The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble

‘Lucky’ was one of the first things that sank in properly. ‘You were lucky, Rebecca.’

She didn’t really understand what he meant.

What did he mean, lucky?

Someone had smashed their windscreen and it was only thanks to Kruse’s decisive action that they hadn’t collided with the Prime Minister’s car and everything had gone completely to hell.

Then they had crashed through the barrier and the car was so badly wrecked that they had to be cut out of it.

So exactly what did this idiot mean when he said she was lucky?

‘Concussion, but fairly mild, a couple of minor cuts to your scalp and face that will need stitches, and a few cracked ribs. But that’s pretty much it. Considering what happened, you were lucky,’ he concluded, simultaneously answering her question.

‘My partner?’ she managed to say, although it felt like her head and mouth were full of cotton-wool. ‘How’s Kruse?’

‘I’m afraid he wasn’t quite as fortunate. Sometimes it isn’t always a good thing to be big and heavy, and car accidents are precisely one such occasion.’

The doctor adjusted his glasses and gave her a knowing look. Her head suddenly felt like it was about to burst and for a moment she considered pulling out her Sig and asking him again, considerably less politely this time. But she bit her tongue and waited patiently for the answer.

He leafed through his notes.

‘Head injuries, broken arms and ribs are what we’ve got so far. Your partner is still in intensive care. It looks as if the roof crumpled mainly on his side.’

He looked up and smiled.

‘Like I said, you were …’

‘Lucky,’ she interrupted, and suppressed another urge to draw her gun, this time to blow his head off.

Flashing blue lights, handcuffs, then the plain-clothes arrived and it was the backseat of an unmarked police car. They must have been very close by.

He suddenly remembered that a lot of cops used to stop for coffee at the Shell garage not far away.

Typical of his miserable fucking luck!

Both of the detectives were thickset men, with shaved heads and bull-necks. One of them beside him, the other at the wheel.

‘So, you’re the sort who throws stones at police cars, are you?’ the gorilla next to him said as soon as they had set off.

HP didn’t answer, now if ever was a time to keep quiet. His head ached and he felt like he was going to be sick. The pain in his lower arm was hardly helped by the fact that his hands had been bent up behind his back.

The cops grinned and exchanged knowing glances in the rear-view mirror. They turned off the motorway and headed into Kungsholmen. Next stop, Police Headquarters in Kronoberg.

Bollocks!

Everything had gone completely to hell. He’d been careless and not looked round properly. And had missed that fucking idiot who rammed him. How stupid could you be?

He gulped a couple of times to suppress the urge to throw up. Now he had to keep quiet and ask for a lawyer as quickly as possible. He knew the routine. There was no point talking to the orcs in the car, they didn’t have any say in anything.

‘What’s the matter, can’t you speak?’ the same gorilla said in a mocking tone which for some reason made HP feel even more uneasy.

He stuck to his strategy and kept quiet.

‘No problem, lad,’ the cop chuckled, giving his colleague in the driver’s seat another look in the mirror.

The blow came out of nowhere, it must have been a left-hook and he had no way of defending himself. Wham, right on his cheekbone, and his head thudded into the side-window.

‘What the f …!’ he managed to say before the next blow struck. A right-hook this time, straight at the middle of his face, and he felt his nose crack.

‘This can’t be happening, this only happens in films!’ he managed to think before the third punch blurred his vision.

When he came round they were already down in the garage, and they were dragging him out of the car. Metal doors, a lift, a couple of blue-shirts hurrying past, then a long, brightly-lit corridor with beige plastic flooring. Doors, voices, a lot of rushing about, and finally a small interview room.

The handcuffs were removed and the belongings that they had taken off him when he was arrested were emptied onto the table. House-keys, ID card and a few crumpled twenty-kronor notes, as well as the mobile, of course.

Blood was trickling from his nose and one of the gorillas tossed him a wad of paper tissue before sitting down on a chair opposite.

HP managed to pull himself together and regain some of his devastated self-confidence.

‘I want a lawyer,’ he said, but the last word sounded more like ‘doyer’ because of his swollen nose.

The gorilla grinned.

