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

Besides, he could think of another political murder where, even though the killer had been caught, the case was a good match for the profile ‘single perpetrator with no good motive’. Not to mention the so-called Laser Man back in the early nineties. There was something methodical about the progress of his criminal career, something that made you think of computer games. As if he had been working his way through different stages of difficulty, taking greater and greater risks. Almost as if he was clambering up some sort of league-table …

According to the clips HP found on the Swedish Television website, the culprit had blown the money he took from his victims in a German casino, so he evidently liked gambling. Was he actually a player, in two senses of the word? It made perfect sense, but at the same time it sounded completely insane! What about the Kennedy assassination? The sinking of the Estonia ? 9/11?

Yes, he’d got it all on the brain.

Big time!

He was scouring the news websites several times an hour, and even though they were mostly about Sweden’s presidency of the EU, he imagined he could see signs of the Game everywhere.

A well-known financier who had vanished into thin air, a load of dynamite that had gone missing from a secure store, a petty-criminal in Portugal who suddenly got it into his head to blow up an empty luxury yacht, and himself with it …

It was all out there, if you only knew what you were looking for. Things that couldn’t be explained, no matter which way you approached them. That’s to say, if the explanation wasn’t the fact that Erman was right. That the whole thing was just a huge fucking Game!

I’ve opened your eyes and now you can see …

The weirdest thing was that he could see how crazy it sounded. But he still couldn’t let it go. ‘An awareness of illness doesn’t mean you’re well,’ as one of his mum’s alcoholic friends used to say.

There was a lot in that! But unlike the idiots out there, he had actually been caught up in it himself. An inside man, just like Brill. He knew that the Game existed, he had seen with his own eyes what they were capable of doing, or – to be more accurate – getting other people to do …

It was actually the manipulation that stung most.

The way they’d pressed his buttons and got him to play along willingly. Humiliating him just for the fun of it, then dropping him quicker than a flask of Russian thallium. But also the fact that he’d actually enjoyed being the centre of attention, getting loads of cred. For the first time ever, a team player, part of something bigger than himself, even one of the stars of the team.

Christ, he’d loved the kick from that! Loved it so fucking much that on one level he still couldn’t help dreaming, in spite of all the shit that had happened, that he could get back in the limelight … he’d do pretty much anything. Like some mangy dog that was so desperate for approval even after it had been beaten by its master that it was willing to shag more legs – any legs – to get another pat on the head. One question itched like a massive great scab and no matter how he tried, he couldn’t help picking at it: if he’d known that Becca was in the cop-car that evening, that she would be or could have been injured by the stone he was going to drop from the bridge, would it have made any difference?

He honestly didn’t know.

Even now, after so many hours thinking, he still couldn’t answer that bastard question with a simple Yes or No.

Totally fucking sick!

It had taken a day or so to work out the deal with the flash-grenade attack on the horse-guards’ cortège. Who would get any pleasure from some bolting horses and a pair of shitty royal underpants? Obviously it could just have been that they wanted to test him or get some cool pictures. But then he read about a break-in at a gentlemen’s outfitters on Östermalm, and how it had been preceded by a false bomb threat. An attaché case with the word bomb in white paint on the side, left outside the Iranian Embassy, and suddenly half the police force were over on Lidingö and thus out of the game. And that’s where he got the idea.

After checking on the police’s own website, he found what he was looking for. At the same time as Kungsträdgården was filling up with galloping horses and all available police units, including the helicopter which was sent to circle above the city centre, someone had stolen a container-load of Viagra from a company out in the western suburbs. They had coolly driven past security with a truck, waving what had looked like the right documentation, then calmly hooked up to the container and driven off with it, without having to worry about being pursued by the police helicopter before they had time to unload the pills, because HP had seen to that.

So had he been a decoy, sent out to lure the dogs into sniffing around in the wrong place?

‘Look up the word Game and you’ll see what I mean!’ Erman had said, and halfway down the page Wiktionary backed up his theory.

– Distraction or Diversion

He could perfectly well have been both! And suddenly all those weird occurrences assumed yet another crazy dimension. Diversionary tactics, decoys and smokescreens, all to get the authorities and the general public to look in the wrong direction?

In that case, what was the main event, what were the things they didn’t want to show, and who was behind them?

The Freemasons?

The WHO?

The Bilderberg Group?

Or was he taking it too far …? Was his brain messing with him, showing him things that didn’t actually exist just because he wanted to see them?

Was the Game really as advanced as Erman had claimed, or was it all just for fun? Something they did just because they could? A game, basically? Just a way of passing the fucking time!

All these questions were starting to drive him mad. His head ached like it was going to burst from all the junk flying around up there. He couldn’t even come up with a single damn paracetamol, he’d long since hunted through all Auntie’s drawers and cupboards.

He lit a cigarette, one of the last few. A deep drag, then out floated all the tensions along with the smoke.

Phew …!

Meditation by Marlboro.

Almost always worked.

So what was he going to do now?

That was the million dollar question. He hadn’t left the cottage for several days, and had hardly even eaten anything. He’d just been smoking, scanning the internet, and picking away at that huge fucking mental scab. Manga had looked in briefly and topped up the essential supplies of fags and cans of army-ration bean soup, but he’d had the sense not to ask any questions, which was just as well, seeing as he wouldn’t have got any answers.

HP could have killed for a spliff, but his stash was long since used up. Since the grass ran out he’d tried to find other ways of easing his anxiety. He’d wanked so much that he had friction burns on his cock, then in the end he took a cautious walk round the allotments to try to reboot his brain with a bit of fresh air.

That was when he discovered the van.

The car was rolling in slow motion, twisting on its own axis before its front end hit the ground. Then it flew up again, rear end towards the sky, did a complete roll before landing on its roof and disappearing out of shot.

The next film sequence showed a smoking wreck, but by that point she was already bent double over Manga’s filthy little toilet.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ screamed a little voice inside her throbbing head as she threw up most of an undigested chicken salad.

What in the name of hell was going on?

A white van with a blue logo, parked a bit further down the narrow track. ACME Telecom Services Ltd.