yet."

"You're more prickly than normal."

Bowls, spoons, glasses. They all sat down, Rasmus's chair still empty, but they would leave him to sleep as long as he needed to.

"I'll take them today."

She had expected him to say that. But it was hard. Because it wasn't true.

"The whole day."

The set table. Not so long ago, nitroglycerine had lain there beside some pentyl fuse and a loaded gun. Now it was laden with porridge and yogurt and crispbread. The cornflakes crunched noisily and some orange juice was spilled on the floor. They ate their breakfast as they usually did until Hugo banged his spoon down on the table.

"Why are you angry with each other?"

Piet exchanged glances with Zofia.

"We're not angry."

He had turned to his oldest son as he spoke and instantly realized that this five-year-old was not going to be satisfied with a platitude and therefore decided to hold his challenging eyes.

"Why are you lying? I can tell. You are angry."

Piet and Zofia looked at each other again and then she decided to answer.

"We were angry. But we're not anymore."

Piet Hoffmann looked at his son with gratitude and felt his shoulders dropping. He had been so tense, longing to hear those words, but he hadn't dared ask the question himself.

"Good. No one's angry. Then I want more bread and more cornflakes."

His five-year-old hands poured more cereal on what was already in his bowl and put some cheese on another slice of bread which then lay next to the first one that hadn't even been started yet. His parents chose not to say anything. This morning he was allowed to do as he pleased. He was wiser than they were right now

He sat on the wooden step by the front door. She had just left. And he still hadn't said what he needed to say, it just hadn't worked out that way. Tonight. Tonight he would tell her. About everything.

He'd given Hugo and Rasmus a dose of Calpol as soon as her back had disappeared down the narrow path between the Samuelssons' and Sundells' houses. Then half a dose more. Thirty minutes later their temperatures had dropped and they were dressed and ready for nursery.

He had twenty-one and a half hours left.

Piet Hoffmann had ordered Sweden's most common car, a silver Volvo. It wasn't ready, neither cleaned nor checked. He didn't have time to spare, so instead chose a red Volkswagen Golf, Sweden's second most common car.

Someone who doesn't want to be seen or remembered should stand out as little as possible.

He parked near the churchyard and fifteen hundred meters away from the enormous concrete wall. A long and open decline all the way down, meadows of grass that were green but not that tall yet. That was where he was going. Aspsås prison, one of the country's three high security prisons. He was going to be arrested, held on remand, prosecuted, sentenced, and locked into a cell within the next ten, maybe twelve, or max fourteen days.

He got out of the car and squinted into the sun and wind.

It was going to be a beautiful day, but looking at a prison wall, all he could think of was hatred.

Twelve fucking months inside another all-encompassing concrete wall, the only emotion that was left.

He had for a long time thought it was simply the rebellion of a young person against everything that restricted or hemmed him in. It wasn't. He was no longer particularly young, but the feeling was just as potent when he looked at the wall. Hatred of the routines, the tyranny, the isolation, the locked doors, the attitudes, the work with square blocks of wood in the workshops, the suspicion, the secure transport, urine tests, body searches. Hatred of the screws, the pigs, uniforms, rules, whatever represented society, that bloody hatred that he'd shared with the others, the only thing they had in common, that and the drugs and the loneliness. That hatred had forced them to talk to each other, even to strive for something, rather strive for something that was driven by hatred than nothing at all.

This time he would be locked up because he wanted to be-no time to feel anything at all, he was there to complete something and then leave.

He stood by the rental car in the morning sun and light wind. In the distance, at one end of the high wall, he could see identical redbrick bungalows and a small town built up around the big prison. Those who didn't work as prison guards in the corridors, worked in the construction company that repaired the floor in Block C, or the catering company that supplied the ready portions to the dining hall, or the electricians who adjusted the lighting in the yard. The people who lived in freedom on one side of the wall in Aspsås were completely dependent on those who were locked up on the other side.

I guarantee that you won't be charged for anything that happened at Viistmannagatan 79.

The digital recorder was still in his trouser pocket. He had listened to her voice several times in the past few hours, his right leg and the microphone had been close to her and her words were dear and easy to understand.

I guarantee that we will do our best to help you complete your operation in prison.

He opened the gate. The path had been raked recently, his every step erasing the traces of a careful church warden. He looked at the graves that were well tended, simple headstones with small squares of grass, as if the people in the bungalows carried on living in the same way after death, with just enough distance between them not to interfere but close enough never to be alone, not too much and not too big, just a clearly marked separate space.

The churchyard was surrounded by a stone wall and trees that had been planted long ago and still stood at regular intervals, with enough space to allow for growth but still give the impression of a protective screen. Hoffmann went closer, sycamore maples with leaves that had just sprung and that moved in the breeze, which meant that the wind strength was between two and five meters a second. He looked at the small branches, they were moving too, between seven and ten meters a second. He tilted back his head, trying to see if the bigger branches were moving, some way to go before it was fifteen meters per second.

