Читать книгу The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble - Литагент HarperCollins USD, Anders de la Motte - Страница 19

Sometimes, usually when she was dreaming, she could still see his face in front of her, the way it looked the very last time their eyes met. First the fury, then surprise, and finally the terror in his eyes when he realized what was happening – that he was about to die.

She always relived the moment as a film running in ever slower slow motion. The way he hung there almost weightless between heaven and earth, between life and death, while his arms moved slowly in circles, flailing, initially to regain his balance, then to grab at salvation. But for a short while physics seemed to have made an exception and allowed him to balance on the edge even though he ought to have fallen already. As if the law of gravity had suspended itself long enough for Rebecca to have time to see the terror and accusation in his eyes. She on the floor, just a metre or so from his feet, close enough to be able to reach, to stretch out a hand to rescue him.

Like so many times before the sequence of events slowed until at last everything was entirely still, almost like someone had pressed a pause button. And for a single intense moment it was actually there, for real, the chance for her to reach out her hand and try to undo what had been done. Save him. If she wanted to.

But even though she tried to convince herself that she loved him, that she regretted it and certainly didn’t wish him any harm, it didn’t help. Because deep down inside her, in a place that reason couldn’t reach, either awake or dreaming, she still wanted – even though more than thirteen years had passed since that night – nothing more than for him to fall. That his face should be smashed beyond recognition, that his arms and legs be broken like matchsticks, and his hands, the soft hands that she had loved and feared more than anything else in the whole world, crushed to bloody fragments against the solid ground far below.

And at the moment when the hatred once again broke free inside her, someone pressed play and her wishes came true.

Often that was when she woke up, at the moment when he disappeared from sight, and she avoided having to hear the sound of his body hitting the ground five floors below.

But not always.

Not today.

The muffled, soft sound was still echoing in her ears as she gulped down a quick breakfast by the kitchen sink. It was almost drowned out by the sound of traffic as she cycled fast along Rålambsvägen, but was still echoing weakly at the back of her mind as she made the mountain bike jump the curb on Drottningholmsvägen, and still hadn’t vanished completely by the time she pulled up breathless beside the guard’s box by the cellar entrance at Fridhemsplan.

She stopped at the barrier, showed her police badge to the guard inside the box, who waved her past absent-mindedly, evidently more interested in the mobile phone he was fiddling with instead of concentrating on his job.

Yet another incompetent idiot, she thought angrily before she rolled down through the tunnel beneath the Kronoberg complex, its cool darkness effectively shutting off the outside world and all of its sounds.

‘Come on, put a bit of effort in, for God’s sake! This isn’t a housewives’ exercise-class!’

Sweat was pouring from the six bodyguards. Five men, one woman. Down on the floor, ten push-ups, quickly up on your feet again, ready, kick, punch, punch. Then down again. Twenty sit-ups and back up into position again. Ten reps in total, then switch with your partner. A firm grip round the waist, kick, punch, punch.

Her sparring partner was strong and his blows almost penetrated the padded shield in Rebecca’s arms.

Bang, bang, bang.

Three more, then change again.

The self-defence instructor was living up to his name today. Peter Pain hadn’t got his nickname simply because he was British.

The first training class for the rookies in the Alpha group. Evidently Vahtola had requested a serious session to challenge the newcomers to her group. Rebecca could see their boss watching them from the glass passageway above the self-defence room.

Approximately forty-five minutes had passed and the tempo had been relentless so far. Even though they were all in good shape, more than one of them was starting to flag.

‘Okay, stop, gather round.’

Peter Pain beckoned them all over. There was a collective sigh of relief and Rebecca noticed to her delight that several of her male colleagues had to rest their hands on their knees to catch their breath. She was tired, but not as tired as the biggest of the men.

‘That’s the advantage of having a bit less muscle, boys, it takes less oxygen to keep it going,’ she smirked silently before Pain’s new orders interrupted her.

‘Restraint and release, groups of three, two holding, one trying to get loose. Questions? Okay, get going, and I want to see some speed! Go, go, go!’

She ended up with two big blokes that she knew slightly already. Stefan and Dejan, the former a muscle-bound bloke about one metre ninety tall, the latter only a bit smaller.