‘Didn’t you hear, I want a lawyer.’ This time slightly less nasal as he rubbed the red marks on his wrists.

The gorilla stood up quickly and HP twitched instinctively on his chair. The cop saw his fear and grinned. He wagged a fat, hairy index finger towards HP.

‘I think you should shut up, my friend,’ he said exaggeratedly slowly, and there was no mistaking the underlying threat.

HP decided to heed his advice and revert to his original plan. Besides, the lead interviewer ought to be along soon, then all this shit would be over.

Sure enough, the door opened a couple of minutes later and another man came in, also in plain-clothes. This one was shorter, wore glasses and was considerably skinnier than the two gorillas, and it was immediately obvious who was in charge.

He glanced at HP’s swollen face and then gave the hairiest ape a disdainful look.

‘You can go now, Wiklander. Haven’t you and Molnar here got a report to write up?’

The gorilla muttered something but went out at once, giving HP the evil eye on the way.

HP nodded happily. This bloke was more to his taste.

‘Bolin, duty officer,’ he said by way of introduction. ‘And you’re Henrik Pettersson, known as HP, is that right?’

HP nodded again.

‘I’m going to turn on the tape-recorder now and we’ll do the introductions once more, but this time I want you to answer verbally, have you got that?’

HP shrugged. He wasn’t planning on saying more than just one sentence.

Bolin started the tape-recorder that was on the table in front of them.

‘Interview with Henrik HP Pettersson concerning suspicion of attempted murder and grievous bodily harm against a public official at the junction of Drottningholmsvägen and the Essinge motorway. Lead interviewer Detective Inspector Bolin, interview commenced at 23:12. Right, Henrik, can you tell me your response to our suspicions?’

HP sighed. Now that the apes had been driven out, the normal order was restored and he was back on familiar territory. His head was starting to clear and the sharp pain in his arm had shifted to a rumbling ache.

‘I’m innocent and want a lawyer present,’ he said as clearly as he could, leaning over towards the tape-recorder to make sure that it didn’t miss a single syllable. ‘I want a lawyer, and I want to report that I was beaten up by that gorilla, the one you called Wiklander.’

He gently touched his swollen nose demonstratively. He still had some tissue-paper stuffed up one nostril. Bolin gave no sign of having understood HP’s request.

‘A lawyer, I said,’ HP clarified once more, seeing as what he had said evidently hadn’t sunk in. Were all cops this slow?

Bright-spark Bolin was still staring at him across the table. Then the police officer slowly smiled and there was something reptilian about the smile that scared HP considerably more than the two trolls in the car had managed to do. He suddenly remembered a Discovery documentary he had seen about poisonous snakes. How they sometimes settled down quite coolly to wait once they had bitten their prey as it used up the last of its energy in a meaningless attempt to escape.

He shivered. Bolin leaned forward slowly and switched off the tape-recorder.

‘Listen carefully now, Pettersson,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You don’t seem to appreciate exactly how bad your situation is, so let me explain. You rode a moped to Lindhagensplan, stopped on the flyover above Drottningholmsvägen, and from a PE bag clearly marked with your name you pulled out a stone which you then threw at the windscreen of a police car passing below. Both police officers are now in St Göran, one of them in a pretty bad way, so with a bit of luck you may have graduated to cop-killer before the night is over,’ he concluded with another of his unnerving snake-smiles.

HP had turned pale, but he continued to stay quiet.

Oh yes, he’d realized that he’d hit a police car, the flashing blue light had been a bit of a giveaway even before he threw the stone. What the hell, did they think he was stupid or something? It was true, on the other hand, that he hadn’t really given much thought to the consequences. But so what?

If you were a cop, you had to put up with a few risks, that much was obvious from the papers. Besides, it was hardly his fault that they were driving so fast, was it? Anyway, wasn’t the speed limit seventy along there? The Volvo must have been doing a ton, so in a way it was the cops’ own fault that things turned out so badly, wasn’t it? He glanced at the mobile phone on the table in front of him, just to one side. The screen was facing up and he was well aware of what was engraved on the other side. Number one hundred and twenty-eight, one of the chosen ones, that was who he was, and rule number one applied, no matter what world you moved in.