The heavy wooden door was open, and he entered a church that was too large: the white ceiling up high, the altar way back, it felt so big that the whole town of Aspsås could fit in the hard pews and there would still be space. One of those buildings from a time when power was measured in size.

The nave was empty except for the warden who was moving some wooden chairs from just by the christening font, silent apart from a scraping sound up in a gallery near the organ.

He went in and put a twenty-kronor note in one of the collection boxes on the table by the entrance, then nodded at the warden who had heard some movement and turned around. He went back out into the vestibule, waited until he was certain that he wasn't being watched before opening the gray door to the right.

He slipped in as quickly as he could.

The staircase was steep, with treads from a time when people were shorter. The door at the top swung open with a little pressure from a crowbar in the gap around the doorframe. The simple aluminum ladder leaned against a narrow hatch in the roof, the entrance to the church tower.

He stopped.

A sound made its way up. Muffled notes from the organ.

He smiled, the scraping that he had heard earlier in the nave from the gallery had been a cantor preparing the day's psalms.

The aluminum ladder swayed unsteadily when he pulled a pipe wrench from his bag and grabbed the hook of the padlock on the hatch. One firm thrust and it sprang open. He opened the hatch, climbed into the tower and ducked down under the enormous cast iron bell.

One more door.

He opened it and went out onto the balcony with a view that was so stunning that he was forced to stand still and follow the sky down to the woods and the two lakes and what looked like a rugged mountain in the far distance. With his hands on the rail, he inspected the balcony, which was not large-there was enough space to lie down. It was windier up here. The same wind that amused itself with leaves and small branches at ground level moved more freely here and the balcony shook when it was caught by a gust that tried to pull it along. He looked at the wall and the barbed wire and the buildings with bars on the windows. Aspsås prison was just as big and just as ugly from here and the view was uninterrupted, nothing in the way: it was possible to see every inmate in the heavily guarded prison yard, every pointless metal fence, every locked door in the concrete.

And… that we will look after you when the work is done. I know that you will then have a death threat on you, branded throughout the criminal world. We will give you a new life, a new identity, and money to start over again abroad.

The recorder was in his hand and her voice just as clear, despite the monotonous moan of wind.

I guarantee you this in my capacity as a state secretary of the Ministry of Justice.

If he succeeded.

If he carried out his work behind those walls down there exactly as they had planned, he would have a death sentence on him, he would have to get out, away.

He put down his shoulder bag and from the front pocket took out a thin black cable and two transmitters, both silver and about the size of a small coin, attached one transmitter to each end of the cable, which was about half a meter long, and fixed it to the outside of the railing with Blu-Tack, facing the prison, where it would be invisible to anyone standing on the church tower balcony.

He squatted down and with a knife cut off a couple of centimeters of the black protective covering on the cable to expose the metal wires so he could splice it to another piece of cable which he then also attached to the outside of the railing. He lay down, his body close to the railing and wired that cable to what looked like a small piece of black glass.

Always alone.

He stuck his head out through the railings to check that the two cables, two transmitters, and solar cell were properly attached to the outside.

Trust only yourself.

The next time someone stood out here and spoke, he or she would do so without knowing that every word, every sentence could be heard by someone who had been sentenced to serve time down there, inside the walls of Aspsås prison.

He paused to look at the view again.

Two extremes, so close, so far apart.

If he stood on the church tower's windy balcony with his head cocked, he could see the glittering water and treetops and endless blue sky.

If he bent his head even farther, he met a separate world with a separate reality, nine square concrete buildings that from a distance looked like a collection of identical Lego pieces, where the most dangerous individuals in the country were crammed together and locked up with days that were totally predictable.

Piet Hoffmann knew that he would be given the job of cleaner in Block B, one of the conditions from the meeting at the Government Offices and one of the tasks that the general director of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service had been ordered to sort out. He concentrated therefore on the Lego piece that stood roughly in the middle of the world that was framed by a seven-meter-high wall and with binoculars studied, section by section, the building that he did not know yet but which in a couple of weeks' time would be his day-to-day reality. He picked out a window on the second floor, the workshop, the largest workplace for inmates at Aspsås who chose not to study. A window that was positioned near the roof, with reinforced glass and closely spaced metal bars, but with the binoculars he could still see several of the people in there working on the machines, faces and eyes that stopped every now and then to look out and yearn-so dangerous when all you could do was count the days and pass the time.

A closed system with no escape.

If I'm exposed. If I'm burned. If I'm alone. He would no longer have any choice.

He would die.

