The Game Trilogy (62 page)

‘Yes, hello, can you tell me, whose number is this?’ the man at the other end of the line said.

‘Rebecca Normén’s …’

‘In Palace admin, or …?’ The man sounded hesitant.

‘Sorry … I don’t understand. Who am I talking to?’

‘My name’s Sandberg, Captain Sandberg of the LifeGuards. I’m in charge of the guard up at the Palace tonight and we’re standing in front of a door we suddenly find we can’t open. If you change the locks, normal procedure requires that you inform …’

‘Hang on a minute,’ she interrupted. ‘Where did you get my mobile number?’

‘There’s a sticker on the lock. What … don’t you work in Palace admin? I thought …’

‘Wait there, Captain, I’m on my way!’

She jogged down the stairs with the phone still pressed to her ear.

‘Where does the door lead?’

‘What?’

‘The locked door …’ she clarified as she pulled her boots on. ‘Where does it lead?’

Someone was carrying him.

Or more than one, surely? One under each arm, his hands tied behind his back and a hood over his head.

Déjà vu!

He wondered briefly if this was all just a dream. That he was still in the garage in Dubai and the orcs were dragging him off to some Guantanamo pit.

His legs were moving, more or less, but the rest of his body still felt numb. The last few minutes were chopped into little fragments of memory. He had a feeling he had been taken somewhere, in some sort of vehicle. But that was more a feeling than a fact. As if the world around him had moved while he himself had been lying still.

They were dragging him up some sort of staircase. He heard a door squeak. Dry, cold air, but still not outdoors. Like some sort of huge attic …

She braked hard in the outer courtyard of the Palace and the car slid another metre or so on the slippery cobbles.

‘Halt,’ the downy teenager in the sentry box said, holding up one hand.

‘The officer in charge of the guard,’ she said quickly as she showed him her police ID. ‘Captain Sandberg, where can I find him?’

Up another narrow staircase, and the person in front practically had to drag him.

Cold night air, voices, city noises in the distance revealed that they were definitely outside now. Stumbling steps
across a slippery, slushy surface. Then hands pushing him down into a sitting position, pushing his legs over some sort of ledge. His feet were suddenly dangling freely and a gust of cold air blew up the legs of his trousers.

Like so many times before, his stomach was quicker than his brain. A roof! He was on some sort of roof.

Three guns in total, two automatic rifles and the officer’s holstered pistol. For some reason they made her feel uneasy. The Guard may be largely ceremonial, but she couldn’t help wondering.

Not dangerous, dangerous?

She guessed at the latter …

They were jogging up what seemed, strangely enough, to be a perfectly ordinary stairwell. Captain Sandberg in front of her, and two soldiers in camouflage uniforms just behind her. There were apartment doors on the landings, and a faint smell of cooking. She would never have imagined that people actually lived in the Palace, behind ordinary brown doors with letterboxes and nameplates, just like any other address in the city.

But on the other hand this was the western wing, a fair way from the royal apartments, the Palace church, the museums and all the other bits.

They stopped in front of a metal door at the very top of the stairwell.

‘There,’ Sandberg said, pointing at a bar across the door with a padlock hanging from it. ‘We only realized something was wrong when our key wouldn’t fit.’

On the lock was a small sticker with a phone number. It took her a fraction of a second to see that it was hers.

‘Are you sure we shouldn’t call the police … I mean, the uniformed police,’ he corrected himself.

‘Not yet …’ she replied curtly.

She pulled the key from her jeans pocket and saw at once that it was the right size.

She put it in the lock and tried turning it. The lock clicked open straightaway, and one of the soldiers removed the bar and opened the door. She was hit by a cold smell of old wood and dust.

‘Where does this lead …?’

She pointed into the darkness.

‘The attic? It runs the whole length of the Palace, we use it to get to the flag …’

‘The flag?’

‘Yes, the three-tailed flag, the one that flies from the roof of the Palace when the King is in the country.’

What the hell had actually happened?

His brain was slowly catching up with reality.

He had grabbed the handle, and was just about to open the door to the stairwell when he had been … well, attacked, somehow?

Could the handle have been booby-trapped?

But if that were the case, his hand ought to be badly barbequed now. But apart from the plastic cord cutting into his wrists, his hands felt fine.

He moved his body gently and after a few moments thought he had identified a point at the base of his spine from where a burning pain seemed to be radiating.

He could hear whispering voices a short distance away from him.

Then a familiar voice that made him start.

A narrow path of double planks led them through the darkness. The smell of tarred wood got stronger and stronger the further in they went.

The roof was several metres above their heads, and in
the glow of the torches she occasionally caught glimpses of green-glinting copper plate.

‘Careful,’ Sandberg said, once again shining his torch at one of the thick cross beams that interrupted their path.

