The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble

14

White bear

Okay, he’d just have to accept the truth – he’d got the whole thing on the brain.

Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, Gene Hackman’s character, Brill, in Enemy of the State, that’s what he was turning into. The obsessive, the lone lunatic, the conspiracy nutter who lived his life in discussion forums and saw intrigues round every fucking corner. He might as well get his own homepage, a cottage in the woods and a wall covered in newspaper cuttings, then everything would be perfect!

True, that idea about the Palme murder was maybe a bit far-fetched, but on the other hand as a theory it was no crazier or worse than any of the other so-called lines of inquiry. Kurds, the ‘baseball’ police squad, his wife Lisbet, or a drunk acting on his own?

All aboard the Crazy Train!

Doors closing, next stop Looneyville!

There was a vast flock of weirdo theories out there in cyberspace, like shrieking harpies, each one crazier than the last. So why not his?

Just think about it!

How else could you fuck up the largest police investigation in the world so spectacularly? Forgetting all common police sense, breaking any number of laws and rules by appointing an amateur to lead both the police work and the preliminary legal investigation? And, as if that wasn’t enough, setting up a Social Democrat political stooge with his own miniature version of the security police to run a parallel investigation directly sanctioned by the Justice Minister …

The whole thing was a cascade of peculiarities, and the case threw up loads of questions to which there were no logical solutions, exactly as Erman had warned him. There just weren’t any good explanations, or at least none that were better than the one he was beginning to accept more and more.

Besides, he could think of another political murder where, even though the killer had been caught, the case was a good match for the profile ‘single perpetrator with no good motive’. Not to mention the so-called Laser Man back in the early nineties. There was something methodical about the progress of his criminal career, something that made you think of computer games. As if he had been working his way through different stages of difficulty, taking greater and greater risks. Almost as if he was clambering up some sort of league-table …

According to the clips HP found on the Swedish Television website, the culprit had blown the money he took from his victims in a German casino, so he evidently liked gambling. Was he actually a player, in two senses of the word? It made perfect sense, but at the same time it sounded completely insane! What about the Kennedy assassination? The sinking of the Estonia? 9/11?

Yes, he’d got it all on the brain.

Big time!

He was scouring the news websites several times an hour, and even though they were mostly about Sweden’s presidency of the EU, he imagined he could see signs of the Game everywhere.

A well-known financier who had vanished into thin air, a load of dynamite that had gone missing from a secure store, a petty-criminal in Portugal who suddenly got it into his head to blow up an empty luxury yacht, and himself with it …

It was all out there, if you only knew what you were looking for. Things that couldn’t be explained, no matter which way you approached them. That’s to say, if the explanation wasn’t the fact that Erman was right. That the whole thing was just a huge fucking Game!

I’ve opened your eyes and now you can see …

The weirdest thing was that he could see how crazy it sounded. But he still couldn’t let it go. ‘An awareness of illness doesn’t mean you’re well,’ as one of his mum’s alcoholic friends used to say.

There was a lot in that! But unlike the idiots out there, he had actually been caught up in it himself. An inside man, just like Brill. He knew that the Game existed, he had seen with his own eyes what they were capable of doing, or – to be more accurate – getting other people to do …

It was actually the manipulation that stung most.

The way they’d pressed his buttons and got him to play along willingly. Humiliating him just for the fun of it, then dropping him quicker than a flask of Russian thallium. But also the fact that he’d actually enjoyed being the centre of attention, getting loads of cred. For the first time ever, a team player, part of something bigger than himself, even one of the stars of the team.

Christ, he’d loved the kick from that! Loved it so fucking much that on one level he still couldn’t help dreaming, in spite of all the shit that had happened, that he could get back in the limelight … he’d do pretty much anything. Like some mangy dog that was so desperate for approval even after it had been beaten by its master that it was willing to shag more legs – any legs – to get another pat on the head. One question itched like a massive great scab and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t help picking at it: if he’d known that Becca was in the cop-car that evening, that she would be or could have been injured by the stone he was going to drop from the bridge, would it have made any difference?

He honestly didn’t know.

