The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble

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?

Farook says: Yes and no, a real wiz a couple of years ago, I’ve actually heard of him, but these days he lives somewhere in the back of beyond off the grid, supposed to be allergic to electricity, that’s why no-one can call him.

Badboy.128 says: Doesn’t sound too damn promising …

Farook says: My mate says this bloke was involved in that server I found in the mobile, that he configured it and organized the whole set-up.

Badboy.128 says: Okay, I’m in!

Badboy.128 says: So what do we do?

Farook says: My mate’s going to contact the bloke and sort something out, he’s a bit of a recluse as well but my man thinks it’ll work. I’ll MSN you instructions when it’s sorted.

Badboy.128 says: ok fine.

Farook says: one more thing …

Badboy.128 says: Shoot, mr Pathfinder!

Farook says: please please don’t send me that file with the bouncing smileys, I have to reboot the machine just to get rid of them!!!!

Badboy.128 says: you mean these?

She read the message over and over again, without really understanding it.

Rebecca,

I and my family have nothing to say to you.

Pernilla

Nilla had replied to her email. And was blowing her out, pretty much as she’d expected. But there was just one problem. She’d never sent the email, just saved it in her Drafts folder to think about it. But when she checked the email had gone and she found it in the Sent folder, fired off yesterday afternoon apparently, just before they had shooting practice.

Nilla,

There’s something I’d like to talk to you about, something I’ve put off for far too long.

Could we meet for a short chat at a time and place that suits you?

Sincerely,

Rebecca Normén (formerly Pettersson)

Her own words, exactly as she remembered them, down to the last comma.

How the hell had that happened?

She remembered that she had had the computer on yesterday, but could an email really send itself? Was there some sort of automated function that sent drafts after a day or so?

She didn’t think there was, but on the other hand you never knew with the police computer system.

So what should she do now? She didn’t really have much choice. The notes were pretty clear. If she was going to get to the bottom of everything, she’d have to talk to Nilla, whether Nilla wanted to or not.

Just to be on the safe side she phoned her answer machine to explain to herself why she shouldn’t just back down.

11

Name of the Game

Another bastard boiling hot day! Global warming must be on overtime judging by how long this heat-wave’s been going on, HP thought as he tugged his sticky t-shirt away from his chest.

The northbound commuter train, a couple more stations and then a bus.

But then what?

He had the name of the bus stop on a bit of paper; get out and wait was the instruction. In the middle of nowhere, you could hardly find it even on Google maps. HP sighed and rubbed his sweaty neck.

From what little he had been told, the bloke he was going to see didn’t seem to have a complete set of cutlery in his drawer, but on the other hand this was HP’s best and actually only chance of getting somewhere and making any sort of sense of this whole fucking mess.

He got off the train and peered cautiously along the platform. Another three passengers had got off with him. An elderly couple and a fifteen-year-old homeboy with a back-to-front cap and his trousers halfway down. He waited on one of the benches for them all to leave, then, when he was entirely alone, he wandered off towards the bus station.

He stopped on purpose at the wrong bus stop, saw his bus come, and it was only when it was about to pull away that he sprinted over the road and forced the irate driver to brake hard and let him on. If anyone had been following him, he’d have lost them by now, either here or when he did the platform trick at South Station half an hour or so before. Even so, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched.

After thirty-five minutes on the bus he was there. But despite counting the bus stops and, just to make sure, asking the driver, he still wasn’t sure he was in the right place. Because this truly was the middle of fucking nowhere. An isolated bus stop on a narrow seventy-km/h road, open fields in all directions and hardly a building in sight.

There was a smell of dry earth, straw and something else natural that HP couldn’t quite identify. And of course there was no-one there to meet him …

He lit a fag and chilled for a while but the sun was burning the back of his neck and soon his grimy t-shirt was clinging to his back with sweat.

He must remember to nick a pair of shorts.

A few cows were mooing in the distance and on the horizon he saw a little yellow plane coming towards him over the treetops. The plane was pulling a long banner and HP couldn’t help smiling.

He hadn’t seen that sort of advert since he was little. Hadn’t the internet and commercial television killed off advertising with real banners? But, on the other hand, this was the arse-end of nowhere and you could probably get away with anything round here.

‘Fjärdhundra Market 28-31 July’ the banner read.

He grinned again. Fjärdhundra Market! Bound to be a load of morons in dungarees trying to guess the weight of a pig, topple cows over, or get off with their fifteen-year-old cousins. A banjo-solo, maybe? Dingelingdingdingdingsdingding ding …

It was beyond him why anyone would choose to live like that instead of in the city like a proper Homo sapiens.

