The Game Trilogy (79 page)

One large bank had already lost several hundred thousand credit and debit card numbers, and a gambling site had thrown in plenty of other details, including email addresses and IMS IDs.

Installations like the Fortress were supposed to be the solution to problems like that. All information stored in one place, protected by the very latest technology and guarded round the clock by thirty experts in IT security. What company or official body could offer anything like that?

She heard a door close further along the corridor and shortly afterwards she saw Thomas marching along the corridor with Kjellgren at his heels.

Thomas didn’t look happy.

I’ll be in touch!
–
Not fucking even!

He already knew who the Source was, and even where he was hiding.

And there he was, thinking he’d seen a ghost and was going mad. But the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place.

There was only one person who fitted that description, both physically and in terms of what he knew. The server king, the computer genius, the crazy backwoodsman, the outcast – the man, the myth, the legend:

Fucking Erman himself!

So he had survived the blaze in the outback. Managed to get himself a new identity, and then gradually returned to civilization while he finessed his plan. First finding a
new hiding place, and then setting about gathering information.

Two years was a long time. Erman may have been pretty soft-boiled when they met, but there was no doubt that the guy was smart. Something of an IT genius, at least according to his own testimony. And once Erman had got himself and his head sorted, and got back in front of a keyboard, there was probably no end to the stuff he could dig out. Tasks that had been carried out, players who had failed …

Shit, HP had actually given the bloke the idea of wiping out the server farm because of what he’d managed to do out in Kista.

And PayTag’s Fortress was obviously a hundred times bigger. The new, improved Death Star …

The Source said you’d done stuff like this before. That you’re some sort of expert …

Ha!

The evidence was watertight.

Erman was the Source!

Or rather, the new, improved version of Erman was.

Slimmer, clean-shaven, short-haired, and with less of an allergy to electricity than the last version. Those idiots at the vet’s seemed to think he was still working for the Game. Maybe that was part of his plan to seem credible. The truth about his real background, the nervous breakdown and the time he had spent holed up in the woods were hardly likely to inspire confidence. Better to pretend he was still part of the Game.

Now it was just a matter of finding the bastard’s hiding place, and he had a feeling he’d already solved that one. It was actually ridiculously simple. After all, the bloke had said it himself out there in his cottage when he was banging on about the Game. The best hiding place was where no-one would ever think of looking.

What was the most visible place in Stockholm, the most talked about, the most over-populated?

Slussen, of course. And what was right in the middle of Slussen, surrounded by glass and granite walls in an effort to make it fit in with its surroundings?

A lift.

An innocent fucking lift for taking wheelchairs, prams and walking frames half a floor down to the City Museum.

He couldn’t understand why he hadn’t noticed it the first time he checked inside the lift, but now in hindsight it was crystal clear.

He’d probably been too tired, and his brain too screwed up to take in all the details.

There were four buttons on the panel inside the lift, but only two of them had floors marked next to them.

Södermalmstorg for street level, and the entrance to the City Museum one floor below.

The other two buttons didn’t light up when you pressed them, which had made him think they were disconnected. Stupid, but on the other hand he hadn’t been firing on all cylinders at the time.

But now that he was able to inspect the lift calmly, he noticed something else. Beside the panel of buttons there was a little card-reader. And you used card-readers to limit access – access to door, gates, entrances, and what else, if there was a card-reader in the lift, Einstein?

Other floors, obviously!

So Erman 2.0 hadn’t just vanished, he’d simply used his card, woken up the dead buttons and carried on down into the ground to a floor that wasn’t signposted in the lift. A secret level, to which a technical genius could surely gain access pretty easily. A dead man hiding in a place that didn’t exist …

You had to take your hat off to him …

All he had to do now was wait for Erman 2.0 to show up at Slussen again, and arrange to have a little chat with him. Pump the bastard for everything he knew about the Game and Sammer, how far they’d managed to drag Becca into it, and then think of a way to get her out.

Get them both out.

Once and for all.

But first he had to make a few preparations …

He saw the cop car the moment he turned the corner into his street.

An ordinary Volkswagen minibus with a ladder on the roof, nothing remarkable at all. If it hadn’t been for the stubby little aerial …

A bloke in a fleece, cargo pants, boots and a tiny, scarcely visible earpiece was standing there talking to the driver through the window.

HP turned on his heel and went back the way he had come. He had to fight hard not to break into a run.

‘Hi,’ she said, standing up.

Thomas didn’t return the greeting.

