But she can’t answer.
And she still isn’t crying.
‘Go on then!’ the man in front of him jeers.
His breath is like a pillar of smoke from his scornful, smiling mouth.
‘Pull the trigger, if you dare!’
The red mark from the laser sight trembles on the man’s broad chest. All he has to do is squeeze the trigger, and the bullet will do the rest.
But he hesitates. In the background the church bells are ringing louder and louder. Somehow he seems to have shrunk, become shorter, smaller, almost as if he were changing into a child. The pistol is getting heavier and heavier and soon he won’t be able to hold it anymore.
‘Henrik,’ the woman at the man’s side says quietly, and she has to lean over to get eye contact with him.
‘You don’t have to do this. I’ll be okay anyway.’
Her voice is calm and friendly, so familiar and comforting. Then she smiles at him, that gentle smile he’s loved for as long as he can remember, and there’s a lump in his throat. It’s forcing its way to his larynx and into his mouth. Tears burn through his eyelids and he hears the man chuckle.
‘I knew you wouldn’t dare!’ he mocks. ‘A worthless little shit like you isn’t capable of anything. Not even taking care of your family.’
He puts his arms round the woman’s shoulders and pulls her to him. She does nothing to stop him and just lets herself be embraced. She stands there quite still, stuck to his side.
In his grasp.
‘I’ll be okay anyway,’ her voice whispers inside his head, but he knows she’s wrong.
And the look in her eyes agrees with him.
Then the man is someone else. Changes again, right in front of his eyes. Into someone older, even more dangerous. And suddenly he feels his little boy’s willy shrivel up and almost disappear inside his pants.
But just as he catches sight of the belt in the man’s free hand, at the very moment he sees how it all fits together and his index finger squeezes the trigger to blow him away, send the bastard back to hell once and for all – the gun turns into something else entirely.
The bells have turned to thunder inside his head.
Drowning out all sound and swallowing the whole world.
It’s as if every church in Stockholm has suddenly joined in the ringing and is making the ground shake beneath his feet. It is the 28th of February 1986, the Prime Minister of Sweden has just been murdered. And the world will never be the same …
‘Fire, fire!’ he hears someone cry as he races up the steep steps towards Malmskillnadsgatan a few seconds later.
In his jacket pocket he can feel an old spanner bouncing about.
HP woke up gently. He opened his eyes slowly and knew straight away from the smell that he wasn’t at home. There was a smell of food. Warm, cooked food, not from some takeaway or kiosk, but proper home-cooked food. Sweet!
‘Oh, so you’re awake!’ She stuck her head into the living room and seemed almost pleased to see him.
‘Food will be ready in a couple of minutes, if you want to freshen up first.’
He nodded and wandered off towards the bathroom.
When he returned she was ladling out a helping of sausage and mash for him.
Proper mash, made from real potatoes, not powder. He hadn’t had that for … well, he could actually remember how long it had been.
It was pretty damn good as well, and he ate ravenously. She waited until he had finished his first portion and was no longer completely starving.
‘I was over at the cottage,’ she said neutrally.
‘I know!’ he said between chews. ‘I saw you from a distance but didn’t really feel like introducing myself to your colleagues,’ he explained when he saw the quizzical look on her face. ‘Was it a real bomb?’
She looked at him searchingly for a few seconds. There were a lot of things you could say about Henke, a hell of a lot, actually, but he wasn’t stupid. That was actually the main problem.
Smart, but lazy. Clever, but indolent. Bright, but lacking ambition.
She should have realized it wouldn’t be that easy to pin him down.
‘Looks like it,’ she said shortly. ‘According to Forensics there was enough dynamex in it to turn Auntie’s cottage into kindling. It was under the sofa, by the way, with a pressure-sensitive detonator, but perhaps you already know that as well?’
He shook his head as he shovelled in another mouthful. Dynamex, that’s the stuff they used on building sites. Good old dynamite in a modern form.
The same stuff he’d read about on the internet, after it went missing from a weapon-store out in Fisksätra. The bit about a pressure-sensitive detonator also sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. Almost like something you’d see at the cinema. Just like everything else that had happened.
As if his whole life had turned into some sort of weird film.
‘I’ve spoken to Manga,’ she said, changing tactic.
That had more of an effect.
He stopped chewing and looked at her anxiously.
‘And?’
‘He told me everything,’ she said, holding his gaze.
The shift was immediate, from cocky little brother to frightened little rabbit in the space of a couple of seconds.
‘And he also showed me some nice video clips from a phone you left with him.’
His face had turned white and his fork fell to his plate with a clatter.
‘Becca, I …’
‘Yes?’
She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to go on.
But nothing came.
Instead he buried his head in his hands and slumped across the table. It actually sounded like he was crying. All of a sudden she didn’t know what to do. She hadn’t bargained for this particular scenario. She hadn’t seen him cry since …
Well, since that evening when the police showed up. Back then he had shaken her, tried to get her out of her state of shock and talk to him. Tears of frustration then. Anger, impotence maybe, but not fear.
Not like now. He looked so vulnerable, so small.
Carefully she put her arms round his shoulders.
‘There, there, Henke, don’t worry,’ she said in her gentlest voice, just like she used to when they were kids and he woke up scared from the noise on the other side of the bedroom door.
‘It’s all going to be all right,’ she whispered, stroking his hair.
Henke had showered and used her ladyshave to get rid of the worst of the stubble, and was now wearing some of her gym clothes while his own were soaking in Y3 detergent in the kitchen sink.
It was surprising what some food, basic hygiene and a bit of sympathy could do, she thought as they sat curled up on her sofa. Once her initial anger had faded away, it actually felt nice having him there, hearing his voice and knowing he was okay.
He had filled in the gaps in Manga’s story. How he found the phone, the assignments, the mocked-up arrest and everything that had followed since he was kicked out of this peculiar Game.
They made slow progress to start with, but as time went on he picked up the pace so much that in the end the words were firing