Bubble: A Thriller (24 page)

But now wasn’t the time to fall apart. Henke wasn’t in a good way, that much was obvious. He needed help, as soon as possible, before he did something even more stupid.

She took a deep breath and turned toward Stigsson to say something.

Just then two men in suits walked into the room.

One was in his thirties, thin, with short hair and dark-framed glasses.

The other man was Tage Sammer.

“Colonel Pellas, excellent,” Stigsson said, and the two men shook hands.

“You’ve met my colleague, Superintendent Runeberg, before, and this is—”

“Rebecca Normén, the suspect’s sister,” Sammer said quickly, holding out his hand. “Good to meet you, my name is André Pellas, I’m linked to the security organization at the Palace.”

She mumbled something and shook his hand as she tried to meet his gaze, but he was deliberately looking away.

“May I introduce Edler, my adjutant.”

He gestured with his stick toward the man in glasses, who nodded briefly in greeting.

“So, what do we know, Eskil . . . ?” Sammer turned toward Stigsson.

“Unfortunately the suspect wasn’t here as we were hoping, but we have been able to confirm that he was fixated upon Black . . .” He pointed to the wall of clippings.

Sammer gave Edler a quick nod, and the younger man went over to the wall and began looking through the clippings.

“Have you found anything of interest to the Palace?”

“Not since the video clip . . .” Stigsson said. “But there’s been a warrant out for Pettersson since this morning, and apart from this flat he basically has nowhere to go, and Normén here has promised her full cooperation.”

He nodded toward Rebecca.

She opened her mouth, then realized that she didn’t know what to say. Thoughts were churning around her head, without any real coherence.

The Grand Hotel, events up at the Fortress, the flat, and now Sammer popping up like a jack-in-the-box, turning out to be acquainted with both Stigsson and Runeberg . . .

“Colonel Pellas, you should probably see this.”

Edler had lifted up a few of the clippings. Behind them were other pictures, also with people’s faces circled with black marker. He held up some of the clippings at random. The result was the same.

Beneath all of the clippings were photographs of the royal family.

♦  ♦  ♦

He saw them emerge from the front door.

First a big, stiff gorilla who could have been a poster boy for the Police Academy. Then some little gray men in suits who seemed to be deeply engaged in serious discussion. He didn’t recognize the shorter one, but he identified Sammer the moment he caught sight of the stick.

His heart began to beat faster.

The Game Leader and the cop—hand in hand, just as he had suspected.

When Becca came out of the door his mood sank at least two notches.

Sammer, the cop, and Becca wasn’t a good combo, no matter how you looked at it.

But it was the final member of the group that really shocked him.

Holy . . .

Fucking . . .

Shit . . .

WELCOME TO KROKEN
dry cleaners. Please leave a message.

He was so wound up he almost forgot to wait for the beep.

“You’re fucked!” he yelled into the receiver as he jogged in the direction of Skinnarviksparken.

“The Source, the man who recruited you . . . he works for the Game Master. I just saw them together . . .”

His throat suddenly felt thick and he coughed a few times in an attempt to clear it.

“And if he works for the Game Master, then so do you . . . You can fuck right off, never contact me again! Never, got that . . . ?”

Halfway out into the street he was hit by another fit of coughing and had to bend over.

A car swept past dangerously close and the driver blew his horn. He didn’t even have the energy to gesticulate back.

Erman, the little bastard, hadn’t come back from the dead with a plan for revenge in his back pocket. Instead he seemed to have got absolution from the Game Master . . . which was actually completely logical. After all, Erman’s only crime was
that he wanted to be an active participant in everything. To carry on messing about with his beloved servers. And he was one of the best in the world at what he did, which had obviously helped his case. PayTag must have been crying out for experts in servers for their massive project.

Supply and demand, and, just like magic, Erman was suddenly forgiven and back from the cold.
Capitalism rules!