He lay down on the balcony, crawled over to the railing holding an imaginary gun with both hands and aimed at the window he had just decided on, on the second floor of Block B. He studied the trees by the churchyard wall-the wind had increased and the bigger branches were moving now.

Wind strength twelve meters per second. Adjust eight degrees to the right.

He aimed his imaginary gun at a head that was moving around inside the workshop window. He opened his bag and took out a rangefinder, aimed it at the same window.

He had already estimated the distance to be around fifteen hundred meters.

He checked the display, a hint of a smile.

It was exactly fifteen hundred and three meters from the balcony of the church tower to the reinforced window.

Distance fifteen hundred and three meters. Clear view. Three seconds from firing to impact.

His hands gripped the nonexistent gun hard.

It was five to ten when he walked back past the graves and protecting sycamore trees, down the neatly raked gravel path to the car that was parked outside the gate. He was on schedule-he had managed to sort out what he had to at the church and would be the first customer in Aspsås library when it opened.

A separate building on the square, tucked between the bank and the supermarket, a librarian in her fifties who was as friendly as she looked. "Can I help you?"

"In a moment. I just want to check some titles."

A children's corner with cushions and small chairs and Pippi Longstocking books stacked in equal piles, three plain tables for anyone who wanted to study or just read for a while in peace, a sofa with headphones for listening to music and computers for surfing the Internet. It was a nice little library, quiet with a prevailing atmosphere of meaningful time in contrast to the prison wall that dominated the view through each window, signalling trouble and detention.

He sat down at one of the screens by the lending desk and searched in the library catalogue. He needed the titles of six books and looked for ones that presumably had not been borrowed for a long time.

"Here."

The friendly librarian looked at his handwritten list.

Byron Don Juan

Homer The Odyssey

Johansson Nineteenth Century Stockholm

Bergman The Marionettes

Bellman My Life Writings

Atlantis Collection of World Literature The French Landscape "Poetry… and titles which… no, I don't think we'll find any of them up here."

"I thought as much."

"It will take a while to get them up."

"I need them now."

"Well, I'm on my own here and… they're in the storage. That's what we do with books that are not borrowed very often."

"I would really appreciate it if it was at all possible to get them now I don't have that much time."

She gave a sigh, a little one, like someone who has been asked to do something that is a problem, but also actually a joy.

"Well, you're the only one here at the moment. And I'm sure there won't be manymore in until just before lunch. I'll go down to the basement if you could just keep an eye on things for me here."

"Thank you so much. Only hardback copies, please."

"I'm sorry?"

"Not paperback or those flimsy bindings."

"Paper bindings? They're cheaper for us to buy. And the content is the same."

"Hardbacks, please. It's the way I read. Or rather, where I read."

Piet Hoffmann sat down on the librarian's chair by the lending desk and waited. He had been here before and borrowed books that weren't popular and were therefore kept in storage in the basement as he had in several other libraries in the small communities close to the country's high security prisons. He had borrowed books from Kumla public library, whose customers included the inmates of Kumla prison, and Sodertalje public library, which had had customers from Hall prison for many years. And when prisoners inside the walls that were only a few hundred meters from the library ordered their books, they were always collected from here, Aspsås library, and what's more, if they were titles from storage, the borrower could be certain to get precisely the book he had ordered.

She was out of breath when she opened the heavy door up from the basement.

"Steep stairs."

She smiled.

"I guess I should perhaps jog a bit more."

Six books on the lending desk.

"Are these okay?"

Hardbacks. Big. Heavy.

"Tulips and poetry."

"Excuse me?"

"Perfect, just as I like them."

The square was windy, relatively sunny, nearly empty. An old lady with a zimmer frame labored over the cobbles, a man of roughly the same age with plastic bags on the handlebars of his bike was rummaging in a rubbish bin with both hands, looking for empty bottles. Piet Hoffmann drove slowly out of the small town, which he would return to in ten days' time, in handcuffs and a secure police van.

"I still want to know how."

"We've already done this three times before."

A closed system with no escape.

An exposed infiltrator, a snitch, as hated in prison corridors as perverts, pedophiles or rapists, always at the bottom of the hierarchy that ruled in European prisons, which gave murderers and major drug dealers their status and power.

"Officially, you will be pardoned. On humanitarian grounds. That doesn't need to be explained in anymore detail. Medical or humanitarian grounds are sufficient for a decision that the Ministry of Justice will then stamp as confidential."

If anything happened. Her promise was all that he had. That, and the things he had prepared himself.

He looked at the clock on the dashboard. Eighteen hours to go.

A few miles out of Stockholm, driving slightly too fast through sleepy suburbs, one of his two mobile phones rang. An irritated woman's voice, one of the nursery teachers from Hagtornsgarden.

Both boys had a temperature.

He drove toward Enskededalen, it was his turn today and the Calpol had stopped working.

