The Game Trilogy

by Anders de la Motte

  He looked at her as if he was expecting some sort of reaction, but when he got none he went on.

  ‘In the second term she got together with Per and we used to hang out together. Not that we were best friends or anything …’ Another look that went unanswered.

  ‘Either way,’ he continued, ‘after the Academy Per and I were allocated to the same law and order unit. I would bump into Therese every now and then, and the flirting never quite stopped even though we both got married eventually to other people. A couple of years later we ended up on the same UN mission, and … well …’

  He shrugged.

  ‘When you’re a long way from home and experiencing a whole load of shit together, it’s easy to get close to someone. A bit too close, maybe …’

  He shifted uneasily on his chair, as if the seat were chafing against his massive body.

  ‘When we got home Therese wanted us to carry on, she wanted us to leave our partners and move in together, but I didn’t want to. My kids were small, and to be honest …’

  He sighed.

  ‘Therese was fairly brittle right from the start, and that UN mission hadn’t made things any better. I suppose I’d …’

  ‘… got bored,’ she finished, in a surprisingly firm voice.

  Philip’s office was on the nineteenth floor.

  Even though that was only one floor above theirs, the lift-journey seemed to take forever.

  He and Frank were leaning against opposite walls, each of them doing his best not to meet the other’s gaze.

  This really was a mistake of biblical proportions. What in the name of holy hell had he been thinking?

  Dressing up and applying for a job under a false name so that he could single-handedly try to solve some fucking murder mystery? Seriously, who the hell did he think he was? Nancy fucking Drew?

  Didn’t he have enough problems already without actively trying to add a few more?

  And he didn’t even have the sense to keep a low profile either …

  Great work, HP!

  The lift doors opened, they got out and Frank pointed at a glass door with the company logo, exactly the same as on their own floor.

  There would usually have been a receptionist sitting there, but at this time of evening the door was locked and Frank had to knock.

  ‘Our passcards don’t work up here,’ he hissed at HP. ‘Only Philip, his secretary and the twin detectives have access.’

  ‘The twin what?’

  ‘Shh, for God’s sake, not so loud! You’ll see …’

  The door was opened by a man with short red hair, also dressed in a suit that clung to his large body like a glove.

  ‘Hi, Elroy. Philip asked us to come up.’

  Frank took half a pace forward but was almost left with his foot in the air when the red-haired man made no sign of moving.

  ‘Not you, just him,’ he muttered, nodding at HP.

  Frank opened his mouth to protest, but stopped himself.

  ‘Well, good luck …’ he said quietly from the corner of his mouth as HP walked past him.

  The reception area looked the same as the one on the floor below. A small, stylish waiting area with a few leather and tubular steel chairs, plus the usual selection of lifestyle magazines. Then a reception desk made of sand-blasted glass and, behind that, a couple of small meeting rooms. But apart from that, this floor looked very different. Instead of an airy, open-plan office divided only by glass walls, here there was just a locked steel door with a cardreader at one side.

  The discreet little spherical camera was similar to those on the floor below, but because the ceiling was lower here it was so prominent that HP almost imagined he could see its lens adjusting as it followed their movements.

  He gulped hard a couple of times, but his mouth still felt horribly dry.

  Instead of taking out a card, the red-haired man simply raised his right thumb to the reader. The little red lamp switched to green and HP heard the lock whirring. For some reason he couldn’t suppress a shudder.

  17

  The hive

  ‘The complaint then, what about that?’

  ‘I don’t quite understand what you mean, Becca …?’

  ‘The official complaint about misuse of office, do you know who’s responsible for that?’

  He squirmed again.

  ‘Of course I know.’

  ‘So who was it, then? Sixten Gladh?’

  ‘No, in purely formal terms it was actually me …’

  She stood up from her chair.

  ‘Fuck, that’s low, Ludvig …!’

  ‘Calm down, Becca, for God’s sake!’

  He held his hands out.

  ‘It’s nothing personal, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  She glared at him, without sitting back down.

  ‘Okay, just think about it, Becca, and try to forget that we know each other. Paragraph nine of the Police Act, does that sound familiar? If a police officer becomes aware of a crime that is liable to prosecution, he or she is obliged to report it … Does that ring any bells? To be honest, I thought you already knew this, but you don’t seem to be quite yourself …’

  She carried on glaring at him.

  ‘Okay, try this: after your incident in Darfur my phone was ringing constantly with people from the Foreign Ministry claiming that you were guilty of all sorts of things. So what do you think I should have done? Put a lid on it? Pretend nothing had happened? A couple of days later Gladh and the Foreign Ministry gang would have had us both swinging from the gallows …’

  He looked at her, as though he were expecting her to say something.

  ‘Go on!’ she said curtly.

  ‘The conclusion I came to, and I still believe it was the right one, by the way, was that if a police officer is suspected of a crime then a report has to be filed and the ensuing investigation will determine what happened. That’s the normal procedure for incidents of this nature, and anything else would have looked very strange. So I asked Ann-Margret to raise a brief preliminary report, officially instigated by me.’

