The Game Trilogy

by Anders de la Motte

A noise off to his left made him jump and he stood there with the key in the lock. His heart was practically beating a hole in his chest, forcing him to take a few deep breaths to lower his pulse-rate. Fuck, he was twitchy!

  Nice and easy now …

  He glanced cautiously at his neighbour’s door. The sound had come from there, he was sure of that, in fact he even recognized it from the previous day. A security chain rattling against the inside of a door. A chain didn’t start to swing of its own accord, so someone must have managed to nudge it. His new neighbour was heading out.

  For reasons he couldn’t explain, his need to know the identity of his new neighbour was much stronger today, so he waited a few more seconds, all the while staring at his neighbour’s door. But nothing happened. The door remained closed.

  He was just about to turn away when he thought he saw movement through the spyhole. A vague shift from light to dark, as if someone had put their eye to the hole. And suddenly he was sure someone was standing on the other side of the door.

  Watching him …

  He quickly turned the key in the lock, forced open his crooked front door and slammed it quickly behind him.

  She held her breath as she listened in the direction of the door. She thought she could hear footsteps in the distance. Even if it was just lard-arse Sunesson shuffling along in his Birkenstocks, she didn’t feel like letting him know what case she was poking about in. She quickly dropped the bunch of keys in her bag and closed the box again. The steps were approaching along the main passageway.

  She recognized hard heels on the concrete floor. A pair of proper shoes, unlike Sunesson’s sandals or a beat officer’s boots. Not many people in Police Headquarters wore shoes like that, and whoever this was, she felt no great desire to bump into him. But the only way out was along that main passageway …

  She gently lifted the box back into place on the shelf.

  The steps were slowly getting closer, steady, almost military.

  She looked round and took a few quick steps further down the aisle. One of the bottom shelves on the same side was empty and, mostly on the spur of the moment, she crouched down and crept into it.

  The footsteps were close now, but a large box on a pallet blocked the line of sight to the corridor. All she had to do was wait until the person had gone past and then creep out as quietly as possible.

  Suddenly the footsteps stopped. Rebecca huddled up even more and held her breath.

  Then the person carried on walking, but much slower now. It took her a couple of seconds to realize where they were going. Down the passageway she was in!

  She pressed against the side of the large box on the pallet. There were still several shelves between her and the far end of the passageway. If the person was heading towards one of them, she was bound to be seen.

  Shit, it had been a really stupid idea to try to hide. She should have brazened it out, saying hello and pretending everything was fine.

  What the hell was she supposed to say now?

  Hello, yes, I just crawled in to see what things look like from down here.

  The steps were getting closer, just a few metres left now.

  She would have to climb out, that would be slightly more normal than being found crouching at the back of one of the shelves. Her heart was pounding in her chest.

  She took a deep breath and shifted her bodyweight forward. She had to play this calm, as natural as possible.

  The steps suddenly stopped. She heard boxes moving, then someone clearing their throat.

  A man, no doubt about that, and just a metre or so away.

  Rebecca tilted her head, leaned forward and cautiously peeped round the edge of the box.

  Shit!

  She pulled her head back quick as a flash. A pair of dark trousers belonging to a suit, matching black shoes, that was pretty much all she had seen. Yet she was still quite sure. The man standing in the passageway was Stigsson. He was standing in front of the boxes she had just been looking at.

  She heard him lift one of them down, then the thud as he put it on the floor.

  The lid came off with a dry rustle, then muffled noises, as if he were rooting around in the box.

  A sudden pain in her left calf made her flinch involuntarily. Damn, the uncomfortable position had made her leg start to cramp. The pain was getting worse and spreading upwards. When it reached her thigh she had to bite her lip to stop herself groaning. Stigsson was still rummaging about in the box.

  She tried to shift her weight to let some blood through to her tormented muscles, but lost her balance instead and fell against the side of the box.

  The noises from the passageway stopped.

  The pain in her leg was getting worse and she bit her lip so hard that she could taste blood.

  Stigsson cleared his throat again.

  Her back was slowly slipping down the cardboard box and she pressed her working leg against the floor to stay upright. But it was impossible to keep her balance. Her body was slowly sliding towards the edge of the box, closer and closer to the passageway.

  In just a few seconds she would tumble out and land at his feet.

  Suddenly she heard the sound of a box being shoved back onto the shelf. Footsteps snapped on the concrete floor like cracks of a whip, and for a moment she thought her heart had stopped.

  Then she realized that the noise was getting quieter, and spent the last of her strength trying to stay upright. Just as the storeroom door slammed shut she fell flat onto the hard floor.

  6

  Head games

  He had spent three mornings in a row with his arse parked on that fucking bench. Starting half an hour before the time of the first sighting, and staying for an hour afterwards. He had his hood up, his cap pulled down over his face and, just to be on the safe side, a cheap pair of sunglasses perched on his nose. All to make sure he couldn’t be seen.

