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‘We were just round the corner when the alarm went off,’ he went on chattily, ‘so we came close to catching them red-handed. Two blokes on a moped. My partner reckons one of them was watching while the other one broke the window, possibly filming the action. Crime videos like that are getting more and more common, happy-slapping and all that …’
HP had suddenly gone ice-cold. He opened his mouth to say something but the policeman interrupted him.
‘Either way, there wasn’t much action, they ran and we pursued them until they turned into a cycle path through Tantolunden.’
They reached the front door and the policeman indicated a fist-sized hole in the window alongside. ‘They must have used an emergency hammer or something like that to break the glass.’
The window was full of what looked like snow, like a Christmas display. All that was missing were a couple of plastic reindeer and a chocolate Santa Claus, HP noted, almost in amusement.
‘I emptied our fire-extinguisher through the hole so it never caught properly. There’ll be a bit of cleaning up, but that’s better than the alternative …’ The policeman shrugged.
HP’s stomach had clenched solid and he was having trouble breathing. The cop’s voice sounded like it was slowed down.
‘A few soaked rags and probably some more paraffin through the hole. It doesn’t look like they were planning a robbery, just wanted to start a fire. I don’t suppose you happen to have acquired any enemies recently, Mr, er … Al-Hassan?’
‘No, not as far as I know,’ Manga replied, giving HP a long look.
They both sat in silence on the way home. Thoughts were whirling through HP’s head, he was desperate for a fag but knew he’d make himself even less popular if he lit up in the car.
This was the second warning, albeit something of a failure, but still. If the cops hadn’t happened to come round the corner when they did, the computer shop wouldn’t be there now. The whole thing would have gone up in smoke, just like that. Whoosh!
And all because he had chosen to break rule number one again.
He’d dragged Manga into this and it had almost cost Manga his shop. In other words, they must have been watching them somehow, either electronically, or else there were people out there following him.
The thought made HP’s skin crawl. He couldn’t help looking in the wing-mirror. There was a car behind them, a Ford, to judge by the lights. It was keeping its distance, didn’t seem to be in any hurry.
‘My mum’s sister’s got a small cottage on a allotment in Tanto,’ Manga said curtly, and it took HP a couple of seconds before he worked out what Manga meant.
‘I’ll move out tomorrow.’
Silence filled the car again.
Another glance in the mirror, the Ford was still there. Its nearside headlight was more yellow than the other one. A replacement rather than the original, HP guessed.
Now Manga seemed to have noticed that something was up, because he too was taking long looks in the rear-view mirror.
‘I need to make a couple of calls,’ he muttered, clutching the wheel. ‘We need to work out who these bastards are, HP, and once we’ve done that, you have to promise me that you’re going to give them some serious payback from me. Kick some ass, you get me?’
HP smiled and nodded.
‘I promise, Manga,’ and this time Manga didn’t correct him.
They fell silent again.
He tried to think. Could he really promise Manga that he’d whip the Game Master’s backside? Sure, he was fucking upset with the way they were treating him, and this latest move on his friend had definitely crossed the line.
But still. What a couple of wankstas they must have sent to do the job! A couple of cretins who didn’t even check the area before they set to work. He’d seen a can of spray-paint in the gutter a few metres away. The cops didn’t seem to have noticed it, or if they had, they hadn’t linked it to the break-in.
But HP got the message, loud and clear. First set light to the shop, then write the message. All of it filmed. That sort of assignment would be worth a thousand points or so, maybe more. Not a job for newbies, in other words.
Give the job to Luca Brasi.
And yet they’d still managed to fuck it up, even though there were two of them! He could have handled something like that solo, but good people are hard to find, even for a Game Master, apparently.
After all, he’d been first Runner-up for a reason, number 128, the man that not even all the king’s horses could stop. If he could just talk to the Game Master, get a chance to explain himself.