A wise woman, a couple of years younger than he was, Hugo and Rasmus had always been safe with her.

"I don't understand it."

The same woman who had phoned him only a couple of days ago about two sick little boys. Now she was sitting in front of him in the office, frowning at him while two warm children waited on a bench out in the playroom.

"That you… both of you… it's just not like you, after all these years, you, if anyone, just wouldn't play that stupid Calpol trick. I just don't understand."

"I'm not quite sure what you're-"

He had started to defend himself as he always did when someone accused him of something. But then stopped. This was not an interrogation, the nursery teacher was not the police and he was not suspected of a crime.

"We have rules here. You know them. You both know them. Rules that say when a child is welcome and when he or she is not. This is a workplace, a workplace for adults, and for your children and other people's children."

He was ashamed and didn't answer.

"And what's more- Piet, it isn't good for the children. It's not good for

Hugo or Rasmus. You can see for yourself how they look. Being here when their little bodies are overheated… it could have other, more serious consequences. Do you understand that?"

When a person crosses a boundary he promised never to cross. Who is he Then?

"I understand and it will never happen again."

They flopped on his shoulders as he carried them out to the car. They were hot and he kissed their foreheads.

One more time. Just one more time.

He explained to them what they had to do. They had to get better. He gave them each a dose of Calpol.

"I don't want it."

"Just one more time."

"It's yucky."

"I know. This is the last time. I promise."

He kissed them on the forehead again and started to drive in a direction that Hugo realized was not home.

"Where are we going?"

"To Daddy's office. We'll just be there for a little while. Then we're done. Then we can go home."

A couple of minutes' drive up the main road into the city via Skanstull and Soderleden; he switched lane in the tunnel under Sodermalm and drove toward Hornsgatan and the road down to Mariatorget. He parked outside the video shop that was squeezed between the supermarket and bowling hall, rushed in, keeping his eyes on the back seat of the car through the window, and picked out three videos: twelve episodes of Winnie the Pooh. The children knew all the lines by heart already, but it was one of the few he could cope with. The sound wasn't as hysterical as most others: adults as cartoon characters shouting in falsettos, pretending to be children.

The next time he stopped was right outside the door on Vasagatan. Hugo and Rasmus were still just as hot and tired and he wanted them to walk as little as possible. They had been with him to Hoffmann Security AB before, several times in fact, curious as children always are about where Mommy and Daddy work, but never when he was actually working-for them it was just a place where Daddy went while he waited for his children to finish playing at nursery.

Half a litre of vanilla ice cream, two big glasses of Coke and twelve episodes of waddling Winnie the Pooh. He set them up in the spacious office in front of the TV screen with their backs to the desk and explained that he had to go up to the loft for a few minutes, but they didn't hear him, they were busy watching something about Rabbit and Eeyore and a wooden cart that they wanted Pooh to sit in. Piet Hoffmann got three tins out of the fan heater, carried them down and put them on the floor, cleared his desk so he would have space to work.

Six books that belonged to Aspsås library that were seldom asked for and therefore had a note stuck on the front page, STORAGE, in blue print.

A plastic bag with a disassembled miniature revolver.

Some pentyl fuse that had been cut into two nine-meter lengths.

A plastic sleeve with four centilitres of nitroglycerine divided up into twenty-four pockets.

A tin of thirty percent amphetamine.

He took a tube of glue from the drawer of the desk, a packet of razorblades and a packet of Rizla papers, thin with a sticky edge, generally used by people who like rolling their own cigarettes.

Tulips.

And poetry.

He opened the first book. Lord Byron's Don Juan. It was perfect. Five hundred forty-six pages. Hardback. Eighteen centimeters long, twelve wide.

He knew it would work. Over the past ten years, he had prepared a couple of hundred novels, poetry, and essay collections to hold ten to fifteen grams of amphetamine, and been successful each time. Now, for the first time, he would borrow the modified books himself and empty them in a cell in Aspsås prison.

"I need three days to knock out the competition. During that time I don't want to have any contact and it's my responsibility to take in enough gear.

He opened the front cover and with a razorblade cut through the hinge until it loosened and the spine of five hundred forty-six pages of Don Juan was revealed, then he tidied up the loose ends with the blade. He flicked through to page 90, held all the pages together and with a strong hand ripped them off and put them down on the desk. Then he flicked to page 390 and ripped off the next thick pile.

It was these pages, from 91 to 390, he was going to work with.

With a pencil he drew a rectangle that was fifteen centimeters long and one centimeter wide in the left-hand margin of page 91. Then, with the razorblade, he cut along the lines, deeper and deeper, millimeter by millimeter until he had cut through the whole pile, three hundred pages. His hand worked the razor blade well and even the slightest unevenness and loose strip was shaved off. He lifted the middle section of the book, which now had a new hole that was fifteen centimeters long, one centimeter wide and three centimeters deep, back into place and glued it together. He felt the edges with his fingertips, there was still some unevenness, so he lined the walls with Rizla papers. If he was going to fill it with amphetamine, it was important that the surfaces were even, and there was space for fifteen grams in this book, as it was particularly thick.