Even now, after so many hours thinking, he still couldn’t answer that bastard question with a simple Yes or No.

Totally fucking sick!

It had taken a day or so to work out the deal with the flash-grenade attack on the horse-guards’ cortège. Who would get any pleasure from some bolting horses and a pair of shitty royal underpants? Obviously it could just have been that they wanted to test him or get some cool pictures. But then he read about a break-in at a gentlemen’s outfitters on Östermalm, and how it had been preceded by a false bomb threat. An attaché case with the word bomb in white paint on the side, left outside the Iranian Embassy, and suddenly half the police force were over on Lidingö and thus out of the game. And that’s where he got the idea.

After checking on the police’s own website, he found what he was looking for. At the same time as Kungsträdgården was filling up with galloping horses and all available police units, including the helicopter which was sent to circle above the city centre, someone had stolen a container-load of Viagra from a company out in the western suburbs. They had coolly driven past security with a truck, waving what had looked like the right documentation, then calmly hooked up to the container and driven off with it, without having to worry about being pursued by the police helicopter before they had time to unload the pills, because HP had seen to that.

So had he been a decoy, sent out to lure the dogs into sniffing around in the wrong place?

‘Look up the word Game and you’ll see what I mean!’ Erman had said, and halfway down the page Wiktionary backed up his theory.

– Distraction or Diversion

He could perfectly well have been both! And suddenly all those weird occurrences assumed yet another crazy dimension. Diversionary tactics, decoys and smokescreens, all to get the authorities and the general public to look in the wrong direction?

In that case, what was the main event, what were the things they didn’t want to show, and who was behind them?

The Freemasons?

The WHO?

The Bilderberg Group?

Or was he taking it too far …? Was his brain messing with him, showing him things that didn’t actually exist just because he wanted to see them?

Was the Game really as advanced as Erman had claimed, or was it all just for fun? Something they did just because they could? A game, basically? Just a way of passing the fucking time!

All these questions were starting to drive him mad. His head ached like it was going to burst from all the junk flying around up there. He couldn’t even come up with a single damn paracetamol, he’d long since hunted through all Auntie’s drawers and cupboards.

He lit a cigarette, one of the last few. A deep drag, then out floated all the tensions along with the smoke.

Phew …!

Meditation by Marlboro.

Almost always worked.

So what was he going to do now?

That was the million dollar question. He hadn’t left the cottage for several days, and had hardly even eaten anything. He’d just been smoking, scanning the internet, and picking away at that huge fucking mental scab. Manga had looked in briefly and topped up the essential supplies of fags and cans of army-ration bean soup, but he’d had the sense not to ask any questions, which was just as well, seeing as he wouldn’t have got any answers.

HP could have killed for a spliff, but his stash was long since used up. Since the grass ran out he’d tried to find other ways of easing his anxiety. He’d wanked so much that he had friction burns on his cock, then in the end he took a cautious walk round the allotments to try to reboot his brain with a bit of fresh air.

That was when he discovered the van.

The car was rolling in slow motion, twisting on its own axis before its front end hit the ground. Then it flew up again, rear end towards the sky, did a complete roll before landing on its roof and disappearing out of shot.

The next film sequence showed a smoking wreck, but by that point she was already bent double over Manga’s filthy little toilet.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ screamed a little voice inside her throbbing head as she threw up most of an undigested chicken salad.

What in the name of hell was going on?

A white van with a blue logo, parked a bit further down the narrow track. ACME Telecom Services Ltd.

Seriously?

ACME – just like every dodgy company in cinema history, from Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner onwards! It was a bit too obvious.

Okay, so there was a telecom distribution box and a manhole alongside the van, but so far he hadn’t seen a soul anywhere near it. And there didn’t seem to be any work going on, so what was the van doing there, parked in the middle of Tantolunden?

He went back inside the cottage and looked up the number on the licence-plate, but all he got was a car-hire company out in Solna.

ACME Telecom Services had their own website, a phone number and an email address for inquiries. ACME Telecom Services – A proud member of the PayTag Group.

On the other hand, there was no terrestrial address, but that wasn’t so unusual, there were a lot of companies like that. Feel free to contact us by email or telephone. A good way of avoiding difficult customers.

