Kitabı oku: «The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble»

6
All the king’s horses …

From: Talent Acquisition

To: Game Master

Subject: Candidate Evaluation 128

Name: Henrik Pettersson

Alias: HP

Age: 31

Height: 179 cm

Weight: 72 kg

Build: Slight

Hair: Medium blond

Eyes: Blue (see attached passport photograph)

Status: Unmarried

Family: One sibling (a sister with whom he has only sporadic contact)

Both parents deceased

Profession: Various, currently unemployed

Address: Maria Trappgränd 7, Södermalm, Stockholm, a two-room flat which he inherited from his mother

Number of completed assignments: 5

Total points: 2200

Current ranking: 23

Current level: 3

Method of recruitment: Recommendation

Education: 9 years of basic Swedish schooling, mixed grades

Started but did not complete 3-year course in economics in Swedish high school

Has twice started but never completed adult education courses

Other qualifications: None

Leisure interests: The candidate spends most of his time watching television and films, mainly American TV series, action films, comedies and erotica. He often plays Counterstrike without belonging to any particular group or clan. Less regular player of World of Warcraft where his avatars are usually Rogues belonging to the Horde.

Internet habits: thefragarena.com, various file-sharing sites for downloading films and music, the Block (a Swedish trading site often used to dispose of stolen goods), YouTube, as well as various pornographic sites. A frequent user of MSN. Has recently opened a Hotmail account under the name Badboy.128

Medical history: One broken arm and two broken ribs in relatively quick succession during the 80s. The case was passed on to social services on suspicion of child abuse. Appendix removed 1992. Latest medical examination 2007 (conducted during probation) showed no abnormalities apart from THC in his blood (the active substance in cannabis-related drugs such as hash and marijuana). No history of allergies, heart problems, impaired immune system or intolerance to any medication.

Social service records: After the referral from the health service (see above) the children were placed in care for the duration of the investigation. This decision was revoked a short while later and the case was dropped. Further instances of suspected child abuse followed, but the only result was a number of visits by social workers. One entry in the register refers to a police report, but this could not been identified.

Father deceased 1995 (stroke), mother 1997 (cancer). The records also mention the candidate’s use of narcotics (hash and marijuana), as well as truancy and disruptive behaviour at school. There is also a care-plan established after a district court judgement (see below).

Criminal record and police register: The candidate’s first conviction occurred shortly after his seventeenth birthday, and concerned numerous instances of minor narcotics offences and one instance of vehicle theft: he was given a probationary sentence under the supervision of social services.

Shortly after his eighteenth birthday he was convicted of aggravated manslaughter and sentenced to ten months in a secure young offenders’ institution. Later entries in police surveillance logs indicate minor narcotics offences, suspected trafficking in stolen goods, and minor larceny.

His most recent conviction was almost two years ago, for one case of dealing in stolen goods, one instance of aggravated unlawful driving and one instance of minor narcotics offences. As a result he received a probationary sentence and a fine.

Other official records: The candidate has five notifications for non-payment registered with the enforcement service, principally for unpaid household bills for his electricity and telephone, as well as unpaid standing charges for the building he lives in. It is worth noting that every case has been resolved before the bailiffs were called because his sister settled the debt.

Personal characteristics: All sources describe the candidate in similar terms. He is intelligent, quick-thinking and imaginative, but is also described as lazy, unreliable and self-centred. He usually prefers simple solutions to long-term engagement, has obvious problems with authority and has few serious friendships or family relationships.

Assignments: Apart from the trial assignment (scenario 12a), the candidate has successfully carried out four assignments (up to difficulty level C3).

He regularly watches his own film-clips, checks the comments often, and is quick to respond positively to invitations of new assignments.

So far the candidate has shown no signs of doubt or anxiety about possible consequences, either on his own account or such as the assignments might generate.

Recommendation: Candidate 128 demonstrates almost all of the qualities required by a successful Player. He is impulsive, intelligent and dynamic, whilst exhibiting little or no empathy for others.

The candidate appears to regard himself as an unfortunate victim or outsider. Someone who for reasons unknown is always being unfairly treated or is simply unlucky. He therefore believes that he has the right to do what is best for himself in all circumstances, usually at the expense of others or of society, and for the same reason, without having to take any responsibility for his actions.

The candidate has no family to speak of, has problems with long-term relationships and intimacy, as well as with trusting or being trusted by others.

Even if money plays a part in his motivation, his main incentive is recognition and attention (so-called ‘cred’) from his peers. For someone who loathes authority, 128 allows himself to be led surprisingly easily, but only under the condition that he can perceive all choices and decisions as his own, and that everything is happening on his terms.

In light of this, the undersigned recommends that the candidate is raised to level two and that further evaluation take place after an assignment of level D1 difficulty.

Sincerely,

Donovan

Talent Acquisition

HP was fucking like he was in a trance.

He was Rocco Sifredi, Paul Thomas, and obviously the legendary Ron ‘The Hedgehog’ Jeremy, all rolled into one. This evening he was the Emperor of Fucking, and he twisted and turned his willing but still somewhat surprised partner in order to explore all imaginable variations of copulation.

The third shag within two hours or so, way beyond his usual average. They had already worked their way through a quick ride on the sofa, then a standing missionary fuck on the kitchen table with her long legs resting on his shoulders, and he was currently busy frenetically penetrating the lady in question from behind with such force that the entire bed seemed on the point of collapse.

His hands had a firm grasp of her broad hips. Breasts and arse bouncing in time with her moans of pleasure, as he speared her harder and harder with his rock-hard porn-star cock.

‘A bit more, a bit more, I’m almost there,’ she whimpered breathlessly. But he didn’t give a damn. Because he was the King of Fucking, the Prince of Penetration, the Ayatollah of Fuck’n’Rolla! But, more important than that, he was also Mr Clip of the Week, first Runner-up and number one hundred and twenty-fucking-eight! The coolest dude in the Game, and the thought of that made him considerably harder than his partner and her undoubted feminine charms could ever have done.

With a couple of final powerful thrusts he concluded his masterpiece, and at the moment he pulled out and sent a cascade of slushy love-joy over her sweaty back there was only one thought in his mind: he should have had the camera on!

She lay next to him in the darkness and glanced over at his sleeping silhouette. Maybe not the smartest guy in the world, exactly, but at least he was damn good in bed and this evening he had seemed unusually inspired.

They had known each other for about six months, after meeting in a bar somewhere in the city centre, and because she had been feeling particularly lonely and in need of physical intimacy she had, against all of her usual principles, gone back to his flat with him that same evening. The sex had been good right from the start and after that it had been difficult to stop.

There was something about him that appealed to her, that got her going. Not that he was especially handsome or exaggeratedly sexy, he was probably somewhere in the middle on both scales. Maybe it was simply the fact that he wasn’t a police officer but just a completely normal bloke who lived in the completely normal world that appealed to her most. Either way, they met up every now and then, usually when she was in the mood. She wasn’t after a relationship and he had never protested against the arrangement that had developed. But she still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was exploiting him. Rebecca suspected, or possibly hoped, that he already had a proper relationship, but she had chosen not to ask and he hadn’t felt obliged to tell her anything more about himself. Whatever it was they shared, it wasn’t about feelings but physical attraction, and that didn’t really call for any details, or at least that was what she liked to think.

Oh well, it probably didn’t matter. They were fuck-buddies, to be blunt about it, even if she wasn’t fond of that particular term. She stroked his back guiltily and heard him mutter something in his sleep.

The Game Master had promised him an entirely new world, and so far he wasn’t fucking disappointed! He could watch the clips any number of times, and by now he probably already had.

Assignment number four had been pretty neat. He had removed the wheel nuts from a Ferrari belonging to a sleazy lawyer while the victim was sitting ten metres away having an after-work drink with his hotshot friends at Sturehof’s pavement café. The car was of course parked in the parking bay for deliveries beside the concrete mushroom in the middle of Stureplan, so that everyone could see his flashy penis extension, but in spite of that no-one had noticed a thing.

The tools were waiting for him, neatly wrapped up in a plastic bag, inside the cistern of one of the toilets in the Sture Gallery, and once HP had got going it had taken him less than three minutes to remove the nuts on the wheels facing the street.

Even though it was Friday evening and the place was crowded, no-one reacted to what he was doing, not even the cop who strolled past just half a metre behind his back. It was actually bloody weird that people cared so little about what other people were doing, at least until Mr Sleazy Lawyer tried to do a wheel-spinning u-turn to head back up Kungsgatan.