‘I’ll start,’ Dejan said and gestured to Rebecca to grab him from behind while Stefan took up position to lock Dejan’s arms from the front.

‘Ungh …!’ Dejan twisted loose easily with some sort of advanced martial arts technique as he let out a loud roar.

‘Nice, Savic, but drop the Karate Kid bullshit!’ their instructor said from the side of the mat.

Rebecca glanced up at the glass passageway. Vahtola was still watching, and it looked like the head of the unit was focusing particularly on her trio.

‘Ungh!’ Dejan was free again, this time even more easily.

Shit, she’d lost her concentration and Pain wasn’t the sort to let it pass.

‘Get a grip, Normén! If you want to belong to the elite you need to step it up!’

The third attempt, and now she knew pretty much how his tactics worked. Dejan took a quick step to the side before twisting free, so what would happen if she kneed him at the back of his knee in the middle of the step?

The answer proved to be that he fell backwards into her arms, and that she and Stefan could easily spin him round and lay him out on the mat.

‘Good, Normén, that’s how it’s supposed to look!’ Pain clapped his hands and Rebecca couldn’t help throwing a smug glance up at the glass passageway. Vahtola’s expression hadn’t changed.

‘Let’s switch!’ Dejan said tersely. He was red in the face and clearly not happy about being bundled over in front of their new boss.

‘I’ll take the back.’

Before Rebecca had time to react he’d taken up position behind her and got her in some sort of headlock. Both arms round her neck, his right arm over her throat locked onto the other arm, his left hand clasping the back of her neck.

It felt like she was in a vice.

She quickly tried to get at the arm across her throat, but Stefan, standing in front of her, caught her wrists and held her arms tight. She struggled and jerked, trying to get free, but Dejan evidently wasn’t about to let that happen.

It was payback time, and instead of loosening his grip to give her a chance, he tightened it. Her feet were almost off the ground.

‘Come on, Normén,’ he snarled in her ear. ‘Show us what you can do!’

Rebecca could feel her eyes starting to flutter. His grip was so tight that both her airway and blood-supply were being cut off. She tried to get free again, this time more frenetically, but Stefan was still holding her wrists tight, not appearing to notice that everything was on the point of spiralling out of control.

Her field of vision was shrinking and she could feel herself on the verge of panic. She was stuck, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move; she was immobile and in another person’s power, someone who wished her harm. Exposed. Helpless. And all of a sudden she was no longer in a gym in Kronoberg but in a flat in one of the southern suburbs and the man holding her was no longer a colleague whose pride had been wounded.

‘I’m going to kill you, you little bitch,’ the man snarled in her ear, and she could tell from the tone of voice, the one that terrified her so, that he meant every word. This time she would die for sure!

The panic she usually kept such a firm grip on welled up and filled her head, pumping adrenalin into her fading muscles and taking command of her body. And suddenly she felt a new burst of life.

She let herself fall towards the floor like a sack, and when the grip on her neck relaxed a couple of millimetres she launched up with both feet and thrust backwards and upwards with such force that they all three almost toppled over.

Rebecca felt the back of her head hit something hard, felt something break, and when she kicked out in front to strike a different target, the force of the kick altered their centre of gravity and then they collapsed onto the mat.

For a moment everything went black, but her sight gradually came back.

She was sitting on the floor with her back against the flattened Dejan with his legs on either side of her. A few metres in front of her Stefan was curled up, clutching his stomach. In a flash she was up on her feet, turning towards Dejan who was still lying down. His hands were over his face, but to judge by the trickles running between his fingers, more than that was needed to stem the flow of blood.

‘What the fuck, you crazy or what, Normén?’ he squeaked as he stared at her, sounding simultaneously suspicious and accusing.

She didn’t quite know what to say.

‘I …’ she began uncertainly, but Peter Pain interrupted her.

‘Damn fine work, Normén, that’s the way to bring them down! Savic, you were asking for that so you’d better take yourself off to the nurse to get yourself patched up. Wikström, do you need to go too?’

Stefan waved his hands dismissively as he got heavily to his feet.

