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The only answer he could think of was that someone wanted to see the look on the lawyer’s face when he got the package. And that was when the penny finally dropped. That there were actually other players like him out there, not just in the USA, but here in Sweden, and probably in other countries as well.
He had already worked out that the gorilla on Birkagatan was involved somehow, and that the stupid fucker hadn’t kept his mouth shut and had blabbed about the Game. That was obviously what the text he had sprayed on the door had been about. And it probably wasn’t Lewis Carroll himself who had left the passcard in the book or worked out how to switch off the clock on the NK roof …
But the bigger picture still didn’t really sink in before he realized that someone had been selected to conclude the assignment with the lawyer. That someone would stand there filming as the GQ-readinglittle wanker opened the parcel and went red upon discovering his own missing wheel nuts. Someone just like himself, with an assignment to carry out, a camera to document it with – and the same applied to whoever it was who managed to come up with a Ferrari spanner and hide it in a toilet-cistern in the Sture Gallery. So at least three little assignments and the same number of Players, all that organization just to give Mr Sleazy a weekend he’d never forget.
The thinking involved was fucking refined, he had to take his hat off to whoever it was who organized all this.
The assignment had given him 1,000 points, and the next morning he had found a foreign credit-card on his doormat. This time he guessed the pin-code correctly first time.
In total the account turned out to contain 2,300 US dollars, which matched the number of points he had on the list. He just had to stick the card into the nearest cashpoint and withdraw what he wanted.
It had been more than enough for the Sopranos box-set he had been dying to get his hands on, and a family-pack of best Moroccan from his friendly neighbourhood dealer. Then he had settled back on the sofa, puffed the magic dragon and blown the heads off some rookies in Counterstrike. Then home-delivery pizza and a bit of male-bonding with the boys in the Jersey mafia. Life was pretty sweet!
But in spite of all this, it was the fifth assignment that was the really cool one. The one that transformed him into Mr Clip of the Week, first Runner-up and, a few hours later, the OmnipotentPope of Pussy-pranging.
As well as a permanent hard-on, task number five left him with 2,500 nice new dollars in his account, but to his own surprise the money was becoming more and more like an agreeable by-product. Considerably more important than the cash was all the love he was getting in his comments section: ‘128 FTW!’, ‘all d kings horses couldnt stop u ;-)’ or ‘W00T onetwoeight!!1!’, to list but a few. He had an average rating of 4.8 stars and he had received a personal message of congratulation from the Game Master himself.
Not bad for a rookie!
He was flavour of the month!
He was in the zone!
He was on his way to the top!
She woke up early, slid out of bed and, without waking him, silently gathered up her clothes and put them on. She didn’t really like staying the night but she had fallen asleep for once, exhausted by all the training and by the previous evening’s activities.
Ever since that first evening they had met in his flat, which suited her fine. She liked him, absolutely, but it didn’t feel right to let him inside her flat. It would be sending out the wrong signals, giving him false hope. Much easier to meet like this, get it over and done with, then go home. Blame having to get up early, the way she always did.
He was actually a decent guy. A bit scruffy maybe, his flat could do with freshening up and it wouldn’t hurt him to get his hair cut more often.
But fundamentally a good bloke, considerably better than she deserved.
She really shouldn’t have fallen asleep.
He moved in his sleep and for a few panic-stricken moments she thought he was going to wake up. What would she say if he did? How could she explain that she was about to sneak out like a thief in the night, without even saying goodbye? Or, even worse, what would happen if he tried to pull her back into bed for a morning cuddle? Snuggle up together and exchange secrets?
She felt her pulse racing.
Calm down now, for God’s sake, Normén!
Then he settled down and she could tell from his breathing that he was sleeping soundly.
Thank goodness!
Time to go. Had she got everything?
She did a quick check of her jeans pockets.
Keys – yep, police badge – yep, mobile phone – missing …
She looked quickly around the dimly-lit bedroom, eager to get going. There it was, on the desk. Relieved, she picked it up, noticing that his mobile was next to it. A smart design, all thin and brushed steel, no bigger than the palm of her hand, with nothing but a touchscreen. A little flashing red light was the only indication that it was switched on. She couldn’t remember ever seeing one of that model before, or this one in particular, come to that. He must have only just got it. Probably cost a fortune, she thought as she carefully closed the front door behind her.
When HP opened the left-luggage locker at Central Station at first he didn’t realize what he was staring at. The green, cylindrical object reminded him of an aerosol-can and for a moment he almost felt disappointed. Was there another rat who needed a reminder of rule number one? He’d been expecting something better.
