The Game Trilogy

by Anders de la Motte

  Which, in some ways, was actually true …

  He noticed that his heart was starting to beat faster. A quiet rustling sound from somewhere inside the flat made him jump.

  A burglar?

  No, impossible. He’d locked the high-security door, all three locks, just like he always did. The door had cost a fortune, but it was worth every single damn penny. Steel frame, double cylinder hook-bolt locks, you name it – so, logically, no-one could have broken into the flat. But the umbrella of paranoia wasn’t about to let itself be taken down so easily …

  He crept out of bed, padded across the bedroom floor and peered cautiously into the living room. It took a few seconds for his eyes to get used to the gloom, but the results were unambiguous. Nothing, no movement at all, either in the living room or the little kitchen beyond. Everything was fine, there was no sign of any danger. Just the unnatural, oppressive silence that still hadn’t broken …

  He crept carefully over to the window and looked out. Not a soul out on the street, not that that was particularly surprising given the time. Maria Trappgränd was hardly a busy street at any time of day.

  Closed off for roadworks, that had to be it. Half of Södermalm already looked like some fucking archaeological dig, so why not go for a complete overnight shut-down? All the little Bobs were probably just having a coffee break.

  Plausible – sure! But the uneasy feeling still wouldn’t let go.

  Only the hall left.

  He tiptoed across the new floorboards over to the front door, taking care to avoid the third and fifth ones because he knew they creaked.

  When he was about a metre away he thought he saw the letterbox move. He froze mid-step as his pulse switched up a gear.

  Two years ago someone had poured lighter fluid through his door and set fire to it. A seriously unpleasant experience, and one which had ended with him lying in Södermalm Hospital with an oxygen mask over his face. It wasn’t until much later that he had realized the whole thing was just a warning shot to remind him about the rules of the Game.

  He sniffed carefully at the stagnant air, but couldn’t smell paraffin or anything similar. But by now he was quite certain. The sounds had come from the front door.

  Maybe someone delivering papers after all?

  He crept a couple of steps closer to the door and carefully put his eye to the peephole.

  The sudden noise was so violent that he staggered back into the hall.

  Fuck!

  For a few seconds he saw stars, and his heart almost seemed to have stopped.

  Then another violent crash jolted him out of the shock.

  Someone was smashing his door in!

  The steel frame was already starting to bow, so whoever it was basically had to be stronger than the Hulk. A third crash, metal against metal, no bastard Bruce Banner but probably a serious sledgehammer – if not more than one.

  The frame moved another few centimetres and he could suddenly see the bolts of the locks in the gap. A couple more blows was all it would take.

  He spun round, stumbling over his own feet, and fell flat on the floor. Another crash from the door sent a rattling shower of plaster over his bare legs.

  His feet slid on the floor as his hands tried to get a grip.

  He was up.

  Quickly into the living room, then the bedroom.

  Another crash on the door!

  He could taste blood in his mouth, and his heart was pounding fit to burst.

  His hands were shaking so much he had trouble turning the key in the lock.

  Whatinthenameofholyfucksgoingon …?

  A further blow from the hall, this time followed by a splintering sound that almost certainly meant that the door frame had given way.

  He grabbed the chest of drawers, and almost fell over when it glided easily in front of the bedroom door.

  Fucking chipboard crap!

  If the steel door out there hadn’t been able to stop his attackers, then a bit of self-assembly furniture from the other side of the Baltic wasn’t going to win him more than a couple of seconds at most. He leapt at the bed and fumbled about on the bedside table, which was covered with magazines and paperbacks.

  The phone, where the hell was the phone?

  There! No, shit, that was the remote for the television …

  He heard rapid steps in the living room, gruff voices shouting to each other, but he was concentrating too hard on his search to hear what they were saying.

  Suddenly his fingers hit the phone, so hard that it fell to the floor.

  Fucking hell!

  The door handle rattled, then a rough voice shouting:

  ‘In here!’

  HP threw himself on the floor, fumbling wildly with his arms.

  There it was, right next to his left hand.

  He grabbed the phone, scrabbled at the buttons. His fingers were twitching as if he had Parkinson’s.

  One, one, two is easy to do … like fuck it was!

  A crash from the door and the Ikea chest of drawers almost fell over.

  ‘Hello, emergency services, how can I help you?’ a dry, professional voice said.

  ‘Police!’ HP yelled. ‘Help m …’

  A sudden flash of light blinded him, burning onto his retina.

  Then a blow that was so strong he was left gasping for air.

  And then they had him.

  ‘It’s back.’

  ‘The van,’ she added when he didn’t react immediately.

  He glanced quickly in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘The same one as yesterday?’

  ‘Mmh,’ she said, without taking her eyes off the extra mirror fixed to the windscreen above the passenger seat.

  What else would it be? she wondered quietly to herself.

  ‘Four cars behind us. It’s been there a while now … Just like yesterday, and in almost the same place.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s the same one? There are plenty of white vans in the city …’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said abruptly. ‘Slow down a bit and let him get closer.’

