Литагент HarperCollins - The Complete Game Trilogy - Game, Buzz, Bubble

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 windscreen 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 carriageway where the Prime Minister’s BMW was just manoeuvring 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 by a hair’s breadth the metal arrow marking the turn-off to Lindhagensplan, and ploughed 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 windscreen and when he looked over the other side of the bridge he saw the Volvo swerving violently between lanes, its blue flashing light streaking. It almost rammed another car with a blue light flashing in the left-hand carriageway, 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 carriageway, then, stopping on the other side of the bridge, he pulled off the camera and zoomed in on the smoking wreck in amongst 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 fuck 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 tearing start out into the carriageway.

The car came screeching out of the shadows. The collision was so hard that he bounced back into the railing, then the moped’s front wheel, which had suddenly been smashed into a shapeless lump, locked instantly and he just had time to put his hands up to protect himself as he flew head-first 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 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 paralysed? A cripple?

Fuck, fuck, fuck!!!

Slowly he tried to open his mouth to get a bit of air. It was like trying to breathe porridge yet everything seemed to be happening in ultra-rapid time. 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 everywhere at once. His head, his legs, and his hands more than anything else hurt like hell, but the agony, surprisingly, made him feel better. If you could feel things, you weren’t paralysed, that seemed fairly logical.

His vision cleared slightly and from the corner of his eye he could make out several dark silhouettes leaning over him where he lay with his face embedded in the tarmac.

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 towards the men to get some help, but none of them moved. Then a flashing blue light was 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, lad,’ said the voice of authority in his 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 round 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 windscreen and it was only thanks to Kruse’s decisive action that they hadn’t collided with the Prime Minister’s car and everything had 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.