Both wheels flew off more or less instantly and suddenly the stupid bastard got considerably more attention than he had been expecting. Apart from the hundred or so who stood there laughing and pointing in an outpouring of Schadenfreude, HP counted at least five others apart from him who were filming the beautiful car as it sat there straddling Sturegatan. The shiny and presumably absurdly expensive disc-brakes were properly embedded in the tarmac, and according to the report in the Dagens Nyheter the following day it had taken almost an hour for the recovery truck to get the vehicle cleared out of the way.

But by then HP was long gone. He hated Stureplan, more than ever at weekends, and didn’t want to spend any more time there than was absolutely necessary.

The last he had seen of the car’s owner was the grown man standing there crying like a little girl, leaning on the boot of his ruined darling car, but HP hadn’t felt the slightest bit of sympathy for his victim. Mr Sleazy must have deserved the treatment, you could tell just by looking at his stuck-up face, his back-slicked hair all greasy with Rogaine, and his flashy suit. With a car like that, you were practically asking for trouble, and that’s precisely what HP had provided.

HP had never liked lawyers anyway. The only time he had ever been stupid enough to employ a law-twister, it hadn’t exactly helped him. The bastard had been completely incompetent, hadn’t done his homework, kept calling him Håkan and stank of drink masked by mints in court. HP should have known better than to accept the first name suggested by the court, but he had only just turned eighteen and even if he knew all the signs of heavy drinking backwards, it would take a bit longer before he had the same sort of grasp of the legal system.

Everything had been a complete fucking mess that time.

Ten months in a secure young offenders’ institution had been the result.

Public defender, my arse! More like ‘public defiler’, as he recalled.

So now at least he got the chance to deliver a bit of payback to the sleazy ambulance chasers, and it felt pretty damn good!

Suck my cock, you stuck-up Stureplan wankers!

And crooks, he thought to himself, to judge by Mr Crybaby’s ridiculously expensive ride.

As per his instructions, he had the wheel nuts couriered anonymously to the law-firm the following week, and for the first time it dawned on him that everything, the whole deal with the Game, was a hell of a lot bigger than he had imagined.

Because what was really the point of sending the wheel nuts back to Mr Sleazy? It was almost like doing him a favour, probably saving him a few thousand kronor on the repair bill. Why not ditch them in the waters of Nybroviken and have done with it?

The only answer he could think of was that someone wanted to see the look on the lawyer’s face when he got the package. And that was when the penny finally dropped. That there were actually other players like him out there, not just in the USA, but here in Sweden, and probably in other countries as well.

He had already worked out that the gorilla on Birkagatan was involved somehow, and that the stupid fucker hadn’t kept his mouth shut and had blabbed about the Game. That was obviously what the text he had sprayed on the door had been about. And it probably wasn’t Lewis Carroll himself who had left the passcard in the book or worked out how to switch off the clock on the NK roof …

But the bigger picture still didn’t really sink in before he realized that someone had been selected to conclude the assignment with the lawyer. That someone would stand there filming as the GQ-reading little wanker opened the parcel and went red upon discovering his own missing wheel nuts. Someone just like himself, with an assignment to carry out, a camera to document it with – and the same applied to whoever it was who managed to come up with a Ferrari spanner and hide it in a toilet-cistern in the Sture Gallery. So at least three little assignments and the same number of Players, all that organization just to give Mr Sleazy a weekend he’d never forget.

The thinking involved was fucking refined, he had to take his hat off to whoever it was who organized all this.

The assignment had given him 1,000 points, and the next morning he had found a foreign credit-card on his doormat. This time he guessed the pin-code correctly first time.

In total the account turned out to contain 2,300 US dollars, which matched the number of points he had on the list. He just had to stick the card into the nearest cashpoint and withdraw what he wanted.

It had been more than enough for the Sopranos box-set he had been dying to get his hands on, and a family-pack of best Moroccan from his friendly neighbourhood dealer. Then he had settled back on the sofa, puffed the magic dragon and blown the heads off some rookies in Counterstrike. Then home-delivery pizza and a bit of male-bonding with the boys in the Jersey mafia. Life was pretty sweet!

But in spite of all this, it was the fifth assignment that was the really cool one. The one that transformed him into Mr Clip of the Week, first Runner-up and, a few hours later, the Omnipotent Pope of Pussy-pranging.

As well as a permanent hard-on, task number five left him with 2,500 nice new dollars in his account, but to his own surprise the money was becoming more and more like an agreeable by-product. Considerably more important than the cash was all the love he was getting in his comments section: ‘128 FTW!’, ‘all d kings horses couldnt stop u ;-)’ or ‘W00T onetwoeight!!1!’, to list but a few. He had an average rating of 4.8 stars and he had received a personal message of congratulation from the Game Master himself.

Not bad for a rookie!

He was flavour of the month!

He was in the zone!

He was on his way to the top!

She woke up early, slid out of bed and, without waking him, silently gathered up her clothes and put them on. She didn’t really like staying the night but she had fallen asleep for once, exhausted by all the training and by the previous evening’s activities.

Ever since that first evening they had met in his flat, which suited her fine. She liked him, absolutely, but it didn’t feel right to let him inside her flat. It would be sending out the wrong signals, giving him false hope. Much easier to meet like this, get it over and done with, then go home. Blame having to get up early, the way she always did.

He was actually a decent guy. A bit scruffy maybe, his flat could do with freshening up and it wouldn’t hurt him to get his hair cut more often.

But fundamentally a good bloke, considerably better than she deserved.

She really shouldn’t have fallen asleep.

He moved in his sleep and for a few panic-stricken moments she thought he was going to wake up. What would she say if he did? How could she explain that she was about to sneak out like a thief in the night, without even saying goodbye? Or, even worse, what would happen if he tried to pull her back into bed for a morning cuddle? Snuggle up together and exchange secrets?

She felt her pulse racing.

Calm down now, for God’s sake, Normén!

Then he settled down and she could tell from his breathing that he was sleeping soundly.

Thank goodness!

Time to go. Had she got everything?

She did a quick check of her jeans pockets.

Keys – yep, police badge – yep, mobile phone – missing …

She looked quickly around the dimly-lit bedroom, eager to get going. There it was, on the desk. Relieved, she picked it up, noticing that his mobile was next to it. A smart design, all thin and brushed steel, no bigger than the palm of her hand, with nothing but a touchscreen. A little flashing red light was the only indication that it was switched on. She couldn’t remember ever seeing one of that model before, or this one in particular, come to that. He must have only just got it. Probably cost a fortune, she thought as she carefully closed the front door behind her.

When HP opened the left-luggage locker at Central Station at first he didn’t realize what he was staring at. The green, cylindrical object reminded him of an aerosol-can and for a moment he almost felt disappointed. Was there another rat who needed a reminder of rule number one? He’d been expecting something better.

He stuffed the object into the bag he’d brought with him, and because the underground was full of people he wasn’t able to take a closer look at it until he’d shut the door of his flat behind him. He felt like he’d been taken for a ride, the assignment had started so promisingly with the key to the locker taped under a table in a branch of Wayne’s Coffee on the steep part of Götgatan. Sitting there among all the unsuspecting latte-slurpers, it was classic spy-film stuff, the anxiety of feeling under the table, and the excitement when his fingers touched something hard.

He already had an idea of what the key was for before the mobile told him where to find the lock it fitted.

So why all this James Bond cloak and dagger shit, just for a can of spray-paint?

But now that he had the chance to inspect his find, everything suddenly got more exciting. He perceived almost at once that it wasn’t an aerosol. It was actually a bit ridiculous that he’d ever been thinking along those lines. You only had to see the handle halfway along one side and the pin at the top to know that this was far more dangerous than a can of paint. And suddenly his pulse started to race with anticipation.

‘M84 Stun Grenade’ it said in military lettering, and a quick check in Wikipedia was enough to confirm what something like that was used for. The grenade, which was also known as Flash & Bang, was a so-called ‘non-lethal weapon’. For anyone who didn’t understand faggy military speak or play Counterstrike, it was a weapon that was not used primarily to kill people.

Unlike ordinary hand-grenades, the M84 didn’t fire out shrapnel that mutilated and killed those around it, but instead it produced a hell of a big bang and a flash of light that made the sun look like a 15-watt light-bulb. The point of the grenade was to knock out your enemy by blinding and deafening him and making him crap himself long enough for you to pick him up alive. Most anti-terrorism and police forces in the civilized world seemed to have M84s in their arsenals, and the descriptions of the grenade’s effectiveness were overwhelmingly positive: ‘very powerful’, ‘extremely useful’ or ‘highly efficient’ were some of the glowing reviews that various users had given the M84, and now HP suddenly had one of his own.

