Game: A Thriller (12 page)

♦  ♦  ♦

Okay, he was in position right at the designated time, 21:12.

The western side of Lindhagensplan, on the bridge crossing Drottningholmsvägen, exactly according to instructions.

There was even a little map attached, which was handy, seeing as there were several overpasses to choose from, and he had driven around a bit before he found the right place.

The moped was perfect for stuff like this, you could just swing around and ride back along the hard shoulder against the flow of traffic if you made a mistake. Okay, so the law-abiding Svenssons in their little socialist boxes blew their horns and flashed their lights at him, but you had to ignore that.

He was sitting astride the moped waiting for instructions. A few meters below him the cars flew past heading into the city. In front of him, high above his head, hung the double bridges of
the Essinge expressway. The noise of the traffic practically drowned out the moped’s engine when it was idling.

So what happened now?

The LED light started to flash.

♦  ♦  ♦

They were approaching the end of the bridge. Kruse was driving, seeing as he had been in the service much longer and therefore got first dibs on the jobs.

Rebecca was sitting beside him in the passenger seat. She glanced up at the extra rearview mirror on her side. The entire convoy was driving in close formation down the left-hand lane, at a speed of about a hundred, exactly as agreed. No problems.

“Crossing Traneberg, heading for Lindhagen,” she reported to Control over the radio.

If she looked out to the right and tried to see past the trees, she’d soon be able to see her own little house up ahead.

The overpasses of the Essinge expressway were coming closer and closer. She squinted at their dark silhouette. It almost looked like there was someone standing up there on one of the bridges.

♦  ♦  ♦

“
Pull up the bag
,” the message said.

So he did.

A blue-striped PE bag, it turned out. Tied to the outside of the railing, and almost exactly the same as one he had made many years ago in sewing class. Even the color of the cord was the same.

It was a pretty neat coincidence, really. He seemed to remember that his was hanging in his wardrobe at home.
Weren’t his old football boots still in it? They must have been there a couple of years by now; he could hardly remember the last time he used them. Maybe the summer before last, something like that?

He felt the bag. It was heavy. He undid it, full of anticipation.

♦  ♦  ♦

Yes, there was definitely someone standing on one of the lower bridges, and there certainly shouldn’t be.

They were all expressways up there, no pedestrians allowed. Kruse didn’t seem to have noticed anything, but he was mainly concentrating on the traffic in the right-hand lane. She raised the microphone to her mouth but stopped halfway. The bridge was approaching fast and she could see the person up there moving. Her instincts were screaming at her to sound the alarm, order the convoy to halt, and turn back.

But what if she was wrong?

♦  ♦  ♦

A stone, a big one, maybe three or four kilos. Sharp edges too. Black, with a slightly rough surface that felt warm against the palm of his hand. A patch of something sticky almost made his fingers slip. He moved the stone to his left hand and wiped whatever it was off on his jeans.

His heart was pounding in his chest. So what happened now?

When he saw the blue lights coming toward him along Drottningholmsvägen he began to realize what this was all about. With the stone back in his right hand he leaned cautiously over the railing.

The light flashed again. He had guessed right.

Lights, camera, action
, he thought excitedly before he dropped the stone from the bridge.

♦  ♦  ♦

Either Kruse didn’t hear her or else the warning came so late that he simply didn’t have time to react. Because suddenly there was a crash as if lightning had struck the windshield and the world ahead of them turned milky white.

Glass sprayed into the car and she felt her face stinging.

“Shit!” she heard Kruse roar. “Fucking shit!”

He rammed his heavy foot instinctively on the brake pedal and wrested the car to the right so they wouldn’t be hit by the escort vehicle behind them.

By the smallest possible margin the car behind them got past, but Kruse’s swerve was so sudden that they slammed into the concrete barrier on the right-hand side. The Volvo rebounded out into the left-hand lane, where the prime minister’s BMW was just maneuvering to get past. The driver swerved wildly to the left to escape what looked like an unavoidable collision.