‘Is Mr Black in there?’ He pointed to the door.

‘Yes, but …’

He pushed past her and knocked. Without waiting for an answer he strode into the room and shut the door behind him.

‘What the hell was that about?’ she asked Kjellgren.

‘He’s really pissed off. The police gave him a serious going over …’

‘Hardly surprising, is it …?’

She smiled but Kjellgren seemed to be avoiding her gaze.

Then the door opened again.

‘Can you come in?’ Thomas said to her abruptly.

‘Sure …’

Black and Ice Queen were sitting on the same side of the conference table. She nodded to them but neither acknowledged the greeting. Nor did they ask her to sit down.

‘Miss Normén, we won’t be needing your services any more,’ Black said bluntly.

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re fired,’ the Ice Queen added. ‘Kjellgren will be taking over your job from now on. You’re to take his car back to Stockholm and empty your office. At 17.00 hours today your passcard will stop working, so I suggest you set off at once.’

‘B-but, I don’t understand? Is this because of the Grand Hotel?’

Rebecca glanced quickly at Thomas, then back at Black.

His face was impassive.

‘You fired into the air,’ Thomas growled. ‘Instead of taking action against the attacker, you intentionally caused confusion to stop me neutralizing him. At first we couldn’t understand your actions, but recent information has made the whole thing abundantly clear.’

Rebecca was having trouble understanding what she was hearing. Were they seriously trying to suggest that she had done something wrong? That she was trying to protect …

‘Henrik Pettersson,’ Thomas said. ‘That’s the attacker’s name. And apart from being a suspected terrorist, he also happens to be your younger brother, doesn’t he?’

The needle of the speedometer had hardly slipped below a hundred for the past hour.

We won’t be needing your services any more …

The bastards had fired her!

After all she had done, all the hundreds of hours she had devoted to getting the business set up. Putting together strategies, writing manuals, recruiting the right staff – not to mention all the sleepless nights.

None of that seemed to count for anything.

Had it been any other employer she would already have called the union. Fighting fire with fire.

But who was she supposed to call now?

She was on leave of absence, after all, and hadn’t bothered switching union. The police union would hardly help someone employed by a private company. Which left getting hold of a good lawyer.

But what good would that do? She could hardly force them to give her the job back, and even if that succeeded, she had no desire to stay there and work for someone like Thomas.

He’d sold her down the river, that was obvious. Let her take the hit for his own stupid behaviour.

The idea that the man in the camouflage jacket could have been Henke was clearly utterly ridiculous.

Someone must have told Thomas about Henke, before or after he was interviewed by the police.

Maybe they’d even shown him a photograph? All Thomas had to say was ‘yes, that was him,’ and it was all sorted.

Henke was already under investigation for terrorist activities, and if Thomas identified him as the attacker, his own actions outside the Grand would look almost praiseworthy.

Okay, so he may have committed a weapons offence, but at least he had been trying to combat terrorism.

And he would probably have succeeded, if only the terrorist’s sister hadn’t got involved …

And, hey presto, she was suddenly the scapegoat …!

So who had Thomas talked to up in the custody unit?

If it had all happened the way she imagined, there was really only one suspect.

She put her hands-free earpiece in, pressed one of the speed-dial buttons and waited a few moments.

‘Norrmalm custody unit, Myhrén.’

‘Hi, Myhrén, this is Rebecca Normén,’ she said in an exaggeratedly cheery voice.

‘Hi, Normén, it’s been a while. What can a simple uniform do to help the Security Police?’ the man at the other end chuckled. He evidently hadn’t heard that she’d left, which suited her fine.

‘Just a quick question, Myhrén …’ she began.

‘Shoot!’

‘You brought in a bloke from the Grand Hotel this morning. A foreigner suspected of weapons offences …?’

‘Hmm.’

She heard him rustling some papers in the background.

‘Who was it who interviewed him, do you know?’

‘Hold on!’

More rustling. Then he came back.

‘Right, Normén. He was brought in by one of our patrols and was going to be interviewed by Bengtsson, who was on call this morning. But he insisted on talking to a different colleague. One of yours, to be more precise …’

‘Do you know who?’

She was unconsciously holding her breath.

‘Er, yes, I’ve got his name here. He signed in on the register … Superintendent Eskil Stigsson.’

It hadn’t been easy getting up there.

First he’d had to circle round a load of little streets. Then clamber over a few fences and walls until he was in the right courtyard.