But what was it Bolin had said about the PE bag, he had almost missed that? His name? Bolin must have read his mind, because out of nowhere he conjured up the striped bag and tossed in on the table.

For a couple of seconds HP just stared at it, then curiosity got the better of him. He opened the bag. It was empty, apart from a bit of dirt.

Suddenly he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. There, on the inside of the lining, was a bit of fabric he’d almost forgotten. A scrap of cloth that his mum had sewn in during the short period when she was actually his mum and not just Maj-Britt the invalid and drunk. A printed tag you could order through school from some company, the sort all well-meaning mothers sewed into all their kids’ stuff so that it wouldn’t get lost. All mothers except his, because Mum had been replaced more and more by Maj-Britt, and this bag was the only thing she ever managed to sew a name-tag into, the bag he himself had made in sewing class.

Property of Henrik Pettersson 08-6636615, it said in blue lettering.

HP went icy cold. The last time he had seen the bag it had been hanging in the wardrobe in his bedroom, he was absolutely certain of that.

‘In other words, you’re not exactly the smartest criminal I’ve ever come across,’ Bolin declared, interrupting his train of thought. ‘Besides, we’ve got the stone and it contains two perfect fingerprints in two-stroke oil, and we’re convinced they’re going to match yours.’

He leaned forward towards the deathly–pale HP.

‘So the way I see it, you’re pretty much in the frame for this, my dear Henrik. Is there anything you’d like to say about it?’ he concluded, then switched on the tape-recorder again.

HP’s head was spinning.

Who the fuck had been in his flat?

Why had someone stolen the bag and hung it up on the bridge?

The car that had rammed him had appeared out of nowhere, almost as if it had been sitting just round the bend waiting for him. And it had only hit the moped hard enough for the cops to be able to pick him up.

But who would want to frame him that badly? Okay, he had a few enemies, but no-one in that league. So who could it be? Number fifty-eight?

What if Mr Five-Eight was Swedish and had managed to work out who it was coming up fast behind him on the league-table? And sabotaged the assignment on purpose?

No, that sounded too ridiculous …

His head was aching from the collision, the punches and all the shit that was flying round inside it. He couldn’t make sense of any of this, at least not right now.

He glanced over at the mobile again and decided to stick to rule number one, keep quiet.

‘I have no comment to make, and, like I said a few moments ago, I want a lawyer,’ he repeated, but this time his voice didn’t sound quite so confident.

Bolin sighed and slowly switched off the tape-recorder again.

‘If you like, Pettersson, obviously that’s within your rights. There’s the phone, with the phonebook next to it. I’ll be back in ten minutes.’

He gestured towards a small telephone table in the corner of the room, and stood up to go.

‘You’re damn lucky that officer Normén got away with minor injuries,’ he added as he got to the door. ‘There’s only one thing us cops hate more than a cop-killer, and that’s someone who kills female cops.’

Something suddenly clicked inside HP and he could almost feel the blood rushing from his head.

‘H-hang on!’ he called to Bolin, who was on the point of closing the door.

‘What did you say the officer was called, the woman … the one who got hurt?’

‘Normén,’ Bolin said drily. ‘Rebecca Normén.’

Fuck, fuck, fuck! a little voice in HP’s skull screamed.

Twelve stitches in total. Four in one cut, five in the other, and a few single ones on her face.

Rebecca looked at herself in the little mirror above the wash-basin in the examination room. Two white plasters on her head. A few bits of surgical tape elsewhere, a faint bruise on one cheek and bloodshot eyes from the powder on the airbag.

Add a bit of nausea, a headache and a gnawing pain in her chest and the picture of her injuries was complete.

Kruse was in a worse state. He remained in intensive care, according to Vahtola, who had looked in a while ago, and they were going to be flying his wife up the next day.

And all because of her. She’d been sitting in the passenger seat – and she should have sounded the alarm. She should have listened to her instincts and ordered the convoy to stop at once and retreat. But instead she had hesitated. She had wasted a couple of absolutely vital seconds on worrying about making a mistake instead of focusing on doing the right thing. Kruse had managed to save the day by his own actions, but he had also had to pay the price for her mistake.