  But, just like the previous two days, he’d failed to see anything, and now the whole project was starting to feel more stupid than was strictly reasonable. As his arse slowly went numb, he realized how ridiculously he was behaving. He had considerably more important problems than a possible doppelganger wandering about Södermalmstorg, and – just like his Playstation, or having a wank – this whole project was yet another way of avoiding getting to grips with the real issue.

  Erman was dead, he had died by fire when the Game finally caught up with him almost two years ago. They had incinerated his cottage, his remains were found in the embers. The poor sod had tried to live outside the connected world like a hermit but by the time HP went to see him out in the sticks he had definitely wandered the wrong side of the fine line between clear-sighted genius and total wacko madness. In spite of that he had certainly been very useful. Opening HP’s eyes and getting him to see what the Game was really about. And not just its most superficial and singularly unappealing levels: the Ants keeping watch, digging out information and recruiting suitable players to carry out the various tasks. Then the betting, while the tasks were filmed and broadcast live and exclusive online for internet gamblers.

  No, what Erman had told him, combined with his own experiences, had also made him understand the considerably darker aspects of the Game, and what it was really capable of. No matter what the bloke’s mental state might have been, HP still owed the lunatic backwoodsman quite a bit, and even if he had tried to convince himself that Erman’s death wasn’t really his fault, his excuses all rang pretty hollow. It was more than likely his own guilty conscience and lack of sleep, edged about with a bit of general-purpose paranoia, that had got him seeing ghosts in broad daylight.

  There was no other explanation.

  Or rather, there simply couldn’t be any other explanation, he corrected himself as he kicked off his trainers and lay down on the sofa.

  He landed on something hard and, after a few acrobatic manoeuvres interspersed with a lot of swearing, managed to dig out the remote control from behind his back, and zapped through a range of dreary daytime
television programmes.

  On the coffee table he found a half-empty box of Marlboros. He lit one and tried to direct the column of smoke towards the lamp-hook in the ceiling.

  That was when he noticed it. High up, on top of his Billy bookcase, it was lying there like a little black box. A solitary, abandoned book.

  From where he was lying, all he could see was a bit of the spine, so presumably you couldn’t see any of it if you were standing in front of the bookcase, which would explain why the cops had missed it.

  He twisted his head and squinted as he tried to work out what book it was, but the writing was too small. It was definitely a library book, though, he could see the white classification letters at the bottom of the spine. Three letters, probably Hce – Foreign Fiction …

  So the plods had missed an item of stolen property right in front of their noses, and instead filled their boxes with perfectly legitimate porn and dog-eared paperbacks.

  He tried to mimic Hellström’s slightly nasal voice: Henrik Pettersson, you are being held on suspicion of crimes against the state for not returning your library books on time. How do you plead?

  Guilty as charged, fuckface!!!

  He grinned and blew another column of smoke, this time aimed towards the top of the bookcase.

  Suddenly he realized he was hungry. How long was it since he last ate? Properly, rather than just stuffing his face over the sink with a micro-bombed Gorby pie?

  He couldn’t actually remember …

  But the rumbling from his stomach was a good sign, as if the old library book had made his brain jump track and return to more solid ground. A shower and a bit of decent food would probably do wonders for his mood. Chinese, or why not a serious kebab down at the Jerusalem? Mmm!

  He glanced at the clock on the television: 10.25.

  A bit early for lunch, he’d have to hold out at least another half hour. Shower first, then. He stood up, but instead of going straight to the bathroom, he went over to the bookcase, stretched up on tiptoe and reached for the book.

  His fingertips just managed to catch the edge and he shuffled the book a few centimetres closer.

  The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. A definite favourite, he must have read it at least ten times. In all likelihood the book was from the library down in Bagarmossen, which meant that the theft had passed the statute of limitation some ten years ago, if not more.

  On the basis of this new information, my client wishes to change his plea to – not guiltyyy!

  He reached up a bit further, got a better grip with his fingertips and tried to grab hold of the book. But instead he lost his balance and the book slipped over the edge of the bookcase. The object on top of it fell with it, hitting him hard on the head before tumbling to the floor.

  A phone.

  A shiny, silvery phone, with a glass touch-screen.

  The passcard was white and, unlike the one she had borrowed from Runeberg a couple of days before, it didn’t contain any visible information at all. No name, no logo, and certainly no photograph of its owner. Just a small, plain white card that had appeared in a padded envelope with no sender’s name given.

  Presumably the anonymity was another security measure. A bulky window-envelope with a bank logo on it reeked of credit card, and thus must increase the risk of it being stolen by several hundred percent.

  They clearly took security very seriously.

  She handed her driving licence to the man on the other side of the counter, and he inspected it carefully before typing her ID number into the computer.

  It was the same man as before but, even though only a few days had passed since her last visit, he showed no sign of recognizing her. If anything, he actually seemed even more formal that before.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He handed her licence back to her.

  ‘Are you familiar with the procedure?’

  ‘No.’

  He moved to the corner of the counter and pointed at the door behind him.

  ‘I’ll open the door for you, and when you’re inside the airlock you run your card through the reader. Then the far door opens and you can get into the vault …’

  She nodded to show that she understood.

