Game: A Thriller (11 page)

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!

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 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 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.

“Bengtsson, you can have Kruse, Savic, and Normén. Take two standard cars. The prime minister has his armored 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-defense 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 dumbass!

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 just 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 cell to the Greek when the light finally started to flash.

Three days in Mange’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 actually too 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 Mange as if he was some sort of holy guru.

Everywhere else Mangelito was just 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 actually managed to put together a pretty nice setup with both his job and his family.

But HP 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 felt the familiar feeling start to bubble up 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 on their route and formation before it was time to glide in through the gates and cruise over toward the hangar.

The prime minister, his female assistant, and two bodyguards arrived with the plane. They switched quickly into the
armored black BMW, then they were ready to set off toward his official residence in the Sager 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 toward the city center.

♦  ♦  ♦

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 the caravan’s flashing blue lights. They were heading toward 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 Sager 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.