He went out again to take a closer look at the van. Still no-one in sight, but the engine felt fairly warm, so it couldn’t have been standing there for long.

So where was the driver?

He walked round the van, but was none the wiser. The rear-windows were tinted, and even though he cupped his hands round his eyes he still couldn’t see in. The driver’s cab was a bit easier.

A jacket on the front-seat, neon-yellow with loads of pockets, and when he looked closer he saw that something was sticking out from under it. An oblong silver object. And suddenly he realized what it was! A phone, of course, just like the one he’d left in the computer shop. Which could well mean that the bastards had found him!

He wandered round to get a better view of the mobile, but it was mostly covered by the jacket. He had to know for sure, and tugged hard on the door-handle.

Locked, obviously.

He glanced quickly around, then picked up a stone from a nearby flowerbed. He raised his arm to strike.

‘Hey, you, what do you think you’re doing!’

The man had appeared out of nowhere, a thickset fifty-something in overalls and an orange Bob the Builder helmet.

Manual labourer, model 1A.

‘Nothing,’ HP muttered and let the stone slide down his leg. ‘Just wondered why you’re parked here?’

The man looked at him suspiciously.

‘Working for Telia, broken cable. Broadband’s out across half of Södermalm, haven’t you heard?’

‘No,’ HP muttered, moving slowly away from the van. ‘Okay, see you, then!’

The man shrugged in farewell, then went round the van and unlocked the rear door.

After poking about for a minute or so he emerged with a toolbox, cast a quick glance in HP’s direction, then carefully locked the door before disappearing between two cottages.

HP breathed a sigh of relief. The bloke seemed genuine, false alarm, in other words.

He was getting brainstorms in broad daylight.

Finally out in the fresh air! It may still have been boiling hot, but anything was better than that claustrophobic little computer shop.

She moved off on her bike breathing deeply, then pedalled hard and with the wind in her face she felt the nausea gradually subside as oxygenated blood started to circulate round her body. After just a hundred metres or so she was feeling considerably brighter.

She wasn’t really much the wiser after her conversation with Manga.

Once he’d finally given up his feeble attempts at excuses and agreed to tell the truth, he started by locking the shop door, turning the sign to Closed, then, just to make sure, pulled her right to the back of the shop.

Manga had never been one of the more courageous of Henke’s deadbeat friends, and certainly not one of the coolest, but unlike most of the others he was one of the few who was still left from the old gang.

Vesa had decided to climb up on top of some railway carriages out in Älvsjö when he was high as a kite, and fried himself to death. She remembered Jesus pretty well too, hadn’t he won loads of money and disappeared to Thailand? Yes, that was him. Henke had talked about going with him, but as usual it never got further than a lot of empty talk. The rest of the gang had drifted away. Anyway, Henke wasn’t exactly the sort of person whose company or reliability anyone would really miss.

But for some reason Manga had always stuck in there, even when things had been at their worst. He was the only one of the gang who showed up at the trial, and as far as Rebecca knew he was the only person apart from herself who had visited Henke in prison. One of the few who had cared.

Manga was okay, really, a decent bloke who meant well, and she felt a pang of conscience at having been forced to resort to interrogation tactics to get him to talk. But at least it had worked, and after making sure not once but twice that they really were alone, he had finally told her everything, or at least as much as he knew.

She was left wondering exactly what it was he had told her.

The whole story about a mysterious mobile phone that allocated assignments and a secret reality game with rewards and punishments sounded crazy, and her initial reaction was that Manga had fallen for yet another of Henke’s bullshit stories. But then he had shown her the video clips on the computer and everything had emerged in an entirely different light.

The business with the door, the car wheels and the royal cortège had been bad enough, but when she saw her own car slowly rolling off the Drottningholm road, it had all got too much for her.

Evidently Manga hadn’t known that she was sitting in the Volvo, because he’d hovered outside the toilet door worrying anxiously if she was okay. She only just managed to hold it together, splashing a bit of water on her face and blaming it all on the heat, which he had accepted without comment.