“Shit,” Rebecca managed to echo before Kruse did what any bodyguard in his position would have done. He let go of the brake, put his foot down on the accelerator, and wrenched the wheel to the right. The front wheels regained their grip on the road and they shot away from the prime minister’s car like an arrow, missing the metal arrow marking the turnoff to Lindhagensplan by a hair’s breadth, and plowed straight into the railing facing the park.

A violent smash, then a feeling of floating. A second of weightlessness when all that could be heard was the roaring engine.

Then everything went black.

♦  ♦  ♦

What a fucking circus!

The stone hit perfectly in the middle of the windshield and when he looked over the other side of the bridge he saw the Volvo swerving violently between the lanes. It almost rammed another car with a blue light on in the left-hand lane, but suddenly lurched sharply to the right before shooting through the side railing and carrying on, rolling wildly, into the park, where it finally came to rest upside down.

He quickly kicked the moped into gear and crossed the traffic lane, then, stopping on the other side of the bridge, he pulled off the camera and zoomed in on the smoking wreck in among the trees. The Volvo was completely still now and there was no sign of movement from it at all.

But who the hell cared about that!

Because now he was the new number one, the Master of the Game!

Mission accomplished, he thought ecstatically. Three thousand fucking points and almost twenty-five thousand nice new kronor in his account, apart from anything else. He wondered who the hell had been in that car? At a guess, some big shot, but who? Oh well, he’d probably find out as soon as he switched on his computer. Now he had to get home and gratefully accept the adoration of the masses!

He put the moped into gear, glanced quickly over his shoulder, and did a terrific start out into the traffic lane.

The collision was so hard that he bounced back into the railing. The front wheel, which had suddenly been twisted into a shapeless lump, locked instantly, and he just had time to put his hands up to protect himself as he flew headfirst onto the tarmac.

He felt his palms scraping over the road surface and a burning pain shot up one arm before the rest of his body hit the ground. The helmet made a cracking sound as it shattered; then the air was knocked out of him.

But he didn’t lose consciousness, at least not properly. He could hear voices and screaming, probably from the stupid fucker who had driven into him. Where the hell had he come from, anyway?

Got to get up
, he thought.
Got to get away from here.

But his body wouldn’t obey. He couldn’t actually even lift his head from the tarmac. All of a sudden his skull seemed full of cement, impossible to move or even turn. Was he paralyzed? A cripple?

Fuck, fuck, fuck!!!

Slowly he tried to open his mouth to get a bit of air. But his head was full of porridge and everything seemed to be happening in ultrarapid. The voices were coming closer, getting clearer.

“. . . bastard . . . threw something . . . the Volvo down there . . . called the cops.”

Suddenly his paralysis eased and he managed to take a deep breath.

The pain came from out of nowhere. His head, his legs, and his hands more than anything else hurt like hell, but the sensation actually made him feel better. If you could feel things, you weren’t paralyzed, that seemed fairly logical.

His vision cleared slightly and from the corner of his eye he could see several dark silhouettes leaning over him.

From somewhere in the distance there was the sound of sirens.

He tried to get up and this time it went a bit better. He raised one hand toward the men to get some help, but none
of them moved. Then he saw a flashing blue light right alongside him.

“It was him!” one of the shadowy figures yelled, but HP was still having trouble focusing enough to see which one. With an effort he heaved himself up into a kneeling position. Then someone suddenly grabbed hold of his arms and a moment later he was lying across a car bonnet.

“Take it easy, boy,” an authoritative voice said in one ear.

“You’re under arrest on suspicion of attempted murder.”

And for a few seconds he thought he was eighteen again.

FLASHING BLUE LIGHTS,
she remembered them. But that was pretty much it.