A real one!

The only question was: what did the Game Master want him to do with it?

From: Game Control

To: Game Master

Subject: Extracts from police report 0201-K246459-10 (candidate 128, assignment 1006-09)

On the above date, patrol car 1054 with Police Inspector Janson and Police Constable Modéer was ordered to the junction of Kungsträdgårdsgatan and Arsenalgatan as a result of an as yet unclassified incident involving the Horse-Guards. A number of patrols and ambulances were despatched simultaneously to the same location and Police Inspector Janson was appointed as acting head of the police operation.

At the location the patrol met Lieutenant Arne Wolff from the Svea Life Guards’ dragoon battalion who told them the following:

Wolff was ordered to form a mounted escort, comprising twelve officers and a total of forty conscripts, for a cortège from the Royal Stables to the Royal Palace. This was an official event on the occasion of the state visit from Greece.

The cortège contained the President of Greece and his wife, as well as Their Majesties the King and Queen.

Wolff reports that they left the Royal Stables in the following formation:

First went two mounted police officers who were primarily responsible for dealing with any traffic issues. Then came the head of the escort and his adjutant and the colour guard (2 + 4 men), then the first troop of the escort (2 + 20 men), of which Wolff was acting commander from a position at their rear.

Behind Lieutenant Wolff followed the first carriage of the cortège containing the President and His Majesty the King, then the second carriage with the President’s wife and Her Majesty the Queen. Behind the royal carriages came two further mounted police officers and then the second escort troop, this too consisting of two officers and twenty soldiers.

Usually the route would follow Nybroplan, Hamngatan, Regeringsgatan, reaching Norrbro bridge via Gustav Adolfs torg, then Skeppsbron to the Palace. But because the bridge is closed for repairs an alternative route was chosen, via Kungsträdgårdsgatan and crossing the water by Strömbron instead.

When HP had finally received his instructions, he knew at once that this assignment was more difficult by an order of magnitude than any he had carried out before. There was a risk of him getting caught, and if he did he would have considerably more trouble with the judicial system than for switching off a clock, spray-painting a door or removing a few wheel nuts. This here was some serious shit, and he didn’t exactly have an unblemished criminal record to fall back on. He’d end up behind bars for this if anything went wrong …

Really he should have turned it down, but he could already feel the excitement bubbling inside him. This would provide fucking good pictures. World class stuff, maybe clip of the week material! He’d never heard of anyone doing anything like it, so he’d be the first. And he couldn’t just back out of a challenge like that.

An offer you can’t refuse …

It would be important to plan the operation carefully. Complete the assignment, get good pictures and find some way of getting away without anyone working out who he was. He thought he had a pretty good idea of how it could work but he needed to get a few things together.

When the first escort troop was level with Wahrendorffsgatan, Wolff noted from his position in the procession that an object was rolled out towards them from somewhere in the crowd of onlookers along the left-hand pavement. The object appeared to be some sort of metal cylinder, somewhat reminiscent of a can of spray-paint, and it stopped in the middle of the front part of the troop, whereupon a number of horses jerked and caused some anxiety in the ranks.

The Goat’s moped was a stroke of genius. HP had borrowed it before and his amiable neighbour and court supplier had never been interested in what he wanted it for.

‘Just take it, no problem, here’s the key,’ was as usual the response he got, and half an hour later he nicked a decent black helmet with a dark visor from a motorbike parked in the square down at Medborgarplatsen.

He’d checked the route of the cortège on the net, then he went down to do a recce and came to the conclusion that the end of Wahrendorffsgatan was the best place to carry out the assignment.

The whole cortège would have made it into Kungsträdgårdsgatan by then, and with a bit of luck both the Kong and Her Mayonnaise the Queen would get to enjoy a proper funfair ride when his new M84 friend went off. Then he could head back up Wahrendorff, be at Nybroplan before you knew it, then up Birger Jarlsgatan and hard left into the Klara Tunnel, and from there he’d have plenty of options.

He’d be back on safe territory on Södermalm before the suspect’s details had even got out, and by then he’d have ditched the black helmet in the water, and would have taken off his jacket and just be wearing a white t-shirt and the Goat’s basic red moped-helmet.

No chance of anyone connecting him to the description of the suspect, and even if they did, so what?

How much evidence would they have?

Suddenly there was a powerful explosion and a flash of blinding light which together caused total chaos in the cortège. Most of the horses in the first troop, including Wolff’s, bolted at once, either along Kungsträdgårdsgatan or directly into Kungsträdgården itself.

Wolff describes himself as a very capable rider, but the flash of light and explosion left him so stunned that he, along with the majority of the dragoons, was thrown off his horse at once and left lying on the pavement by Kungsträdgården.

When he came to his senses a few moments later he observed that the horses pulling the carriage of His Majesty the King had reared up and were about to bolt. Instinctively he grabbed hold of the snaffle of one of the horses to help the driver calm them. This however did not succeed at first, and the carriage raced some twenty metres down Kungsträdgårdsgatan with Wolff hanging from the harness.

Jesus what a fucking massive great explosion! Even though he’d thrown loads of flashbangs in Counterstrike and read about the effects on the net and even seen YouTube clips of the M84 in action, none of that came close to doing the little fucker full justice.

Up with the switch, out with the pin and then just roll it in among the horses. Okay, a bit harder IRL than Online, but not that bad. Even though he had earplugs, sunglasses, and the visor pulled down, the blast and the flash of light still took his breath away. It was a bit like pressing pause on television, and the image freezes while the programme and the sound roll on behind it.

He had to blink hard several times to shake the effect from his retinas and get his eyes back to real time. And what he saw exceeded all his expectations! The street was a fucking warzone! Beaten up riders everywhere, horses bolting, rearing up and generally going crazy. One horse went through the glass of one of the outdoor cafés, a couple of others mowed down one of the newly planted trees in the avenue in Kungsträdgården and carried on blindly into the park through a cluster of parked bicycles. People taking a Saturday stroll in the park had to leap out of the way of the panicked creatures to avoid getting run down or having their heads kicked in. People screaming, horses whinnying, kids crying and in the middle of all that one of the royal carriages came racing down the street with some bloke hanging off the side of one of the horses. It was like a Hollywood film, only better.

Much, much better!

HP couldn’t stop staring at the destruction, and it must have taken a good thirty seconds before he remembered that he had caused it and that it was probably high time to leave.

After several minutes of chaos among wounded dragoons, horses and onlookers, it was ascertained that the explosion had been caused by a so-called ‘non-lethal weapon’ and the royal and presidential couples were all uninjured, albeit shaken, and that there didn’t appear to have been any attack aimed at them specifically.

See separate witness statement from Wolff for further details.

When patrol 1054 arrived on the scene a dozen horses were still running loose in the area. At least fifteen members of the escorting troop and another seven onlookers were deemed by the paramedics to have injuries requiring immediate medical treatment, so Kungsträdgårdsgatan was blocked off in both directions and an evacuation operation with extra resources was put into action.

Superintendent Nilsson assumed the role of head of the police operation at 12:04. On the advice of the Security Police vehicles were called from the Royal Stables and these, under escort from patrol cars 1920 and 1917, as well as members of the personal protection unit, took care of the onward transport of the royal party to Stockholm Palace.

The pictures were brilliant! As well as his own, which were now almost razor-sharp and hardly moved at all, thanks largely to the new strap he had fashioned from an old rucksack, the Game Master had placed no fewer than two other cameramen in Kungsträdgården.

How the hell they knew exactly where HP was going to strike he had no idea, but by this point he had ceased to be surprised at the reach of the Game. Maybe someone had followed him when he did his recce, or perhaps the mobile had a built-in GPS tracker? Whatever, the results exceeded all expectations and just a few hours later he was Mr Clip of the Week, Mr A Number One, and the Ayatollah of Fuck’n’Rolla.

Television and the papers would be busy for at least a week and he laughed himself almost hare-lipped at all the so-called experts who pontificated about the perpetrator and the motives behind what had quickly become known as ‘the Kungsträdgården incident’.

According to one of the evening tabloids he was a rightwing extremist, according to the other he was a leftwing activist, all depending on the ideological position of the paper in question.

The television channels, on the other hand, were more into the international terrorism angle. The most commercial station which had employed the most expensive expert even dared to identify a new Swedish network with ‘connections to Al-Qaida’.

The only thing all those smart alec know-alls with their millions of high-school grades had in common was that they were all wrong!