He saw Manga cast another anxious glance in the rear-view mirror and decided to park any thoughts of that nature for the time being. Manga was looking completely paranoid now, as if he was going to burst any second, and his foot was on the floor of the battered little Polo, even though it had already had to work hard on its way into the city. It was shaking like it had Parkinson’s and HP quickly pulled on his seatbelt, even though it didn’t actually make him feel much safer.
The Ford was still some fifty metres behind them.
Their slip-road was getting closer, but Manga showed no sign of turning off.
Instead he stuck in the right-hand lane, slowing down a bit so that the Ford almost caught up with them.
Just as they were about to pass the slip-road he changed down a gear and suddenly wrenched the wheel to the right, making HP grab the door-handle in horror to stop himself flying out of his seat. The Polo’s tyres protested loudly and they missed the barrier at the end of the slip-road with the smallest possible margin, swerving up the road and flying through a red light, all without Manga so much as touching the brake-pedal.
‘Calm down, for fuck’s sake!’ HP yelled, trying to make himself heard above the pained howl of the Polo, but Manga didn’t seem to be listening. The knuckles clutching the wheel were white and he was grinding his jaw like he was on acid.
HP twisted his head to look for the Ford, but the road behind them was completely empty.
‘You can calm down, Manga,’ he said in a gentler tone of voice. ‘There’s no-one behind us.’
This time Manga seemed to hear him and, after checking and double-checking in the rear-view mirror, he eased up slightly on the accelerator.
HP sat up in his seat and took a couple of deep, relieved breaths. Manga wasn’t much of a driver at the best of times, and the Jason Bourne manoeuvre he had just pulled could have ended really badly.
The Ford seemed to have been completely halal, the driver hadn’t even swerved in an attempt to follow them, but Manga didn’t seem to have noticed that. Instead he seemed to be looking for new pursuers to flee from. They still had a way to go, and HP had to find a way to snap Manga out of this paranoia if they weren’t going to end up in Huddinge Hospital.
‘Listen, there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask …’ he managed to splutter.
‘Shoot,’ Manga muttered, without taking his eyes from the rear-view mirror.
‘This whole carpet-seller routine of yours.’
‘Hmm …’
‘Well, I suppose I’m wondering why, really? I mean … you’ve tried a whole load of different stuff over the years. The vegan thing, local politics, Amnesty … You never stuck with any one thing for too long. Like that screen-saver you’ve got in the shop: If you don’t change …?’
‘… then what’s the point of anything happening to you?’ Manga concluded, and suddenly took a break from staring in the mirror. ‘Fuck, HP, sometimes you do listen to what I say!’
The trick worked, Manga’s jaw stopped grinding and his rigid grasp of the steering wheel relaxed slightly. A bit of practical philosophy and a few Couplandisms, that was Manga’s bag, he was considerably better at that than street-racing in the suburbs. Best to keep him in his comfort zone …
‘So why did you get hooked on Islam in particular?’ he blurted out, and found himself, to his own surprise, genuinely curious to know the answer. He didn’t really have any idea why Manga had converted. Bloody hell, what sort of a best friend was he, he’d never even asked …?
‘I mean, there’s a whole load of religions out there to choose from …’ he went on rather vaguely.
‘Well, giving to the poor, putting spiritual concerns above worldly ones, helping a brother in need … what’s not to like?’ Manga smiled wryly as the Polo’s speed slowed to a more normal level.
‘Women covered up, suicide bombers, holy war, there are quite a few options, aren’t there …?’
Manga sighed wearily.
‘Most of that has very little to do with religion, if you look below the surface … There are fanatics everywhere, but here in the West we get much more worked up about men in beards burning flags in Damascus than we do about smooth-shaven weirdos with bad haircuts blowing up abortion clinics in Detroit.’
‘So you mean the whole jihad thing is mainly a question of bad PR …?’
