Erman chuckled.
“Sure, Double O Seven, no problem!”
He turned on his heel and went back inside the house.
HP took the chance to light another cig. This whole thing was starting to sound like a fucking blockbuster video. He wasted a couple of minutes trying to work out which one came closest. Conspiracy Theory maybe, or Enemy of the State? It was like a mixture of all of them, some kind of tribute thing. He took a couple of deep drags. High above he could hear a familiar droning.
Farthundra Airline’s afternoon flight. He grinned to himself.
Erman came back out onto the porch with a folded piece of paper in his hand.
“This is all you need: the address of the farm and a few old user names that might still work. I’ve written down the bank’s website as well, in case you make it that far. Now you just have to figure out a way of getting into the building, because I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”
HP took hold of the piece of paper, but Erman didn’t let go.
“Promise me one thing, HP. ”
“What?”
“You’ve seen how I live, what the Game did to me.” His stare was starting to get to HP again. “Promise me that you’ll use this information to give them one hell of a fucking kick in the balls, just promise me that!” Erman’s face was starting to change color again.
“Sure, mate, no problem, take it easy!” HP muttered uncomfortably, snatching the note.
He’d got what he wanted, and it was pretty much time to get away from there.
The address was the only thing he’d get any real use out of; the rest was more or less meaningless. No matter what he’d promised this hillbilly, he was hardly going to break into a damn server farm, all he needed was a way to get to the Game Master and now he’d got it. A visiting address, no less. All he had to do was head out there and knock on the door, if he still felt like doing that after everything he’d heard.
The buzzing sound above them returned and Erman twitched. He stared anxiously around the treetops trying to catch a glimpse of the plane.
“Take it easy, Erman, it’s just Farthundra’s very own airline doing its daily flight.” HP grinned nervously. “Nothing worth crapping your pants over.”
“What-did-you-say?!” Erman spun toward him and HP saw that the crazy look had suddenly made a full-blown comeback.
“I said it was just a plane towing an advertisement for some fucking farmers’ market in Fjärdhundra next week. Nothing to get steamed about.”
He was speaking slowly on purpose, the way Erman had done to him half an hour or so ago, but he could hear how worried he sounded.
“You’ve seen the plane before?”
Erman’s face had gone completely white.
“Y-yes, it flew past just before you picked me up in your hicksville limo; just take it easy, okay!”
Erman didn’t seem to hear him. He stood completely still for a few seconds.
“Go!” he finally managed to say through gritted teeth.
“What?” HP didn’t understand anything.
“Go, get lost, fuck off, are you thick or what?!”
He spun his arms and took a step toward HP.
HP backed away instinctively and held up his hands.
“Okay, okay, calm down, I’m going, I’m going!”
Christ, the guy had really lost it this time.
“It’s only a damn plane, Erman, there’s no need to get so worked up!”
♦ ♦ ♦
So much for that brilliant plan.
Nilla still hated her, she’d understood that much. Which wasn’t really so surprising, seeing as it had been her adored big brother who had gone through the balcony railing.
Nilla and Dag had always been close, and she’d never accepted the investigation’s conclusions that the whole thing had been at least in part an accident. The company the housing association contracted to renovate the façade had cut corners when they were fixing the balconies back on, and several bolts had evidently been missing.
“An unfortunate circumstantial coincidence,” it had said in the verdict.
For Henke that meant ten months for causing another person’s death instead of manslaughter. If the balcony railing had been correctly fitted with all its bolts in place, Dag would probably have been okay.
But it was difficult to know for sure. The shove had been pretty hard, maybe hard enough for him to have tumbled over the railing? That couldn’t be ruled out, at any rate, or so the court had reasoned.
For her own part, she doubted that conclusion. Dag was big and heavy, almost ninety kilos of muscle, and he had good balance. If the railing hadn’t given way, he wouldn’t have fallen, and their lives would have looked very different. Henke would never have ended up in prison and she would never have been released from hers. His imprisonment and her freedom—each one was dependent on the other.
The problem was just that it shouldn’t have been like that. That’s what she had wanted to tell Nilla. What had really happened that night. And why . . .
♦ ♦ ♦
“Only a plane? Only a plane?!!!” Small drops of saliva were getting caught in the yellowing beard around Erman’s mouth.
“You don’t get any of it, do you, you stupid fuck?! They’ve got ears everywhere, absolutely every-fucking-where! Didn’t you understand what I said about the Ants? Who did you talk to on your way here, the bus driver, some nice old lady on the train? Did you happen to mention it on the phone to some friend, or were you stupid enough to write the directions on your computer?”
His voice had hit falsetto again.
“None of that, I promise . . .”
HP was slowly backing toward the wheel tracks that led toward civilization. This was getting really creepy now. He had to get away from this psycho, straightaway. God knew what would happen otherwise. In the forest no one can hear you squeal.
♦ ♦ ♦
Erman took another couple of steps forward, clenching his fists, then abruptly stuck out one of his index fingers.
“Google!” he managed to spit. “You Google Mapped the address, admit it!”
