Bubble: A Thriller (3 page)

“Seeing as you’re still employed by the Security Police, Normén, your security clearance still applies, as does the oath of confidentiality that you signed when you first joined. Whether or not you’re his sister, everything you hear in here
is confidential, and any attempt to communicate it to anyone else is strictly forbidden, is that understood?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“Of course,” she added when he didn’t seem happy with her response. “So, what’s this all about, then?”

On the other side of the glass a door suddenly opened and two people, a man and a woman in dark suits, walked into the room. For a few seconds no one in the room moved. Then Henke opened his eyes.

He raised his head, sat up in the chair, and then stretched, slowly and elaborately, as if he had just woken up. He said something that she couldn’t hear through the glass, and she was seized momentarily with an urge to burst in and give him a good slap.

Stigsson’s bone-dry voice changed her mind.

“Your brother is suspected of conspiracy, and possibly planning a gross act of terrorism.”

♦  ♦  ♦

“Well, Henrik, as we said before, you are suspected of planning and possibly making preparations for a crime intended to seriously destabilize or disrupt the fundamental political, constitutional, economic, or social structures of the country,” said the lead interviewer, a woman with short, dark hair, somewhere around forty, as she fixed her eyes on him.

But HP hardly noticed her. His weary brain was still trying to make sense of everything. At least there was one thing he was reasonably sure of. Unlike two years ago, when he thought he had been arrested but was actually the victim of a huge hoax, this time every single detail was right, from the armed unit’s break-in to his flat down to the scorched taste of the instant coffee in the brown plastic cup on the table next
to him. It all seemed genuine.
Was
genuine, in all likelihood. Which meant . . . ?

The subject is conspiracy theories, and here comes your thousand-kronor question . . .

“Mmm . . .” he muttered, seeing he was evidently expected to say something. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples to buy himself a bit of thinking time. What the fuck was the woman going on about? Destabilizing the political what . . . ?

“I’ve already told you at least a dozen times, I want a lawyer present during the interview,” he said quietly.

The woman, whose name was Roslund or Roskvist, something like that, exchanged a quick glance with her colleague.

“Yes, we realize that, Henrik,” the policeman said. HP had already forgotten his name. “But we thought we might start by getting some of the formalities out of the way before your lawyer shows up.

“He is coming, isn’t he? We’ve been waiting several hours now. How many law firms have you called?” He tilted his head and smiled in a way that left no room for misinterpretation.

“Of course there’s one coming . . .” Henrik mumbled.

“Well then, how about making a start anyway? To save us all a bit of time,” the policeman added with another smile.

“Unless there’s anyone else you’d like to call? Someone close to you—”

“No!” HP interrupted, slightly too loudly, as he sat himself up.

He saw the look in their eyes. Damn, he’d been trying to play it cool . . .

“I’ve got all the time in the world, and I’m not going to say anything until I’ve got a lawyer,” he said as calmly as he could, staring down at the tabletop.

“But by all means—feel free to talk away . . .” he muttered a
couple of seconds later, mainly to break the oppressive silence.

“Good suggestion, Henrik.” The male police officer, whose name HP still couldn’t remember, pulled out a chair and sat down. He took out a little digital recorder from the pocket of his jacket and put it on the table between them.

“Interview with Henrik Pettersson, known as HP, third of June, time fifteen thirteen. Officers present, Police Inspectors Roswall and . . .”

♦  ♦  ♦

“. . . Hellström.”

Stigsson had pressed a button next to the window and suddenly the lead interviewer’s voice could be heard from the speakers.

“So what exactly is Henke supposed to have done?” Rebecca said to no one in particular, while Hellström went on talking to the recording device.

She was doing her best to sound calm, as if she weren’t that worried about the answer.

“We’ve received information that suggests your brother is planning some sort of terrorist attack against the state, possibly connected to the princess’s wedding . . .”

“You’re kidding!” she exclaimed, unable to stop herself.

