Piet Hoffmann—Stefan

Piet Hoffmann’s relationship with Stefan Lygas is a prison alliance built for a purpose, not a lasting friendship: Stefan helps Hoffmann gain standing and distribute drugs at Aspsås Prison, then becomes one of the men whose hostility turns the operation into a fight for survival. Their change from collaborators to mortal opponents tracks the collapse of Hoffmann’s assumed protection inside the prison.

Arrival and Calculated Alliance

Before entering Aspsås Prison, Hoffmann had studied the institution from the outside and learned about its staff and prisoners while on remand. But his first arrival inside the high-security prison brought him into a system whose daily rules and informal order he still had to navigate. After ten days largely alone in a cell, he was given a guided tour of the unit and began preparing for the other prisoners’ return.

Hoffmann had studied photographs of the fifteen men in the unit and knew their backgrounds. He positioned himself where each returning prisoner would see him, deliberately occupying a familiar chair and beginning a game of solitaire at someone else’s table. The performance was calculated: rather than appear frightened or wait to be tested, he presented himself as someone already entitled to take up space. He was watching in particular for Stefan and Karol Tomasz Penderecki, two Wojtek members serving long sentences at Aspsås Prison. The narrative establishes that the two men had already helped Hoffmann remove competitors and seize the prison drug market, while their allegiance also carried a threat: if his identity as Paula were exposed, they could become his executioners.

Establishing Standing and Control

At supper, two older prisoners challenged Hoffmann and demanded to see his papers. Stefan and Karol Tomasz stood to intervene, but Hoffmann waved them back and allowed the questioning to continue. He wanted to handle the test himself, treating the encounter as a contest over respect rather than a reason to rely openly on his allies. The scene shows the arrangement’s limits: Stefan could help protect Hoffmann’s position, but Hoffmann needed the other prisoners to accept that position in their own right.

Stefan had helped prepare for Hoffmann’s arrival. In the days beforehand, he and Karol Tomasz had circulated information about who Hoffmann was said to be, the reason for his imprisonment, his associates, and his standing with Eastern European criminal groups. With help from Stefan’s lawyer, they also obtained copies of records from police and prison systems, including a judgment. This information gave the new arrival a ready-made criminal profile within the unit. It also made the alliance practical: Stefan helped turn Hoffmann from an unknown prisoner into a figure whose identity and status could be assessed by others.

That groundwork became operational authority. After Hoffmann brought down the three main dealers with amphetamine, he expanded distribution beyond the unit. He directed prisoners to order from Stefan and collect from him, making Stefan a named point of access for the new supply. Small packages were moved through prison buildings, carrying word of a new supplier and the product’s quality and price. Stefan was therefore more than a bodyguard or a member of the group: he served as part of the network through which Hoffmann sought to establish control across Aspsås Prison.

From Protection to Suspicion

The alliance depended on secrecy and on Hoffmann’s confidence that the men around him would continue to protect his position. That confidence failed when he was attacked in his cell. Stefan was among the men involved in the assault, approaching with a screwdriver. The attack sharply reversed the meaning of their earlier cooperation: a man who had helped Hoffmann enter and consolidate the market was now a direct threat to his safety.

After Hoffmann was moved to voluntary isolation, he tried to determine which of the four men associated with his protection had betrayed him. He did not know who had exposed him, but understood that someone within the group he had relied on had burned him. Later, as danger intensified, he called out for Stefan. When Stefan’s voice answered with an accusation that Hoffmann was an informer, their conflict was no longer just a dispute over prison business. Stefan’s words named the identity Hoffmann had been concealing and showed that the relationship had crossed into open enmity. The available evidence does not establish that Stefan alone was responsible for exposing him; it does establish that Stefan joined the attack and became one of his openly hostile opponents.

The Final Confrontation

During the hostage crisis, Hoffmann had intended to exchange hostages and threaten Wojtek rather than the Swedish Prison and Probation Service. He had underestimated the hatred directed at him. When Stefan ran toward him, Hoffmann’s planned strategy gave way to immediate self-preservation. He pushed a guard away and shot Stefan; after Stefan fell, Hoffmann fired again. Stefan died on the floor, and the persistent noise of the confrontation gave way to silence.

The ending does not resolve the uncertainty over who first betrayed Hoffmann, but it closes the relationship decisively. Stefan’s path through the story runs from helping prepare Hoffmann’s arrival, to enabling his distribution network, to attacking and denouncing him, and finally to being killed by him. Their alliance is sustained only while it serves the takeover and while Hoffmann’s hidden identity remains useful. Once suspicion and exposure destroy that basis, the same prison world that made Stefan valuable as an intermediary turns their connection into a lethal confrontation.