Buzz: A Thriller (20 page)

Maybe he would understand, she certainly hoped so. Either way, she owed him the truth. The whole truth, not just the crumbs she had been feeding him so far.

But the flat was empty and silent. No shoes and no jacket in the hall telling her that he was home.

On the kitchen table she found a note.

Think we need a break.

Call me when you’re ready.

/M

She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry . . .

Her cell suddenly bleeped and she almost ran back into the hall to get it from her jacket pocket.

But the text wasn’t from Micke.

Just got home?

She began to type a snotty reply but stopped herself. Without turning on the lights in the living room, she crept over to the window, pressed close to the curtain, then peered down at the narrow street. Parked cars lined up, just like every other evening. A thin layer of snow on their hoods let on that they had been there for a while.

A tiny point of light among the shadows in the park on the other side of the street brought her up short.

The glow from a cigarette.

There was someone standing there.

Someone who was watching her flat.

Pillars of Society forum

Posted: 6 December, 08:48

By:
MayBey

I’ve heard a rumor that everyone’s favorite bodyguard, Regina Righteous, is at her most accomplished between the sheets. Apparently there’s a little bonking pad on Söder.

Anyone know anything about that?

This post has
23 comments

“THERE, MR. SANDSTRÖM,
I think we’re done.”

The little man with the tape measure still had a couple of pins in the corner of his mouth, but this evidently didn’t stop him from sounding just the right sort of servile for HP.

Mr.
Sandström—very nice!

He had just been measured for a suit, as well as a number of matching shirts. This wasn’t the first time he’d done this, but this tailor didn’t speak Thai English but the rather posh, nasal Östermalm dialect of Swedish. Of course the bills wouldn’t
look very similar either, but money was actually the least of his problems right now.

He had transferred more than enough funds from the Cayman Islands, and his first wages were on their way as well.

“Ready in a week,” the man concluded, handing him a receipt. “Mr. Argos’s acquaintances take priority,” he added when he saw the look of surprise on HP’s face.

“But I’m afraid we can’t do any better than a week.”

HP left the little shop and waved down a taxi.

He leaned back in the seat and took a deep breath. He could definitely get used to this life.

♦  ♦  ♦

She was woken by the doorbell.

Long, persistent rings, and it took her a while to pull on her jogging trousers and a top.

A delivery of some sort,
she thought as she opened the door after checking the peephole.

“Hi, are you Rebecca Normén?”

“Yes, what’s this about?”

“Delivery from Interflora.”

The man handed her what looked like a well-wrapped bouquet of flowers. She took it and nudged the paper aside to get at the card.

Red roses, at least a dozen, if not more.

She read the card. Then she handed the bouquet back.

“You can take them away again,” she said.

“Wh-what?”

“The flowers, I don’t want them, so you can take them back.”

“B-but, er . . .”

The man seemed confused.

“They’ve been paid for and everything, I don’t know how . . .”

“Not my problem,” she said. “You’re welcome to return them to the sender. Then he might finally get the message . . .”

♦  ♦  ♦

“Nice of Frank to loan out his big star for a couple of days. You’re supposed to be Philip’s new golden boy?”

Rilke winked at him and HP found himself blushing against his wishes.

God, he was still such a freaking approval junkie! Even though he was a superhero it was enough to get the slightest little pat on the shoulder from someone he respected or had the hots for, and there he was, wagging his tail like a damned cocker spaniel . . .

“S-so, what exactly do you do over in your corner?” he muttered, turning his face away.

“Ah, so Frank hasn’t said anything. You guys down in the mine keep yourselves to yourselves!”

She gave him another teasing smile and HP could feel himself grinning like an idiot in response.

“The girls and I look after the blogs. Well, I say girls even though we do actually have one bloke in the team—apart from you now, I mean.”

She smiled again but this time he managed to keep up his poker face.

“It works pretty much the same way as the trolls, but every handler has a slightly smaller stable. We each look after four to seven different blog personalities. Music, film, technology, fashion, books, food, and politics of course. We cover the
whole lot, basically. Some of us work on long-term projects, planting ideas, while others do more short-term work, pushing specific opinions or products. You’ll be sitting with Halil here, she’s my number two.”

Rilke stopped at a desk where a young woman in a tight black outfit and beige headscarf was busy typing in a text.

“There, all done!” she said, spinning her chair to face HP and Rilke and holding out her hand.

“Halil’s the name—blogging’s my game . . .”

“Mange,” HP mumbled.

“Good to meet you!”

Rilke pulled over a chair for him, then left them to it.

“Okay,” Halil began. “Hang on to your hat, Mange, because we don’t fool around here.”

She snapped her fingers.

“I handle mostly fashion and music. Sandy over there looks after the technological blogs. Anders and Rilke deal with politics and the other three pretty much look after the rest. The design and technology team sitting over there make sure that all the sites work and that everything looks kosher. I’ve got seven bloggers in my stable—six girls and one guy. Half of them have got fronts, the other three are anonymous, a bit like your trolls . . . Musiklover, Blingdarling, well, you get it . . .”

Yeah,
he got it, even if not quite . . .

“Fronts? I mean . . . what?”

“Real people fronting the blogs.”

It took him a couple of seconds to catch on.

“What, so you look after the blog for someone else? Like a sort of ghostwriter?”

“Bingo! Basically I take care of all the serious writing. The fronts are usually busy talking crap about each other or discussing
their shopping habits, which is fine. Their computers and smartphones have an app that links through to me, so I always have the last word before anything gets posted. Most of the time I let them get on with it, but if it’s something important I take over.”

She opened a minifridge standing on the corner of her desk, took out a couple of cans of Coke, and offered one to HP, who shook his head.