‘Just lost my breath, nice hit, Normén.’ He nodded towards her.

Rebecca blushed, feeling simultaneously guilty and pleased. Maybe Dejan’s nose was a bit unfortunate, but on the other hand he had been asking for it with his stupid macho posturing.

She’d done her job, managed to get free on her own. She hadn’t been some helpless victim.

Not like then.

Absolutely not like then!

She was different now, stronger, better, braver. A completely different person.

When she eventually dared to glance up at Vahtola, she saw a faint smile on the other woman’s face.

Birkagatan 32, be there at 18:00.

It wasn’t exactly a difficult instruction, but this time he had at least prepared himself better. In spite of the heat he had dug out an old army jacket that someone, he couldn’t remember who, had left in his flat after a party ages ago. The jacket had loads of pockets which he stuffed with various useful things, and it had straps on the front which would be perfect for holding the phone.

The clip of number twenty-seven had finally made him realize where the camera ought to be to get the best pictures. No more rubbish bouncing at waist-height like on the train or at NK, from now on nothing but head-shots.

The viewers, or fans as he was calling them more and more often, had been impressed with the NK stunt.

Even if he didn’t know who they were, he felt increasingly sure that they were his kind of people, solid guys that he’d be happy to share a chilled beer with if the opportunity arose.

He’d actually tried to find a way to get into the community. He’d tried to find an entrance portal where you could sign up as a member and then play, watch and maybe even chat to the fans. Find out a bit more about who they were and why they liked him in particular.

But he’d failed. The search terms he had used didn’t come up with any links that worked, so membership seemed to be by invitation only. Which was a bit crap, because seeing other players’ clips would have been fucking cool, not to mention the direct contact with the fans, but there wasn’t a lot he could do about it.

The Game was more impartial this way, he reluctantly accepted that.

After his second task he had strolled intentionally slowly along the quayside of Skeppsbron, walking backwards at least half the way so he could enjoy his handiwork as long as possible. By the time he got home to Maria Trappgränd the Game had already put up a professional montage. First his own shaky footage from the inside interspersed with external shots of the clock. Then a split screen with the countdown in the middle. His hand and the buttons on one side, the rotating clock on the other. Three, two, one, click, and time stopped above the centre of Stockholm.

Five hundred lovely points, a personal message of congratulation from the Game Master and a load of new comments, as well as clambering a few notches up the high score list.

To say it was cool didn’t even come close! He’d been forced to wank not once but twice before he could get to sleep.

Up out of the underground at St Eriksplan, into Tomtebogatan and then right at the corner. As he approached the address he could feel his pulse rate go up. He decided to cross over Birkagatan to be able to observe his target in peace and quiet from a doorway almost opposite, and to have a well-deserved fag.

There wasn’t anything odd about the address.

A perfectly ordinary residential building built sometime in the early twentieth century or so, at a guess. Four rows of windows plus the skylights on the roof gave five floors in total. From the look of it, the ground floor seemed to be mostly shops and offices, and presumably the top floor was some sort of luxurious loft apartment.

So what now?

He pulled the phone from the strap on the left shoulder where, after much deliberation, he had decided to attach it, and swept it across the building, zooming in on the front doorway, then out to give the big picture again. When he was finished he noticed the little red light start to flash.

Behind the telephone box next to the Co-op

was all it said, and HP frowned unhappily as a minute or so later he fished out a plastic bag that had been stuffed behind the grey telecom engineers’ box on the other side of the street.

Had he come all the way out to Birkastan to pick up a lousy package?

What sort of shit assignment was this?

But before he had time to look in the bag the light flashed again and when he had read through the third message of the evening he felt his heart starting to race with excitement again.

This was more like it!

He checked that the camera was working, then fastened the phone in its place.

Then he tapped in the door-code he had just been given and heard the lock click.

Lights, camera, action! he thought excitedly as he opened the door and slid in.

The first target spun round like a flash!

‘Off to the right’ her brain registered as her instincts did the rest. She pushed her jacket open with her right hand, pulled her pistol from the holster and as soon as the barrel was free she aimed it in front of her.