Rebecca had only vague memories of the rescue operation. She had almost no recollection of the early part of it, when the firemen rolled the car the right way up and cut the roof off to get them out. She remembered fragments of a trip in an ambulance, probably to St. Göran’s Hospital. An oxygen mask over her nose and mouth, a plastic collar around her neck. Pain in her head, chest, and face. People in white-and-green coats. The sounds of running and urgent shouting. Occasionally she thought she could hear familiar voices among all the strangers, but she wasn’t altogether sure. She made an effort to hear what they were saying, but no matter how hard she tried the words merged together into a single monotonous mumble. The world didn’t start to get clearer until she was eventually wheeled into a room in the hospital, whichever one it was, and the doctor started to examine her.

“Lucky” was one of the first things that sank in properly. “You were lucky, Rebecca.”

She didn’t really understand what he meant.

What did he mean, lucky?

Someone had smashed their windshield and it was only thanks to Kruse’s decisive action that they hadn’t collided with the prime minister’s car and everything hadn’t gone completely to hell.

Then they had crashed through the barrier and the car was so badly wrecked that they had to be cut out of it.

So exactly what did this idiot mean when he said she was lucky?

“Concussion, but fairly mild, a couple of minor cuts to your scalp and face that will need stitches, and a few cracked ribs. But that’s pretty much it. Considering what happened, you were lucky,” he concluded, simultaneously answering her question.

“My partner?” she managed to say, although it felt like her head and mouth were full of cotton wool. “How’s Kruse?”

“I’m afraid he wasn’t quite as fortunate. Sometimes it isn’t always a good thing to be big and heavy, and car accidents are precisely one such occasion.”

The doctor adjusted his glasses and gave her a knowing look. Her head suddenly felt like it was about to burst and for a moment she considered pulling out her Sig and asking him again, considerably less politely this time. But she bit her tongue and waited patiently for the answer.

He leafed through his notes.

“Head injuries, broken arms and ribs are what we’ve got so far. Your partner is still in intensive care. It looks as if the roof crumpled mainly on his side.”

He looked up and smiled.

“Like I said, you were . . .”

“Lucky,” she interrupted, and suppressed another urge to draw her gun, this time to blow his head off.

♦  ♦  ♦

Flashing blue lights, handcuffs, then the backseat of an unmarked police car. They must have been very close by.

He instantly remembered that a lot of cops used to stop for coffee at the Shell garage not far away.

Typical of his miserable fucking luck!

Both of the plainclothes officers were thickset men, with shaved heads and bull necks. One of them beside him, the other at the wheel.

“So, you’re the sort who throws stones at police cars, are you?” gorilla number one said as soon as they had set off.

HP didn’t answer; now if ever was a time to keep quiet. His head ached and he felt like he was going to be sick. The pain in his lower arm was hardly helped by the fact that his hands had been bent up behind his back.

The cops grinned and exchanged knowing glances in the rearview mirror. They turned off the expressway and headed into Kungsholmen. Next stop, Police Headquarters in Kronoberg.

Balls!

Everything had gone completely to hell. He’d been careless and not looked around properly. And had missed that damn idiot who rammed him. How stupid could you be?

He gulped a couple of time to suppress the urge to throw up. Now he had to keep quiet and ask for a lawyer as quickly as possible. He knew the routine. There was no point talking to the orcs in the car, they didn’t have any say in anything.

“What’s the matter, can’t you speak?” gorilla number one said in a mocking tone that for some reason made HP feel even more uneasy.

He stuck to his strategy and kept quiet.

“No problem, boy.” The cop chuckled, giving his colleague in the driver’s seat another look.

The blow came out of nowhere; it must have been a left hook and he had no way of defending himself.
Wham
, right on his cheekbone, and his head thudded into the side window.

“What the f . . . !” he managed to say before the next blow struck. A right hook this time, straight at the middle of his face, and he felt his nose crack.

This can’t be happening, this only happens in films!
he managed to think before the third punch blurred his vision.

When he came around they were already down in the garage, and they were dragging him out of the car. Metal doors, a lift, a couple of blue shirts hurrying past, then a long, brightly lit corridor with beige plastic flooring. Doors, voices, a lot of rushing about, and finally a small interview room.