‘Yeehaa, Farthundra!’ he yelled, waving at the plane as it passed overhead. But even though the pilot must have seen him as he stood there in the middle of the road among the new-mown fields, HP didn’t get a hint of a response. Not even a little dip of the wings.

‘Fuck you, then, shithead,’ he muttered. With the cigarette dangling from his mouth, he switched to other less friendly gestures as the plane disappeared from sight.

When the sound of the engine died away he heard another, angry-sounding motor coming towards him. It turned out to be a flatbed moped, and the character riding it looked like Tim Burton’s younger brother.

Long fair hair, a scruffy matching beard, all held down by one of those old leather flying-helmets with built-in goggles. Blue overalls that had definitely seen better days and a pair of old army boots completed the outfit, and yet again HP had trouble holding back his laughter.

A bit odd, yeah, right!

Fuck, this was serious Candid Camera stuff!

The moped man stopped sharply in front of him and grappled with the gears.

‘Are you HP?’

‘No, I’m just a tourist who likes cows and fields, what the fuck do you think?’ HP muttered.

‘Whassat?’ The moped muppet leaned forward.

‘Yes, that’s me. Nice with all these cows and fields you’ve got out here,’ HP replied, this time louder so the man could hear him over the noise of the two-stroke engine.

‘Erman,’ the bloke nodded in reply. ‘Jump on!’

HP hesitated for a moment, then, still grinning, jumped up onto the flatbed. Of course, a little ride on a flatbed moped was all he needed to reinforce all his prejudices about the countryside. The banjo duet in his head got even louder and he hummed along, safe in the knowledge that his driver couldn’t hear him over the clatter of the engine.

Erman followed the road for a couple of kilometres, then turned off, heading straight across the fields on an almost invisible gravel track.

As they approached the tree-line the track got even bumpier, but HP’s chauffeur made no attempt to ease up on the gas, and by the time they pulled up outside the little cottage hidden in amongst the fir trees, the whole hillbilly thing had almost stopped being fun.

While Erman parked the moped HP stretched and massaged his sore backside.

Where the fuck had he ended up now?

The house was small, maybe just fifty or sixty square metres, not much bigger than Auntie Berit’s allotment cottage. The façade had once been red but most of the planks had faded to grey, with just a few hints of pink where the sun and rain hadn’t got to them. The drooping concrete-fibre roof was green with moss and algae and the cottage was surrounded by metre-high nettles. The whole thing looked ready to collapse at any moment.

‘Go on in,’ Erman muttered, nodding towards the entrance as he closed the door of the little outhouse. HP did as he was told and discovered that the inside of the shack looked considerably better than the outside had led him to expect.

The kitchen and small living room were clean and tidy, there was a smell of detergent and in one corner there was a cosy crackle from a cast-iron stove. In spite of that the house was cool, probably because it was shaded by the surrounding firs.

‘You followed the instructions, I hope?’ Erman said abruptly as he came into the kitchen a few seconds later.

‘Yep,’ HP said. ‘No mobile, paid cash for all tickets and did a bit of James Bond stuff before catching the train, so your little paradise is safe from discovery.’

Erman grunted and tossed the flying-helmet onto a kitchen chair.

To his surprise HP realized that his host wasn’t some old bloke like he’d first thought, but at a guess was just a few years older than him.

Erman gestured to him to sit down on the kitchen sofa, then put an old-fashioned coffee-pot on the stove and started to get cups out.

‘So you’re allergic to electricity, how do you get that?’ HP began in an exaggeratedly friendly tone, but got a quick snort in reply.

‘Twenty-five years with computers, magnetic fields, radio waves and all the other shit flying around through the air. Then you wake up one day covered in a rash and can hardly breathe.’

He poured them both coffee and HP took a quick, scalding sip. Boiled coffee, he hadn’t drunk that since his grandmother had died, he realized as he managed to swallow the burning liquid and blink a tear from his eye. Apart from the temperature, it tasted pretty good.

The porcelain cup was wafer-thin and the handle so finely made that he had to hold it Lidingö style, with his ring and little fingers sticking out. The coffee-set had to be at least as old as the house, if not even older.

He swirled the coffee round, blowing on it, then took another cautious sip as he peered at his host.

‘So you want to know more about a server I installed?’ Erman said, glowering suspiciously at him across the table. ‘I don’t usually talk to people I don’t know, or with anyone at all these days, come to that.’