She brought her left hand up to meet the gun, put her hand over the casing as she continued to raise her pistol-hand, which made the mechanism feed a bullet into the chamber. The moment her right arm was fully extended, with her left hand supporting the three fingers on the barrel, she fired off two quick shots at the centre of the target.

The entire movement hadn’t taken much more than a second.

Rebecca backed away slowly, still with the Sig Sauer ready to fire, her eyes sweeping in both directions above the barrel. When she had retreated ten metres from her mark, the next target suddenly popped up, this time way off to the left.

She quickly spun round and without even thinking she fired off another two shots halfway through the movement.

Bang, bang!

Another five-metre retreat, then the final target appeared, low and in the centre, not much bigger than a head. Half a second later this target too had two neat nine-millimetre holes acceptably close to the centre.

‘Stop, cease fire, cartridge out!’

‘Cease fire, cartridge out!’ she repeated back to the firing instructor, took her finger off the trigger, pulled out the magazine and then released the seventh bullet which was already in the chamber.

Once that was all done she put the gun back in her holster, took off her ear-defenders and protective glasses to await the judgement.

‘Nice shooting, Normén, you need slightly better tempo on the first series and less of a pull on the second, but generally, like I said, nice shooting!’ the instructor told her.

Rebecca nodded appreciatively at the critique, she had fumbled slightly with her jacket, lost a fraction of a second and then tried to make up the time on the second series.

‘Squeeze the shot off, don’t pull!’ she told herself as she taped stickers over the holes in the second target, ten centimetres or so higher than she had intended.

She had had trouble with her shooting when she started at Police Academy. The weapon and, above all, the bangs frightened her, and to begin with she had shut her eyes before she fired. Fortunately the academy ran an extra class for anyone not used to guns, and after a few evenings of intensive practice her fear had changed into something entirely different. Once she had got over her distaste and mastered the basic technique, the pistol made her feel safe. As if no-one in the world could get at her as long as she had the Sig in her hand. The size and strength of any opponent suddenly didn’t matter at all for someone holding a firearm.

And if both parties were armed, you had to shoot first and shoot best. So she had practised, properly down in the firing-range in the basement, but just as much at home with the authentic replica of her service pistol that she had bought in a model shop.

Draw, bolt-action, fire.

Draw, bolt-action, fire.

Fifty times each morning, and the same again each evening.

Squeeze the trigger, don’t pull. Over and over again, until it was deeply engrained and there was no-one in her class or even her year who was quicker. She had worn out two replica pistols so far, but it had been worth it!

Even in her current unit she was among the fastest, and when their shooting instructor checked the day’s results for both accuracy and speed, she came second, beaten only by a man from the Western District.

Shortly afterwards she called her answer machine to leave a message reminding her to increase her training that same evening.

The staircase was wide, made of grey marble, reasonably worn after a century or so of use. The banister was polished teak and a small, more recent lift for two people at most had been squeezed into the centre of the stairwell.

He checked out the stairwell carefully before setting off upstairs. He was heading for the second floor. The building evidently had another wing built out into the rear courtyard, seeing as there were doors off in that direction after every half-flight. Single doors to the flats facing the courtyard, double doors to those facing the street, he’d noted by the time he reached the third floor.

Four doors, all of them with neat brass signs and one of them, the second from the left, with the right name combination. So far, so good. By this time his heart was pounding in his chest, and not exclusively because of the stairs.

He looked around the stairwell and landing once more before he got going.

First he pulled an old blue woolly hat over his head – he’d already cut holes in it for his eyes and mouth, just like number twenty-seven. Then he pulled out the things that had been in the bag. The first, a little rubber wedge, he pushed under the door that was his target, kicking it to make sure it was properly inserted. Then he took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. At the moment the door-handle was pushed down from inside he pulled out the can of red spray-paint which had been in the bag along with the rubber wedge, and set to work.

It took a few seconds for the man in the flat to realize what was happening, and HP had got almost halfway through the text before the man started trying to open the door seriously.

