The Game Trilogy (60 page)

It looked like MayBey had lost his grip, but weirdly enough Rebecca seemed to be the only person reacting to it. Most of his readers appeared to think the whole thing was just kinda cool, writing encouraging comments, goading him to carry on with his plan to murder her brother. As if it was all some sort of game.

Like that poor girl who announced her suicide on Facebook, as a last cry for help, only to get scornful comments from her so-called friends.

This whole thing was sick!

He had built himself a little den behind the empty boxes so that even if anyone opened the storeroom door, they wouldn’t be able to see his little nest. A sleeping bag and cut-off cola bottle for pressing emergencies. The laptop, so he could stay in touch with the outside world. It was fine, the only problem was that he had to get up every ten minutes to press the timed red button if he wanted more light.

Okay, he could have tried to find another hotel, but he didn’t actually have the time. Besides, the Game would be bound to check every place in the city now that they knew he was back.

The basement storeroom under the computer shop would have to do. But at least he’d got his very own little slave into the bargain. Well, two, actually, Wedge and Marky, but to be honest he was still having trouble telling the difference between Manga’s little acolytes.

He had received the things he had ordered over the net faster than he had dared to hope. The list was more or less complete, there was just one thing missing …

He had just ‘borrowed’ the building’s shower and sauna, and had put on the new clothes that Wedge and Marky had been kind enough to get for him. Just to be sure, he had gone with the whole hat and sunglasses routine all the way to her building.

He composed himself as he stood in front of the door, checked his breath and tugged as his collar to stop it sticking to his neck. He had to admit it, he felt nervous.

He had thought about her a fair bit over the past few
days. She had every right to be angry with him, disappointed even. After all, he had lied straight to her face. But without her help he wouldn’t be able to do it. Besides, he missed her …

Shit, this was all so fucked up!

He took a deep breath, then rang the doorbell. Then he cupped his hand over the peephole in the door and saw the light from inside flicker as she approached the door.

He took a quick step to the side, to stay as far out of reach of the peephole as possible.

What if she didn’t open the door?

She had to, his entire plan depended on it.

His mouth felt dry as dust and he swallowed a couple of times in an attempt to moisten it.

A drop of sweat ran down his spine, then another one.

Come on!

The lock rattled, then the door opened a crack. She had the chain on. Smart girl.

He opened with:

‘Hi baby,’ then added his very best smile as he held out the flowers he’d picked up down at the Seven-Eleven.

‘What the fuck do you want?!’ Rilke snapped, and for a moment he thought she was going to slam the door in his face.

‘Calm down, I came to apologize. Here!’

He waved the flowers but she made no move to open the door and take them.

‘You’ve got a fucking nerve, Magnus or Farook or whatever your real name is …’

‘Henrik,’ he interrupted. ‘My name’s Henrik Pettersson, but my friends call me HP.’

‘Like I care,’ she snarled. ‘Philip’s told me all about you. A traitor and a spy, sent to …’

‘You’re absolutely right,’ he said. ‘I’m all that, and quite a bit more …’

She opened her mouth but he quickly went on:

‘But I’ve got a proposal for you, a very lucrative one. It’s about the company …’

He fired off his best Valentino smile and crossed his fingers. She stood there without saying anything for a few seconds.

‘Give me one good reason why I should let you in!’ she said eventually.

‘I’ll give you forty! Since the day before yesterday, that’s the percentage of ArgosEye that I own …’

There were eight people on her list. Five officers in Tobbe’s rapid response unit, Nina Brandt, and another two names that she had reluctantly added after her conversation with Henke.

MayBey had some connection to Tobbe, the problem was that she didn’t know what the connection was. Out of his five colleagues she thought she recognized two of the names. One who’d been in the same class as her at Police Academy, and another she’d worked with back when she was in uniform five or six years ago. But she honestly couldn’t think of any reason why they should want to get at her.

Nina Brandt and Tobbe went out with each other for a while when they were at the academy, and she knew they were still good friends. It sounded pretty far-fetched, but she couldn’t get away from the fact that Nina was the person who had first tipped her off about the Pillars of Society website.

Then there was Håkan Berglund, the guy she’d so rudely given the brush off.

That business with the faded flowers had undeniably
been a bit weird, so Håkan could probably be a suspect, especially as Henke seemed to think MayBey wasn’t actually in the police.

The last name on the list made her feel a bit sick.

Micke …

Unlike the others on the list, he had both the skill and the right contacts to be able to take care of the technical side of MayBey, and he had plenty of reasons for wanting to cause her grief. But, as with Nina Brandt, she was having trouble thinking of Micke as a genuine suspect. He might have had every right to be angry with her, more than anyone else on the list, in fact. But still …

Anyway, he’d helped her to track down MayBey.

He had helped her, hadn’t he?

She didn’t believe him at first, not until he showed her his contract with Monika and the printout from the Patent and Registration Office. After that her tone got a bit more conciliatory. Not that she asked him right into the flat, but at least she agreed to go and get him a glass of water.

There were removal boxes in the hall, so presumably she had actually bought the apartment they had looked round. Maybe the plotters had already received an advance from PayTag?

There were several jackets hanging from the coat rack, and a couple of designer handbags, and beneath them a long row of shoes.

He ran his fingers over the leather of one of the handbags. Soft and pale brown, almost cream-coloured. Just like her skin. For a moment he felt a pang in his chest, and when she reappeared with his glass of water shortly afterwards he was surprised by an impulse to touch her. But he resisted.

‘So, what’s your proposal … Henrik?’

Her tone was cautious but considerably less hostile.

‘It’s very simple …’

He took a few sips of water as he kept his eye on her. God, she was pretty, even in jogging pants and a t-shirt she was still a clear ten-pointer. Funny to think that he’d been in a relationship with her, properly.