Stigsson gave her a quick look and she bit her tongue. Obviously, this was all just a big practical joke, the Security Police were renowned for their sense of humor, and Stigsson here was a brilliant stand-up comedian . . .

Pull yourself together, for God’s sake, Normén!

A mistake—this was clearly some sort of huge mistake. They must have got Henke mixed up with someone else, got the information mixed up and broken into the wrong flat. It would hardly be the first time, after all . . .

“We’ve also been made aware that this is by no means the first time your brother has been involved in this sort of criminal activity—”

“You mean that business with Dag,” she cut him off. “That wasn’t actually Henke’s fault, he was only trying to protect me. Besides, that was almost fifteen years ago . . .”

Stigsson shook his head.

“No, no, not the incident in which your boyfriend was killed, even if that isn’t entirely without interest as part of the bigger picture . . . This is about something else entirely. See for yourself.”

He gestured toward the interview room, where one of the officers had just switched on a video projector. A recording from a shaky handheld camera appeared on one wall, blue sky and some dark buildings. Then slender trees and a row of sidewalk cafés. Kungsträdgården, more specifically: Kungsträdgårdsgatan. In the background there was a clattering sound that was getting louder and louder. It took her a few moments before she suddenly realized what it was. Horses’ hooves . . . a lot of horses’ hooves on tarmac. When the royal cortege appeared in frame she noticed she was trembling . . .

♦  ♦  ♦

He recognized the film at once. Kungsträdgårdsgatan, exactly two years ago, the cortege with the royal couple and the Greek president.

The soldiers bobbing along on their horses, the spectators on the sidewalk fiddling with their cell phones. He’d seen it on film hundreds of times, recognized every face, every expression. The guy with the dog, the woman in the white hat, the German tourists with their huge backpacks . . . He knew the rest of it by heart. Any moment now a flash would bleach
the image, and a bang like the one he had experienced in his flat would make the hand holding the camera shake. Then complete chaos, galloping horses, soldiers on the ground, people screaming in panic.

But instead of focusing on the cortege as he had expected, the camera suddenly began to pan around. It wavered for a few seconds, then slid along the crowd lining one side of the road.

And it came to rest on a familiar figure, then zoomed in slowly until the person filled almost the entire screen.

HP couldn’t help squirming. Suddenly he felt a bit sick.

♦  ♦  ♦

A man dressed in black sitting on an EU moped. The tinted helmet was obscuring his face, but Rebecca had no trouble recognizing him. His posture, jerky movements, the way he held his head slightly tilted. There was no doubt at all . . .

She had suspected it at the time, but had deliberately not asked because she hadn’t wanted to know the answer . . .

The man on the screen reached into a plastic bag that was hanging from the handlebar, pulled out a cylindrical object, and started to fiddle with it. The noise of horses’ hooves got steadily louder as the cortege approached. The camera zoomed in even closer. The man looked up, waiting for a moment with the object in both hands. Then he suddenly jerked one hand and raised his arm. She already knew what he was about to throw.

♦  ♦  ♦

The blast from the grenade made this film shake as well, but the cameraman didn’t shift his focus from the moped. According to the timer in one corner of the screen, he sat there impassively for ten seconds, watching the effects of what he
had done, before putting the bike into gear, making a sharp U-turn, and disappearing down Wahrendorffsgatan.

The film stopped abruptly and the room fell silent. HP shifted in his chair and swallowed unconsciously a couple of times. A couple of clicks on the computer and suddenly a still of him covered the whole screen. A freeze-frame image of the precise moment when he threw the grenade.

His arm in the air, his body coiled like a spring. When you added the tinted helmet, he looked pretty alarming, to put it mildly.

“So, Henrik,” Hellström began, in a considerably less friendly tone of voice than before. “Is that . . .”

♦  ♦  ♦

“. . . your brother on the screen?” Stigsson and Runeberg were both looking at her now, and for a few seconds her head was completely blank. Her blouse was sticking to her skin, and the air in the little room suddenly felt stale and difficult to breathe. Their eyes seemed to be boring right through her.

