Game: A Thriller

by Anders de la Motte

  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 Arsenalsgatan 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:

  Together with twelve fellow officers and a total of forty conscripts, Wolff was ordered to form a mounted escort for a cortège from the Royal Stables to the Royal Palace, 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 color 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 New Bridge Square, Hamngatan, Regeringsgatan, reaching North Bridge via Gustav Adolf Square, 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 understood at once that this assignment was considerably more difficult than any he had carried out before. There was actually 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 his excitement bubbling inside him. This would provide damned 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, he just needed to get a few things together.

  When the first escort troop was level with Wahrendorff Street, Wolff noted from his position in the procession that an object was rolled out toward them from somewhere in the crowd of onlookers along the left-hand pavement. The object in question 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 neighbor 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 Wahrendorff Street 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 king 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 New Bridge Square 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 that 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 meters down Kungsträdgårdsgatan with Wolff hanging from the harness.

  Jesus what a fucking massive great explosion! Even though he’d thrown loads of flashbangs in Counter-Strike 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 program 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 war zone! 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 through 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 guy 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 he left.

  After several minutes of chaos among wounded dragoons, horses, and onlookers, it was ascertained that 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 onlo
okers 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 cell 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 harelipped 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 right-wing extremist, according to the other he was a left-wing 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 that had employed the most expensive expert even dared to identify a new Swedish network with “connections to Al Qaeda.”

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

  Totally and utterly damn 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

  You murdering little whore!

  Someone like you shouldn’t be allowed in the police!

  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 toward the top of the locker.

  She touched it, stroking her fingertips over it, and silently repeated the words that 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 toward women, a rapist, a bully—in short, a complete pig of a human being—and that she was relieved, no, actually 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, with their eyes all on her, walked out of the church and out of her old life.

  Two months later she applied to 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 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 back then, 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. As if 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 paralyzing 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 around. 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 just 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 home page, 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 pr
etty 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 actually 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 the whole thing even worse, he was running out of money.

  He’d soon have to take up Mange’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 damn 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 twenty forty-five 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.