  He gestured towards the area outside his office, where the department’s civilian secretary had her desk.

  ‘It wasn’t until much later that I discovered that the case had ended up on Per Westergren’s desk, and realized what a tricky situation I’d inadvertently landed you in. Having my name on the report was hardly going to help, and obviously it was stupid of me to suggest coming in as your witness, I realized that just a couple of minutes into the interview. But by then it was already too late …’

  A large open-plan office with subdued lighting. But unlike the floor below, which was a hive of activity, this one had just two desks in the middle of the room. The contrast between the vast, darkened room and these two illuminated workplaces made everything look very odd, almost surreal.

  At one of the desks a tall, broad-shouldered woman was bent over a computer screen. HP was taken aback and almost came to a stop. He didn’t know if it was the way she sat, the suit or her sharp features that fooled him, but the woman at the desk actually looked like Rebecca.

  The illusion lasted no more than a second. As he got closer he realized that the woman’s hair was much fairer, actually it was red, and she was much more like the red-haired man walking ahead of him than Rebecca. He guessed that they were brother and sister, probably twins, if Frank’s nickname meant anything.

  As they walked past the woman looked up from her screen. HP gave her a short nod but she made no attempt to return the greeting, she just stared at him.

  There was something about the way she looked at him that made him feel uneasy, and he took a couple of quicker steps to catch up with his guide.

  The red-haired man whom Frank had called Elroy pressed his thumb against another reader beside a frosted glass door. He let HP through.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said tersely.

  Surely you see that you can’t treat me like this?!!

  Oh yes, she certainly could, and right no
w she was finally angry enough to dump him once and for all.

  Maybe it wasn’t nice, but a quick end was best for both of them. Anyway, what was there to talk about? They were each being unfaithful, they each had a partner they were lying to. And what for?

  Love?

  Hardly – at least not from her side.

  All they had shared were a few sweaty orgasms on the floor of an empty flat.

  Secret meetings that made life more bearable but which neither of them was really prepared to pick up the tab for. And besides, she had started to get bored.

  Recriminations, jealousy and wounded feelings were the last thing she needed …

  Just stop it! We’re both adults.

  It’s over – full stop!!

  The two exterior walls were basically huge windows offering a fantastic view over Stockholm city centre. There was red lettering on Kulturhuset, blue from the Sergel arcade and the square far below him, and, high above to the left, the illuminated clock of the NK department store.

  The hands said it was exactly seven o’clock, and for a moment HP’s heart almost skipped a beat.

  But it took him just a couple of seconds to regain control of his racing imagination.

  The hands were showing seven o’clock – not because anyone had stopped the clock, but because it was actually seven o’clock in the evening.

  He took a couple of steps into the room. Philip Argos’s desk was almost entirely empty. Two linked computer screens, a keyboard and a wireless mouse – that was all. The same almost clinical state applied to the rest of the room. There wasn’t any sign of habitation, not a single loose sheet of paper or post-it note or abandoned coffee-cup.

  The left-hand wall was covered with framed certificates hung in laser-straight rows, and the white wall-to-wall carpet must have been washed regularly seeing as it showed no trace of having ever been walked on, let alone had coffee spilt on it.

  In one corner was a set of white leather sofas. Five leadership magazines were laid out in a perfect, zen-like fan on the little coffee-table. The top one had Philip Argos himself on the cover. ‘The Man in Control’, declared the caption. The precision of the room made HP feel even more uncomfortable, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to nudge at the magazines, just a bit, to make the room seem slightly more human.

  As he was doing that, he noticed two small, framed photographs above the sofa. The first was black and white, and showed Philip Argos with the man whose name was evidently Elroy. They were both wearing berets and camouflage uniform, crouching down with their arms round each other’s shoulders, smiling at the camera.

  The other photograph was of a chalk-white beach, the outlines of a few dark palm trees, and a blood-red sunset which – apart from the magazines – appeared to provide the only splash of colour in the monochrome room.

  The picture intrigued HP, and he walked round the coffee-table to take a closer look. The photograph actually looked like …

  ‘Marmaris,’ a dry voice said behind HP, making him jump.

  ‘W-what?’

  Philip Argos pointed at the picture.

  ‘That’s the view from my villa in Marmaris. In Turkey,’ he clarified. ‘I go there as often as I can to unwind. It’s a good place to fill your soul with positive energy …’

  ‘Aha, okay! I – I was just admiring the colours,’ HP muttered.

  ‘Sit yourself down, Magnus.’ Philip gestured towards the leather sofa. ‘Would you like anything to drink? Water, tea?’

  HP realized his mouth was bone-dry.

  ‘Water, please.’

  He glanced up at Philip, but the expression on his face gave no clue about what was to come.

  Philip pulled out his mobile phone from a holster on his belt, but instead of dialling a number he just pressed a button on the side, then spoke into it as if it were a microphone.

  ‘Sophie, would you mind bringing in some mineral water for me and Magnus.’

  He let go of the button and waited a moment. The mobile let out two distinct bleeps.

