The Game Trilogy (3 page)

When the bell on the door of the stuffy little shop started playing the opening notes of the theme to
Star Wars
, Magnus Sandström – or Farook Al-Hassan as he now called himself – gave no indication of having heard it. He just carried on reading the crumpled copy of
Metro
spread out on the counter in front of him, scarcely bothering to glance up at the visitor.

‘Salaam-Aleikum, brother HP,’ he muttered from the corner of his mouth.

‘Hi, Manga,’ HP grinned as he sauntered towards the counter. ‘Anything interesting in the paper today? Let me guess: the recession’s getting worse, Hammarby lost again, and some nutters blew something up somewhere, probably in Baghdad, Bombay, or maybe Timbuktu?’

‘Portugal,’ Manga sighed, looking up reluctantly.

‘Huh?’

‘The nutters blew something up in Lisbon – an empty luxury yacht, to be precise. No-one knows why. But you got two out of three. Hammarby are bloody useless these days.’

He folded the paper and straightened up with a sullen look on his face.

‘And you know perfectly well that I want to be called Farook now,’ he added flatly.

‘Of course I know, Mangay-boy! If you insist on turning yourself into a second-class carpet-seller, that’s your decision.’

He nodded demonstratively at Farook’s middle-eastern trousers, silk waistcoat and long shirt.

‘Just don’t expect me to buy into that bullshit. You were Manga when we started school, when we used to smoke your mum’s fags behind the Co-op, and when you lost your virginity to that fat Finnish girl in a tent at Hultsfred. So that’s who you are to me, regardless of whatever you, your wife or your latest god think, okay?’

Manga/Farook sighed again. There was no point arguing with HP when he was in this mood, he knew that from experience. Better to change the subject completely, that usually worked. HP was usually fairly easily distracted.

‘And to what does my humble little shop owe the honour of this visit, young Padwan?’ he said instead, holding out his hands to indicate the cramped space.

The shop consisted of some thirty square metres of worn cork-matting, plus a couple more hidden behind a shabby bead-curtain behind the counter. Practically every available surface, as well as several that weren’t, from floor to ceiling, was packed full of things, mainly computers and electronic components and accessories. Cases, hard-drives, cables, print cartridges and various USB gadgets jostled with printed signs for various games and all sorts of discontinued products. A worn-out air-conditioning unit above the door was fighting a noisy losing battle against both the summer heat outside and the warmth generated by the countless machines within the shop.

At the back of the shop two computers were whirring, ostensibly for demonstration purposes, but in practice
this area was used as an internet café, as indicated by the neat lettering of the printed sign hanging askew above the grimy coffee-machine. The machine bore another sign offering free coffee to paying customers, but there was at present a distinct absence of these.

As usual, the lighting was subdued, mostly provided by the various screens spread around the shop. Together with the feeble fluorescent strip-light above the counter, these made up the only opposition to the sheets of paper taped across the barred window that effectively blocked out all sunlight.

HP pulled the mobile phone out of his inside pocket. With a triumphant gesture he slapped it on the counter in front of Manga.

Game over, mothafucker!

But instead of giving up and admitting everything, Manga merely adjusted his dark-framed glasses and leaned forward with interest.

‘A new mobile … pretty cool design. Haven’t seen one like that before. Found or bought?’ he summarized as he looked up again.

‘You tell me, Manga,’ HP grinned, but without quite achieving the degree of triumph he was hoping for in either the comment or the smile.

The confidence he had felt when he slapped the phone on the counter had vanished. This wasn’t turning out the way he’d expected. Manga had never been able to keep a straight face, even when it didn’t really matter. When they were younger, Manga had let HP and the others down more than once, and he had been expecting him either to confess at once, or to make a pathetic and embarrassing attempt at denial. But neither had happened, and his hastily improvised Plan B, which involved staring angrily at Mangalito, met with the same meagre response.

Not a hint, not a blink or a twitch of the eye – none of the things that usually happened to a little geek when he was out of his depth. And his voice passed the test too …

‘Huh … what you talking about, brother?’

HP tilted his head and made a last, half-hearted attempt.

‘So you’re telling me you don’t know anything about the little practical joke someone played on me on the train from Märsta half an hour or so ago?’

‘Nope, not a clue, scouts’ honour,’ Manga said, raising two fingers to where his hairline had once been.

‘Do you feel like initiating me into the mysteries of the Märsta train over a cup of Java?’ he asked, taking another look at the mobile, evidently keen to get to know it better.

‘Sure,’ HP muttered.

So what the fuck was really going on?

‘Well, if you don’t have any questions, we’re done here.’

Rebecca shook her head and was out of the sofa before the psychologist had time to stand up. She knew that debriefing was important and that it was just standard procedure after an incident like the one she had been involved in earlier, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

She didn’t like talking in confidence to strangers, she’d had more than enough of that growing up. Even though she couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old when it started, it hadn’t taken her long to work out the ‘right’ answers. Wide-open eyes, a childlike smile, just enough confidentiality for the lies to sound sincere. It had worked well then, and it was surprisingly easy to use the same technique, with only modest adjustments, in the adult world.

‘Thanks, Dr Anderberg, I’m a bit shaken, but basically
I’m fine,’ and a few more similar standard-issue clichés. The same wonky smile and shy eye contact, that usually worked. But today it felt unusually difficult. Her words rang slightly false, and the performance wasn’t as convincing as usual. She was having trouble keeping track of her thoughts and concentrating.

The composed feeling she had had in Runeberg’s office had suddenly vanished without a trace.