He stuffed the object into the bag he’d brought with him, and because the underground was full of people he wasn’t able to take a closer look at it until he’d shut the door of his flat behind him. He felt like he’d been taken for a ride, the assignment had started so promisingly with the key to the locker taped under a table in a branch of Wayne’s Coffee on the steep part of Götgatan. Sitting there among all the unsuspecting latte-slurpers, it was classic spy-film stuff, the anxiety of feeling under the table, and the excitement when his fingers touched something hard.
He already had an idea of what the key was for before the mobile told him where to find the lock it fitted.
So why all this James Bond cloak and dagger shit, just for a can of spray-paint?
But now that he had the chance to inspect his find, everything suddenly got more exciting. He perceived almost at once that it wasn’t an aerosol. It was actually a bit ridiculous that he’d ever been thinking along those lines. You only had to see the handle halfway along one side and the pin at the top to know that this was far more dangerous than a can of paint. And suddenly his pulse started to race with anticipation.
‘M84 Stun Grenade’ it said in military lettering, and a quick check in Wikipedia was enough to confirm what something like that was used for. The grenade, which was also known as Flash & Bang, was a so-called ‘non-lethal weapon’. For anyone who didn’t understand faggy military speak or play Counterstrike, it was a weapon that was not used primarily to kill people.
Unlike ordinary hand-grenades, the M84 didn’t fire out shrapnel that mutilated and killed those around it, but instead it produced a hell of a big bang and a flash of light that made the sun look like a 15-watt light-bulb. The point of the grenade was to knock out your enemy by blinding and deafening him and making him crap himself long enough for you to pick him up alive. Most anti-terrorism and police forces in the civilized world seemed to have M84s in their arsenals, and the descriptions of the grenade’s effectiveness were overwhelmingly positive: ‘very powerful’, ‘extremely useful’ or ‘highly efficient’ were some of the glowing reviews that various users had given the M84, and now HP suddenly had one of his own.
A real one!
The only question was: what did the Game Master want him to do with it?
From: Game Control
To: Game Master
Subject: Extracts from police report 0201-K246459-10 (candidate 128, assignment 1006-09)
On the above date, patrol car 1054 with Police Inspector Janson and Police Constable Modéer was ordered to the junction of Kungsträdgårdsgatan and Arsenalgatan as a result of an as yet unclassified incident involving the Horse-Guards. A number of patrols and ambulances were despatched simultaneously to the same location and Police Inspector Janson was appointed as acting head of the police operation.
At the location the patrol met Lieutenant Arne Wolff from the Svea Life Guards’ dragoon battalion who told them the following:
Wolff was ordered to form a mounted escort, comprising twelve officers and a total of forty conscripts, for a cortège from the Royal Stables to the Royal Palace. This was an official event on the occasion of the state visit from Greece.
The cortège contained the President of Greece and his wife, as well as Their Majesties the King and Queen.
Wolff reports that they left the Royal Stables in the following formation:
First went two mounted police officers who were primarily responsible for dealing with any traffic issues. Then came the head of the escort and his adjutant and the colour guard (2 + 4 men), then the first troop of the escort (2 + 20 men), of which Wolff was acting commander from a position at their rear.
Behind Lieutenant Wolff followed the first carriage of the cortège containing the President and His Majesty the King, then the second carriage with the President’s wife and Her Majesty the Queen. Behind the royal carriages came two further mounted police officers and then the second escort troop, this too consisting of two officers and twenty soldiers.
Usually the route would follow Nybroplan, Hamngatan, Regeringsgatan, reaching Norrbro bridge via Gustav Adolfs torg, then Skeppsbron to the Palace. But because the bridge is closed for repairs an alternative route was chosen, via Kungsträdgårdsgatan and crossing the water by Strömbron instead.
When HP had finally received his instructions, he knew at once that this assignment was more difficult by an order of magnitude than any he had carried out before. There was a risk of him getting caught, and if he did he would have considerably more trouble with the judicial system than for switching off a clock, spray-painting a door or removing a few wheel nuts. This here was some serious shit, and he didn’t exactly have an unblemished criminal record to fall back on. He’d end up behind bars for this if anything went wrong …
Really he should have turned it down, but he could already feel the excitement bubbling inside him. This would provide fucking good pictures. World class stuff, maybe clip of the week material! He’d never heard of anyone doing anything like it, so he’d be the first. And he couldn’t just back out of a challenge like that.
An offer you can’t refuse …
It would be important to plan the operation carefully. Complete the assignment, get good pictures and find some way of getting away without anyone working out who he was. He thought he had a pretty good idea of how it could work but he needed to get a few things together.
