The Game Trilogy (25 page)

It was a shame about his stuff at home in Maria Trappgränd, but Becca had volunteered as usual. She’d
promised to put it all in storage and sort out an estate agent to unlock the value of the two-room flat. He was going to call her in a month or so to sort out the money.

Half of the flat was actually hers, but there’d still be plenty of money left over.

Transferring the cash would be a bit tricky, but there had to be ways round that. An anonymous account with Western Union or something?

Most of the stuff in the flat was crap, things he’d inherited from Mum and not bothered to get rid of. Apart from the television and computer there was nothing of any value, he’d long since sold anything worth selling.

They’d got rid of Dad’s stuff just after he died, when they moved into the city.

The Salvation Army had picked up the lot, every last thing. He definitely didn’t need any reminders of the old bastard and what he had done.

Looking in the mirror was more than enough …

No, there was really only one thing in the flat that he was worried about, something he’d rather not have Becca snooping about in. But he didn’t have much choice. Even if she did find the box, she wouldn’t realize, or at least he hoped not.

She was okay, Becca, as far as sisters go. More than okay, actually … Even if she was always getting at him, she stepped up whenever it really mattered.

Watching his back …

She’d always done that, ever since they were little and he … well … he loved her for it.

Obviously that was the case, even if he was reluctant to admit it. Becca was the only family he had, actually the only person who had ever behaved like someone who was family ought to. The only fixed point in his life. In fact, he’d do almost anything for her if she asked …

Bloody hell, that sounded wet!

He’d never dream of saying anything like that to her face. He actually felt a bit embarrassed just thinking stuff like that, but maybe it wasn’t so weird that he was getting a bit soppy now that it was time to leave his homeland for good?

Sollentuna flew past on the right-hand side and he slouched down in his seat to try to get comfortable. He’d already scanned his fellow passengers a couple of times and none of them looked suspicious. To be on the safe side, he’d pulled his usual 007 stunt when he reached Central Station, and had waited until the very last minute before racing for the airport bus. No-one had followed him, he was sure of that.

But on the other hand, maybe they didn’t need to shadow him? According to Erman, they were everywhere. Hundreds, maybe thousands of little Ant-eyes looking out for him, sweeping their mobiles over people’s faces until the face-recognition app found a match. And suddenly he was a red dot on a map! Hadn’t the bus driver given him a strange look when he got on? What about little miss businesswoman behind him, sitting there fiddling with her Blackberry? He could feel his pulse rate going up and closed his eyes for a few seconds.

Just calm down, HP, you’ve been doing this shit for too long! Your brain just sees what it wants to see, so leave off
wanting
to see this sort of bollocks and get a fucking grip!

He took a couple of deep breaths and then opened his eyes.

Everything was fine. There was nothing to worry about. He was on his way to leaving the Game, putting this crap behind him and starting a whole new chapter. Disappearing under the radar and becoming a ghost-rider. So why
couldn’t he put his mind to rest? Probably because there was something in all the crap that was still sticking out, something he hadn’t fixed.

Somewhere near Bredden he worked out what it was. A quick call to Becca from his new mobile, it was worth the risk. He was going to switch when he got to Thailand anyway. And he had to know, had to be properly sure. That she’d be safe. Out of harm’s way.

She picked up at once.

‘Rebecca Normén.’

‘It’s me. A quick question.’

‘Okay, but it’ll have to be really quick, I’m at work, things are a bit …’

‘The mobile, the one you picked up from Manga. What did you do with it?’

He held his breath.

‘I booked it into lost property, it’ll be there until they can trace the owner.’

‘Great!’ he breathed out.

Everything was fine, time to round it all off. Now he could exit with a clear conscience.

‘I was just worried you might have kept it or something …’

‘No, it’s down in the store. Apparently it was reported stolen by some company out in the Western District, according to the IMEI number. Some telecoms company, I think it was. Anyway, I thought you were on your way out of the country?’

Suddenly he sat up in his seat.

‘I am. You don’t happen to remember what the company was called?’

‘No, not really, something short. I’ve got it written in my pad, but that’s down in my locker …’

He could hear voices in the background.

