Game: A Thriller (27 page)

Yes, he’d got it all on the brain.

Big-time!

He was scouring the news websites several times an hour, and even though they were mostly about Sweden’s presidency of the EU, he imagined he could see them everywhere: signs of the Game.

A well-known financier who had vanished into thin air, a load of dynamite that had gone missing from a secure store, or a petty criminal in Portugal who had unexpectedly got it into his head to blow up an empty luxury yacht, and himself with it . . .

It was all out there, if you only knew what you were looking for. Things that couldn’t be explained, no matter which way you approached them. That’s to say, if the explanation wasn’t the fact that Erman was right. That the whole thing was just a huge fucking Game!

I’ve opened your eyes and now you can see . . .

The weirdest thing was that he could see how crazy it sounded. But he still couldn’t let it go. “An awareness of illness doesn’t mean you’re well,” as one of his mom’s alcoholic friends used to say.

There was a lot in that! But unlike the idiots out there, he had actually been caught up in it himself. An inside man, just like Brill. He knew that the Game existed, he had seen with his own eyes what they were capable of doing, or—to be more accurate—getting other people to do . . .

It was actually the manipulation that stung most.

The way they’d pressed his buttons and got him to play along willingly. Humiliating him just for the fun of it, then dropping him quicker than a flask of Russian thallium. But also the fact that he’d actually enjoyed being the center of attention,
getting loads of cred. For the first time ever, a team player, part of something bigger than himself, even one of the stars of the team.

Christ, he’d loved the kick from that! Loved it so fucking much that in spite of all the shit that had happened, on one level he still couldn’t help dreaming about doing pretty much anything to get back in the limelight. Like some mangy dog that was so desperate for approval even after it had been beaten by its master that it was willing to hump more legs—any legs—to get another pat on the head. One question itched like a massive great scab and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t help picking at it: If he’d known that Becca was in the cop car that evening, that she would be or could have been injured by the stone he was going to drop from the bridge, would it have made any difference?

He honestly didn’t know.

Even now, after so many hours thinking, he still couldn’t answer that bastard question with a simple yes or no.

Totally fucking sick!

It had taken a day or so to work out the deal with the flash-grenade attack on the Horse Guards’ cortège. Who would get any pleasure from some bolting horses and a pair of shitty royal underpants? Obviously it could just have been that they wanted to test him or get some cool pictures. But then he read about a break-in in a gentlemen’s outfitters on Östermalm, and how it had been preceded by a false bomb threat. An attaché case with the word “
bomb
” in white paint on the side, left outside the Iranian embassy, and instantly half the police force were over on Lidingö and thus out of the game. And that’s where he got the idea.

After checking on the police’s own website, he found what he was looking
for. At the same time as Kungsträdgården was filling up with galloping horses and all available police units, including the helicopter that was sent to circle above the city center, someone had stolen a container load of Viagra from a company out in the western suburbs. They had coolly driven past security with a truck, waving what had looked like the right documentation, then calmly hooked up to the container and driven off with it, without having to worry about being pursued by the police helicopter before they had time to unload the pills, because HP had seen to that.

So had he been a decoy, sent out to lure the dogs into sniffing around in the wrong place?

“Look up the word
game
and you’ll see what I mean!” Erman had said, and halfway down the page Wiktionary backed up his theory.

Distraction or diversion

He could perfectly well have been both! And suddenly all those weird occurrences assumed yet another crazy dimension. Diversionary tactics, decoys, and smokes creens, all to get the authorities and the general public to look in the wrong direction?

In that case, what was the main event, what were the things they didn’t want to show, and who was behind them?

The Freemasons?

The WHO?

The Bilderberg Group?

Or was he taking it too far . . . ? Was his brain messing with him, showing him things that didn’t actually exist just because he wanted to see them?

Was the Game really as advanced as Erman had claimed, or was it all just for fun? Something they did just because they could? A game, basically? Just a way of passing the fucking time?!

All these questions were starting to drive him mad. His brain was getting completely overloaded and his head ached like it was going to burst from all the junk flying around up there. He couldn’t even come up with a single damn paracetamol; he’d long since hunted through Auntie’s drawers and cupboards.

He lit a cigarette, one of the last few. A deep drag, then out floated all the tensions along with the smoke.

Phew . . . !

Meditation by Marlboro.

Almost always worked.

So what was he going to do now?

That was the million-dollar question. He hadn’t left the cottage for several days and had hardly even eaten anything. He’d just been smoking, scanning the Internet, and picking away at that huge damn mental scab.

Mange had looked in briefly and topped up the essential supplies of cigarettes and cans of army-ration bean soup, but he’d had the sense not to ask any questions, which was just as well, seeing as he wouldn’t have got any answers.

HP could have killed for a spliff, but his stash was long since used up. Since the grass ran out he’d tried to find other ways of easing his anxiety. He’d jacked off so much that he had friction burns on his cock; then in the end he took a cautious walk around the allotments to try to reboot his brain with a bit of fresh air.

That was when he discovered the van.

♦  ♦  ♦

The car was rolling in slow motion, twisting on its own axis before its front end hit the ground. Then it flew up again, rear end toward the sky, and did a complete roll before landing on its roof and disappearing out of shot.

The next film sequence showed a smoking wreck, but by that point she was already bent double over Mange’s filthy little toilet.

Fuck, fuck, fuck,
screamed a little voice inside her throbbing head as she threw up most of an undigested chicken salad.

What in the name of hell was going on?

♦  ♦  ♦

A white van with a blue logo, parked a bit farther down the narrow track. ACME Telecom Services Ltd.

Seriously?

ACME—just like every dodgy company in cinema history, from Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner onward?! It was a bit
too
obvious!

