and neat, hardly bigger than the palm of his hand, and the shell was made of brushed steel. A small hole in the back indicated that it was equipped with a camera, and at the top was a clumsy black clip, presumably so you could fasten it to your clothes. The clip was in marked contrast to the otherwise minimalist design, and he was about to see if he couldn’t take it off when the screen suddenly came to life.
Wanna play a game?
it asked, showing two icons for Yes and No.
HP started in surprise. In his comatose, hungover state he hadn’t even checked if the phone was switched on.
Careless!
He touched his finger to the No icon, then tried to work out how to get the menu to appear. If he was lucky, he’d be able to use the phone for a few days until the owner managed to block it.
But instead of a normal start menu, the phone just kept repeating the question, and now, as he clicked it away, with growing irritation, goodness knows how many times, he was on the verge of giving up.
Fucking shit phone!
He swallowed a couple of times in an attempt to stop himself throwing up. Fucking hangover, he ought to know better than to mix his drinks, and he was so desperate for a cigarette that he felt like he was going to burst.
As for that girl, Christ, she was a dog, but what could you expect if you went out on the pull in the burbs? He had made a quick exit when the morning light mercilessly revealed her shortcomings, giving some lame excuse about a football game he’d promised a friend he’d show up for. To judge by her lack of response, the feeling had been pretty mutual. Run, Forrest, run!
But he wasn’t really in any hurry to get back to Maria Trappgränd. A stop to see the Greek, some easy money that ought to be enough for a hangover pizza and then a few beers at Kvarnen.
There was always space for that in the diary.
If he was lucky, there’d be enough left over for a bit of weed, because the mobile was no bog-standard design like the ones he sometimes ‘chanced’ upon. Five hundred to a thousand kronor pure profit, all in all not a bad day, in spite of the hangover and the tropical heat.
The screen flashed again and his finger had almost gone automatically to the No icon before he noticed that this message was different.
Wanna play a game, Henrik Pettersson?
Yes
No
HP stiffened in his seat.
What the fuck …?
He glanced around quickly a few times. Was someone messing with him?
There were maybe ten, twelve other passengers spread out around the carriage, and apart from a mother with two hyperactive kids almost all of them seemed to be in the same sluggish morning coma as him. Hanging heads, glassy eyes, sweaty, overheating. Not one of them so much as glanced in his direction.
He checked the screen again. The same text. How the hell could the phone know his name?
He looked around, but was left none the wiser. Then he clicked the button for No.
A new message flashed up immediately, this time in Swedish.
Are you really sure you don’t want to play a Game, HP?
He almost flew out of his seat. What in the name of holy fuck was going on here?
He shut his eyes tight, took a couple of deep breaths, and regained control of his galloping hangover anxiety.
Just keep calm, he thought. You’re a smart lad. And this isn’t the fucking Twilight Zone.
Either this is Candid Camera or else one of your mates is mucking about with you. Probably the latter …
Manga was top of the list of suspects. An old friend from school, good with technical stuff, owned a computer shop, got furious about anyone taking the piss about his new-found Arab god, and he had a really sick sense of humour.
Yep, no doubt about it. This was one of Manga’s sick jokes!
Relief spread through his body.
So, Mangalito.
It had been ages. He had actually thought that getting married and his new religion had turned Manga soft, but the little bastard must have been biding his time for this masterstroke.
First he had to work out how it all fitted together, and then find a way to turn the joke back on Manga.
It was bloody well thought-out so far, he had to give the little floor-kisser credit for that.
HP looked around once again.
Nine people in total in the carriage, twelve if he counted the young kids.
Three teenage girls, an alcoholic, two stereotypical Swedish blokes about the same age as him, somewhere round thirty. An old boy with a stick, a pretty decent girl of twenty-five or so with a ponytail and wearing running gear (it must have been the hangover that stopped him noticing her earlier), and finally the woman with the kids.
Whichever one of them Manga the Muslim had managed to recruit, they had to have some sort of electronic gizmo to be able to send the messages. Sadly, that didn’t exactly make the list much shorter. Five of them were clicking on some sort of electronic gadget, and, if you counted the earplugs the alcoholic was wearing, at a push you could stretch the list of suspects to six.
His weary brain came to the conclusion that it was more the rule than the exception to mess about with a mobile on the train, not just to send texts but to kill a few minutes with one of those stupid mobile phone games.
So, Einstein – not really much wiser.
His head was throbbing from the unexpected exertion, and his mouth was still bone-dry. Strangely enough, though, he did feel slightly more alert.
So what happened now?
How was he going to get his own back?
He decided to go along with the prank for a while, so first he pressed the No icon, then, when the question was repeated, the icon for Yes.
Oh yes, he’d play along with it for a while and pretend to be taken in, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized that this was actually pretty cool. A good way of passing time on a boring train journey.
‘Fucking Manga,’ he grinned, before a new message appeared on the screen.
Welcome to the Game HP!
Thanks! he thought, leaning back.
This was going to be interesting, after all.
Even before the wheels of the heavy vehicle had stopped Rebecca Normén was out on the pavement. The heat that hit her was so intense that she wanted to get back into the cool of the car at once.
Three weeks of high summer in Sweden had made the streets so hot that the tarmac had started