‘Listen, I’m about to get in the lift so we’ll be cut off. I can text you the name in a minute if it’s important?’

‘Sure, no problem, you’ve got my new number now …’ he muttered as thoughts flew round his head.

‘Well, bye, Becca!’

‘Bye, Henke, look after yourself.’

The call was cut off abruptly. The thoughts had time to start whirling again before his mobile bleeped. He didn’t really need to open the message to read the address of the company. The crumpled up note he’d got off Erman the other day was enough.

Torshamnsgatan 142, Kista. Acme Telecom Services Ltd

And all of a sudden he was nowhere near as sure that he really wanted to stop.

She’d reached the third bend when it happened. She was going about a hundred and had just got past the obstacle when the front tyre blew and the steering wheel began to shudder madly in her hands.

Even though she had been expecting it, her pulse was racing as she struggled to regain control of the vehicle. Braking hard, the jolt on the pedal telling her that the ABS was working.

‘Stop the skid, steer into the direction you want to go in, don’t fight it,’ the instructor said beside her.

When the car had stopped at the side of the road she realized she was wet with sweat.

‘Good! No problems at all, Normén!’ the instructor summarized.

She nodded in response and tried to look calm and composed.

Driving instruction out at Tullinge airfield was obligatory, so she just had to grit her teeth and get through it even if her heart had started doing panic-stricken somersaults in her chest the moment she sat in the driver’s seat.

The tyre blow-out at speed was the last task of the day,
and she’d be heading home immediately after the debrief. Which suited her fine.

Kruse was better, considerably better, in fact. It looked like he was going to make a full recovery.

It was a hell of a relief, and made everything a bit easier to cope with, now that she knew who had thrown the stone through the windscreen, and possibly even why. But obviously she couldn’t tell anyone that whole story about the Game. Not even Anderberg would manage to stay quiet about something like that, she was sure of that.

So she’d just have to deal with her demons the way she always had. With shock therapy.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and all that macho bullshit … If you were terrified, you ought to join the police. If you felt insecure, you should become a bodyguard, and if you had a car-crash you just had to jump back in the driving seat as soon as you could. Take the bull by the horns and put your foot hard on the pedal.

Yippikayee!
as Henke would have put it.

She wondered what he was doing now?

He ought to have arrived in Thailand by now, but she hadn’t heard anything.

Not that that was much of a surprise,

They’d hidden themselves away well, he had to give them credit for that. The building looked completely normal at first glance. An ordinary brick office-building, standard Swedish design, nothing fancy. Just like all the others along the road. Two storeys, a main entrance, underground parking and a small, glassed-in security booth. A couple of tatty pennants drooped in front of the entrance, their cords whipping rhythmically in the summer breeze.

Bang-bang-bang-bang.

Fucking smart move, actually, hiding in plain sight like
this, where everyone could see, but no-one did. Much better than some secret fortress which would only provoke a load of questions.

The best trick the devil ever pulled …

Getting a car hadn’t been a problem. A Saab 900 from the long-stay carpark at Arlanda. You could start those with a lollypop stick if you knew what you were doing. The barrier of the carpark was just as easy. Mr Sensible had naturally left the ticket in the ashtray to make sure he didn’t lose it while he was getting drunk in Mallorca. He just had to pay a bit of cash into the machine, then drive out entirely legally. Two hundred and fifty kronor for a car with a full tank that wouldn’t be reported stolen for at least six days. And that was a fairly decent price, a hell of a lot less than Hertz, and a lot less hassle, particularly for someone who didn’t want to be seen. And who didn’t actually have a driving licence …

His conscience didn’t give him much trouble either. Car theft didn’t actually feature in the Law Code under its own heading. ‘Wrongful procurement of transport’ was a useless offence, pretty much on a par with crossing the road when the red man was still showing. Not the sort of thing Big Brother really cared about. So nor did HP.

He drove past the place a total of three times, taking pictures with his new mobile each time he passed. Then he settled down to wait a few blocks away, staking out the building for a couple of hours.

Once he’d settled down: plug the USB-cable into the laptop and open up the media player.

And roll the film!