Once she had composed herself again she had asked to see Henke’s mobile phone, and when he reluctantly pulled it out of a locked cupboard she had quickly inspected it and then put it in her bag. For a moment it had looked like Manga was going to protest, but he thought better of it and let her take it without a word.

Before she left, he had also given her the address of Aunt Berit’s allotment cottage, and she was looking forward to a fresh, more detailed conversation with her brother in just a few minutes.

This time she was going to twist the little sod’s arm until he told her the truth about what was really going on!

She cruised through the traffic, crossed Ringvägen and was soon in amongst the trees of the park. She was feeling brighter, enjoying the cool shade. Manga had said it was about fifteen minutes’ walk from the shop, so five minutes or so by bike seemed about right.

When she turned into the road she had to swerve to avoid a white van pulling away at speed and roaring past her way too fast.

‘Bloody idiot!’ she thought as she struggled to keep her balance. For a moment she considered making a note of the number-plate, the speed limit here was actually only thirty. But she didn’t bother, it was far too hot to make the effort to feel properly upset, and besides, she hadn’t seen the whole number. Some sort of company van with a blue logo on the side.

At that moment she caught sight of Aunt Berit’s cottage.

She knocked on the door three times but there was no answer. Maybe he was asleep? It may have been well into the afternoon, but it would hardly surprise her if Henke was taking a little siesta.

She felt the handle and discovered that the door was unlocked, but for some reason she stopped in the doorway. She didn’t really know why, but something was making her feel uneasy. She examined the door more carefully and soon found what she was looking for. A small, almost invisible mark in the wood just above the lock. Admittedly, it could have been old, but a quick check of the step revealed some flakes of the right colour paint.

Someone had broken into the cottage, and recently. The question was, were they still in there?

Rebecca held her breath and listened for any sound from inside.

Quiet as the grave.

She stepped silently through the door and into a tiny hallway. The stench of cigarette smoke almost made her eyes water. She put her hand on the frame of the door to the kitchen and leaned round it quickly to get a look inside.

The movement was too fast for any attacker to have time to react, but still enough for her to register the contents of the room. She repeated the procedure with the little bedroom to the right of the hall.

The results were unambiguous, the cottage was empty.

Whoever had broken in was gone now, and it didn’t look like anything had been stolen. A laptop, screensaver on, stood untouched on the little kitchen table. There were a few dirty mugs and glasses here and there, most of them containing cigarette butts, and the little sink was overflowing with dirty dishes and empty food tins.

There was a shabby green sleeping-bag in a heap at one end of the rib-backed sofa, and a filthy t-shirt and a pair of tattered Cheap Monday jeans were hanging untidily over one of the two kitchen chairs.

Smoky, filthy and untidy: rather different to how Aunt Berit usually kept it, she imagined.

It looked like Manga had been telling the truth, all the signs were that Henke had taken up residence …

So, where was he now, and how long would he be gone? The best thing she could do was sit down on the little sofa and wait.

What the fu …?

A quick trip up to Ringvägen to stock up on cigarettes and Gorby pies, that was the plan.

He ended up getting falafel and an ice-cream as well, because there wasn’t really any hurry. He’d almost made it back to the cottage when he saw the flashing blue lights.

Two patrol cars and an unmarked van with a trailer, all lined up in front of Auntie’s little cottage. The trailer looked weird, a bit like an outsized milk-churn with its lid open. One of the cops seems to be in a hell of a hurry to set up a police cordon at the end of the road, but as luck would have it, HP saw him first.

He stopped abruptly and turned into one of the little side-paths to find a good observation post.

A couple of minutes later he was sitting on top of a rocky outcrop surrounded by lilac bushes.

So what the hell was going on down there?

For some reason she hadn’t just sat down.

Afterwards she couldn’t really explain why, but the feeling that something was wrong wouldn’t let go of her.

It took a few seconds before she realized what was troubling her. The sofa was slightly out of position. She could clearly see the marks on the cork matting where the leg of the sofa usually sat, but now it was a few centimetres out. Okay, so the sofa was pretty old, but it was solid pine and to judge by the deep indentation in the floor it would take a fair bit of effort to shift it. So why had someone done so?