“No, I didn’t!” HP replied instinctively, then realized at the same moment that that’s exactly what he’d done.
Erman must have noticed the change in the look on his face, or else he guessed that HP was lying.
Either way, he leaped a couple of strides toward HP.
“You stupid fuck!” Erman roared. “I gave you one simple instruction. Don’t talk to anyone, don’t use anything electronic. And you go and Google Map me! You might as well have been working for the Game Master directly, Christ, I ought to kill you on the spot!”
“Sorry!” HP muttered, now too terrified to even try to lie properly.
For a moment he thought he was going to end up buried like the fucking Bocksten Man. Dug up in two hundred years’ time to get his perfectly preserved backside put on display in a glass case in Farthundra’s local history museum. The thought almost made him crap his pants.
Erman took another few steps in HP’s direction, then he momentarily stopped.
He stood there for a couple of seconds, apparently thinking. Then without a word he turned on his heel and disappeared inside the house.
HP didn’t hang around to find out if he was going to come back out with a shotgun. Instead he turned and fled along the path back toward the road as fast as he could. Above him he could still hear the drone of the airplane. It sounded like it was circling.
After a couple of hundred meters he reached the edge of the forest. There was about a kilometer of gravel track through the open fields before he could reach the relative safety of the road. He looked anxiously over his shoulder. Shit, obviously he should have nicked the flatbed moped, or at least pulled the sparking plug out or something. Now he’d just be an open target out there.
Oh well, no point worrying about that now.
He couldn’t hear anything like a moped engine, but that was mainly because of
the damn plane that was still circling overhead. He noticed that the advertising banner was gone. So what was the idiot doing up there, then?
He left the shade of the forest and set off toward the road. Every ten meters or so he glanced behind him. Still nothing. He was starting to get his fear back under control. What a psycho the guy had turned out to be. Thanks a lot, Mange, that was a brilliant tip-off!
Another glance. No sign of Erman. Great!
It wasn’t until he got about halfway across the field that he noticed that the sound of the plane engine had changed. Before, it had been mainly a monotonous buzzing sound, one note higher or lower depending on where in its circuit it happened to be. But unexpectedly the sound was getting louder, both in volume and pitch, and it took him a few seconds before he understood why. Because out of the blue, when he looked over his shoulder yet again to make sure Erman wasn’t coming after him, he discovered that the plane was diving straight at him like he was fucking Cary Grant! He could hardly believe his eyes.
It came closer and closer, but it wasn’t until the plane was more or less filling his field of vision that he had the sense to get really scared. The roar of the engine and the sound of the wind on the wings were drowning out all his thoughts. He saw the whirring propeller at the front and just beneath it the metal beam connecting the undercarriage coming straight toward him, but he was still having trouble taking in what was going on.
Shit! was the only contribution his brain could come up with, then he tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground.
He felt the rush of wind and heard the sound of the undercarriage missing his head by the smallest of margins, before he suddenly realized he had a mouthful of gravel.
The engine noise started to decrease and HP raised his scratched face just enough to see the plane bank in a slow left-hand turn. It took him a couple of seconds to become aware that the pilot was climbing to gain enough height to make a second attempt.
Fuck! he thought in panic, staggering to his knees and then forcing his paralyzed legs into action. He abandoned the gravel track and headed off straight across the field instead, in the direction he knew the bus stop was in. Dust and soil swirled up around his feet, and the stubble left by the crop tore at his trouser legs.
Scratch-bang-scratch-bang-scratch-bang.
HP was running as he had never run before, that much was certain.
At least five hundred meters left to the road, to salvation. The plane was almost halfway through its circle. His heart was pumping so hard in his chest that he thought it would burst. He could taste blood in his mouth, and his pulse was pounding in his temples.
Then he heard the roar of the engine get louder again as the plane dived toward him Alfred Hitchcock–style, and now the noise was even more earsplitting, if that was possible. He ran on in panic, trying to zigzag to present a harder target, the way you did in Counter-Strike. But this was IRL, and not some damn computer game! The plane was coming closer and closer and nothing seemed likely to divert it.
All at once he caught sight of something in the stubble a few meters ahead of him. It looked like a white plastic stick of some sort, about two meters long.
He didn’t really know where the idea came from, but just before the plane was on top of him he threw himself at the stick, grabbed it with both hands, and with one end stuck under his armpit, something like a knight’s lance, he rolled over onto his back.
The plane filled his world; the roar of the engine was deafening. As the rush of air whipped his breath away he felt the stick strike something solid and then it was torn from his hands.
Then the plane was gone. HP rolled over onto his stomach again. The remnants of the shredded stick lay scattered a few meters away.
Must have hit the propeller, he thought as he struggled to his feet again.
The plane had started to climb again. But this time the engine didn’t sound quite so angry. It was rising and falling as if the engine was running unevenly, and HP could clearly hear a whistling sound that must have been coming from the damaged propeller.
The pilot was clearly having trouble, but HP didn’t wait to see how he was going to deal with it.