If you could sit and concentrate in peace and quiet, it was much easier to pick up anything unusual. The discreet cameras covering every angle of the building,
the roller-shutter on the slope leading down to the underground garage. The guard manning the barrier, rather than Lisa-the-receptionist-from-Bredäng. All of them small indications that he was in the right place.

He didn’t notice the biggest thing for quite a while. It wasn’t actually anything at all, but rather the opposite.

Apart from the orc on guard occasionally doing a circuit around the building, nothing was happening in or around Torshamnsgatan 142.

Zippo, nada, niente!

No clients, no visitors, not even a gaggle of nicotine-starved employees huddled by the side door.

Zero traffic, no deliveries and not a single car in or out of the garage even though he had been watching at both four and five o’clock.

In other words, there was no-one working inside the building. Not a soul, apart from the guard. But presumably a server-farm pretty much ran itself? Everything could be done remotely. Unless there were people living in there to look after the control room? Pasty little technicians who never saw daylight?

Either way, he was feeling more and more sure. This was
the place!

This was where it was all controlled from: the Ants, the functionaries, the Players and the assignments. Reality as a game, and the Game reality, all in one single, seamless app. Hidden behind those anonymous walls was Mission Control, and it was him, Henrik HP Pettersson, who had found it.

The Houston of Fucking Cyberspace!

And he was sure of one more thing.

He had to get inside.

Rebecca opened the front door and sniffed carefully at the hall, but the only smell she could detect was paint.
She’d picked the key up from the housing association and been given a ten-minute lecture about ‘how seriously we take this incident’. As if Henke was somehow responsible for someone trying to set fire to his flat?

That wasn’t an entirely unreasonable conclusion, but that wasn’t something she felt like discussing with a total stranger. At least the old man had seemed relieved when she said she was there to empty the flat before they sold it, and hurried to get her out before she had time to change her mind. Maria Trappgränd was considerably more desirable now than when they had bought the flat in the mid-nineties.

Really the street had been completely unsuitable for Mum, with its cobblestones and narrow steps.

But as soon as she saw the flat and the area, she fell for a romantic dream based on an old film,
Anderssonskans Kalle,
and wouldn’t be shaken. Dad’s life insurance had been just enough for the down-payment and a bit of new furniture.

Personally Rebecca thought the area was more
The Third Man
than anything. As if some unknown danger were lurking in amongst the gloomy alleyways and dark courtyards. She had never liked coming here, and today was no exception.

The door was new, the hall repainted and the parquet floor repaired, but otherwise everything in the flat looked the same as usual. The same old Henke mess. And, the same as ever, she was playing at being the cavalry, helping him sort it all out.

She manoeuvred the folded moving boxes into the kitchen and started to put them together. It only took half an hour or so to clear the kitchen. Most of it had evidently got broken during the fire, which at least saved her having to do any washing-up. The fridge and freezer were, with
the exception of some mouldy cheese and a pack of frozen pies, basically empty, so she moved on to the living room. The high-tech stuff in there turned out to be pretty straightforward. The boxes were all in the corner, presumably because Henke couldn’t be bothered to carry them down to the bins. She couldn’t help wondering where the money for all these toys had come from. Computer, flatscreen TV, home cinema and games console: altogether they must have a shop value of at least forty thousand. But then Henke probably hadn’t bought them over the counter …

Apart from the electronics, the furnishings in the flat weren’t much to write home about. A sagging sofa-bed, a couple of rickety Billy bookcases and a small coffee table. All things they’d bought when they moved in.

The bedroom still contained Mum’s creaking old pine bed. The covers and sheets were on the floor. She couldn’t quite believe he’d kept it. Okay, Mum had died in the Ersta Clinic, but still …

An old poster from a computer games fair was the only adornment on the otherwise bare walls.

‘Dreamhack -07, the Biggest Game-Fair in the World’, she muttered as she gathered together the heaps of clothes and stuffed them into various bags. Even her goodwill had its limits, so most of this could go to the nearest charity bin.

The bookshelves contained a load of DVDs, many of them clearly burned copies.

She ran her fingers along their dusty spines. There seemed to be a preponderance of gangster films, closely followed by American action films, with an impressive collection of adult material in an easy third place. But there was also a fair number of old classics, and for a moment she thought about taking some home with her. But when would she find the time to watch them?