  ‘But then I’ll lose the VIP …’ He gestured towards the open-topped sports car in front of them.

  ‘Just forget the Security Police handbook, Kjellgren, and try to be a bit flexible,’ she snapped with unnecessary sharpness.

  He took his foot off the accelerator more abruptly than he needed to. The car behind blew its horn angrily, and then overtook them a little too closely. Another car followed it.

  Rebecca opened the glove compartment and took out the camera. She held it low and close, so that the van-driver wouldn’t see it through the rear window.

  Another glance in the rear-view mirror.

  The zoom lens was pretty good, but the van was still two cars away and partially obscured.

  ‘A bit more,’ she muttered to Kjellgren, getting the camera ready in her lap.

  She was fighting the urge to look round.

  Suddenly the VIP in front of them changed lane, crossing a solid white line, and headed up towards Kungsgatan.

  Kjellgren had no choice but to follow it.

  She swore quietly to herself – so much for that chance. But a couple of seconds later she realized that the van was still following them. Another of the cars between them was gone and it was much closer now. Considerably closer than she would have been if she was tailing someone.

  The sudden change of lane must have taken the driver by surprise. Forced him into making a mistake.

  She slowly turned her upper body, pressing her left elbow against the seat and holding herself in place with her legs. The van’s licence plate was still hidden by the car between them, but she could see the top halves of the two people in the driver’s cab through the tinted windscreen. Long-sleeved, pale-coloured clothing, some sort of overalls, just like yesterday. But last time she hadn’t managed to get the camera out quickly enough. She was planning to make up for that mistake today.

  The car directly behind them suddenly indicated to ch
ange lane and she saw her chance. She turned round in a flash, raised the camera and aimed at the point where the licence plate was about to become visible.

  She pressed the button halfway down. The car between them pulled out. There was a short bleep as the automatic focus adjusted the image.

  Button down. She fired off a couple of pictures. Perfect!

  Then she quickly raised the camera towards the cab of the van. She focused on the driver and pressed the button. The telephoto lens whirred and the fuzzy shape behind the wheel suddenly became much sharper. But just as the automatic focus bleeped, Kjellgren suddenly accelerated hard and the rapid movement threw her off balance.

  By the time she got the cab back into view, the van was already a long way behind them.

  ‘What the hell are you playing at, Kjellgren?’ she snapped as she took a series of shots, almost at random, of the diminishing silhouette in the van.

  ‘The VIP, Wennergren junior.’ He pointed ahead at the little sports car which was almost out of sight. ‘He suddenly took off like a scalded troll. Didn’t want to risk losing him.’

  She lowered the camera and sank back into her seat.

  Shit!

  A quick glance in the mirror, but she already knew what it would tell her. The van was gone.

  She clicked through the pictures on the little screen of the camera. The licence plate was clearly visible, but just as she suspected the images of the cab were pretty much useless.

  Bloody hell!

  Call it police intuition or whatever the hell you liked, but there was something about that van that worried her.

  As soon as she got back to the office she’d check the licence plate, maybe even make a couple of calls and double check with Surveillance if the Highways Agency didn’t come up with anything …

  She suddenly regretted snapping at Kjellgren. His priorities had been totally correct. The VIP was the most important thing, after all, and she would have done exactly the same if she had been the one driving.

  Kjellgren was an excellent driver, which was one of the reasons why she’d brought him across from the Security Police. He had already made up the distance to the VIP’s car and they were in their customary position immediately behind him.

  ‘You made exactly the right call, Kjellgren,’ she said, doing her best to sound neutral.

  He merely nodded and for a few minutes they sat in silence as they took it in turns to check their rear-view mirrors.

  ‘So when did you say we’d be going up to the Fortress?’ Kjellgren said eventually, in a rather too-friendly voice.

  ‘That depends a bit on Black’s schedule.’ She made an effort to return his smile.

  ‘Okay. By the way, did you see that article in Dagens Nyheter? A big piece about the new uses people have found for old military installations. Apart from using underground bunkers as server rooms, they’ve also fixed the old communication tunnel to the coast so it brings in water for the cooling system. Seriously advanced stuff.

  ‘The security up there’s supposed to be quite something as well.’

  He pulled closer to Wennergren’s car and did a quick swerve to scare off a car that was trying to squeeze in between them.

  ‘Apparently PayTag want to retain its status as a high security installation, which is pretty understandable. Because then their security staff up there can be armed …’

  Kjellgren looked away from the car in front to give her a quick sideways glance.

  She could hear the question coming before he had opened his mouth.

  ‘By the way, how are things going for us on the weapons front, boss …?’

  ‘The licensing authority is still looking at our application …’

  … again, she almost added, but her mobile started to vibrate in her jacket pocket. Number withheld. Probably another marketing call, or some former police colleague fishing for a job …

  She moved her thumb towards the red icon to reject the call, but changed her mind at the last moment. Kjellgren kept glancing at her, evidently keen to carry on the conversation about weapons licences. And he wasn’t alone in that.