No shit! HP thought, grinning into his coffee cup.

‘But an old friend said you were okay and I owe him, big time you could say. If he says you’re all right, then you’re okay in my book. So what do you want to know, and why?’

HP had worked out his strategy while he was on the bus and made an effort to sound nonchalant.

‘Just who you installed the server for and where it is. I’m the art director of a small advertising agency and they’ve got some visual material I’m interested in.’

Erman gave him a long look and HP did his best to look like he thought a hard-working art director would.

Then his host grinned and threw out his arms.

‘Well I never, an art director!’

HP smiled and nodded.

‘And there I was thinking that you were a player who’d fucked up and was desperately trying to work out the identity of the juggernaut that ran over you, and why.’

Erman burst out into a roar of laughter and HP had to cough several times to get the scalding coffee out of his windpipe.

Another boiling hot day! A day in the office, which meant a bit of paperwork, reading up on current threat analysis and the preliminary programme for the next round of the EU Presidency. Plenty of time to clear stuff from her desk.

She got a glass of water from the kitchen, took a deep breath, and tried to shift the tension in her neck and jaw.

Even this early in the day, her shirt was already wet under the arms. The building may have been air-conditioned, but every reorganization of the police force seemed to require new walls and office partitions, so practically all the cool air had ended up in a few rooms at the far end of the corridor. To get at least an illusion of coolness, Rebecca had been forced to buy the fan that was now stirring up the hot air in the office she shared with three other bodyguards. She settled down behind her desk and shut her eyes, letting the blast of air cross her face a couple of times as she tried to gather her thoughts.

It had taken a while to dig out the phone number. Nilla wasn’t in the phone book and she wasn’t listed online either.

Ex-directory, of course, just like most police employees, whether or not it was actually necessary. But there were ways round that, of course. A call to a girl she knew in personnel was all it took. A white lie about her and Nilla sharing a lift to a course, and suddenly she had her work rota, home number and mobile. Who said female networks didn’t work?

But now she was hesitating again.

How should she start, and what did she really expect to get out of the conversation? Get it all out in the open, once and for all, she repeated to herself. Turn the page at last and put a stop to all those damn notes …

Not exactly a straightforward aim, and maybe not even possible. Just a few days ago she wouldn’t be bothering with any of this. After all, she’d gone more than a decade without getting bogged down in the past. But after what happened out at Lindhagensplan everything had changed.

Seeing Kruse there in hospital with tubes and wires everywhere, admittedly a bit brighter now than to begin with, had made her think along different lines. It could easily have been her lying there. Should have been, maybe, just like the note implied; it had been her mistake.

So that’s why she was thinking of trying to make contact, properly this time. Clear the air, say what she should have said all that time ago, and get some sort of closure. First with his family, then, after that, with Henke somehow. Get him to forgive her for what she’d done, or, more truthfully, hadn’t done … If anything like that was actually possible.

Their conversation the other day hadn’t exactly given her much hope. She’d tried ringing him but the new number he’d given her had been cut off. Typical Henke.

But what was she actually going to say?

‘The truth!’ a voice inside her head whispered.

In spite of the heat she shivered.

‘So, tell me what they got you to do, and don’t worry about rule number one. In the forest no-one can hear you squeal!’

Erman let out another rumbling belly-laugh as he refilled their cups.

‘To start with, what number did you have?’

HP was a bit taken aback, to put it mildly. The shaggy geek had tricked him, playing the village idiot even though he knew exactly how the land lay. Fucking brilliant, what a laugh, yippikayee mothafucker!

But what the hell, he just had to bite the rotten apple and make the best of it.

‘One hundred and twenty-eight,’ he muttered, and for the third time in just a few days he told his whole story, right from the start, with a few choice bits missing.

When he was finished Erman nodded thoughtfully.

‘Well, I can certainly understand why you’re here. You’ve got plenty of reasons to be furious, I can see that. But now I’m going to tell you why you should think seriously before getting into round two with the Game Master, if that’s what you’ve got in mind?’

Suddenly he got up from his chair and walked around the little house, bending down to look out of the low windows. Evidently satisfied, he returned to the kitchen table.

‘Now listen carefully, lad, because you don’t really seem to be taking this seriously … unless you’re just a bit crazy. You don’t mess with the Game, if you haven’t already realized that. I used to work for them, so I know more about it than most people, but we can talk about that later. To start with, who do you think has been leaving comments on your page?’

‘Erm, well, people who’ve watched the clips?’