Suddenly the aimless jerking of the handle stopped and a moment later the whole door shook, as if the man inside had given it a real shove. HP noticed to his horror that the wedge had slid out a bit on the slippery stone floor, and that there was now a centimetre-wide gap between the double doors. He caught a glimpse of a furious red face and heard the man inside yelling at him, but it was too late to stop now. Instead he gave the wedge a hard kick which he hoped would make it hold for a few more seconds, long enough for him to complete his task.

‘I’ll get you, you bastard, I’m going to get you, you cowardly little fucker!’ the man inside roared as he kept shoving at the door.

The gap was growing wider and HP felt himself starting to panic. But he couldn’t stop now, he only had a couple of letters left. Nobody loves a fucking quitter, certainly not the fans.

Suddenly he heard a door to his right open and when he turned his head he saw a girl of about twenty peer out. As soon as their eyes met she pulled the door closed again in horror, and he heard the safety-chain rattle behind it.

Fuck, he’d almost forgotten that he had the balaclava over his head!

There was another shove to the door and this time HP could see the wedge sliding back on the stone floor. All the target had to do was pull the door back and it would be free. A muscular tattooed arm and a shaved head were visible through the gap between the doors and in a sudden flash of inspiration he raised the spray-can and fired off a blast of paint at the furious face. He was rewarded with a roar in response as the door closed again.

Direct hit!

With two quick gestures he completed his work of art and had just turned towards the stairs when all hell broke loose behind him. Without looking back he threw himself down the stairs.

He took the first flight in two strides and when he reached the landing halfway down he heard the man up above take up the chase with a roar. Two more strides, first floor, two more to the next landing, then just one more flight of steps left to freedom. He could hear thuds and heavy breathing behind him, but not close enough to stop him getting away. But when he turned the corner to the last flight down to the exit he saw that his escape route was blocked. A woman was just squeezing a bulky pram through the front door and there was no way he could slip past. The gorilla behind him seemed to have worked out what was going on because he let out a triumphant roar somewhere just behind HP.

‘I’ve got you now, you little fuck!’

Panic welled up inside him, but instead of running straight ahead and getting caught like a rat by the pram, HP spun round past the lift and carried on towards the back door out into the courtyard.

He raced out into the walled yard without slowing down, and took aim at the carpet-beating frame off to one side. The gorilla was gaining on him, he was literally at his heels, so close that he could hear his laboured breathing.

HP leapt up onto the frame and from there jumped up towards the top of the wall high above. He managed to grab the edge with both hands, and kicked wildly with his legs against the wall to get his upper body up to the top.

It worked!

He struggled hard to get to the strip of tin crowning the wall, and managed to swing one leg over. But just as he was about to pull up the other one he felt someone grab hold of his trouser-leg and he was left sitting astride the wall, clinging on for dear life.

From the corner of his eye he could see his pursuer and could feel the man trying to get a better grip around his ankle.

Panicking, HP started to kick his left leg wildly in an effort to get free. Suddenly his foot hit something solid and he heard a grunt, and the grip on his ankle let go. It came as such a shock that HP lost his balance and tumbled helplessly into the flowerbed on the other side of the wall.

He landed face down and got a mouthful of soil.

When he got up a couple of seconds later and began to stagger towards a gateway that he guessed must lead out onto St Eriksgatan, he could still hear the gorilla roaring on the other side of the wall.

Once he was out on the street he decided against the closest underground station and sprinted off instead along Karlbergsvägen towards Odenplan. When he reached the entrance four minutes later and reduced his speed, he realized that his whole body was shaking.

Congratulations, HP!

the screen said once he had sat down in an underground carriage and got control of his trembling hands.

You have successfully completed

your third assignment, worth 700 points.

I have also decided to award you 100 extra points for an accomplished performance. Your film clip is expected to be ready in 23 minutes.

Greetings from

The Game Master

So in other words he would just have time to get home to watch everything repeated, and wallow in the love of the fans. Fuck, this was seriously cool!

When the door of the flat closed behind Rebecca she was almost too tired to go through her new routine. For a moment she toyed with the idea of not actually bothering this time, that everything was good enough as it was. But then her anxiety took over and she spent almost three minutes locking, unlocking, and then relocking all of the four locks that were attached to the door.