She glanced at the interview room, but there was total silence in there as well. She had to try to gain a bit of time, get a chance to think things through . . . But to judge from the looks on both men’s faces, they were expecting an immediate answer.

So what was she supposed to do? Lie, or tell the truth?

Make a decision, for God’s sake!

She gulped a couple of times to clear the lump in her throat.

“Well . . .” she began.

“You don’t have to answer, Henrik!”

The door to the interview room opened and a tall man with slicked-back gray hair walked in. The man unbuttoned the gold buttons on his blazer with a flourish and then sat
down on the empty chair beside Henke. At that moment Rebecca realized that she knew him.

“My client declines to answer that question,” the man said, this time looking at the police officers as he put his briefcase on the table and took out a folder, putting it down next to HP’s coffee cup.

“Well, now I’d like to know why this interview has already started even though my client clearly stated that he wished to have his legal representative present. As I’m sure you are aware, this is in breach of chapter twenty-one of the Penal Code . . .”

♦  ♦  ♦

“Johan Sandels!”

Runeberg’s surprised exclamation drowned out the rest of the lawyer’s speech.

“How the hell did your brother manage to get hold of a heavyweight like that at such short notice?”

“I’ve got no idea,” Rebecca replied with a shrug.

That much was completely true.

What the hell was going on?

THE METAL GATE
swung shut behind him and he took a couple of steps out into Bergsgatan. Freedom again—what a relief!

The prosecutor had backed down almost immediately. A blurry film clip was evidently not sufficient grounds to hold him, at least not if Johan Sandels was involved.

The cops clearly hadn’t done their homework and still thought he was the sort of small fry they could scare the shit out of with a nocturnal break-in, a few hours of waiting, and then a stint in the hot seat.

A couple of years ago that might well have worked, and indeed probably
had
worked. But he was a totally different person now, and was playing in a considerably higher league than the cops could possibly realize.

Even if he
had
chosen to break rule number one and tell them what had actually happened, their tiny little cop brains would never have been able to accept the truth.

I found a cell phone on a train, a shiny silvery thing with a glass touch screen, and through that I got invited to play a
game. An alternative reality game that altered my reality forever. But I broke out, or at least I tried to . . .

Someone had shopped him, that much was obvious. Sent in the film clip and gave the Security Police his name.

The clip was hardly a new Zapruder film; it was captured by some tourist who had got more than he had bargained for. The cameraman had focused specifically on him, had known exactly where he was going to be. Which must mean that the film came from the Game. But the Game had nothing to gain from getting him locked up—on the contrary, they needed him out in the open if he was to stand any chance of fulfilling the task they were trying to force on him.

He had actually considered trying to get himself locked up. Come up with some petty little crime that would land him inside for a few months and quite literally get him out of the Game. But, like so many of his other brilliant ideas, he had chosen to park it for the time being. Prison really wasn’t his thing.

Been there, done that . . .

Fucking lucky that Sandels guy showed up.

He had called four of the biggest law firms, asking for their most famous lawyers, and each time he got stuck with some snippy little underling who gave him a halfhearted promise that they’d be in touch. He’d decided to make do with some junior lawyer from the B-team and a few nights on a hard bunk.

But suddenly Sandels had popped up like a jack-in-the-box . . .

Maybe the lawyer had got fed up with life in the country with his family and was grateful for an excuse to come into the city and see his mistress?

A stroke of luck, anyway. Unless it wasn’t . . .

Either way, he had been severely roughed up, banned from traveling, and the cops had seized his passport.

But at least he was out.

He took a few more deep breaths, then set off toward the tobacconist’s a few blocks away.

♦  ♦  ♦

They had let him go far too easily.

They could hold a suspect for seventy-two hours, and in terrorism cases the court usually followed the Security Police line and agreed to remand suspects. Yet Henke had been held for less than thirteen hours. That couldn’t only be down to the fact that he’d got hold of a famous lawyer.