Her thoughts kept racing away and she was having trouble keeping her focus. The sounds were still echoing in her head. As soon as she let them loose her pulse started to race and she saw it happen all over again. The shouts from the men attacking them, the alarm, the blood-filled balloon bursting. Then Lessmark’s scream … In retrospect, the panic-stricken falsetto had become distorted in her head. Younger, more shrill. Like something she’d heard before. Her mouth felt tight and she swallowed drily a couple of times in an effort to lubricate it. Concentrate, Normén!

She had glanced furtively at Anderberg a few times, trying to sneak a look at his notes, but if the psychologist had noticed anything he’d concealed it well. He’d stuck to the standard questions, running through the usual script and making a couple of dutiful attempts to probe a bit deeper, but mercifully quickly he gave up his attempts at incisive analysis and accepted the concise answers she gave him. Her performance seemed to hold in spite of its shortcomings; it was good enough, once again. And the conversation was over at last.

They shook hands, and it wasn’t until she was halfway across the courtyard of Police Headquarters, heading towards the garage, that she realized that her t-shirt was soaked with sweat.

Anderberg stood at his window and watched her go. He took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then let out a deep sigh.

‘Police Inspector Rebecca Normén, thirty-four, thirteen years’ service,’ he said quietly to himself. Her career path had been fairly conventional. A few years in patrol cars after graduation from Police Academy, picking up drunks and shoplifters, breaking up fights. Then a stint in Crime via the custody-section duty desk. Then the usual – watching, investigating and pulling in wife-beaters, burglars and muggers, until she had enough experience for the Security Police and the bodyguard unit. Good references, but not exceptional. None of the over-effusive statements that were fairly common in the service when you wanted to get shot of a difficult colleague.

She could probably have applied to the personal protection unit a couple of years earlier. After the Foreign Minister was murdered the group had been expanded considerably, and female applicants had been particularly hard to find – and were therefore particularly welcome.

But Rebecca Normén had taken her time. It looked like she had wanted to put in the years and gain experience in the regular force before leaving reality behind for the secret world of the Security Police. He himself had given her a ‘highly suitable’, the second highest of the four grades used in recruitment.

‘Focused and ambitious, possibly slightly reserved,’ was how he had summarized her in his notes on that occasion, and nothing he had seen in today’s conversation had given him any real reason to change that judgement.

‘And she could also be considered fairly attractive,’ he added slightly guiltily to himself, well aware of how
unprofessional the comment was. As if to make up for this slip, he qualified the thought by adding ‘if you like the tall, sporty type’, which he didn’t.

Rebecca Normén had dark eyes, defined cheekbones, and a slightly too pointed nose which, in his opinion, made her face more interesting than conventionally beautiful. Her sharp features were emphasized by the fact that she always pulled her hair back in a tight little ponytail down her neck.

But Inspector Normén wasn’t the type to draw attention to her appearance. Little or no make-up, nails cut short, and strictly practical clothing – with the possible exception of today, although he guessed this was because of the incident a few hours earlier.

Even though she had made obvious efforts to be obliging, her manner was reserved, almost defensive, offering no opening for confidential conversation. To judge from her personnel file, Rebecca kept a low profile in her unit, did her job and studiously avoided the swamp of workplace romance that was otherwise so common in the force. More than half of her male colleagues probably thought she was lesbian, and the ones who knew better had the sense not to cross the line between private life and work that Normén obviously guarded so zealously.

He doubted whether any other officer had ever got particularly close to her. A smart move if you wanted to get on in the force, and Rebecca Normén was definitely both smart and ambitious. The fact that she didn’t want to share her personal thoughts and secrets with a psychologist hardly made her unique in the force, rather the opposite.

In spite of this there was something about her that unsettled him. A vague feeling that he couldn’t quite put
his finger on. As if there was something there, something she was hiding behind the rigidly maintained façade and was desperate not to reveal.

He hadn’t made any notes about this at her recruitment, so either it had become more obvious, or else he was simply more attentive than he had been last year. But he got the impression that he had picked up a small, almost imperceptible fracture in her otherwise polished and professional exterior.

He couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was all just a façade, some sort of game where the packaging didn’t quite match the contents. But on the other hand he could be wrong. Psychology was hardly an exact science, after all.

He fetched a mug of coffee and sat down at his computer. When it came down to it, Rebecca Normén had demonstrated that she was more than capable of handling every aspect of a critical situation, so what else was there to say?

Right now she was the bosses’ favourite, and it would take more than a few vague suspicions on his part to get them to change their minds. If he couldn’t back up his feeling with facts, he would just have to let it go. After all, this concerned another person’s career, and he of all people ought to know that gut instincts were way down the priority list within the police service.

Everyone has their secrets, so why should Rebecca Normén be any different? he thought as he settled to write his report.

Yep, he understood all right, rules, blah blah blah, but – more importantly – more information. Just what he needed.

As soon as he got home to his little two-room flat on the steeply stepped alleyway of Maria Trappgränd, he threw all the windows wide open in a vain attempt to stir up the stale air inside. The bitter coffee from the computer shop was still bubbling in his stomach and it dawned on him that he hadn’t actually eaten anything since the burger he gulped down when he was drunk the previous night. And he was desperate for a cigarette. A crumpled, half-full packet of Marlboros that he found under the sofa after a bit of a search solved the latter problem, and he took a couple of deep drags and relaxed. Sweet!

With the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth he mounted a raid on the fridge, but without any great expectations. Apart from a couple of cans of beer it offered thin pickings, but the ice-covered freezer compartment actually managed to produce a frost-damaged Gorby pie. He zapped the little delicacy in the microwave and settled down at the kitchen table, fiddling with the mobile and trying not to burn his mouth on the melted cheese.

It was all pretty straightforward. Even though the touchscreen was fairly large, there were only five icons. Phone, calendar, email, internet, and the one he was after – ‘The Game’.