‘Something like that,’ Manga grinned, almost back to his normal self again. ‘Just like the Bible, the Koran is ninety per cent about living your life in a decent way, focusing on love and mercy and being a good person. The other ten per cent is stuff that might have been important for the survival of the tribe in the desert a fuck of a long time ago, but these days it’s basically nonsense. Unfortunately not everyone seems to have worked out that we’re living in the twenty-first century, or else they choose not to for a variety of reasons. That’s hardly unique to Islam. We’re good at focusing on the wrong things here in the West as well. Just look at the war on terror …’
He shook his head unhappily.
‘Fear is a strong instrument of power, brother, extremely strong, in fact. If you pluck the right strings the population stays docile, concentrates on idiotic rubbish and doesn’t complain about the things that are really important, like freedom of expression and thought and other fundamental human rights. It works both ways.’
‘So a lot of our lack of trust is a sort of mutual power trip? Each country’s Big Brother stands to gain if we stay scared of each other?’
‘Exactly, brother, you’ve hit the nail on the head!’ Manga hit the wheel with one hand.
HP shrugged. Bloody hell, maybe the Mangster actually had a point?
‘… and the name? I mean, I get the Al-Hassan, seeing as your dad’s name is Hasse, but why Farook?’
‘Well, as I’m sure you know, Magnus means “great”, which doesn’t exactly apply to me …’
HP couldn’t help grinning.
Manga was small and wiry, with thick glasses and his hairline was already halfway to the North Pole. In purely physical terms, he wasn’t what you’d call great.
‘I’ve never really felt much like a Magnus, and Manga sounds so eighties. It just seemed to make sense when I converted. Farook is someone who can tell good and bad apart. Someone who helps others find the right path. Religion helped me to sort out a whole load of stuff, and I hoped I might be able to do the same for other people.’
‘So that’s why you haven’t given up even on such a hopeless case as me? You’re my spiritual guide?’
‘Something like that, brother, something like that,’ Manga smiled, then turned on the car radio.
All readings back to normal, HP thought happily and slumped down slightly in his seat. But he couldn’t help taking the occasional surreptitious glance in the wing-mirror.
Rebecca was sitting outside the door to an anonymous conference room in the parliament building with a cup of coffee from a vending-machine in her hand. It was really far too early for her to be back at work, but she’d insisted and no-one had protested, not even Anderberg. Besides, the personal protection unit was on its knees in advance of the EU Presidency, and every man or woman who was able to work was welcome. All of the reserves had been called up, meaning that they had an extra twenty-five people who had previously served in the unit. But they were still having trouble covering all their duties.
Rebecca’s charge was behind the conference-room door, and, according to the schedule, would be there for at least another two hours. Wikström, with whom she was sharing the assignment, had just headed down to the canteen to have a quick lunch, and in half an hour’s time, when he got back, she would be doing the same.
Scenarios like this were what bodyguard work mainly consisted of. Waiting, more waiting, and then a move to a different location where the waiting would begin again. There was no way to pass the time apart from taking short walks along the corridor or talking to your colleagues. Books and MP3-players, the things other people used to pass the time, were obviously banned in her line of work. Nearly all of it was pure routine mixed with tedium. The difficulty was staying alert and ready for the brief periods that weren’t routine. She had already experienced more than her fair share of those …
She had four years left of her secondment to the Security Police, and she had already seen more action than most bodyguards did in their entire careers.
In spite of this, she still liked the job, the whole deal of being a protector, in charge of a situation. Detailed planning, checking routes and escape plans, thinking through every possible scenario with the others in the unit. If X occurs, I’ll do Y and you do Z.
The set-up was basically the same for each job, regardless of who was being protected. You just added more people and equipment if the threat-level was higher. You also had to plan for basic requirements, meals, toilet breaks, that sort of thing. Timetables and schedules were always changing, and lunch and dinner could suddenly fall by the wayside. Always have a few protein bars with you. She had been grateful for that piece of advice from an older colleague on more than one occasion when her blood-sugar levels had nearly gone through the floor.
Bodyguards were important to democracy, more so in recent years since attacks on politicians had become more common. The subjects she had encountered so far had been pleasant, almost grateful for their protection and had been careful to follow all instructions. But she hadn’t yet had the ‘honour’ of working in the royal protection unit …
His Majesty usually wanted the officers as far away from his royal person as possible. Ideally they should be invisible, or at least out of sight. That business with the explosion in Kungsträdgården seemed to have to changed his tune, though.