Rebecca mechanically gathered together her things, the blue bulletproof vest that had probably saved her ribs, the baton and radio that they took from her before she was put on the stretcher.

A patrol car was waiting outside to drive her home. The debriefing could wait until the morning, Runeberg had decided. That suited her fine. She wanted to go home, take a couple of the knockout pills she had been given, and sleep for a day or so.

Just as she was taking a last look round the room to make sure she’d got everything her mobile phone rang. Number withheld, she noted with a frown.

‘This is Rebecca,’ she said with one hand on the door-handle.

‘Becca?’ the voice at the other end said, and she stopped.

‘Becca, it’s me …’

‘I can’t talk right now,’ she said unnecessarily abruptly. ‘Can I call you back tomorrow?’ She tried to compensate by sounding more friendly.

‘Er, sure, I just wanted to check that you’re … okay?’

‘What d’you mean?’ she replied, and somewhere inside her his tone of voice was setting off alarm bells.

‘Er …’ A few moments of silence followed, but she chose not to fill them. ‘… don’t really know how to say this.’

‘But?’ she cut him off, as her suspicions grew stronger and stronger.

‘That business … out at Lindhagensplan … Well … that wasn’t supposed to happen, or, well … it was, but … I didn’t know it was you, Becca!’

The words came in bursts and his voice rose to a falsetto towards the end. Suddenly she felt utterly exhausted, as if her legs could no longer hold her. Slowly she went back inside the examination room and sank down on the trolley she had only just got up from.

‘Okay, let’s take this from the start, please,’ she said, as calmly as she could while she tried to take in what he’d just said.

‘It wasn’t really serious, sort of a game, I suppose. A game that went a bit wrong.’

‘A game, you say.’

Her voice sounded tired but in spite of that he couldn’t mistake how angry she was.

‘Yeah …’ he replied, aware of how lame it sounded.

‘So you were playing a game, and that’s why my partner’s in intensive care, is that a reasonable summary of the situation?’

She sounded more angry now, as if she’d already got over the initial shock.

‘Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen, like I said. Someone getting hurt, I mean … It’s sort of like an elaborate joke, I suppose.’

His voice was pleading, almost whiney.

‘A joke? Are you taking the piss? Are you completely stupid? For God’s sake, you’re over thirty and you still don’t give a fuck, you’re playing your way through life and you let everyone else pay for it! Only this time it all went to hell, or have I got that wrong?’

He didn’t answer. On the rare occasions when she swore he’d learned it was best to keep quiet.

‘Where are you now?’

The question was unnecessary, really. She already knew the answer. Why else would he have called her?

All that flannel about whether she was okay was just one of his usual smoke-screens. The cavalry to the rescue, even though what she most felt like doing was ripping his stupid immature fucking head off.

‘Kronoberg,’ he muttered.

She rested her head on her free hand.

‘Okay,’ she sighed after composing herself for a few seconds. ‘This is what we’re going to do …’

Bolin came back after ten minutes exactly.

‘Well, is a lawyer coming?’

HP shook his head.

‘I thought about it, but I don’t need one,’ he muttered, looking down at the table.

‘Splendid,’ Bolin nodded, and switched on the tape-recorder.

‘Interview recommenced at 23:43 after Pettersson declined the offer of a lawyer. Is that correct, Pettersson?’

HP muttered in agreement but Bolin forced him to repeat himself.

‘Yes, that’s correct.’

‘Okay, Pettersson, how about taking it right from the start?’

HP took a deep breath and glanced at the mobile phone.

‘Tell them everything,’ she had said, and she was usually right.

To hell with rule number one, in other words. Blood was thicker than water, after all.

‘It all started when I found a mobile phone on the train …’

‘Duty custody desk.’

‘Hello, this is Police Inspector Rebecca Normén. My partner Kruse and I were the ones who went off the Drottningholm road earlier this evening,’ she said, as calmly as she could.

‘Inspector Normén, good to hear your voice. We’ve been pretty worried about you, I can tell you. Are you okay?’

Rebecca smiled. She hadn’t recognized the voice at the other end of the line, but now there was no doubt. Her old boss was on duty in Kronoberg tonight, which was one bit of positive news.