  Philip returned it to its holster and sat down in the armchair opposite HP. He adjusted the journals on the table, crossed one leg over the other and leaned back. Then he smiled, and for the second time that evening HP couldn’t help shivering.

  ‘Magnus … that is your name, isn’t it?’

  18

  Oh what a tangled web we weave …

  Fucking hell – his cover was blown!

  ‘Er … what?!’ he mumbled, trying to win a bit of time.

  Philip Argos smiled again – an unsettling, reptilian leer that made the hair on the back of HP’s neck stand up.

  ‘I said, your real name isn’t really Magnus Sandström, is it?’

  ‘Er … N-no …’ HP managed to say as he desperately ran through his options.

  He’d been found out and he was stuck on the nineteenth floor. The door was closed and outside stood the society of red-heads. Both siblings looked like they would be capable of causing him a fair degree of physical harm –not to mention Philip Argos himself. The man looked like a rattlesnake working out how best to attack an unusually stupid desert rat …

  ‘Did you really think we wouldn’t check you out properly? I mean, a person with your sort of reputation and experience …?’ Philip chuckled.

  HP shrugged and adopted a resigned face to gain a few more seconds thinking time. In the harsh light of hindsight the whole of his undercover project looked more insane than ever.

  What the hell had he been thinking? That he could just waltz in through the door in his cheap suit and even cheaper disguise and, hey presto, would suddenly get access to a whole load of secrets?

  He glanced over at the door again. Through the frosted glass he thought he could make out the twins’ threatening silhouettes. As if they were waiting out there, ready to jump him the moment their boss pressed the button …

  ‘It didn’t take a great deal of digging to unmask you,’ Philip Argos went on. ‘Like I said, you do have something of a reputation … We’re very careful here at ArgosEye. Trust is good, but making certain is, as I’m sure you’ve already heard, always preferable …’

  Philip Argos smiled another rattlesnake smile and HP made a brave attempt to return it.

  All aboard! The next train to fucksville is about to depart from platform four!

  ‘Farook Al-Hassan!’

  ‘W-what?’

  ‘Farook Al-Hassan, that’s what you’re called these days, isn’t it?’

  Philip gave him a encouraging nod.

  ‘S-sure …’ HP stammered after a couple of seconds of confused thought.

  ‘Of course …’ he added as his grin grew gradually wider. ‘But you can carry on calling me Manga if you like. I’m not too fussy about that. When you apply for jobs Manga sounds a bit better, if you see what I mean …?’

  Philip Argos nodded.

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference here. We go by people’s abilities, not what their surnames happen to be, but obviously I respect your wishes. To tell you the truth, you impressed me the moment I saw your CV. On paper you were precisely the sort of person we needed here at the company, someone who knows what he’s doing and is prepared to do whatever it takes to grow in line with the business. That’s why I asked the others to take special care of you from day one …’

  HP really was trying not to, but he still couldn’t stop grinning. His disguise was still intact. His cover wasn’t blown. In fact it even looked as if he might be heading for …

  ‘… promotion,’ Philip Argos went on. ‘From what I saw down in the Mine this evening, it would be foolish of me not to give you the chance to develop further. My job as a boss is to seek out talented individuals and help them to reach their full potential. That’s how you build up a successful enterprize …’

  HP was nodding as if he knew exactly what Philip Argos meant. His grin was still glued to his face, but not only because he felt so relieved. There was something about Philip’s style and way of t
alking that appealed to him.

  ‘I’m going to let you move around a bit, find out how everything works, then when an opportunity arises you’ll be in the front line to take the step up,’ Philip went on, before being interrupted by a short knock.

  The door opened and the strapping tall red-head whose name was evidently Sophie came in with a tray. As she put the glasses and bottles on the table she gave HP a quick but considerably less hostile look than before, and HP caught himself extending his vulpine grin in her direction.

  ‘Thanks, Sophie,’ Philip Argos said when she was almost finished.

  He took hold of her elbow with one hand. An odd gesture that seemed simultaneously intimate and stern, and she turned her face towards her boss at once, almost like a dog waiting for orders from its master.

  ‘You can tell Elroy to have the car ready in ten minutes. We’ll be dropping off Fa … I mean Magnus here on the way home.’

  Sophie nodded and gave HP another glance before she left the room. This time he could have sworn he caught a hint of a smile.

  She undid all three locks on the door of the flat, taking the opportunity to inspect both the door and frame. But, just as before, there were no signs of any attempted break-in.

  She locked the door behind her and peered into the living room. The mattress and bedclothes were still on the floor where they had left them. She rolled the whole lot up into a bundle and tied it up with a length of nylon rope.

  She had no intention of ever using any of them again, so it would be just as well to dump the whole lot down in the garbage room in the basement. A fitting end to the affair. Fucking a colleague on a thin mattress in an empty flat, and – even worse – a notorious lady’s man whom she had seduced at a staff party. Things really didn’t get any more sordid than that.

  She put the rolled-up mattress in the hall and took a last walk around the flat. The bedroom door was closed and when she opened it a waft of stagnant air hit her. She took a couple of steps towards the window to air the room, and was about halfway there when she realized that there was another sort of smell in there.