Halil opened her can and took a couple of deep gulps.

“But . . . I mean . . .” HP said after a few seconds of confused thought, “ . . . what do they get out of it, the fronts?”

“More like what don’t they get out of it! Apart from a monthly salary from us: attention, free samples, previews, VIP events, you name it . . . A few of them are now so well known that they get to appear on television and go to gala premieres.”

“What, like her . . . What’s her name? . . . The one who keeps arguing with that other one . . . ?”

HP searched his memory for her name but failed to find it.

Halil drew a tick in the air—and then another one.

“Yes to her, and to her opponent as well! They’re both ours, and the squabbling only gets them even more readers. Over a million hits per week per blog, and neither of the girls has any idea that they actually work for the same company . . .

“You’ve got to admit, that’s pretty damn good!”

♦  ♦  ♦

Forty-five minutes of interval training on the elliptical and the sweat was running down her back. She could almost taste the lactic acid on her tongue, but she had no intention of stopping until she’d done an hour. She knew that if she was going to get
any sleep at all that night, the only thing that really worked was getting completely exhausted.

MayBey hadn’t mentioned her before, not until after Darfur. And now she was suddenly the number-one topic of conversation.

There had been twenty-three comments the last time she checked. Twenty-three “colleagues” all declaring themselves to know with either total or reasonable certainty that she had slept her way through the force. That she was in the habit of jumping into bed with anyone as long as it benefited her career. Twenty-three people, and no doubt considerably more who had read it with a grin at home in front of their computers.

How could people, presumably thinking and perfectly logical individuals, take the time to slander and write shit about her and her personal life?

Were they driven by hate, jealousy, envy, or bitterness? That would at least have a hint of logic to it. But she suspected that the truth was actually much worse than that.

That what was driving most of the haters out there wasn’t any sort of grand, strong feeling, but just mundane, low-level stuff.

Something they did just because they could. As a way of passing the time.

So why was MayBey suddenly interested in her?

The people he or she heckled usually only popped up once or twice, mostly as passing incidental characters to make a good story even better. MayBey was the storyteller, and although readers were allowed to comment, they were never asked to contribute any information. But it was different with Regina Righteous.

MayBey had first brought up the whole issue of her suspension,
then asked others to add what they knew. And now this post, constructed in the same way. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that MayBey knew that she was reading every single word that was being written. And that it was precisely this that had made him or her change behavior and get more personal. Something else that was deeply damned unsettling was the talk of a “bonking pad” on Södermalm. Of course, MayBey could have just been making it all up and happened to get it right. But if that wasn’t the case, that meant that someone had been talking. And if that was right, then there was only one candidate. Unless someone had been following her, of course . . .

A bleep from the elliptical interrupted her thoughts. The interval session was over and she had a couple of minutes to wind down.

She lowered her chin to her chest, took a few deep breaths, and so didn’t notice when the man came into the room.

♦  ♦  ♦

“Listen, Mange, it’s all about setting trends! There are thousands of bloggers out there, and most of them spent the whole time sneaking anxious glances at each other, especially the big names. I usually think of the Internet as a huge school playground. Almost everyone wants to hang out with the cool kids, be seen in the right company. So we don’t need to control all of them, just a suitable number of the hip ones with enough cred to be able to steer the buzz in a direction that suits our clients.”

She took another gulp of her Coke.

“We start with a fronted blog, add a couple of anonymous bloggers in support, and hope someone takes the bait. Obviously
not all the bloggers join in, but we don’t need them to either. It’s like there’s a critical mass, a point where so many people are all saying the same thing that their opinion suddenly becomes the accepted truth. And somewhere out there, there are thousands upon thousands of people who are so desperate to live a different life to the one they’ve got that they’re only too happy to soak up what the right people serve up to them. Fragments of someone else’s life, which they unconsciously fit into their own. Products, food trends, trademarks, opinions—you name it! You see how it works, Mange?”

Oh yes, he saw all right, but for once HP was totally speechless. Philip Argos really hadn’t been joking when he talked about control. The trolls were one thing, poking about in a few forums and supporting their clients’ version of a story. Throw in a few made-up blogs that did more or less the same thing, just on a slightly firmer foundation. But this was way bigger than that, and at the same time a hell of a lot cooler! Only now was he starting to appreciate the full extent of what Philip had been talking about.

Knowledge—Security—Control.

That was what it was all about, and the best way to . . .

Wrong!

Unquestionably
the best way to control the buzz, or whatever name you chose to give the torrent of information out there, wasn’t to adapt to the rumors. It was to start them.

♦  ♦  ♦

She was just wiping down the elliptical when he came over to her. Because she had her back to him she didn’t see him at first, and his voice made her jump.

“Hi, you’re new here, aren’t you?”

It was the man from the treadmill.

“Yes,” she replied curtly, going back to what she was doing.

He waited a few seconds until she had finished and was obliged to turn and face him.

“I thought as much,” he said with a slight smile. “I’ve been coming here for a couple of years now and usually recognize everyone else. I’d definitely have remembered a beautiful woman like you.”

The man’s smile revealed a row of sparkling white teeth that suited his deep suntan perfectly. She searched her mind for a suitable comment to get rid of him, but for some reason nothing popped up. Instead she suddenly found herself returning his smile.

There was something about him that made her feel in a slightly better mood. Something he radiated. Something she had been missing for a long time.

“My name’s Rebecca,” she said, and to her own surprise held out her hand.

His handshake was dry and firm.

“Good to meet you, Rebecca! I was wondering if I could be cheeky enough to ask if you’d like to have dinner with me? How about next Saturday?”