Okay, so there was a telecom distribution box and a manhole alongside the van, but so far he hadn’t seen a soul anywhere near it. And there didn’t seem to be any work going on, so what was the van doing there, parked in the middle of Tantolunden?

He went back inside the cottage and looked up the number on the license plate, but all he got was a rental car company out in Solna.

ACME Telecom Services had their own website, a phone number, and an email address for inquiries. “
ACME Telecom Services—A proud member of the PayTag Group
.”

On the other hand, there was no terrestrial address, but that wasn’t so unusual, there were a lot of companies like that. “
Feel free
to contact us by email or telephone
.” A good way of avoiding difficult customers.

He went out again to take a closer look at the van. Still no one in sight, but the engine felt fairly warm, so it couldn’t have been standing there for long.

So where was the driver?

He walked around the van, but was none the wiser. The rear windows were tinted, and even though he cupped his hands around his eyes he still couldn’t see in. The driver’s cab was a bit easier.

A jacket on the front seat, neon yellow with loads of pockets, and when he looked closer he saw that something was sticking out from under it. An oblong silver object. And suddenly he realized what it was! A phone, of course, just like the one he’d left in the computer shop. Which could well mean that the bastards had found him!

He wandered around to get a better view of the cell, but it was mostly covered by the jacket. He had to know for sure, and tugged hard on the door handle.

Locked, obviously.

He glanced quickly around, then picked up a stone from a nearby flower bed. He raised his arm to strike.

“Hey, you, what do you think you’re doing?!”

The man had appeared out of nowhere, a thickset fifty-something in overalls and an orange Bob the Builder helmet.

Manual laborer, model 1A.

“Nothing,” HP muttered and let the stone slide down his leg. “Just wondered why you’re parked here?”

The man looked at him suspiciously.

“Working for Telia, broken cable. Broadband’s out across half of Södermalm, haven’t you heard?”

“No,” HP
muttered, moving slowly away from the van. “Okay, see you, then!”

The man shrugged in farewell, then went around the van and unlocked the rear door.

After poking about for a minute or so he emerged with a toolbox, cast a quick glance in HP’s direction, then carefully locked the door before disappearing between two cottages.

HP breathed a sigh of relief. The man seemed genuine—false alarm, in other words.

He was getting brainstorms in broad daylight.

♦  ♦  ♦

Finally out in the fresh air! It may still have been boiling hot, but anything was better than that claustrophobic little computer shop.

She took several deep breaths, then pedaled hard on her bicycle and felt the nausea gradually subside as oxygenated blood started to circulate around her body. After just a hundred meters or so she was feeling considerably brighter.

She wasn’t really much the wiser after her conversation with Mange.

Once he’d finally given up his feeble attempts at excuses and agreed to tell the truth, he started by locking the shop door, turning the sign to
CLOSED
, then, just to make sure, pulled her right to the back of the shop.

Mange had never been one of the more courageous of all of Henke’s deadbeat friends, and certainly not one of the coolest, but unlike most of the others he was one of the few who was still left from the old gang.

Vesa had decided to climb up on top of some railway carriages out in Älvsjö when he was high as a kite, and fried
himself to death. She remembered Jesus pretty well too; hadn’t he won loads of money and disappeared to Thailand? Yes, that was him. Henke had talked about going with him, but as usual with him it never got further than a lot of empty talk. The rest of the gang had drifted away, and Henke wasn’t exactly the sort of person whose company or reliability anyone would really miss.

But for some reason Mange had always stuck in there, even when things had been at their worst. He was the only one of the gang who showed up at the trial, and as far as Rebecca knew he was the only person apart from her who had visited Henke in prison. One of the few who had cared.

Mange was okay, really, a decent guy who meant well, and she felt a pang of conscience at having been forced to resort to interrogation tactics to get him to talk. But at least it had worked, and after making sure not once but twice that they really were alone, he had finally told her everything, or at least as much as he knew.

She was left wondering exactly what it was he had told her.

The whole story about a mysterious cell phone that allocated assignments and a secret reality game with rewards and punishments sounded crazy, and her initial reaction was that Mange had fallen for yet another of Henke’s bullshit stories. But then he had shown her the video clips on the computer and everything had emerged in an entirely different light.

The business with the door, the car wheels, and the royal cortège had been bad enough, but when she saw her own car slowly rolling off the Drottningholm road, it had all got to be too much for her.

Evidently Mange hadn’t known that she was sitting in the Volvo, because he’d hovered outside the toilet door worrying
anxiously if she was okay. She only just managed to hold it together, splashing a bit of water on her face and blaming it all on the heat, which he had accepted without comment.

Once she had composed herself again she had asked to see Henke’s cell phone, and when Mange reluctantly pulled it out of a locked cupboard she had quickly inspected it and then put it in her bag. For a moment it had looked like Mange was going to protest, but he thought better of it and let her take it without a word.

Before she left, he had also given her the address of Aunt Berit’s allotment cottage, and she was looking forward to a fresh, more detailed conversation with her brother in just a few minutes’ time.

This time she was going to twist the little sod’s arms until he told her the truth about what was really going on!

♦  ♦  ♦

She cruised through the cars, crossed Ringvägen, and a few minutes later she was in among the trees of the park. She was feeling considerably brighter by now, and was enjoying the cool shade. Mange had said it was about fifteen minutes’ walk from the shop, so five minutes or so by bike seemed about right.

When she turned into the right road she had to swerve to avoid a white van pulling away at speed and roaring past her way too fast.

Bloody idiot!
she thought as she struggled to keep her balance. For a moment she considered making a note of the license plate; the speed limit here was actually only thirty. But she didn’t bother; she hadn’t seen the whole number anyway. Some sort of company van with a blue logo on the side.

At that moment she caught sight of the right cottage.