‘Hi, Mulle. Thanks, I’m okay, a few bruises and one hell of a headache, but that’s about it. I’m afraid Kruse wasn’t so lucky.’

‘Yes, so I heard, we had three cars there when the fire-brigade were cutting you free, and the lads said Kruse didn’t look too good,’ he replied in a more serious tone of voice. ‘We’ll be keeping everything crossed for him. Did you want anything in particular, or were you just calling to reassure your old boss?’

‘Well, there’s something I could do with some help with, Mulle, and it’s all a bit sensitive.’

‘Okay, let’s hear it!’ he replied encouragingly, and she took a deep breath before she went on.

‘The bloke you’ve arrested, Henrik Pettersson … He’s my little brother.’

He’d done exactly as she said. Told Bolin everything. Or almost everything …

For obvious reasons he’d decided to leave out the business with the M84 fireworks down in Kungsträdgården, but apart from that he’d explained everything, even about the door in Birkagatan.

It had felt pretty good, it was quite a story.

Bolin had mostly just nodded, occasionally interrupting to ask a question, but mainly he had kept quiet.

When they were finished it was past one o’clock in the morning.

Bolin read the time to the tape-recorder, then switched it off.

‘That’s some story, Pettersson,’ he said as he stood up. ‘We’ll have to double-check a few things, then we’ll need to talk again tomorrow. Someone will be with you shortly to take you to a cell.’

HP merely nodded in reply. He could handle a night in the cells, no problem.

Been there, done that …

But now fifteen minutes had passed since Bolin had left, and he was starting to get impatient.

Where the hell was the custody officer?

He was tired, his head and nose ached, and his mouth was completely dry.

Two more minutes, he thought, then he’d stick his head out into the corridor and make some noise.

He realized almost incidentally that his mobile was still sitting on the table among his other belongings.

The little LED light was flashing red.

‘Okay, you’ve lost me now, Normén. Did you say we’ve arrested your little brother?’

‘I’m afraid so, Mulle. Henrik’s a decent lad but he’s incredibly immature, and he’s something of a magnet for trouble, if you get what I mean?’

He chuckled in response.

‘The black sheep of the family, then?’

‘Exactly,’ she lied.

‘Do you know what he’s been arrested for, we’ve got quite a few immature trouble-magnets to choose from up here this evening?’

She frowned. Mulle may be getting close to retirement but there wasn’t normally anything wrong with his memory.

‘His name’s Henrik Pettersson and he’s been arrested for throwing that stone at me and Kruse.’

The line went silent for a few moments.

‘I’m sorry, Normén, but as far as I know no-one’s been arrested for the attack on the pair of you. Every patrol car in the district’s out looking for the bastard, they’re still hard at it on channel sixteen, so I’d definitely have heard if they’d got him. And we haven’t got anyone by the name of Pettersson according to the book, so your brother must have been playing some sort of prank on you, I’m afraid.’

Suddenly she couldn’t think at all, then she felt a wave of fury surging through her.

What the fuck was Henke really up to?

Two minutes. The light was still flashing angrily at him and for some reason, when he stood up to go over to the door and start banging, he grabbed it and his other belongings.

As he took a deep breath ready to shout, he pressed the handle.

The door was unlocked.

He opened it and to his surprise found himself staring out into a dark corridor.

‘Hello!’

No answer.

He called in a trembling voice, ‘Is anyone there?’

Suddenly he was in the fucking Twilight Zone! This was even worse than the gorilla or Bolin’s reptilian smile.

The corridor was completely deserted, not a sound, and all he could see was a row of closed doors the same as the one he had just opened. At the far end a green and white emergency exit sign flickered irregularly. He was reminded of the mobile flashing red in his hand and touched the screen. Even though he already had a vague suspicion of what the message had to say, his stomach still clenched in terror.

Player 128

You have broken Rule Number One and are therefore expelled from the Game with immediate effect!

Your points and any remaining pecuniary

rewards are hereby withdrawn.

Please leave the phone in the premises and refrain from talking to anyone about the Game in future.

Continued violation of Rule Number One

will have serious consequences!

The Game Master

With an audible click the light in the room behind him went out.