The first ninety pages were still intact and he put them back where they should be, over the hole, glued them to the spine and the loose front board and then pressed Lord Byron's classic hard against the desk with both hands until he was certain that every page was glued in place.

"What are you doing, Daddy?"

Hugo's face peered at him from behind his elbow, close to the recently prepared book.

"Nothing. Just reading a bit. Why don't you watch the show?" "It's finished."

He stroked Hugo's cheek and got up; there were two more films, Winnie the Pooh had to eat more honey and get more scoldings from Rabbit before he was finished with everything.

Piet Hoffmann prepared The Odyssey, My Life's Writings, and French Landscape in the same way. In two weeks' time, an inmate serving time at Aspsås prison who was interested in literature would be able to borrow as many as four books, containing a total of forty-two grams of amphetamine.

Two books left.

With a new razorblade, he cur a rectangular hole in the left hand margin of Nineteenth Century Stockholm and The Marionettes. In the first, he put the pieces of what a reader, who knew how, might be able to reassemble into a miniature revolver; the hardest piece was the cylinder loaded with six bullets, which was wider than he thought, but he managed to press it down carefully into the cavity by taking off some of the Rizla papers. A gun with the power to kill if the bullet hit its target. He had seen one for the first time six months ago in winoujcie, when a wired mule had tried to throw up 2,500 grams of heroin in the toilet at the ferry terminal, before even boarding the boat. Mariusz had opened the door to see the mule lying on the floor with a plastic bag to his mouth and he hadn't said a word, just moved in sufficiently close and aimed the short barrel at one of his eyes and killed him with one bullet. In the second hole, in the last book, he put a detonator the size of a large nail and a receiver the size of a penny-the kind that you put in your ear to receive and listen to sounds from two transmitters that are attached with Blu-Tack to the railings on a church tower balcony.

Two nine-meter pieces of pentyl fuse and a plastic envelope with twenty-four centilitres of nitroglycerine were still left on the desk. He took a furtive glance over at two small backs that were watching a cartoon about a fat bear. They laughed suddenly, a jar of honey had got stuck on Pooh's head. Hoffmann went out into the kitchen, opened another tub of ice cream and put it down on the table between them, stroked Rasmus on the cheek.

It was going to be hardest to hide the pentyl fuse and plastic sleeve with nitroglycerine without anything showing.

He chose the largest book, Nineteenth Century Stockholm, twenty-two centimeters long and fifteen centimeters wide. He cut open the front and back of the library cover and pulled out the porous paperlike filling and replaced it with the explosive and fuse, glued it up again, tidied the edges and then leafed through all six books to make sure that the hinges were properly glued and it wasn't possible to see any of the rectangular holes.

"What's that?"

Hugo's face popped up over the top of the desk again. The second video had finished.

"Nothing."

"What is that, Daddy?"

He pointed at the shiny metal tin full of thirty percent amphetamine. "That? Oh… just grape sugar."

Hugo stood there, he was in no hurry.

"Don't you want to watch the rest? There's another video."

"I will in a minute. There's two letters there, Daddy. Who are they to?" Inquisitive eyes had spotted the two envelopes that were lying high up in the open gun cabinet.

"I'm not going to send them."

"But they've got names on."

"I'll finish them later."

"What do they say?"

"Shall I put the video on now?"

"That's Mommy's name. On the white one. It looks like it. And the one on the brown one starts with an E, I can see that too."

"Ewert. His name's Ewert. But I don't think he'll get it."

The ninth part of Winnie the Pooh was about Piglet's birthday and an outing with Christopher Robin. Hugo sat down beside Rasmus again and Pier Hoffmann checked the contents of the brown envelope-a CD of the recording, three passports, and a transmitter-stamped it and put it in his brown leather bag along with the six prepared books from Aspsås library. Then, to the white envelope which Hugo had noticed had Zofia's name on-a CD, the fourth passport, and a letter with instructions-he now added 950,000 kronor, in notes, and put the envelope in his brown leather bag along with the rest.

Fifteen hours left.

He stopped Winnie the Pooh, helped the two children who were starting to heat up again put their shoes on, then went into the kitchen and the fridge and put fifty tulips with green buds into a cool box and carried this and the leather bag and two boys downstairs to the car that was parked right outside the front door, with a parking ticker tucked under the windshield wiper.

He looked at the two red faces in the back seat.

Two more stops.

Then he would put them to bed, with clean sheets, and sit there and watch them until Zofia came home.