When the first escort troop was level with Wahrendorffsgatan, Wolff noted from his position in the procession that an object was rolled out towards them from somewhere in the crowd of onlookers along the left-hand pavement. The object appeared to be some sort of metal cylinder, somewhat reminiscent of a can of spray-paint, and it stopped in the middle of the front part of the troop, whereupon a number of horses jerked and caused some anxiety in the ranks.
The Goat’s moped was a stroke of genius. HP had borrowed it before and his amiable neighbour and court supplier had never been interested in what he wanted it for.
‘Just take it, no problem, here’s the key,’ was as usual the response he got, and half an hour later he nicked a decent black helmet with a dark visor from a motorbike parked in the square down at Medborgarplatsen.
He’d checked the route of the cortège on the net, then he went down to do a recce and came to the conclusion that the end of Wahrendorffsgatan was the best place to carry out the assignment.
The whole cortège would have made it into Kungsträdgårdsgatan by then, and with a bit of luck both the Kong and Her Mayonnaise the Queen would get to enjoy a proper funfair ride when his new M84 friend went off. Then he could head back up Wahrendorff, be at Nybroplan before you knew it, then up Birger Jarlsgatan and hard left into the Klara Tunnel, and from there he’d have plenty of options.
He’d be back on safe territory on Södermalm before the suspect’s details had even got out, and by then he’d have ditched the black helmet in the water, and would have taken off his jacket and just be wearing a white t-shirt and the Goat’s basic red moped-helmet.
No chance of anyone connecting him to the description of the suspect, and even if they did, so what?
How much evidence would they have?
Suddenly there was a powerful explosion and a flash of blinding light which together caused total chaos in the cortège. Most of the horses in the first troop, including Wolff’s, bolted at once, either along Kungsträdgårdsgatan or directly into Kungsträdgården itself.
Wolff describes himself as a very capable rider, but the flash of light and explosion left him so stunned that he, along with the majority of the dragoons, was thrown off his horse at once and left lying on the pavement by Kungsträdgården.
When he came to his senses a few moments later he observed that the horses pulling the carriage of His Majesty the King had reared up and were about to bolt. Instinctively he grabbed hold of the snaffle of one of the horses to help the driver calm them. This however did not succeed at first, and the carriage raced some twenty metres down Kungsträdgårdsgatan with Wolff hanging from the harness.
Jesus what a fucking massive great explosion! Even though he’d thrown loads of flashbangs in Counterstrike and read about the effects on the net and even seen YouTube clips of the M84 in action, none of that came close to doing the little fucker full justice.
Up with the switch, out with the pin and then just roll it in among the horses. Okay, a bit harder IRL than Online, but not that bad. Even though he had earplugs, sunglasses, and the visor pulled down, the blast and the flash of light still took his breath away. It was a bit like pressing pause on television, and the image freezes while the programme and the sound roll on behind it.
He had to blink hard several times to shake the effect from his retinas and get his eyes back to real time. And what he saw exceeded all his expectations! The street was a fucking warzone! Beaten up riders everywhere, horses bolting, rearing up and generally going crazy. One horse went through the glass of one of the outdoor cafés, a couple of others mowed down one of the newly planted trees in the avenue in Kungsträdgården and carried on blindly into the park through a cluster of parked bicycles. People taking a Saturday stroll in the park had to leap out of the way of the panicked creatures to avoid getting run down or having their heads kicked in. People screaming, horses whinnying, kids crying and in the middle of all that one of the royal carriages came racing down the street with some bloke hanging off the side of one of the horses. It was like a Hollywood film, only better.
Much, much better!
HP couldn’t stop staring at the destruction, and it must have taken a good thirty seconds before he remembered that he had caused it and that it was probably high time to leave.
After several minutes of chaos among wounded dragoons, horses and onlookers, it was ascertained that the explosion had been caused by a so-called ‘non-lethal weapon’ and the royal and presidential couples were all uninjured, albeit shaken, and that there didn’t appear to have been any attack aimed at them specifically.
See separate witness statement from Wolff for further details.
When patrol 1054 arrived on the scene a dozen horses were still running loose in the area. At least fifteen members of the escorting troop and another seven onlookers were deemed by the paramedics to have injuries requiring immediate medical treatment, so Kungsträdgårdsgatan was blocked off in both directions and an evacuation operation with extra resources was put into action.
Superintendent Nilsson assumed the role of head of the police operation at 12:04. On the advice of the Security Police vehicles were called from the Royal Stables and these, under escort from patrol cars 1920 and 1917, as well as members of the personal protection unit, took care of the onward transport of the royal party to Stockholm Palace.
