Game: A Thriller by Anders de La Motte

Protection Unit, took care of the onward transport of the royal party to Stockholm Palace.
    The pictures were brilliant! As well as his own, which were now almost razor sharp and hardly moved at all, thanks largely to the new strap he had fashioned from an old rucksack, the Game Master had placed no fewer than two other cameramen in Kungsträdgården.
    How the hell they knew exactly where HP was going to strike he had no idea, but by this point he had ceased to be surprised at the reach of the Game. Maybe someone had followed him when he did his recce, or perhaps the cell had a built-in GPS tracker? Whatever, the results exceeded all expectations and just a few hours later he was Mr. Clip of the Week, Mr. A Number One, and the Ayatollah of Fuck ’n’ Rolla.
    Television and the papers would be busy for at least a week and he laughed himself almost harelipped at all the so-called experts who pontificated about the perpetrator andthe motives behind what had quickly become known as “the Kungsträdgården incident.”
    According to one of the evening tabloids he was a right-wing extremist, according to the other he was a left-wing activist, all depending on the ideological position of the paper in question.
    The television channels, on the other hand, were more into the international terrorism angle. The most commercial station that had employed the most expensive expert even dared to identify a new Swedish network with “connections to Al Qaeda.”
    The only thing all those smart-aleck know-alls with their millions of high-school grades had in common was that they were all wrong!
    Totally and utterly damn wrong, in fact!
    There was no conspiracy, no terror network, no political agenda. There was just him.
    The single shooter. A man with a mission.
    Henrik  “HP” Pettersson, the man, the myth, the legend, and he had beaten all of them! Among all the thousands of other deadbeats, the Game had selected him specifically. They had seen his potential, evaluated his talents, and set him on track.
    And as thanks he had stepped up and struck a totally fucking massive home run!
    Just thinking about it made him rock hard again!

7
FAIR GAME
    You murdering little whore!
    Someone like you shouldn’t be allowed in the police!
    THE NOTE WAS waiting for her when she opened her locker and for a moment she was almost surprised. But then reality caught up with her. A little white Post-it note with the police force logo in the top-right corner, just like the others, and fixed to the edge of the little shelf toward the top of the locker.
    She touched it, stroking her fingertips over it, and silently repeated the words that had been written in red ink. Round, almost childish lettering, yet the message was anything but innocent. Really she ought to pull it off, crumple it up, and get rid of it. But she knew that if she did, it would only be replaced with a new one. And why not, really? The note was basically right.
    A “ murdering little whore ,” that’s what Dag’s sister had called her at the funeral. Deathly pale, with her arm around her sobbing mother, Nilla had pointed and shouted those very words so loudly that no one could have missed a single syllable.
    “It’s all your fault, you murdering little whore. You killed him, you and your damn brother!
    “How the hell have you got the nerve to show yourself here?”
    The church had fallen utterly silent. Even the priest seemed to be staring at her as she stood there alone in the middle of the aisle, among all the seated black-clad figures.
    And she knew that Nilla was right.
    She didn’t belong there; she had nothing in common with the people who were mourning Dag’s death. With people who would like nothing more than for him to be alive still, instead of in the coffin up at the front by the altar. Because she wasn’t one of them. She was happy, yes, actually happy, that Dag was dead, that he could no longer make her life a living hell. For a moment she was on the point of