Buzz: A Thriller (7 page)

Fuck,
he scared the shit out of him!

“W-what?”

“Ghourab Al-Bain.” The man pointed at the bird.

“A desert raven. They bring bad luck, bad things—you understand?”

And then the raven cried out—a low, rolling sound that vibrated off HP’s chest.

Then it tilted its head and gave HP a last glance before setting off from its lookout post with a couple of heavy wing beats.

Seconds later the bird had been swallowed up by the desert night.

“You shouldn’t wander off like this, boss. It’s easy to get lost out there. Easy to disappear, you understand?”

Oh yes,
HP was pretty sure he understood.

“Bad things,” he mumbled, peering out into the darkness.

Pillars of Society forum

Posted: 7 November, 21:28

By:
MayBey

The worst thing a police officer can experience is not being able to trust his or her colleagues . . .

This post has
29 comments

WHEN HE CAME
out of the toilets he almost ran straight into Anna Argos.

She had her back to him, and he guessed she was waiting for someone.

Presumably Frankie Frog-Eater was laying a little croissant before they snuck out to the cars for a bit of sexytime.

Damned idiots!

Then he saw the shiny cell against her ear and his stomach did a little somersault of recognition. The flames of resentment that had almost died down suddenly flared up again and he took a couple of angry steps forward.

“No, no one followed me; everything’s fine. I’m on the other side of the world,” he heard her say quickly in English just before he grabbed her arm.

The look in her eyes was exactly as terrified as he had imagined up in the hotel lounge, and, just like in his fantasy, all the fury drained away from him in an instant. It only took her a second or so to pull herself together and angrily shake herself free from his grasp—but he still had time to realize.

Whoever Anna Argos was, however fucking cool and savvy she pretended to be, there was still something—or more likely someone—who scared the shit out of her, even from the
other side of the world.

“Let me go, you disgusting little idiot!”

“Sorry,” he muttered, taking a couple of shaky steps back as he held his hands up in front of him. “I think I’ve had a bit too much . . . Peace!”

She gave him an angry stare and then turned her back on him again.

“You know, my sister used to go out with one of those . . . wife beaters,” he added when she seemed to be ignoring him.

She turned her head and looked at him suspiciously. When she opened her mouth to speak a couple of seconds later, her tone wasn’t quite as unfriendly.

“So?”

“I killed the bastard.” He grinned, then walked away unsteadily into the camp.

♦  ♦  ♦

They had hung up their radios and bulletproof vests, locked their weapons away in the gun cabinet, and changed into civilian clothing. Anderberg had booked a conference room for
the obligatory debriefing, and now everyone was waiting impatiently to get going.

It would take at least an hour to go through the whole chain of events, then another before they were allowed to go home to their families.

But even if she was at least as tired as the others, she wasn’t in any rush to get home.

“We’re waiting for Runeberg,” Anderberg said when he noticed how impatient they were.

“Ah, here he is.”

Runeberg walked into the room.

“Change of plan,” he said abruptly. “Normén, you’ll do your debriefing alone once the others are finished. You can write up your report of what happened in the meantime.”

She jerked and opened her mouth to protest. This wasn’t usual procedure, and she had absolutely no desire to be forced from the room in front of her own team.

But before she had time to say anything, Runeberg cut her off.

“Off you go, Normén. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can all go home . . .”

Seconds later the door of the conference room closed behind her.

♦  ♦  ♦

At last!

He was lying among the silk cushions of the shisha pavilion, inhaling deep, relaxing mouthfuls of smoke. The water pipe in front of him was bubbling nicely as the cool, damp smoke spread down his throat, curling down his airways, and into his greedy lungs.

Sweet!

One of the Frenchmen—he couldn’t remember which one—had sorted out the blend. A bit of grass at the bottom, just enough tobacco on top, before the foil and the charcoal. Whoever he was, he clearly knew what he was doing. The trip was almost perfectly balanced.