Totally and utterly fucking wrong, in fact!

There was no conspiracy, no terror network, no political agenda. There was just him.

The single shooter. A man with a mission.

Henrik HP Pettersson, the man, the myth, the legend, and he had beaten all of them! Among all the thousands of other deadbeats, the Game had selected him specifically. They had seen his potential, evaluated his talents and set him on track.

And as thanks he had stepped up and struck a totally fucking massive home run!

Just thinking about it made him rock-hard again!

7
Fair Game

The note was waiting for her when she opened her locker and for a moment she was almost surprised. But then reality caught up with her. A little white post-it note with the police force logo in the top-right corner, just like the others, and fixed to the edge of the little shelf towards the top of the locker.

She touched it, stroking her fingertips over it and silently repeated the words which had been written in red ink. Round, almost childish lettering, yet the message was anything but innocent. Really she ought to pull it off, crumple it up and get rid of it. But she knew that if she did, it would only be replaced with a new one. And why not, really? The note was basically right.

A ‘murdering little whore’, that’s what Dag’s sister had called her at the funeral. Deathly-pale with her arm around her sobbing mother, Nilla had pointed and shouted those very words so loudly that no-one could have missed a single syllable.

‘It’s all your fault, you murdering little whore. You killed him, you and your damn brother! How the hell have you got the nerve to show yourself here?’

The church had fallen utterly silent. Even the priest seemed to be staring at her as she stood there alone in the middle of the aisle, among all the seated black-clad figures.

And she knew that Nilla was right.

She didn’t belong there, she had nothing in common with the people who were mourning Dag’s death. With people who would like nothing more than for him to be alive still instead of in the coffin up at the front by the altar. Because she wasn’t one of them. She was happy, yes, actually happy, that Dag was dead, that he could no longer make her life a living hell. For a moment she was on the point of yelling that at them. That their beloved son, brother, grandchild, relative or great mate was nothing but a fully paid-up fucking psychopath. That he was violent towards women, a rapist, a bully – in short, a complete pig of a human being – and that she was relieved, no, positively overjoyed that it was his broken body in the wooden box up there rather than hers.

But of course she said none of that. Instead she merely nodded curtly at Nilla, turned on her heel and, all eyes on her, walked out of the church and out of her old life.

Two months later she applied to the Police Academy. Took the bull by the horns and confronted her fears, under a different surname as a thin cover for her new, fragile identity. And as time passed her new self grew stronger and stronger. So strong that she had started to think she no longer needed any protection.

At least, she’d believed that up to now.

But Nilla had been wrong about one thing.

Rebecca was responsible, not her little brother. Henke was innocent, but he was still the one who had been punished.

‘It was me who did it,’ he had told the police when they came, and they had believed him. She had wanted to protest, yell at him to shut up, or just simply and calmly explain what had really happened. But it was as if her insides had frozen to ice around an impossibly cold heart. That paused image of Dag’s last seconds alive had taken root inside her head and was stopping her from thinking, speaking or even moving. And then it went on paralysing her through the interviews and later during the trial, while that useless lawyer messed everything up. And, having always been the person who protected him, she just watched as her little brother assumed responsibility for everything. How he protected her and how she let him do it without raising a finger.

She let him throw away his life, his future, all his opportunities, all for her sake.

That little white note was right. Someone like her shouldn’t be in the police. That’s why she left it where it was.

Nilla had been a civilian employee with the Södertälje Police back then. At a guess she was still there, and she was bound to know someone who knew someone … And the story would have got round. That was always the way. The police force was large, but not that large, and police officers loved talking shit about other people, just like everyone else. Really she ought to phone Nilla and explain to her just what sort of person her wonderful big brother was. Put a stop to all the talk and people looking over their shoulders at her. Clear the air once and for all and say what really happened that night, and why.

She had toyed with the idea before, but always came up with some reason not to do it. Maybe it was time now?

She would think about it, think about it properly, she promised herself as she pulled on her bulletproof vest and buttoned her shirt.

When she closed her locker a short while later, the note was still in place.

Okay, he had to admit it. He was disappointed, seriously fucking disappointed, even! After his big moment and his elevation to first Runner-up, he had expected more challenges of the same level as the one he had just accomplished. More chances to end up in the spotlight, to garner points, love and cred on his way to the top.

But instead he had been given a couple of shitty little tasks. Stupid stuff that any nobody with a couple of functioning brain-cells and a tiny pair of balls could have handled.

First he’d had to set up an anonymous internet account and empty a few buckets of bile over a popular blogger on her homepage, which in retrospect turned out to be unnecessary seeing as more than fifty other trolls had already done the same thing. The woman in question had evidently stepped on someone’s toes, she did that pretty much on a daily basis, but why waste his talents on shit like that?

Assignment number two was in the same class, a phone call to a television channel to threaten a famous presenter. Child’s play, and in total he’d only earned four hundred points and had as a result slipped two places on the list. The flow of love that had washed over him after the business in Kungsträdgården had quickly reduced to the Manneken fucking Pis. A pathetic little trickle that stung more than it did any good. And someone else appeared to have replaced him as clip of the week, a clown who had thrown a pie at some world-famous business leader that HP had never even heard of. Ridiculous, a piece of piss, and nowhere near his own achievement.

To make matters even worse, he was running out of money.

He’d soon have to take up Manga’s offer of doing some casual work in the computer-shop to pay the bills.

He needed a new mission.

A task that challenged him, something more in line with what he was capable of. And he needed it soon, because right now this shit was fucking useless!

‘Okay, attention, Alpha One!’

Vahtola stepped into the room and the chatter among the six bodyguards died away instantly.

‘Welcome to today’s assignment,’ she began curtly. ‘You’ll be deployed as follows: one plus three will reinforce the Prime Minister’s group, he’s due to land at 20:45 at Bromma, and, as you all know, after Kungsträdgården we’re doubling up.’

Nods of agreement from the whole group, no-one could object to the logic of that following the warning shot that the royal party had quite literally been subjected to a week or so before.

‘Bengtsson, you can have Kruse, Savic and Normén. Take two standard cars, the Prime Minister has his armoured vehicle plus one, so you’ll be a total of four vehicles. Channel twenty-eight as usual. Questions?’

Bengtsson, a wiry man somewhere in his forties with thinning hair, Vahtola’s second in command, merely shook his head quickly.

‘Good, you can get going at once,’ Vahtola concluded, and a few minutes later they were sitting in the cars.

Bengtsson had made it easy for them by letting them divide up among themselves before they set off, and Rebecca had intentionally kept close to Kruse, a sturdy man from Gothenburg who had been in Alpha since the group was formed. She hadn’t spoken to Dejan since the incident in the self-defence class, even though she knew she should probably apologize to him. After all, he was the one who ended up getting hurt, not her. But for some reason it hadn’t happened and now too much time had passed.

The injury was still visible from the plaster supporting the bridge of Dejan’s nose, and he shot sullen looks in her direction whenever he got the chance.

Macho prat!

Kruse, on the other hand, was more like a kindly uncle, he didn’t really give her any sort of looks at all, usually spoke about his wife and their almost grown-up kids back home in Gothenburg, whom he only saw when he had time off. She’d asked him why he hadn’t tried to get a post closer to home, but he had only laughed:

‘Once a bodyguard, always a bodyguard, Normén. You’ll realize that soon enough. Besides, Iréne doesn’t want me cluttering the place up during the week.’

They booked out an ordinary black Volvo S60 and set off after Bengtsson and Dejan’s Suburban. Quarter of an hour or so later they were out at Bromma Airport.

Finally it had arrived!

He had almost given up hope, and had been toying with the idea of giving up altogether and getting rid of the mobile to the Greek when the light finally started to flash.

Three days in Manga’s shop had been quite okay. Washing the floor, running cables, and playing World of Warcraft whenever he got the chance. And five hundred tax-free kronor in his hand if the till could spare it, so it wasn’t all bad.

The customers were pretty okay as well. Mostly a load of nerds who wanted advice about various gadgets, and seemed to look up to Manga as if he was some sort of holy guru.

Everywhere else Mangalito was small-fry, completely lost, but in the dark little shop he was clearly the Boss, the Geeks’ very own Godfather, and he seemed to enjoy the role.

It was actually pretty cool, and he had to admit that he might have to reconsider his opinion of the Mangster. He’d managed IRL to put together a pretty nice set-up with both his job and his family.

But he himself wasn’t the nine to five type. Not your average loser who was going to be happy with any shitty McJob. He needed something more, something that all his efforts so far had failed to give him. A challenge, some excitement and a bit of fucking action!

