Buzz: A Thriller (16 page)

A quick wash in the bathroom to get as much of his smell off her before she made her way home.

Just as she was pulling her jacket on she heard a noise from the front door. At first she thought it was the paper being delivered, then she remembered where she was. Obviously no papers got delivered to Henke’s empty flat.

She listened again.

There was a faint metallic clicking sound from the door, almost as if someone were messing about with the lock. The lights inside the flat were all off, so she ought to have been able to see a point of light from the peephole in the door. But it was completely dark.

She took a few steps out into the hall.

One of the new floorboards creaked beneath her foot and she stood still.

The clicking had stopped.

She padded carefully over to the door and tried to look out of the peephole.

But the stairwell was completely dark.

Then she suddenly heard quick footsteps on the stairs, and a moment or so later the front door of the building opening. She ran over to the window, peered down into the alley, and managed to catch a glimpse of a dark figure disappearing around the corner.

“Wossup?” he muttered sleepily from the mattress.

“Burglar,” she replied without taking her eyes off the street.

But for some reason she didn’t feel entirely sure about that . . .

HE’D SAT THROUGH
thirty different slides about the company’s “core values,” “mission statement,” and “code of conduct,” and he and the two other new employees had been obliged to sign a hefty bundle of papers covering all manner of confidentiality regulations.

The worst of his nerves had settled, but the feeling of joining a sect that he had picked up on earlier had definitely not subsided.

But at least the personnel manager’s evangelical meeting seemed to be almost over now.

“Well, if no one’s got any more questions, that’s it from me. Now for a few words from our MD . . . As I said earlier, he would have spoken first, but Philip’s just got in from the airport so we’re having to work around his schedule.”

Eliza Poole opened the door and muttered something to the girl out in reception.

The other two new employees instantly pulled out their smartphones, but HP used the pause to fill his water glass instead. His mouth was dry and his head was throbbing with a tension headache.

He had zoned out a couple of minutes into the presentation and was gradually starting to wonder if this project was really such a good idea. Maybe he should have thought it through a bit better, come up with some sort of plan instead of just jumping at the first thing that popped into his head, as usual?

What did he actually think he was going to be able to achieve, anyway?

The door opened and a sinewy man with cropped hair, probably somewhere in his early fifties, stepped into the room. His pin-striped suit looked like it was glued to his extremely trim body, his shirt was silky smooth, and his tie impeccably knotted. A precisely measured and no doubt genuine suntan made him look healthy and relaxed.

Almost as if he’d just got home from a long holiday,
HP thought, and felt his heartbeat speed up.

Energetic Eliza, who was actually about the same height as Mr. Pinstripe, and definitely a couple of weight classes above him, suddenly seemed rather submissive.

“Allow me to introduce our managing director—Philip Argos,” she said, a little too loudly.

She tried to instigate a round of applause, but stopped instantly after a quick sideways glance from her boss.

“Thank you, Eliza.”

He nodded at the personnel manager, who blushed bright red and backed away quickly.

“Welcome to ArgosEye,” Philip Argos began, in a surprisingly soft voice. HP leaned forward so as not to miss anything. He suddenly realized there was something familiar about the man, but he couldn’t quite work out what.

♦  ♦  ♦

MayBey was obviously the website’s big star.

No one else’s threads had anything like the same number of comments, and his or her readership appeared to be constantly growing.

The last post was pretty good.

Picked up a lowlife dealer today. Found him at the top of a stairwell. During the search my partner stabbed himself on a syringe in one of the fucker’s jacket pockets. The dealer got it straightaway. Went completely white and started to cry. He’d broken the rules. Whether he meant to or not. The punishment was still the same . . .

The post had thirty-six different comments; another four had appeared since she last checked half an hour ago. Practically all of them knew exactly what had happened.

It was an unspoken rule that addicts always told the police if they had needles on them before they were searched. A tiny scratch from a dirty needle meant a whole load of blood tests followed by weeks of uncertainty. Weeks when you hardly dared to be in the same room as your family, going through every possible diagnosis over and over again . . .

Hepatitis A, B, or C? Or worse . . .

The rule was unconditional, which in all likelihood meant that MayBey and his unfortunate partner had given the dealer a severe beating. She would have done the same if she’d been in their shoes. Reluctantly, maybe, but still . . .

Hope you castrated the fucker!

Hit him till your baton bends.

Semper Fi—do or die!

And a whole load of other moronic comments in the same vein.

Hardly surprising. Half the comments probably weren’t even from cops, but idiots with a fetish for uniforms who’d failed to get into Police Academy and were now stuck in their mom’s basement watching
Cops
.

But on the net they could all play whatever role they wanted to.

@Applelover 672

Your well wrong there, mate. Everyone knows Android’s way better. Why spend a shitload more money on a phone that every fucker will have in six months?

@lost—get an Android, fella! You won’t regret it!

HP clicked the Send button and moments later his contribution appeared on the technology forum. He pressed Alt+Tab and switched to the
Dagens Nyheter
discussion page as he glanced at the printout next to the keyboard.

It hasn’t been proven that GMO products are in any way harmful to people. On the contrary, a number of tests show that the human body actually finds it easier to absorb nutrition from this type of product . . .

The Send button again, posting the contribution under the right article, then Alt+Tab again.
Expressen
this time, and the comment section under a film review:

Can’t understand what the reviewer means. Saw the film yesterday and it’s way better than the first one!!

Shit, only three days into the job and he was already good at this troll business! Damned good, even! His contributions usually got loads of feedback—mostly from people agreeing with him. He couldn’t help wondering what sort of people had the time to devote so much energy to commenting on things. Some of them seemed to live the whole of their pathetic little lives in the piss-filled gutters of the newspapers . . .

