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

Why had he dropped a stone on their car from a bridge, or at least claimed to have done so?

‘Kronoberg,’ he had said, but that had turned out not to be true. Just to be sure she had called Södermalm and the Western District too, but neither of them had a Henrik HP Pettersson in custody.

Had he been lying to her?

He could very well have been, that had happened far too many times in the past. But there was something about his voice, something … it sounded stupid to use the word when you were talking about Henke, but nonetheless … something honest. As if he really believed he’d been arrested. The only way she’d get any answers to any of her questions was to get hold of her little brother.

The question was: where the hell was he?

He ran. First in sheer panic. Along the dark corridor, towards the door – although he was prepared to bet it was locked. Then relief as it opened onto a stairwell.

Stone steps down into the darkness, more unlit corridors along the way. His steps echoed on the concrete walls. Finally, at last, a way out.

Damp night air hit him as he crossed the street to get as far away as possible from that corridor. A quick glance over his shoulder, then one more just to be sure.

Suddenly he felt soft grass under his feet and it took him a few seconds to get his bearings. Large black trees splayed towards the night sky above him, and ahead of him was an iron railing and some unkempt gravestones.

Kronoberg Park, close to the Jewish Cemetery. Only a block or so from where he’d thought he was to start with.

His legs were working by themselves. Up the hill, through the park and finally out onto Polhemsgatan. The most western of the police’s three copper-coloured towers in front of him. For a few moments he considered carrying on to the entrance down on Kungsholmsgatan, knocking on the copper doorway and handing himself in. But before he’d had time to make a decision his legs were already carrying him out onto Fleminggatan, then right, towards the city centre.

His head was spinning as his feet drummed on the tarmac.

Tramp, tramp, tramp.

The monotonous sound calmed him down a bit. The whirlpool in his head gradually slowed down and the panic slowly released its iron grip of his chest.

Tramp, tramp, tramp.

A set-up!

Tramp, tramp, tramp.

The whole thing had been a fucking set-up!

Tramp, tramp, tramp.

The more he thought about it, the better he could see how it all fitted together. He had thought that three thousand points was a bit too much just for throwing a stone at a car, even if it was a cop-car.

And he’d been right!

The stone, the car, the cops – all of that had been secondary, or a sort of prologue. The assignment, the real assignment, had been all about him. A sort of evaluation, really.

Or a test …

Only a very small number of people are qualified for this level …

They had tested him to see if he had what it took. If he could handle the storms up on the summit.

And the result, ladies and gentlemen?

He had fucked up.

Big time.

‘Okay Rebecca, we’ve been through the details a couple of times now, but could you say a bit more about how you feel?’

She had to stop herself from looking up at the ceiling.

How she felt?

Standard-issue psycho-babble of the sort she’d heard so many times before, and it had never led to anything positive.

Did he really want to hear the truth?

That she felt like shit?

And even if she was entirely honest and told her whole story, and turned her feelings, thoughts and reflections inside out – was that going to help? Could it make everything undone? Hardly, so she’d have to pull out the tried and tested mask.

‘Thanks, but I feel fine, in myself,’ she managed to say, with something that was supposed to be a helpful smile.

She glanced at the time, twenty minutes or so since they started the debriefing talk, and she’d be lucky to get away with anything less than half an hour.

It had been Rebecca who’d insisted on the eight o’clock appointment. She wanted to get the conversation with Anderberg out of the way, so she could head over to Maria Trappgränd before her layabout brother had even opened his eyes …

Anderberg sighed and leafed through his notes.

‘Have you had a chance to talk to anyone else about what happened? Friends, family, colleagues, maybe?’

He looked at her over his narrow glasses.

‘No,’ she said, slightly too abruptly, then realized her mistake at once and tried to correct herself. ‘No, I haven’t had time to talk to anyone yet, it only happened last night, after all, and I wanted to see you first.’

A little smile to top off the lie ought to do the trick?

Nice save! Anderberg was thinking.

A smart girl, this one, but not smart enough to catch him out, at least not the day after such a traumatic experience as the one she’d just been through. A car crash and her partner in intensive care, that wasn’t the sort of thing you could just shrug off.

This was the second time in just a couple of weeks that they’d met, and his earlier concerns about Rebecca Normén hadn’t exactly decreased. As far as he understood it, she had once again acted in an irreproachable manner, but this time she didn’t seem anywhere near as composed.

In contrast to their previous conversation, this time she sounded mostly like a robot, as though she were on autopilot. That wasn’t a good sign. If he couldn’t get her to open up and let go of some of her feelings now, things would look very different and his report would be considerably easier to write. He’d seen tougher officers than her snap as a result of unprocessed experiences, and he had no desire to add Rebecca’s name to that tragic list.

‘But you do have someone you can talk to if you need to? Sometimes it can take a few days after an experience like this, then suddenly a whole load of things come bubbling up. You can have my number, of course, but it’s important to be able to talk to other people, above all family and friends,’ he went on.

She nodded mutely.

‘But you don’t have any problems on that front?’

He looked at her again over the rim of his glasses.

She took a deep breath and made an effort to sound composed.

‘No, I don’t.’

Anderberg nodded and leafed through his notes again.

‘You’ve got a Henrik Pettersson listed as your closest relative. Is that your partner?’

She was on the point of jumping out of her chair! Anderberg wasn’t stupid, that much was clear.

A bit of harmless chat and then bang, straight to her weak point. Evidently her usual defence wasn’t working, so she had to choose her words carefully …

Another deep breath. Careful now, Normén!

‘Henrik’s my brother. Normén was Mum’s maiden name, I took it after …’ She bit her lip involuntarily.

‘… she passed away,’ she concluded, with what she hoped was a sad smile.

The psychologist nodded.

‘So you’re close to your brother?’

‘Not any more,’ slipped out of her mouth.

Shit, the lack of sleep and headache were taking their toll, and Anderberg wasn’t just anyone. Today it was unusually difficult to keep her guard up, mainly because in her mind she was already knocking on Henrik’s door. She had to regroup and try a new tactic.

‘Do you feel like talking about it?’

Anderberg had evidently caught a scent of something. She had to tread carefully now.

She shrugged to give herself a couple more seconds to think. What the hell could she say?

No, dear shrink, I don’t feel like telling you about my useless petty criminal little brother who doesn’t give a shit about anything and wrecks everything he touches, but to whom I’m going to be in debt for the rest of my life .