‘Really I should have been a cop,’ he grinned to himself as he headed west on the Goat’s moped and the familiar feeling started to build inside him. This could turn out to be pretty damn cool.

The official government plane landed on schedule and everything went according to plan. They had time for a quick coffee with two of the Prime Minister’s regular protection team who had met them at Bromma, and they had agreed their route and formation before it was time to glide in through the gates and cruise over towards the hangar.

The Prime Minister, his female assistant and two bodyguards arrived with the plane. They switched quickly into the armoured black BMW, then they were ready to set off towards his official residence in the Sagerska Palace. Rebecca and Kruse went first in the Volvo, then the two regular guards in a similar car, then the Prime Minister’s vehicle, with Bengtsson and Dejan bringing up the rear in their Suburban.

Flashing lights on and full speed towards the city centre.

Hornsgatan, heading west, a bit of weaving around the red lights at Hornstull, then out across the Western Bridge. In contrast to his previous triumph, for the time being he had very few details about this assignment. But he wasn’t too worried about that. NK and Birkagatan had also been on a need-to-know-basis right up until things kicked off. All he needed to know was where he was going and that whatever awaited him there was going to give him three thousand fucking points!

If you added those to the five thousand two hundred he’d already scraped together, that was enough to take him past number fifty-eight and into the lead, that very evening!

The thought made him so ecstatic that for a moment he almost swerved into the railing of the bridge.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new leader, number one-twenty-eight!’

His comments section would easily stretch to more than ten pages.

HP, Master of the Game.

All he needed to do was get to Lindhagensplan and wait for new instructions.

His cock was already at half-mast.

He could hardly wait!

Ulvsundavägen was behind them now, after a bit of neat zigzagging from Kruse at the red lights at the junction with Drottningholmsvägen, where the ordinary, law-abiding Svenssons had moved their cars out of the way of their flashing blue lights. They were heading towards the Traneberg Bridge, then on to Lindhagensplan.

She glanced at the time, 21:12. If everything carried on like this they’d make their delivery at Sagerska and be done by half past nine. That would give her plenty of time for a session in the gym once the debriefing was over. The boys would probably want to play indoor hockey as usual. It was probably best to join in, even if she didn’t really like ball-games. Important to be one of the team.

Okay, he was in position right at the designated time, 21:12.

The western side of Lindhagensplan, on the bridge crossing Drottningholmsvägen, exactly according to instructions.

There was even a little map attached, which was handy seeing as there were several flyovers to choose from, and he had drive round a bit before he found the right place.

The moped was perfect for stuff like this, you could just swing round and ride back along the hard-shoulder against the flow of traffic if you made a mistake. Okay, so the law-abiding Svenssons in their little socialist boxes blew their horns and flashed their lights at him, but you had to ignore that.

He was sitting astride the moped waiting for instructions. A few metres below him the cars flew past heading into the city. In front of him, high above his head, hung the double bridges of the Essinge motorway. Traffic noise practically drowned out the moped’s engine when it was idling.

So what happened now?

The LED light started to flash.

They were approaching the end of the bridge. Kruse was driving seeing as he had been in the service much longer and therefore got first dibs on the jobs.

Rebecca was sitting beside him in the passenger seat. She glanced up at the extra rear-view mirror on her side. The entire convoy was driving in close formation down the left-hand carriageway, at a speed of about a hundred, exactly as agreed. No problems.

‘Crossing Traneberg, heading for Lindhagen,’ she reported to Control over the radio.

If she looked out to the right and tried to see past the trees, she’d soon be able to see her own little house up ahead on the right.

The flyovers of the Essinge motorway were coming closer and closer. She squinted at their layered dark silhouettes. It almost looked like there was someone standing up there on one of the lower bridges.

Pull up the bag, the message said.

So he did.

A blue-striped PE bag, it turned out. Tied to the outside of the railing, and almost exactly the same as one he had made many years ago in sewing-class. Even the colour of the cord was the same.

It was a pretty neat coincidence, really. He seemed to remember that his was hanging in his wardrobe at home. Weren’t his old football boots still in it? They must have been there a couple of years by now, he could hardly remember the last time he’d used them. Maybe the summer before last, something like that?

He felt the bag. It was heavy. He undid it, full of anticipation.

Yes, there was definitely someone standing on one of the lower bridges, and there certainly shouldn’t be anyone there!

They were all motorways up there, no pedestrians allowed. Kruse didn’t seem to have noticed anything, but he was mainly concentrating on the traffic in the right-hand lane. She raised the microphone to her mouth but stopped halfway. The bridge was approaching fast and she could see the person up there moving. Her instincts were screaming at her to sound the alarm, order the convoy to halt and turn back.

But what if she was wrong?

A stone, a big one, maybe three or four kilos. Sharp edges too. Black, with a slightly rough surface that still felt warm against the palm of his hand. A patch of something sticky almost made his fingers slip. He moved the stone to his left hand and wiped off whatever it was on his jeans.

His heart was pounding in his chest. So what happened now?

When he saw the blue lights coming towards him along Drottningholmsvägen he knew in his gut this was what his task was all about. With the stone back in his right hand he leaned cautiously over the railing.

The light flashed again. He had guessed right.

Lights, camera, action, he thought excitedly before he dropped the stone from the bridge.

Either Kruse didn’t hear her or else the warning came so late that he simply didn’t have time to react. Because suddenly there was a crash as if lightning had struck the windscreen and the world ahead of them turned milky-white.

Glass sprayed into the car and she felt her face stinging.

‘Shit!’ she heard Kruse roar. ‘Fucking shit!’

He rammed his heavy foot instinctively on the brake-pedal and wrested the car to the right so they wouldn’t be hit by the escort vehicle behind them.

By the smallest possible margin the car behind them got past, but Kruse’s swerve was so sudden that they slammed into the concrete barrier on the right-hand side. The Volvo rebounded out into the left-hand carriageway where the Prime Minister’s BMW was just manoeuvring to get past. The driver swerved wildly to the left to escape what looked like an unavoidable collision.

‘Shit,’ Rebecca managed to echo before Kruse did what any bodyguard in his position would have done. He let go of the brake, put his foot down on the accelerator and wrenched the wheel to the right. The front wheels regained their grip on the road and they shot away from the Prime Minister’s car like an arrow, missing by a hair’s breadth the metal arrow marking the turn-off to Lindhagensplan, and ploughed straight into the railing facing the park.

A violent smash, then a feeling of floating. A second of weightlessness when all that could be heard was the roaring engine.

Then everything went black.

What a fucking circus!

The stone hit perfectly in the middle of the windscreen and when he looked over the other side of the bridge he saw the Volvo swerving violently between lanes, its blue flashing light streaking. It almost rammed another car with a blue light flashing in the left-hand carriageway, but suddenly lurched sharply to the right before shooting through the side railing and carrying on, rolling wildly, into the park where it finally came to rest upside down.

He quickly kicked the moped into gear and crossed the carriageway, then, stopping on the other side of the bridge, he pulled off the camera and zoomed in on the smoking wreck in amongst the trees. The Volvo was completely still now and there was no sign of movement from it at all.

But who the hell cared about that!

Because now he was the new number one, the Master of the Game!

Mission accomplished, he thought ecstatically. Three thousand fucking points and almost twenty-five thousand nice new kronor in his account, apart from anything else. He wondered who the fuck had been in that car? At a guess, some big-shot, but who? Oh well, he’d probably find out as soon as he switched on his computer. Now he had to get home and gratefully accept the adoration of the masses!

He put the moped into gear, glanced quickly over his shoulder and did a tearing start out into the carriageway.

The car came screeching out of the shadows. The collision was so hard that he bounced back into the railing, then the moped’s front wheel, which had suddenly been smashed into a shapeless lump, locked instantly and he just had time to put his hands up to protect himself as he flew head-first onto the tarmac.

He felt his palms scraping over the road-surface and a burning pain shot up one arm before the rest of his body hit the ground. The helmet made a cracking sound as it shattered, then the air was knocked out of him.

But he didn’t lose consciousness, at least not properly. He could hear voices and screaming, probably from the stupid fucker who had driven into him. Where the hell had he come from, anyway?

Got to get up, he thought. Got to get away from here.

But his body wouldn’t obey. He couldn’t even lift his head from the tarmac. All of a sudden his skull seemed full of cement, impossible to move or even turn. Was he paralysed? A cripple?

Fuck, fuck, fuck!!!