A quick glance at the time told him he was well on schedule and that it would soon be time for a well-deserved coffee break. But first he was going to surf through one of the big travel websites and let a few different aliases tell the world what a fantastic time they’d had in a hotel he’d never heard of.

He had about fifty different trolls in his stable, and his job was to keep them all going. Maintaining their Hotmail addresses and keeping their Facebook pages active, posting opinions that were in line with their predetermined attitudes on one of the many hundreds of forums out there. A few of his trolls were angry and shouty, others more reserved and sarcastic. Each one had its own little folder with a character description:

Male, 50 years old, self-employed, votes to the right and reads thrillers. Likes Swedish sitcoms, boxed red wine, and spending Friday evenings on the sofa. Dislikes: the leftwing in general, environmental cars, traffic restrictions and taxes on wealth and property. Angry, loud and often spells things wrong. Usually supports category A3 clients.

Or:

Female, 25 years old, student, votes to the left, reads Nobel prize-winners, likes world music, Apple, fair-trade products and Iranian films. Dislikes: rightwing politics, 4x4s, meat, designer clothes and the USA in general. Expresses herself in a controlled, articulate way. Mostly supports category A6 clients.

On a chart he carefully jotted down which trolls had had an outing, and on which forums. Which ones had been engaged in heated discussions in defense of which clients, and which ones were currently inactive. He couldn’t help being impressed by the whole setup. If a client’s trademark was getting a hammering somewhere, you just had to choose a suitable troll and deploy it.

Clicking to like something, or writing a few positive contributions. More or less as he was about to do on the travel site. Evidently the hotel’s average score had fallen below an acceptable level, and needed some positive feedback to get the average up again.

Simple!

Frank had told him about a consultancy firm that got into trouble a few years ago and had been stupid enough to get its employees to write comments in defense of the company under entirely new usernames. It only took a couple of days for the blogosphere to yank the idiots’ trousers down and wreck the trademark to the extent that the company had had to change its name.

It was different with tame trolls. Because they were already established out in cyberspace, no one could call into question where they had appeared from. So they could be used to clients’
advantage without risking the indignant fury of the Internet.
Smart. Really smart, actually!

But if he could choose, he would probably rather work at the other end. Causing trouble and trying to get undesirable discussions to spin so far out of control that the moderator had to shut them down. Unfortunately he hadn’t been allocated an attack troll yet. They were managed by his colleagues at the bank of desks to his right.

Not that he’d had that many jobs, but this was one of the best of them, if not
the
best.

His workmates were okay, the money was more than decent, and he got on pretty well with Frank. As he found his feet, his fear of being uncovered gradually subsided. The only person who still gave him bad vibes was Philip Argos. He was an imposing figure, no doubt about that, and he seemed sharp as a razor. Everyone who had spent any time working with Philip had something like admiration on their faces when they talked about him. Maybe that wasn’t so odd—Philip Argos was clearly a charismatic leader. But not just that, he was also really . . .

♦  ♦  ♦

Unnerving!
That was the best word she could think of to describe him.

Even though she had basically only seen his back and met his gaze in the mirror, he radiated something that both scared and appealed to her.

Control.

That was it.

This man had complete control—both over himself and
over the world around him. He was usually already on the treadmill by the time she arrived at the gym just after seven, which meant he was an early riser. Her exercise session usually lasted just under an hour, and on most occasions the man was still there when she left. At least one and a half hours on the machine, in other words, which at the speed he went must mean something like thirty kilometers of concentrated running.

Only once had she seen him interrupt his session. She had been warming up on one of the ellipticals, and when she glanced over at him as she usually did, he suddenly stepped off the machine. For a moment she thought he’d seen her looking and was on his way over to her. But before she had time to analyze what she felt about this impending contact, he had turned away to answer a cell phone that had been in front of him.

It must have been an important call to make him interrupt his session, and she couldn’t help switching off her iPod and trying to listen to what he was saying. But to her disappointment he was talking quietly, almost whispering, and in a language she didn’t understand too.

It sounded like French . . .

Pillars of Society forum

Posted: 27 November, 17:44

By:
MayBey

. . . yanked open the driver’s door and emptied the pepper spray in his face. Then dragged him onto the road. Baton out. Almost bent it. Then we let the dog loose.

The bastard shat himself. God, what a stink. Had to wrap him in the vomit sheet.

And drive in with the windows down.

Instant justice, you could say.

This post has
69 comments

“SURE—NO
PROBLEM,
Frank, I’ll find it . . . See you there!”

He ended the call, tossed his cell on the bed, and dashed for the little wardrobe. Beige chinos and a neatly ironed shirt—that was the sort of thing his Mange character would wear for a bonding session with his workmates.

It was Friday evening and he’d been starting to wonder if he ought to get in touch with Becca. He missed her more than
he was prepared to admit. But last time he got her mixed up in the Game he almost managed to kill her—quite literally, in fact.

Talking of the Game . . .

That morning when he woke up the phone was on the little writing desk.

After a few moments of blind panic he suddenly remembered that he’d taken it out when he’d got up for a pee during the night. But he couldn’t quite remember why . . .

Damned lucky that there was no charge left in it anyway . . .

He was suddenly interrupted by a cautious knock at the door.

Strange: he hadn’t ordered any grub, and the cleaner only came once a week.

He put the safety chain on and carefully opened the door. A skinny little man in oversized pilot’s glasses, Brylcreemed gray hair, and a Hep Stars T-shirt nodded at him.