My compliments to the chef!

He felt calmer now, considerably more relaxed.

He couldn’t help glancing down at his tourist T-shirt and suddenly burst out laughing.

Hell, it looked ridiculous, and he must look ridiculous wearing it, as well as buying one of those lousy tablecloths to wrap around his head.

He was chuckling with laughter and his good mood seemed to spread out to the others in the pavilion.

“Hey, Thomas. What’s so funny?”

“Nothing special, mate, nothing special.” He giggled, unable to stop. “Just this whole fucking country, you know? So fucking fake, yeah?”

He took another deep drag of the bubbling smoke, held it in for a few seconds, then fell back among the cushions.

“Sure, we get it, Tommy,” another of the Frenchmen muttered. “Everything’s fake, nothing’s real,
d’accord?
”

He said something in French and they all started laughing.

“Exactly . . .” HP mumbled at the ceiling as secret Stasi agent 007 Sleep finally showed up, loosening the muscles around his eyelids and slowly rolling down the shutters.

“Nothing’s real. It’s all just . . .”

“A game?”

He opened his eyes. The whisper came from the right of
him, somewhere near the entrance, but in the weak light his clouded gaze could only make out dark silhouettes.

“What? Wh-who said something about . . . ?”

No answer, just more giggling. Had he heard wrong, was it just the little lads’ choir of the withdrawal section piping up again?

He blinked a few times and tried to clear his gaze, but the veils of fog in his head wouldn’t ease up. Maybe that pipe blend had been a bit too strong after all . . .

“Have you ever done anything real, Thomas?”

This time it was the Frenchman next to him.

“What do you mean?” HP slurred, scratching his neck.

“Something that made your whole being, your body and soul, feel absolutely present in the moment? As if the whole world had stopped just to look at you?”

More laughter, including from him, even if he wasn’t entirely sure why he was laughing.

He was gradually beginning to suspect that the Frenchmen might be laughing at him—that they were making fun of him, but his doped-up brain couldn’t quite work out how.

“You’ve got no idea, mate,” he muttered, then suddenly realized that he was talking Swedish.

He repeated what he had just said in English. If these guys only knew who they were sharing a pipe with . . .
A total damn legend,
that’s what he was!

The thin white drapes at the entrance to the pavilion were swaying gently to and fro in the light desert breeze.

To . . .

. . . aaaand . . .

. . . fro.

“So what have you done, Tom? Tell us!”

One of the girls this time, maybe the pretty one he’d been dancing with?

He shook his head slowly and it took a while before he realized that none of them could see his movements in the gloom.

“Nope—I never talk to anyone about that. I stick to rule number . . .”

“One!”

This time it wasn’t his imagination, he was certain of that. The same low whisper somewhere off to the right, and he sat up unsteadily. The world was swaying and he was having trouble focusing.

“How are you doing, Tommy, old friend? Aren’t you feeling well?”

This voice was familiar—it was Vincent. But what the hell was he doing in here? Why wasn’t he outside by the cars, practicing his precision parking with Anna Argos?

The Frenchman landed on the cushions with a bounce, and put his arm around him.

“Look, my friend, have some more and it will all feel better.”

He passed the mouthpiece of the shisha pipe to HP, who took it after a moment’s hesitation.

The bubbling sound of the water pipe helped calm him down, as he slowly let the smoke out through his nose.

He heard Vincent say something, followed by more laughter, but by the time the man’s hands gently lowered him down onto the cushions HP was already fast asleep.

♦  ♦  ♦

The shadow was approaching quickly and she knew almost immediately who it was. She put her hand to her belt, but in the dream she had no gun, and felt panic rising. Then the man burst through the cloud of dust.

His arm was outstretched and the shiny revolver was aimed straight at her.

The gun was even bigger than she remembered it—the barrel looked like a deep, pitch-black well.

She screwed her eyes shut, tensed her body, and waited for the shot.