When she was finally happy, sufficiently convinced that everything worked and that the flat was secure, she threw her soaking wet gym clothes in the little washing-machine, staggered into the living room and collapsed on the sofa.

‘Hello!’ she said in the direction of the bedroom, but no-one answered.

It had been a long time since there had been anyone there.

Yet she couldn’t help saying something, anything, so as not to feel so alone.

‘Hello …’ a voice suddenly answered, and her heart skipped a beat before she heard it continue and realized that she was listening to her own voice.

‘… you’ve called Rebecca. I’m not home right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’

She threw herself at the phone and just picked up the receiver before the answer phone bleeped, but whoever it was who had called had already hung up.

Hell! She’d put the phone on mute while she was doing yoga the previous evening and must have forgotten to reset it.

Oh well, they’d call back if it was important.

The odds were fairly short that it would be a call from work about some overtime, something which for once she didn’t feel inclined to do.

The intense training of the past few days had left her worn out and tonight she just wanted to sleep. She might do a short session in the gym tomorrow, but she was planning to spend the rest of her day off catching up on a bit of well-deserved rest.

She went through her messages. The following were all reminders from herself:

‘Rebecca, remember to book a time in the laundry-room and pay the Nespresso bill, it’s due on the twenty-fifth.’

‘Step up the training regime with the Sig, Normén.’

‘This evening there’s that documentary about serial killers that you ought to watch. Discovery, eight o’clock.’

She gave a wry smile at her own orders as she deleted the messages. It was odd how strange her own voice sounded when she heard a recording of it. Almost like another person on the tape. A distant relative with a few common features, but more stern and cold. But then the sound quality wasn’t very good. She actually thought it was rather a silly habit to use the machine like this. Maybe it was time to get a new mobile? Then she could type up her reminders instead of carrying on with all these endless calls. A suitable project for the next time she had a few days off.

She picked up the phone and reset the ringtone, and fought a sudden impulse to call Henke. She actually missed him, more than she cared to admit. But that would have to be tomorrow now, or sometime over the next few days, she promised herself before she put the phone down and switched on the television.

A few minutes later she was lost in a deep, dreamless sleep.

The clip exceeded all expectations! It looked as if someone had set up a camera on the landing, because he couldn’t see a single movement that suggested a human hand behind the images which had been posted alongside his own under his profile. Even though the events had only taken place an hour or so before, everything actually seemed even more dramatic than he remembered it.

The door shaken by the gorilla’s shoves, the terrified girl poking her face out, and not least his own masked figure tagging the entire door. He looked at least as cool as twenty-seven had done when he sorted out that cop-car!

And the text on the door looked pretty damn good:

REMEMBER

RULE

NUMBER

ONE!

That was a message the grass inside was guaranteed never to forget. A little reminder from the Game Master about what the rules were, basically. Silence is golden …

Bloody hell, he was a body-builder or something, because he looked pretty fucking solid when he came storming out onto the landing.

The sequence from the yard was almost as good. Because he’d only been half-lying on top of the wall, the camera had been pointing in the right direction and he could get a better idea of the effects of his kicking.

You could make out a powerful lower arm and parts of a furious face sliding in and out of shot, then his own size forty-three Nike landing in the middle of the gorilla’s face before everything became a mess of sky and soil when he fell down the other side of the wall.

At a guess, the orc had been too pumped up on steroids to get over the wall.

Too bad, sucker!

Time to cut back on the anabolics.

He grinned broadly and pressed repeat one more time.

The fans liked it when you fried rats. The comments had already started to appear and his average rating had crept closer to four stars. With a bit more exposure he should have passed the boundary to ‘good’ by the morning.

And why not? After all, he was pretty much born for this. A hitman in the service of the Game Master!

The jacket had been a stroke of genius, the new clip was a hell of a lot better than the previous ones. You could even watch the run down Karlbergsvägen without feeling seasick, and he made a note to remember to pull off the balaclava sooner next time. It wasn’t until a couple of old women had screamed in terror somewhere near Hälsingegatan that he had remembered that he still had his face covered.

He’d make sure he did better next time.

Because there was definitely going to be a next time!