Three Seconds

birds, then back to the people who were no longer in a rush to get anywhere.
    ‘I won’t carry the guilt. Not any more. Not again.’
    Three days earlier he had dared to make a decision he had dreaded throughout his working life – to fire a lethal shot at another person.
    ‘I was not responsible for his death.’
    Last night he had dared to spend several hours in a cemetery – a modest grave that he had been more frightened of than anything else he could remember.
    ‘I was not responsible for her death.’
    His voice, it was remarkably calm again.
    ‘It was not me who committed murder.’
    He pointed at them, one at a time.
    ‘It was you. It was you. It was you.’

another day later
     

A couple of centimetres above the tail bone, the third or fourth vertebra, the pain was unbearable at times. He moved with care, he pedalled with his feet in the air, one at a time, then nothing could be heard and the intense pain was dulled for a while.
     
    He didn’t notice the smell, the stench of urine and faeces; in the first few hours perhaps, but that was a long time ago, not now, not any more.
    He had kept his eyes open the first evening and night and morning, looking for what couldn’t be seen, shouting voices and running feet. But he had his eyes closed all the time now, the heavy darkness. He couldn’t see anything in any case.
    He was lying on square pieces of aluminium that had been welded to form a long, round pipe – he guessed about sixty centimetres in diameter, just enough room for his shoulders and if he stretched his arms up he could press his palms against the top of the pipe.
    There was still pressure on his stomach and he let go of the drops that trickled down his thighs – it felt better, eased the discomfort. He hadn’t had anything to drink since the morning before he took the hostages, only the urine he managed to catch and lift to his mouth, a couple of handfuls over a hundred hours.
    He knew that a person could survive a week without water, but thirst was like hosting madness and his lips and palate and throat shrivelled in the presence of dryness. He held out, just as he held out against the hunger and pain in his joints from lying so still, and against the dark that he had relaxed into once the shouting and running feet fell silent. It was the heat that had made him think about giving up a couple of times. All electricity had been turned off in connection with the smoke and fire and when the ventilation system no longer supplied fresh air, the temperature in the sealed pipe had risen and felt like a fever. In the last few hours he had just aimed at a couple of minutes at a time, but that didn’t work any more, he couldn’t stand much more.
    He should have left the pipe yesterday.
    That was what he had planned: three days for the adrenaline and full alert to die down.
    But yesterday afternoon someone had opened the door, come in and walked around in the substation. He had lain petrified and listened to the footsteps and breathing of a guard or electrician or plumber only half a metre below him. The control room for the prison’s water and electricity was only checked a few times a week, he knew that, but still he waited for another twenty-four hours to be on the safe side.
    He pulled his left arm up towards his face, looked at the watch that had belonged to the elderly warden.
    Quarter to seven. Another hour to lock-up.
    Then an hour and a quarter for the staff to change shifts, when the day guards became the night guards.
    It was time.
    He checked that the scissors were still in his trouser pocket, the ones that had been in a pen holder on the desk in the workshop office and that he had cut his long hair with on the first day, his arm and hand movements restricted by the inside of the pipe, but he had plenty of time to do it and it had been a good way to forget the sound of people looking for body parts. He teased them out of his pocket again and, arm back, hit the inside of the pipe hard with the point until his fingertips felt a hole and he could slash the soft metal with the blades. He braced his body directly above the cut and pushed back, feet against the base, both hands against the sharp edges of the metal. He was bleeding heavily when the pipe finally gave way and he sank through the aluminium and fell onto the stone floor of the substation.
    He counted fifty-seven small red and yellow and green lights on panels that controlled the water and electricity; counted them one more