  ‘Inside there are a number of rooms containing safe deposit boxes. The doors are kept locked, but the one containing your box will be unlocked. Then you will have to use your key to open the right compartment.

  ‘You do have your key with you?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she replied, patting the bag hanging from her shoulder while she did her best to suppress a smile.

  Judging by the look on his face, she didn’t quite succeed.

  ‘Inside the compartment is a metal box. Usually clients take the box into one of the private booths at the end of the vault. There’s less risk of being disturbed there than out in the vault itself …’

  He paused for a moment, but something in her expression seemed to prompt him to go on.

  ‘The booths aren’t covered by surveillance cameras …’ he added.

  ‘I understand,’ she replied curtly.

  He pressed a button and the dark steel door behind him swung open.

  Rebecca stepped inside the little airlock. In front of her, only a metre or so away, was another metal door, even sturdier than the one she had just passed through.

  She turned her head slightly and glanced at the security camera in the ceiling, and tried to look as calm as possible. She actually had a perfectly legitimate reason for being there, so why was she so nervous?

  The door behind her closed and the sound made her jump.

  Calm, now, Normén!

  She took a deep breath, held it for several seconds, then slowly breathed out.

  Then she ran the passcard through the little reader. For a couple of seconds there was total silence. Then the steel door in front of her swung open.

  The vault was considerably more exclusive than she had been expecting. Discreet uplights around the concrete walls and a faint smell of lemon, both presumably intended to alleviate any hint of nuclear bunker and being shut in. It worked fairly well.

  A curved path of fluorescent paint on the shiny marble floor led her between a row of barred gates. In the rooms beyond she could see a great number of brass-coloured lockers. At the far end of the vault were what looked like changing-room doors. Presumably the booths mentioned by the guard.

  A green lamp was shining above the fourth gate on the left-hand side. She took hold of the handle and the gate swung open without a sound. The room within was small, probably no more than a couple of metres square. Another of the spherical cameras stared down from the ceiling but she did her best to ignore it. So, which of the two hundred or so compartments in the room was hers?

  She ran her fingers over the doors: 115, 120, 125 … There it was, almost at the bottom of the row.

  She knelt down, pulled the large bunch of keys from her bag, then inspected the brass door carefully. One of the medium-sized doors, about thirty centimetres square?

  The keyhole was fairly wide, which meant she could dispense with a good number of the keys, but there were still about a dozen that might fit.

  She glanced up at the camera, and imagined she could see the lens moving to zoom in on her. As if they already suspected that she shouldn’t be there, that the box and its contents weren’t actually hers and belonged to someone else.

  No, she really did have to try to calm down. The bank had contacted her, and had sent her a passcard. And as for Henke, he clearly wasn’t bothered enough about his possessions not to leave her to pay the bill for their safekeeping.

  In other words, she had every right in the world to open the box.

  She gave the camera another quick glance, then leaned forward and selected the first key of the ones she thought most likely.

  Too big, much too big. Which meant she could dispense with that one, and another which was even bigger.

  She tried a slightly smaller key. It went into the hole, but once it
was in it just spun round without getting any purchase. So she discarded that one and another that was even smaller.

  Four possible keys left. She inspected them carefully.

  One of them was slightly crooked and looked too old, so she decided not to try it. But a couple of the others looked much more promising.

  Neither of them worked, however, nor did her third choice.

  She was just about to try the slightly crooked key when there was a faint noise from out in the vault. She started, and flew up to her feet, turned round and peered cautiously out into the corridor.

  Empty, of course.

  The door to the vault was motorised, and if it had opened there was no doubt at all that she would have heard it.

  She went back to the locker and put the crooked key in the lock. It fitted, but she couldn’t manage to turn it. After a couple of attempts she took it out.

  Bloody hell!

  Her guess about the bunch of keys looked like it had been wrong. Henke had probably hidden the key somewhere else entirely, so her best hope of opening the box was gone.

  She could probably persuade the bank to drill it open eventually but, given the number of security procedures they had in place, that would be bound to take several months.

  Which of course would give Stigsson and his team plenty of time to find out about the box.

  So what was she going to do now?

  The crooked key had at least fitted, so maybe it could be straightened?

  She removed the key from the bunch, put it on the floor and put her heel on the bent part a couple of times. Then she picked it up again and looked at it carefully.

  It was worth a last attempt, at least.

  She put the key in the lock and carefully turned it.

  The lock clicked and the little brass door opened.

  The metal box inside surprised her. Not only because it was locked, with a combination dial on the front, but also because its colour and shape really didn’t seem to belong in this exclusive, almost sterile bank vault. The box had probably been green once upon a time, but the paint had peeled badly. In a couple of places she could make out the remnants of yellow letters and numbers. And the thick tin was badly buckled in places, almost as if someone had tried to open it with force. Slowly she pulled the box from the compartment. It was seventy to eighty centimetres long, and much heavier than she had been expecting, but fortunately there was a handle at the back, enabling her to pick it up and carry it over towards one of the small cubicles without difficulty.