Slowly he tried to open his mouth to get a bit of air. It was like trying to breathe porridge yet everything seemed to be happening in ultra-rapid time. The voices were coming closer, getting clearer.

‘… bastard … threw something … the Volvo down there … called the cops.’

Suddenly his paralysis eased and he managed to take a deep breath.

The pain came from everywhere at once. His head, his legs, and his hands more than anything else hurt like hell, but the agony, surprisingly, made him feel better. If you could feel things, you weren’t paralysed, that seemed fairly logical.

His vision cleared slightly and from the corner of his eye he could make out several dark silhouettes leaning over him where he lay with his face embedded in the tarmac.

From somewhere in the distance there was the sound of sirens.

He tried to get up and this time it went a bit better. He raised one hand towards the men to get some help, but none of them moved. Then a flashing blue light was right alongside him.

‘It was him!’ one of the shadowy figures yelled, but HP was still having trouble focusing enough to see which one. With an effort he heaved himself up into a kneeling position. Then someone suddenly grabbed hold of his arms and a moment later he was lying across a car bonnet.

‘Take it easy, lad,’ said the voice of authority in his ear.

‘You’re under arrest on suspicion of attempted murder.’

And for a few seconds he thought he was eighteen again.

8
Hardball

Flashing blue lights, she remembered them. But that was pretty much it.

Rebecca had only vague memories of the rescue operation. She had almost no recollection of the early part of it, when the firemen rolled the car the right way up and cut the roof off to get them out. She remembered fragments of a trip in an ambulance, probably to St Göran’s Hospital. An oxygen mask over her nose and mouth, a plastic collar round her neck. Pain in her head, chest and face. People in white and green coats. The sounds of running and urgent shouting. Occasionally she thought she could hear familiar voices among all the strangers, but she wasn’t altogether sure. She made an effort to hear what they were saying, but no matter how hard she tried the words merged together into a single monotonous mumble. The world didn’t start to get clearer until she was eventually wheeled into a room in the hospital, whichever one it was, and the doctor started to examine her.

‘Lucky’ was one of the first things that sank in properly. ‘You were lucky, Rebecca.’

She didn’t really understand what he meant.

What did he mean, lucky?

Someone had smashed their windscreen and it was only thanks to Kruse’s decisive action that they hadn’t collided with the Prime Minister’s car and everything had gone completely to hell.

Then they had crashed through the barrier and the car was so badly wrecked that they had to be cut out of it.

So exactly what did this idiot mean when he said she was lucky?

‘Concussion, but fairly mild, a couple of minor cuts to your scalp and face that will need stitches, and a few cracked ribs. But that’s pretty much it. Considering what happened, you were lucky,’ he concluded, simultaneously answering her question.

‘My partner?’ she managed to say, although it felt like her head and mouth were full of cotton-wool. ‘How’s Kruse?’

‘I’m afraid he wasn’t quite as fortunate. Sometimes it isn’t always a good thing to be big and heavy, and car accidents are precisely one such occasion.’

The doctor adjusted his glasses and gave her a knowing look. Her head suddenly felt like it was about to burst and for a moment she considered pulling out her Sig and asking him again, considerably less politely this time. But she bit her tongue and waited patiently for the answer.

He leafed through his notes.

‘Head injuries, broken arms and ribs are what we’ve got so far. Your partner is still in intensive care. It looks as if the roof crumpled mainly on his side.’

He looked up and smiled.

‘Like I said, you were …’

‘Lucky,’ she interrupted, and suppressed another urge to draw her gun, this time to blow his head off.

Flashing blue lights, handcuffs, then the plain-clothes arrived and it was the backseat of an unmarked police car. They must have been very close by.

He suddenly remembered that a lot of cops used to stop for coffee at the Shell garage not far away.

Typical of his miserable fucking luck!

Both of the detectives were thickset men, with shaved heads and bull-necks. One of them beside him, the other at the wheel.

‘So, you’re the sort who throws stones at police cars, are you?’ the gorilla next to him said as soon as they had set off.

HP didn’t answer, now if ever was a time to keep quiet. His head ached and he felt like he was going to be sick. The pain in his lower arm was hardly helped by the fact that his hands had been bent up behind his back.

The cops grinned and exchanged knowing glances in the rear-view mirror. They turned off the motorway and headed into Kungsholmen. Next stop, Police Headquarters in Kronoberg.

Bollocks!

Everything had gone completely to hell. He’d been careless and not looked round properly. And had missed that fucking idiot who rammed him. How stupid could you be?

He gulped a couple of times to suppress the urge to throw up. Now he had to keep quiet and ask for a lawyer as quickly as possible. He knew the routine. There was no point talking to the orcs in the car, they didn’t have any say in anything.

‘What’s the matter, can’t you speak?’ the same gorilla said in a mocking tone which for some reason made HP feel even more uneasy.

He stuck to his strategy and kept quiet.

‘No problem, lad,’ the cop chuckled, giving his colleague in the driver’s seat another look in the mirror.

The blow came out of nowhere, it must have been a left-hook and he had no way of defending himself. Wham, right on his cheekbone, and his head thudded into the side-window.

‘What the f …!’ he managed to say before the next blow struck. A right-hook this time, straight at the middle of his face, and he felt his nose crack.

‘This can’t be happening, this only happens in films!’ he managed to think before the third punch blurred his vision.

When he came round they were already down in the garage, and they were dragging him out of the car. Metal doors, a lift, a couple of blue-shirts hurrying past, then a long, brightly-lit corridor with beige plastic flooring. Doors, voices, a lot of rushing about, and finally a small interview room.

The handcuffs were removed and the belongings that they had taken off him when he was arrested were emptied onto the table. House-keys, ID card and a few crumpled twenty-kronor notes, as well as the mobile, of course.

Blood was trickling from his nose and one of the gorillas tossed him a wad of paper tissue before sitting down on a chair opposite.

HP managed to pull himself together and regain some of his devastated self-confidence.

‘I want a lawyer,’ he said, but the last word sounded more like ‘doyer’ because of his swollen nose.

The gorilla grinned.

‘Didn’t you hear, I want a lawyer.’ This time slightly less nasal as he rubbed the red marks on his wrists.

The gorilla stood up quickly and HP twitched instinctively on his chair. The cop saw his fear and grinned. He wagged a fat, hairy index finger towards HP.

‘I think you should shut up, my friend,’ he said exaggeratedly slowly, and there was no mistaking the underlying threat.

HP decided to heed his advice and revert to his original plan. Besides, the lead interviewer ought to be along soon, then all this shit would be over.

Sure enough, the door opened a couple of minutes later and another man came in, also in plain-clothes. This one was shorter, wore glasses and was considerably skinnier than the two gorillas, and it was immediately obvious who was in charge.

He glanced at HP’s swollen face and then gave the hairiest ape a disdainful look.

‘You can go now, Wiklander. Haven’t you and Molnar here got a report to write up?’

The gorilla muttered something but went out at once, giving HP the evil eye on the way.

HP nodded happily. This bloke was more to his taste.

‘Bolin, duty officer,’ he said by way of introduction. ‘And you’re Henrik Pettersson, known as HP, is that right?’

HP nodded again.

‘I’m going to turn on the tape-recorder now and we’ll do the introductions once more, but this time I want you to answer verbally, have you got that?’

HP shrugged. He wasn’t planning on saying more than just one sentence.

Bolin started the tape-recorder that was on the table in front of them.

‘Interview with Henrik HP Pettersson concerning suspicion of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm against a public official at the junction of Drottningholmsvägen and the Essinge motorway. Lead interviewer Detective Inspector Bolin, interview commenced at 23:12. Right, Henrik, can you tell me your response to our suspicions?’

HP sighed. Now that the apes had been driven out, the normal order was restored and he was back on familiar territory. His head was starting to clear and the sharp pain in his arm had shifted to a rumbling ache.

‘I’m innocent and want a lawyer present,’ he said as clearly as he could, leaning over towards the tape-recorder to make sure that it didn’t miss a single syllable. ‘I want a lawyer, and I want to report that I was beaten up by that gorilla, the one you called Wiklander.’

He gently touched his swollen nose demonstratively. He still had some tissue-paper stuffed up one nostril. Bolin gave no sign of having understood HP’s request.

‘A lawyer, I said,’ HP clarified once more, seeing as what he had said evidently hadn’t sunk in. Were all cops this slow?

Bright-spark Bolin was still staring at him across the table. Then the police officer slowly smiled and there was something reptilian about the smile that scared HP considerably more than the two trolls in the car had managed to do. He suddenly remembered a Discovery documentary he had seen about poisonous snakes. How they sometimes settled down quite coolly to wait once they had bitten their prey as it used up the last of its energy in a meaningless attempt to escape.