And now he was paying the price for his exertions. His body ached, his t-shirt was wet with sweat, and even though he’d been sitting in the alcove by the window for a fair while, his pulse didn’t seem to want to return to normal.

He wondered if it was time to take one of the horse tablets that Doctor Nora had given him. But stupidly he hadn’t brought anything to drink, and there was no way he was going to swallow one of those depth-charges dry. It would have to wait …

At least his lookout post was perfect. He was in the building diagonally opposite his own, at the very top of the stairwell, with a full view of everything going on down in the street.

The cop van was still there, but both the driver and the plain-clothes cop were gone. Probably hiding in the back.

They were no ordinary surveillance team, he’d already worked that much out. The guy with the earpiece reeked
of cop too much, as did the black minibus. They were more like uniformed gorillas who’d got dressed up in civvies.

Which could really only mean one thing.

At that moment another similar minibus slowly rolled up from Hornsgatan. It stopped outside his door. The man in the passenger seat raised a microphone to his mouth. The next moment the street was crawling with cops.

The door to his building was thrown open and a gang of the heaviest orcs stormed inside. A couple of them were carrying something that looked like a battering ram.

It wouldn’t take them long to smash down his already badly damaged front door.

Besides, they’d already practised once.

Yet another weird
déjà vu
to add to the collection …

His bladder was so full he could hardly sit still, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the scene below. This time they hadn’t been so ambitious with their roadblocks, and weren’t shutting down the whole district.

A patrol car with flashing blue lights was blocking the street further down, and he could see people already starting to gather behind the cordon. Then he saw the roller-blind in one of his windows sway.

Fucking good job he hadn’t bothered to do any cleaning …

So what the hell did the cops think they were going to find this time? It didn’t take him long to realize …

Him, of course!

Stigsson could go to hell.

She was going to get hold of Henke even if it meant she had to kick his door in. She had to make sure he was okay, that Thomas’s story was all rubbish. And that he was keeping well away from the Game, the Event, the Circus or whatever else it was called …

She changed lane, put her foot down and overtook three cars, only to pull back quickly into the right-hand lane and take the next exit.

The car behind her flashed its headlights at her and she responded by sticking her middle finger up over her right shoulder.

She turned into Hornsgatan, and accelerated to get over the hill.

Then she saw the flashing blue lights ahead and slowed down.

A patrol car was parked at the junction, and two uniformed colleagues were busy setting up a cordon across the entrance to Maria Trappgränd.

She crawled past, trying to see what had happened. But all she managed to see was that the door to Henke’s building was open. The nausea she had felt earlier that day suddenly flared up again, and she hurriedly found a free parking space a bit further down the road.

As luck would have it, one of the officers by the cordon recognized her and, without a single word from her, held the plastic tape up to let her through.

She found the rapid-response unit in the stairwell. Six men, all dressed in civilian clothing, but they might as well have been in uniform. The holsters and bulletproof vests they were wearing on top of their clothes didn’t exactly make a discreet impression …

A couple of the officers nodded to her, but it wasn’t until she almost reached the flat that she realized which unit they were from. He was standing in the hall with his back to the doorway, which gave her a few moments to compose herself.

‘Hello, Tobbe,’ she said as calmly as she could.

He jerked and spun round.

‘Er, h-hi Becca …’ he said, apparently not sure where
he should look. ‘I was just wondering if I should call you …’

‘Were you? What for?’ She stepped carefully over the remains of the front door.

The hall was so cramped that he had to press back against the wall so she could squeeze past.

The proximity seemed to make him even more nervous.

‘The flat. I mean, we used to …’

‘… meet here,’ she concluded.

She turned round and looked at him. He was still pretty good looking, and for a brief moment she could almost feel the physical attraction again. But only almost …

There was the sound of steps from the stairs, it sounded as though several people were on their way up.

‘If I were you, Tobbe, I’d stay really fucking quiet about that,’ she said in a low voice.

A pair of forensics officers in overalls, each carrying a large case of tools, appeared in the doorway.

‘All clear?’ one of them asked.

‘Sure, go ahead.’ Tobbe Lundh gestured in at the flat.

The two men squeezed past and a short while later their cameras began to whirr.

‘What was the thinking behind all this?’ she said, leaning forward so the forensics officers wouldn’t hear her. Tobbe looked quickly over his shoulder.

‘There’s a warrant out for your brother, suspicion of attempted murder.’

‘What?!’

He nodded and glanced over his shoulder again.

‘I don’t know any more than that, the Security Police are in charge of the investigation, we’re just helping out. They’ll be here any moment. Maybe you should go …?’