That had been completely crazy. At the time, His Royal Highness had been absolutely furious about what had happened, and hadn’t minced his words to his bodyguards. Evidently they hadn’t been close enough to protect him, which coming from him was rather ironic.
But after the first few days of hysteria the media had calmed down The explosion had frightened the horses but no one had been killed, and it had been a while since she last read an article confidently identifying the purpose of the attack.
Because the attack had been aimed at the head of state, the Security Police were in charge of the investigation, but to judge by Vahtola and Runeberg’s comments they didn’t exactly have any red-hot leads. ‘Single perpetrator on a moped, heading towards Birger Jarlsgatan.’ This had been the first description circulated, and she suspected that its single sentence pretty much summed up the findings of the investigation so far.
The door to the conference room opened and Rebecca stood up at once. But it was only one of the assistants coming out to fetch some more bottled water.
She glanced at the time and sat down on her chair to wait a bit longer. It was another three hours before the next shift came on duty.
The cottage wasn’t such a bad idea! It had electricity and running water. And Manga had loaned him a laptop with television reception that could crack all the coded channels. Okay, he’d have to shit in a little outhouse in the corner of the allotment, but that was no biggy. As long as he had HBO he could squeeze one out on a flowerbed if he had to.
He’d been very careful when he came out here. He’d packed just a few things in a rucksack, pillow, sleeping-bag and a little food, as well as the bag of grass he’d bought with the five hundred that Manga guiltily gave him as compensation for his failing hospitality. The miserable witch had looked pleased when HP left, but he didn’t care. Now at least he was his own man.
He had taken the underground to Slussen, then changed to the green line and headed all the way out to Fridhemsplan. Once he got there he pulled an old spy trick, waiting until the doors were about to close, then jumping straight onto a train heading back into the city.
Just to be sure he repeated the stunt at the central station before carrying on to Zinkensdamm where he stole a woman’s ramshackle bicycle and made his way up into Tantolunden.
Finding the right place had been easy, yellow wooden panelling with white windows and two big apple trees in the plot. He hadn’t been out here since he was a teenager and his gang used to hang around the mini-golf course to check out the girls and smoke the menthol cigarettes he’d nicked off his mum. Happy days …
Back then he had mainly thought that allotment cottages were pathetic, but now he was grown up he had to admit that having a miniature house wasn’t such a stupid idea, especially if you needed somewhere to hide away from the rest of the world. If the Game was going to find him here, they’d have to put in a bit of effort; he grinned, taking a deep drag of a fat joint.
Pretty nice living like this, close to nature, birdsong and a solitary lawnmower the only sounds. If he concentrated he could just about hear traffic in the distance, from Hornstull and Ringvägen, but it just seemed to fade into the background somehow.
He lazed about for a while on the rib-backed sofa in what was supposed to be the kitchen, but which, apart from the sofa and table, consisted of one cupboard and a tiny little sink. The sun was shining through the leaded window and he felt far more relaxed here than in Manga’s flat out in the suburbs.
Sweet!
A ping from the laptop woke him from his lethargy. He’d left the mobile in the shop and hadn’t had time to get a new one, so Messenger was his only contact with the outside world, and the only person who had his address was the Mangster, a.k.a. Farook.
Farook says: Salaam-Aleikum, brother HP!
Badboy.128 says: Hi Manga.
Farook says: How are things out in the model village?
Badboy.128 says: Pretty good, actually, say thanks to your aunt!
Farook says: will do!
Farook says: Have talked to some mates and one of them knows a bloke who might be able to help us.
Badboy.128 says: Sweet, should I call?
Farook says: No, you can’t get hold of him, only way is to meet him. Supposed to be a bit odd. Clever as fuck but a bit odd, yeah?
Badboy.128 says: Computer nerd?