HP had never given it much thought. The answer was fairly obvious, after all.

‘Well, it has to be people who like watching cool film clips and don’t mind paying for it. Otherwise the Game wouldn’t work, would it?’ he added, slightly uncertainly.

Erman shook his head.

‘So you really think there are loads of people out there with nothing better to do than watch a load of pranks, and who’ve got fed up of doing it for free on YouTube and MTV?’

‘Er … yeah?’ HP managed to say, mostly in the absence of anything more sensible.

‘What about the assignments, then? All that stuff you and all the other players do, they just come about by accident, because it’s all a bit of fun, I suppose?’ Erman looked at him inquiringly.

‘Erm, well, I haven’t really thought about that,’ HP said, feeling his dunce’s hat growing.

Erman sighed.

‘No, I’m afraid you’re not one of life’s great thinkers, HP. I suppose you’re the sort who follows his impulses and does whatever suits him, am I right or am I right?’

‘Huh, what, what do you mean?’ HP was pretty sure he’d just been insulted, and quickly adopted his most aggrieved expression.

‘What I mean is that you’re the sort who takes care of himself and doesn’t give a shit about anyone else.’

‘So what’s so wrong with looking out for number one?’ HP folded his arms over his chest and leaned back.

Erman sighed again.

‘Nothing at all, in fact it’s pretty much an advantage when it comes to the Game. We don’t know each other, but let me try a few wild guesses.’

He counted on his fingers.

‘You haven’t got a permanent job, you don’t mind cutting a few corners if necessary and as a result you’ve got a criminal record for various minor offences. And you’ve got little or no family and not too many close friends. Stop me if you think I’m going too wide of the mark …’

He glanced quickly at HP before carrying on, using the fingers of the other hand:

‘You’re also desperate for approval and/or seriously short of cash. How am I doing so far?’

HP was speechless.

How the fuck could this hermit know all that?

Had he checked him out somehow, or had someone blabbed?

‘Easy, my friend,’ Erman chuckled. ‘I’m not a mind-reader. It’s just that the qualities I’ve listed are the things that are valued in a Player – in other words, someone like you makes a good Player.’

He nodded to emphasize what he was saying, as if HP was a bit thick, which irritated HP more than the quick run-through of his personality.

‘Nothing in the Game is a coincidence, you have to remember that!’ Erman went on. ‘You found that mobile phone because they wanted you to find it. They’d already selected you because they thought you had what it took. First you got a couple of easy assignments so that everyone could see what you were like, pretty much like when they warm up horses out at Solvalla: Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, and then the Game is up and running!’

HP’s head had gone blank.

‘You … you mean they were betting on me, like the horses?’ he eventually managed to say.

‘Congratulations, Einstein, the penny finally drops!’ Erman grinned. ‘The Game is fundamentally nothing more than an advanced betting set-up, only a hell of a lot more exciting than football or horse-racing. They’ve been playing for years, long before the internet. The men placing bets are called the Circle, and they’re all over the world. You can place short-term bets, from assignment to assignment, or you can place a long-term bet on the End Game.’

‘The end game?’ the tumble-dryer in HP’s head had suddenly kicked into action.

‘Good question, maybe you’re not so slow after all!’

Erman got up and started waving his arms about.

‘Players who reach a certain level get to participate in larger scenarios, and all their assignments lead up to some sort of grand finale, the ultimate test. The Circle can bet on the final outcome, the End Game. Will a Player be able to cope with the pressure, or will he buckle, you get it?’

HP nodded uncertainly. His loony radar had started to bleep. This sounded completely crazy …

‘Best of all, Players don’t usually work out how everything fits together but act purely on impulse, which makes the Game even more authentic. A true show of character, you could say.’

Erman took another turn about the cottage before he returned to the kitchen table.

He gave HP a long, searching look, and seemed to be weighing something up seriously before he went on.

‘Okay, like I said, I don’t usually talk to anyone, and above all never about the Game, but you’ve got a pretty good sponsor who guarantees that you’re okay, and you seem a bit too daft to be playing a double-bluff …’

Erman pulled a piece of paper and a pen from a kitchen drawer and started to draw a pyramid.

‘This is what it looks like. Right at the bottom are loads of small-time players who are happy with a little bit of excitement and a reliable source of extra income, they’re called Ants. The Ants are used for small jobs, like getting hold of stuff, or information, preparing and delivering the tools for various assignments, or helping to film them. Ants never aim for the top, they never become real Players, they just play it safe, if you see what I mean?’