They lay in the car while he went into the Handelsbanken branch on KungstradOrdsgatan, and down into the basement and a room full of rows of safe deposit boxes. He opened the empty box with one of his two keys and put in one brown envelope and one white envelope, locked it and emerged from the building a couple of minutes later, got in the car and drove to Hökens Gata on Sodermalm.

He looked at them again-he was so ashamed.

He had overstepped the boundary. The two boys whom he loved more than anything in the back seat, and amphetamine and nitroglycerine in the trunk.

He swallowed, they weren't going to see him crying, he didn't want them to.

He parked as close to the entrance to Hökens Gata 1 as he dared. Number four, fifteen hundred hours. Erik had already gone in from the other door.

"I don't want to walk anymore."

"I know. Just here, then we'll go home. I promise."

"My legs hurt. Daddy, they really, really hurt."

Rasmus had sat down on the first step. His hand was warm when Piet took it, he lifted him up on one arm, with the cool box and leather bag in the other hand. Hugo would have to walk up the stairs himself, like you sometimes do when you're the oldest.

Three floors up, the door with LINDSTROM on the letter box opened from the inside at exactly the same time that his watch alarm started to bleep.

"Hugo. Rasmus. This is Uncle Erik."

Small hands were held out and shaken, he felt Erik Wilson's withering look: What the hell are they doing here?

They went into the plastic-wrapped sitting room of the flat that was being renovated, and despite being tired, they looked curiously around at all the strange furniture.

"Why is there plastic everywhere?"

"There's work being done."

"What do you mean, work?"

"They're making the flat new and they don't want things to get dirty." He left them in the rustling sofa and went into the kitchen, and another piercing look. He cocked his head.

"I didn't have a choice."

Wilson didn't say anything-it was as if he'd lost track when he saw two children in a world that dealt in life and death.

"Have you spoken to Zofia?"

"No."

"You have to speak to her."

He didn't answer.

"Piet, you can make all the excuses in the world. You know that you have to. Jesus Christ, you have to fucking talk to her, man!"

Her reactions, the ones he couldn't control.

"This evening. When the boys have gone to bed. I'll talk to her then." "You can still back out."

"You know I'm going to finish this."

Erik Wilson nodded and looked at the blue cool box that Pier lifted onto the table.

"Tulips. Fifty. They'll be yellow."

Wilson stared at the green stems and green buds that were lying among the white, square ice packs.

"I'll put them in the fridge. It should be about 35 degrees. I want you to look after them. And the same day that I go in through the gate of Aspsås prison, I want you to send them to the address I give you."

Wilson put his hand into the cool box and flipped over one of the white cards with the bouquet.

"With thanks for a successful partnership, Aspsås Business Association." "Correct."

"And where should they be sent?"

"Aspsås prison. The prison governor."

Erik Wilson didn't ask anymore questions. It was better not to know. "How much longer do we have to wait?"

Hugo had grown bored of sliding his fingers over the plastic and making it rustle.

"Just a little while. Go back in to Rasmus. I'll be there in a minute." Wilson waited until the small feet had disappeared into the gloom of the hall.

"You'll be arrested tomorrow, Piet. After that, we'll have no contact whatsoever. You won't communicate with me or anyone else from the city police. Until you're ready and you tell us that you want out. It's too dangerous. If anyone suspects that you're working for us… you're dead."

Erik Wilson walked down the corridor in Homicide. He was uneasy and slowed down outside Ewert Grens's office, as he had done every time he went past in recent days, curious eyes peering into the empty office and the music that was no longer there. He wondered what the detective superintendent who was investigating the murder in Västmannagatan was up to, what he knew, how long it would take before he started asking the questions that no one could answer.

Wilson sighed, it didn't feel right, those children, they were so young. It was his job to encourage infiltrators to take big risks to get the information that the police depended on, but he wasn't sure that Piet had fully understood what he had to lose. They had gotten too close, he genuinely cared about him.

If anything happens, abort.

If anyone discovers who you are, you have a new mission.

To survive.

Wilson closed the door to his office and turned on his computer, which was not connected to the Internet for security reasons. He had explained to Piet, while the two boys pulled at their dad's arms, that he would go back to FLETC and southern Georgia in the meantime, to finish what he had been forced to interrupt a couple of days ago. He was not convinced that the man in front of him had actually been listening; he had said yes and he had nodded, but he was already on his way home to his last night of freedom for a long time. The computer screen was filled with an empty document and Erik Wilson started to write an intelligence report for the county commissioner, via Chief Superintendent Göransson, which would then be deleted from his own hard disk: a background report for the arrest of a wanted and violent criminal with three kilos of Polish amphetamine in his car trunk, a report that would not be delivered until tomorrow, as it had not happened yet.