So why the hell had he gathered together that bunch of losers? And why goad them into breaking into the jewel in the Game’s crown? There was obviously some sort of plan behind it all, a plan that also included him and Becca.

But, just like with everything else that had happened to him in recent days, it was no longer possible to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. His brain had gone into overdrive, and the jog had got his pulse racing at a dangerous level, so he aimed for the nearest park bench.

This was so totally fucked up he couldn’t handle it anymore. The very thought that he had once dreamed of getting back into that whole crazy circus made him feel sick. The Game was obviously out to get him, and the same went for the cops . . .

All he wanted right now was to take off, get a very long way away and crawl into a hole somewhere until it had all blown over.

But Rebecca was still stuck in the shit, literally led by the nose by the Game Master, with Erman, the treacherous bastard, scuttling along behind.

Obviously that was no coincidence; nothing the Game Master did was a coincidence.

He leaned his head in his hands and struggled with another coughing fit.

His skin felt hot, not just because of the exertion, so his fever was probably back.

That was all he needed.

He needed grub, then a bit of cash to settle down somewhere quiet where he could gather his strength and try to make sense of this mess.

If that was even remotely possible.

♦  ♦  ♦

“As I said, good to meet you, Rebecca,” Colonel Pellas said as he shook her hand in farewell. “And if you do hear from your brother, or get the slightest idea of where he might be, we’d be extremely grateful if you could let us know immediately.”

He handed her a business card, which she tucked away mechanically.

“We’ll be in touch, Eskil,” he said to Stigsson as he got into the backseat of the large Volvo.

The door closed, the driver put the car in gear, and just as it was about to pull away Pellas gave her a quick look through the side window. She tried a tentative smile, looking for the slightest sign of acknowledement. His face didn’t move.

The car glided around the corner and disappeared, its tires rattling on the cobblestones of the slope.

“Oh yes, Normén . . .” Stigsson said just as she was about to walk off. “We’ve found a safe-deposit box belonging to your brother . . .” He left a meaningful pause, and she almost walked into the trap. But at the last moment she stopped herself.

“Do you happen to know anything about that?” he continued when she didn’t respond.

She shook her head.

“Henke and I haven’t had much contact recently . . .”

“No, so you said at Police Headquarters, yet here you are at his flat just as we go in to search it . . .”

Once again she refrained from answering. As long as she didn’t say anything, he couldn’t claim she was lying.

The tactic didn’t seem to bother Stigsson in the way she had hoped it would.

“You’re listed as sharing it with him, Normén, so I presume you knew what was in it?”

She shook her head.

“Nothing, Normén. The box was empty.”

“Oh . . .” She tried to look as unconcerned as possible.

“Fortunately the bank has an advanced security system . . .”

She felt her heart beat faster.

“Loads of cameras, much like over in Police Headquarters . . .”

He paused again, trying to lure her into saying something, but she just stared down at the cobblestone instead. What date had she visited the vault? She thought about the cameras, counting them in her head. Seven, eight, nine . . .

“Is there anything you want to tell me, Normén?” His voice suddenly sounded rather more friendly. “According to Runeberg, you’re a very good bodyguard, an asset to the department, I’m sure those were his words . . .”

She looked up and met his gaze. Stigsson had tilted his head.

“Obviously we stick up for our own. Help colleagues who find themselves in tricky situations . . .”

Another pause.

She opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated for a few seconds.

“Yes . . . ?” he said, to prompt her.

“Seven,” she said.

“W-what?” At last his composed expression seemed slightly shaken.

“Seven days, that’s how long the banks usually store re
corded material, isn’t it? At least that was the case when I worked in crime . . .”

His mouth closed like a trap. His almost paternal expression from a minute ago had vanished completely. Not that that mattered. His bluff had failed, and they both knew it. There were no pictures, nothing that could tie her to the vault. It had all been erased several days ago.

“Did you want anything else?”

Stigsson didn’t answer, so she waved at Runeberg, who was standing a short distance away, then turned to go.