She shook her head.

No, she had no intention of going anywhere. She wanted
to get to the bottom of this, once and for all. Henke might be an idiot, a gullible fool with an oversized ego and zero ability to control his impulses. But he was no murderer, not even a failed murderer.

Unless …?

In purely theoretical terms, perhaps he was, but Dag had been a different matter.

An entirely different matter …

She took a couple of steps further into the flat. God, the state it was in! The flat was usually untidy, but this gave the word an entirely new dimension. There were piles of newspapers all over the place in the hall and kitchen, and the stench of cigarette smoke and rubbish was so strong it made her eyes sting.

All the roller-blinds were down, and the only light came from the bare bulb in the ceiling.

The walls looked odd, all stripy, and it took her a moment to realize what the dark patches were. Duct tape. It looked like he’d taped over all the cracks and sockets.

She carried on into the living room. Same thing there, piles of papers, overflowing improvized ashtrays, and all cracks and sockets completely covered.

‘Must have used at least ten rolls,’ one of the forensics officers concluded, taking a few shots with his camera.

‘Poor sod was probably worried about radiation …’

He zoomed in on one of the covered plug sockets and took another series of pictures.

‘Either that or he was being bugged by aliens,’ the other one said with a grin as he picked up his box of tools.

‘I’ll take the bedroom,’ he said to his colleague, then vanished through the door.

She heard voices in the hall, several of them familiar, and took a deep breath.

Stigsson came through the door and behind him she could make out Runeberg’s great bulk.

‘So you’re here already …’ Stigsson said drily. He didn’t even sound surprised. ‘Have you touched anything in here, Normén?’

‘No, of course not …’

‘Good. But we’ll have to insist that you empty your pockets on the way out. Runeberg, can you deal with that?’

‘Sure, no problem,’ her former boss mumbled, taking a step forward.

‘You spoke to Thomas when he was in custody,’ she said, fixing Stigsson with her cop stare. He didn’t even blink.

‘Of course.’

‘Was it you who suggested that it might possibly have been Henke down at the Grand? Supplying him with a suitable perpetrator so that you could carry on harassing my brother?’

Stigsson shook his head.

‘No need. The television crew who were there were kind enough to share their recording. The perpetrator is clearly visible. There’s no doubt that it was your brother. On the film he’s about to pull something from his coat pocket, something that Mr Thomas is certain was a gun. He might be mistaken, but unfortunately, as you know, a certain confusion broke out after your warning shot, which makes it impossible to see what happened next. Thomas is an extremely credible witness, and, considering the previous suspicions against your brother, obviously we can’t take any risks. What with the royal wedding imminent, it’s probably safest for everyone if he’s locked up …’

He waited a few seconds, as if he were expecting her to say something.

‘Was there anything else you were wondering about, Normén? If not, we’ve got work to do here …’

She opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment the forensics officer came back into the room.

‘You should probably take a look at this …’ he said.

He’d gone for a piss behind a bike shed in the courtyard, then found a tap and managed to get one of the horse pills down. His stomach was grumbling and he probably ought to do something about that, give up on all this and just lie low for a few days until the whole story had leaked out into the evening tabloids and he could read up about whatever the fuck was going on. Besides, he had a plan of his own to stick to: getting hold of Erman and squeezing out everything he knew about the Game.

But he couldn’t quite tear himself away, not quite yet, at least.

There was certainly a degree of satisfaction to be had from being one step ahead for a change.

Hunting the hunters.

The cops had already emptied the flat in their first raid, so obviously it was him they were looking for. Him personally. The stupid bastards must have thought he was at home.

If the cops had only been a bit less obvious, they’d have been right and he’d be back in a cell by now.

Something told him he wouldn’t get out quite so easily next time …

Installed back at his window again, he saw the car was already parked outside his door. A big, dark, stretched Volvo with little chrome flag-holders on the side of the bonnet. Not exactly a surveillance car …

The driver was still in the car, but the passengers seemed to have gone inside already.

The car had black number-plates with yellow lettering,
and it took him a moment to work out what that meant. The car belonged to the military.

This was all getting curiouser and curiouser …

One of the walls in the bedroom was almost completely covered by newspaper cuttings that had been taped up with thick strips of duct tape. Close together, so that they overlapped and occasionally obscured each other. In the middle were photographs of Black from various magazines, all with his face circled with black marker pen in a way that reminded her of the cross hairs of a sniper’s sights.