He had waited on his own by the kitchen table for two hours.

A beer, a sandwich, a crossword, but he hadn't drunk, eaten, or written anything.

Hugo and Rasmus had gone to sleep upstairs a long time ago. They had had pancakes with strawberry jam and too much whipped cream first and then he had put them to bed and opened their windows and watched them fall asleep after only a few minutes.

He heard them now, the steps that he knew so well.

Through the garden, up the front steps and then the creak as the door opened and he felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach.

"Hi."

She was so beautiful.

"Hi."

"Are they asleep?"

"Have been for a couple of hours."

"And how's the temperature?"

"It'll be gone tomorrow."

She gave him a light kiss on the cheek and smiled, she didn't notice that the world was about to fall to pieces.

Another kiss, on the other side, twice, as always.

She didn't notice that the damn floor was heaving.

"We have to talk."

"Now?"

"Now."

A slight sigh.

"Can't it wait?"

"No."

"Tomorrow? I'm so tired."

"By then it'll be too late."

She went upstairs to change, soft trousers and the thick sweater with too-long sleeves. She was all he had ever wanted and she looked at him in silence as she curled up in the corner of the sofa and waited for him to start talking. He had thought of making food with a strong scent of either India or Thailand, opening a bottle of expensive red wine and then starting to tell her, gently, after a while, But he had realized that what was false and had to be explained became even falser when it was disguised by enjoyment and intimacy. He leaned forward, hugged her-she smelled good, she smelled of Zofia.

"I love you. I love Hugo. I love Rasmus. I love this house. I love knowing that there's someone who calls me my husband and someone else who calls me Daddy. I didn't know it was possible. I've gotten used to it, I'm completely dependent on it now."

She pulled herself into a ball even more and withdrew farther into the corner of the sofa. She could tell that he'd been rehearsing what he had to say.

"I want you to listen to me, Zofia. But most of all, I want you to sit there and not leave until I have finished."

He always knew more about every situation than those he would later share it with. If he was more prepared, he would have more control and someone who has control is always the one who decides.

Not now.

Her feelings, her reactions, they scared him.

"Then- Zofia, you can do what you like. Listen to me and then do what you want."

He sat opposite her and in a quiet voice, started to tell a story about a prison sentence ten years ago, about a policeman who had recruited him as an infiltrator and about continued criminal activity and the police who turned a blind eye, about a Polish mafia organization called Wojtek, about secret meetings in flats that were being renovated, that she had dropped off her husband and collected him from a shell company that he had called Hoffmann Security AB, about a fabricated criminal record and suspect database and prison records that described him as extremely violent and classified him as psychopathic, that the illusion that was one of Sweden's most dangerous men would be arrested tomorrow morning at six thirty in a pool hall in central Stockholm, about the expected trial and outcome, a sentence with years in prison, a life behind high walls that would start in about ten days and continue for two months, about having to look his wife and children in the eye each day and know that their trust and confidence was built on a lie.

Friday

They had lain beside each other in bed and tried very hard to avoid touching.

She had been completely still.

Now and then he had stopped breathing, scared that he might not hear what she didn't say.

He sat on the edge of the bed, knew that she was awake, that she was lying there looking at his false back. He had continued to talk as they shared a cheap bottle of wine and when he was done, she just got up, disappeared into the bedroom and turned off the light. She hadn't spoken, screamed, only silence.

Piet Hoffmann got dressed, suddenly in a hurry to get away-it wasn't possible to stay with the nothingness. He turned around and they looked at each other without saying anything until he gave her a key to a safe deposit box in the Handelsbanken branch on Kungstradgardsgatan. If she still wanted to share a life together she should go there if he contacted her and said that everything had kicked off. She should open the safe deposit box and she would find one brown and one white envelope and she should do exactly what the handwritten letter instructed her to do. He wasn't sure if she had listened, her eyes had been distant, and he fled to the two small heads that were sleeping on two small pillows and he breathed in the smell of them and stroked them on the cheek and then left the house in the residential area that was still fast asleep.

Two and a half more hours. His face in the rearview mirror. A dark chin with salt-and-pepper stubble that was even more obvious on his cheeks-he had been a much younger man the last time he had stopped shaving. It itched a little, it always did to begin with, and then the straggled hair. He tugged at it, not much better really, it was actually too thin to grow.

He would be arrested soon, transported in a police van to Kronoberg remand prison, be issued with baggy prison clothes.

He drove through the dawn, his final trip to a small town to the north of Stockholm with a church and a library that he had visited less than twenty-four hours ago. The weak light and confused wind were his only companions in the square at Aspsås; Not even the magpies and pigeons and the bum who usually slept on one of the benches were there. Piet Hoffmann opened the returns box to the right of the library entrance and dropped in six books that were not borrowed often enough to merit being visible on the shelves. He then continued on to the church that took up so much space with its white facade, into the churchyard that was blanketed in a soft mist and looked up at the church tower that had a view over one of the country's high security prisons. He picked the locks of the solid wooden door and the considerably smaller door just inside and went up the uneven steps and an aluminum ladder to a closed hatch just under a cast iron bell that must weigh several hundred kilos.

