Hoffmann begins seizing control of the drug market at Aspsås Prison by making the prison’s restrictions part of his strategy: amphetamine hidden in altered books becomes both his opening supply and a weapon against the existing dealers. The operation joins meticulous preparation to calculated public behavior. He does not merely bring drugs inside; he arrives with a prison identity prepared for inspection, allies ready to help, and a plan to make his new presence difficult to ignore.

Preparation and the concealed supply

Before entering Aspsås Prison, Piet Hoffmann prepares the first of four books, Lord Byron’s Don Juan. The hardback is 546 pages, and he works on it with a razor blade, removing a central block of pages and cutting a cavity into the remaining stack. The compartment measures fifteen centimetres by one centimetre and three centimetres deep. He smooths its walls with Rizla papers, glues the book back together, and leaves its opening pages intact. The carefully reconstructed volume can hold fifteen grams of amphetamine.

This method is not a first experiment. Over the preceding ten years, Hoffmann has prepared a couple of hundred novels, poetry collections, and essay books to carry ten to fifteen grams apiece, with success each time. The change now is that he will use the modified books himself, emptying them in a cell at Aspsås Prison. He prepares The Odyssey, My Life’s Writings, and French Landscape in the same manner. In two weeks, an inmate interested in literature will be able to borrow as many as four volumes containing a total of forty-two grams. The concealment depends on books being available through the prison library, turning an ordinary lending process into the route by which his supply enters the institution.

Arrival and establishment of status

Hoffmann has studied Aspsås Prison from outside before entering it. From the church tower, he has mapped the buildings and examined the bars on the windows; while on remand, Erik Wilson has helped him learn about the prisoners and staff in Block G. Even so, the bus passing through the iron gates marks his first actual entry into one of the country’s highest-security prisons. He is searched, issued ill-fitting clothes, and left in a sterile waiting room. The preparation has given him information, not immunity from the institution’s rules.

Ten days later, the unit’s rhythms have begun to define his immediate existence. For twenty-three hours a day he has been behind a metal door, in a five-square-metre cell without visitors, newspapers, television, or radio. When the unit is empty for a few hours, a principal officer shows him its practical routines, including where to use the toilet and when lock-in begins. The visit makes the cell more than a temporary stop: it is to be his home while the operation proceeds.

Hoffmann chooses how the other prisoners will first see him. Before they return, he takes a place in the television corner, where he can watch each man enter and where each man can see him. He sits in another prisoner’s preferred chair, takes marked cards, and begins playing solitaire at a table without asking permission. These are deliberate breaches of small courtesies, presented as signs that he is neither frightened nor waiting for approval. His position is meant to make the new inmate legible as a challenge before the drug trade itself changes hands.

Allies, records, and the opening move

Two of the four Wojtek members serving long sentences at Aspsås Prison, Stefan Lygas and Karol Tomasz Penderecki, are already in place as Hoffmann’s helpers. He also knows the danger attached to them: if his identity as Paula is exposed, they could become his executioners. Their assistance has a practical foundation. In the days before his arrival, they have spread word about who is coming, the reason for his imprisonment, his past associates, and his standing with an Eastern European mafia. Through Stefan’s lawyer, they have obtained copies of criminal and prison records, intelligence-database material, and Hoffmann’s latest judgment.

At supper, two older inmates demand to see his papers. Stefan and Karol Tomasz rise, but Hoffmann signals them to hold back. He lets the challenge develop rather than relying on his allies to settle it for him. The encounter makes respect, reputation, and the apparent history documented in his papers part of the same contest. His staged criminal identity must survive scrutiny in the social order of the unit, not just on official records.

Distribution and consequences

Once inside his cell, Hoffmann opens Don Juan with a knife taken from the kitchen. The book’s hidden compartment remains intact: fifteen grams of yellowish-white amphetamine, exactly as he left it. He empties the four prepared books in turn, pausing when footsteps or unfamiliar sounds pass his door. Together they yield forty-two grams of thirty-percent manufactured amphetamine. The other two prepared books, Nineteenth Century Stockholm and The Marionettes, remain untouched at this stage; he hopes not to need to read them. The contrast between the books already emptied and those left on the bed marks the operation’s boundary: these four carry the drug supply, while the other volumes are not yet put to use.

The prison market, as Hoffmann understands it, has more demand and less supply than the world outside, while detection inside a locked cell carries a higher risk and the same quantity can bring a longer sentence. He divides the forty-two grams among three plastic bags of fourteen grams each. One is for him to keep for the Greek inmate in Cell 2; the other two are put out for collection in Block H, where two other major suppliers operate on different floors. The division is meant to knock out the competition in one move, rather than build his position through a succession of small sales. Reports of the takeover reach Warsaw, where the next stage is treated as underway.

The plan also exposes him to immediate prison penalties. Hoffmann hides thirteen or fourteen grams high in his cell by taping a plastic bag against the wall behind a curtain rail, which he tests and replaces. The quantity would be enough to bring a new judgment, an extended sentence, and removal to another prison if discovered. His room contains a photograph of a young girl, a reminder of the family life his imprisonment interrupts; the concealed supply is therefore both a resource for the operation and a risk to his ability to remain where he is.

When Hoffmann believes he is about to be exposed, he cannot travel far within the prison and instead demands isolation. Ten members of the riot squad escort him from Block G to the voluntary-isolation unit in Block C, while six remain behind to discourage further violence. Even there, the move does not end the threat. He realizes that one of the people he regarded as protection and a possible route to escape has betrayed him, but the evidence does not identify which one. The market takeover thus begins with carefully controlled concealment and calculated visibility, yet leaves Hoffmann inside a closed system where allies can turn into threats and every successful step creates another exposure.