There were quite a few books on the shelves as well,
which didn’t really surprise her. Henke liked reading, had done ever since he was little.

She had helped him to start with, but he soon got the hang of it and was reading as well as her by the time he was six. Dad had had a load of old illustrated classics in a box at home, and Henke had ploughed through them more than once. The cartoon versions of
Robinson Crusoe
and
Moby Dick
had rescued his marks in Swedish pretty much the whole way through school. Ten minutes with the illustrated version from
Reader’s Digest
and he looked like he was well-read.

So utterly typical of Henke!

The master of cutting corners.

Rebecca couldn’t help smiling. Despite his obvious failings, at least no-one ever had a dull moment in her little brother’s company. She used to take him to the library when they were a bit older. They would hang around there instead of going home. She used to bribe him to do his homework before he could look at the comics. The library had been a refuge, a safe haven where they could dream away a few hours, especially after Mum got ill and everything started to escalate. She still associated the smell of books with security.

Often they would sit there until the library closed and the friendly librarians had to shepherd them out.

It felt like a hundred years ago.

The photograph album was on the bottom shelf. Brown plastic sleeves, with pages that had stuck together. She’d seen the yellowing pictures many times before, but even so she couldn’t help leafing through them. It hadn’t been all bad. Sometimes life had been almost normal. Like the camping holiday in Rättvik, with her, Mum and Henke all wearing traditional wooden clogs and squinting at the camera. The other two were blond and happy, while she
had dark hair like Dad, and a more serious demeanour. Obviously Dad was behind the camera, the long shadow the only thing that betrayed his presence. She was pretty sure that was the closest he would come to being in any of the pictures in Henke’s album.

She realized that that particular summer photograph from the early eighties actually said quite a bit about their family. Henke and Mum had always been close, whereas she was more Daddy’s girl. Like Mum, she had done all she could to keep him happy, even though he usually ignored them. Dad was a serious man who did a lot of thinking, and usually preferred his own company. He seldom smiled, almost never laughed, at least not as she remembered it. Work was probably the only thing that really interested him, some sort of sales job that she couldn’t remember much about, except that he travelled a fair bit. Sometimes they’d get a postcard, and very occasionally his duty-free bags would contain something apart from bottles of spirits. Sweets, perfume, or maybe some cheap plastic toy from the souvenir shop at the airport if the trip had gone particularly well and he was in a good mood.

On the rare days when Dad was at home he never wanted to be disturbed. He usually locked himself away in his little cubbyhole with a book and a bottle of some sort. The rest of the family simply didn’t interest him. A necessary distraction that he was obliged to tolerate, mostly for form’s sake. During his last years he got increasingly bitter at the way his life had turned out. How he had never been appreciated the way he thought he should have been.

He had started some sort of memoir project which was supposed to prove him right, but instead it just seemed to make him feel even more badly treated, especially when
no-one was interested in publishing it. They burned the whole lot once he was dead. They drove all the way out to Lida and threw the fat bundle of papers on one of the open barbeque fires out there.

It took just a few minutes for all the close-written pages to burn up.

None of them – not even Mum – had read a single word.

But no matter what Henke might think, Dad wasn’t actually a bad person – far from it! It wasn’t until she was grown up that she realized his behaviour was a sort of handicap. That some people simply lack empathy and are therefore incapable of showing love.

Poor Mum had probably done her best. Obeying his slightest command and tiptoeing round him in an effort to keep him in a good mood. Then illness and comfort-drinking took over Mum’s world and it was suddenly down to her to see that the home functioned the way Dad wanted.

It really wasn’t so strange that she fell in love with Dag. When it came down to it, he was nothing but a younger version of her father. A bit of interest from his side was all it took. Unlike Dad, Dag could be extremely sensitive when he was in the right mood. Turning up with flowers and presents, telling the whole world how wonderful she was, and excelling in the role of devoted boyfriend. Obviously she had fallen head over heels, and he had proposed after just a few months. And so she had acquired a new authority figure to fit in with, someone whose love she would once again have to try to earn through self-sacrifice.