“We’ve requested the list of pass cards from the bank . . .” Stigsson said when she’d taken a few steps. “It will be a couple of days before we get it, but I’m guessing we’ll soon be speaking again, Normén.”

♦  ♦  ♦

HP woke up with his whole body shaking like a pneumatic drill.

It may have been the middle of the summer, but taking an evening nap outdoors on a boat under a fucking tarpaulin hadn’t exactly been his smartest move, in hindsight.

He needed to get warm, right away. But his body didn’t seem to want to obey him. His head ached, his mouth was dry, his arms and legs felt like overcooked spaghetti. When he tried to roll onto his stomach he suddenly noticed the wet lump in his underwear.

At first he thought it was the bundle of notes he had dug out of the glass jar buried a few hundred meters up in the woods. But then he remembered that he’d stuffed it into one of the front pockets of his jeans.

It took another few seconds before he realized.

Fucking hell!

He reached for the railing and tried to get to his feet. The
stench from his trousers caught in his nose, and his stomach cramped. It took a huge effort just to stand up.

The deck swayed beneath him, making his knees buckle.

He fell forward, hit his chin on one of the benches, and ended up lying there on the deck.

Food poisoning, how fucking ironic. He hadn’t eaten properly for weeks and had basically lived off canned sardines and baked beans. But now that he’d finally managed to get hold of a kebab, it turned out to be a staphylococcus bomb with extra garlic sauce . . .

His stomach cramped again, making him curl up into a ball.

Damn it to hell!

He tried to crawl to his feet but it was hopeless. All the energy had drained out of him and he couldn’t stop shivering. But he had to get away from there at once, otherwise it would be autumn before Nisse or whoever owned this bastard boat found his freeze-dried corpse.

It was late in the evening, and the stretch of Pålsundet where the old boat lay was hardly a busy place even during the day.

The fall had knocked most of the strength out of him, but if he didn’t want to end up like Ötzi the Iceman, he had to get away from there.

His stomach cramped again, making him pull his knees up around his ears. The cold lump of clay in his underwear moved slightly up the base of his spine.

Fuckingbastardnonsense
 . . .

He waited for the attack to pass, then gathered what little strength he had left and forced himself up onto his knees. The jetty was no more than half a meter away.

He planted one foot in the bottom of the boat, tensed the
muscles in his thigh, and got up onto his feet. His legs swayed but he stayed upright. One step forward, then another. He lifted one foot and took aim at the jetty.

But the leg he had all his weight on suddenly collapsed and he fell backward into the dark water.

He churned his arms like mad and swallowed several liters of water as he tried to turn the right way up. For a brief moment he was back on the prison bunk in Dubai where the cops had tried to drown a confession out of him. But then the tips of his toes touched the bottom and his panic subsided somewhat.

He dragged himself laboriously up onto the shore, crawled up into a sitting position, and leaned his back against a tree. He gasped for breath a few times, then let loose a fountain of green water from Lake Mälaren. Over and over again, through both his mouth and nose, until his stomach was exhausted. He too, come to that . . .

Goddamn it . . . !

But, oddly enough, after a while he started to feel a bit better. As if the little swim and involuntary stomach pump had rebooted his body.

Besides, he’d had an idea. The youth hostel on Långholmen, in the converted prison. Why hadn’t he thought of that before . . . ?

Using the tree trunk as a support, he got to his feet and felt automatically in his pockets for his cigarettes. He found a soaking-wet stub that he tried in vain to light.

Then, with the unlit cigarette between his lips, he staggered carefully up toward the path that led to the old prison.

♦  ♦  ♦

His office door was closed, but she didn’t even bother to knock.

“I’ve been fired,” she said before he even had time to turn around.

“Er, yes . . . so I heard.”

He stood up but made no attempt to move closer to her.

“Oh, so the rumor’s already out. How much do you know?”

“Not much, we had a conference call with Anthea a little while ago . . .”

“And?”

He shrugged his shoulders and seemed to be studying a mark on the wall behind her.