The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble. Литагент HarperCollins USD

thing sounded pretty odd, which was probably the understatement of the year …

      Fake police, madmen in the forest, planes, arson and bombs – it was all a bit difficult to take in, to put it mildly. Then, on top of all that, a secret gambling set-up where people could place bets and order assassinations at the same time.

      When he started rambling about Palme’s murder, 9/11 and the fire in Katarina Church, she had to stop him.

      This was just too much!

      All his usual bullshit stories paled against this collection. Could he even hear how crazy he sounded? But, on the other hand, she could hardly ignore the tangible evidence proving that at least some of what he was saying had actually happened.

      The phone, the video clips, the fires and the bomb were clearly all real. She had seen them herself, or evidence of them.

      It was quite obvious that he was in trouble, and it was undeniable that someone was trying to hurt him. But where was the dividing line between reality and fantasy?

      He sounded like one of the radiation-obsessed crazies who used to phone the police in the middle of the night.

      People who wanted to report that NASA was using television sets to watch the whole world, and that the king was actually a robot working for the CIA.

      The only similarity with all the scrapes Henke had got himself into before was the question of guilt. None of it was his fault, obviously, he was just a victim of unfortunate circumstances. He’d got into a bit of trouble, that’s all. Soon that stone at Lindhagensplan would have thrown itself off the bridge …

      ‘So what are you planning to do next?’ She tried to keep her voice neutral.

      He took a deep breath, then sighed.

      ‘I haven’t got many options left, really. The flat’s going to be ready soon, but fuck knows if I’ve got the balls to live there anymore. The cottage is buggered now, and I can’t stay with Manga. So I was thinking of leaving, ditching all this shit and moving somewhere else. Somewhere they can’t find me. Thailand maybe, Jesus is already out there, of course, if you remember him?’

      Rebecca nodded but said nothing.

      ‘I can probably find a way of making some money once I get there, and the flat would raise a bit of money if I sold it.’

      He gave her his little brother look and tilted his head to one side. She’d long since worked out where this conversation was heading.

      ‘But I could do with a bit of start-up capital to get me going …’

      Here we go, she thought.

      The patented solution to all his problems. This time the mess he’d got himself into looked far worse than usual, but the punchline was the same as ever.

      He needed money, and as always she was the one who was expected to cough up. Little Henke had got into trouble and some nasty people were trying to get him, so now he needed money so he could run away and hide.

      The worst thing was that no matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t come up with a better solution. Obviously she could suggest that they go to the police together, that he should take responsibility for what he had done and help to put it all right. But she already knew what the answer would be, and even if he took her advice, against all expectation, she doubted if her colleagues would be any help. Sure, they’d be quick to arrest and charge him with Lindhagensplan and Kungsträdgården, so they could say they’d solved that summer’s most talked about crimes. But any more in-depth investigation into the underlying causes would be put on ice the moment Henke started with his radiation-lunatic stuff. And he’d be blamed for it all – he’d be the lone perpetrator, and even if it wasn’t entirely undeserved, she couldn’t just watch while he was sent to prison again.

      His proposed solution was, under the circumstances, the best one on offer.

      ‘How much?’ she sighed.

      Obviously he shouldn’t have told her. Partly because he was breaking that bastard rule again, but that particular reason was fairly easy to rationalize away. In practice he had already been punished for telling her when they torched his flat, and that time he hadn’t actually done it.

      In other words, they owed him one. Quid pro quo, so to speak.

      The more serious reason for staying quiet was that he could hear how crazy it all sounded now that he was telling someone else. The conclusions he had reached out in the cottage, which had seemed so solid when he went through them on his own, now sounded like something out of the X-Files, and when he’d finished talking his sister wasn’t the only one in the room with doubts about his sanity.

      He should have kept quiet, just talked about the things she already knew and kept the rest to himself.

      The end result was the same, after all.

      He was in trouble, and needed to get away, this time much further than Tantolunden. Disappear off the map, basically, some place where no-one could find him, but where he could still have a decent life.

      But that sort of vanishing act took money, and he didn’t have any. So he was left standing there, cap in hand as usual. His sister would cough up, she always did. They even joked about it sometimes: Cavalry to the rescue!

      But for some reason it didn’t feel quite as easy about taking her money this time.

      It wasn’t right, somehow …

      But he still did it. Spent the night on her sofa, then went with her to the bank the next day.

      A night’s sleep and some more decent food had done him good, and he felt much brighter than he had during the previous evening’s tearful outburst.

      It was still a bit embarrassing, but what the fuck …

      Bodyguards must get paid pretty well, if she had that much in her account …

      He got twenty-seven thousand in cash, and was left with twenty-three once he’d bought a few clothes and a new pay-as-you-go mobile in the shops around Hötorget. Then a quick call to Lufthansa.

       Ein return ticket to Frankfurt for an Andreas Pettersson? Kein problem, mein herr!

      Seeing as his passport very handily didn’t say which of his first names he used, there wouldn’t be any problem picking the ticket up at Arlanda.

      It was the first time he’d ever had any use for his middle name. Anyone checking the passenger lists wouldn’t find him, at least not straight away. They’d probably start by looking for single tickets booked in the name he usually used, so Andreas wouldn’t be picked up first time round.

      By then he’d already be in Frankfurt, with a whole load of airlines and destinations to pick from. If he felt like it he could even skip the flight and catch the train to some other airport instead. Cross the border into Holland or Belgium, maybe. The Germans were pretty fucking hot when it came to trains, and cash left no trail.

       Are you sure you want to exit?

       Hell yeah!

      He was sitting on the airport bus with his newly purchased cabin luggage by his feet. Apart from the laptop it contained a pair of jeans, some underwear and toiletries, but that was more or less it. He was travelling light, essentials only, he could pick up the rest when he got there.

      It was a shame about his stuff at home in Maria Trappgränd, but Becca had volunteered as usual. She’d promised to put it all in storage and sort out an estate agent to unlock the value of the two-room flat. He was going to call her in a month or so to sort out the money.

      Half of the flat was actually hers, but there’d still be plenty of money left over.

      Transferring the cash would be a bit tricky, but there had to be ways round that. An anonymous account with Western Union or something?

      Most of the stuff in the flat was crap, things he’d inherited from Mum and