But nothing happened.

Why didn’t he shoot?

When she opened her eyes again everything had changed.

It was as if the cloud of dust, the man, and his gun had never existed.

A dream within a dream . . .

Instead she was standing in the middle of a desert.

No matter what direction she looked in, identical sand dunes stretched out, all the way to the horizon.

In the distance some dark birds were slowly circling. Around and around above the same point in the desert sand.

When she woke up with the sheets sticking to her body, the image of those black birds was still ingrained on her retinas.

“Bad omens,” she muttered to herself, without really knowing why.

♦  ♦  ♦

The pavilion was empty. He was lying alone among the cushions, and the water pipe had gone out.

Outside the whole camp was bathed in white light.

The large floodlights had been lit and he could see people running about across the open space. The music had fallen silent, he could hear shouting in different languages, but his brain was groggy and he couldn’t make out what was being said.

Then he heard the sound of an engine approaching—a muffled, pulsing noise. It sounded like a helicopter, possibly more than one? His head felt like a lump of concrete, his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth, and when he tried to get up he found that his body didn’t seem to want to obey him.

The engine sound got louder and louder, and a sudden gust of wind made the drapes around him blow violently. He brushed the fabric aside and took a couple of stumbling steps toward the entrance.

At that moment he discovered to his surprise that his tourist garb was gone and that he was once again wearing his soaking-wet silk shirt from Thailand.

For a few seconds he began to suspect that everything that had happened in the camp had all been in his imagination.

That the dance, the ominous bird, the whispering voice, and everything else were just details from a hash dream that he had just woken up from.

It wasn’t until he staggered out into the light and people started pointing at him that he realized that his shirt was drenched in blood.

Pillars of Society forum

Posted: 11 November, 09:13

By:
MayBey

All good police officers end up facing an official investigation sooner or later . . .

This post has
32 comments

“INTERVIEW WITH POLICE
Inspector Rebecca Normén concerning suspected misuse or gross misuse of office during an event that occurred in Darfur Province in western Sudan on 8 November.

“The purpose of this interview is primarily to gather information. Conducting the interview are Inspectors Walthers and Westergren from the National Police Complaints Commission. Also present is Normén’s witness for the defense, Superintendent Ludvig Runeberg.”

Walthers was an overweight man in his fifties who looked like a kindly uncle and had a twinkle in his eye as he sat back and adjusted the microphone on the table between them.

Misuse of office. She’d had to get out a copy of the criminal code when she received the summons, if only to check that the whole thing wasn’t some sort of absurd joke.

But no, the first paragraph of chapter twenty of the penal code was definitely no laughing matter:

A person who in the exercise of public authority by act or by omission, intentionally or through carelessness, disregards the duties of his office, shall be sentenced for misuse of office to a fine or imprisonment for at most two years.

Then, a little farther down the same page:

If a crime mentioned in the first paragraph has been committed intentionally and is regarded as gross, a sentence for gross misuse of office to imprisonment for at least six months and at most six years shall be imposed. In assessing whether the crime is gross, special attention shall be given to whether the offender seriously abused his position or whether the crime occasioned serious harm to an individual or the public sector or a substantial improper benefit.

At first she wasn’t even going to mention it to her boss, just get the interview out of the way and then forget about it. It ought to be a purely routine matter—after all, she had done her job and not done anything wrong. At least that was what she kept trying to convince herself . . .

But Runeberg already seemed to know that she had been summoned to an internal investigation and suggested that he come along as a witness.

“It’s only a fact-finding interview. I’m not actually under suspicion for anything, Ludvig,” she protested.

“That’s what they want you to think, Normén. Almost all internal investigations begin with fact-finding. That’s to make you feel safe and encourage you to help them, one colleague to another. Then all of a sudden you’ve said too much, a prosecutor appears, and before you know it you’re facing official charges. Remember that internal investigators aren’t like the rest of us. They’ve got their own agenda!”