He shivered. Bolin leaned forward slowly and switched off the tape-recorder.

‘Listen carefully now, Pettersson,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You don’t seem to appreciate exactly how bad your situation is, so let me explain. You rode a moped to Lindhagensplan, stopped on the flyover above Drottningholmsvägen, and from a PE bag clearly marked with your name you pulled out a stone which you then threw at the windscreen of a police car passing below. Both police officers are now in St Göran, one of them in a pretty bad way, so with a bit of luck you may have graduated to cop-killer before the night is over,’ he concluded with another of his unnerving snake-smiles.

HP had turned pale, but he continued to stay quiet.

Oh yes, he’d realized that he’d hit a police car, the flashing blue light had been a bit of a giveaway even before he threw the stone. What the hell, did they think he was stupid or something? It was true, on the other hand, that he hadn’t really given much thought to the consequences. But so what?

If you were a cop, you had to put up with a few risks, that much was obvious from the papers. Besides, it was hardly his fault that they were driving so fast, was it? Anyway, wasn’t the speed limit seventy along there? The Volvo must have been doing a ton, so in a way it was the cops’ own fault that things turned out so badly, wasn’t it? He glanced at the mobile phone on the table in front of him, just to one side. The screen was facing up and he was well aware of what was engraved on the other side. Number one hundred and twenty-eight, one of the chosen ones, that was who he was, and rule number one applied, no matter what world you moved in.

But what was it Bolin had said about the PE bag, he had almost missed that? His name? Bolin must have read his mind, because out of nowhere he conjured up the striped bag and tossed in on the table.

For a couple of seconds HP just stared at it, then curiosity got the better of him. He opened the bag. It was empty, apart from a bit of dirt.

Suddenly he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. There, on the inside of the lining, was a bit of fabric he’d almost forgotten. A scrap of cloth that his mum had sewn in during the short period when she was actually his mum and not just Maj-Britt the invalid and drunk. A printed tag you could order through school from some company, the sort all well-meaning mothers sewed into all their kids’ stuff so that it wouldn’t get lost. All mothers except his, because Mum had been replaced more and more by Maj-Britt, and this bag was the only thing she ever managed to sew a name-tag into, the bag he himself had made in sewing class.

Property of Henrik Pettersson 08-6636615, it said in blue lettering.

HP went icy cold. The last time he had seen the bag it had been hanging in the wardrobe in his bedroom, he was absolutely certain of that.

‘In other words, you’re not exactly the smartest criminal I’ve ever come across,’ Bolin declared, interrupting his train of thought. ‘Besides, we’ve got the stone and it contains two perfect fingerprints in two-stroke oil, and we’re convinced they’re going to match yours.’

He leaned forward towards the deathly–pale HP.

‘So the way I see it, you’re pretty much in the frame for this, my dear Henrik. Is there anything you’d like to say about it?’ he concluded, then switched on the tape-recorder again.

HP’s head was spinning.

Who the fuck had been in his flat?

Why had someone stolen the bag and hung it up on the bridge?

The car that had rammed him had appeared out of nowhere, almost as if it had been sitting just round the bend waiting for him. And it had only hit the moped hard enough for the cops to be able to pick him up.

But who would want to frame him that badly? Okay, he had a few enemies, but no-one in that league. So who could it be? Number fifty-eight?

What if Mr Five-Eight was Swedish and had managed to work out who it was coming up fast behind him on the league-table? And sabotaged the assignment on purpose?

No, that sounded too ridiculous …

His head was aching from the collision, the punches and all the shit that was flying round inside it. He couldn’t make sense of any of this, at least not right now.

He glanced over at the mobile again and decided to stick to rule number one, keep quiet.

‘I have no comment to make, and, like I said a few moments ago, I want a lawyer,’ he repeated, but this time his voice didn’t sound quite so confident.

Bolin sighed and slowly switched off the tape-recorder again.

‘If you like, Pettersson, obviously that’s within your rights. There’s the phone, with the phonebook next to it. I’ll be back in ten minutes.’

He gestured towards a small telephone table in the corner of the room, and stood up to go.

‘You’re damn lucky that officer Normén got away with minor injuries,’ he added as he got to the door. ‘There’s only one thing us cops hate more than a cop-killer, and that’s someone who kills female cops.’

Something suddenly clicked inside HP and he could almost feel the blood rushing from his head.

‘H-hang on!’ he called to Bolin, who was on the point of closing the door.

‘What did you say the officer was called, the woman … the one who got hurt?’

‘Normén,’ Bolin said drily. ‘Rebecca Normén.’

Fuck, fuck, fuck! a little voice in HP’s skull screamed.

Twelve stitches in total. Four in one cut, five in the other, and a few single ones on her face.

Rebecca looked at herself in the little mirror above the wash-basin in the examination room. Two white plasters on her head. A few bits of surgical tape elsewhere, a faint bruise on one cheek and bloodshot eyes from the powder on the airbag.

Add a bit of nausea, a headache and a gnawing pain in her chest and the picture of her injuries was complete.

Kruse was in a worse state. He remained in intensive care, according to Vahtola, who had looked in a while ago, and they were going to be flying his wife up the next day.

And all because of her. She’d been sitting in the passenger seat – and she should have sounded the alarm. She should have listened to her instincts and ordered the convoy to stop at once and retreat. But instead she had hesitated. She had wasted a couple of absolutely vital seconds on worrying about making a mistake instead of focusing on doing the right thing. Kruse had managed to save the day by his own actions, but he had also had to pay the price for her mistake.

Rebecca mechanically gathered together her things, the blue bulletproof vest that had probably saved her ribs, the baton and radio that they took from her before she was put on the stretcher.

A patrol car was waiting outside to drive her home. The debriefing could wait until the morning, Runeberg had decided. That suited her fine. She wanted to go home, take a couple of the knockout pills she had been given, and sleep for a day or so.

Just as she was taking a last look round the room to make sure she’d got everything her mobile phone rang. Number withheld, she noted with a frown.

‘This is Rebecca,’ she said with one hand on the door-handle.

‘Becca?’ the voice at the other end said, and she stopped.

‘Becca, it’s me …’

‘I can’t talk right now,’ she said unnecessarily abruptly. ‘Can I call you back tomorrow?’ She tried to compensate by sounding more friendly.

‘Er, sure, I just wanted to check that you’re … okay?’

‘What d’you mean?’ she replied, and somewhere inside her his tone of voice was setting off alarm bells.

‘Er …’ A few moments of silence followed, but she chose not to fill them. ‘… don’t really know how to say this.’

‘But?’ she cut him off, as her suspicions grew stronger and stronger.

‘That business … out at Lindhagensplan … Well … that wasn’t supposed to happen, or, well … it was, but … I didn’t know it was you, Becca!’

The words came in bursts and his voice rose to a falsetto towards the end. Suddenly she felt utterly exhausted, as if her legs could no longer hold her. Slowly she went back inside the examination room and sank down on the trolley she had only just got up from.

‘Okay, let’s take this from the start, please,’ she said, as calmly as she could while she tried to take in what he’d just said.

‘It wasn’t really serious, sort of a game, I suppose. A game that went a bit wrong.’

‘A game, you say.’

Her voice sounded tired but in spite of that he couldn’t mistake how angry she was.

‘Yeah …’ he replied, aware of how lame it sounded.

‘So you were playing a game, and that’s why my partner’s in intensive care, is that a reasonable summary of the situation?’

She sounded more angry now, as if she’d already got over the initial shock.

‘Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen, like I said. Someone getting hurt, I mean … It’s sort of like an elaborate joke, I suppose.’

His voice was pleading, almost whiney.

‘A joke? Are you taking the piss? Are you completely stupid? For God’s sake, you’re over thirty and you still don’t give a fuck, you’re playing your way through life and you let everyone else pay for it! Only this time it all went to hell, or have I got that wrong?’

He didn’t answer. On the rare occasions when she swore he’d learned it was best to keep quiet.

‘Where are you now?’

The question was unnecessary, really. She already knew the answer. Why else would he have called her?

All that flannel about whether she was okay was just one of his usual smoke-screens. The cavalry to the rescue, even though what she most felt like doing was ripping his stupid immature fucking head off.

‘Kronoberg,’ he muttered.

She rested her head on her free hand.

‘Okay,’ she sighed after composing herself for a few seconds. ‘This is what we’re going to do …’

Bolin came back after ten minutes exactly.

