Pull up the bag, the message said.
So he did.
A blue-striped PE bag, it turned out. Tied to the outside of the railing, and almost exactly the same as one he had made many years ago in sewing-class. Even the colour of the cord was the same.
It was a pretty neat coincidence, really. He seemed to remember that his was hanging in his wardrobe at home. Weren’t his old football boots still in it? They must have been there a couple of years by now, he could hardly remember the last time he’d used them. Maybe the summer before last, something like that?
He felt the bag. It was heavy. He undid it, full of anticipation.
Yes, there was definitely someone standing on one of the lower bridges, and there certainly shouldn’t be anyone there!
They were all motorways up there, no pedestrians allowed. Kruse didn’t seem to have noticed anything, but he was mainly concentrating on the traffic in the right-hand lane. She raised the microphone to her mouth but stopped halfway. The bridge was approaching fast and she could see the person up there moving. Her instincts were screaming at her to sound the alarm, order the convoy to halt and turn back.
But what if she was wrong?
A stone, a big one, maybe three or four kilos. Sharp edges too. Black, with a slightly rough surface that still felt warm against the palm of his hand. A patch of something sticky almost made his fingers slip. He moved the stone to his left hand and wiped off whatever it was on his jeans.
His heart was pounding in his chest. So what happened now?
When he saw the blue lights coming towards him along Drottningholmsvägen he knew in his gut this was what his task was all about. With the stone back in his right hand he leaned cautiously over the railing.
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