Instead he set off at full speed toward the bus stop, which was now visible up ahead. As he got closer he saw a bus just passing the stop and he changed direction in an attempt to intercept it. He might just make it . . .
Then he caught sight of something from the corner of his eye and realized that the pilot had changed tactic. Instead of diving from a few hundred meters up, the plane was sniffing across the field, and HP could see the undercarriage almost touching the stubble.
This time it wouldn’t do any good to dive; he’d get his skull crushed either by the wheels or the bar between them.
Terrified, he sped up even more. He raced toward the road, seeing the bus come closer, and exerted every last bit of strength to beating it. The sound of the plane was coming closer and closer.
He put one foot in the ditch, which made him lose his balance, but he was running so hard that he carried on, stumbling up onto the side of the road, just in front of the roaring bus.
Then a shriek of brakes, a squeal of tires, and the airplane motor roaring overhead.
A moment later he was knocked over and everything went black.
♦ ♦ ♦
“Hey, man, are you okay?”
The voice was coming from far away and HP sat up with a jerk. For a panic-stricken moment he thought he’d gone blind, that he’d got brain damage or something like that, and was condemned to a life of eternal darkness. But gradually his senses returned and he managed to open his eyes.
“You okay, man?” A young man in a uniform that was too big for him was leaning over him, and beside him he saw a couple of anxious old ladies’ faces.
“You came out of nowhere, man, I hardly had time to brake, but I don’t think you got much more than a knock.”
HP didn’t answer, just tried to get up with an effort.
The driver, an immigrant of about thirty or so, gave him a hand.
He did a quick check of his limbs, with satisfactory results.
“We ought to call an ambulance,” one of the old ladies trilled. At a guess, she must have been on the bus.
“. . . and the police,” the other one chimed in. “That plane . . .”
“No ambulance!” HP interrupted. “I’m fine!”
He was too. Apart from the scratches to his face and hands, and the fact that the wind had been knocked out of him when the bus hit him, he felt fine. The last thing he needed right now was a load of nosy cops.
“Sorry,” he muttered to the driver. “I misjudged it, my fault, my bad!” he managed to say as his voice started to work again. “I’m fine, really!”
“Great!” the driver said in relief. “Maybe we should get going?”
He nodded to the two ladies who were standing anxiously at the side of the road.
“No damage done, so no ambulance. Everyone on board!”
Then he brushed the grit from HP’s back as he whispered:
“You’re not going to file a complaint, are you, man? I’ve already got one charge for speeding, and I need this job, you know?”
“No worries!” HP replied, starting to get a grip again. “Don’t worry, just let me off without paying and it’s all forgotten.”
“No problem, friend!” The driver smiled in relief and gestured invitingly toward the door of the bus.
“You should just make it to the train, but it’ll be tight.”
HP just nodded and collapsed in the nearest seat.
“Did you see that plane, man? God, it was flying low!”
13
MIND GAMES
HE COULD HARDLY remember the journey home. HP had completely exhausted himself running across the field, and if you added that to his close encounter with the bus, it wasn’t so surprising that he was shattered. He did actually try to stay awake and check to see if he was being followed, but it had been impossible. H
is eyelids just kept drooping and he ended up all the way out in Älvsjö before he realized that he’d dozed off and gone too far.
It wasn’t until he eventually made it back to Slussen that he woke up properly and managed to do the secret agent trick to shake off anyone following him. But by the time he finally got home to the little allotment cottage he instantly felt wide awake.
His heart was racing and adrenaline was rushing through his body, and it was like he was reliving the whole thing again. For a few minutes he actually believed he was about to have a heart attack, that he was going to die out there in the cottage and his ant-eaten corpse wouldn’t be found until Auntie showed up to close the place up for winter.
But then his galloping pulse finally calmed down and the fog in his head began to lift.
What in the name of fuck had actually happened?
Had it really happened, properly, or had he just dreamed it all?
It only took a quick glance in the mirror to write off the dream theory. Filthy, covered in scratches, and the bottom of his jeans left in tatters by the sharp stubble in the field. It was a damn good job he hadn’t been wearing shorts!
The man in the plane really had been trying to bump him off, and he’d probably have succeeded if HP hadn’t made it onto the bus. His pulse started to race again and he felt sick, and it took a few minutes and several liters of water before he felt he was back in control again.
His thoughts were churning wildly in his head—the drying machine in there seemed to hit some sort of hyperspeed.
The Game, the assignments, everything that had happened to him—it was all just a betting game for bored rich bastards?
They’d pressed all his buttons, pushed his boundaries, and got him to play along merrily. Was he really so fucking easy to deceive?
The alternative was obviously that Erman had been lying, and had just been talking a load of crap.
Okay, so the guy clearly didn’t have all his sheep in the meadow, but he didn’t seem like a liar. The hillbilly obviously believed one hundred percent in what he had said, and most of it also fitted in with HP’s own experiences. The problem was that he just couldn’t take it all in; it was too much.
Game: A Thriller Page 18