The pictures were brilliant! As well as his own, which were now almost razor-sharp and hardly moved at all, thanks largely to the new strap he had fashioned from an old rucksack, the Game Master had placed no fewer than two other cameramen in Kungsträdgården.
How the hell they knew exactly where HP was going to strike he had no idea, but by this point he had ceased to be surprised at the reach of the Game. Maybe someone had followed him when he did his recce, or perhaps the mobile had a built-in GPS tracker? Whatever, the results exceeded all expectations and just a few hours later he was Mr Clip of the Week, Mr A Number One, and the Ayatollah of Fuck’n’Rolla.
Television and the papers would be busy for at least a week and he laughed himself almost hare-lipped at all the so-called experts who pontificated about the perpetrator and the motives behind what had quickly become known as ‘the Kungsträdgården incident’.
According to one of the evening tabloids he was a rightwing extremist, according to the other he was a leftwing activist, all depending on the ideological position of the paper in question.
The television channels, on the other hand, were more into the international terrorism angle. The most commercial station which had employed the most expensive expert even dared to identify a new Swedish network with ‘connections to Al-Qaida’.
The only thing all those smart alec know-alls with their millions of high-school grades had in common was that they were all wrong!
Totally and utterly fucking wrong, in fact!
There was no conspiracy, no terror network, no political agenda. There was just him.
The single shooter. A man with a mission.
Henrik HP Pettersson, the man, the myth, the legend, and he had beaten all of them! Among all the thousands of other deadbeats, the Game had selected him specifically. They had seen his potential, evaluated his talents and set him on track.
And as thanks he had stepped up and struck a totally fucking massive home run!
Just thinking about it made him rock-hard again!
7 (#ulink_9a7b0d1e-9224-5ca6-84ff-53363d3d761a)
Fair Game (#ulink_9a7b0d1e-9224-5ca6-84ff-53363d3d761a)
The note was waiting for her when she opened her locker and for a moment she was almost surprised. But then reality caught up with her. A little white post-it note with the police force logo in the top-right corner, just like the others, and fixed to the edge of the little shelf towards the top of the locker.
She touched it, stroking her fingertips over it and silently repeated the words which had been written in red ink. Round, almost childish lettering, yet the message was anything but innocent. Really she ought to pull it off, crumple it up and get rid of it. But she knew that if she did, it would only be replaced with a new one. And why not, really? The note was basically right.
A ‘murdering little whore’, that’s what Dag’s sister had called her at the funeral. Deathly-pale with her arm around her sobbing mother, Nilla had pointed and shouted those very words so loudly that no-one could have missed a single syllable.
‘It’s all your fault, you murdering little whore. You killed him, you and your damn brother! How the hell have you got the nerve to show yourself here?’
The church had fallen utterly silent. Even the priest seemed to be staring at her as she stood there alone in the middle of the aisle, among all the seated black-clad figures.
And she knew that Nilla was right.
She didn’t belong there, she had nothing in common with the people who were mourning Dag’s death. With people who would like nothing more than for him to be alive still instead of in the coffin up at the front by the altar. Because she wasn’t one of them. She was happy, yes, actually happy, that Dag was dead, that he could no longer make her life a living hell. For a moment she was on the point of yelling that at them. That their beloved son, brother, grandchild, relative or great mate was nothing but a fully paid-up fucking psychopath. That he was violent towards women, a rapist, a bully – in short, a complete pig of a human being – and that she was relieved, no, positively overjoyed that it was his broken body in the wooden box up there rather than hers.
But of course she said none of that. Instead she merely nodded curtly at Nilla, turned on her heel and, all eyes on her, walked out of the church and out of her old life.
Two months later she applied to the Police Academy. Took the bull by the horns and confronted her fears, under a different surname as a thin cover for her new, fragile identity. And as time passed her new self grew stronger and stronger. So strong that she had started to think she no longer needed any protection.
At least, she’d believed that up to now.
But Nilla had been wrong about one thing.
Rebecca was responsible, not her little brother. Henke was innocent, but he was still the one who had been punished.
‘It was me who did it,’ he had told the police when they came, and they had believed him. She had wanted to protest, yell at him to shut up, or just simply and calmly explain what had really happened. But it was as if her insides had frozen to ice around an impossibly cold heart. That paused image of Dag’s last seconds alive had taken root inside her head and was stopping her from thinking, speaking or even moving. And then it went on paralysing her through the interviews and later during the trial, while that useless lawyer messed everything up. And, having always been the person who protected him, she just watched as her little brother assumed responsibility for everything. How he protected her and how she let him do it without raising a finger.
She let him throw away his life, his future, all his opportunities, all for her sake.
That little white note was right. Someone like her shouldn’t be in the police. That’s why she left it where it was.