  Pretty much all of the new recruits to her bodyguard team had taken the job on the assumption that they’d be able to bear arms in the course of their duties. So if the application got rejected …

  She quickly pressed the green icon on her phone.

  ‘Sentry Security, Rebecca Normén,’ she said, in an exaggeratedly businesslike tone.

  ‘Personal Protection Unit, Detective Superintendent Ludvig Runeberg,’ her old boss said at the other end.

  ‘Hi, Ludvig, it’s been a while. Good to hear from you …’

  ‘I’m not sure you’re going to think that by the time we’ve finished, Normén …’

  Something in his tone of voice made her straighten up unconsciously.

  ‘You should probably come up here to Police Headquarters, right away if you can manage that …’

  The connection crackled and his voice vanished for a few seconds. But part of her had already worked out what he was going to say. Her stomach contracted into a hard little lump.

  No, no, no …

  ‘… your younger brother.’

  2

  Opening

  His body was slumped motionless across the table. His eyes were shut and it almost looked like he was asleep.

  The last time she had seen him his hair had been cropped short, but now it had grown again and was hanging in greasy clumps over his chalk-white face. The fluorescent lighting in the claustrophobic little room made the rings under his eyes look darker than ever against his pale, yellowish skin. As if she were really looking at a wax doll rather than an inert human body through the large glass window.

  She had been worried that this would happen. Ever since Henke threw a rock through her windscreen two years ago and almost killed her and Kruse, her colleague, she had been dreading this moment. Well, longer than that, really. Much, much longer …

  ‘He was brought in last night,’ Runeberg said somewhere behind her right shoulder, but she hardly heard him.

  ‘I was only informed an hour or so ago. I called you at once. Not quite going by the rules, but I thought you’d want to know straight away. I know I would if it was my brother …’

  She tore her eyes away from the glass and turned to look at him.

  ‘Thanks, Ludvig, I appreciate it …’ The words caught in her throat.

  They stood in silence for a while.

  ‘Terrible business,’ he said eventually.

  He put his hand clumsily on her arm.

  Suddenly and without warning the door opened and a skinny man in his sixties with thinning hair walked in. He was carrying a file of papers under one arm and, even though it was summer, he was wearing a dark three-piece suit topped off with a perfectly centred tie. The man nodded curtly to Runeberg, then turned to Rebecca.

  ‘You must be the sister.’

  ‘Rebecca Normén,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  But instead of taking her hand, the man pulled out a pair of narrow reading glasses from the pocket of his waistcoat, planted them firmly on the end of his nose and then opened the file.

  ‘You said she used to work for the Firm, Runeberg?’

  ‘She still does, at least officially, Stigsson,’ her former boss replied in an ingratiating tone that she didn’t recognize at all.

  ‘Normén is on leave of absence until the end of the year,’ he explained. ‘Then she has to make up her mind which she prefers, the Security Police or private enterprise …’ Runeberg attempted a smile, but the other man’s face didn’t move a muscle.

  ‘I see …’ Stigsson turned his head and looked at Rebecca over his glasses.

  ‘Since you’re still employed by the Security Police, Normén, your security clearance holds, as does the oath of confidentiality you signed when you first joined. Whether or not you’re his sister, everything you hear in here is confidential, and any attempt to communicate it to anyone else is strictly fo
rbidden, is that understood?’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded.

  ‘Of course,’ she added when he didn’t seem happy with her response. ‘So, what’s this all about, then?’

  In the room on the other side of the glass a door suddenly opened and two people, a man and a woman in dark suits, entered. For a few seconds no-one in the room moved. Then Henke opened his eyes.

  He raised his head, sat up in the chair. Slowly and elaborately he stretched, as if he had just woken up. He said something that she couldn’t hear through the glass, and she was seized momentarily with an urge to burst in and give him a good slap.

  Stigsson’s bone-dry voice changed her mind.

  ‘Your brother is suspected of conspiracy, and possibly planning a gross act of terrorism.’

  ‘Well, Henrik, I repeat: you are suspected of planning and possibly making preparations for a crime intended to seriously destabilize or disrupt the fundamental political, constitutional, economic and social structures of the country,’ said the lead interviewer, a forty-something woman with short, dark hair, as she fixed her eyes on him.

  But HP hardly noticed her. His weary brain was still trying to make sense of everything. At least there was one thing he was reasonably sure of. Unlike two years ago, when he thought he had been arrested but was actually the victim of a huge hoax, this time every single detail was right, from the armed unit’s break-in to his flat down to the scorched taste of the instant coffee in the brown plastic cup on the table next to him. It all seemed genuine. Was genuine, in all likelihood. Which meant …?

  The subject is conspiracy theories, and here comes your thousand-kronor question …

  ‘Mmm …’ he muttered, seeing as he was evidently expected to say something. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples to buy himself a bit of thinking time. What the fuck was the woman banging on about? Destabilizing the political what …?

  ‘I’ve already told you at least a dozen times, I want a lawyer present during the interview,’ he said quietly.

  The woman, whose name was Roslund or Roskvist, something like that, exchanged a quick glance with her colleague.