Well, almost …

He lowered the glass and looked at her.

‘I’ve got forty percent, you’ve got ten. Together we control half the company. If you can think of anyone else who could be persuaded to support us …’

He took a deep breath.

‘… then we could take over ArgosEye. Get rid of Philip as MD, and run the business however we want.’

He fell silent and stared at her. For a few seconds everything was almost back to normal, and once again he had to fight the urge to put his hand out and touch her.

‘You’re crazy,’ she said, slowly shaking her head.

‘Maybe. Prising Philip away from the helm wouldn’t be easy, but we could manage it together. You and me, baby! What do you say?’

He tried to muster up an enthusiastic smile.

‘That wasn’t what I meant …’ she said in a low voice.

‘Oh?’

‘What I meant is that you must be crazy if you think I’d betray Philip. After all he’s done for the company, for us, for me personally. Do you really think I’d risk that for someone … like you?’

Her anger was back again, but there was something else in her voice, something he didn’t like.

‘Congratulations, Henrik, if that is your real name. You managed to trick Monika into selling you her shares, so now you own forty percent of a company where one hundred percent of the employees hate you!’

She took a step closer to him.

‘My advice to you is to call Philip and sell your shares to him. If you’re lucky you’ll make a profit and can crawl back under whatever stone you came from, with a bit of extra money in your pocket. Because you’re absolutely right about one thing …’

She poked him in the chest with her index finger, and even though HP was a head taller than her he still took a step back.

‘… Philip would never let anyone else take over control of ArgosEye, not a chance. He’d kill anyone who even dared to try!’

She realized something was wrong when she heard the letterbox rattle. The post ought to have come a long while ago, and the bloke who delivered advertizements to her block didn’t usually ignore the ‘No adverts’ sticker on the door.

She walked quickly out into the hall to see the little brown envelope land on the doormat. She picked it up and felt a hard little object through the paper.

A key, the sort that usually fitted a padlock. But which lock? And who had put it though her letterbox?

She pulled her shoes on and raced down the stairs. She heard the front door slam two floors below, but by the time she reached the darkened street there was no-one in sight.

Okay, now he was officially heartbroken.

It was probably the first time since primary school.

Rilke despised him, to her he was nothing but a bottom feeder, a disgusting insect that deserved to be trodden underfoot. It actually hurt more than he could have imagined.

Usually he didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone thought
about him. But with her it was different. Even if he had worked out that the odds weren’t on his side, on some level he still hadn’t been able to stop himself hoping that she might be willing to support his little palace coup.

Change sides for his sake – the way women usually did in Bond films.

Instead she had probably leapt at the phone the moment the door slammed on his heartbroken sorry arse. And by now Philip must be aware that ArgosEye had a new partner, which only meant that the hunt for him would be stepped up another notch …

But he could take comfort in the fact that his plan could still work.

Tomorrow was New Year’s Eve, and the office would be running at minimum strength. And thanks to the passcard he had pinched from Rilke’s bag in her hall, he wouldn’t have any problem getting in.

‘Listen, HP, there’s something I’ve been thinking.’ Disciple number one, the one called Wedge.

The guys had closed the shop and pulled down the shutters the moment he crept in through the door.

‘Fire away.’

HP took a deep toke on the joint, then passed it to his right while he carried on staring at the little patch of damp on the ceiling that had been absorbing their attention over the past few minutes.

‘That whole story about ArgosEye, the bomb and everything …’

‘Mmm.’

Marky, who was lying on the floor next to him, took a drag and then coughed violently.

‘You’re still rushing it too much, M. You need to dare to hold onto the smoke, feel the taste of Morocco, yeah?’

Marky half sat up and tried to nod between coughs. Wedge waited until the noise had stopped and Marky had lain back down before going on.

‘Well … Marky and I have been thinking about what you said. That they set the bomb off to try to hide something else. We’ve been doing a bit of a project, looking at the flow of information on the net, so we gave it a try. Wait till you see what we found.’

He got up and stumbled across to one of the computers through the semi-darkness. Then the screen flickered into life.

‘Okay, check this out. We looked at all the main news sites and listed the subjects that were most read or linked to during the days after the bombing. Like this, for instance …’

He moved the mouse onto a heading and clicked on it. A timeline popped up, with a red line showing the traffic on the subject.

‘This is the debate about Swedish troops in Afghanistan cooperating with an American assassination unit. Hot as hell for two days or so, and top of almost every forum until the bomb went off, and then …’

The line that had been heading straight up suddenly dive-bombed down towards the bottom of the screen.

‘Shit,’ HP muttered.

‘And look at this,’ Wedge went on.

He went back to the list of news subjects, picked another heading, and a blue timeline showed up.

‘Looks like someone high up in Volvo is going to be charged about the illegal export of weapons to Iraq. The newspapers picked up the story and it was red hot for about a day, then GONE …’

The line had hardly got going before it dived towards the bottom of the screen.

‘You can choose pretty much whatever subject you like. Over the past ten days debate and speculation about the bomb has completely dominated all the media. Every other story is basically stone-dead, especially anything that’s a bit complicated. Your theory fits perfectly so far.’

HP nodded.

‘But have you managed to work out what the massive story is that they’re trying to hide? The big Kahuna?’

‘Not exactly,’ Wedge said. ‘But we did come up with another idea.’

He glanced at Marky, then leaned closer to HP.

‘What if there isn’t a massive story?’ he whispered.

‘What?’

HP sat up.

‘Okay, try this,’ Marky said. ‘What if they weren’t just trying to shift the focus …’

‘… but?’

‘… because
that
was actually the debate they really wanted.’