‘Well, is a lawyer coming?’

HP shook his head.

‘I thought about it, but I don’t need one,’ he muttered, looking down at the table.

‘Splendid,’ Bolin nodded, and switched on the tape-recorder.

‘Interview recommenced at 23:43 after Pettersson declined the offer of a lawyer. Is that correct, Pettersson?’

HP muttered in agreement but Bolin forced him to repeat himself.

‘Yes, that’s correct.’

‘Okay, Pettersson, how about taking it right from the start?’

HP took a deep breath and glanced at the mobile phone.

‘Tell them everything,’ she had said, and she was usually right.

To hell with rule number one, in other words. Blood was thicker than water, after all.

‘It all started when I found a mobile phone on the train …’

‘Duty custody desk.’

‘Hello, this is Police Inspector Rebecca Normén. My partner Kruse and I were the ones who went off the Drottningholm road earlier this evening,’ she said, as calmly as she could.

‘Inspector Normén, good to hear your voice. We’ve been pretty worried about you, I can tell you. Are you okay?’

Rebecca smiled. She hadn’t recognized the voice at the other end of the line, but now there was no doubt. Her old boss was on duty in Kronoberg tonight, which was one bit of positive news.

‘Hi, Mulle. Thanks, I’m okay, a few bruises and one hell of a headache, but that’s about it. I’m afraid Kruse wasn’t so lucky.’

‘Yes, so I heard, we had three cars there when the fire-brigade were cutting you free, and the lads said Kruse didn’t look too good,’ he replied in a more serious tone of voice. ‘We’ll be keeping everything crossed for him. Did you want anything in particular, or were you just calling to reassure your old boss?’

‘Well, there’s something I could do with some help with, Mulle, and it’s all a bit sensitive.’

‘Okay, let’s hear it!’ he replied encouragingly, and she took a deep breath before she went on.

‘The bloke you’ve arrested, Henrik Pettersson … He’s my little brother.’

He’d done exactly as she said. Told Bolin everything. Or almost everything …

For obvious reasons he’d decided to leave out the business with the M84 fireworks down in Kungsträdgården, but apart from that he’d explained everything, even about the door in Birkagatan.

It had felt pretty good, it was quite a story.

Bolin had mostly just nodded, occasionally interrupting to ask a question, but mainly he had kept quiet.

When they were finished it was past one o’clock in the morning.

Bolin read the time to the tape-recorder, then switched it off.

‘That’s some story, Pettersson,’ he said as he stood up. ‘We’ll have to double-check a few things, then we’ll need to talk again tomorrow. Someone will be with you shortly to take you to a cell.’

HP merely nodded in reply. He could handle a night in the cells, no problem.

Been there, done that …

But now fifteen minutes had passed since Bolin had left, and he was starting to get impatient.

Where the hell was the custody officer?

He was tired, his head and nose ached, and his mouth was completely dry.

Two more minutes, he thought, then he’d stick his head out into the corridor and make some noise.

He realized almost incidentally that his mobile was still sitting on the table among his other belongings.

The little LED light was flashing red.

‘Okay, you’ve lost me now, Normén. Did you say we’ve arrested your little brother?’

‘I’m afraid so, Mulle. Henrik’s a decent lad but he’s incredibly immature, and he’s something of a magnet for trouble, if you get what I mean?’

He chuckled in response.

‘The black sheep of the family, then?’

‘Exactly,’ she lied.

‘Do you know what he’s been arrested for, we’ve got quite a few immature trouble-magnets to choose from up here this evening?’

She frowned. Mulle may be getting close to retirement but there wasn’t normally anything wrong with his memory.

‘His name’s Henrik Pettersson and he’s been arrested for throwing that stone at me and Kruse.’

The line went silent for a few moments.

‘I’m sorry, Normén, but as far as I know no-one’s been arrested for the attack on the pair of you. Every patrol car in the district’s out looking for the bastard, they’re still hard at it on channel sixteen, so I’d definitely have heard if they’d got him. And we haven’t got anyone by the name of Pettersson according to the book, so your brother must have been playing some sort of prank on you, I’m afraid.’

Suddenly she couldn’t think at all, then she felt a wave of fury surging through her.

What the fuck was Henke really up to?

Two minutes. The light was still flashing angrily at him and for some reason, when he stood up to go over to the door and start banging, he grabbed it and his other belongings.

As he took a deep breath ready to shout, he pressed the handle.

The door was unlocked.

He opened it and to his surprise found himself staring out into a dark corridor.

‘Hello!’

No answer.

He called in a trembling voice, ‘Is anyone there?’

Suddenly he was in the fucking Twilight Zone! This was even worse than the gorilla or Bolin’s reptilian smile.

The corridor was completely deserted, not a sound, and all he could see was a row of closed doors the same as the one he had just opened. At the far end a green and white emergency exit sign flickered irregularly. He was reminded of the mobile flashing red in his hand and touched the screen. Even though he already had a vague suspicion of what the message had to say, his stomach still clenched in terror.

Player 128

You have broken Rule Number One and are therefore expelled from the Game with immediate effect!

Your points and any remaining pecuniary

rewards are hereby withdrawn.

Please leave the phone in the premises and refrain from talking to anyone about the Game in future.

Continued violation of Rule Number One

will have serious consequences!

The Game Master

With an audible click the light in the room behind him went out.

Home, she thought.

She just wanted to go home. Take her clothes off, grab a quick shower to get rid of the sweat and blood. A handful of pills and then sleep, wonderful fucking sleep.

But it didn’t turn out to be that easy. And of course it was Henke’s fault.

She’d tried his home number but the line had been disconnected. The same thing with the two most recent mobile numbers he’d given her. She couldn’t get hold of her idiot little brother, which only made her more angry.

What had he actually said?

She tried to remember what his exact words had been, but it was practically impossible. He had at any rate confessed to throwing the stone. But how the hell could he have know that she was in the car? Was this some sort of elaborate, delayed revenge?

No, that sounded crazy, she realized that as soon as she had thought it. No matter how messed up her and Henke’s relationship was, he’d never set out to hurt her on purpose. So what was this all about?

Why had he dropped a stone on their car from a bridge, or at least claimed to have done so?

‘Kronoberg,’ he had said, but that had turned out not to be true. Just to be sure she had called Södermalm and the Western District too, but neither of them had a Henrik HP Pettersson in custody.

Had he been lying to her?

He could very well have been, that had happened far too many times in the past. But there was something about his voice, something … it sounded stupid to use the word when you were talking about Henke, but nonetheless … something honest. As if he really believed he’d been arrested. The only way she’d get any answers to any of her questions was to get hold of her little brother.

The question was: where the hell was he?

He ran. First in sheer panic. Along the dark corridor, towards the door – although he was prepared to bet it was locked. Then relief as it opened onto a stairwell.

Stone steps down into the darkness, more unlit corridors along the way. His steps echoed on the concrete walls. Finally, at last, a way out.

Damp night air hit him as he crossed the street to get as far away as possible from that corridor. A quick glance over his shoulder, then one more just to be sure.

Suddenly he felt soft grass under his feet and it took him a few seconds to get his bearings. Large black trees splayed towards the night sky above him, and ahead of him was an iron railing and some unkempt gravestones.

Kronoberg Park, close to the Jewish Cemetery. Only a block or so from where he’d thought he was to start with.

His legs were working by themselves. Up the hill, through the park and finally out onto Polhemsgatan. The most western of the police’s three copper-coloured towers in front of him. For a few moments he considered carrying on to the entrance down on Kungsholmsgatan, knocking on the copper doorway and handing himself in. But before he’d had time to make a decision his legs were already carrying him out onto Fleminggatan, then right, towards the city centre.

His head was spinning as his feet drummed on the tarmac.

Tramp, tramp, tramp.

The monotonous sound calmed him down a bit. The whirlpool in his head gradually slowed down and the panic slowly released its iron grip of his chest.

Tramp, tramp, tramp.

A set-up!

Tramp, tramp, tramp.

The whole thing had been a fucking set-up!

Tramp, tramp, tramp.

The more he thought about it, the better he could see how it all fitted together. He had thought that three thousand points was a bit too much just for throwing a stone at a car, even if it was a cop-car.

And he’d been right!

The stone, the car, the cops – all of that had been secondary, or a sort of prologue. The assignment, the real assignment, had been all about him. A sort of evaluation, really.

Or a test …

Only a very small number of people are qualified for this level …

They had tested him to see if he had what it took. If he could handle the storms up on the summit.

And the result, ladies and gentlemen?

He had fucked up.

Big time.