Then the path turned sharp right, into the next section of the Palace, and she realized that they must be in the north side now, the side facing the Parliament building. Ahead of them in the darkness a door slammed. Sandberg stopped and pointed the torch ahead of him. Twenty metres in front of them the outline of another staircase appeared.

‘This is a site of national importance,’ Sandberg said quietly. ‘No-one’s supposed to be here, and certainly not up there.’

They reached the stairs and aimed their torches towards its top. Another metal door, this time barred horizontally.

There was a bleeping sound from her pocket. She pulled out her mobile and read the message.

It was from Micke.

She had been right!

MayBey wasn’t the person he was pretending to be.

Unless that was precisely what he was …

An imitation, a copy of someone else entirely.

She turned to Sandberg.

‘Wait here!’ she said sharply.

Then she started to head up the steps on her own.

‘Welcome, Rebecca,’ the man in the balaclava said.

The platform they were standing on was small, perhaps no more than seven or eight square metres. To her left was an ornate stone balustrade, and beyond that the drop to Lejonbacken, and on her right was a low wall, and then the gently sloping copper roof tilting down towards the inner courtyard.

She checked the time: 23:51.

In the distance was the sound of fireworks.

‘We’ve been expecting you.’

He gestured with his head and she saw there was a person sitting curled up on the balustrade with his back towards her. For a moment she turned completely cold. His arms were tied behind his back, and he had a black hood pulled down over his head.

Beneath his feet the building dropped away, some twenty metres or more straight down to Lejonbacken.

She looked back at the man in the balaclava. Even if his black jacket and mask made him seem big, he was actually smaller than she had thought.

‘Obviously, you see the poetic justice here …’ he said.

She nodded briefly as she followed his movements with her eyes. His voice sounded strange, as if he were doing his best to disguise it.

‘Your brother murdered your boyfriend by pushing him off a building …’

Her eyes darted to the hunched figure, then back across the little platform.

There was a black bag on the low stone wall about a metre away. She nodded again.

‘Yes, I get it. Your law applies here, an eye for an eye …’

‘Exactly …’ he said, but something in his voice revealed that she hadn’t reacted quite as he had expected.

The sound of New Year rockets began to grow, and through them blaring sirens approaching the Palace. Sandberg’s patience had evidently run out.

The balaclava turned and its eyes glanced quickly towards the edge.

‘They’re on their way,’ she said drily.

‘Good, then you can go back down again …’

She took half a step towards the trapdoor again, then stopped.

‘You know what, MayBey …? I think I’d rather stay here, actually …’

He started, and it looked like he was about to say something. But instead he took a step towards the seated figure.

‘You obviously don’t get it …’ he purred.

‘Oh, I get it.’ She glanced at the bag.

The sirens were close now, at least three or four different vehicles.

The sound of rockets was still growing.

‘I get the whole thing, actually. You’re planning to push my brother there …’

She pointed at the seated figure.

‘… off the roof, just as you’ve promised all your fans.
If it’s okay with you, I thought I might stand here and watch while you do it.’

‘W-what?’

His voice cracked, and for a moment it sounded almost shrill.

‘I said you might as well get going and push Henke over the edge. You’ve been talking about it for weeks now, so you might as well get on with it.’

He appeared to consider this for a moment, then took another half step towards the balustrade. She saw the seated figure squirm anxiously.

The sirens had stopped, which probably meant that the police were already on their way up through the stairwell. Another minute to get through the attic and they’d have reached the last flight of steps.

She slowly slid her hand under her jacket.

‘You don’t seem to understand, Rebecca …’ he said, raising one foot ready to kick out with it.

‘No,’ she said calmly as she closed her fingers round the object attached to her belt at the small of her back. ‘You’re the one who doesn’t understand …’

She shot across the platform in two quick strides, snatching her hand out. The baton extended to its full length and hit MayBey on the back of the thigh.

The blow was so hard that she felt the bone crack through the metal.

He fell backwards but she didn’t jump on him. Instead she planted her own foot against the back of the seated figure.

He could hear voices, two, to be precise. A man and a woman. They both sounded familiar, he knew that much, but his head was still far too groggy for him to be able to identify them.

Then he heard what sounded like rapid movements behind him.

Then someone put their foot against his back. HP HP

HP?

‘Here you go, MayBey, let me help you,’ she yelled over the screaming rockets.

She pushed with her foot.

‘Noooo!!’

The two panicked cries merged together to form one single brittle sound.

Having scared the shit out of whoever it was, she grabbed hold of the seated man, pulled him down from the balustrade and dragged him back onto the platform next to MayBey. Then she pulled her handcuffs from her back pocket.

Under his thick gloves and the heavy padded jacket, MayBey’s wrists were slender and she had no trouble at all putting the cuffs on him.

‘Time for a bit of unmasking, gentlemen.’

She pulled MayBey’s balaclava off and looked coldly at the face.

Then she removed the other man’s hood.

‘Jonathan Lundh and I have already met …’

She nodded towards MayBey, who was still grimacing with pain.