Nine square concrete buildings inside substantial walls, which looked more like Lego blocks in their own world than ever before.

He looked toward the window he had chosen and aimed at it with an imagined gun, then took a silver receiver from his pocket-an earpiece identical to the one that was now hidden in a cavity in the left-hand margin of The Marionettes. He leaned over the railing, for a moment feeling like he might fall to the ground, and he held on to the iron railing with one hand while he checked that the two transmitters, a black cable, and a solar cell were still properly fixed where they should be. He put the receiver in his ear and one finger on a transmitter and ran it lightly back and forth-a crackling and snapping in his ear told him it was working fine.

He went down again, to the graves that lay side by side, but not too close, to the mist that blotted out death.

A merchant and his wife. A senior pilot and his wife. A mason and his wife. Men who had died as titles and professions and women who had died as the wives of their bedded husbands.

He stopped in front of a stone that was gray and relatively small and the resting place of a captain. Piet Hoffmann saw his father, the way he imagined him at least, the simple boat that had gone out from the border area between Kaliningrad and Poland and disappeared with its fishing nets over the Danzig Bay and Baltic Sea for weeks on end, his mother who later stood there and watched the slow progress into shore and then ran down to the harbour and his father's embrace. That wasn't how it had been. His mother had often talked about the empty nights and the long wait, but never about running feet and open arms, that was the picture he had painted for himself when he, as a child, had asked curious questions about their lives in another time, and it was the image he chose to keep.

A grave that hadn't been looked after for years. Moss crept over the corners of the stone and the small bed was overgrown with weeds. That was the one he was going to use. Captain Stein Vidar Olsson and wife. Born 3 March 1888. Died 18 May 1958. He had lived to be seventy. Now he was not even a gravestone that people came to visit. Piet Hoffmann held his mobile phone in his hand, his contact with Erik that would be cut in less than two hours. He turned it off, wrapped it in plastic wrap, put it in a plastic bag, got down on his knees and started to dig up the earth with his hands at the bottom right of the headstone, until he had a sufficiently large hole. He looked around, no other dawn visitors in the churchyard, dropped the telephone into the ground and covered it with earth and then hurried back to the car.

Aspsås church was still veiled in morning mist. The next time he would see it would be from the window of a cell in a square concrete building.

He'd managed it. He'd finished all his preparations. Soon he would be entirely on his own.

Trust only yourself.

He missed her already. He had told her and she hadn't said a word, somehow like being unfaithful-he would never touch another woman, but that was how it felt.

A lie that was neverending. He, if anyone, knew all about it. It just changed shape and content, adapted to the next reality and demanded a new lie so that the old one could die. In the past ten years he had lied so much to Zofia and Hugo and Rasmus and all the others that when this was all over, he would have forever moved the boundary between lies and truth; that was how it was, he could never be entirely sure where the lie ended and the truth began, he didn't know any longer who he was.

He made a sudden decision. He slowed down for a few kilometers and let it sink in that this really was the last time. He had had a feeling all year and now it had caught up with him, now he could feel it again and interpret it. That was how he worked. At first something vague that tugged at him somewhere in his body, then a period of restlessness when he tried to understand what it meant, then insight, a sudden, powerful understanding that had been so close for so long. He would sit out this sentence at Aspsås and he would finish his work there, and after that, never again. He had done his service for the Swedish police, for little thanks other than Erik's friendship and ten thousand kronor a month from their reward money, so that he didn't officially exist. He was going to live another life later, when he knew what a true life really looked like.

Half past five. Stockholm was starting to wake up. There were only a few cars on the road, the odd person rushing to catch a train or bus. He parked on Norrtullsgatan opposite the primary school and opened the door to a cafe that opened early and served porridge and stewed apples and a cheese sandwich and an egg and black coffee on a red plastic tray for thirty-nine kronor. He saw Erik as soon as he walked in, a face over by the newspaper stand that disappeared behind Dagens Nyheter in order to avoid eye contact. Piet Hoffmann ordered his breakfast and chose a corner on the other side of the room as far away from him as he could get. There were six other customers: two young men from a construction site in high-viz jackets and four considerably older men dressed in suits, with their hair combed for the only fixed point in the day. Breakfast cafes often looked like this, men who didn't have anyone and fled the loneliness of eating alone-women seldom did that, maybe they coped with loneliness better than men, maybe they were more ashamed and didn't want to make it public.

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."

Only a criminal can play a criminal.