‘But who are you?’

‘M-Marky,’ the young man who was supposed to be her brother sniffed. ‘Marcus Lillhage.’

‘And how do you know Lundh junior here? Is your dad a policeman as well, by any chance?’

‘N-no …’ he sobbed. ‘Wedge and I go to the same school …’

She nodded slowly and then turned towards the black bag.

‘There’s a camera in there, isn’t there?’

The young man called Marky nodded.

She aimed her baton at Jonathan Lundh’s chest.

‘So, do you want to tell me, or should Marcus?’

He was clutching his injured thigh with both hands and trying not to look at her.

‘Okay, Marcus, off you go.’

She rested the baton on her shoulder.

‘It was a project … for school.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, we had to do a project in media studies on the flow of information. We wanted to see if it was possible to get away with creating a fictitious character on a site. Wedge’s dad used to look at that cops’ site, that’s where we got the idea.’

She glanced at Jonathan Lundh, who still wasn’t talking.

‘Then one night his dad sat on his mobile and accidentally called home. Wedge heard the way they talked in the van …’

‘… about me,’ she filled in, and saw Jonathan look up.

‘You were fucking my dad …’ he snarled. ‘Even though you knew he had a family …’ She nodded slowly.

‘You’re quite right, Jonathan,’ she said. ‘And it’s not exactly something I’m proud of, if that’s any consolation. So that was why you chose me?’

‘Th-the project wasn’t really supposed to be that big. We thought about pretending to be a cop who’d gone off the rails, who’d end up blogging about wanting to commit suicide. We wanted to see if his colleagues would try to help him,’ Marcus went on.

‘I mean, the whole thing was about creating a profile, becoming a name. Like that girl at art school who pretended to be psychotic and ended up really famous …’

‘Marky, shut the fuck up!’ Jonathan snapped. ‘We
haven’t got anything else to say to you, you fucking whore …’

She kicked him in the knee and he curled up into a ball.

‘You should think a bit about what you’re saying, Jonathan. Think about what they say about my state of mind on that site … A smart lad like you might be able to tell me what would happen if I broke your camera and then claimed I was forced to throw you both over the edge in self-defence?’

She saw his eyes open wide, as he tried to see any sign that she was joking. Instead she grabbed hold of his jacket and dragged him towards the edge.

Below a crowd had formed.

‘You’ve been terrorizing me for weeks …’ she went on, with her mouth close to his ear. ‘You’ve encouraged people to throw all sorts of shit at me, you almost ran me over, and you’ve threatened my brother’s life …’

She pulled him a bit closer to the edge. In spite of the whine and roar of the New Year fireworks, she could hear him gasp for breath.

‘Isn’t that right? The car outside my house, that was you, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes! Y-yes, for fuck’s sake!’ he yelled. ‘We just wanted to check you out. Then when you came running over …’

‘… you panicked?’

He nodded desperately, unable to tear his eyes from the cobblestones far below.

‘What about my brother, how does he fit into the picture?’

‘Coincidence. One day he just walked into the shop … Then everything just sort of fell into place …’

She pulled Jonathan Lundh back onto the platform and let go of him next to his friend.

‘What about all this?’ She nodded towards the roof of the Palace. ‘Whose idea was this?’

‘My brother’s an officer in the Guard,’ Marcus muttered. ‘He brought me up here last summer when they were lowering the flag.’

‘So the idea was that I’d think it was Henke sitting there on the edge? And I’d beg and plead for his life while you filmed it – okay, I get that. But how did you think you were going to get away?’

The two young men looked at each other, but neither of them answered. Rebecca thought for a few moments.

‘I see,’ she finally said. ‘Being led down in handcuffs and getting on television and in the papers would be the perfect climax to your little project.’ She nodded. ‘And because you didn’t actually have a hostage up here, you’d probably end up just getting a fine or a suspended sentence for some pissy minor offence. And I’d be hung out to dry while you got famous. Oh well, it’s not too late yet!’

She dragged them to their feet, untied the flag cord, and before they had time to work out what she was doing, she threaded it through the cuffs behind their backs. Then she tied the cord to the pole with reef knots and then shoved the two young men towards the balustrade so hard that they both ended up leaning over it.

A double, terrified scream – and the flag cord snapped tight with a jolt, leaving them hanging in the air with their knees still on the balustrade.

She could see the flashes from the mobile phones down among the crowd.

‘Smile and wave nicely, boys,’ she said. ‘You’re going to be famous.’

She went over to the bag, fished out the camera and, after a bit of fiddling about, pulled out the memory card.

On the staircase on the way down she found a hostage
negotiator, and below him a heavily armed squad in black uniforms.

‘Everything’s fine,’ she said, waving her police ID.

She pointed at the phone in one of the man’s hands.

‘But you can call Tobbe Lundh in the rapid response unit and tell him to come and get his son down. And tell him to bring two pairs of clean trousers …’